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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#601

Post by itsoktocry »

choilive wrote: post #369
asciimov wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad that the only people benefiting from all green power subsidies are the people that least need them. We should be investing solar in lower income communities, as those people could really use cheaper utilities, and any saving they get would immediately go back into their communities.

We do. Through community solar programs low/medium income households can get anywhere from 10%-50% off their electricity supply costs.

Oh, the low income people only have to pay 50-90% of the costs eh?

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#602

Post by epistasis »

secabeen wrote: post #585
epistasis wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My frame of mind is that residential solar has the potential to dramatically reduce transmission and grid costs, but there is no way to force the utilities to shift to that model, because they will make less money. And regulators are asleep at the wheel and beholden to the utilities they regulate. Grids are sized for peak, and without solar that peak is midday in most places, meaning that distributed behind-the-meter…

Peak load without solar is not midday. Here's an NYT article from 1975 about introduction of Time of Use billing describing peak rates being in the morning and evening: > Mrs. Wells changed her housework habits because for part of the year it costs her more than six times as much to use electricity from 8 A.M. to 11 A.M. and 5 P.M. to 9 P.M. as it costs during the rest of the day. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/29/a…

You're making a blanket statement about peak time which is incorrect.

Historically in Califorinia, peak load has been in the afternoon, which I count as midday. At least, it's when solar panels are still pumping out a ton of power:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

You're posting a random day in winter in California, where overall consumption is low even at its highest, because there's very little demand for cooling. True peak for the California grid is ~50GW, not 25GW like today. You're also omitting all the residential solar that never gets on the grid that drives down midday demand in that graph.

Texas also has midday peaks, here's today and you'll see that even though its winter and very little AC is needed, peak is midday:

https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/loadForecastVsActualC...

My statement was qualified with "most places." There will undoubtedly be some places with other peaks for which solar will not shave the peak. But in most places distributed solar will shave the peak.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#603

Post by epistasis »

jerkstate wrote: post #586
epistasis wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My frame of mind is that residential solar has the potential to dramatically reduce transmission and grid costs, but there is no way to force the utilities to shift to that model, because they will make less money. And regulators are asleep at the wheel and beholden to the utilities they regulate. Grids are sized for peak, and without solar that peak is midday in most places, meaning that distributed behind-the-meter…

I think you've still got too much of an "us vs them" mentality about the utilities, its not so much that they are refusing to shift to that model per se, these shifts are ongoing and happening today (which is why you're getting paid 10c per kwh for unreliable solar, IMO definitely more than it's worth), but I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations with how far things can be shifted without addressing the…

I think you are giving the utilities far too much credit. They were bemoaning solar being even 5% of the grid, complaining that it would bring down everything. Seriously!

And if you didn't know that, and think that I'm too "us vs. them," then you should go look at the arguments made in regulatory proceedings and IRPs etc.

The utilities invoke preposterous technical arguments all the time. Yes, the grid should be reliable, but making it more decentralized and adding storage all over will make it far more reliable.

Industrial scale battery packs are quite often cheaper than new transmission lines. And we're going to need a lot more transmission or transmission alternatives in the future as more of our energy needs are electrified.

I don't dispute that some distribution might need to be upgraded to fully take advantage of the cost savings that distributed solar and storage present.

But you'll never find the utilities making the case for engineering a more reliable cheaper system, if that system is cheaper, because they will make less money. It would be financially irresponsible for them to make that case, and in fact they must try their hardest to increase the amount of money that is spent on fixed grid assets, that they can directly rate base.

This is not being overly "us vs. them" this is simple economics and incentives of regulated monopolies. Utilities are great at responding to the financial incentives put before them. Sometimes those financial incentives are making the grid reliable. But I don't know of a single regulated monopoly that has been financially incentivized to lower grid costs.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#604

Post by epistasis »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #587
epistasis wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My frame of mind is that residential solar has the potential to dramatically reduce transmission and grid costs, but there is no way to force the utilities to shift to that model, because they will make less money. And regulators are asleep at the wheel and beholden to the utilities they regulate. Grids are sized for peak, and without solar that peak is midday in most places, meaning that distributed behind-the-meter…

Peak is not usually midday; peak is in in the evening when people get home from work. So in places like California and Hawaii, you get the opposite problem where the solar drops off right before peak demand and you have to ramp up other generators to make up for it. It's called the duck curve problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve The United States electric grid data is freely available and pretty neat: ht…

My sentence was "and without solar that peak is midday in most places." Remove the solar and California has a huge midday peak. Watch it shift over the years into the evening as more residential solar was added to the California grid:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

(Note also in your visualisation that all times are Eastern and should be adjusted for different localities. And if you go to a summer week rather than a winter week, you'll find the true peak, which is much higher, and which has a pretty standard curve with a peak that overlaps sunlight hours.)

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#605

Post by fsckboy »

CtrlAltmanDel wrote: post #446
fsckboy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need to read up on the economics of "public goods", other people have thought this through before you. In a nutshell, police and fire protection benefit everyone, because if your neighbor has low crime or low chance of fire spreading, that also benefits you, so it makes sense to include everyone in the plan. But while the $7500 was paid for by everybody else, the only person with the $0 electric bill is GP, which…

If you had even the slightest clue about what you're pretending to know about, you would realize this $7500 is about the farthest thing possible from the only time the government pays for a benefit that doesn't benefit everyone. It's just straight up amusing how much you lose your mind over like absolute economic trivialities, because evil renewable energy is a symbol of the liberals.

