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It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technologic

It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storage, every grid component must be sized to maximum expected through put, which can be many many times as large as average throughput. The grid is also the most expensive part of delivering energy, more expensive than generation. This means that storage, and a lot of electrification means storage, whether that's charging the battery on a car, or heating a hot water tank, or cooling/heating a building which can be used as several degrees of thermal storage, is going to drastically reduce the potential peak load as a ratio to average load. Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO.

connicpu 4y ago
Even without any other sources of power, storage already makes sense for hydro since ideally you'd like to store excess water that comes during above average rainy seasons so that you have more power to use during a drought, but allowing your nuclear base load to stay running even when the rest of the grid demands less does seem like another useful benefit
throwaway894345 4y ago
That's an interesting point I hadn't considered before. That said, I would think the net effect is still increased demand on the grid. If everyone buys an EV, I can't imagine that constitutes a net reduction in demand on the grid even if everyone charges off-peak (unless utilities can pull storage from those car batteries during peak hours, and I doubt car owners will want that kind of wear on their batteries). Do you know of any publications which try to estimate the effect of electrification on capacity?
- beerandt 4y ago
  In engineering speak, what he means is increased grid efficiency, which can happen simultaneously with increased demand and increased cost. But all that does is shift the inefficiencies off of the grid. It's redefining the system boundary in a politically/ marketing friendly way, but doesn't eliminate the problem of storage/buffer capacity. Anyone who thinks the grid can approach steady-state operations near capacity hasn't seriously looked at demand patterns, and that's before complicating things by trying to accommodate the transportation needs of replacing gas/diesel. It's the equivalent of claiming traffic problems can be solved by staggering when people work instead of doing road improvements.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    > Anyone who thinks the grid can approach steady-state operations near capacity hasn't seriously looked at demand patterns I think that's a bit of a straw man, the key thing is to reduce the peak, rather than get to steady state.
    - beerandt 4y ago
      Sure, it's a scale, not an absolute, but maximum efficiency is at steady state. As you move away from that, the gains drop quickly, especially versus managing the demand variance with on-grid storage.
- epistasis 4y ago
  The most advanced modeling I know of is coming from Christopher Clack, whose latest models show that deploying lots of storage at the grid edge now will pave the way for much cheaper energy in the future. I thought this was more recent but it's 16 months old now: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-146-why-local-solar-costs-less/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-146-why-local-sol... Even if there are grid upgrades, getting a higher utilization factor, or more precisely, knocking off the highest peaks of demand, has huge cost savings on the grid size. So as we shift spending away from fossil fuel, that money will be going to utilities which will allow them to do the grid upgrades. Unfortunately utilities make the best profits on grid upgrades, so unless there are really good utility commissions, utilities will not be looking to decrease their grid investments or make grid utilization better, the are literally incentivized to make transmission and distribution costs as high as possible. If you live in California and have PG&E check out how many times more they charge you to deliver a kWh than to generate it, and you'll be fairly shocked and annoyed at CPUC for having done such a terrible job of reigning in PG&E's management.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
trashtester 4y ago
> Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO. This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. Also, if you want to be able to transfer a significant fraction of power generated from wind and solar across the country, transmission capacity needs to be multiple times greater than today, as far as I can tell. Some kind of smart adjustment of the end user consumption may slightly shave up the extremes in demand, but that requires a significant investment per household (not only in money, but also awareness and ability to set this up), and a lot of people do not want to compromise on the charge of the car or the temperature in their living room. And in the end, I really doubt that those efforts will make a big difference, unless paired with significant spare battery capacity.
- teknopaul 4y ago
  Electric vehicles are all a way of moving power, and huge spare battery capacity. They are not a problem, they are the solution. Just throw software at it. I know Musk does not believe that, but essentially it has to work.
- epistasis 4y ago
  > This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. The total spend on grid infrastructure may increase, but storage will mean we will get more kWh per dollar of grid spending, lowering the energy cost.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Most infrastructures are built to handle maximum load. If the load become nearly flat (by utilizing idle time) thanks to electrification, it makes easy to collect grid cost.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    The effect of a lot of renewables can be the opposite, though. When the wind is blowing, all consumers may want to charge their Tesla's at the same time, meaning that the grid wil experience even more spikey load patterns. Batteries as part of the central grid can help, of course.

