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Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

news.stanford.edu

201–210 of 394 posts

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#201

This article does a poor job of explaining why there is going to be a problem and relaying the point of the study. To model the grid and power infrastructure into the future, assumptions must be made about where the power is derived. The article fails to provide the basic factors contributing to the problem, even though the study itself does a fine job. So California wants to legislate electric cars. That means highe…

> Charge your car at work in the sun and use it to power your home at night.

And fill your coffee thermos at work and drink free coffee at home all weekend. And toilet paper and pencils from work can also be taken home and maybe resold at a flea market.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#202
post #132
post #17

>We're doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study Wrong according to what metric? Cost? Raw efficiency? A lot of people are more than willing to give up efficiency so that they don't have to actually worry about finding a station during the day. To say that something is just outright "wrong" based on their personal preference of priorities comes off as unhelpful to me. The solution is simple. Make electricity…

That’s how we do it in Denmark. We have hourly prices on electricity, so for me it’s cheaper to start the dishwasher outside peak hours. In some areas they are experimenting with car chargers hooked up to this electricity price info, so it charges when it’s cheap.

my 2014 BMW i3 could be set to start charging when electricity was cheap (defined by me onscreen). it was a little buggy, as far as systems go, but it was the original model year (for north america, i think 2013 in europe).

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly, the latest iPhone + iOS pops a dialog box saying it will do this. // Weird given tiny amount of energy for your iPhone. But perhaps reasonable in aggregate.

Nice. I’ve also wanted my phone to tread water and not add charge while I’m driving. Dumb dumb to use a gasoline engine’s generator to charge it, but I don’t want it to go dead either.

The iPhone 13 pro max has a battery about 17Wh.

A typical car uses 330 Wh per mile.

Charging your phone from flat will cost you about 90 yards in range. At the most expensive electricity on the planet of about 70c per kWh it will cost you about 1c.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. I’ve also wanted my phone to tread water and not add charge while I’m driving. Dumb dumb to use a gasoline engine’s generator to charge it, but I don’t want it to go dead either.

The iPhone 13 pro max has a battery about 17Wh. A typical car uses 330 Wh per mile. Charging your phone from flat will cost you about 90 yards in range. At the most expensive electricity on the planet of about 70c per kWh it will cost you about 1c.

That’s probably what electricity costs in gasoline from a car’s alternator. I’d like to keep that 1c tyvm.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#205
post #176
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a car is parked for 8 hours, even the slowest 3kW charger will charge 70-90 miles of range. Low-power AC "chargers" are dumb devices, basically just wire. They don't require active cooling, and all of the expensive hardware is in the car. They could be installed on every single parking spot.

Our lot isn't closed, and it's adjacent to a mall. So the only way we'd electrify each spot is with pay outlets (which is what the current 2 are). Otherwise we'd have people leeching off of the company.

You're overthinking this. The solution can be as trivial as putting a padlock on the power outlet. More practically, there are dispensers that read RFID cards, so employee badges can be used to grant access. It can be a raspberry-pi level tech, not a full-blown payment terminal.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even better would be to plug the car in at all times when parked either at work or home and it just charges when the rate is cheapest. 99% of people have a fixed rate 24/7/365. I live in NYC and I'm not even sure if it's possible for me to pay time of use rates. The time of day that electricity is cheapest is... all the time. I sincerely doubt there is any public or political will to change this engrained billing me…

California's electricity has been mandated to switch to TOU since 2015: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...

I live in California and have never had TOU at my residence. I do have TOU options that just haven't been very good choices for my family.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#207
post #17

>We're doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study Wrong according to what metric? Cost? Raw efficiency? A lot of people are more than willing to give up efficiency so that they don't have to actually worry about finding a station during the day. To say that something is just outright "wrong" based on their personal preference of priorities comes off as unhelpful to me. The solution is simple. Make electricity…

If only there were a clean energy source that we could harness.. Hey what about nuclear!?

More expensive than alternatives, sorry.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even better would be to plug the car in at all times when parked either at work or home and it just charges when the rate is cheapest. 99% of people have a fixed rate 24/7/365. I live in NYC and I'm not even sure if it's possible for me to pay time of use rates. The time of day that electricity is cheapest is... all the time. I sincerely doubt there is any public or political will to change this engrained billing me…

California's electricity has been mandated to switch to TOU since 2015: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...

I couldn't find data more recent than 2017, but as of 2017 fewer than 4% of utility customers were using time of use billing.

Re: Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go: study

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is simple. Make electricity cheaper when it's more available From the parts of the world I come from the majority of people are vehemently opposed to time of use pricing. Because that's when they use it most. They and their political representatives would much prefer to keep taking from those who consume in off-peak rather than fix the underlying mechanism.

Ontario Canada did a mass $2b implementation of smart meters for time of day pricing. Unfortunately most people don’t care (or the technology to take advantage of it just isn’t there), and demand shifted less than 1% over several years. But it’s hard to find this info, because it doesn’t fit the (expensive to implement) narrative of “let them pay market price and people will respond to incentives”. https://www.cbc.ca…

they can afford not to care. this doesn't mean it's not a good solution.

it's no surprise the general population in one of the richest regions on Earth doesn't immediately change their consumption habits when a small fraction of their monthly bill gets variable

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