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What current or future planned power source can deliver 1MW power to even the amount of fast chargers currently in existence?! Small modular reactors at every c
by threemux 1y ago
What current or future planned power source can deliver 1MW power to even the amount of fast chargers currently in existence?! Small modular reactors at every charging station?
The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Station in my home state of Maryland outputs 1700MW on a typical day. This is enough to power a third of the homes in the state. According to some estimates I found, there are more than 1450 EV charging stations of all types in the state (not enough even for current EV adoption and many are L2 chargers). I can't find over what timescale each charger uses 1MW (per second?) but let's say it's 1MW of power for the 5 minute charge. Let's say each 1MW charger is used twice per day for a single charge each. If all 1450 chargers are used twice per day (2MW/day), you've now exceeded the output of Calvert Cliffs. This is the scale we're talking about.
It's not negative to point out these absurdities, it's vitally important because many jurisdictions are getting ready to ban the sales of new gas cars in 5 years. People depend on working cars for their livelihoods.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoWe do need to be planning for more energy capacity yes. Ideally our net charge capacity is growing. But it's worth pointing out that if there's 1450 chargers today & many of them are L2, replacing them with 1MW chargers wouldn't actually change the energy demand at all. It would just be faster charging, not more net charging; people wouldn't be likely to be driving more all of a sudden (ok, ride-share drivers would be on the road a slight bit more). But yes, we do need to be building more energy capacity (something that places other than the US are doing effectively).