2023 Summary

2023 was the first full year with the upgraded solar setup and using a Tesla as our main transport. We also spent a lot of time away from the RV doing road-trips and staying in rented houses/hotels. In total we spent around 100 days away from the RV. The most epic road-trip was our winter ski trip in March and April where we visited 5 different resorts.

We also went for a long drive in July including skiing at Mammoth for some late season. We drove almost 34000 miles in the 12 months.

We have been keeping track of the charging at home versus on the road. When road-tripping is AC charging very rarely possible, but with the trailer mounted solar able to supply a lot of power, have we been able to charge 77% of the at home charging from the trailer. This amount to a saving of $1700 compared to charging at DC fast chargers.

Not a single time have we used an airline to go where we wanted. Driving takes the same time for a trip to San Diego (~5 hours) and we can bring all we need and need to rental car, the total trip cost is under $100.

During the year have we purchased a new set of winter tires with rims and tire chains. We needed our first tire replacement in the fall and had a cracked windshield from rocks flung up by a truck.

With everything added up under 24 cents per mile driven. A lot of energy was used by the car over 12000 kWh in total for the year. We charged 4340 kWh from AC, mainly our own setup.

We used to spend the primary amount of power created by our solar setup in the RV, This year we have been charging our own car at at time also other Teslas.

The RV use the same 9-10 kWh per day as years ago, we do run our water heater from electricity a lot more than we used to with the help of extra ground deployed solar panels.

Water Heater is still the largest consumer as a single device, but adding out network gear and StarLink is now consuming a lot more of our AC power consumption than any other group.

We have also been using the trailer to run the Air Condition and in the winter Heat Pumps, but the main consumption is for charging the cars. Of the 15 MWh created from our solar setup has over 4 MWh went to charging our own car.

The high production in the winter is because of the large number of ground deployed panels when we are stationary in Arizona. We even added extra panels on the ground for assisting the RV to generate the needed power for the short days. These panels are only needed for December and January where the days are very short and the sun angle low.

We also had the RV stored for long time in the spring and summer with air condition active day and night. One day in mid-July we charged the car and used air condition for a total production of 108 kWh.