>amusing how much you lose your mind over like absolute economic trivialities... If you had even the slightest clue about what you're pretending to know about

i didn't lose my mind, all of you have. i just "pointed out"

in terms of "the slightest clue about what you're pretending to know about", i was raised from the crib as a good liberal and socialist, i understand the perspective intimately, then I studied economics at MIT and realized I didn't need to change my morals/sensibilities at all, the free market achieves what socialism is trying to achieve, and then I studied more economics in grad school at MIT... please, tell me your background, and like you suggest, no "pretending to know about"...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#606

Post by epistasis »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #583
epistasis wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fully sold on this reasoning. Electricity on the local distribution node has a value equal to the cost of generation plus the distribution. That's the value of it, what we pay. So by supplying the kWh locally to neighbors, the grid costs have been avoided. But the value is still the same. Now, the T&D infrastructure has already been built, and the utility wants to get paid no matter what, but if they were a p…

> So by supplying the kWh locally to neighbors, the grid costs have been avoided. No they haven't. The grid cost is to build and maintain the wires and equipment. Your solar output isn't reliable enough for them to downsize the grid, so even though selling to a neighbor bypasses the grid it doesn't reduce the cost of having a grid. What you could do is split out the grid cost, make it be a fixed fee per location inst…

If you keep reading to the next few sentences I point out that the utility has sunk costs, so I understand you point quite well already.

Transmission savings are the big thing with distributed solar and storage. And transmission is the bottleneck for most projects looking to connect to the grid right now. Not only is it expensive, it's slow to build.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#607

Post by ailun »

ricardobeat wrote: post #513
rootusrootus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protecting local manufacturers from cheap offshore labor is rational, especially if the offshore products are being subsidized specifically to undermine incumbents and put them out of business. I get that individual consumers want the cheapest trinket they can find, but the gov't has to be more strategic. And every country does this, including the one that would be the source of these trinkets.

The current average monthly salary in China is $3000-$4000 US dollars. This is not about cheap labour anymore but simple economies of scale. The whole talk about subsidies is pure smoke screen. US automakers have received a lot more subsidies than their Chinese counterparts. The top chinese firm receiving government subsidies, CATL, got ~$500M USD last year. BYD is said to have received $3.5 billion in total in its l…

> The current average monthly salary in China is $3000-$4000 US dollars.

Source, please. I do not believe this.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#608

Post by tomatotomato37 »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #477
bane wrote: post #434

I can't believe that the average price of a car in the U.S. is almost $50k. For rapidly depreciating assets. Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money. I coworker of m…

> coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck > It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel. I understand hating on pickup trucks is an easy way to farm upvotes on HN, but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg. The closest that comes to that is the F-150 Raptor with turbocharged V8 which is a preposterous performance vehicle with a racing engine. It is a luxury item.…

My guess would be the difference in perception comes from the fact sport cars tend to be smaller and sit lower, which makes pedestrians and motorist feel safer and less intimidated around them. In addition their general rarity means most people still view them as novelties rather than something to actually take a side on. That being said though it is 100% true performance engines are the absolute worst in terms of economy/emissions/noise; most truck engines are really just oversized economy engines and have the efficiency to match.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#609

Post by ThatPlayer »

epistasis wrote: post #604
ThatPlayer wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak is not usually midday; peak is in in the evening when people get home from work. So in places like California and Hawaii, you get the opposite problem where the solar drops off right before peak demand and you have to ramp up other generators to make up for it. It's called the duck curve problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve The United States electric grid data is freely available and pretty neat: ht…

My sentence was "and without solar that peak is midday in most places." Remove the solar and California has a huge midday peak. Watch it shift over the years into the evening as more residential solar was added to the California grid: https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory... (Note also in your visualisation that all times are Eastern and should be adjusted for different localities. And if you g…

That's why I said choose a region to get regional time. California's chart shows the time in Pacific time: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...

They have this summer's data too, though no way to link directly, and it still peaks at ~7pm: https://i.imgur.com/16mssuH.png . Using the 16th as an example, a peak demand of 44,008 megawatthours @ 20H PDT. Comparing that to their generation graphs, which you can separate into sources, like solar. On the 16th, peak solar generation is at 11 @ 13,201 megawatthours. By 6PM, it's down to 853 megawatthours. By peak time, it's nothing. My own residential solar matches that curve on that date.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#610

Post by DaveExeter »

kraken20480 wrote: post #126
DaveExeter wrote: post #105

If we wanted a cheap American electric car, the way to do it would be to allow Chinese EV manufacturers to sell to the American public! Of course, that is not allowed, because it would benefit the American people and hurt the American car cartel.

Chinese EV imports could threaten national security through technology dependence and harm American auto manufacturing jobs. Safety and environmental standards may also be lower. I think that view is rather narrow.

You think Japanese auto imports was good for American auto manufacturing jobs?

Don't you remember American auto workers beating a Japanese man to death? You probably don't, because they beat a Chinese man to death by mistake. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin

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