9 ms·

Us crosses the electric-car tipping point for mass adoption

candiddevmike 4y ago
I was talking with an electrician about electric cars and he said the neighborhood/city electric grids aren't prepared for everyone to come home at 5 and plug in their cars. Thinking in terms of bandwidth, each neighborhood's circuit is woefully oversubscribed and the thought of a house pulling a ton of current to charge a vehicle was not planned for.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  The US is at least 20 years away from ~70% of cars being electric. In that time, ~50% of people could be either not commuting or commuting in some other way than by car. That gives the power grid plenty of time to adapt.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    I agree. The problem is people are pushing electric cars as a solution to today's gas prices, not gas prices in future decades. Even if they could be manufactured, even if people could afford them, the grid would need some work to accommodate them. That isn't "big oil propaganda"
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  That’s nonsense and mostly a big oil talking point. In the south every single home has at least one large A/C unit, most of which draw the amount or more as an electric car being charged and yet the grid doesn’t fall over when it’s noon and everyone’s air conditioning is running full blast during the summer. This is like that old fable about the English power companies having to fire up peaker plants during the commercial breaks of soccer games because of so many people putting the kettle on. Further, most electric car owners I know charge at night when the grid usually has excess capacity. I personally am on a time of use plan where I get free charging from midnight to 3AM, and that’s the window in which I charge my electric cars every day.
  - urthor 4y ago
    Yeah, it's basically a software update to the cars, and suddenly the cars are only pulling from the grid at 4am based on the average spot price of electricity. I think the biggest issue is that if nobody charges during the day, and all the energy is coming from solar, demand for energy during the night will skyrocket. But that's solvable by literally putting some power plugs into parking spaces. Not a huge ask.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    > In the south every single home has at least one large A/C unit, most of which draw the amount or more as an electric car being charged and yet the grid doesn’t fall over when it’s noon and everyone’s air conditioning is running full blast during the summer. Texas has had grid problems because of this. It was especially bad in the winter. > This is like that old fable about the English power companies having to fire up peaker plants during the commercial breaks of soccer games because of so many people putting the kettle on. This isn't a fable, I've seen interviews with National Grid staff where they talk about tracking the TV schedule. This is one of the reasons why we have pumped-hydro capacity, to handle quick spikes. I think this issue may end up being less of an issue than the doomsayers go on about. When I looked into this in ~2012 the solution was going to be "smart grids" where components would collaborate. Now, we've pretty much got there with electric cars being relatively smart, energy pricing being quite dynamic on some tariffs, and smart meters understanding that relationship.
    - tr_user 4y ago
      That sounds like a Texas underinvesting in the grid problem
      - dopidopHN 4y ago
        Yes. A few hours driving East, and the only power outage I had in Louisiana were related to weather even. I think the comparison the other poster make is useful. If Louisiana small town can handle AC usage, they should be able to handle charging EV.
    - 4y ago
- smileysteve 4y ago
  > aren't prepared for everyone to come home at 5 and plug in their cars. 200 mile range cars and 20 mile average commutes make this not a necessity. The need to use fast charging even less, as slow charging from 5pm-5am provides more than enough miles for the average commute. I wonder what your electrician thinks about HVAC systems? They all do turn on at roughly the same time (a top cause of brownouts in under prepared grids), don't have a slow charging equivalent (they even depend on large capacitors to start the compressors). The even worse case is a house with multiple heat pumps and auxiliary heating. Or what does your electrician think about hot water heaters? Fast charging requires similar supply as every house coming home and taking a shower at 5pm. Or, perhaps the most likely, every house starting the oven at 5pm, the stove, The microwave, With some hot water. What about all of these combined? Information; on circuit breaker size required Low speed charger 120x15amp Highest speed residential charger: 240x40amp Water heater 240x30amp Instant whole house hot water heater 240x40 HVAC 240x30 Aux heat 240x30 Stove 240x30 Oven 240x30 Microwave 120x15
  - philg_jr 4y ago
