3 ms·

What do you think will happen to the grid when everyone has an EV charging point and charge their cars? There is a general infrastructure issue in the UK, and

What do you think will happen to the grid when everyone has an EV charging point and charge their cars? There is a general infrastructure issue in the UK, and I fear we'll need to hit crisis point (and we're not far off) before anything is done.

londons_explore 4y ago
If National Grid were a nimble organisation, they would get EV charging stations to all be web-controlled, and then they would model for each station how much load it puts onto every link in the electricity network. This is counterintuitive - turning on an EV charger in one place can in many cases decrease the load on some distant electricity connections. But it's no trouble for a computer to calculate. They wouldn't build any new links - instead they would turn on and off EV charging stations to make sure everyone's car still gets charged reasonably quickly, and we get far more power delivered through the existing electricity grid. Such a setup can, I would guess, probably triple the power delivered through the national grid and all the nations electricity infrastructure, with no physical upgrades beyond software in EV chargers. Obviously, not everyone will want their EV charging station 'controlled by the government' - and thats fine. But there will be a discount on your electricity bill if you do.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Unfortunately, for a pile of non-technical human reasons, this vision won't come to fruition. Firstly, EV chargers aren't as smart as they seem. For many models of car, they can't know how much energy the car will be wanting to be full, or the charge profile of how fast the car can accept said energy. Without that, it's hard to plan ahead when to do the charging most optimally. Secondly, National Grid refuses to trust the energy metering done by EV chargers. They don't believe the software that claims 'I used 1 kWh between 5pm and 6pm' unless that's proven by independent metering equipment that costs hundreds of pounds. Not worth it to save a few cents. Thirdly, National Grid (and linked energy distributors) don't have reliable 'whole system' monitoring. They wouldn't know if the cable in your street was at 99% capacity and about to trip because 18 of your neighbours happened to all be using the oven at the same time. Smart meters ought to give them this information, but sadly their design fell short of such second by second realtime information. Fourthly, National Grid is an old organisation averse to change. They have no shareholders to demand the use of new tech to save money. Instead they'll just build new (very expensive and mostly unneeded) capacity and charge usersmake users pay for it. While building that stuff very slowly, they'll deny permission to install new EV chargers, holding back other industries.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    > Firstly, EV chargers aren't as smart as they seem. For many models of car, they can't know how much energy the car will be wanting to be full, or the charge profile of how fast the car can accept said energy. Without that, it's hard to plan ahead when to do the charging most optimally. Do you have any evidence that this extra smarts and optimization is actually necessary? How much of an improvement is it over basic "charge slowly during the night at a random point in the off peak zone and avoid or slow down charging during peak times". That is a net positive in most ways, so it would need to degrade pretty badly from there to actually be a problem to worry about. And if it is necessary, the current smart chargers are able to be controlled via apps and have internet connection, which means they're effectively unlimited in potential smartness being applied to when they start/stop/modulate charging.
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      > charge slowly during the night at a random point in the off peak zone Even this is difficult. Many home chargers are only 8kW. That means if you park your nearly-empty 80kWh tesla at home at 8pm, you really can't wait long to start charging to be done by 8am. You need to start by 10pm. On the other hand, if the tesla is already 80% charged, you have far more flexibility. But the charger usually has no way to know which case it's facing. But if all chargers must start charging at or before 10pm to be sure they'll be done by morning, very few will be still charging by 5am, since in most cases cars only require a little top-up. Basically, it isn't even close to being a solvable problem with the info that many of today's chargers have. The charger needs more info, which means the cars need updated software to provide that info, and most cars on the road today will never get their firmware updated. Besides, car manufacturers have no incentive to put in the engineering work - they get nothing out of it. Todays solution for many users is manually setting the charger to start at a specific time when the off peak hours are for their utility provider, and hitting the 'override' button for when the battery is nearly empty. That isn't ideal, and only a small number of eco/budget-conscious people will bother with such things.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > If National Grid were a nimble organisation, they would get EV charging stations to all be web-controlled This already happened and has been planned and talked about for over a decade. Why are your news sources misleading you so badly? Just recently they turned on some of the functionality they'd been forced to include for years to qualify for government grant support. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulations-electric-vehicle-smart-charge-points#how-to-comply https://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulations-electric-vehicle-sma...
- rasz 4y ago
  >They wouldn't build any new links - instead they would turn on and off EV charging stations to make sure everyone's car still gets charged reasonably quickly, and we get far more power delivered through the existing electricity grid. ah yes, the "smart" grid where smarts are used to cut my power instead of delivering what I pay for.

