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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

#241

Post by cgb223 »

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…

> The solution is simple. Make electricity cheaper when it's more available, and people will use it. You don't need any complex "AI" like people in this thread are saying, you just use natural market forces and the problem fixes itself. Too much energy being used at night - price increases. It's not complicated, and it's what we're doing already. People don't need a Stanford study to convince them to get their energy for cheaper.

This is exactly what they were doing in Texas right up until the moment the Blizzard hit last year.

Suddenly electricity became unavailable (because you know, giant blizzard), and consequently it was something like $6000 a kw/hr[1] for some users

Your market force solution for electricity pricing almost bankrupted me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/natural-disa...

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

#242

Post by Schroedingersat »

exabrial wrote: post #212

I know this is against the grain, but I do think clean hydrogen is the future fuel. I know hydrogen is less efficient than Battery-Electric, but it's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. One can transfer millions of joules at the petro pump in a few minutes without having to actually "handle" said joules.... but to transfer hundreds of joules with a battery-electric vehicle, one currently must actually "cond…

Hydrogen has a number of hard to solve problems. But there are other fuels that are both burnable or usable in fuel cells.

But all these improvements will mean nothing if we increase consumption enough to offset any efficiency increases.

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

#243

Post by fsckboy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #217
Grimburger wrote: post #39

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.

The point is that off-peak isn't necessarily the best option anymore. In areas that are going all-in on solar, there is power during the day, but at night it would have to be generated or come from storage batteries. Off-peak traditionally means when demand is low. Now you have to change your thinking to be when supply is high.

> Now you have to change your thinking to be when supply is high

teachable moment, all along you should have been using price

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

#244

Post by fsckboy »

Marsymars wrote: post #214
Scoundreller wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The pricing model isn't appropriate to make people care. What they could do instead of time-of-use pricing is a sliding multiplier that multiplies your total bill based on the ratio of on-peak to off-peak use. Make the multiplier worse based on what the total usage is.

you'll win a Nobel prize in econ if you can prove "The pricing model isn't appropriate to make people care"

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

#245

Post by saisundar »

Also worth noting That ev platforms are now essentially closely engineering the power train and the battery systems to work and extract maximum juice ( similar to Apples battery/cpu control on the iPhone).

When the above is executed well, you get performance and range that are moats to car manufacturers, which reduces the incentive to partake in such efforts as well. ( Tesla, and of course the recent EGMP platform is an example of this. The latter powers 3 best selling cars in the US this year).

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

#246

Post by concordDance »

cgb223 wrote: post #241
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…

> The solution is simple. Make electricity cheaper when it's more available, and people will use it. You don't need any complex "AI" like people in this thread are saying, you just use natural market forces and the problem fixes itself. Too much energy being used at night - price increases. It's not complicated, and it's what we're doing already. People don't need a Stanford study to convince them to get their energy…

Set thresholds on your meter that notifies you when price rises to high and turns it off automatically? Maybe some household batteries or a small generator?

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

#247

Post by sidewndr46 »

concordDance wrote: post #246
cgb223 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is simple. Make electricity cheaper when it's more available, and people will use it. You don't need any complex "AI" like people in this thread are saying, you just use natural market forces and the problem fixes itself. Too much energy being used at night - price increases. It's not complicated, and it's what we're doing already. People don't need a Stanford study to convince them to get their energy…

Set thresholds on your meter that notifies you when price rises to high and turns it off automatically? Maybe some household batteries or a small generator?

Where in Texas does the end-user get to install their own meter they can customize?

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

#248

Post by fsckboy »

jeffreygoesto wrote: post #179
mirchiseth wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saw the Slashdot effect reference after such a long time. Not sure what % of HNers were there in the heydays of /.

More than you think? =;-{)} Wo remembers the "Anonymous FTP Sites List"?

https://old.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/

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

#249

Post by jerlam »

dybber wrote: post #169
spoonjim wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. This is classic “virtue signaling.” Your iPhone battery is not even a rounding error on your electricity consumption.

If all iPhones do this it will matter. Charging when energy is plentiful also means that electricity is more likely to come from renewables.

Phones are rarely plugged in unless the battery is dead.

This strategy actually works with laptops though. I know that one company set up all their laptops to stop drawing power from mains and run from the battery at peak hours, even though it was still plugged in. This was for cost savings and not for environmental ones, but the same strategy would work.

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

#250

Post by meatmanek »

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?

The industry _has_ standardized, except for one hold-out (Tesla):

https://youtu.be/sZOuz_laH9I?t=990

> CCS is the established industry standard DC fast-charging connector, and every automaker selling cars for the US market is already using it, or, in the case of Nissan, has pledged to use it going forward. Except, oh right, except for... them [Tesla].

The charger situation is quite analogous to Lightning vs. USB-C for smartphones. USB-C is the industry standard, and there's one manufacturer still using a proprietary connector. And in both cases, the hold-out manufacturer provides an adapter cable so you can use the standard connector.

(To your point about standardized batteries having approximately 0% chance of happening any time soon, I 100% agree.)

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