    All teslas besides the SR Model 3 charge at 48A. At home with the Tesla wall connector, it’s a 240V charger, so roughly 11k watts, and they recommend a 60A breaker.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      All Teslas will charge at whatever rate the EVSE says it's rated for. If you have a 36A EVSE it'll pull 36A. You don't have to have it set to 48A, you don't need a 60A circuit to charge a Tesla.
      - philg_jr 4y ago
        Yes you are correct. I guess I was just stating that it can pull up to 48A, which can be a lot higher than most other appliances in a home.
  - spockz 4y ago
    I think the parents post is claiming that the grid isn’t able to handle the additional load of charging everyone’s car at the same time on top of the stoves etc that you mention. It will be in addition to not instead.
- crikeyjoe 4y ago
- theplumber 4y ago
  I guess everyone has a pump station at home right? This is a false argument given that electric chargers are so much easier to install and convenient to use. I don't think anyone takes it seriously
  - smileysteve 4y ago
    This! The top 10% of use cases (high mileage a day) have incentive to use substation (or at least commercial) charging stations. Many utilities are installing chargers at major brand gas stations.
- ageitgey 4y ago
  No offense to the electrician you talked with, but they are ill-informed. Electric grids have been planning for the shift to EVs for years. This isn't a surprise to them. This is what they do all day. In the UK for example, the Nation Grid reports that grid-source electricity use peaked in 2002 and has fallen 16% since then (due to increased solar panel installations, etc). If all cars switched to electric overnight with no time for additional planning, grid-source electricity use would increase 10%, still under 2002 numbers and still well within manageable limits. [1] But obviously in a real-world scenario, they have plans to better handle the pace of adoption more intelligently than that. It is true that everyone charging at full speed simultaneously at 5pm would be an issue. So that's why every car sold is smart enough to charge when rates are cheap and skip charging during peak hours. This is further incentivized by fluctuating power prices. People vote with their wallet and if they can get the same result (a fully charged car) for half price or less, they are certainly going to skip charing during peak hours unless they are on empty. I think people who haven't owned an electric car are imaging how home charging works in the wrong way. Most people don't need to supercharge their car every night at 5pm to fill up the battery from empty to full by 5:30pm. Most of the time, your car has lots of power left after a normal commute and you just plug it in when you park so it is full again tomorrow. It doesn't matter what time during the night it charges and the car will figure it out. It's just not a big deal. [1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-m...
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  Electric cars support 'charging schedules' - my utility gives me discounted electricity to charge between midnight and 8AM, and it took about 5 minutes to setup. I plug in my car when I get home from work, and it happily sits there until midnight when it starts charging (and when the grid is otherwise unstressed).
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Don't downvote this one! There's a bunch of issues on this that are hard to judge. The obvious one is power availability. Likely solveable, but not trivial. The non obvious one is the grid itself. A lot of grid systems are overloaded already. And this is fine. They run hot during the day, they cool off at night, and by morning they're good to go. Electric vehicles demand a lot of power. Even if you're doing it at night, it's going to add a lot of heat to the system. It's going to be an expensive and difficult thing to solve if transformers start dropping like flies during a heatwave.
iamgopal 4y ago
I hope people do not by two car once short range electric car gets cheaper. Electric for short commute and conventional for longer one.
- b112 4y ago
  What a strange thought. Why on earth not? Many families have two cars, and having any electric car, over 2 gas cars, seems preferable, yes?
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The remaining per-capita carbon budget to avoid > 1.5C climate change is 50 tons. Two new cars could easily consume that entire amount, even if never driven. Replacing the entire vehicle fleet with battery-electric cars is a bad enough idea, but replacing it with twice as many cars is truly unworkable. Replacing your short-range transport needs with a bicycle, on the other hand, is a great idea.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Per capita budgets don't make much sense to think about that literally I don't feel. We could all be good little beans and meet our individual climate targets and still get fucked by the industrial practices of the bare necessities. We need to materialize the cost of carbon, so that it's felt by industry. We also need to get a wriggle on with research of remediation. I am optimistic that we will pull through, but I don't think it will be because we met our prevention targets.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      > Replacing your short-range transport needs with a bicycle, on the other hand, is a great idea. I don’t disagree, but not every area is what I would consider bicycle friendly. Especially in the US. Nearest grocery to me is 4 miles away. Certainly do able on a bicycle, but unfortunately in this area the roads are not super friendly for bicycles. I’d rather not be run over by a semi full of tomatoes, while going to buy some tomatoes.
