In comes the mini nuclear plants - what-could-go-wrong?

Called it years ago

Sounds pretty efficient if all EV charging stations only account for the electricity usage of a small town.

Better start getting it ready...

What's realy needed in transport reform

Oh boy, you better start taking measures to avoid the creation of any new small town until 2035!

Will it be ready by 2035?

I don’t think so. Most people will charge daily at their homes and place of work using level 1 and 2 chargers. The only people using fast dc charging will be on long distance trips. I also think it likely that many new cars by 2035 will incorporate solar charging into the body or windows allowing a nearly completely disconnected daily commute.

A single mid sized corporation typically uses as much power or more then a small town. Better stop creating new businesses.

Sounds accurate, great reply. But I’d still love to see a source

Here is an article from the UK. Depending on the type of business, it can vary greatly. https://bionic.co.uk/business-energy/guides/average-energy-usage-for-businesses/

Too may cars. I agree with you.

Here for the ditto as well. In the United States, the real issue is the abysmal absence of effective public transportation.

Always the same stupid argument: What if everybody went EV today? The poor grid....

IF COURSE today's grid is not ready, but 2035 is 12 years from now. And this transition gonna be adiabatic enough that the grid in 2035 will cope.

Not if you live in Texas it’s not

Can confirm. I worked at a chemical plant. We had a 2500 hp motor. It used more electricity than a small town. The power company had conditions for turning it on, but they were more than happy to supply us with, and charge us for, power.

Edit; hour to hp

Sooo: Charging stations can expand to have some assumed high energy usage by 2035 but grids are forbidden to be adapted till then? Is that what this article is trying to sell? Really?

I mean: energy providers make money off of selling energy. Don't you think they will make sure that they can do that?

Go drive an EV they said, it will be fun they said.

They are fun. Have you driven one?

The power grid will grow, this headline is just more FUD.

Doesn't really need to grow much.

As demand for oil drops, so does the massive amounts of power it requires for processing and delivery. I'm pretty confident my EV uses less electricity in a year than a soda/beer cooler in gas station does.

How many EVs can you charge with the power freed up for a refinery or port shutting down?

Each new town also uses as much energy as a small town. Are we done building new towns?

Your EV uses way more power than a refrigerator unless you almost never drive it. I have an EV and get about 3.5 to 4 miles per kWH. Driving 10000 miles a year would be at least 2500 kWH.

https://ecocostsavings.com/cost-of-running-refrigerator/ They say 500 kWH. Even if a beer cooler at a gas station used twice as much, it would be only 1000 kWH.

In general, electrification will result in less total energy being needed. We will just need to convert some of the energy to a different form.

America would massively benefit form a decent rail network especially around holidays not even stupid fast hsr

Everyone can just live at the new charging station.

Ah, more needless worry.

Grid capacity is growing at an ample rate. If we need to accelerate we will.

"Electricity demand will grow in the future". Way to go, Nostradamus.

Costs my about $35 a month to keep it charged (6 year average).

Yes, I'm a low milage driver, clock in about 1/3 the national average (sources vary but 12,000 is what I'm using) but then 1/2 the national (US) drivers drive less than the average 33 miles a day.

Added: your link compares a home refrigerator, I specifically said a commercial gas station type case, which runs 24/7 and is constantly being catch up since it's opened and closed much more frequently, than home refrigerator.

https://www.uscooler.com/blog/operating-cost-walkin-cooler-freezer/

How much does your electricity cost per kWH?

Then fix it cause this is the future.

What the FUTURE will be, we are not ready for TODAY.

... Well, duh. What else is new?

"3rd grader not ready for calculus!"

"Mountain climber not currently wearing gear for next years climb!"

"Worker asleep at midnight, not yet awake for the 8-o'clock shift..."

Spot the next target for political delay and destruction.

Republicans: “Electric vehicles are destroying our electrical networks!”

oh no, we'll have to update our infrastructure

how many bets that Texas bans electric cars and opts for another crisis

Did they actually pick an EV station photo that’s also powered by solar panels to go with this headline?

What gas, coal, nuclear or diesel fuel will power these electric charging stations requiring as much power as a small town should be the question? Think hard folks

If as much effort were put into upgrading the electric grid as writing these false panic stories, we'd have EV chargers installed in every building by 2030

The ones that can be converted far more efficiency into electricity then a ICE car can convert them into motion?

And are substituted by renewable energy when available?

