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Each of those has major problems. Water heating is usually natural gas. Electric vehicle charging during the day prevents charging at home. So employers would

Each of those has major problems. Water heating is usually natural gas. Electric vehicle charging during the day prevents charging at home. So employers would need to come on board paying for charging stations with employee parking. And shopping malls, schools, etc. Heating is also usually natural gas, and while cooling is almost universally electric, it doesn't take very long minutes to a very few hours) in hot weather to consume any reasonable pre-cooling.

Gibbon1 7y ago
Elimination of natural gas water heaters is necessary. Workplace charging stations isn't so much an employer thing, as a commercial real estate thing. So it's not so much an inconvenience since borrowing money to pay for upgrades of real estate is what those guys are about. And of course natural gas heating needs to die as well.
function_seven 7y ago
I imagine the electric vehicle charging could be time-shifted to overnight. Between 10pm and 6am Also, energy for water heaters and home heating vary a bit across the country. Electricity is more common in some parts than in others. Even in places that are overwhelmingly gas or propane fueled, the 10% of systems that are electrically powered represent a small but significant opportunity to time-shift demand. A/C is definitely the largest culprit here, though. And precooling does work if you lower the temperature of the interior thermal mass of the house. I used to do it when I was subject to random 4-hour A/C shutoffs as part of my discount plan. If I got the house down to 66˚F before the shutoff occurred, the house would remain comfortable for a couple hours. I may have used an overall larger amount of power to do this, but it was the "right" power: drawn from neighbors' solar rather than generating plants.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  You could create a heatsink by freezing a mass of water then thawing it. The problem is space for large amounts of water and the high efficiency cooling and distribution system needed.
kbutler 7y ago
The replies miss the point: Shifting from natural gas heating and water heating cannot help flatten the duck curve, except by overall raising the demand for electricity. Most car charging is currently overnight, which doesn't match use of solar (the low part of the duck curve). To flatten the duck curve, we need to raise that low part and lower the later part. And if you drop the temperature of the house way low in advance, yes, you use much more power, you reduce the comfort (at least of some people!) And you still only push your peak demand out a little bit. Again, "use more power" isn't a good option to flatten the curve.
jsight 7y ago
I can see where you are coming from, but you are likely not aware that a lot of this is already happening. Even my small coop gives out a few hundred dollars in rebates for electric water heaters with remote control. They use this for demand control now. They also offer cheap ecobee thermostats, with an agreement that they can use them for load leveling. Again, rebates make it practical. I haven't seen anyone do this with electric cars yet, but its a pretty small leap to imagine utilities offering rebates to businesses for the install, if the result is to shift demand in ways that are useful for the utility. Right now that isn't really necessary here, as the currently small demand for EV charging is mostly at night, and that is already off-peak for our utility.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Elimination of natural gas water heaters is necessary. Workplace charging stations isn't so much an employer thing, as a commercial real estate thing. So it's not so much an inconvenience since borrowing money to pay for upgrades of real estate is what those guys are about. And of course natural gas heating needs to die as well.

function_seven 7y ago

I imagine the electric vehicle charging could be time-shifted to overnight. Between 10pm and 6am Also, energy for water heaters and home heating vary a bit across the country. Electricity is more common in some parts than in others. Even in places that are overwhelmingly gas or propane fueled, the 10% of systems that are electrically powered represent a small but significant opportunity to time-shift demand. A/C is definitely the largest culprit here, though. And precooling does work if you lower the temperature of the interior thermal mass of the house. I used to do it when I was subject to random 4-hour A/C shutoffs as part of my discount plan. If I got the house down to 66˚F before the shutoff occurred, the house would remain comfortable for a couple hours. I may have used an overall larger amount of power to do this, but it was the "right" power: drawn from neighbors' solar rather than generating plants.

AstralStorm 7y ago
You could create a heatsink by freezing a mass of water then thawing it. The problem is space for large amounts of water and the high efficiency cooling and distribution system needed.

kbutler 7y ago

The replies miss the point: Shifting from natural gas heating and water heating cannot help flatten the duck curve, except by overall raising the demand for electricity. Most car charging is currently overnight, which doesn't match use of solar (the low part of the duck curve). To flatten the duck curve, we need to raise that low part and lower the later part. And if you drop the temperature of the house way low in advance, yes, you use much more power, you reduce the comfort (at least of some people!) And you still only push your peak demand out a little bit. Again, "use more power" isn't a good option to flatten the curve.

jsight 7y ago

I can see where you are coming from, but you are likely not aware that a lot of this is already happening. Even my small coop gives out a few hundred dollars in rebates for electric water heaters with remote control. They use this for demand control now. They also offer cheap ecobee thermostats, with an agreement that they can use them for load leveling. Again, rebates make it practical. I haven't seen anyone do this with electric cars yet, but its a pretty small leap to imagine utilities offering rebates to businesses for the install, if the result is to shift demand in ways that are useful for the utility. Right now that isn't really necessary here, as the currently small demand for EV charging is mostly at night, and that is already off-peak for our utility.