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I would be curious about a study done for the Texas market. From what I understand, you'd definitely want to charge at night due to the vast amounts of wind po

I would be curious about a study done for the Texas market. From what I understand, you'd definitely want to charge at night due to the vast amounts of wind power available and the otherwise low demand. Even better would be to plug the car in at all times when parked either at work or home and it just charges when the rate is cheapest. You don't need to charge every day to refill that 20 or 30 miles.

lbriner 4y ago
I guess the issue with this report is that it is specific to the unique mix of energy that the (west of the) USA has compared to other areas/countries. Countries with a lot of nuclear see that energy wasted at night because you can't just dial down the level very quickly, in that sense, in most of Nothern Europe this would be desirable. In countries that have extreme levels of solar, clearly this only works during the day and perhaps leaves the night being covered by fossil fuel plants instead where they are happy to use less/dial it down. The massive missing piece, at least in the UK, is a genuine Smart Grid that can drive usage to meet supply. I have precisely zero appliances in my house that can make any use of cheap electricity and even worse, if I want a dual-tariff to get cheaper overnight electric, I get punished for it costwise.
- jayd16 4y ago
  Smart metering would make it easily enforceable but couldn't tie into the smart thermostat system to at least delay charging to off peak hours?
- maccard 4y ago
  > I have precisely zero appliances in my house that can make any use of cheap electricity and even worse, if I want a dual-tariff to get cheaper overnight electric, I get punished for it costwise No dishwasher or washing machine? I have a hog water tank with an immersion switch on it, I would love to heat that with cheap electricity overnight. I agree on the stupidity of punishing people for taking on the cheaper night tariffs - we should be goint for as much carrot as we can over stick! The other aspect of this is price and consumption. I work from home with a workstation PC and an electric over that we use maybe every other day. Meanwhile my annual electricity bill is 1/4 of what my annual heating (gas) is, and of that, hot water is only 1/4 of that. Well over half of my annual bill and energy consumption is just heating my house during winter. The real goal is to get storage heat sources heated by renewable sources for those of us in the UK.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Hog water! Heat is hard and it’s hard to get around the energy requirements. Ovens don’t use that much at all at normal home duty cycles. Improvements in insulation can certainly help.
parkingrift 4y ago
>Even better would be to plug the car in at all times when parked either at work or home and it just charges when the rate is cheapest. 99% of people have a fixed rate 24/7/365. I live in NYC and I'm not even sure if it's possible for me to pay time of use rates. The time of day that electricity is cheapest is... all the time. I sincerely doubt there is any public or political will to change this engrained billing method. People will not willingly change their habits, and any politician proposing reducing quality of life will just get thrown out
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  In Texas right now you can get two meters to your home. One meter you use a fixed rate plan and the other meter you use a "wholesale" plus fee type plan, infamous example being Griddy. When the rate is nearly free you enable the outlet that charges your car. Of course hiring an electrician and all of that would probably have a long payback period.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    That's one of those things that works great if you use a huge amount of power. The fixed rate cost of charging for my commute would probably be less than the connection fee for the 2nd meter. In that scenario it wouldn't pay off it all (and of course you wouldn't bother doing it).
    - bombcar 4y ago
      That may be true now but if we develop meters with dual outputs it wouldn’t be much more than the normal box setup. But if we’re doing that might as well make it so it can pull from the car if needed and turn it into a powerwall.
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
  California's electricity has been mandated to switch to TOU since 2015: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-rates/residential-rate-reform-r-12-06-013 https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...
drak0n1c 4y ago
Many electricity co-ops and providers in Texas offer a choice of plans, one of which is higher rates during daytime but free electricity during nights and weekends. But that allowance doesn't kick in until later in the night, so a programmable clock on the charger would be a killer feature for electric car sellers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  yeah I wonder how the car would respond to that at the outlet level.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If it’s smart enough it should be able to turn off and on itself otherwise it’ll just think the charger turned off.
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
  I believe most electric cars already support charging on a timer. I have a ChargePoint charger that does the same thing on the charger side. The app even has a choice of all the electricity providers and plans to choose it so I don't have to look it up manually.
tetha 4y ago
Hamburg the city is currently funding a fairly interesting research project. The problem here is that solar + wind at times overproduces, and we have no grid scale energy storage to keep that power. So, a short-term idea is to equip most larger garages with EV chargers and to include a central control unit for these chargers. This way, the grid can bring the EVs to 40% - 60% charge slowly during off-hours, or dump as much power into the EVs as possible if the alternative was to shut down solar plants or wind turbines. And additionally, centralizing the power usage simplifies transmission issues for now. It's much easier to have a few big cables to a few big buildings, than having every single home pulling a lot of power all of a sudden.