“Did that lib down the street just buy an EV? You might not have enough power to watch Faux News and use your CPAP!”

“Better get out there with the family’s assault rifle and ask them kindly to not do that.”

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Oh is the grid ready for all the new housing developments that will use as much power as a small town? No one seems concerned about that.

Check the current numbers

A single station.

Ontario Building Code requires wiring for charging ports in all new houses. While we are sleeping we will be using the energy that is usually sold to the US at a loss.

From the article, “By 2035, a larger installation serving both passenger cars and trucks could need to provide 19 megawatts of peak power, National Grid projects, roughly what a small town uses. In 2045, that kind of truck stop may require 30 megawatts of capacity, approaching the peak usage of a large industrial plant.”

Vote for a better and faster public transit, express trains to ferry more people all day than a stupid car (even if EV) that sits in a parking lot for close to 8 hrs a day. Fucking waste.

It saddens me that we are still not talking about a good public transport connecting cities, towns, and rural area in 2022. What a waste of a last few decades.

Fuck highways, fuck Cars (all of them).

better start upgrading the transformers and lines now.

Managed a gas station way back in the day... can tell those fridges use many times more than a residential house fridge.

2x is not even close... a cooler is roughly 1200-1400 kwh per MONTH... a freezer is waaaay more

We don’t have the capacity NOW for something in the FUTURE. Duh. Demand will drive supply it always has. There is money to be made by selling electricity. That’s a big motivator.

Yeah, maybe they should start work on upgrading.

Dafuq do you think they’ve been doing constantly since I dunno….. the 50s? The ‘grid’ is constantly being upgraded. They just upgraded the transformer at the end of my dead end street in May.

Either their going need local power station recharging this charging stations or they need recalculate the saves their getting. I don't think either the communities at large its ready this kind burden. Were people actually thinking AHEAD about this?

The infrastructure bill that democrats recently passed included $65 billion for upgrading our electrical grid.

​

https://www.ase.org/blog/heres-how-infrastructure-bill-improves-grid

ho, so according to that NOBODY NO COMPANY will invest on produce more energy for 2035!!!!! with a non-stop EV car sales grow evidence RIGHT NOW?

Well, good luck then, you will need it.

Never mind, i just decide to read it and it is explained well.

Then fucking update them!

Exactly I mean if y’all hVe a black out you’ve screwed but Im gonna be driving around with my gas powered vehicle!

It's not like everyone or even most will charge high speed anyway.

Democrats infrastructure bill includes $65 billion dollars for upgrading the power grid.

​

https://www.ase.org/blog/heres-how-infrastructure-bill-improves-grid

Community level renewable energy generation is the answer to the energy gap. Any excess goes back into the grid.

Guess people who don't read articles, also vote on reddit(Context: They were at -1).

>By 2035, a larger installation serving both passenger cars and trucks could need to provide 19 megawatts of peak power, National Grid projects, roughly what a small town uses

So the grid now is not ready for future usage rates in 13 years?

Okay. So umm maybe actual invest in it?

More propaganda from the oil industry and some car companies. "EVs are bad, we wont survive if we go EV" crap. 2 years ago California was plagued with power outages, we installed large batteries to take the load during peak times, little power outages. CA did it in 2 years, Last I hear this was America who could solve problems like this.

Too bad we can’t add solar wind and a big ass battery pack to these charging stations…..

WAIT A MIN! We can!

No matter the fuel, a electric car will always be able to go more miles on the same amount of initial fuel. power plants are just much more efficient then a gas powered ICE car could ever hope to be.

So which numbers are you talking about?

I love how the people who are the most jingoistic in their patriotism are also the ones who are most likely to be claiming that we can't switch to EVs because the grid can't handle it.

America developed an atomic weapon in about four years and put a man on the moon in about a decade, but somehow we are incapable of expanding the grid to shift from gas to electric vehicles. I usually point that out and then ask why they don't have any faith in America's abilities.

>While we are sleeping we will be using the energy that is usually sold to the US at a loss.

Sounds like the pentagon needs to start planning that invasion across the northern border to protect Canadian's freedom.

The grid isn’t ready for this winter… so yeah

I don’t honk you have any clue how much the charging stations actually consume in a day

Gas pumps work in a Black out?

That's crazy, I guess they come in different sizes. Opening then a lot probably doesn't help.

That’s like 12 normal sized cars worth of power…

I can electric generators everywhere once electric cars are in full force…. Turbines everywhere.

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I don’t know what you mean

No kidding and gas stations weren't widespread when the model T went into production.

