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California is currently having power outages with no severe weather and rather mild temperature today. Electric vehicles make a lot of sense for driving in citi

California is currently having power outages with no severe weather and rather mild temperature today. Electric vehicles make a lot of sense for driving in cities but how are they planning on providing the power for EVs without building a lot more power generation than they currently seem willing to do? https://poweroutage.us/area/state/california https://poweroutage.us/area/state/california I've seen conflicting reports on California's ability to generate enough electricity to sustain the rising demand for EVs and so far it seems the politicians are just wanting to push that problem off until it becomes an unsustainable emergency. https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2022/09/19/california-grid-can-handle-electric-vehicle-load-with-updated-infrastructure-and-customer-discipline https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2022/09/19/california-... https://reason.com/2022/09/09/california-demands-evs-but-cant-even-keep-the-power-on/ https://reason.com/2022/09/09/california-demands-evs-but-can...

treeman79 4y ago
Simple. Wishful thinking, then blame game.
rrss 4y ago
Build. It does not appear that these outages are due to load, so I do not follow how they are relevant to a discussion of the supply required for EVs. Perhaps a separate discussion of how PG&E sucks? (And maybe SDPL and SCE too?) The only solution to increased demand requirements is to build more generation. I do not know what you are referring to with “currently willing to do,” but whoever needs to be willing in order to build more generation will certainly become willing at some point.
Tagbert 4y ago
From that power outage map, I see only a couple of areas with outages and only affecting about 5K homes. Nothing that indicates demand shortages. In our area we get that sometimes when the wind blows down a couple of trees. Why do you assume that anyone is expecting EVs to arrive without needing additional electrical generation capacity? That makes no sense. There has been a lot of discussion and planning around expanding generation. Here is one: The Biden administration just announced the first-ever California offshore wind lease sale https://electrek.co/2022/10/18/us-california-offshore-wind-lease-sale/ https://electrek.co/2022/10/18/us-california-offshore-wind-l... People over estimate the impact of EVs on the grid, Even after EVs have reached 18% of vehicle sales in CA, they use less than 1% of the power produced. It will be at least a decade before most cars might be EVs. That is enough time to increase the power generation capacity. “Though California has more electric cars than any other state, they make up just .4% of all energy consumption during peak hours. Even at 2030 estimates, some 5.6 million electric cars, trucks, and vans would only comprise 4% of peak loads.” https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/16/electric-cars-power-grid/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/16/electric-cars-power-grid...
- hedora 4y ago
  Peak hours are during commute time (when cars tend to be moving or ready to move), so that's sort of a weird thing to focus on. The big question is whether charging times overlap with renewable electricity generation.
comte7092 4y ago
> California is currently having power outages with no severe weather and rather mild temperature today You posted this 20 minutes ago. I followed your link and it shows that ~1% of customers tracked are without power. This could be due to any number of reasons but it’s not like this is anywhere near catastrophic. Grid issues tend to be related to huge spikes in usage or significant acute damage to supply. EVs don’t need to be charged constantly and therefore can be charged in a way that smooths out demand.
- rrss 4y ago
  It currently shows ~17k out from 13M customers, closer to 0.1% than 1%
  - comte7092 4y ago
    Good catch, I didn’t really do the math. I just saw that the purported “outage” was minimal.
juve1996 4y ago
You do the same thing you do any other time there's demand for infrastructure...build.
- calculatte 4y ago
  CA has had major demand to improve their electric infrastructure for decades. They still don't build. They have been regulated to death.
  - rrss 4y ago
    What major potential and unmet demand for decades is this?
    - calculatte 4y ago
      Oh you got me. CA is actually awash in extra power and those rolling blackouts, poorly maintained equipment causing power line fires every year killing hundreds, burning thousands of acres is all an extremist conspiracy theory. Carry on.
      - rrss 4y ago
        CA’s grid certainly has problems today. You refer to issues that are all within the past five years, not decades. The last significant problems before these were in 2000 & 2001, which were due to artificial shortages created by Enron, not physical infrastructure problems, had huge political implications, and which led to the development of the current resource adequacy program used in CA. (Which has generally worked pretty well but has been too slow in adapting to rapidly rising amount generation from solar). But I misread your comment and thought you were talking about significant unmet electrical demand rather than deficiencies in the reliability & safety of the grid. (The late summer grid problems in the past 3 years are partially due to insufficient supply, but require only 1% or so additional supply in the critical hours of the day and CA is building to address that.) In short, I don’t believe that chronic insufficient demand is a tenable political and economic position (even in CA…) and do not expect it to be tolerated and not fixed.
xsmasher 4y ago
You linked to a map that shows no demand-related outages. The peak demand is caused when everyone's AC kicks on at once during heat waves. Electric cars can easily be charged off-peak; even my ten year old model has a "timer" function to delay charging.
hedora 4y ago
As much as I like making fun of PG&E, EV's really aren't going to knock over the California power grid. As it is, they have to limit the amount of solar people put on their roofs to keep there from being too much surplus electricity during the day.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
I don't see any outages on the map you linked. However I think this is a case where, believe it or not, the invisible hand is going to do the right thing. Most (all?) electric cars have settings to prioritize charging in the daytime or late night, when TOU power is the cheapest (the grid is most stressed around 5-9pm, when solar is less productive but demand is still high).