lbriner 4y ago

I guess the issue with this report is that it is specific to the unique mix of energy that the (west of the) USA has compared to other areas/countries. Countries with a lot of nuclear see that energy wasted at night because you can't just dial down the level very quickly, in that sense, in most of Nothern Europe this would be desirable. In countries that have extreme levels of solar, clearly this only works during the day and perhaps leaves the night being covered by fossil fuel plants instead where they are happy to use less/dial it down. The massive missing piece, at least in the UK, is a genuine Smart Grid that can drive usage to meet supply. I have precisely zero appliances in my house that can make any use of cheap electricity and even worse, if I want a dual-tariff to get cheaper overnight electric, I get punished for it costwise.

jayd16 4y ago
Smart metering would make it easily enforceable but couldn't tie into the smart thermostat system to at least delay charging to off peak hours?
maccard 4y ago
> I have precisely zero appliances in my house that can make any use of cheap electricity and even worse, if I want a dual-tariff to get cheaper overnight electric, I get punished for it costwise No dishwasher or washing machine? I have a hog water tank with an immersion switch on it, I would love to heat that with cheap electricity overnight. I agree on the stupidity of punishing people for taking on the cheaper night tariffs - we should be goint for as much carrot as we can over stick! The other aspect of this is price and consumption. I work from home with a workstation PC and an electric over that we use maybe every other day. Meanwhile my annual electricity bill is 1/4 of what my annual heating (gas) is, and of that, hot water is only 1/4 of that. Well over half of my annual bill and energy consumption is just heating my house during winter. The real goal is to get storage heat sources heated by renewable sources for those of us in the UK.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Hog water! Heat is hard and it’s hard to get around the energy requirements. Ovens don’t use that much at all at normal home duty cycles. Improvements in insulation can certainly help.

parkingrift 4y ago

>Even better would be to plug the car in at all times when parked either at work or home and it just charges when the rate is cheapest. 99% of people have a fixed rate 24/7/365. I live in NYC and I'm not even sure if it's possible for me to pay time of use rates. The time of day that electricity is cheapest is... all the time. I sincerely doubt there is any public or political will to change this engrained billing method. People will not willingly change their habits, and any politician proposing reducing quality of life will just get thrown out

denimnerd42 4y ago
In Texas right now you can get two meters to your home. One meter you use a fixed rate plan and the other meter you use a "wholesale" plus fee type plan, infamous example being Griddy. When the rate is nearly free you enable the outlet that charges your car. Of course hiring an electrician and all of that would probably have a long payback period.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  That's one of those things that works great if you use a huge amount of power. The fixed rate cost of charging for my commute would probably be less than the connection fee for the 2nd meter. In that scenario it wouldn't pay off it all (and of course you wouldn't bother doing it).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That may be true now but if we develop meters with dual outputs it wouldn’t be much more than the normal box setup. But if we’re doing that might as well make it so it can pull from the car if needed and turn it into a powerwall.
ThatPlayer 4y ago
California's electricity has been mandated to switch to TOU since 2015: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-rates/residential-rate-reform-r-12-06-013 https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...

drak0n1c 4y ago

Many electricity co-ops and providers in Texas offer a choice of plans, one of which is higher rates during daytime but free electricity during nights and weekends. But that allowance doesn't kick in until later in the night, so a programmable clock on the charger would be a killer feature for electric car sellers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
denimnerd42 4y ago
yeah I wonder how the car would respond to that at the outlet level.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If it’s smart enough it should be able to turn off and on itself otherwise it’ll just think the charger turned off.
ThatPlayer 4y ago
I believe most electric cars already support charging on a timer. I have a ChargePoint charger that does the same thing on the charger side. The app even has a choice of all the electricity providers and plans to choose it so I don't have to look it up manually.

tetha 4y ago

Hamburg the city is currently funding a fairly interesting research project. The problem here is that solar + wind at times overproduces, and we have no grid scale energy storage to keep that power. So, a short-term idea is to equip most larger garages with EV chargers and to include a central control unit for these chargers. This way, the grid can bring the EVs to 40% - 60% charge slowly during off-hours, or dump as much power into the EVs as possible if the alternative was to shut down solar plants or wind turbines. And additionally, centralizing the power usage simplifies transmission issues for now. It's much easier to have a few big cables to a few big buildings, than having every single home pulling a lot of power all of a sudden.