They mean each charging station.

Going full throttle. 2500 hp is very large for an electric motor. We had a 5000 hp one where I worked and it was a 10k bill PER START plus running energy.

Also cars are very powerful. Your home uses maybe 10-12 hp, max. With the dryer and stove going. Absolute max.

A single station currently holds that much energy in the form of Diesel fuel.

Really? When I was in school 15 years ago they said our grid was originally designed with tons of redundancy but it was all stripped away and we are now at about 104% capacity. This is Canada.

I don't think normal people have a very good grasp on what a megawatt is, or what a kilowatt is, or a horsepower, or anything like that at all.

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Doubling the power grid would be much more expensive than any of those things. For every wire that exist, you will now need two.

Definitely. We lack the creativity and leadership.

Those are not the transformers in question. Those are plentiful. The larger ones are all custom and are so critical and have such incredible lead times (years) the US military started keeping copies of them all since they would be such an easy military target.

"The Department of Energy (DOE) announced that first-round applications are open for competitive grants under the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership Programs, which total $10.5 billion in available funding, as well as the $2.5 billion Transmission Facilitation Program. Funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these programs together represent the largest single direct federal investment in critical transmission and distribution infrastructure."

Ontario sells it at a loss? Wow. NB buys from QC and sells for 4x what they pay for it. Which is why QC is running a wire to bypass NB.

You would need approximately 5-10 full size wind mills per charging station. Full utility size ones.

You lose half of the energy between the power plant and the end user in the electrical grid. You are right the massive turbines are more efficient, though. But it is roughly a wash. Maybe 20% better at most in favorable conditions.

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Oh I completely understand. A single car is far more power hungry than a house as well. When we’re talking town scale though 2500hp isn’t that impressive. You have to notify the power company only because it’s a large sudden spike that could damage other devices outside the building due to voltage drops.

I think you have a misunderstanding of how power grids work…

We had a separate building for the variable frequency drive. We weren’t allowed to start it across the line. It would have browned out the city.

I’ve been present for a 10000hp motor startup as Siemens. It was incredible. The whole building shook and they had a lot of steps just to get it going.

I’d say it again…the US needs high speed luxury train and many tracks. I am American in Switzerland now since August…most stuff are moved through tracks thus limiting the use of trucks. The trains are super fast and run all the time. The most delay was like 3 minutes. The buses connecting homes to trains are brand new. In every station they now have cars you can rent via an app if you need it but you can also take the tram. I really can’t be bothered to buy a car here.

Have fun running your house off ya gas powered vehicle. Anyone with the correct setup can power their house for days off an EV

Only 12 years to fix it then. 🤔

So if I want to have to have twice as a many baths, I need to install another bathtub and plumbing system?

Nikola Tesla had a solution. Remember? The concept that makes your wifi work, could be injected into the planet itself and radiate to be absorbed by the receiver in the cars or flying things.

That is true. Mind you we have the infrastructure to keep those tanks full. Not sure the current electrical grid can handle that kind of energy delivery. Considering the number of stations needed for a city or town.

I was mostly just curious so I did some quick math. There seem to be some pretty knowledgeable folks here. If I get something wrong, just tell me and I’ll correct. 2500hp X 0.746kw/hp X 24hr X 365 =16 million kwhr. An average house is about 10,000 kwhr per year. That motor was worth 1600 houses.

Correct, we do not have it yet but we didn't have the infrastructure for ICE vehicles in 1905 either.

Billions of dollars are currently in the pipeline to do this work. The number of jobs this will create will help our country embrace the future rather than remain dependant on older, oilier and dirtier technology.

Sounds about right. When you’re talking an entire town though that’s not that significant. And it’s not just houses it’s homes. Which could mean a reasonably sized apartment. Not hard to fit 400 units into a single apartment building.

I get your point. That was a single piece of equipment in a massive plant. The utilities had no problem supplying us.

Having charging stations use the power of a small town is actually not that big of a deal right now. Having many of them in 13 years is not that big of a deal.

And hundreds of billions of dollars and a willingness to take people’s land by force.

No, because you only use about 0.001% of the possible flow-time of your pipe.

I work on them for a living. You either double the current or double the voltage, if you want to double the power. Doubling current means the copper carrying the energy has to be twice as thick. And they can't step up the voltage much more at local levels, usually not at all.