pornel 4y ago
There are so many myths about charging, mostly coming from people who don't own an EV. Most people don't realize that BEVs (not hybrids) have batteries large enough to last a whole week of commuting. This gives a lot of flexibility in when and where they can be charged. They're typically configured to charge overnight, when charging speed doesn't matter, and electricity demand is low (if the demand shifts, they could be configured to charge at different times, e.g. when they're parked at work). EVs are designed to be left charging unattended, so they can just be left plugged in whenever they're parked. That's a different use-case than quarter-megawatt chargers for road trips. New cars have vehicle-to-load capability built-in already, and there are trials to use them as grid storage. The more EVs there are, the more they can be used to shift renewable energy and flatten the duck curve. EVs can help the grid, not strain it. Large fast charging sites for road trips typically have their own batteries, because it allows them to have cheaper lower-power connection to the grid, do price arbitrage, and use their own renewables. This is also a place where degraded batteries from old EVs can be reused. Of course the electric grid will need to be expanded. Lament about that sounds like developed countries have forgotten how to develop infrastructure?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Using electric vehicles as batteries seems like a good way to run extra cycles through your car and need a replacement battery. It would seem to be a useful emergency feature, but not a steady state part of the grid.
  - pornel 4y ago
    It can be a simple free market thing: you earn enough from renting your battery to make it worth the extra cycles. Or if the grid operator can build enough cheaper energy storage themselves, then they won't use your v2l capability. If there's going to be an increased demand for grid-stabilizing storage, it will price the supply accordingly.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      If its a simple free market thing, then you won't use your car battery to supply the grid, because the economics wouldn't work out. So the issue remains.
FpUser 4y ago
There were numerous occasions when hundreds or thousands of cars were stranded on highways during blizzard and exhausted their fuel reserves. It is easy to deliver some fuel when conditions clear. I am curious what it would look like with electric vehicles.
- darkerside 4y ago
  I wonder if we could chain cars together to the nearest power plant, so using the traffic jam itself as the grid.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  If they aren’t moving, just running the heater, how long do the batteries last? Regardless, that’s such an edge case, I’m not sure it needs to be a major part of EV vs ICE calculus. Here in DC, it’s a 1x/decade event, give or take - basically takes a ton of wet snow falling mid-morning, the Fed closing offices early PM, and the entire city tryin to get home that afternoon in one giant mob.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"Here in DC" There are many populated places that are not "Here in DC" but still have lot of highways and are further north of DC.
    - danaris 4y ago
      I live in NYS. A blizzard that's bad enough that it strands cars here for any length of time is incredibly rare—because we have the infrastructure to deal with snow. I would be willing to bet the DC area actually has that happen more often than anywhere else in the US, because it's among the post populated places far enough north that it gets big blizzards from time to time, but far enough south that its snow-removal (and snow-prevention—eg, salting the roads) infrastructure is fairly minimal compared to places that get lots of snow all the time.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      True, but DC has a fairly unique mix of… - daytime temperatures that hover around freezing, leading to lots of black ice. - A major employer (US government) with a disdain for WFH arrangements prior to COVID - rare major winter events, so not enough snow removal equipment - crap public transit options (the subway gets stuck in a few inches of snow) Anybody who works private sector in the area stays home (if they can) when the forecast is for snow. This wasn’t an option for most of the government (including 10s of thousands of .gov contractors). With .gov wide early release when weather hits, icy mix, and crap public transit options, it’s a combination that leads to insane gridlock on the rare occasion we get a true winter storm. I’m sure there are regions that have one-off traffic. DC gets city-wide gridlock that lasts 8 hours or so if we get more than 8” of snow during a work day.
