Can the electrical grid handle a boom in electric vehicles?

[svetz]

Unless you need a truck, in 20 years most people may not have cars. They'll either be working from home or use a low-cost self driving taxi...

Which also means too bad if you hate paradise, no need for a parking lot!

 

[RCinFLA]

Tesla has missed the boat already.

The entire body from front of the front bumper, over the roof and down the back and on both sides should all be PV cells helping to boost the battery. 60sq ft of high efficiency PV cells.

The finish should be functional....not a glossy, pretty color..

That will get you about 2-3 miles of travel per day, assuming you have sunny days.

 

[Austint]

ref: https://energycentral.com/news/can-electrical-grid-handle-boom-electric-vehicles





What do you think?

unless we find a better solution to store energy, no . Our grid is becoming unstable as it is . We have removed a large portion of base load coal plants and have replaced them with solar which unfortunately we cannot economically store . We can expect more outages nation wide like Texas recently experienced. I am not against solar , I think it’s great , I wish we could find a storage solution. In addition , in the west ,our hydro sources are drying up . The hydro plants are critical to act as the swing generators to maintain 60 hz .

 

[svetz]

...We have removed a large portion of base load coal plants and have replaced them with solar which...

It's true a large number of coal plants have been decommissioned in the last 20 years, but for the most part they were replaced by natural gas due to advances in fracking making gas cheaper. In the U.S., solar only accounts for ~97.2 gigawatts (that's ~2.5%). Your location may be very different of course.

...I wish we could find a storage solution....

Me too! We just need to hang in there and hope Jennifer et.al. can pull it off. We're already really close, but as Musk says the manufacturing chain is a hundred times harder than the rest.

 

[Hedges]

Solar power in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"In 2018, utility scale solar power generated 66.6 terawatt-hours (TWh), 1.66% of total U.S. electricity. During the same time period total solar generation, including estimated small scale photovoltaic generation, was 96.1 TWh, 2.30% of total U.S. electricity"

Fixed orientation PV gives about 5.5 hours effective sun. Tracking, or many arrays, spreads it over 8 hours. Out of a 24 hour day.
So let's multiply 2.30% by 3x or 4x to get an estimate of what percentage of instantaneous production PV represents.
(That's ignoring how loads vary by day. I think peak is actually during time of afternoon PV production, but in some markets PV produces so much there we now see "Duck's Back" where early evening is the peak remaining for other generators if PV is subtracted.)

2.3% x 3 = 6.9%, 2.3% x 4 = 9.2% of instantaneous production coming from PV.


Rather than storage, if we could implement load control for 10% of the total load, that would be just as effective but far less capital investment, mining, manufacturing.

Plugging the Plug Load – the Next Opportunity for Net Zero Buildings | Building Efficiency Initiative | WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities

buildingefficiencyinitiative.org

For an office building, lighting, cooling, office machines are shown consuming 75%. there could be some opportunity to vary power draw of those. Wouldn't want to dim lights rapidly, but with power alerts scheduled days in advance could dim a bit on hot days when more A/C was needed. Electronics these days adjust power consumption according to die temperature or battery condition, so varying performance of office equipment could be considered; in some cases that wouldn't be implemented until the next roll-out of new models with the latest "Energy Star" ratings. In others, could be software updates. Microsoft and Adobe are always pushing updates to Windows 10 machines, so there's an opportunity.

Used to be when I browsed the web, it would load instantly and I could read an article. Later my PC slowed to a crawl, with status bar saying "loading this or that garbage", exhaust air gets hot and fan winds up. We wouldn't tolerate appliances that turn on the water full blast for a couple extra minutes each cycle dumping water down the drain, but that's exactly what our browsers do with electricity when loading websites that serve video advertisements and large data files.

 

[svetz]

... if we could implement load control for 10% of the total load, that would be just as effective but far less capital investment, mining, manufacturing....

There's some money to be made in that concept... every business/household would love to cut their energy costs.

 

[PYO]

unless we find a better solution to store energy, no . Our grid is becoming unstable as it is . We have removed a large portion of base load coal plants and have replaced them with solar which unfortunately we cannot economically store . We can expect more outages nation wide like Texas recently experienced. I am not against solar , I think it’s great , I wish we could find a storage solution. In addition , in the west ,our hydro sources are drying up . The hydro plants are critical to act as the swing generators to maintain 60 hz .

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[noenegdod]

Thoughts?

 

[Sanwizard]

Thoughts?

