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When everyone starts to buy electric cars, won't we start getting closer to 24 peak hours a day?
by nsxwolf 14y ago
When everyone starts to buy electric cars, won't we start getting closer to 24 peak hours a day?
- epistasis 14y agoInteresting question! Obviously this isn't a problem that's going to happen any time soon. But if you look at a random day of usage for the California ISO (actually, the only one I could find) [1], peak load was 30,000 MW and between midnight and 6AM load was around 22,000 MW. So that's 48,000 MWh, or 48,000,000 KWh, and at 100miles/38KWh, that's 126 million miles of excess capacity in those hours on the West coast. If the average commute is ~30 miles round trip, that's 4 million commuters in California, just from current excess capacity at night time. Needless to say, it will be a while before Tesla ships 1 million cars in California, much less 4 million. http://www.ferc.gov/market-oversight/mkt-electric/california/CAISO-rto-dly-rpt.pdf http://www.ferc.gov/market-oversight/mkt-electric/california...
- secabeen 14y agoEven if we did, that would be good for the grid. Many power-generation technologies have high start-up and shut-down costs, and are most economical when they can be run 24/7. If we can get the variability of power demand lower, we can generate more power with economical means, and use less of the more-expensive and polluting methods.