Electrical demand with more EVs on the road. Is there enough power supply for future growth?

[luebri]

@Drayday55 Early poll results would tell me we are not in the minority!

People are buying for the Cost of ownership or for the perfomance, or both, not for the perceived climate effects.

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[MM in SouthTX]

I have an idea that will help. Let's ban natural gas heating and cooking. Just get it from the grid instead. Which is already strained, and powered mostly by natural gas in Texas. Oh, but we have wind. Unless the wind isn't blowing...and there's no storage for that wind energy...so back to natural gas. Have to have 100% backup for wind, or the grid fails.

Just my rant against banning natural gas appliances. Here in Corpus Christi, when we freeze over or get a Cat 4 hurricane, the natural gas supply has NEVER been interrupted. Never. Turn on the burners and boil that water after the hurricane. Take a hot shower when it's 45 degrees in the house because the power is out and it's 20 outside. Banning natural gas appliances is lunacy.

End of Rant.

Oh wait, there's more.

p.s. What is the single biggest contributor to the reduction in carbon emissions in the US? Cheap natural gas. Displaced a lot of coal plants.

p.p.s. We ship a hell of a lot of oil and natural gas out of Corpus Christi. Unfortunately we (the US) used to be able to ship more, but our recent policies have reversed the "net exporter of energy" role that the US had. Instead, Europe is going to freeze this winter, while Putin, the Saudis and Venezuela reap the benefits. Apparently it's good for the environment that other countries that pollute more than us produce that energy.

Okay, real End of Rant.

 

[Drayday55]

Spot on man.

I'm a business owner. I just sold a 2020 gas 2500 chevy. It cost me over 23k a year for fuel and ownership driving about 30k a year. The lighting will be 5 grand less than that. ( and it's a blast to drive) This thing is gonna be my mobile office for the next 3 ish years if I like it.

For those of you that don't live in San Diego, the new racket is going to be taxing us for each mile we drive! Our local town Mayor's have been fighting this but it sounds like some slimey $h/t is going on and an appointed burocrat is trying to go over thier heads with this policy.

We will see.

@Drayday55 Early poll results would tell me we are not in the minority!

People are buying for the Cost of ownership or for the perfomance, or both, not for the perceived climate effects.

 

[Roy2001]

I see that California is experiencing issues with power consumption of its users and moving to level 3 grid emergency with possible rolling power outages possible to save energy. http://www.caiso.com/Documents/consumers-advised-to-be-prepared-for-possible-outages.pdf

How does this affect owners who are new to EV? Is there anything in place to expand the capacity at a state level, or even federally? Will this cause electric costs to rise as well?

As long as you charge in late night it will be fine. Actually power suppliers welcome you to charge off peak time because electricity generated during early am would be wasted anyway since they cannot shutdown or reduce generators.

 

[Roy2001]

California is a joke!. Newsome is a joke! There can be power for all with good policy.

But do we have choices

 

[Drayday55]

It's foolish to even think we would have choice on that level. Even Mr.Musk figured that out.

But do we have choices

 

[Sam James]

JFC… I suggest in one thread that maybe a certain news channel isn’t educating folks in the best way possible and a mod must step in immediately! Then there is this drivel above.

1. Grid issues are usually on a local level
2. There are ways to mitigate this or generate your own electricity
3. Even when fueled with fossil fuels, an EV (outside of the Hummer) will generally have lower emissions
4. Who is coming for your natural gas? Not me, but realize that is a SIGNIFICANT source of methane. Not as clean to produce as you’re thinking.
5. The state of Texas ran out of juice because they cut themselves off from everybody. If you can buy electricity from other states then they can send it to you.
6. Texas also hurt themselves BECAUSE of their reliance on NG (https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/amp/)

I sure am glad we moved out of Texas right before that storm. Even in this conservative bastion, our electricity comes from 45% renewable resources. We recently demolished one of two coal plants in our area due to it being unneeded. Gas plant left operational as a backup, but not running.