londons_explore 4y ago

If National Grid were a nimble organisation, they would get EV charging stations to all be web-controlled, and then they would model for each station how much load it puts onto every link in the electricity network. This is counterintuitive - turning on an EV charger in one place can in many cases decrease the load on some distant electricity connections. But it's no trouble for a computer to calculate. They wouldn't build any new links - instead they would turn on and off EV charging stations to make sure everyone's car still gets charged reasonably quickly, and we get far more power delivered through the existing electricity grid. Such a setup can, I would guess, probably triple the power delivered through the national grid and all the nations electricity infrastructure, with no physical upgrades beyond software in EV chargers. Obviously, not everyone will want their EV charging station 'controlled by the government' - and thats fine. But there will be a discount on your electricity bill if you do.

londons_explore 4y ago
Unfortunately, for a pile of non-technical human reasons, this vision won't come to fruition. Firstly, EV chargers aren't as smart as they seem. For many models of car, they can't know how much energy the car will be wanting to be full, or the charge profile of how fast the car can accept said energy. Without that, it's hard to plan ahead when to do the charging most optimally. Secondly, National Grid refuses to trust the energy metering done by EV chargers. They don't believe the software that claims 'I used 1 kWh between 5pm and 6pm' unless that's proven by independent metering equipment that costs hundreds of pounds. Not worth it to save a few cents. Thirdly, National Grid (and linked energy distributors) don't have reliable 'whole system' monitoring. They wouldn't know if the cable in your street was at 99% capacity and about to trip because 18 of your neighbours happened to all be using the oven at the same time. Smart meters ought to give them this information, but sadly their design fell short of such second by second realtime information. Fourthly, National Grid is an old organisation averse to change. They have no shareholders to demand the use of new tech to save money. Instead they'll just build new (very expensive and mostly unneeded) capacity and charge usersmake users pay for it. While building that stuff very slowly, they'll deny permission to install new EV chargers, holding back other industries.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > Firstly, EV chargers aren't as smart as they seem. For many models of car, they can't know how much energy the car will be wanting to be full, or the charge profile of how fast the car can accept said energy. Without that, it's hard to plan ahead when to do the charging most optimally. Do you have any evidence that this extra smarts and optimization is actually necessary? How much of an improvement is it over basic "charge slowly during the night at a random point in the off peak zone and avoid or slow down charging during peak times". That is a net positive in most ways, so it would need to degrade pretty badly from there to actually be a problem to worry about. And if it is necessary, the current smart chargers are able to be controlled via apps and have internet connection, which means they're effectively unlimited in potential smartness being applied to when they start/stop/modulate charging.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    > charge slowly during the night at a random point in the off peak zone Even this is difficult. Many home chargers are only 8kW. That means if you park your nearly-empty 80kWh tesla at home at 8pm, you really can't wait long to start charging to be done by 8am. You need to start by 10pm. On the other hand, if the tesla is already 80% charged, you have far more flexibility. But the charger usually has no way to know which case it's facing. But if all chargers must start charging at or before 10pm to be sure they'll be done by morning, very few will be still charging by 5am, since in most cases cars only require a little top-up. Basically, it isn't even close to being a solvable problem with the info that many of today's chargers have. The charger needs more info, which means the cars need updated software to provide that info, and most cars on the road today will never get their firmware updated. Besides, car manufacturers have no incentive to put in the engineering work - they get nothing out of it. Todays solution for many users is manually setting the charger to start at a specific time when the off peak hours are for their utility provider, and hitting the 'override' button for when the battery is nearly empty. That isn't ideal, and only a small number of eco/budget-conscious people will bother with such things.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> If National Grid were a nimble organisation, they would get EV charging stations to all be web-controlled This already happened and has been planned and talked about for over a decade. Why are your news sources misleading you so badly? Just recently they turned on some of the functionality they'd been forced to include for years to qualify for government grant support. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulations-electric-vehicle-smart-charge-points#how-to-comply https://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulations-electric-vehicle-sma...
rasz 4y ago
>They wouldn't build any new links - instead they would turn on and off EV charging stations to make sure everyone's car still gets charged reasonably quickly, and we get far more power delivered through the existing electricity grid. ah yes, the "smart" grid where smarts are used to cut my power instead of delivering what I pay for.