6 ms·

The solution to this is going to be have customers enroll in smart charging. Keep your car connected to the smart charger when not in use and during times of ex

The solution to this is going to be have customers enroll in smart charging. Keep your car connected to the smart charger when not in use and during times of excess power charge the car for a few cents per kw.

kybernetyk 4y ago
Then everyone‘s charger decides „now is the time“ and the grid gets overloaded
- philkuz 4y ago
  or coordinate them so that doesn’t happen?
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    Yeah. Adding complexity to a system is always the best solution.
    - quonn 4y ago
      Sorry, it's not even hard. Coordination isn't even necessary. You just locally randomly choose a timeslot and there will be a uniform distribution.
    - pseudosavant 4y ago
      I'm trying not to be smug, but are you under the assumption that the delivery of physical forms of energy is simple? Distributing, on average, ~1.5B liters of gasoline, with different qualities/chemistries/regions/etc, every day in the US has immense amounts of complexity. Now do that for coal, natural gas, heating oil, etc. Managing time of day for charging isn't a more complicated problem than any of those.
  - shagie 4y ago
    This gets into the utility frequency... that information is already out there, on the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency_and_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency_an... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_demand_(electric_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_demand_(electric_power... The way that power companies "communicate" about load is by slightly changing the frequency. If the frequency is 60.5, then there's an abundance of energy on the grid and some less profitable generators can cut back or storage systems can charge. If the frequency is 59.5 then there's a lack of available power on the grid and other generators should go on line and unnecessary load should stop doing its thing (and if it has the ability, it could discharge instead).
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
    That's how it works already in Australia People in US were so flipped when they heard this
- ortusdux 4y ago
  You're describing dumb charging.
georgyo 4y ago
This assumes you can have your car plugged in during the day. It people drive to work and cannot plug in their car, then most of the time it will only be plugged in at night.
- darknavi 4y ago
  Hopefully the ability to charge at work becomes more popular.
  - biomcgary 4y ago
    Hopefully, the requirement to commute to work goes away for a large fraction of the population so that all that energy can be used for more productive things.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    And further increase traffic problems and the continued blight of cities designed for cars? I can't see anything that encourages people to start driving to work as a good thing sorry.
    - biomcgary 4y ago
      Most of the forms of travel that are energy and space efficient are typically not time efficient due to inherent tradeoffs. Nothing saves time, space, and energy simultaneously like not commuting in the first place. To butcher an old phrase, "Think globally, live locally". Universal-ish WFH dramatically undercuts the need for both energy and infrastructure (which also takes energy) and will allow us to scale back both dramatically (e.g., multi-lane roads), while saving lives and giving employees more life flexibility. Advocates for public transportation (for environmental reasons, particularly) risk fighting the last war. They should shift focus to WFH instead. I really don't understand why Greens and Labor don't push for WFH mandates (for environmental and quality of life reasons, respectively). Probably too tied to the commercial real estate industry.
akira2501 4y ago
So, the solution to "the solution" is to allow the government to control more of the market? Who will enforce this? What will the penalties be? Or, do we just raise power prices for everyone and then give them a break if they allow a third party device to restrict their power usage? Seems like a great way to subsidize "the solution" on the backs of people who can't afford a new EV of their own. Also.. when are there times of "excess power?" The grid operator tracks demand and then orders power from stations, or it doesn't. There is "excess capacity" but that's set against not running the plant at all, so I'm not sure there's some "free lunch" to be had here.
- megaman821 4y ago
  The grid does and will increasingly curtail renewables. If they had a demand queue of customer cars to send that power to, they do that instead of curtailing it. This is not a penalty situation, it is an enticement. Smart charge rates of 4 cents instead of 20 cents a kw/h. People will voluntarily do this to save themselves money.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    > The grid does and will increasingly curtail renewables. If they had a demand queue of customer cars to send that power to, they do that instead of curtailing it. And you're going to have those renewables available at night, when this charging is expected to take place and be straining the grid? > This is not a penalty situation, it is an enticement. Smart charge rates of 4 cents instead of 20 cents a kw/h. People will voluntarily do this to save themselves money. So where does that 16c/kWh come from? Subsidies? From taxes? So again, everyone has to pay to benefit a small group of consumers who can afford the product in the first place?
    - megaman821 4y ago
      Wind power is available at night. I think you are misunderstanding curtailments. It's when renewables are producing more power than what is needed and they are shut off or throttled. For the power producers getting 4 cents is better than getting 0 cents. Everyone involved in the transaction is better off. Customers get cheap power to charge their cars, and power producers get to sell energy that they otherwise couldn't. No one is subsidizing anything, the system is just more efficient.
ortusdux 4y ago
I got the new Pixel phone, and this morning I woke up to 20% battery even though it was plugged in all night. It turns out that it ships with a smart charging feature that checks you morning alarm time and waits till a few hours before to initiate charging. It is a cool feature designed to increase the lifespan of your battery, but I can't make use of it. My alarm is a fail-safe and I almost always wake up an hour or so beforehand. Life is unpredictable, and I have had emergency 2 AM phone calls that lead to situations where 20% battery is not sufficient. I don't have an electric vehicle yet, but my concern with smart charging would be finding myself in another situation where I need to drive to the nearest trauma center (2 hrs away) in the middle of the night and my battery is dead.
- kieranmaine 4y ago
  When I worked at Kaluza our smart charging solution allowed you to set a minimum % that your EV would always charge to, prior to any smart charging taking place. So as soon as you plugged in it would charge to the minimum value you set.
  - ortusdux 4y ago
    That was the first thing I checked when I investigated this feature on my phone. Annoyingly it is an "AI driven smart feature" that is not adjustable. I would love it if it charged to 75% right away and then waited till the morning to finish.
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      At some point iOS added AI-driven "smart charging," and the first time I woke up to an 80%-charged phone, I disabled that feature.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  So 2 low probability events at your particular area should dictate energy policy of a the continent?