Now, getting out of this thread. Yeesh.

 

[data003]

I’m surprised nuclear power hasn’t been mentioned here yet. We can’t compromise on NG, all fossil fuels need to go ASAP. Between renewables and nuclear we have all the tech we need to solve this problem.

 

[Skidrowe]

I see that California is experiencing issues with power consumption of its users and moving to level 3 grid emergency with possible rolling power outages possible to save energy. http://www.caiso.com/Documents/consumers-advised-to-be-prepared-for-possible-outages.pdf

How does this affect owners who are new to EV? Is there anything in place to expand the capacity at a state level, or even federally? Will this cause electric costs to rise as well?

I’m very new to this and was just curious how people handle this currently if they plan on having their truck charged and there is an unexpected outage.

@metroshot have you dealt with this before?

What would you do if you learned in advance that your local gas station was going to shut off the pumps for a couple hours? I'd plan to fill up beforehand or after.

If they didn't tell you they were going to shut down for a couple hours, what are the odds that it would align with your need to fill up? Unless you're one of the very few people who drive your personal vehicle 250 miles every day and fill up on your way home, it wouldn't affect you. Most people would just wait until later in the week when their truck was low on gas and then fill it up.

Let's say you got home on an empty tank one night and tried to fill up, but the gas station was shut down. The next one was too far away to reach on your low tank. You'd go home and call into work the next morning to let them know you'll be late while you take a gas can in your wife's car to the next nearest gas station. Then you'd put it in your truck and drive it to the same gas station to fill up and head off to work late.

What if a hurricane or wildfire rolls through and you need to evacuate, but your truck didn't have any gas because you weren't planning for this? What if the local gas stations were shutdown for said hurricane or wildfire. You'd probably leave your truck and pray for the best.

I don't see how any of these scenarios are any different for an electric truck that might be fully charged or might not when the power goes out. If you can drive outside the range of the blackout, you can fill up your truck at an EV station (or a friend's house that has a charger). If you don't have enough power in the truck, then you wait for the power to come back on and call in late to work. Odds are that a power outage is going to affect you about as much as a gas station closing its pumps for a few hours currently affects you.

Let's say our power grid gets strained so bad that there are rolling blackouts every day, all year long in our area. Unless those blackouts span the 14 hours I'm home every day, I'm going to charge my truck when the power is up for a couple hours and still drive it every day.

I believe most of the fear and uncertainty about how blackouts and overloaded power grids will affect EV owners is unfounded. We'll be fine.

 

[SmokingtheMeats]

What would you do if you learned in advance that your local gas station was going to shut off the pumps for a couple hours? I'd plan to fill up beforehand or after.

If they didn't tell you they were going to shut down for a couple hours, what are the odds that it would align with your need to fill up? Unless you're one of the very few people who drive your personal vehicle 250 miles every day and fill up on your way home, it wouldn't affect you. Most people would just wait until later in the week when their truck was low on gas and then fill it up.

Let's say you got home on an empty tank one night and tried to fill up, but the gas station was shut down. The next one was too far away to reach on your low tank. You'd go home and call into work the next morning to let them know you'll be late while you take a gas can in your wife's car to the next nearest gas station. Then you'd put it in your truck and drive it to the same gas station to fill up and head off to work late.

What if a hurricane or wildfire rolls through and you need to evacuate, but your truck didn't have any gas because you weren't planning for this? What if the local gas stations were shutdown for said hurricane or wildfire. You'd probably leave your truck and pray for the best.

I don't see how any of these scenarios are any different for an electric truck that might be fully charged or might not when the power goes out. If you can drive outside the range of the blackout, you can fill up your truck at an EV station (or a friend's house that has a charger). If you don't have enough power in the truck, then you wait for the power to come back on and call in late to work. Odds are that a power outage is going to affect you about as much as a gas station closing its pumps for a few hours currently affects you.

Let's say our power grid gets strained so bad that there are rolling blackouts every day, all year long in our area. Unless those blackouts span the 14 hours I'm home every day, I'm going to charge my truck when the power is up for a couple hours and still drive it every day.

