hi I'm Ricky and I'm on a mission to build the Net Zero house first and foremost we gotta go
solar and so today we are really excited because we're driving to Yuma Arizona to pick up our solar
panels now one of the questions I've gotten from a lot of you is I wish solar was more
affordable and I have thought about this for a long time and behind the scenes we're building a
new Energy website but one of the things we want to do is find ways to bring the price of Solar
down so the company we're meeting with today is called solar Steels and they're they have
a couple of different warehouses they have one in Arizona so we're driving out there today to
pick up used solar panels now they pretty much work with really good high-end panels that are
just a couple of years old so we're picking up 3 410 watt Trina panels today the reason why it's
such an interesting idea is because if I were to buy these panels new it would cost twelve thousand
dollars and instead I'm paying just under five grand which is a seven thousand dollar savings
and that is one of the easiest ways you can lower the price of Solar so today Joe join
us in this Ford F-150 Lightning huge thanks to Ford for Lending us this car for a day this is
the lower range truck it has about 220 miles of range as opposed to the longer 300 mile range
bigger battery option so we're going to pick up about 1500 pounds in solar panels and drive back
so I've reached out the computer and we're going to track our efficiency on the way there unladen
and then on the way back with a full pallet of solar panels and we have 157 miles to go and
the car is only showing 186 miles now my concern is if I go 80 miles an hour we're going to get
less than that as we eat more of our range due to the Air drag at higher speeds but we have another
problem too there's only two EA charging stations on the way to Arizona one is in Yuma at a Target
and I just opened the app and I promised you yesterday when I checked it was fine and available
and now it's showing as unavailable the entire station so that means we are forced to charge
both ways in El Centro so that's where we're going to stop and charge and right now what's even worse
is it's showing that that station is full so we'd have to wait to then charge we've gone 38 miles
so far and our efficiency is actually pretty bad we're looking at 1.5 miles per kilowatt hour and I
think that's largely due to the fact that we just climbed to about 3 600 feet and we actually were
seeing 1.4 and now we're coming back downhill now the reality is even at 190 miles of stated range
can we get to Yuma Arizona on a single charge I don't know that I would feel comfortable so
luckily we're going to charge it El Centro no matter what but it would be interesting let's
see what happens between now and El Centro which is 63 miles away we'll come back in a little bit
foreign
I'm not so sure if this is a mountain or just a pile of rocks actually is there a difference I'm
not sure all right quick update we are now at 1.8 miles per kilowatt hour up from 1.4 earlier and
that's because now we have a six percent slope and we're recovering that range try doing that
in a non-electric vehicle but so we're still a little under where I'd like to be but yeah let's
see what happens over the next couple of miles we are closer now to where we'd like to be it doesn't
really matter too much for this leg because we're going to make it just fine to El Centro El Centro
is probably 40 miles from here the problem is going to be from El Centro to Yuma and then
back to El Centro is how far one miles so 120 miles so now that 120 miles is going to be with
the solar panels on board and then we'll have to stop again and charge for probably 45 minutes or
something we'll see so bottom line is this trip is going to take an extra two hours because of
the fact that the car needs to charge twice okay so we just pulled into El Centro we've traveled
exactly 100 miles and we have an average of two miles per kilowatt hour which means we use 50
kilowatt hours of energy now for the moment of truth I'm gonna have to wait to charge
no there's two looks like there's a Maki and id4 cool colors of those two and I think there's a
spot right there San Diego to El Centro 100 miles two miles per kilowatt hour we've got
nothing but me and Juan inside the car and now I'm gonna set the charge limit to a hundred percent
and uh we're gonna charge this truck all the way up just to be safe so 100 charging by two
23. oh man that's really bad we'll let them know we'll be about an hour delayed
so while we're charging to 100 just to be safe we'll go get some lunch we'll see what happens
all right we're now 11 miles from our destination in Yuma Arizona
and we are doing 1.8 miles per kilo hour on this step and there's something interesting
that I just came across I want to share with you guys here in the settings under trip energy it'll
break down how much the climate is using actually driving the distances using and then accessories
and what I figured out is this accessories number was really high and then if you go to Pro onboard
Power Pro Power on board when it's on it actually uses a fair bit of energy and when I turned it
off I noticed my efficiency improved a little bit now it could be a lot of factors I don't know if
it was just the hill that I was on but if you're not using anything leave that off I think that'll
probably get you a little better range also a little bit of good news the Electrify America
station in Yuma is now showing as available every spot is in use but it's back to being online now
you know seeing it go from online last night to offline today and now online again I just don't
have that confidence and that's why I have the EA app open the only app I would trust with E8
is the EA app I wouldn't trust what the car says but even then I just I don't know this is part
of the adventure of not having a Tesla is the the charging is just much more of an adventure