treeman79 4y ago

Simple. Wishful thinking, then blame game.

rrss 4y ago

Build. It does not appear that these outages are due to load, so I do not follow how they are relevant to a discussion of the supply required for EVs. Perhaps a separate discussion of how PG&E sucks? (And maybe SDPL and SCE too?) The only solution to increased demand requirements is to build more generation. I do not know what you are referring to with “currently willing to do,” but whoever needs to be willing in order to build more generation will certainly become willing at some point.

Tagbert 4y ago

From that power outage map, I see only a couple of areas with outages and only affecting about 5K homes. Nothing that indicates demand shortages. In our area we get that sometimes when the wind blows down a couple of trees. Why do you assume that anyone is expecting EVs to arrive without needing additional electrical generation capacity? That makes no sense. There has been a lot of discussion and planning around expanding generation. Here is one: The Biden administration just announced the first-ever California offshore wind lease sale https://electrek.co/2022/10/18/us-california-offshore-wind-lease-sale/ https://electrek.co/2022/10/18/us-california-offshore-wind-l... People over estimate the impact of EVs on the grid, Even after EVs have reached 18% of vehicle sales in CA, they use less than 1% of the power produced. It will be at least a decade before most cars might be EVs. That is enough time to increase the power generation capacity. “Though California has more electric cars than any other state, they make up just .4% of all energy consumption during peak hours. Even at 2030 estimates, some 5.6 million electric cars, trucks, and vans would only comprise 4% of peak loads.” https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/16/electric-cars-power-grid/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/16/electric-cars-power-grid...

hedora 4y ago
Peak hours are during commute time (when cars tend to be moving or ready to move), so that's sort of a weird thing to focus on. The big question is whether charging times overlap with renewable electricity generation.

comte7092 4y ago

> California is currently having power outages with no severe weather and rather mild temperature today You posted this 20 minutes ago. I followed your link and it shows that ~1% of customers tracked are without power. This could be due to any number of reasons but it’s not like this is anywhere near catastrophic. Grid issues tend to be related to huge spikes in usage or significant acute damage to supply. EVs don’t need to be charged constantly and therefore can be charged in a way that smooths out demand.

rrss 4y ago
It currently shows ~17k out from 13M customers, closer to 0.1% than 1%
- comte7092 4y ago
  Good catch, I didn’t really do the math. I just saw that the purported “outage” was minimal.

juve1996 4y ago

You do the same thing you do any other time there's demand for infrastructure...build.

calculatte 4y ago
CA has had major demand to improve their electric infrastructure for decades. They still don't build. They have been regulated to death.
- rrss 4y ago
  What major potential and unmet demand for decades is this?
  - calculatte 4y ago
    Oh you got me. CA is actually awash in extra power and those rolling blackouts, poorly maintained equipment causing power line fires every year killing hundreds, burning thousands of acres is all an extremist conspiracy theory. Carry on.
    - rrss 4y ago
      CA’s grid certainly has problems today. You refer to issues that are all within the past five years, not decades. The last significant problems before these were in 2000 & 2001, which were due to artificial shortages created by Enron, not physical infrastructure problems, had huge political implications, and which led to the development of the current resource adequacy program used in CA. (Which has generally worked pretty well but has been too slow in adapting to rapidly rising amount generation from solar). But I misread your comment and thought you were talking about significant unmet electrical demand rather than deficiencies in the reliability & safety of the grid. (The late summer grid problems in the past 3 years are partially due to insufficient supply, but require only 1% or so additional supply in the critical hours of the day and CA is building to address that.) In short, I don’t believe that chronic insufficient demand is a tenable political and economic position (even in CA…) and do not expect it to be tolerated and not fixed.

xsmasher 4y ago

You linked to a map that shows no demand-related outages. The peak demand is caused when everyone's AC kicks on at once during heat waves. Electric cars can easily be charged off-peak; even my ten year old model has a "timer" function to delay charging.

hedora 4y ago

As much as I like making fun of PG&E, EV's really aren't going to knock over the California power grid. As it is, they have to limit the amount of solar people put on their roofs to keep there from being too much surplus electricity during the day.

Rebelgecko 4y ago

I don't see any outages on the map you linked. However I think this is a case where, believe it or not, the invisible hand is going to do the right thing. Most (all?) electric cars have settings to prioritize charging in the daytime or late night, when TOU power is the cheapest (the grid is most stressed around 5-9pm, when solar is less productive but demand is still high).