I believe most of the fear and uncertainty about how blackouts and overloaded power grids will affect EV owners is unfounded. We'll be fine.

I'm not saying we won't. I'm stating there are already constraints on the energy market. If more people are buying EV's it's just going to add to that constraint. To be honest, I've never run into an issue finding gas at a gas station before, even with hurricanes. For people that charge every night, I was curious how it would affect those who rely on that as more and more EVs are on the market

 

[Skidrowe]

I think it's prudent to plan for future problems. I hope providers and governments are planning for increased power consumption. If it becomes a big enough problem that wasn't planned for, we could be forced to deal with less than ideal conditions, but we will adapt. Then innovation will be spurred and people will solve the problems. Or one of those future plans will come to fruition and solve the problems.

I'm not concerned because I will adapt if necessary or smarter people than me will solve these problems (hopefully in a timely manner, but if not, see the adapt comment).

 

[MM in SouthTX]

I’m surprised nuclear power hasn’t been mentioned here yet. We can’t compromise on NG, all fossil fuels need to go ASAP. Between renewables and nuclear we have all the tech we need to solve this problem.

Nuclear is a great option. Of course the big prize is nuclear fusion. But NG can not go. Wind and solar need 100% backup, or the grid will fail. There is no storage, so if the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing there would be no energy produced in real time and so no energy available. It's a very simple concept, but one that not a lot of people realize.

You can point to the two or three grid-scale battery facilities and say that's the solution, but they don't exist right now in 99.9% of the market. Even if they did, with the number you would have to build and a battery life span of 15 years, how green is that?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for renewables. I have solar on my roof. I'm buying an electric truck. I support the progress, but we ain't there yet. Not even close. All the renewables are redundant at this point, because you have to have 100% backup in order to have a stable grid.

 

[jefro]

The last map of grid worry was about half US is in a position where things can go bad. Texas followed California and shut down too many working plants and tried to replace them with plants that simply weren't time tested. Texas did expect too much from NG too soon under the most demanding times. Sadly one of the nukes did also go offline. I don't think I ever heard of a coal plant failing simply because they have been used for 100 years.

"Here in Corpus Christi," That is a difficult place for sure. Yesterday I watched the two wind farms off 37 and not one was spinning. 4000 wind generators offline.

My Dad had a NG lamp put in his house in Michigan. He said that he left it on all the time in winter. I asked why, he said the power goes off a lot and this is his nightlight and emergency heat source. Not sure he ever ran the AC there.

 

[shutterbug]

There is a lot of chattering lately about how EVs will put a tremendous strain on the electric grid in CA. But that ignores the inconvenient fact that CA has had rolling blackouts for well over 20 years. Long before there were EVs in any significant numbers. CA's problems are caused by general incompetence and mismanagement.

I was in LA area in December 2000 for my sister's wedding. At that time there were widespread rolling blackouts that couldn't possibly be blamed on EVs and heatwave increasing AC use.

 

[sotek2345]

Nuclear is a great option. Of course the big prize is nuclear fusion. But NG can not go. Wind and solar need 100% backup, or the grid will fail. There is no storage, so if the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing there would be no energy produced in real time and so no energy available. It's a very simple concept, but one that not a lot of people realize.

You can point to the two or three grid-scale battery facilities and say that's the solution, but they don't exist right now in 99.9% of the market. Even if they did, with the number you would have to build and a battery life span of 15 years, how green is that?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for renewables. I have solar on my roof. I'm buying an electric truck. I support the progress, but we ain't there yet. Not even close. All the renewables are redundant at this point, because you have to have 100% backup in order to have a stable grid.

I would say the bigger prize is room temperature superconductors. If we had those we could transmit power losslessly over any distance. The wind is always blowing and it is always sunny somewhere.

For grid level storage, I still think pumped hydro is a better option than batteries whenever possible. And you get free bonus energy whenever it rains!

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