foreign
solar panels procured next stop San Diego via EA let's go
okay we have our solar panels we're driving back to El Centro we've done 26 miles we have
36 remaining so far our average is 1.7 miles per kilowatt hour that's down from an average on the
first part of the trip that was two so we're down a little bit from there but all in all not bad
considering we are hauling 1500 pounds and also those solar panels are like a big refrigerator
so they really hurt the aerodynamics as well and if you listen really closely
you can hear that howling like that's the vortices being shut off the back of the panel so there's
definitely an arrow drag penalty we're taking which is the bigger part of it I don't think
the rolling resistance from the weight is as substantial so all in all pretty good so also
this truck I keep forgetting I'm doing anything different in fact it doesn't feel much different
the brakes work really well it doesn't roll anymore the motors are more than powerful
enough so if you're hauling on the regular the F-150 Lightning is more than up to the task and
you'll barely even notice you're doing it I remember now when I was in Michigan at their
Proving Grounds we were towing a trailer I had the same feeling like after about five minutes
I forgot we were doing anything special at all and it's not until you look back in the rear
view mirror that you remember so job well done to the 14 for making it that way now the penalty on
Range let's wait till the end and we will give you a report but right now 1.7 miles per kilowatt hour
so we ended up charging at this same EA station both ways in El Centro about 100
miles from San Diego and 65 miles from Yuma now on this particular time I pulled in over here
and this is a 350 kilowatt charger now I use this cable plugged it in and I was getting 28
kilowatts which is really slow and on the car it told me 90 will happen at eight o'clock at
night that's like two and a half hours from now so I knew something was wrong and I decided okay
let me try to try another station so I moved right over here into a 150 kilowatt station
which should be slower but now I'm getting 124 kilowatts and I'll be at 90 percent by 6 30.
so we just had our first error luckily I was in the truck when it happened so
it wasn't that big of a deal but it says charging session error to unplug
it and plug it back in so the truck is not charging right now now let's try that again
this is the sort of thing that I think gets EA a bad name there's it's by and
large pretty good it's working but you know these kinds of things happen again if you
were having dinner out at a restaurant this would be a huge issue because you'd
think the car is trudging it wasn't right so luckily we were here and I noticed it
because I'm watching this I don't want to wait here any long and I have to but yeah
there's just a little bit of cleaning up and a little more reliability that has to happen
before the third party networks outside of Tesla catch up and are as reliable foreign
what we did today we went out to Yuma Arizona about 320 miles round trip with the Ford
Lightning to get this about 1500 pounds worth of solar panels so here's the data on the way there
with nothing in the bed just me and Juan we were getting two miles per kilowatt hour which means
our total range would have been about 196 miles so they're telling us that we would get 230 miles we
didn't get that we got about 30 miles less than that that's pretty normal and on this trip we
rose up to about 4 000 feet and back down it was 110 degrees out so the AC was blaring the entire
time all in all pretty good range and then with the panels on the way back we got 1.7 miles per
kilowatt hour which means that the range would have fallen from 230 miles to 166 miles but still
pretty decent but the challenge really comes down to charging availability we had to charge in El
Centro both ways so as a result we had to charge and wait a little bit longer to charge it to full
90 percent before we left to make sure we can make it back and because I didn't know what to expect
when I was hauling I wanted to be safe and charged it more than I needed to so we have 50 miles left
as I mentioned if you're going to go home right now you would have charged twice on this trip
gone home plug in your garage been done with your day but because when I get this car back to Ford
tomorrow we got to fill this up before we go back so as a result we had three charging stops each on
average about 35 minutes which is not terrible but if this is a gas truck you would have saved
yourself an hour to an hour and a half on this trip which is a lot of time to be fair so the
first thing I would say get the Ford Lightning with the bigger battery pack all the other
features I don't really care for but I wish it had the 320 miles of range the bigger battery pack
driving this thing with all this weight and everything else was a was a breeze it was
really windy on those mountain passes and nothing was much of a challenge at all it just soaked it
up and the trip went by really quickly felt very confident you can slam on the brakes the
brakes were really good suspension all of it pretty amazing truck and now we have our solar
panels for our house this is the first time we've actually put it to work and man I wish I had one
I'm really tempted because this would just be the perfect crew truck there's room for five
all of our gear the front is a safe place to put our cameras and stuff we had a blast one did you
have fun pretty good trip so thank you guys for watching and be on the lookout we'll be
dropping videos about solar coming up our plans our permitting process our micro inverters now
that we have the panel secured that comes next we have a span smart meter going in we'll link
if that's already out by the time this video goes out tons of really awesome home stuff thank you
guys so much for watching I'm Ricky with two Da Vinci and we'll catch you guys next time