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> The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers I don't understand why this is

> The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers I don't understand why this is a surprise and why they think they can muscle through it. I didn't think our current battery technology is built for this scenario. > During the installation process, the Megachargers took down the power grid for a good chunk of the city This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm

recursive 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm. If I plug my car in at 5pm, it won't start charging for 7 hours, when it's economically rational for it to do so. Time-of-use pricing seem to solve this. EV load is among the least time-sensitive of all power consumers. Set up your pricing right, and the EV charging will follow.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  What if you need to go out again at 9pm?
  - recursive 3y ago
    Then I go out at 9pm. Unless I've driven 200 or 300 miles that day (depending on charge level) there's no issue with any of this. If I'd driven 300 miles earlier in the day, and know I need to drive more in the evening, I'd override the charging schedule. This literally never happens.
uoaei 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm Household- or neighborhood-scale battery banks make a lot of sense in the near term. Because they are stationary they don't need to emphasize light materials and can focus more on cost efficiency and charge/discharge rate than mass or energy density using more readily available materials and cheap production methods. With relatively simple BMS you can charge your EV now and recharge the battery at off-peak times if you need to use it again in the evening (lots of people do).
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  Like a Tesla Powerwall
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Aren't those still made with lithium?
ouiouibaguette 3y ago
It was "during the installation process", probably due to mucking with high voltage mains and not actual use? BTW my car charges at midnight. Super easy to set up that way. I override if I have to but 99% of the time midnight is just great.
pdq 3y ago
1 MW charger per truck, if you need to super charge. Equivalent to approximately 1000 homes. This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. The only way this makes sense at scale is if we had nuclear power, and charging was done at night.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  > This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. They don't exactly get to push it onto someone else. Large loads like this come with demand charges. In some areas, they might be $5/KW, in others I've heard of >$10. A single megacharger would be $5-10k on top of the actual energy used. It is high enough that I'd expect them to start thinking about battery buffers at charging sites to mitigate the cost. That already happens at a smaller scale, with things like Freewire.
_ea1k 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm First off, it said during the install. So evidently it wasn't load related anyway. Second, I used to live in a little town of well under 50k people. The local coop gave a couple hundred dollars in rebates for the installation of load management on their water heaters. I'd expect this would get solved in basically the same way. The total gwh isn't a problem, the gw is, and that's fairly easy to solve problem.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
  Back in the day everybody watched the same TV programs, there used to be the "simultaneous flush at break time" problem (real or imagined), e.g. https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sunday-e0050699fa1b https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sund...
  - thebigjc 3y ago
    And the "TV Pickup" in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
rootusrootus 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm If every house had a fast charger, that would be a sensible concern. But everybody turning their dryers on simultaneously during off-peak hours isn't something worth worrying about. Especially since it's not going to just happen all at once some day.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
Compounded by getting rid of natural gas for cooking and heating. It's fine to say that electric is simpler to deliver and more efficient in theory, but our grid is not even a fraction ready for that, and heat pumps and induction ranges are a whole order of magnitude up the tech ladder from boilers and gas stoves, and by going all electric you lose the multiple sources redundancy which is literally a life saver. I do actually welcome the cleaner future but I hate how people are pretending it's already here and making regular people deal with the discrepency.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  That's why a carbon tax (pollution tax, I hate calling pollution carbon) would be better than straight outlawing natural gas fuel. Too bad voters hate prices being anything but uniform and cheap. So much backlash even against demand pricing.
  - thebigjc 3y ago
    This is happening in Canada. It's a huge boogie man from the opposition, even if it's revenue neutral.
- mulmen 3y ago
  My parents just went a week without natural gas. When the power goes out it’s rarely for that long and EVs and generators are alternate sources. Looks to me like electric is more redundant than gas.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    You can't heat a house on backup electricity, unless it's in the form of an entirely separate full fat distribution along side the primary, the way the gas lines or oil trucks are along side the power lines. And this means diffent modes too, one up on poles, the other buried. Not both together and both subject to the same risks at the same time. Anything less, and you are losing something you currently have. Which is what will hapoen of course. And idiots will tell each other "this is better".
rgmerk 3y ago
This is a very easily solved problem. Right now people are buying charging systems that do things like only charge when there’s a surplus of self-generated rooftop solar, or offer a big discount on EV charging if you’re prepared to have it interrupted at peak times.

recursive 3y ago

> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm. If I plug my car in at 5pm, it won't start charging for 7 hours, when it's economically rational for it to do so. Time-of-use pricing seem to solve this. EV load is among the least time-sensitive of all power consumers. Set up your pricing right, and the EV charging will follow.