I think the real issue will be chargers at home, new construction and projects are easier to fund and plan. Upgrading old infrastructure and explaining to people they have to pay more for something they already have not so much. (P.S. I’m referring to substations that feed neighborhoods that need to account for increase in power/current demand)

Here it comes. Electricity costing more than gasoline. We're all screwed.

Good thing we have 12 yrs to get ready, right?
If only there was a way to install more electric production, or reduce the amount the power plants need to pump out... something like millions of homes and businesses installing solar/wind power.
Oh wait, that is expected to happen, so never mind.

I don't care how much money you want to throw around, our world has finite resources, such as conductive metals.

Yeah, gee, how in the world would we ever find a way to generate more power? I mean it's not like we could just have the Commerce Department lift the tariffs on solar panels or anything extreme like that. Seems that there is no reasonable solution.

Lol the grid…ready…HA

And fossil fuels, and platinum, palldium rodium etc. Used in ice cars. Conductive metals are recycleable. Copper and aluminum are plentiful.

Good thing that fossil fuels will never run out, then.

I understand form S-K 1300 quite well, thanks. I also understand how harmful to the environment current recycling methods of most copper/gold/silver/platinum/etc. is.

Earth will not last forever.

My level 2 charger uses as much energy as my clothes dryer. Better stop building new dryers?

No doubt improvement is needed but cradle to grave electric infrastructure and transportation is already far cleaner than fossil fuel based systems with the potential to be far cleaner.

Using less, local sourcing, re-use etc. unfortunately isn't discussed a lot since there is less business involved.

Most home EV charging happens at night when there is virtually no other residential demand for power. And it is on par with running your dryer.

Where exactly do you need to go during a blackout?

Also, pretty sure my EV battery holds its charge during a blackout.

What do you think generates the power for the grid? Spoiler alert, it's "fossil fuels". So we should harm the environment by creating unnecessary infrastructure to transmit fossil fuel converted energy to the power grid instead of just using the more pure form of energy directly in an internal combustion engine.

That makes perfect fucking sense! 🤤

>they can't step up the voltage much more at local levels, usually not at all.

Car chargers for the home run on 220V. Are you really trying to say that the current grid cannot supply that voltage to houses?

Even a power plant running on fossil fuel is more efficient than your car's engine.

How simpleminded do you think people are?

You are either being disengenuous or haven't done your reasearch.

Renewable energy sources accounted for about 19.8% of total utility-scale electricity generation and more renewable generation is the leading sector in regards to new sources.

Even with the current grid EV's have been cradle to grave cleaner than ICE vehicles since at least 2015 and they're getting cleaner.

https://thecharge.ca/news/ford-u-of-michigan-study-finds-evs-cleaner-from-cradle-to-grave/

An electric motor is so much more efficient than a gas motor that even electricity made with natural gas allows electric cars to be more effucient than ICE vehicles.

Electric motors makes vehicles A LOT more efficient than internal combustion engines. Electric motors convert over 85 percent of electrical energy into mechanical energy, or motion, compared to less than 40%for a gas combustion engine. The drivetrain in an EV is far more efficient as in less friction. According to the DOE an EV is about 59-62 percent of the electrical energy from the grid goes to turning the wheels, whereas gas combustion vehicles only convert about 17-21 percent of energy from burning fuel into moving the car. This means that an electric vehicle is about three times as efficient as an ICE vehicle. And that doesn't include regenerative braking.

Understanding is a far better methodology than repeating someone elses decades old fossil fuel industry propaganda.

Elon Musk is going to solve that one right after he fixes Twitter.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

You should watch Planet of the Humans.

No single person will solve this. It's a group effort.

This is why Twitter is so important.

Facts are great for that. Suggest you try them.

I have, some good points but very flawed information as well.

We live with a smaller footprint than most and practice what we preach.

I read the population bomb when I was twelve, ride a bike more than I drive, started one of the first curbside recycling programs in my State and the first in my County in the 1980's. I also helped build a number of Community Gardens including one on the land trust I was on the board of for 25 years that helped negotiate funding and purchases of several open space properties.

None of that changes the fact that an electric infrastructure even with it's myriad of challenges is a far better plan for the future than one based on fossil fuels. Hopefully people will live less wastefull, less energy intensive lives but even if they do we will still need electricity.

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Cool beans. Explains a lot.

True but what you aren’t accounting for is the edge case which in engineering is what you need to plan for, favorable cases are ideal and easy to deal with. For example will it always be the case everyone charges at night? What happens during a particularly cold winter, or extremely hot summer, after a natural disaster, and how many concurrent high power devices will be used in the future (multiple vehicles charging in one home, most people only have 1 ac and 1 washer/dryer).

