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It does show how insignificant electric cars are in the mix of things, and counter productive (unless recharged off-grid) compared to putting Gov rebates and in
by dwd 7y ago
It does show how insignificant electric cars are in the mix of things, and counter productive (unless recharged off-grid) compared to putting Gov rebates and incentives into alternate generation that gets these plants offline as quickly as possible.
Tesla (and other electric manufacturers) are years away from building 3.5 million cars for the US.
- reitzensteinm 7y agoEVs (including PHEVs) provide an instantly switchable dynamic demand, along the lines of 20% of total electricity use if the entire fleet were replaced. Then if you add on V2G, all of a sudden you can swing electricity demand +/- 20%. Combined with overprovisioning, this greatly mitigates the disadvantages of intermittent renewables. I don't really see how we get to 100% renewables without it, and it makes sense to pursue both simultaneously.
- dwd 7y agoYes, definitely pursue both. My point was more as far as where Gov funding should be prioritised given their relutance to throw funding at new generation and rely on market investment while providing incentives to buy electric vehicles - though for Telsa that will be gone soon enough. 2b would pay for ~3.4GW* of hydro, ~1.2GW* wind or ~700MW solar* but only subsidise 400k EVs (avg 5k tax credit per vehicle). * https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31912 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31912
- maliker 7y agoI work with electric utilities, and every time we talk with car manufacturers (including recently Tesla) they say vehicle-to-grid (v2g) isn't on the roadmap. On the other hand, almost all charging happens at night, which is a time of low demand on the grid. And delayed charging (combined with time-of-use rates) to move off of the 7 PM winter peaks is widely available. So even without v2g, vehicle electrification has worked out great on the grid so far.
- nicoburns 7y agoGovernments generally run electricity grids though. If V2G is wanted, it could simply be mandated.
- brohee 7y agoIt's definitely on the roadmap in Europe: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/03/groupe-renault-launching-large-scale-v2g-trials-with-fleet-of-15-zoe-evs.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/03/groupe-renault-laun...
- IAmEveryone 7y agoI worked on a software design project a year or two ago that was exploring the user interface and incentive mechanisms for the consumer side of such a scheme. This was for one of the big-3 German automakers and the company running a significant portion of Europe's energy grid. It's still a while off, but it is a serious project with the intend to get to market. I'm no expert on the grid side, but if I'm not mistaken, the need just isn't quite there yet because the grid have been able to accommodate current renewable production levels.
- glacials 7y agoElectric cars are an energy-source-agnostic vehicle. Whether their energy comes from coal or nuclear or wind or solar, they are unaffected. Because of this you can gradually swap out pieces of the energy production backbone to renewables, and see a reflective immediate payoff in personal transportation CO2 emissions. If the vehicle is tightly coupled to burning petrol, that can't happen. Electric cars are merely an exercise in uncoupling energy source and energy use.
- baroffoos 7y agoAlso fuels burned in a power plant are much more efficient than fuels burned in a car that is constantly slowing/speeding up/idling.
- mcv 7y agoAbsolutely. Internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient. The idea of hybrids like the Prius is that they try to run the engine as much as possible at its most efficient level (or least inefficient, more accurately) to reduce that waste, but offloading it to more optimised power plants will do much more.