7 ms·

The cost to transition away from fossil fuels isn’t really talked about much. For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everyth

by mfer 4y ago

The cost to transition away from fossil fuels isn’t really talked about much. For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that.

ajross 4y ago
> For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that. Cite for that? That's simply not true. In fact of all major infrastructure media in modern society, electrical transmission is by far the cheapest to upgrade. Even discounting industrial electricity and adding on DC charging of the EV, my household usage has gone up 35%. You really don't think society can absorb a 35% growth in one infrastructure sector? That's just silly. Obviously there are "costs", but there's no justification for "can't handle" or "massive". At all.
- ozzydave 4y ago
  And the majority of people will charge when power is cheapest, meaning peak power won’t increase nearly as much.
- briffle 4y ago
  plus there are other significant changes that can change in that time. HVDC power transmission lines lose something like 3% of their power over 600 miles, where AC ones lose closer to 7%. And use much less precious metals, since they require 2 lines instead of 3.
  - thworp 4y ago
    Is that 3% for the cable only or the entire system including conversion to AC at both ends?
brk 4y ago
All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs. I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim. I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation, which could be new plants, and/or residential solar. Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or permanently parked, we are decades away from a scenario where pure EVs are the dominant vehicle type on the road. There are just too many serviceable ICE vehicles in play to expect them to really go away in the next quarter century or so. That allows plenty of time for anything the current power generation and distribution infrastructure lacks to be adequately addressed.
- s0rce 4y ago
  The grid seems fine from my non-expert view, its sized for peak loads on the highest capacity days. EV charging can be done at night once AC use drops off. In my 5 years in California there was maybe 1-2 days midsummer when there wasn't enough power and still was entirely due to inadequate generation and high usage in neighboring states as well which limited imports.
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  In Germany the government asked people not to use electric heaters this winter because the grid could break down. An ev drains way more power then a 2kw space heater.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Well, yes. If tomorrow everyone replaces their ICE cars with EVs, then the grid won’t be able to handle that. Completely different situation, though.
    - hasmanean 4y ago
      We should not replace ICE cars with EVs, but something smaller. Steam engines were large because that was how they got efficiency up. ICE cars could afford to be smaller and more efficient. If they had just replaced steam locmotives with diesel ones that would have been stupid...instead they built a whole new infrastructure around smaller cars that was much better than the rail network and redesigned our entire cities. Existing cars are the optimal configuration for a given engine cost and gas price. Electric motors are even more efficient, but using them in the form factor of a car is also stupid. With robotics we can now make tiny self-driving vehicles that can do chores for us. Why should I drive a 2-ton car to the store to pick up a gallon of milk, when the store can send a small robot to deliver it to me? Similarly a large empty bus can be replaced with smaller ATV sized EVs that drive me from my house to the main artery and merge to form one train. That reduces the size of the EV engine and battery pack by 10x. Some of the problems to be solved are not merely technological but organizational and cultural.
marcosdumay 4y ago
Oh, you mean some non-zero investment is required? What change doesn't require investment? In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. And that's not just infrastructure that is already paid for. There is a much larger maintenance cost, an ongoing labor cost, and a much shorter useful life for anything related to fossil fuels.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. This statement just doesn't pass even the most lax economic sanity check. Why don't all the use cases where people don't care about anything other than the bottom dollar and don't run up against the weaknesses of modern batteries already run electric vehicles. I'm thinking like low daily mileage fleet of small vehicles in a warm climate somewhere with high fuel costs. Like why doesn't an EV Fiat Promaster exist and why doesn't every tradesman in Sicily run one? If the numbers penciled out then surely we'd have it, at least in some niche somewhere. We are starting to see mass EV adoption but it's right on the margin and the details on any specific use case make it cheaper or maybe not.
  - rainsford 4y ago
    Because vehicles are expensive and people don't replace them all that often? Affordable, capable EVs are relatively new and being competitive with gasoline vehicles doesn't necessarily mean they're so competitive that it makes sense to prematurely replace a working gas powered vehicle. Longer term though, EVs replacing gasoline vehicles for those kind of use-cases is exactly what we're going to see. In the US, the postal service intends to start deploying tens of thousands of EVs over the next few years as they replace older gasoline powered delivery vehicles. The economics do apparently work out and pass the sanity check, just not overnight.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Well, you seem to not have read my answer... But anyway, your answer is because transportation costs are irrelevant for both gasoline and electricity. So, even tough they are much cheaper for electricity, none makes any difference, and nobody picks a power source based on them. But some people makes a huge effort to focus on this non-issue and turn it into a showstopper on their discourse. People resorting to this is good evidence that there aren't any large showstoppers for cars electrification.
Retric 4y ago
The EV transition is really slow and easy for the grid to adapt to. Assuming 100% of new cars where EV’s you’re talking 25 years before adoption approaches 98%. Plus on average each EV is only using ~50,000kWh / year or 400 watts average load.
mulmen 4y ago
Sounds like an opportunity to me. Think of the jobs.
themitigating 4y ago
"For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars" I bet you the electrical grid couldn't handle everyone having an air conditioner in Texas in the 1920s but slowly people installed window and later central ACs and the grid grew. The situation where everyone suddenly had an electric car is implausible
greenthrow 4y ago
The grid today can't handle all the industrial power use and residential power use increases that will happen over the next 20 years either. So what? Everybody switching overnight is not and was never on the table. This is a silly non-issue pushed by the fossil fuel industry.
thomasmg 4y ago
The grid can handle everyone using electric cars. Yes some upgrades are needed, but they are needed anyway. See for example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-electric-vehicles-wont-break-the-grid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-electric-vehi... Electric car batteries are even seen as part of the solution to move to renewables.
smileysteve 4y ago
What the grid can't handle is if everybody all at once needed a full 300 mile charge in 8 hours, while they are showering, running ac, and factories are producing. This is partly resolved by sun heating, cold sleep patterns, factory shifts, smart charging, and that 95% of consumers do not make 300 mile daily commutes. Substation and individual point of charge capacity may not be there for areas without ac, or high density apartments - but that's where distributed charging stations come into play (aka charging stations) (very low volume of gasoline is distributed to home parking, currently). In the worst cases this is readily reduced with storage (liquid or power wall) at distribution centers.
masta 4y ago
Same when we went from horse carriages to gasoline powered cars. There was no infrastructure in place to buy hydrocarbons for otto-engines, other than in pharmacies. Industries are built when demand is rising, infrastructure always has to change to cover the needs of the population. EVs will be important sinks for electrical energy in the future, to balance out demand.