kybernetyk 4y ago

Then everyone‘s charger decides „now is the time“ and the grid gets overloaded

philkuz 4y ago
or coordinate them so that doesn’t happen?
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  Yeah. Adding complexity to a system is always the best solution.
  - quonn 4y ago
    Sorry, it's not even hard. Coordination isn't even necessary. You just locally randomly choose a timeslot and there will be a uniform distribution.
  - pseudosavant 4y ago
    I'm trying not to be smug, but are you under the assumption that the delivery of physical forms of energy is simple? Distributing, on average, ~1.5B liters of gasoline, with different qualities/chemistries/regions/etc, every day in the US has immense amounts of complexity. Now do that for coal, natural gas, heating oil, etc. Managing time of day for charging isn't a more complicated problem than any of those.
- shagie 4y ago
  This gets into the utility frequency... that information is already out there, on the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency_and_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency_an... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_demand_(electric_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_demand_(electric_power... The way that power companies "communicate" about load is by slightly changing the frequency. If the frequency is 60.5, then there's an abundance of energy on the grid and some less profitable generators can cut back or storage systems can charge. If the frequency is 59.5 then there's a lack of available power on the grid and other generators should go on line and unnecessary load should stop doing its thing (and if it has the ability, it could discharge instead).
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  That's how it works already in Australia People in US were so flipped when they heard this
ortusdux 4y ago
You're describing dumb charging.

georgyo 4y ago

This assumes you can have your car plugged in during the day. It people drive to work and cannot plug in their car, then most of the time it will only be plugged in at night.