I’m not disagreeing with your assessment. During initial adoption of EVs your logic holds up but what about 10 years from now with climate change? I’m not saying the future is fucked but in regards to the original post how much power new charging stations use is trivial compared to the outdated infrastructure we have in place.

No, you are confused. I'm not talking about the wall outlets at your house.

Your dryer is the most power hungry thing in your home. Homes run them a few hours a week, maybe. Now it will be 8 hours a day or more.

The lines that feed the neighborhood are based on how much power will be likely used for all the homes at any time. It isnt sized so every house could use max power at all times.

I'm not confused. Home charging for an electric car can be done with a regular 110V outlet, but it is very slow. If you hook it up to a 220V then it will charge overnight and those are common home outlets for electric stoves and dryers. Nobody is looking to put the "quick charge" stations in their homes, those are and will continue to be commercial applications.

Don't you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby. I'm not just going to be able to move out of Texas and could move me and EV. But yes, that's exactly what they would do.

I know exactly how power hungry it is. Yet we have been powering them at home for decades.

But 8 hours a day or more of charging? Where are you getting your math from? Or what are you smoking so I can have some? According to my charger stats, I charge roughly twice a week for maybe 4 hours at most each session. That's less than 8 hours a week.

8 hours of charging nets me about 200 miles of range. Who regularly drives 200 miles a day? I am sure someone does, but they aren't the average car owner by any stretch.

Edge cases affect ICE cars as well. Long lines at gas pumps are a regular thing after major hurricanes, for example. As for the future...

>For example will it always be the case everyone charges at night?

People will charge their cars at the intersection of "cheapest electricity" and "where the car is located". That means the majority of charging will continue to happen:

1. at night at home (since we are generally all home at night, and electricity is cheapest then), and
2. at work, in situations where the employer offers at-cost charging or close to it (commercial electricity rates tend to be a lot cheaper than residential)

>What happens during a particularly cold winter, or extremely hot summer

You're asking the wrong questions. The more important question is, "what about people who can't park their car in a garage"? Those are the folks without easy access to low-cost charging, or an enclosed parking space that mitigates temperature extremes on their EV battery. That's a problem that we don't even need 10 years to get to.

Ok so I think you kinda missed the point or taken the my original comment past its original scope.

In my opinion the real issue regarding charging stations is not how much power charging stations will draw from the grid (although one can argue where will that extra energy come from, but that’s a different topic) but rather in as we move to more EVs at home the current infrastructure of the grid is not equipped to deal with the new demands. Remember electricity goes from the power plant to substations that feed your neighborhood/homes. The cables transformers, breakers, fuses, and panels are not ready for the additional power/current that there will b needed to to support all EVs. Al of those components have a limit to how much power they can provide and like every system on the planet there is a level of degradation in performance of its components as thing wear out.

I understand the whole concept of charging overnight and charging when electricity is the cheapest and by location. That argument doesn’t account for again can you guarantee that will always be the case? If you are thinking yes you are setting yourself up for another winter debacle like they had in Texas when people lost power and some died because they continuously refused to upgrade/winterize their power grid (do you honestly believe that’s the last time something like that will happen?). People will charge their vehicles when ever they need to not strictly when it’s cheapest. (You never bought gas at an expensive station cause you were short on time or just needed it quickly?)

As for me asking the wrong questions I’m afraid you misunderstand. My point was targeted to the home user who hat happens in a commercial building/work is easy. The utility will simply charge the business to upgrade their service before they incorporating any EV charging to ensure they don’t have a disaster on hand. (Plus before doing so at a business it must be signed off multiple folks including fire Marshall, utility, engineering firm, and contractors. Which isn’t always the case for home installations)

To your point about ICE being affected, it is true that they are but the difference is a home user is t affected by long lines at a gas station, overloading the grid and causing power outages affects everyone at home not just those charging their EVs at home. For the people who can’t park at a garage this isn’t new and if they haven’t figured that out by now they have bigger problems than where they park their cars.

>but rather in as we move to more EVs at home the current infrastructure of the grid is not equipped to deal with the new demands.

People run clothes dryers at home today, and they often do it at peak times because that's when they are awake and able to do laundry. They also run their AC during peak hours, which is also during the hottest part of the day.