SoftTalker 3y ago
What if you need to go out again at 9pm?
- recursive 3y ago
  Then I go out at 9pm. Unless I've driven 200 or 300 miles that day (depending on charge level) there's no issue with any of this. If I'd driven 300 miles earlier in the day, and know I need to drive more in the evening, I'd override the charging schedule. This literally never happens.

uoaei 3y ago

> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm Household- or neighborhood-scale battery banks make a lot of sense in the near term. Because they are stationary they don't need to emphasize light materials and can focus more on cost efficiency and charge/discharge rate than mass or energy density using more readily available materials and cheap production methods. With relatively simple BMS you can charge your EV now and recharge the battery at off-peak times if you need to use it again in the evening (lots of people do).

thinkmassive 3y ago
Like a Tesla Powerwall
- uoaei 3y ago
  Aren't those still made with lithium?

ouiouibaguette 3y ago

It was "during the installation process", probably due to mucking with high voltage mains and not actual use? BTW my car charges at midnight. Super easy to set up that way. I override if I have to but 99% of the time midnight is just great.

pdq 3y ago

1 MW charger per truck, if you need to super charge. Equivalent to approximately 1000 homes. This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. The only way this makes sense at scale is if we had nuclear power, and charging was done at night.

_ea1k 3y ago
> This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. They don't exactly get to push it onto someone else. Large loads like this come with demand charges. In some areas, they might be $5/KW, in others I've heard of >$10. A single megacharger would be $5-10k on top of the actual energy used. It is high enough that I'd expect them to start thinking about battery buffers at charging sites to mitigate the cost. That already happens at a smaller scale, with things like Freewire.

_ea1k 3y ago

> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm First off, it said during the install. So evidently it wasn't load related anyway. Second, I used to live in a little town of well under 50k people. The local coop gave a couple hundred dollars in rebates for the installation of load management on their water heaters. I'd expect this would get solved in basically the same way. The total gwh isn't a problem, the gw is, and that's fairly easy to solve problem.

B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
Back in the day everybody watched the same TV programs, there used to be the "simultaneous flush at break time" problem (real or imagined), e.g. https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sunday-e0050699fa1b https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sund...
- thebigjc 3y ago
  And the "TV Pickup" in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

rootusrootus 3y ago

> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm If every house had a fast charger, that would be a sensible concern. But everybody turning their dryers on simultaneously during off-peak hours isn't something worth worrying about. Especially since it's not going to just happen all at once some day.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

Compounded by getting rid of natural gas for cooking and heating. It's fine to say that electric is simpler to deliver and more efficient in theory, but our grid is not even a fraction ready for that, and heat pumps and induction ranges are a whole order of magnitude up the tech ladder from boilers and gas stoves, and by going all electric you lose the multiple sources redundancy which is literally a life saver. I do actually welcome the cleaner future but I hate how people are pretending it's already here and making regular people deal with the discrepency.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
That's why a carbon tax (pollution tax, I hate calling pollution carbon) would be better than straight outlawing natural gas fuel. Too bad voters hate prices being anything but uniform and cheap. So much backlash even against demand pricing.
- thebigjc 3y ago
  This is happening in Canada. It's a huge boogie man from the opposition, even if it's revenue neutral.
mulmen 3y ago
My parents just went a week without natural gas. When the power goes out it’s rarely for that long and EVs and generators are alternate sources. Looks to me like electric is more redundant than gas.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  You can't heat a house on backup electricity, unless it's in the form of an entirely separate full fat distribution along side the primary, the way the gas lines or oil trucks are along side the power lines. And this means diffent modes too, one up on poles, the other buried. Not both together and both subject to the same risks at the same time. Anything less, and you are losing something you currently have. Which is what will hapoen of course. And idiots will tell each other "this is better".

rgmerk 3y ago

This is a very easily solved problem. Right now people are buying charging systems that do things like only charge when there’s a surplus of self-generated rooftop solar, or offer a big discount on EV charging if you’re prepared to have it interrupted at peak times.