mactitan 4y ago
This article covers major issues: Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/02/09/limits-to-green-energy-are-becoming-much-clearer/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/02/09/limits-to-green-energy... [1] It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them. 2] Adequate storage for electricity is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe. This means that if cold countries are not to “freeze in the dark” during winter, fossil fuel backup is likely to be needed for many years in the future. 3) After many years of subsidies and mandates, today’s green electricity is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to keep our current economy operating. [4] Even as a percentage of electricity, rather than total energy, renewables still comprised a relatively small share in 2020. 5] Most modelers have not understood that reserve to production ratios greatly overstate the amount of fossil fuels and other minerals that the economy will be able to extract. 6] The world economy seems already to be reaching limits on the extraction of coal and natural gas to be used for balancing electricity provided by intermittent renewables. 7] Conclusion. Modelers and leaders everywhere have had a basic misunderstanding of how the economy operates and what limits we are up against. This misunderstanding has allowed scientists to put together models that are far from the situation we are actually facing.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Thanks for this article, it’s refreshing to read an article that is pragmatic about the topic.
- invalidname 4y ago
  There are MANY mistakes here. Offshore wind especially in the north sea is barely tapped and powerful all year round. There are many other constant green energy options such as hydro, waves, currents, geothermal, etc. The value is in including a wide variety of all and over a large enough territory so surplus in one area can compensate a shortfall in another. Grid energy storage includes MANY creative and easy to implement ideas. Tesla style batteries are the most mundane. The cost and setup of grid scale storage is much lower than the alternative.
  - 4y ago
falcolas 4y ago
IMO, electric cars are still too expensive for broad adoption. There really needs to be a strong used market for them before broad adoption is realistic. The charging story (overnight plug-in) is also too expensive for most folks, too (most dense housing has no garages for the installation of a charger). I’m in the north, where 110v plugs are somewhat common for block heaters, but “common” still only means about 30% coverage. There’s also not enough room for anything but a standard power cable. Side note, can you imagine how bad thefts of copper rich, exotic connectors would be?
- manholio 4y ago
  EVs are (much) cheaper to run, for commuters that need a steady, predictable mileage within range, they are already less expensive in TCO terms for comparable quality/comfort. In Europe, where gas is insanely taxed, the operational costs of EVs are 4-5 times lower than ICE, you can save about 10,000€ per 100,000 km (62,000 miles) .
  - logifail 4y ago
    > EVs are (much) cheaper to run [..] already less expensive in TCO terms for comparable quality/comfort. Errm, I would love this claim to be true for the smallest and cheapest new cars. Is it? Our smaller car cost €10k to buy outright, new, a few years ago. At that time the very same car was available as an EV for €23k. I'm concerned about climate change, fairly pro-EV, but we simply didn't have €13k to spare. We have every intention of keeping that car for another five years, unless something major goes wrong (all it's needed is standard servicing so far) Petrol and diesel have gone up everywhere, but electricity rates are rising too. Q: When will I be able to buy a four seater EV with similar range for a similar (inflation adjusted) price as the petrol-engined version?
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Assuming that a vehicle goes 250,000 km before hitting the scrap heap: 250,000km / 6 kWh/km * 0.30 €/kWh overnight rate = €12,500 2500 100km * 6 l/100km * 2 €/l = €30,000 You could have saved substantially more than €13k, even if you had to finance the difference. Lifetime TCO is the proper metric, even if you only keep your car for 5 years. 2 major reasons. 1) anybody buying a used car obviously cares about costs, so is going to value fuel savings quite highly and should be willing to pay the appropriate premium. 2) In 5 years time in Europe the gasoline infrastructure will be starting to degrade and most used buyers will want EV's.
entropicgravity 4y ago
Much sooner than you expect cities will ban IC cars from downtowns. Not long after that EV's with a width of more than half a lane will be banned or taxed. This will effectively double the capacities of city cores at no cost. Few cities will resist.

