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

[sotek2345]

For short term outages, you may have a point, but usually short term outages aren’t an issue, unless you have an empty tank or a low state of charge.

Having been through many events in which there is prolonged loss of power, I am thinking the comparison is not as simple as you make it. For instance, one small generator can power the gas pumps to fill hundreds of cars. It would take that generator a day to charge one car. Also, many of us have gas cans at home. I usually fill 15 gallons in addition to full tanks in the cars before a hurricane hits. Finally, when there are weather-related power outages, they are usually localized. You can always find a gas station with power. That is not the same for electrical charging at this point.

But this thread is (or was) about the grid handling EV’s.

To be fair to EVs. If it is a localized outage, all you need to do is drive out of the outage and find a plug somewhere. High speed charging may not be everywhere we want yet, but any outlet can work in a pinch.

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[ExCivilian]

For short term outages, you may have a point, but usually short term outages aren’t an issue, unless you have an empty tank or a low state of charge.

Having been through many events in which there is prolonged loss of power, I am thinking the comparison is not as simple as you make it. For instance, one small generator can power the gas pumps to fill hundreds of cars. It would take that generator a day to charge one car. Also, many of us have gas cans at home. I usually fill 15 gallons in addition to full tanks in the cars before a hurricane hits. Finally, when there are weather-related power outages, they are usually localized. You can always find a gas station with power. That is not the same for electrical charging at this point.

But this thread is (or was) about the grid handling EV’s.

There are a number of us in this conversation who believe that we're going to need all of the energy sources we can harness to get us into the next century. Dave is on record as stating we'll *never* be able to fully move away from fossil fuels and I tend to agree with that point of his, which is highlighted by your examples above. The example you provided is true for a developed nation let alone those who don't even have roads!

The less discussed aspect of Europe and CA (among others, but these are two significant consumers of fossil fuel energy) moving away from fossil fuels and ICE vehicles is that it frees up a tremendous amount of energy for the rest of the world. It buys us some time although I don't know how much. The fact that China is bringing fossil fuel generators online isn't particularly relevant to my thinking on this. While I wish that wasn't the case it clearly is necessary to their economy. Developed nations can't suck all the resources from the ground and then demand less developed nations have to read by candlelight. I mean, we can, but it clearly won't work.

So the only thing that makes sense to me is a combined energy policy where we mix and match to the best our abilities while making our best attempts to mitigate any damage we're doing in the process.

 

[Nick Gerteis]

That’s an opinion piece, not a news article. There are opinion pieces that would counter a lot of the things said in that opinion piece about how good batteries are. I am not taking sides because I don’t know enough about it, but some of the questions to ask when you read something like that are: Where did the minerals for these batteries come from? What type of mining was done to get them? What type of energy went into the mining? How long do they last?

I did read an article recently that said that China is building coal plants faster than we are removing them. Just things to think about. Grid-scale batteries may be a good green choice. I don’t know. Seems like nuclear is better if you want green.

Nuclear? But-
“I am not taking sides because I don’t know enough about it, but some of the questions to ask when you read something like that are: Where did the minerals for these (nuclear fuel rods)come from? What type of mining was done to get them? What type of energy went into the mining? How long do they last?”
As you can see, our hunger for energy will unfortunately always involve some degree of environmental impact. All we are trying to do is find the least bad way of keeping our industrialized society and the pleasant perks it provides going. Renewables, storage, and EVs are our best bet right now.

 

[Nick Gerteis]

It's not realistic because we don't have all that infrastructure right now. That's ignoring the reality that it's going to take a bit more than some hills, some pumps, and some turbine generators to supply 40 million people with electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing--it's also going to take a lot of water.

I can only imagine the reason you didn't list "water" as an essential component to that system is that you're assuming the water is there and that we just have to build infrastructure around it to harness energy from it. Assuming the water is there, or that it will always be there, is a dangerous assumption.

The same unprecedented heat that underlies unprecedented energy usage and unprecedented forest fires is also causing unprecedented lack of water. Here is the impact of the once mighty Colorado river drying up on our historical hydro-electric projects:

Regardless, unless some people are ready to muster an argument against transitional battery storage that is *currently* allowing CA to shut down its fossil fuel generators because it's not the end-all-be-all perfect solution we'd all prefer, the idea that we ought not use batteries because storing energy on our waterways is technically feasible seems like an unrealistic and untenable position to me.

I don't see the value in debating which sources of energy are better because we currently need them all to get off fossil fuels...unless one doesn't think it urgent to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Agree with everything, but couldn’t CA use sea water for pumped hydro? Not sure if that’s workable? The elevation difference is already there.

 

[ExCivilian]

Agree with everything, but couldn’t CA use sea water for pumped hydro? Not sure if that’s workable? The elevation difference is already there.

I don't know the feasibility of harnessing the ocean for our energy needs. I've read a mix of opinions regarding using ocean water for energy generation but I haven't found anything regarding energy *storage*.

There are technical limitations, economic limitations, space limitations, and for lack of a better term, cultural limitations--I don't know how much appetite exists in CA to dot our coastal horizon with hydro plants. Some communities either won't or *can't* (due to laws) implement such designs into their coastline.

But to your point, if we can do it I'm all for it and that's one more source of energy we will need to reply upon. Again, to be clear, the football field-sized batteries already replaced some of our traditional generators. It's not a plan or something being proposed--it's already here and now.

I don't even know how many Californians know about those batteries. I actually find it strange that I didn't, which was one of the reasons I posted the story. I was trying to find out how we managed to make it through our historic energy demand last week without shutting anything down (that wasn't due to forest fire risks) and I came across that article explaining what we've been doing for the past several years.

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