Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 394 posts

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

#251

Post by sidewndr46 »

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?

Let's just ignore the total of end-user standardization like a charging plug.

They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. They can't even make the way you access it universal. Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate?

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

#252

Post by Scoundreller »

pas wrote: post #210
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…

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

It’s not a good solution when you spend a ton of money to force people to pay the averaged out market prices per time segment and they still don’t care.

It’s like making me spend $$$ to measure and charge me for how much co2 I exhale.

It’s technically correct: that co2 does contribute to global warming.

But it’s going to cost more to meter it than I could possibly save in conservation through this newfound incentive.

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

#253

Post by _8j50 »

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?

Governments can mandate this just like electrical outlets and emissions requirements.

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

#254

Post by _8j50 »

lossolo wrote: post #236
_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...

That's what I'm talking about. Biden's 300bn plan will essentially lock the US to charging stations, I wish someone can tell them about this.

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

#255

Post by sidewndr46 »

Animats wrote: post #141

"more than 5.4 gigawatts of energy storage would be needed if charging habits follow their current course." Gigawatts are a unit of power, not energy. Storage is measured in gigawatt-hours. Stanford's PR department should know this. The question is, how much storage is needed to make it through the night? The biggest pumped storage station in the US [1] generates 2.7GW of power and stores 24GWH. So, two of those, som…

So we're just going to destroy huge parts of the Sierras so we can charge electric cars?

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

#256

Post by tacostakohashi »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #251
tacostakohashi wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Let's just ignore the total of end-user standardization like a charging plug. They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. They can't even make the way you access it universal. Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate?

> Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate?

Yes, I have. Those are kind of cool, because it is equidistant from both sides.

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

#257

Post by parker_mountain »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #202
dybber wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

A lot of newer charging stations in the US also have this built in, as well. You can hook them up to the internet, or do it manually. How mine works is pretty clever: you plug it in, and it asks you if you'd like to go to 100% now or wait until charging is cheaper. If you don't reply, it will fast charge your car to about 40%, and then wait.

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

#258

Post by DennisP »

pfdietz wrote: post #207
Overtonwindow wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More expensive than alternatives, sorry.

Maybe not, if the alternative is installing enough battery to charge most people's electric cars at night.

My state's grid is over half nuclear, and our electric rates are not high.

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

#259

Post by timwaagh »

The market would come to the same conclusion in time but only if they are right. The conclusion about the need for incentives is therefore wrong. It will just encourage rent seeking and destroy efficiency. It's important for the government to support optimal price finding instead by removing possible oddities in how energy prices are created.

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

#260

Post by sidewndr46 »

toast0 wrote: post #185
_ph_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "charging station" is hinting at a too big infrastructure. All you need is a power outlet per car. If the car parks for 8 to 9 hours, you don't need a huge amount of power to recharge it.

You need more than just a power outlet per car, with regular 120vac, you pretty much need a breaker and circuit per car, because you shouldn't put two of those on a single circuit, since they'll usually pull up to the 15A rating of the plug, and code restricts you from using more than 20A breaker on a circuit with 15A plugs, so you'll pop the breaker if you've got two 15A loads and they don't communicate to share. It…

I works out to about 12.5 amps for a normal 15 amp plug. You can't draw the full rated current continuously.

With an MWBC circuit you can however supply two different 15 amp plugs with a single cable 14/3 cable fed off a 15 amp duplex breaker. So it slightly reduces the amount of copper you need to run.

Post reply on HN