> We’re doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study.
This requires further clarification. What is it that we want to optimize? How do we know we want to optimize that?
Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
21–30 of 394 posts
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#22This is simple. Musk just needs to throw 1% of his AI talent at optimizing charging times via realtime grid negotiating and nobody will need to even think about this. Cars will turn into one of our most valuable assets as they help stabalize the grid by being both sinks when energy is plentiful and sources when it's not. There are certain problems we all need to think about, but this is not one of them. It will effec…
Musk does not control power utilities, nor what they charge, nor what power they have access to at a given time, nor the load of the rest of the grid outside of Telsa vehicles.
> Cars will turn into one of our most valuable assets as they help stabalize the grid by being both sinks when energy is plentiful and sources when it's not.
In fantasy land, sure. In reality there are a lot more players with a lot more variables and most of them don't give a shit about some grand unified solution through cars. Just because in theory there is one great universal solution to one problem (demand for power) doesn't mean everyone is going to work together to achieve it. We have more than enough agricultural land around the world to feed the entire planet every day, yet millions of people go hungry every day. Just because a solution is possible doesn't mean it happens.
By the way: if we had fewer cars, we wouldn't have this huge demand for additional power. The simpler solution is to replace cars with public transit and micromobility. Then we would pollute less to make the cars, require fewer chips and rare earth metals, require less power generation and distribution, require fewer people to sink huge amounts of money into car ownership, free up cities for more pedestrian and bike traffic, provide easier access to jobs and education for poor rural areas, and have 30,000 fewer fatalies in the US every year.
But instead let's just buy more cars and build more nuke plants to power them and expand the grid because I want my own zoom-zoom machine!
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#23I personally think Govt should ban home charging if they are going to ban non-EV vehicles. How is that rich people with homes charge at home while everyone else has to queue up and waste their time at charging stations. Doesn't seem fair at all. Its a extra time tax on the poor.
This is nonsensical. You are taking away extremely useful technologies from people who can afford a parking space next to a power outlet, all because it's not fair to people who don't have that.
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#24Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#25This is simple. Musk just needs to throw 1% of his AI talent at optimizing charging times via realtime grid negotiating and nobody will need to even think about this. Cars will turn into one of our most valuable assets as they help stabalize the grid by being both sinks when energy is plentiful and sources when it's not. There are certain problems we all need to think about, but this is not one of them. It will effec…
So electric car owners need to just cover all the battery wear out of their own pockets? Wouldn't that make electric cars even more expensive since battery replacement will be needed more often?
The Tesla Model 3 SR ships with a battery expected to last ~750,000 km. If you had that vehicle, how much would you need to get paid to compensate for reducing that range by 1km? I'd accept 0.1 cents, how about you?
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#26> Current time-of-use rates encourage consumers to switch electricity use to nighttime whenever possible, like running the dishwasher and charging EVs. This rate structure reflects the time before significant solar and wind power supplies when demand threatened to exceed supply during the day, especially late afternoons in the summer. So, if you have a grid that doesn't heavily rely on solar then charging at night ma…
From the article:
> drivers should move to daytime charging at work
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#27> Current time-of-use rates encourage consumers to switch electricity use to nighttime whenever possible, like running the dishwasher and charging EVs. This rate structure reflects the time before significant solar and wind power supplies when demand threatened to exceed supply during the day, especially late afternoons in the summer. So, if you have a grid that doesn't heavily rely on solar then charging at night ma…
> > Today, California has excess electricity during late mornings and early afternoons, thanks mainly to its solar capacity. If most EVs were to charge during these times, then the cheap power would be used instead of wasted.
> How are people going to charge their cars during commutes?
Come on, you're saying most commutes are "late morning and early afternoon"? I too would like a job where my commute in is at 11 and my commute home is at 2.
Rather than spreading EV FUD, can we instead discuss what the article is actually talking about, like installing charging infrastructure in daytime parking lots so we can take better advantage of the cheap, plentiful, and often curtailed solar energy?
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#28Fire risks are also much greater at night if you are charging a BEV in your house while asleep. Far safer to charge in an open area preferably away from other vehicles and stuctures. https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20210113.as...
Frankly, if a user cannot trust their EV to charge without going up in flames it is not ready for prime time and should be recalled. Period.
Yes! It surprises me that the reliability issues in charging an EV are not discussed more. This bears more discussion and subject to regulations. It is not ok for companies to push EVs to general consumers without creating a good safety record.
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#29"Electric vehicles will contribute to emissions reductions in the United States, but their charging may challenge electricity grid operations. We present a data-driven, realistic model of charging demand that captures the diverse charging behaviours of future adopters in the US Western Interconnection. We study charging control and infrastructure build-out as critical factors shaping charging load and evaluate grid impact under rapid electric vehicle adoption with a detailed economic dispatch model of 2035 generation."
The opening lines of the actual study paper. Wanted to put that out into the mix before this turns into another Soleus Pushup debacle.
That said, I think University of Houston actually did a better job with their press release than Stanford did, both in clarity of explanation and in the quality of presentation. I'd like to hear some thoughts for/against though.
Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study
#30This is simple. Musk just needs to throw 1% of his AI talent at optimizing charging times via realtime grid negotiating and nobody will need to even think about this. Cars will turn into one of our most valuable assets as they help stabalize the grid by being both sinks when energy is plentiful and sources when it's not. There are certain problems we all need to think about, but this is not one of them. It will effec…
Yeah, except now each parking spot at work needs its own power outlet.
That would be the best part. Cover all that parking with solar panels, use those panels to partially or completely offset the charging demands of the cars parked under them. An average parking space has enough room for (napkin math...) 6kW of solar output. That's more than enough to offset a level 2 charger while the driver of that car is in the office.
And it leaves the car cooler at the end of the say.
Costs a bit upfront, sure. But I think we'll continue to see these costs come down, and the incentive to build out parking lot solar arrays will increase as the grid has to adapt to the demands we're placing on it.