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And who's going to pay to upgrade the grid to handle this mass switch to electric vehicles? Even the "just use solar panels" argument doesn't hold water becaus
by tw04 10y ago
And who's going to pay to upgrade the grid to handle this mass switch to electric vehicles? Even the "just use solar panels" argument doesn't hold water because utilities are already struggling with storing the energy from non-constant sources (solar/wind/tidal) - and we've barely even gotten started on that front.
The current house and senate have an allergic reaction anytime infrastructure investment is mentioned, so I don't really see a solution to the problem arising anytime soon. I would imagine it will boil down to "oh, we just have to stop regulating the power companies so they can afford to upgrade" - at which point you'll find that dollar of electricity gets you about 1/100th the energy of that dollar of gasoline.
- philipkglass 10y agoAmong renewables, I expect wind to be the earliest and cheapest (at least for the near-future) way to charge EVs. Wind output tends to peak late at night/early in the morning: http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.html http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.htm... Conveniently, that's when commuter vehicles are most likely to be parked at home. That's also when local distribution circuits are traditionally operating well below capacity, so there won't initially need to be any distribution capacity upgrades to support night time vehicle charging.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoYou don't need a grid to run electric vehicles. They can plug directly into distributed systems.