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Yes, I can refute those. Those rolling brownouts happen in the summer when AC demand is high and the grid is barely capable of meeting peak demand. Vehicles do
by kurthr 4y ago
Yes, I can refute those.
Those rolling brownouts happen in the summer when AC demand is high and the grid is barely capable of meeting peak demand. Vehicles do not need to charge at that time (when most people are at work or staying home) and could even provide some power to homes during that time. Most electric vehicles are charged at night (when rates are lower).
Of course utilities would love to have people pay more maintenance, because they already have to do it and their profits are capped. But they have already built to peak demand and the only driver now for that peak is rising summer temperatures... because electric vehicles need not be charged then, and they are computer controlled so they know when to charge.
In some localities residential solar is changing the exact time of peak load and often reducing daily peak load. The best argument is that electric vehicles require improvements to the utility writing is that electricity even more important so reliability of the network is more critical. But, well cell phones are pretty important.
- boringg 4y agoI think the difference is since you do this at scale it puts a lot more pressure on the grid. EV adoption is still quite low relative to the fleet. Yes heat load and AC are drivers for california grid and similar climate grids. I would wager that if the north east went electric heating and EV they would have significant problems in the winter. Grid reliability would be even more important given that transportation and home heating are tied to it. Those load profiles in aggregate would most certainly but pressure on the system both in transmission of electricity and production of energy.
- kurthr 4y agoAverage CA car drives ~12kmi/year (above average). That's less than 40miles/day and at ~250Wh/mi about 10kWh per electric vehicle day or 1kW for 10 hours for $1.50 at nighttime rates. Typical air conditioning load is 30-50kWh per day residential customer during the summer. There are ~2.5 registered vehicles per household (including commercial). Charge at night and you'll use less than AC in the day. Sure the north east will need more power and efficiency improvements while solar is less effective, but I expect them to have slower adoption as well. Residential solar added 5GW of typical spring day capacity while utilities added 7GW over the last 10 years. In another 10 years that will swamp daytime usage (except for winter) and utilities will be begging people to charge during the day.