EV charging happens at night, between 9pm and 6am, when nothing else is going on in the house, when residential energy demand is at its lowest. And it's the same power draw as these huge appliances.

So in 10 years, you have more people effectively running their dryer at night. If everyone running their AC at the same time during peak hours isn't a constant problem in the summer (yes, it occasionally is, but they key word there is occasionally), why do you think level 2 charging in the middle of the night is going to be an issue?

The real problem is people who don't have access to at-home charging. They are at risk of having to charge in suboptimal conditions, and at suboptimal times. And yes, that is going to be a problem in 10 years unless we do something about it, because it is a problem right now.

Yeah, I always like this argument. We sold about 14 million cars total last year. Not even a million were electric, right? If we are on the verge of doing what we couldn't possibly do overnight, we would have a hypothetical problem.

How many people run multiple dryers at home? How many people have multiple cars at home? How you will you guarantee cars will only be charged between 9pm and 6am?

The reasons I think infrastructure is a problem (also in the U.S. infrastructure issues extend well beyond the grid, a lot of our infrastructure is old out date and poorly maintained)

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-renewables-electric-grid/

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/31/us/power-outages-electric-grid-climate-change/index.html

https://blog.ucsusa.org/samantha-houston/can-the-electric-grid-handle-ev-charging/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/13/electric-vehicles-grid-upgrade/

Note that my concern is not that we won’t be ready or be able to get ready but rather getting the infrastructure ready for such is a bigger challenge than simply how much energy EV charging stations will require.

I’m hopeful that renewables will take off in the future to help help us meet the demand but the real trick is having the infrastructure in place to be able to take advantage.

Just an FYI electric dryers been around since the 60s the infrastructure we have today has them accounted for and as technology has progress they’ve become somewhat more efficient (nothing too crazy though since they work off heat and law of conservation of energy is real) which has bought us some extra capacity within the grid. But nowhere near enough to support all EVs.

Btw you keep dancing around the issue that you can’t guarantee when people will and will not be charging their EVs you keep mentioning the ideal situation of charging at night but what happens when that isn’t case. To the best of your knowledge what is the worst case scenario for charging EVs?

Exactly. We have a spaceship in orbit around the moon this second, but expanding the grid by about 25% in 20 years is a bridge too far.

>You lose half of the energy between the power plant and the end user in the electrical grid.

Who told you these figure... and maybe more importantly why on earth did you believe them? They are off by a whole order of magnitude.

https://theconversation.com/we-calculated-emissions-due-to-electricity-loss-on-the-power-grid-globally-its-a-lot-128296

>In more developed countries, losses were lower: While the United States experienced 6% losses in 2016, 5% was reported for Germany and Singapore reached 2%.

I've also looked at other sources and between 5 to 6% is the consensus for the US.

And before we were just talking tank-to-wheel efficiency for ICE.

If we're going to take a broader view then we'll need to include the cost to refine the oil into gasoline. That's another 15-20% of the energy gone before it even gets to your tank. And we haven't even added in the energy costs of distributing the fuel.

>How many people run multiple dryers at home? How many people have multiple cars at home?

I have run my AC and my dryer at the same time.

>How you will you guarantee cars will only be charged between 9pm and 6am?

You program them not to run between 5pm and 9pm, or whenever your peak hours are.

Trust me on this: when you get an EV, you become very aware of how much electricity costs. If you want to pay a lot less for charging than you do for the equivalent mileage from gas, then you move to a plan where you pay based on the time of day. In this case, capitalism and the market work in your favor. Few things build habits quite like cost of use.

You keep talking about the grid as if adding overnight charging is some huge stress. It's not. Even the third article you linked to say this. (The fourth was behind a pay wall so I couldn't read it).

The average home uses about 30kW of electricity per day. That usage is concentrated between 6 or 7am and 9 or 10pm. A level 2 charger is about 7 to 8 kWh, and my charger's stats tell me my longest sessions are about 5 hours, for a total of 34kW, but more typical is a 3.5 hour charge because we prefer to keep the battery above 40% (trading a little long-term lifetime to ensure we have plenty of range during an emergency). But I am not charging every day: I am charging maybe 2x a week at most. So twice a week I am pulling up to 8 kW an hour for a few hours, when the only other things of note running in the house are the fridge, water heater, and HVAC.

When the second car arrives, my best option is really to stagger. Most folks probably only have one level 2 charger, so they have to stagger anyway. There may be some cases where both cars are charging at the same time, but since you don't need to charge every day, that's just not going to happen frequently.