I was talking with an electrician about electric cars and he said the neighborhood/city electric grids aren't prepared for everyone to come home at 5 and plug in their cars. Thinking in terms of bandwidth, each neighborhood's circuit is woefully oversubscribed and the thought of a house pulling a ton of current to charge a vehicle was not planned for.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
The US is at least 20 years away from ~70% of cars being electric. In that time, ~50% of people could be either not commuting or commuting in some other way than by car. That gives the power grid plenty of time to adapt.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  I agree. The problem is people are pushing electric cars as a solution to today's gas prices, not gas prices in future decades. Even if they could be manufactured, even if people could afford them, the grid would need some work to accommodate them. That isn't "big oil propaganda"
shiftpgdn 4y ago
That’s nonsense and mostly a big oil talking point. In the south every single home has at least one large A/C unit, most of which draw the amount or more as an electric car being charged and yet the grid doesn’t fall over when it’s noon and everyone’s air conditioning is running full blast during the summer. This is like that old fable about the English power companies having to fire up peaker plants during the commercial breaks of soccer games because of so many people putting the kettle on. Further, most electric car owners I know charge at night when the grid usually has excess capacity. I personally am on a time of use plan where I get free charging from midnight to 3AM, and that’s the window in which I charge my electric cars every day.
- urthor 4y ago
  Yeah, it's basically a software update to the cars, and suddenly the cars are only pulling from the grid at 4am based on the average spot price of electricity. I think the biggest issue is that if nobody charges during the day, and all the energy is coming from solar, demand for energy during the night will skyrocket. But that's solvable by literally putting some power plugs into parking spaces. Not a huge ask.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  > In the south every single home has at least one large A/C unit, most of which draw the amount or more as an electric car being charged and yet the grid doesn’t fall over when it’s noon and everyone’s air conditioning is running full blast during the summer. Texas has had grid problems because of this. It was especially bad in the winter. > This is like that old fable about the English power companies having to fire up peaker plants during the commercial breaks of soccer games because of so many people putting the kettle on. This isn't a fable, I've seen interviews with National Grid staff where they talk about tracking the TV schedule. This is one of the reasons why we have pumped-hydro capacity, to handle quick spikes. I think this issue may end up being less of an issue than the doomsayers go on about. When I looked into this in ~2012 the solution was going to be "smart grids" where components would collaborate. Now, we've pretty much got there with electric cars being relatively smart, energy pricing being quite dynamic on some tariffs, and smart meters understanding that relationship.
  - tr_user 4y ago
    That sounds like a Texas underinvesting in the grid problem
    - dopidopHN 4y ago
      Yes. A few hours driving East, and the only power outage I had in Louisiana were related to weather even. I think the comparison the other poster make is useful. If Louisiana small town can handle AC usage, they should be able to handle charging EV.
  - 4y ago
smileysteve 4y ago
> aren't prepared for everyone to come home at 5 and plug in their cars. 200 mile range cars and 20 mile average commutes make this not a necessity. The need to use fast charging even less, as slow charging from 5pm-5am provides more than enough miles for the average commute. I wonder what your electrician thinks about HVAC systems? They all do turn on at roughly the same time (a top cause of brownouts in under prepared grids), don't have a slow charging equivalent (they even depend on large capacitors to start the compressors). The even worse case is a house with multiple heat pumps and auxiliary heating. Or what does your electrician think about hot water heaters? Fast charging requires similar supply as every house coming home and taking a shower at 5pm. Or, perhaps the most likely, every house starting the oven at 5pm, the stove, The microwave, With some hot water. What about all of these combined? Information; on circuit breaker size required Low speed charger 120x15amp Highest speed residential charger: 240x40amp Water heater 240x30amp Instant whole house hot water heater 240x40 HVAC 240x30 Aux heat 240x30 Stove 240x30 Oven 240x30 Microwave 120x15
- philg_jr 4y ago
  All teslas besides the SR Model 3 charge at 48A. At home with the Tesla wall connector, it’s a 240V charger, so roughly 11k watts, and they recommend a 60A breaker.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    All Teslas will charge at whatever rate the EVSE says it's rated for. If you have a 36A EVSE it'll pull 36A. You don't have to have it set to 48A, you don't need a 60A circuit to charge a Tesla.
    - philg_jr 4y ago
      Yes you are correct. I guess I was just stating that it can pull up to 48A, which can be a lot higher than most other appliances in a home.
- spockz 4y ago
  I think the parents post is claiming that the grid isn’t able to handle the additional load of charging everyone’s car at the same time on top of the stoves etc that you mention. It will be in addition to not instead.
crikeyjoe 4y ago
theplumber 4y ago
I guess everyone has a pump station at home right? This is a false argument given that electric chargers are so much easier to install and convenient to use. I don't think anyone takes it seriously
- smileysteve 4y ago
  This! The top 10% of use cases (high mileage a day) have incentive to use substation (or at least commercial) charging stations. Many utilities are installing chargers at major brand gas stations.
ageitgey 4y ago
No offense to the electrician you talked with, but they are ill-informed. Electric grids have been planning for the shift to EVs for years. This isn't a surprise to them. This is what they do all day. In the UK for example, the Nation Grid reports that grid-source electricity use peaked in 2002 and has fallen 16% since then (due to increased solar panel installations, etc). If all cars switched to electric overnight with no time for additional planning, grid-source electricity use would increase 10%, still under 2002 numbers and still well within manageable limits. [1] But obviously in a real-world scenario, they have plans to better handle the pace of adoption more intelligently than that. It is true that everyone charging at full speed simultaneously at 5pm would be an issue. So that's why every car sold is smart enough to charge when rates are cheap and skip charging during peak hours. This is further incentivized by fluctuating power prices. People vote with their wallet and if they can get the same result (a fully charged car) for half price or less, they are certainly going to skip charing during peak hours unless they are on empty. I think people who haven't owned an electric car are imaging how home charging works in the wrong way. Most people don't need to supercharge their car every night at 5pm to fill up the battery from empty to full by 5:30pm. Most of the time, your car has lots of power left after a normal commute and you just plug it in when you park so it is full again tomorrow. It doesn't matter what time during the night it charges and the car will figure it out. It's just not a big deal. [1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-m...
mechagodzilla 4y ago
Electric cars support 'charging schedules' - my utility gives me discounted electricity to charge between midnight and 8AM, and it took about 5 minutes to setup. I plug in my car when I get home from work, and it happily sits there until midnight when it starts charging (and when the grid is otherwise unstressed).
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Don't downvote this one! There's a bunch of issues on this that are hard to judge. The obvious one is power availability. Likely solveable, but not trivial. The non obvious one is the grid itself. A lot of grid systems are overloaded already. And this is fine. They run hot during the day, they cool off at night, and by morning they're good to go. Electric vehicles demand a lot of power. Even if you're doing it at night, it's going to add a lot of heat to the system. It's going to be an expensive and difficult thing to solve if transformers start dropping like flies during a heatwave.

