4 ms·

> I have these images in my mind of massive land areas devastated by strip-mining and other activities just to be "clean" in lands far and away from the mines.

> I have these images in my mind of massive land areas devastated by strip-mining and other activities just to be "clean" in lands far and away from the mines. Because extracting petrol is so much cleaner... Our civilization is going to use more and more energy as it grows, that's just a fact of life. Might as well get on with the program and install whatever capacity is needed to sustain them. If the US can't be arsed to upgrade its infrastructure to accomodate that (see Texas), then I'm sorry but they deserve what's happening to them. Also, main issue in terms of capacity in the near-term is mainly linked to time-of use (i.e instantaneous power at a given time); EVs help a lot with this because they can easily charge at a more convenient time.

robomartin 4y ago
> So "solar isn't going to make this happen" is kind of missing that. That's a common fallacy in thinking about this. When you get to hundreds of millions of vehicles there is no such thing as a more convenient time. You'll have massive power requirements 24/7/365. People tend to think about this in terms of their own micro view of the universe as opposed to the problem at scale. Once you do that, and apply numbers to it, not just wave a magical wand, the reality of the matter becomes visible. In my case, I wanted to understand this in some detail. I wrote a simulation many years ago to do just that. It was interesting to see my numbers confirmed years later once the question started to be asked. BTW, my model predicted a range between 900 GW and 1400 GW. The accepted estimate today is approximately 1200 GW. Another popular simplification is to say something like: You have 300 million vehicles. Divide them such that 1/24th of them start charging every hour and that solves your problem. Only 12.5 million cars are plugged in at any given time. Well, no, that's not the way reality works. This is the equivalent of over-simplified academic physics problems where everything starts with the equivalent of "assume a cow is a uniform sphere of milk one meter in diameter". Works great for simplifying problems. Sucks at painting reality.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Another popular simplification is to say something like: You have 300 million vehicles. Divide them such that 1/24th of them start charging every hour and that solves your problem. Only 12.5 million cars are plugged in at any given time. > Well, no, that's not the way reality works. This is the equivalent of over- simplified academic physics problems where everything starts with the equivalent of "assume a cow is a uniform sphere of milk one meter in diameter". Works great for simplifying problems. Sucks at painting reality. Yeah, you're right. Grid aware charging and price signals will mean charging will shift to times when energy is cheapest. So rather than being a constant additional load it will fill in all the times with low load reducing the peak requirement to lower than the average.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    > Yeah, you're right. Grid aware charging and price signals will mean charging will shift to times when energy is cheapest. To some extent, sure. However, once you pass a certain number of cars on the road things quickly become stochastic. Just like going to the gasoline station. People will charge when they need to charge. The aggregate loads will not be trivial at all and they will not happen when we with they did. A simple example of this are long-haul trucks travelling the roads at all hours of the day. They don't have a lot of options in terms of charging schedules. Yes, some percentage of the population will have the ability to behave as nice little robots and charge when they are told they should. Most everyone else will not behave in that way, either by choice or circumstance.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      I love the ridiculous hyperbole. Calling the behavior of anyone who currently uses a block heater a 'nice little robot', as well anyone who reacts to information (like it costing $100 to fast charge on the way home but $5 to get a charge by parking daily in a spot with a L1 charger), but anyone who follows your simulation blindly is a free thinker. Around 90% of cars in the US cover under 60 miles a day. This can easily be provided by an L1 charger during off peak. The overwhelming majority of cars are parked the overwhelming majority of the time. Adding level 1 chargers (ie. A standard household extension cord with a bit of weatherproofing) to parking spots is about two to three orders of magnitude cheaper than the nonsense of massive overprovision of thermal generators, and massive overbuild of transmisikon to only run them 12% of the time. Margins on trucking are razor thin. Nobody in their right mind will pay your 8x overprovisioned $200/MWh nuclear power at $1600/MWh to pay for the down time or even $100/MWh overprovisioned fossil fuel power when they are already crossing hundreds of miles and anyone with a few hectares can build a battery buffered charging station at $30/MWh. They'll just book a slot on a charger as soon as they hit the highway to match the mandatory rest breaks and they'll have 4-6 hours and several hundred miles of flexibility to avoid peak charging in addition to the arbitrage supplied by the battery on the charger which is necessary to provide the 3MW or so to fast charge.
      - 4y ago

