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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

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.

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.