darknavi 4y ago
Hopefully the ability to charge at work becomes more popular.
- biomcgary 4y ago
  Hopefully, the requirement to commute to work goes away for a large fraction of the population so that all that energy can be used for more productive things.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- wizofaus 4y ago
  And further increase traffic problems and the continued blight of cities designed for cars? I can't see anything that encourages people to start driving to work as a good thing sorry.
  - biomcgary 4y ago
    Most of the forms of travel that are energy and space efficient are typically not time efficient due to inherent tradeoffs. Nothing saves time, space, and energy simultaneously like not commuting in the first place. To butcher an old phrase, "Think globally, live locally". Universal-ish WFH dramatically undercuts the need for both energy and infrastructure (which also takes energy) and will allow us to scale back both dramatically (e.g., multi-lane roads), while saving lives and giving employees more life flexibility. Advocates for public transportation (for environmental reasons, particularly) risk fighting the last war. They should shift focus to WFH instead. I really don't understand why Greens and Labor don't push for WFH mandates (for environmental and quality of life reasons, respectively). Probably too tied to the commercial real estate industry.

akira2501 4y ago

So, the solution to "the solution" is to allow the government to control more of the market? Who will enforce this? What will the penalties be? Or, do we just raise power prices for everyone and then give them a break if they allow a third party device to restrict their power usage? Seems like a great way to subsidize "the solution" on the backs of people who can't afford a new EV of their own. Also.. when are there times of "excess power?" The grid operator tracks demand and then orders power from stations, or it doesn't. There is "excess capacity" but that's set against not running the plant at all, so I'm not sure there's some "free lunch" to be had here.

megaman821 4y ago
The grid does and will increasingly curtail renewables. If they had a demand queue of customer cars to send that power to, they do that instead of curtailing it. This is not a penalty situation, it is an enticement. Smart charge rates of 4 cents instead of 20 cents a kw/h. People will voluntarily do this to save themselves money.
- akira2501 4y ago
  > The grid does and will increasingly curtail renewables. If they had a demand queue of customer cars to send that power to, they do that instead of curtailing it. And you're going to have those renewables available at night, when this charging is expected to take place and be straining the grid? > This is not a penalty situation, it is an enticement. Smart charge rates of 4 cents instead of 20 cents a kw/h. People will voluntarily do this to save themselves money. So where does that 16c/kWh come from? Subsidies? From taxes? So again, everyone has to pay to benefit a small group of consumers who can afford the product in the first place?
  - megaman821 4y ago
    Wind power is available at night. I think you are misunderstanding curtailments. It's when renewables are producing more power than what is needed and they are shut off or throttled. For the power producers getting 4 cents is better than getting 0 cents. Everyone involved in the transaction is better off. Customers get cheap power to charge their cars, and power producers get to sell energy that they otherwise couldn't. No one is subsidizing anything, the system is just more efficient.

ortusdux 4y ago

I got the new Pixel phone, and this morning I woke up to 20% battery even though it was plugged in all night. It turns out that it ships with a smart charging feature that checks you morning alarm time and waits till a few hours before to initiate charging. It is a cool feature designed to increase the lifespan of your battery, but I can't make use of it. My alarm is a fail-safe and I almost always wake up an hour or so beforehand. Life is unpredictable, and I have had emergency 2 AM phone calls that lead to situations where 20% battery is not sufficient. I don't have an electric vehicle yet, but my concern with smart charging would be finding myself in another situation where I need to drive to the nearest trauma center (2 hrs away) in the middle of the night and my battery is dead.

kieranmaine 4y ago
When I worked at Kaluza our smart charging solution allowed you to set a minimum % that your EV would always charge to, prior to any smart charging taking place. So as soon as you plugged in it would charge to the minimum value you set.
- ortusdux 4y ago
  That was the first thing I checked when I investigated this feature on my phone. Annoyingly it is an "AI driven smart feature" that is not adjustable. I would love it if it charged to 75% right away and then waited till the morning to finish.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    At some point iOS added AI-driven "smart charging," and the first time I woke up to an 80%-charged phone, I disabled that feature.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
So 2 low probability events at your particular area should dictate energy policy of a the continent?