Big problem. We will need tons of coal or nuke plants for power, and massive updates to the lines themselves to handle the load.

 

[Ampster]

Thoughts?

Yesterday I checked the CAISO site and the peak demand was 45,000 megaWatts at 5:45 PM and the capacity was above 50,000 megaWatts. By midnite demand was down to 33,000 megaWatts with plenty of capacity to charge my EV. Plenty of available capacity.

 

[noenegdod]

Yesterday I checked the CAISO site and the peak demand was 45,000 megaWatts at 5:45 PM and the capacity was above 50,000 megaWatts. By midnite demand was down to 33,000 megaWatts with plenty of capacity to charge my EV. Plenty of available capacity.

So at peak demand there was a little more than 10% capacity left and at midnight there was a little more than 34% left.

I live in Canada, dont have an EV. We have no power supply issues in any way where I am so I am just trying to understand and figure out if Fox is framing the issue in an unreasonable way or if they are leaving out some facts.

Apparently it was requested that people dont charge their EVs. Was there more to that request Fox left out? For example did they ask people to not charge during the day and wait till after AC and other heavy loads had reduced?

 

[Sanwizard]

So at peak demand there was a little more than 10% capacity left and at midnight there was a little more than 34% left.

I live in Canada, dont have an EV. We have no power supply issues in any way where I am so I am just trying to understand and figure out if Fox is framing the issue in an unreasonable way or if they are leaving out some facts.

Apparently it was requested that people dont charge their EVs. Was there more to that request Fox left out? For example did they ask people to not charge during the day and wait till after AC and other heavy loads had reduced?

California has had rolling blackouts for years now. Their electrical infrastructure causes lots of wild fires. In 2030, they will go up in flames if they dont invest in upgrading the grid, which will cost mega billions. Poor CA taxpayers.

 

[Hedges]

I'm sure the billions exist.
They were enjoyed by the competitive power producers and squirreled away.
When it comes time to pay the piper, they will be nowhere to be found.

Same can be said for Social Security, Fire insurance (my rates have doubled because there were fires elsewhere), anything else that requires planning for the future, and "profits", "pork", or otherwise sticky fingers are around.

 

[noenegdod]

California has had rolling blackouts for years now. Their electrical infrastructure causes lots of wild fires. In 2030, they will go up in flames if they dont invest in upgrading the grid, which will cost mega billions. Poor CA taxpayers.

Yes, I had heard about transmission issues and that they had cause a high number of wild fires.

 

[MurphyGuy]

ref: https://energycentral.com/news/can-electrical-grid-handle-boom-electric-vehicles





What do you think?

There are over 200,000 airplanes in the USA as of 2021, and I think that long ago back in the 60's, we couldn't handle that many airplanes. The solution was to build more airports and more servicing stations.

I think we could learn a lesson from that. Maybe install more grid capacity and more power generation.

 

[brb58]

California has had rolling blackouts for years now. Their electrical infrastructure causes lots of wild fires. In 2030, they will go up in flames if they dont invest in upgrading the grid, which will cost mega billions. Poor CA taxpayers.

You have absolutely ZERO idea what starts wildfires in California. A tiny percent are caused by downed electrical wires. The two main fires in Lake Tahoe last year where I live were caused by lightning and people illegally shooting guns in a closed area. Most wildfires are caused by man and lightning.

 

[Sanwizard]

You have absolutely ZERO idea what starts wildfires in California. A tiny percent are caused by downed electrical wires. The two main fires in Lake Tahoe last year where I live were caused by lightning and people illegally shooting guns in a closed area. Most wildfires are caused by man and lightning.

Here we go again. You seem to love to pick fights. Do you even own a gun? You are correct about Man being a major cause. My buddy in Oregon caught an Antifa idiot starting a fire in his freaking back yard. There were fires started along the trails in his area also.

 

[A.Justice]

 

[Risky Rob]

California has plenty of solar energy. The trick would be to charge car batteries only during peak solar.

 

[brb58]

Here we go again. You seem to love to pick fights. Do you even own a gun? You are correct about Man being a major cause. My buddy in Oregon caught an Antifa idiot starting a fire in his freaking back yard. There were fires started along the trails in his area also.

Yes...I am a gun owner.

Just responding to your idiotic comment...once again!

Bail significantly reduced for Caldor Fire suspects while new details emerge in case

While prosecutors had sought $1 million bail for each of the two suspects, a judge on Monday set the amounts to $50,000 and $25,000. The two men are prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition, and barred from leaving the state.

www.capradio.org