robomartin 4y ago

> So "solar isn't going to make this happen" is kind of missing that. That's a common fallacy in thinking about this. When you get to hundreds of millions of vehicles there is no such thing as a more convenient time. You'll have massive power requirements 24/7/365. People tend to think about this in terms of their own micro view of the universe as opposed to the problem at scale. Once you do that, and apply numbers to it, not just wave a magical wand, the reality of the matter becomes visible. In my case, I wanted to understand this in some detail. I wrote a simulation many years ago to do just that. It was interesting to see my numbers confirmed years later once the question started to be asked. BTW, my model predicted a range between 900 GW and 1400 GW. The accepted estimate today is approximately 1200 GW. Another popular simplification is to say something like: You have 300 million vehicles. Divide them such that 1/24th of them start charging every hour and that solves your problem. Only 12.5 million cars are plugged in at any given time. Well, no, that's not the way reality works. This is the equivalent of over-simplified academic physics problems where everything starts with the equivalent of "assume a cow is a uniform sphere of milk one meter in diameter". Works great for simplifying problems. Sucks at painting reality.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Another popular simplification is to say something like: You have 300 million vehicles. Divide them such that 1/24th of them start charging every hour and that solves your problem. Only 12.5 million cars are plugged in at any given time. > Well, no, that's not the way reality works. This is the equivalent of over- simplified academic physics problems where everything starts with the equivalent of "assume a cow is a uniform sphere of milk one meter in diameter". Works great for simplifying problems. Sucks at painting reality. Yeah, you're right. Grid aware charging and price signals will mean charging will shift to times when energy is cheapest. So rather than being a constant additional load it will fill in all the times with low load reducing the peak requirement to lower than the average.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > Yeah, you're right. Grid aware charging and price signals will mean charging will shift to times when energy is cheapest. To some extent, sure. However, once you pass a certain number of cars on the road things quickly become stochastic. Just like going to the gasoline station. People will charge when they need to charge. The aggregate loads will not be trivial at all and they will not happen when we with they did. A simple example of this are long-haul trucks travelling the roads at all hours of the day. They don't have a lot of options in terms of charging schedules. Yes, some percentage of the population will have the ability to behave as nice little robots and charge when they are told they should. Most everyone else will not behave in that way, either by choice or circumstance.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    I love the ridiculous hyperbole. Calling the behavior of anyone who currently uses a block heater a 'nice little robot', as well anyone who reacts to information (like it costing $100 to fast charge on the way home but $5 to get a charge by parking daily in a spot with a L1 charger), but anyone who follows your simulation blindly is a free thinker. Around 90% of cars in the US cover under 60 miles a day. This can easily be provided by an L1 charger during off peak. The overwhelming majority of cars are parked the overwhelming majority of the time. Adding level 1 chargers (ie. A standard household extension cord with a bit of weatherproofing) to parking spots is about two to three orders of magnitude cheaper than the nonsense of massive overprovision of thermal generators, and massive overbuild of transmisikon to only run them 12% of the time. Margins on trucking are razor thin. Nobody in their right mind will pay your 8x overprovisioned $200/MWh nuclear power at $1600/MWh to pay for the down time or even $100/MWh overprovisioned fossil fuel power when they are already crossing hundreds of miles and anyone with a few hectares can build a battery buffered charging station at $30/MWh. They'll just book a slot on a charger as soon as they hit the highway to match the mandatory rest breaks and they'll have 4-6 hours and several hundred miles of flexibility to avoid peak charging in addition to the arbitrage supplied by the battery on the charger which is necessary to provide the 3MW or so to fast charge.
    - 4y ago