Comment by monkeynotes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monkeynotes | Hacker News Reader

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So you think that the challenges keeping grid capacity and stability up with demand are FUD? I think they are reasonable concerns, and seeing early signs of that already here. Our power costs are on track to go up significantly over the coming years, mainly because of capacity. Building new clean, scalable energy is expensive, someone has to pay for that demand.

I think these are very real, and reasonable problems on the horizon. And like I said, these costs are already being noticed. My power bill is going up by over 10% in the next two years for capacity reasons. They are paying people to put in more efficient electric heating, so we are using less and paying more. I know this is info about my own region but Europe is also heading toward these problems on a wider scale:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/gro...

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-sto...

Also "Otherwise it’s like running your dryer". It is not, at all. If the cost of running my dryer goes up 10% that's not a big deal. Running my car at a 10% increased cost is significant. If my whole neighbourhood gets home at 5pm and plugs in, the grid would fall apart here.

We all can share in the costs of electricity, something centralized and 99% of us need, and that need isn't going away. Fewer of us need gasoline.

E-cars almost always have charge scheduling built-in, to charge when cheapest. Here it is after 8 or 9PM for example.

You didn't really acknowledge the citations or my overall point.

"E-cars almost always have charge scheduling built-in, to charge when cheapest" if everyone charges when it's cheapest, it will no longer be cheapest. Demand drives cost.

The schedule car be changed. Though the early evening time period has a lot of spare capacity for a lot of people to charge without changing rates. That is when it tends to be windiest and so those wind turbines which they are trying to size for times of day with otherwise more demand while there is less wind as plenty of supply for your cars. (solar similar analysis but a different time when it is as peak)

Talk to me about how that works when 80% of people are charging every day. That spare capacity goes away as everyone economically chases it to the point of saturation. Everyone can change their schedule and they will all go for the cheapest, which will normalize power prices across the board, AKA no cheap power windows.

Cars are only a small part of the total energy pie, and EVs are a lot more efficient: even with 100% charging the cheap power window won't go away. It won't be as cheap, but most uses of cars are flexible enough to charge during the low price window whenever that happens to be, and the window is large enough to keep the prices down.

> Cars are only a small part of the total energy pie

If 80% of US drivers switched to electric vehicles, the total annual electricity consumption would be approximately 1,013,472,000,000 kWh (or about 1.01 trillion kWh). This calculation is based on the assumptions of an average annual mileage of 13,500 miles per vehicle, an average electric consumption of 0.34 kWh per mile, and a total of approximately 276 million vehicles in the US.

As a contrast, today's total output of power in the US is 4 to 4.5 trillion kWh. So capacity needs to increase 1/4 which is not trivial.

Caveat here is we keep the same efficiency in EVs.

Course to go to 80% would require probably 15 years. 25% / 15 years is 1.7% a year.

Does not seem like a big deal.

A question. Is the extra electricity need to power electric cars less or greater than the amount required by more air conditioning due to global warming.

which is why EVs are not a big deal. Any utility director/planner knows they are coming and factors them into their 10 year plans. They should also be building wind and solar at high rates just because they are so cheap as sources of power.

I don't deal with power utilities. But have talked to water utility managers.

Key thing. Regulated utilities can't just raise prices to generate a profit. But capital improvements are an asset that you can earn a profit on. So investment is how you can 'grow the business'

Replace the pole pig feeding your house with bigger one? The utility makes a profit off that. If it were me I'd get the utility involved in upgrading residential panels to support heat pumps and car charging.

They got quiet quick! The Facebook memes didn’t mention air conditioning.

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