All this stuff you write is mostly FUD. It's human nature to joke around and say that people are stupid, but they really aren't. People learn the things they need to learn.

Stop assuming that everyone is going to charge their cars all at once. Stop assuming that everyone will collectively lose their minds and charge during the day when electricity is the most expensive. Why would you assume these things? The first article you linked to makes this same assumption and it's just plain silly.

>To the best of your knowledge what is the worst case scenario for charging EVs?

Rapid charging during the daytime. It is expensive and requires a large amount of power. Busy charging stations are in constant use, so that power demand is significant. But the only people who should be rapid charging are those who are on a long road trip, where time matters.

Work at a very large plant. We have 3 pumps alone that draw more energy than the whole town around us...and it's not a small town. We have to generate our own power from waste gas and steam to supplement what the grid cannot provide.

As previously stated AC and Dryers are technologies that have been around and have been improved over time to run more efficiently. The grid as it exists today has taken into account running them both simultaneously. Running multiple central ACs and Dryers is not very typical, Running of each is.

Programming vehicles to charge between any times doesn't guarantee that it will always be so, again what you are describing is an ideal situation. Even with programming you cannot guarantee that the day wont ever come that people wont charge their vehicles during peak hours. This is not due to stupidity, maliciousness, arrogance, or anything of the sort. It may come in the form of an emergency where people may have to evacuate, or other unprecedented scenarios. Think about it like this if there is ever a situation where you think you might lose power are you really going to wait to charge your vehicle? or will you charge it while you still can? These are the type of questions that help build reliable systems. Again you don't just plan for the best case scenarios you must account for as many as possible.

When it comes to engineering systems as a whole you MUST account for the worst case scenarios. In this case it would be everyone charging their vehicles during peak hours (here lets assume every household only charges 1 vehicle at a time). The current infrastructure (substations) that supplies power to homes cannot withstand that (if you go back up to my original comment you shall see I mentioned I'm referring to the substations that feed the neighborhoods). Remember when you are talking about breakers, transformers, transmission lines, and fuses they all have a maximum limit they can operate at. Exceeding that limit will cause a failure in the system. Again when they were put in place they weren't accounting for EVs and their additional power draw. As stated before as the system ages performance degrades its simply a matter of fact. The reason you MUST account worst case scenario is to avoid critical failures such as an entire neighborhood losing power. Either the system must be capable enough to account for the WORST or safeguards and procedures must be put in place to avoid faults/failures. Adding the safeguards would be considered an upgrade to the infrastructure.

As far as trusting you goes I'm having a hard time doing so (I'm not sure if you truly meant kW or kWh two different things one is power the other is energy you consume energy and power is the rate in which you consume that energy it seems they may have gotten mixed up) as far as being aware of how much electricity costs I'm all too familiar as an Electrical Engineer (supplied generators to airports, hospitals, fire stations, nursing home, and schools) The iron clad law of power generation is your generation must always be greater than the load, if not you must be able to load shed (Also you must take into account inductive loads for the the inrush current of starting motors and if they have soft starters or not).

Also I never said or assumed all these vehicles where going to be put in peoples homes all at once (hell I even acknowledge that because of increasing efficiencies in technologies we bought ourselves extra leeway). The reality is as we move on to more EVs we must upgrade our infrastructures to keep up with the rising demand.

As far as what I write you considering it FUD is mostly a you problem. The information I've at least taken the time to share with you is factual to the best of my knowledge (I don't know everything nor do I want to pretend to). If any of it gives you FUD that's because life is that way there are many things we don't know such as how the future will play out, there is a lot of uncertainty in reality, and doubt is something we all deal with everyday. Ignoring the facts doesn't make any of that go away.

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Just as an FYI I never joked about calling anyone stupid.

>The grid as it exists today has taken into account running them both simultaneously.

The grid doesn't directly care how efficient something is. It only cares about how much power is being drawn. A central AC is roughly 3 to 5kW. A dryer is roughly 2 to 5kW. That's 5 to 10 kW, and a level 2 EV is right in the middle of that range. So, by your statement, "the grid" can handle EV's charging at night, since it can already handle AC+dryer during the day.

>Programming vehicles to charge between any times doesn't guarantee that it will always be so, again what you are describing is an ideal situation. Even with programming you cannot guarantee that the day wont ever come that people wont charge their vehicles during peak hours. This is not due to stupidity, maliciousness, arrogance, or anything of the sort. It may come in the form of an emergency where people may have to evacuate, or other unprecedented scenarios. Think about it like this if there is ever a situation where you think you might lose power are you really going to wait to charge your vehicle?