by mfer 4y ago

ajross 4y ago

> For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that. Cite for that? That's simply not true. In fact of all major infrastructure media in modern society, electrical transmission is by far the cheapest to upgrade. Even discounting industrial electricity and adding on DC charging of the EV, my household usage has gone up 35%. You really don't think society can absorb a 35% growth in one infrastructure sector? That's just silly. Obviously there are "costs", but there's no justification for "can't handle" or "massive". At all.

ozzydave 4y ago
And the majority of people will charge when power is cheapest, meaning peak power won’t increase nearly as much.
briffle 4y ago
plus there are other significant changes that can change in that time. HVDC power transmission lines lose something like 3% of their power over 600 miles, where AC ones lose closer to 7%. And use much less precious metals, since they require 2 lines instead of 3.
- thworp 4y ago
  Is that 3% for the cable only or the entire system including conversion to AC at both ends?

brk 4y ago

All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs. I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim. I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation, which could be new plants, and/or residential solar. Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or permanently parked, we are decades away from a scenario where pure EVs are the dominant vehicle type on the road. There are just too many serviceable ICE vehicles in play to expect them to really go away in the next quarter century or so. That allows plenty of time for anything the current power generation and distribution infrastructure lacks to be adequately addressed.

s0rce 4y ago
The grid seems fine from my non-expert view, its sized for peak loads on the highest capacity days. EV charging can be done at night once AC use drops off. In my 5 years in California there was maybe 1-2 days midsummer when there wasn't enough power and still was entirely due to inadequate generation and high usage in neighboring states as well which limited imports.
kybernetyk 4y ago
In Germany the government asked people not to use electric heaters this winter because the grid could break down. An ev drains way more power then a 2kw space heater.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Well, yes. If tomorrow everyone replaces their ICE cars with EVs, then the grid won’t be able to handle that. Completely different situation, though.
  - hasmanean 4y ago
    We should not replace ICE cars with EVs, but something smaller. Steam engines were large because that was how they got efficiency up. ICE cars could afford to be smaller and more efficient. If they had just replaced steam locmotives with diesel ones that would have been stupid...instead they built a whole new infrastructure around smaller cars that was much better than the rail network and redesigned our entire cities. Existing cars are the optimal configuration for a given engine cost and gas price. Electric motors are even more efficient, but using them in the form factor of a car is also stupid. With robotics we can now make tiny self-driving vehicles that can do chores for us. Why should I drive a 2-ton car to the store to pick up a gallon of milk, when the store can send a small robot to deliver it to me? Similarly a large empty bus can be replaced with smaller ATV sized EVs that drive me from my house to the main artery and merge to form one train. That reduces the size of the EV engine and battery pack by 10x. Some of the problems to be solved are not merely technological but organizational and cultural.