iamgopal 4y ago

I hope people do not by two car once short range electric car gets cheaper. Electric for short commute and conventional for longer one.

b112 4y ago
What a strange thought. Why on earth not? Many families have two cars, and having any electric car, over 2 gas cars, seems preferable, yes?
- jeffbee 4y ago
  The remaining per-capita carbon budget to avoid > 1.5C climate change is 50 tons. Two new cars could easily consume that entire amount, even if never driven. Replacing the entire vehicle fleet with battery-electric cars is a bad enough idea, but replacing it with twice as many cars is truly unworkable. Replacing your short-range transport needs with a bicycle, on the other hand, is a great idea.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Per capita budgets don't make much sense to think about that literally I don't feel. We could all be good little beans and meet our individual climate targets and still get fucked by the industrial practices of the bare necessities. We need to materialize the cost of carbon, so that it's felt by industry. We also need to get a wriggle on with research of remediation. I am optimistic that we will pull through, but I don't think it will be because we met our prevention targets.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > Replacing your short-range transport needs with a bicycle, on the other hand, is a great idea. I don’t disagree, but not every area is what I would consider bicycle friendly. Especially in the US. Nearest grocery to me is 4 miles away. Certainly do able on a bicycle, but unfortunately in this area the roads are not super friendly for bicycles. I’d rather not be run over by a semi full of tomatoes, while going to buy some tomatoes.