Of course it's no guarantee, but money is a powerful motivator. Yes, we have accidentally charged our car during mid-peak hours, which costs me not quite double what off-peak costs. Of course mistakes like that will happen, but so what? Every EV owner is not going to make this same mistake at the same time. You keep insisting that the grid needs to plan for this extremist nonsense. And I say, no, it doesn't. That would be throwing tons of infrastructure money away, overdesigning for a theoretical edge case with a likeliness of occurrence so low that it may as well be zero. That is not how you do capacity design.

As for emergencies...so what? If I lose power, guess what? The battery in my car still holds its charge. And unlike an ICE vehicle, it doesn't consume a significant amount power while idling in traffic (an ICE engine burns roughly 1/4 to 1/2 gallon per hour while idling). Remember that big snowstorm in the NE? EV's, it turns out, did just fine. More than fine.

If a storm is coming, maybe I'll charge to 80% even if I'm not down very much. So what? That's going to be a really short charging session. Or, if I am especially worried, maybe I'll take the extra hour and go to 90% so give me more usable miles. Most ICE car owners will also gas up to a full tank, too. It's the same strategy, only I don't have to wait in line to do it.

If it's a sudden disaster, like an earthquake? The car is the last thing I am worried about.

You're way too lost in whataboutism.

>far as trusting you goes I'm having a hard time doing so (I'm not sure if you truly meant kW or kWh two different things one is power the other is energy you consume energy and power is the rate in which you consume that energy it seems they may have gotten mixed up)

The "7 to 8 kWh" figure I used for Level 2 charger, stating kWh instead of kW, was a simple typo. I know those are unusual on the internet, but there you go.

>If any of it gives you FUD that's because life is that way there are many things we don't know such as how the future will play out, there is a lot of uncertainty in reality, and doubt is something we all deal with everyday. Ignoring the facts doesn't make any of that go away.

It's FUD because it's based on hypotheticals and extreme cases. Read that third article you linked to, again. The grid is able to handle current adoption rates. There is plenty of time to plan for years from now, when adoption rates will be forced to accelerate further. Money has been allocated for exactly that purpose.

The grid may not directly care about efficiency of individual components but to the system as a whole makes a huge difference. A 5kW dryer that's only 80% efficient will actually consume 6.25kW of power (imagine if that was the case for 1000 house holds that would be equivalent to 6.25MW of power, thats something that cant be ignored) the fact that things are more efficient helps a fuckton.

Also I never argued that the grid cannot handle EVs charging at night I'm not even sure how you came to that conclusion, once again the grid cannot withstand the worst case scenario of most consumers charging EVs during peak hours. Once Again if you read my original comment I was referring to the infrastructure upgrades to the substations that feed power to neighborhoods/homes to meet the increased demand. Also as far as need to be able to supply all that power I never said it was actually necessary to do that but the system but rather the grid needs to be either powerful enough to meet the peak demand or have safeguards in place to prevent critical faults/failures that would cause interruption of service to customers.

As far as the "Typo" goes its not just that you put kWh where it should of been kW. You incorrectly stated that your car charged 30kW in 5 hours that sentence does not make sense. I even explained the difference between kWh and kW (you can charge at a rate of 30kW for a period of 5hrs, giving you a total charge of 5 x 30 x 3600 doing this will give you the energy stored in your batteries in kWh (kWh is how batteries are measured or AmpHrs if know the voltage and divide by it).

As far as my hypothetical FUD goes: its not really a hypothesis if its happened. Electric grids have failed before, we have had natural disasters which have caused people to panic, and there's been too many examples of failures of infrastructures that have caused plenty of harm and property damage (I'm only here fighting to prevent it yet its FUD...). Once again if the information that I present to you gives you FUD that's a you problem, where I come from its simply reality.

I also like to point out you have tried multiple times to deflect from arguments by using words like FUD, whataboutism, and twisted my words to the point of calling people stupid. If you truly believe that these scenarios are as improbable as you believe them to be please articulate as to why you believe that to be the case. Saying we have this one fits all solution of just charge vehicles at night is complete BS. you yourself admitted there maybe a situation where youd charge during peak hours I wonder how many people will have the same thought during the same emergency? My point always was that you must have a plan to account for the worst case because thats when shit hits the fan not during "ideal scenarios".