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This article does a poor job of explaining why there is going to be a problem and relaying the point of the study. To model the grid and power infrastructure i

This article does a poor job of explaining why there is going to be a problem and relaying the point of the study. To model the grid and power infrastructure into the future, assumptions must be made about where the power is derived. The article fails to provide the basic factors contributing to the problem, even though the study itself does a fine job. So California wants to legislate electric cars. That means higher demand in a shorter period of time. Meanwhile Calofornia wants to legislate 'clean' or 'green' energy production. If that's a design limitation then the outcome is a shift away from what is the normal situation we face with energy use today. Energy use at night with a highly solar derived power system requires significant storage and efficiency loss. Charging all of California's electric cars in 2035 will be a demand that far surpasses anything seen today. These things that we see causing rolling black outs and brown outs, like AC use spikes in summer will be a blip compared to the consistent vehicle charging demand. Interesting, though, the electric vehicle adoption basically negates the storage problem if a parallel infrastructure of charge back from homes at night is implemented. Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night.

NickM 4y ago
If you're regularly committing a certain percentage of your car's battery capacity to powering your house, wouldn't it make more sense to just have a stationary battery at home? Otherwise you can't rely on that extra range in your car if you need it to power your home anyway, and you're just spending extra energy carrying around extra battery weight in your car every day.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  I wonder if there's any correlation between times someone travels 400 miles and times when they are not home... we probably need a study or something to figure it out.
  - NickM 4y ago
    The problem is, you need a full charge in the morning if you're leaving on a road trip, so then your car will not be powering your house the night before. This would likely lead to big spikes in demand the night before the start of holiday a weekend, for example.
    - kevinpet 4y ago
      I don't have an electric car, but I can't imagine this is a challenging problem at all. All you need is a target charge level. If you're going on a trip tomorrow, set it to 100%. If your normal commute is 20 minutes, no reason to charge past 75% or even 50%.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        They were saying this creates huge problems for the grid. Let's assume people will want to destroy their car battery by draining it to power their house every night, and that this indeed supplements the need for grid storage overnight. However, when holiday seasons comes around, all of a sudden a significant percentage of homes will start demanding much higher power usage from the grid, as people co-ordinate in setting their cars not to drain power into their homes on the night before.
        nikau 4y ago
        Sounds like the UK where everyone used to turn their kettles on during the ad breaks of popular TV shows
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  If we're seriously going there , then legislate mandatory carpool or motorcycles for single occupants. The thing is, California isn't making great policy decisions or even efficient power decisions. They are making virtue decisions. Moving 1.5 tons of battery or 1.25 tons of battery isn't where the hairsplitting should take place
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If only there were a way to encourage upwards of 50% of trips to be done via methods that take a tiny fraction of the energy with no or negligible battery without invasive freedom limiting legislation just by spending roughly as much as EV manufacturers have received in subsidy on infrastructure. Oh well. Guess we'll have to give another billion to elon.
  - NickM 4y ago
    My point isn't that we should actually shrink EV batteries and use the excess for stationary storage, my point is that car batteries as a demand-leveling mechanism is not likely to be an optimal solution. That said, it's not something that's really happening right now anyway, so the "power your home with your car at night" idea seems unlikely to take off unless there is a (possibly misguided) legislative push for it.
    - qqqwerty 4y ago
      Batteries are a bit too expensive to make sense as stationary storage outside of some specialty cases right now. But EVs have been economical for a while. So while we wait for battery prices to drop, two way EV charging absolutely make sense as a transition technology. Most of those EV batteries are sitting unused for large chunks of the day, and the entire capacity of the battery is often only needed by the driver a few times per year. Adding two way charging is not a prohibitive cost, and that installation can be reused if/when an onsite battery is added in the future. The rest of the program can be managed with software.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
- kieranmaine 4y ago
  This requires extra cost for the consumers and will drive up battery demand. It will be cheaper for the consumer to use their car to help balance the grid, as long as they have the required range for when it's needed (with current smart charging solutions already providing this).
ParksNet 4y ago
Each car is typically driven 35 miles daily in the USA. Against a capacity of ~250 miles, this represents many days of non-charging, and thus a lot of flexibility in when charging occurs. EVs can potentially strengthen the grid: if they are charged smartly, to balance demand. We need manufacturers, regulators, grid operators to align on how to figure this out. At the least, grid conditions/pricing should be sent to the car for smart charging. Mandating 240volt connections in all garages and a large portion of apartment parking lots would also enable the solar excesses of the day to be quickly utilized.
- kieranmaine 4y ago
  This is spot on. Kaluza (https://www.kaluza.com/demand-response/ https://www.kaluza.com/demand-response/) are working on this problem, by giving EV drivers reduced prices for EV charging as long as the Kaluza platform controls when you car is charged, with the Kaluza platform using price signals to decide when to stop/start charging. The larger impact will come from V2G (Vehicle-to-grid) charging. This will require manufacturers to add this capability to vehicle but the savings for customers are significantly greater than just smart charging (see see https://www.kaluza.com/case-studies/case-study-kaluza-enabled-vehicle-to-grid-v2g-charging/ https://www.kaluza.com/case-studies/case-study-kaluza-enable...).
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    I’d happily let the utility decide when to charge the car for best pricing and load usage so long as I can override it when I need from time to time at prevailing price. I’d also be happy to sell power back to the grid if I can set the price floor threshold since batteries do have cycle limits.
landemva 4y ago
> Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. And fill your coffee thermos at work and drink free coffee at home all weekend. And toilet paper and pencils from work can also be taken home and maybe resold at a flea market.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  These are great options
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Did you see anyone suggest that you receive free electricity while at work?
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. Completely infeasible in cold climates if your house is heated by electrically-powered air source heat pumps, as it probably should be.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  I live in a cold climate and it would take only take more than 50% of charge to keep the house warm overnight with an air source heat pump. Since I rarely use more then 10% of range per day driving this would easily work for me. With an LFP battery car the cycle usage wouldn’t even be a big deal. It’s not impossible.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    I live near Santa Fe at 6000'. I have a 6.6kW array out front. It generates 3x what we need in the summer, and 1/3rd of what we need in the winter, when we heat with an air source heat pump. Yes, it's an old adobe and not well insulated, but even with those things fixed, the amount of power we'd need to stay warm would require a battery system of immense size, much larger than a car (for now, anyway).
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      From two googlings, avg home consumption daily : 30kwh Avg EV consumption per 100mi : 30kwh That is about a third of a typical modern vehicle range. Sounds like an adequate amount for your needs, but what you really should do is install passive solar heating like a thermal mass. If you're in Santa Fe then you already know the what and how. There's about 325 days of sunshine over there
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        The average daily home consumption does not typically include electric heating. Most homes in the US use oil or gas for heat. Even though heat pumps are very efficient, it still requires quite a lot of energy. Given that our house is mostly constructed of double adobe (24" thick) walls, we have lots of thermal mass, and some notable passive solar design features too.
codelord 4y ago
-Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. This doesn't make any sense. If you don't need the capacity, why do you wanna carry a ton of battery everywhere with you wasting energy? Buy a smaller battery for the car. Keep another battery installed at home. The battery at home is also more flexible to draw power at the optimal time for the grid. Not to mention that this constant charging and recharging would decrease the lifetime of the battery, causing more environmentally unfriendly waste and inefficiency.