pornel 4y ago

There are so many myths about charging, mostly coming from people who don't own an EV. Most people don't realize that BEVs (not hybrids) have batteries large enough to last a whole week of commuting. This gives a lot of flexibility in when and where they can be charged. They're typically configured to charge overnight, when charging speed doesn't matter, and electricity demand is low (if the demand shifts, they could be configured to charge at different times, e.g. when they're parked at work). EVs are designed to be left charging unattended, so they can just be left plugged in whenever they're parked. That's a different use-case than quarter-megawatt chargers for road trips. New cars have vehicle-to-load capability built-in already, and there are trials to use them as grid storage. The more EVs there are, the more they can be used to shift renewable energy and flatten the duck curve. EVs can help the grid, not strain it. Large fast charging sites for road trips typically have their own batteries, because it allows them to have cheaper lower-power connection to the grid, do price arbitrage, and use their own renewables. This is also a place where degraded batteries from old EVs can be reused. Of course the electric grid will need to be expanded. Lament about that sounds like developed countries have forgotten how to develop infrastructure?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Using electric vehicles as batteries seems like a good way to run extra cycles through your car and need a replacement battery. It would seem to be a useful emergency feature, but not a steady state part of the grid.
- pornel 4y ago
  It can be a simple free market thing: you earn enough from renting your battery to make it worth the extra cycles. Or if the grid operator can build enough cheaper energy storage themselves, then they won't use your v2l capability. If there's going to be an increased demand for grid-stabilizing storage, it will price the supply accordingly.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    If its a simple free market thing, then you won't use your car battery to supply the grid, because the economics wouldn't work out. So the issue remains.

FpUser 4y ago

There were numerous occasions when hundreds or thousands of cars were stranded on highways during blizzard and exhausted their fuel reserves. It is easy to deliver some fuel when conditions clear. I am curious what it would look like with electric vehicles.

darkerside 4y ago
I wonder if we could chain cars together to the nearest power plant, so using the traffic jam itself as the grid.
alistairSH 4y ago
If they aren’t moving, just running the heater, how long do the batteries last? Regardless, that’s such an edge case, I’m not sure it needs to be a major part of EV vs ICE calculus. Here in DC, it’s a 1x/decade event, give or take - basically takes a ton of wet snow falling mid-morning, the Fed closing offices early PM, and the entire city tryin to get home that afternoon in one giant mob.
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"Here in DC" There are many populated places that are not "Here in DC" but still have lot of highways and are further north of DC.
  - danaris 4y ago
    I live in NYS. A blizzard that's bad enough that it strands cars here for any length of time is incredibly rare—because we have the infrastructure to deal with snow. I would be willing to bet the DC area actually has that happen more often than anywhere else in the US, because it's among the post populated places far enough north that it gets big blizzards from time to time, but far enough south that its snow-removal (and snow-prevention—eg, salting the roads) infrastructure is fairly minimal compared to places that get lots of snow all the time.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    True, but DC has a fairly unique mix of… - daytime temperatures that hover around freezing, leading to lots of black ice. - A major employer (US government) with a disdain for WFH arrangements prior to COVID - rare major winter events, so not enough snow removal equipment - crap public transit options (the subway gets stuck in a few inches of snow) Anybody who works private sector in the area stays home (if they can) when the forecast is for snow. This wasn’t an option for most of the government (including 10s of thousands of .gov contractors). With .gov wide early release when weather hits, icy mix, and crap public transit options, it’s a combination that leads to insane gridlock on the rare occasion we get a true winter storm. I’m sure there are regions that have one-off traffic. DC gets city-wide gridlock that lasts 8 hours or so if we get more than 8” of snow during a work day.

