6 ms·

> 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

> 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.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    It seems that it can be easily adjustable by include grid capacity for pricing calculation.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      It can, but that would lead to wasted energy when demand is pushed below supply (when there is no way to store the supply). That sort of defeats the benefit of elasticity in the demand that was the premise. The idea was that when there is a lot of power being generated on a sunny and windy day, everyone should charge all batteries, heat their water a few extra degrees, run heating or air conditioning a bit harder, etc, as an hour later, the sun could go down, the wind stop blowing and power generation could be scarce. On the other hand elastic supply sources with a fuel cost (hydro, fossil fuels and to some extent nuclear) are much more suited for cases where consumption elasticity is linked to limitations of the distribution systems.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        One interesting approach to this is special tariffs that give you discounts when your local wind turbine is producing. https://octopus.energy/octopus-fan-club/ https://octopus.energy/octopus-fan-club/
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    More spikes are good, it's the height of the tallest spike that determines the cost, so reducing that specific spike is the key. And one way to do that, is to spike at other times instead. Think about it like roads and rush hour. The width of the road is set for rush hour, and most of the rest of the time it's empty. Any way of shifting demand away from that peak is good. You'd have to shift an infeasible amount to create a traffic jam in the middle of the night, but every extra car removed from rush hour helps.

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.
- fomine3 4y ago
  It seems that it can be easily adjustable by include grid capacity for pricing calculation.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    It can, but that would lead to wasted energy when demand is pushed below supply (when there is no way to store the supply). That sort of defeats the benefit of elasticity in the demand that was the premise. The idea was that when there is a lot of power being generated on a sunny and windy day, everyone should charge all batteries, heat their water a few extra degrees, run heating or air conditioning a bit harder, etc, as an hour later, the sun could go down, the wind stop blowing and power generation could be scarce. On the other hand elastic supply sources with a fuel cost (hydro, fossil fuels and to some extent nuclear) are much more suited for cases where consumption elasticity is linked to limitations of the distribution systems.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      One interesting approach to this is special tariffs that give you discounts when your local wind turbine is producing. https://octopus.energy/octopus-fan-club/ https://octopus.energy/octopus-fan-club/
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  More spikes are good, it's the height of the tallest spike that determines the cost, so reducing that specific spike is the key. And one way to do that, is to spike at other times instead. Think about it like roads and rush hour. The width of the road is set for rush hour, and most of the rest of the time it's empty. Any way of shifting demand away from that peak is good. You'd have to shift an infeasible amount to create a traffic jam in the middle of the night, but every extra car removed from rush hour helps.