NickM 4y ago

If you're regularly committing a certain percentage of your car's battery capacity to powering your house, wouldn't it make more sense to just have a stationary battery at home? Otherwise you can't rely on that extra range in your car if you need it to power your home anyway, and you're just spending extra energy carrying around extra battery weight in your car every day.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
I wonder if there's any correlation between times someone travels 400 miles and times when they are not home... we probably need a study or something to figure it out.
- NickM 4y ago
  The problem is, you need a full charge in the morning if you're leaving on a road trip, so then your car will not be powering your house the night before. This would likely lead to big spikes in demand the night before the start of holiday a weekend, for example.
  - kevinpet 4y ago
    I don't have an electric car, but I can't imagine this is a challenging problem at all. All you need is a target charge level. If you're going on a trip tomorrow, set it to 100%. If your normal commute is 20 minutes, no reason to charge past 75% or even 50%.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      They were saying this creates huge problems for the grid. Let's assume people will want to destroy their car battery by draining it to power their house every night, and that this indeed supplements the need for grid storage overnight. However, when holiday seasons comes around, all of a sudden a significant percentage of homes will start demanding much higher power usage from the grid, as people co-ordinate in setting their cars not to drain power into their homes on the night before.
      - nikau 4y ago
        Sounds like the UK where everyone used to turn their kettles on during the ad breaks of popular TV shows
upsidesinclude 4y ago
If we're seriously going there , then legislate mandatory carpool or motorcycles for single occupants. The thing is, California isn't making great policy decisions or even efficient power decisions. They are making virtue decisions. Moving 1.5 tons of battery or 1.25 tons of battery isn't where the hairsplitting should take place
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If only there were a way to encourage upwards of 50% of trips to be done via methods that take a tiny fraction of the energy with no or negligible battery without invasive freedom limiting legislation just by spending roughly as much as EV manufacturers have received in subsidy on infrastructure. Oh well. Guess we'll have to give another billion to elon.
- NickM 4y ago
  My point isn't that we should actually shrink EV batteries and use the excess for stationary storage, my point is that car batteries as a demand-leveling mechanism is not likely to be an optimal solution. That said, it's not something that's really happening right now anyway, so the "power your home with your car at night" idea seems unlikely to take off unless there is a (possibly misguided) legislative push for it.
  - qqqwerty 4y ago
    Batteries are a bit too expensive to make sense as stationary storage outside of some specialty cases right now. But EVs have been economical for a while. So while we wait for battery prices to drop, two way EV charging absolutely make sense as a transition technology. Most of those EV batteries are sitting unused for large chunks of the day, and the entire capacity of the battery is often only needed by the driver a few times per year. Adding two way charging is not a prohibitive cost, and that installation can be reused if/when an onsite battery is added in the future. The rest of the program can be managed with software.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
kieranmaine 4y ago
This requires extra cost for the consumers and will drive up battery demand. It will be cheaper for the consumer to use their car to help balance the grid, as long as they have the required range for when it's needed (with current smart charging solutions already providing this).