mactitan 4y ago

This article covers major issues: Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/02/09/limits-to-green-energy-are-becoming-much-clearer/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/02/09/limits-to-green-energy... [1] It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them. 2] Adequate storage for electricity is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe. This means that if cold countries are not to “freeze in the dark” during winter, fossil fuel backup is likely to be needed for many years in the future. 3) After many years of subsidies and mandates, today’s green electricity is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to keep our current economy operating. [4] Even as a percentage of electricity, rather than total energy, renewables still comprised a relatively small share in 2020. 5] Most modelers have not understood that reserve to production ratios greatly overstate the amount of fossil fuels and other minerals that the economy will be able to extract. 6] The world economy seems already to be reaching limits on the extraction of coal and natural gas to be used for balancing electricity provided by intermittent renewables. 7] Conclusion. Modelers and leaders everywhere have had a basic misunderstanding of how the economy operates and what limits we are up against. This misunderstanding has allowed scientists to put together models that are far from the situation we are actually facing.

kcplate 4y ago
Thanks for this article, it’s refreshing to read an article that is pragmatic about the topic.
invalidname 4y ago
There are MANY mistakes here. Offshore wind especially in the north sea is barely tapped and powerful all year round. There are many other constant green energy options such as hydro, waves, currents, geothermal, etc. The value is in including a wide variety of all and over a large enough territory so surplus in one area can compensate a shortfall in another. Grid energy storage includes MANY creative and easy to implement ideas. Tesla style batteries are the most mundane. The cost and setup of grid scale storage is much lower than the alternative.
- 4y ago

falcolas 4y ago

IMO, electric cars are still too expensive for broad adoption. There really needs to be a strong used market for them before broad adoption is realistic. The charging story (overnight plug-in) is also too expensive for most folks, too (most dense housing has no garages for the installation of a charger). I’m in the north, where 110v plugs are somewhat common for block heaters, but “common” still only means about 30% coverage. There’s also not enough room for anything but a standard power cable. Side note, can you imagine how bad thefts of copper rich, exotic connectors would be?

manholio 4y ago
EVs are (much) cheaper to run, for commuters that need a steady, predictable mileage within range, they are already less expensive in TCO terms for comparable quality/comfort. In Europe, where gas is insanely taxed, the operational costs of EVs are 4-5 times lower than ICE, you can save about 10,000€ per 100,000 km (62,000 miles) .
- logifail 4y ago
  > EVs are (much) cheaper to run [..] already less expensive in TCO terms for comparable quality/comfort. Errm, I would love this claim to be true for the smallest and cheapest new cars. Is it? Our smaller car cost €10k to buy outright, new, a few years ago. At that time the very same car was available as an EV for €23k. I'm concerned about climate change, fairly pro-EV, but we simply didn't have €13k to spare. We have every intention of keeping that car for another five years, unless something major goes wrong (all it's needed is standard servicing so far) Petrol and diesel have gone up everywhere, but electricity rates are rising too. Q: When will I be able to buy a four seater EV with similar range for a similar (inflation adjusted) price as the petrol-engined version?
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Assuming that a vehicle goes 250,000 km before hitting the scrap heap: 250,000km / 6 kWh/km * 0.30 €/kWh overnight rate = €12,500 2500 100km * 6 l/100km * 2 €/l = €30,000 You could have saved substantially more than €13k, even if you had to finance the difference. Lifetime TCO is the proper metric, even if you only keep your car for 5 years. 2 major reasons. 1) anybody buying a used car obviously cares about costs, so is going to value fuel savings quite highly and should be willing to pay the appropriate premium. 2) In 5 years time in Europe the gasoline infrastructure will be starting to degrade and most used buyers will want EV's.

entropicgravity 4y ago

Much sooner than you expect cities will ban IC cars from downtowns. Not long after that EV's with a width of more than half a lane will be banned or taxed. This will effectively double the capacities of city cores at no cost. Few cities will resist.