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

news.stanford.edu

81–90 of 394 posts

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

#81
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except now each parking spot at work needs its own power outlet.

Future is SAE J2954 (aka Witricity): you have a wireless charging pad under each parking spot. No screwing with power plugs, just park and go. This isn't ideal for fast charging, but for the slower charging you'd get from being somewhere for 6-8 hours, it's perfectly fine. You still need to run power to every parking spot, but now it's embedded in the ground, and you don't have to worry about someone just coming arou…

Losing 30-70% of the power and adding a bunch of cost doesn't seem like the way forward. Cables exist for a reason. They are the best way to move charge.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really matter. If you own a resource, and I utilize it, are you going to let me do so without compensating you in some fashion? If so I'll take you up on that offer. I have no problems with encouraging people to charge at certain times. Using personal batteries for energy storage and draw without any compensation however seems to cross a line. Your argument seems to me like justifying petty theft because…

I think your position comes from a lack of understanding of energy markets and pricing mechanisms. Powerwall owners are paid roughly $2/kwh when called upon to support the grid in California. Compensation is absolutely available for discharging and charging at specific times. If you’ll charge me a fraction of the cost to charge off peak or when there are excess renewables on the grid, and you’ll pay a premium to pull…

[deleted]

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

#83
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem, it's an opportunity to optimize energy use to match how it's now generated.

Shouldn't it be an opportunity to match energy generation to how it's consumed? No industry survives long by offering a worse product to consumers than what they had before

Unfortunately for them it isn't a product they can control with the legislation they are choosing.

There will be significant problems with CA power infrastructure in the near future.

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

#84
Of course, it is far more efficient system-wide to charge electric cars around noon, where photovoltaic energy produces a surplus of energy with zero marginal economic value.

It is an elegant way of solving at least part of the storage problem and the mismatch between peak power and demand times.

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

#85
post #78

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…

If you're regularly committing a certain percentage of your car's battery capacity to powering your house, wouldn't it make more sense to just have a stationary battery at home? Otherwise you can't rely on that extra range in your car if you need it to power your home anyway, and you're just spending extra energy carrying around extra battery weight in your car every day.

I wonder if there's any correlation between times someone travels 400 miles and times when they are not home... we probably need a study or something to figure it out.

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

#86

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.

time-of-use is also cognitive load that can cause anxiety

For the small amount I consume, tiny potential savings are not worth the mental hassles. I switched a residence to flat rate to avoid these mental games.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really matter. If you own a resource, and I utilize it, are you going to let me do so without compensating you in some fashion? If so I'll take you up on that offer. I have no problems with encouraging people to charge at certain times. Using personal batteries for energy storage and draw without any compensation however seems to cross a line. Your argument seems to me like justifying petty theft because…

I think your position comes from a lack of understanding of energy markets and pricing mechanisms. Powerwall owners are paid roughly $2/kwh when called upon to support the grid in California. Compensation is absolutely available for discharging and charging at specific times. If you’ll charge me a fraction of the cost to charge off peak or when there are excess renewables on the grid, and you’ll pay a premium to pull…

If I am being compensated a premium $/kwh for each kwh drawn then we have no problem. Otherwise I'll just not offer my battery by disconnecting it when not charging.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your position comes from a lack of understanding of energy markets and pricing mechanisms. Powerwall owners are paid roughly $2/kwh when called upon to support the grid in California. Compensation is absolutely available for discharging and charging at specific times. If you’ll charge me a fraction of the cost to charge off peak or when there are excess renewables on the grid, and you’ll pay a premium to pull…

If I am being compensated a premium $/kwh for each kwh drawn then we have no problem. Otherwise I'll just not offer my battery by disconnecting it when not charging.

Of course! No one is forcing you to, these programs are voluntary.

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

#89

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.

>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 method. People will not willingly change their habits, and any politician proposing reducing quality of life will just get thrown out

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

#90
post #35

So plugging in the car whenever it's parked and letting the grid decide when to charge it is the way to go?

I would love to have a charger that just has a knob on it. Charge fast on one side, charge cheap on the other.

I would be okay with a "give me at least x range by tomorrow" button, so that the car can also feed back to the grid if I happen to have more in the tank than I need.
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