Switching to electric vehicles (EV) - has the ability to supply the required power been addressed?

Great Debates
21

There are some power companies that have tariffs that incentivize EV charging when demand is low.

This can done with a simple timer or it can made automatic resolving to variable prices on 30 minute time slots if a suitable smart meter is used.

Given the energy crisis in Europe, this kind of peak demand reduction is going to greatly encouraged.

Such innovations don’t need changes to the grid. Demand limiting has been around a long time for large business customers with high energy demands. It will simply downsize to become available to domestic customers. People like cheap.

There are also Vehicle to Grid pilot projects but that requires bi-directional chargers.

These could save the need for a power station or two.

Grids are designed to cope with peak demand. There is a lot of spare capacity available outside of peak times. EV charging patterns, where charging can be done at home, are very different from the routine of filling up an ICE vehicle at a gas station. EV charging facilities needed for long distance trips can also use batteries that can be charged at cheaper rates at times of low demand.

It is still early days with EVs and all the charging infrastructure technology.

Are there any dire warnings about EVs from grid operators that are credible?

Grids have bigger challenges coping with renewables. They need more wires. But that is a different story.

22

It has not been addressed; they are just assuming that the power supply problems will be worked out by then. No real plan as far as I can see and I’ve done extensive research on this topic. No plan for more public transportation, or for nationalizing the railroads, or really anything.

By they I mean states like my home state of New York. They passed a bill that will outlaw the sale of most ICE vehicles by 2035.

That date will almost certainly be pushed back, but it is foolish to set a date in the first place without having any other policies to support it.

23

On the contrary. Actually setting a goal with a deadline is the only way to get those policies in place at all. Or do you pack your luggage before deciding where to travel?

24

It’s not a goal it’s a mandate in NYS. They are not saying they would like to achieve such and such a thing by this date, that would be a goal.

It’s already been passed as law, prematurely in my opinion and purely for optics. I’m not too worried because the date will keep getting pushed back. The politicians just think it looks good now to have a strong pro stance on BEV’s. They don’t even have to make any policy changes right now, which to me is proof that it’s not a serious thing, or goal as you put it.

I expect that when 2035 comes, they’ll say we need ten more years, and on and on until the change happens naturally.

That change will be the end of the car-based society. It’s not sustainable and will be looked at as a fluke of a different time but it will take more than 12 years to get to this conclusion.

25

You can’t have it both ways. If the date just gets pushed back if it turns out we aren’t ready, then it’s a goal. But one with the power of law, and therefore the ability to drive other laws.

There are policy changes being made. California is mandating rooftop solar for new homes. Electrical generation is on a path to pure renewables (hitting 100% in 2045, with intermediate goals up to then). We’re already building renewables at a prodigious rate, as well as battery storage.

Nonsense. All-EV ground transportation will be a new golden age for personal transport, especially coupled with self-driving. None of the advantages of cars go away with EVs, but many of the disadvantages do disappear. Environmentalists hoping for the end of cars are going to be bitterly disappointed.

26

It’s not a mandate, it’s a goal, because it’s not 2035 yet. But folks have already pointed out in this thread what’s already been done, and what’s continuing to be done, and what could be done with no additional infrastructure, so it’s simply not true that there are “no other policies to support it”.

27

Yes, apps and all that is a great policy.

28

Setting deadlines and shutting down power stations on the assumption that someone will just ‘figure out’ how to solve the issues that arise is how Europe got into the trouble it is currently in.

Converting light vehicles to EV will require huge increases in mining for copper, lithium, cobalt, and a number of other materials that are in short supply. And yet the same people demanding we move to EVs are also working hard to oppose new mines and new electrical generation other than wind and solar.

If we convert all those vehicles to EV, we will need about 24% more electrical generation. If you want the cars to charge at night, you can’t use solar. Wind is intermittant, and can go down for long periods of time.

We have 2734MW of wind capacity in Alberta. For at least a week now, it’s been almost all offline. At this moment, wind is generating at 0.2% of capacity, at 6 MW. When the sun goes down, 94% of our energy will come from fossil fuels. That means all those cars charging at night will be charged with fossil fuels, if there’s power to charge them at all.

Obviously, adding more wind and solar does not fix this problem. We could have 10X more wind generation capacity, and we’d still only be getting 2% of our power from it.

The only thing that can make wind and solar work is energy storage. And the world isn’t even close to having enough storage for more than a few minutes. There isn’t enough proven reserves of lithium to provide even an hour’s worth of global power storage, even if we didn’t use it to make car batteries. And there isn’t enough lithium to meet the demand required for the 2035 mandates. At 4% of sales we are already resource limited for electric cars.

Set all the deadlines you want. Offer as large a subsidy for electric cars as you want. In a resource constrained market, all that will do is drive up prices.

What’s really needed is a rapid ramp up in mining for these resources. But ‘rapid’ and ‘mining’ don’t go together well. Expect serious resource shortages for at least a decade, and more likely two or three.

A related problem is that the ‘green’ supply chain mostly comes from some of the world’s worst places : China, the Congo, etc. American mining expansion is mired in red tape and opposition from the same people who want a ‘green’ transition.

29

Yawn. Some extremely minor and short-term challenges to work through. It this this kind of fear-mongering about solvable problems that is the conservative playbook.

Nothing ever gets done unless there is a driving force. Maybe that’s an economic incentive, maybe a law, maybe something else. But there must be a force or else there is no change.

By setting a deadline, it gives all those parties that might be interested in some investment (say, opening a new mine) a great deal of confidence that their investment will pay off–that it is not some temporary fad.

Do you think these problems aren’t being worked on already? The demand for these resources provides the drive to expand production. Investors see the writing on the wall at this point, and realize that in 10 years there will be high demand for all these things, and therefore the incentive to open new mines and other facilities.

Hence why we should be setting mandates now about where we want to be in 10-15 years.

30

I agree with most of what you said but the conclusion. I totally disagree that we need to ramp up mining, that is just the same thing we are doing now.

To me it’s clear now how this will go. People will move back to cities, cars in these metro areas will be hydrogen powered fuel cell cars, as It’s going to be easier to produce the hydrogen in a central plant than to upgrade the grid to power BEV’s.

But they won’t be the main form of transportation. The railroads will be nationalized, and people will have priority over freight. They will also be electrified with the leftover energy from the hydrogen plants.

ICE will still be in use for limited reasons. Trucks, farms, things like that.

31

Everyone keeps saying that the problems are being worked on. The problems require physical infrastructure not apps.

I don’t see any of that being built in NYS. We have transformers blowing in the summer just from AC demand.

32

The cities would have to be huge. And I don’t see a need for this. I could drive to work and back for two weeks on one charge (and that doesn’t even account for days working at home). Moving to the city isn’t going to reduce my power usage much.

33

Not huge, dense yes, but optimized for not being car based.

34

Apparently you aren’t aware that renewable plants are being built at a prodigious rate. See:

Solar+wind+battery was >35 GW added last year. And that will very likely increase.

Total renewable production in California was 93,333 GWh in 2021:
2021 Total System Electric Generation).

That’s enough to drive 370 billion miles. Which is 29M cars at an average of 13,000 miles/year (about double the number of cars we actually have).

The grid needs to be beefed up, to be sure, and capacity increased. But the amounts are not very large even compared to what exists today. And renewable capacity is already growing very rapidly.

I don’t know what NY is doing. Maybe they’re all dipshits, but I doubt it. They have more than a decade to figure these things out.

Mischaracterizing all this work as “apps” does your argument a disservice, to put it mildly.