connicpu 4y ago

Even without any other sources of power, storage already makes sense for hydro since ideally you'd like to store excess water that comes during above average rainy seasons so that you have more power to use during a drought, but allowing your nuclear base load to stay running even when the rest of the grid demands less does seem like another useful benefit

throwaway894345 4y ago

That's an interesting point I hadn't considered before. That said, I would think the net effect is still increased demand on the grid. If everyone buys an EV, I can't imagine that constitutes a net reduction in demand on the grid even if everyone charges off-peak (unless utilities can pull storage from those car batteries during peak hours, and I doubt car owners will want that kind of wear on their batteries). Do you know of any publications which try to estimate the effect of electrification on capacity?

beerandt 4y ago
In engineering speak, what he means is increased grid efficiency, which can happen simultaneously with increased demand and increased cost. But all that does is shift the inefficiencies off of the grid. It's redefining the system boundary in a politically/ marketing friendly way, but doesn't eliminate the problem of storage/buffer capacity. Anyone who thinks the grid can approach steady-state operations near capacity hasn't seriously looked at demand patterns, and that's before complicating things by trying to accommodate the transportation needs of replacing gas/diesel. It's the equivalent of claiming traffic problems can be solved by staggering when people work instead of doing road improvements.
- epistasis 4y ago
  > Anyone who thinks the grid can approach steady-state operations near capacity hasn't seriously looked at demand patterns I think that's a bit of a straw man, the key thing is to reduce the peak, rather than get to steady state.
  - beerandt 4y ago
    Sure, it's a scale, not an absolute, but maximum efficiency is at steady state. As you move away from that, the gains drop quickly, especially versus managing the demand variance with on-grid storage.
epistasis 4y ago
The most advanced modeling I know of is coming from Christopher Clack, whose latest models show that deploying lots of storage at the grid edge now will pave the way for much cheaper energy in the future. I thought this was more recent but it's 16 months old now: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-146-why-local-solar-costs-less/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-146-why-local-sol... Even if there are grid upgrades, getting a higher utilization factor, or more precisely, knocking off the highest peaks of demand, has huge cost savings on the grid size. So as we shift spending away from fossil fuel, that money will be going to utilities which will allow them to do the grid upgrades. Unfortunately utilities make the best profits on grid upgrades, so unless there are really good utility commissions, utilities will not be looking to decrease their grid investments or make grid utilization better, the are literally incentivized to make transmission and distribution costs as high as possible. If you live in California and have PG&E check out how many times more they charge you to deliver a kWh than to generate it, and you'll be fairly shocked and annoyed at CPUC for having done such a terrible job of reigning in PG&E's management.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

trashtester 4y ago

> Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO. This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. Also, if you want to be able to transfer a significant fraction of power generated from wind and solar across the country, transmission capacity needs to be multiple times greater than today, as far as I can tell. Some kind of smart adjustment of the end user consumption may slightly shave up the extremes in demand, but that requires a significant investment per household (not only in money, but also awareness and ability to set this up), and a lot of people do not want to compromise on the charge of the car or the temperature in their living room. And in the end, I really doubt that those efforts will make a big difference, unless paired with significant spare battery capacity.

teknopaul 4y ago
Electric vehicles are all a way of moving power, and huge spare battery capacity. They are not a problem, they are the solution. Just throw software at it. I know Musk does not believe that, but essentially it has to work.
epistasis 4y ago
> This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. The total spend on grid infrastructure may increase, but storage will mean we will get more kWh per dollar of grid spending, lowering the energy cost.
fomine3 4y ago
Most infrastructures are built to handle maximum load. If the load become nearly flat (by utilizing idle time) thanks to electrification, it makes easy to collect grid cost.
- trashtester 4y ago
  The effect of a lot of renewables can be the opposite, though. When the wind is blowing, all consumers may want to charge their Tesla's at the same time, meaning that the grid wil experience even more spikey load patterns. Batteries as part of the central grid can help, of course.