marcosdumay 4y ago

Oh, you mean some non-zero investment is required? What change doesn't require investment? In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. And that's not just infrastructure that is already paid for. There is a much larger maintenance cost, an ongoing labor cost, and a much shorter useful life for anything related to fossil fuels.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. This statement just doesn't pass even the most lax economic sanity check. Why don't all the use cases where people don't care about anything other than the bottom dollar and don't run up against the weaknesses of modern batteries already run electric vehicles. I'm thinking like low daily mileage fleet of small vehicles in a warm climate somewhere with high fuel costs. Like why doesn't an EV Fiat Promaster exist and why doesn't every tradesman in Sicily run one? If the numbers penciled out then surely we'd have it, at least in some niche somewhere. We are starting to see mass EV adoption but it's right on the margin and the details on any specific use case make it cheaper or maybe not.
- rainsford 4y ago
  Because vehicles are expensive and people don't replace them all that often? Affordable, capable EVs are relatively new and being competitive with gasoline vehicles doesn't necessarily mean they're so competitive that it makes sense to prematurely replace a working gas powered vehicle. Longer term though, EVs replacing gasoline vehicles for those kind of use-cases is exactly what we're going to see. In the US, the postal service intends to start deploying tens of thousands of EVs over the next few years as they replace older gasoline powered delivery vehicles. The economics do apparently work out and pass the sanity check, just not overnight.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, you seem to not have read my answer... But anyway, your answer is because transportation costs are irrelevant for both gasoline and electricity. So, even tough they are much cheaper for electricity, none makes any difference, and nobody picks a power source based on them. But some people makes a huge effort to focus on this non-issue and turn it into a showstopper on their discourse. People resorting to this is good evidence that there aren't any large showstoppers for cars electrification.

Retric 4y ago

The EV transition is really slow and easy for the grid to adapt to. Assuming 100% of new cars where EV’s you’re talking 25 years before adoption approaches 98%. Plus on average each EV is only using ~50,000kWh / year or 400 watts average load.

mulmen 4y ago

Sounds like an opportunity to me. Think of the jobs.

themitigating 4y ago

"For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars" I bet you the electrical grid couldn't handle everyone having an air conditioner in Texas in the 1920s but slowly people installed window and later central ACs and the grid grew. The situation where everyone suddenly had an electric car is implausible

greenthrow 4y ago

The grid today can't handle all the industrial power use and residential power use increases that will happen over the next 20 years either. So what? Everybody switching overnight is not and was never on the table. This is a silly non-issue pushed by the fossil fuel industry.

thomasmg 4y ago

The grid can handle everyone using electric cars. Yes some upgrades are needed, but they are needed anyway. See for example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-electric-vehicles-wont-break-the-grid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-electric-vehi... Electric car batteries are even seen as part of the solution to move to renewables.

smileysteve 4y ago

What the grid can't handle is if everybody all at once needed a full 300 mile charge in 8 hours, while they are showering, running ac, and factories are producing. This is partly resolved by sun heating, cold sleep patterns, factory shifts, smart charging, and that 95% of consumers do not make 300 mile daily commutes. Substation and individual point of charge capacity may not be there for areas without ac, or high density apartments - but that's where distributed charging stations come into play (aka charging stations) (very low volume of gasoline is distributed to home parking, currently). In the worst cases this is readily reduced with storage (liquid or power wall) at distribution centers.

masta 4y ago

Same when we went from horse carriages to gasoline powered cars. There was no infrastructure in place to buy hydrocarbons for otto-engines, other than in pharmacies. Industries are built when demand is rising, infrastructure always has to change to cover the needs of the population. EVs will be important sinks for electrical energy in the future, to balance out demand.