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

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

#231

Post by tacostakohashi »

_8j50 wrote: post #228

I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batteries charging at home or hundreds at a "battery station", where you would park at a spot/drive-thru garage and have a hydraulic machine drop your old battery and lift in a new battery and the whole swap can take no longer than the time it takes to fill up a has…

We're talking about an industry that has failed to standardize on a single, interchangeable charging plug here.

What do you think the chances of a single, interchangeable battery for such a "battery station" to remove, recharge, replace are? Or are you proposing such stations for each individual manufacturer, model, model year, etc?

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

#232

Post by maccard »

lbriner wrote: post #43
denimnerd42 wrote: post #18

I would be curious about a study done for the Texas market. From what I understand, you'd definitely want to charge at night due to the vast amounts of wind power available and the otherwise low demand. 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. You don't need to charge every day to refill that 20 or 30 miles.

I guess the issue with this report is that it is specific to the unique mix of energy that the (west of the) USA has compared to other areas/countries. Countries with a lot of nuclear see that energy wasted at night because you can't just dial down the level very quickly, in that sense, in most of Nothern Europe this would be desirable. In countries that have extreme levels of solar, clearly this only works during th…

> I have precisely zero appliances in my house that can make any use of cheap electricity and even worse, if I want a dual-tariff to get cheaper overnight electric, I get punished for it costwise

No dishwasher or washing machine? I have a hog water tank with an immersion switch on it, I would love to heat that with cheap electricity overnight. I agree on the stupidity of punishing people for taking on the cheaper night tariffs - we should be goint for as much carrot as we can over stick!

The other aspect of this is price and consumption. I work from home with a workstation PC and an electric over that we use maybe every other day. Meanwhile my annual electricity bill is 1/4 of what my annual heating (gas) is, and of that, hot water is only 1/4 of that. Well over half of my annual bill and energy consumption is just heating my house during winter.

The real goal is to get storage heat sources heated by renewable sources for those of us in the UK.

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

#233

Post by upsidesinclude »

landemva wrote: post #201
upsidesinclude wrote: post #66

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.

These are great options

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

#234

Post by CryptoBanker »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #231
_8j50 wrote: post #228

I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batteries charging at home or hundreds at a "battery station", where you would park at a spot/drive-thru garage and have a hydraulic machine drop your old battery and lift in a new battery and the whole swap can take no longer than the time it takes to fill up a has…

We're talking about an industry that has failed to standardize on a single, interchangeable charging plug here. What do you think the chances of a single, interchangeable battery for such a "battery station" to remove, recharge, replace are? Or are you proposing such stations for each individual manufacturer, model, model year, etc?

They haven’t standardized because they haven’t been given an incentive to standardize. I would argue that perhaps the incentives mentioned in the article could be given to companies instead to encourage them to standardize in plugs and batteries, but many people prefer to see financial incentives given to people instead of corporations

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

#235

Post by JohnFen »

spoonjim wrote: post #226
JohnFen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"virtue signaling" is doing something useless in order to make yourself look good to a particular group. Could it be that this isn't "virtue signaling", but rather people overestimating the impact of the action? In other words, an honest (if mistaken) attempt at doing a good thing rather than just wanting to be perceived as doing a good thing?

I think many virtue signalers are earnest and think that Tweeting #BLM or other useless actions are actually useful.

If someone is doing something because they think it makes a real difference, then it's not virtue signaling by definition.

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

#236

Post by lossolo »

_8j50 wrote: post #228

I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batteries charging at home or hundreds at a "battery station", where you would park at a spot/drive-thru garage and have a hydraulic machine drop your old battery and lift in a new battery and the whole swap can take no longer than the time it takes to fill up a has…

They are already doing this in China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc

20 seconds battery swap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2ew50YVHY

NIO have 1000 stations and 10 million swaps already.

More info:

https://www.arenaev.com/nio_achieves_10_million_battery_swap...

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

#237

Post by M3L0NM4N »

spoonjim wrote: post #226
JohnFen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"virtue signaling" is doing something useless in order to make yourself look good to a particular group. Could it be that this isn't "virtue signaling", but rather people overestimating the impact of the action? In other words, an honest (if mistaken) attempt at doing a good thing rather than just wanting to be perceived as doing a good thing?

I think many virtue signalers are earnest and think that Tweeting #BLM or other useless actions are actually useful.

I think the OP just overestimated how much electricity charging their phone actually uses, and not intentionally trying to claim they're being useful by saving 1 cent of electricity.

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

#238

Post by kodah »

saidajigumi wrote: post #51
alexb_ wrote: 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…

This is precisely what the linked article says. From the section "Charging Incentives": “And it’s not just California and Western states. All states may need to rethink electricity pricing structures as their EV charging needs increase and their grid changes,” added Powell, who recently took a postdoctoral research position at ETH Zurich. The article also includes other interesting and more nuanced policy details tha…

> This can disincentivize employers from installing chargers, especially once half or more of their employees have EVs.

> So yes, there are weird red herrings in this thread from people who want a technology first and a solution second (or never) and/or who don't understand design of incentive structures.

Speaking of incentive structures, one of my former employers installed EV chargers in all of the bottom floors of our parking garage while explicitly not allowing non-EVs to park in those spaces. I was left parking my hybrid on the roof in a desert climate where my car would continually get covered with pollen.

Naturally, I did what they were trying to incentivize: I looked at EVs. I quickly discovered that the cheaper models have limited usecases; for instance, the road trips I go on would now be out of the picture. The more expensive ones are much more functional but come at a high price that I've never personally spent on a car.

There's also the fact that I didn't have anywhere to charge it except public spaces where I'd have to awkwardly wait for hours because I lived in an apartment. In order to get a 240v plug in my garage I would need to pay for it myself.

These policies, as they invade the workforce, need to be looked at from a lens that doesn't end up doing harm in the end.

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

#239

Post by mh8h »

_8j50 wrote: post #228

I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batteries charging at home or hundreds at a "battery station", where you would park at a spot/drive-thru garage and have a hydraulic machine drop your old battery and lift in a new battery and the whole swap can take no longer than the time it takes to fill up a has…

With the current way of owning an EV, you own the battery. And because batteries degrade overtime, the health of the battery is a big component of the value of your car. Using a service like that means you'll get a random battery every time you swap.

I guess that can change if you lease the battery separately.

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

#240

Post by kadoban »

pornel wrote: post #205
greedo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could even just throw up a sign and once in a while tow people who cheat. Not like it's really going to cost a ton anyway.
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