ParksNet 4y ago

Each car is typically driven 35 miles daily in the USA. Against a capacity of ~250 miles, this represents many days of non-charging, and thus a lot of flexibility in when charging occurs. EVs can potentially strengthen the grid: if they are charged smartly, to balance demand. We need manufacturers, regulators, grid operators to align on how to figure this out. At the least, grid conditions/pricing should be sent to the car for smart charging. Mandating 240volt connections in all garages and a large portion of apartment parking lots would also enable the solar excesses of the day to be quickly utilized.

kieranmaine 4y ago
This is spot on. Kaluza (https://www.kaluza.com/demand-response/ https://www.kaluza.com/demand-response/) are working on this problem, by giving EV drivers reduced prices for EV charging as long as the Kaluza platform controls when you car is charged, with the Kaluza platform using price signals to decide when to stop/start charging. The larger impact will come from V2G (Vehicle-to-grid) charging. This will require manufacturers to add this capability to vehicle but the savings for customers are significantly greater than just smart charging (see see https://www.kaluza.com/case-studies/case-study-kaluza-enabled-vehicle-to-grid-v2g-charging/ https://www.kaluza.com/case-studies/case-study-kaluza-enable...).
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  I’d happily let the utility decide when to charge the car for best pricing and load usage so long as I can override it when I need from time to time at prevailing price. I’d also be happy to sell power back to the grid if I can set the price floor threshold since batteries do have cycle limits.

landemva 4y ago

> Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. And fill your coffee thermos at work and drink free coffee at home all weekend. And toilet paper and pencils from work can also be taken home and maybe resold at a flea market.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
These are great options
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Did you see anyone suggest that you receive free electricity while at work?

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. Completely infeasible in cold climates if your house is heated by electrically-powered air source heat pumps, as it probably should be.

theluketaylor 4y ago
I live in a cold climate and it would take only take more than 50% of charge to keep the house warm overnight with an air source heat pump. Since I rarely use more then 10% of range per day driving this would easily work for me. With an LFP battery car the cycle usage wouldn’t even be a big deal. It’s not impossible.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  I live near Santa Fe at 6000'. I have a 6.6kW array out front. It generates 3x what we need in the summer, and 1/3rd of what we need in the winter, when we heat with an air source heat pump. Yes, it's an old adobe and not well insulated, but even with those things fixed, the amount of power we'd need to stay warm would require a battery system of immense size, much larger than a car (for now, anyway).
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    From two googlings, avg home consumption daily : 30kwh Avg EV consumption per 100mi : 30kwh That is about a third of a typical modern vehicle range. Sounds like an adequate amount for your needs, but what you really should do is install passive solar heating like a thermal mass. If you're in Santa Fe then you already know the what and how. There's about 325 days of sunshine over there
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      The average daily home consumption does not typically include electric heating. Most homes in the US use oil or gas for heat. Even though heat pumps are very efficient, it still requires quite a lot of energy. Given that our house is mostly constructed of double adobe (24" thick) walls, we have lots of thermal mass, and some notable passive solar design features too.

codelord 4y ago

-Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night. This doesn't make any sense. If you don't need the capacity, why do you wanna carry a ton of battery everywhere with you wasting energy? Buy a smaller battery for the car. Keep another battery installed at home. The battery at home is also more flexible to draw power at the optimal time for the grid. Not to mention that this constant charging and recharging would decrease the lifetime of the battery, causing more environmentally unfriendly waste and inefficiency.