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Grid monitor warns of U.S. blackouts in ‘sobering report’


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3 hours ago, Harley Lover said:

 

This is standard operating procedure during major heatwaves in North Texas. Oncor usually does a decent job minimizing any inconvenience of load shedding to its customers.

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45 minutes ago, Joe771476 said:

California is NOT the auto mfrs.' friend! First they'll get all cars to be electric.  Then when the power grid goes down from too much charging, people will have use mass transit!  Ford better start making buses and trains...............NOW!

 

"Power grid goes down from too much charging" of BEV is a myth. However, you make a good point about increasing access to mass transit, and Ford's involvement in that area. In 2019, Ford acquired a company called Journey Holding and integrated its intelligent transportation system software with Ford's own TransLoc software for managing public and private transit operations. Ford Smart Mobility Acquiring Journey Holding; Accelerating Solutions for Public and Private Transit Systems | Ford Media Center

 

Selling these kinds of software and services to public transit operators is a much better fit for Ford nowadays than making buses and trains.

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18 hours ago, rperez817 said:

 

"Power grid goes down from too much charging" of BEV is a myth.

 

Perhaps Tesla didn't get the memo: 

Quote

As a lengthy heatwave sears Texas, the state's power grid operator is struggling to meet demand, forcing it to seek reduced usage from industrial companies in the state. 

Tesla urged its customers to avoid charging their cars during peak hours to avoid adding strain to the power grid in Texas.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technologyinvesting/texas-power-grid-woes-hit-toyota-tesla/ar-AAZAaUo?li=BBnb7Kz

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59 minutes ago, Harley Lover said:

Tesla urged its customers to avoid charging their cars during peak hours to avoid adding strain to the power grid in Texas.

 

You missed the peak hours-you can still recharge from 9PM to 5AM, or whatever Texas off peak hours are. 

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1 hour ago, silvrsvt said:

You missed the peak hours-you can still recharge from 9PM to 5AM, or whatever Texas off peak hours are. 

 

Oncor's summer on-peak demand period is 1 PM to 7 PM CST Monday - Friday, June 1 to September 30, excluding weekends and federal holidays.

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2 hours ago, silvrsvt said:

 

You missed the peak hours-you can still recharge from 9PM to 5AM, or whatever Texas off peak hours are. 


For now yes, if you have at home charging and you’re not traveling.  But if we had a lot more BEVs especially with owners who can’t charge at home it would be an issue.  If it’s 1 pm and you’re 100 miles from home with 10% charge you have to recharge.

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The U.S. can build as many charging stations as it wants but needs to seriously address the power grid issues and how we generate electricity in this country. There's a basic conflict with increased regulations on existing/traditional energy production, blocking efficient increased pipeline transportation of energy, making investment in increased refinery capacity cost prohibitive while pushing the transition to BEV vehicles that will increase the demands on the power grid before enough "clean energy" sources are available in the quantities necessary to offset the costs involved for the transition. Both Federal and State gas taxes are used to fund infrastructure maintenance but as the BEV market share increases, new technology can be expected to be utilized to monitor BEV vehicle usage in order implement new taxes to make up for the reduced traditional gas tax funding.

 

Governments mandating a rapid transition from ICE to BEV vehicles have to address the real-world, related energy costs of the transition and the impact on the consumers. Market and economic factors in the past two years have continued to drive both new and pre-owned vehicle prices to continuous higher levels. At some point, the market will reach its limit as to how high prices can go before impacting sales. The government subsidies/tax credits for BEV vehicles have given the manufacturers a license to charge premium prices for vehicles in much the same way that Student Loans gave colleges a license to substantially increase tuition fees because the funding was so easily available. Eliminate the BEV tax credits and you'll see a real competitive market that will drive down the costs to the consumer and then increase the BEV consideration rate.      

 

The U.S. has gone from being a net energy exporter to being dependent again on imports. We're reducing our Strategic Petroleum Reserve by a million barrels per day for a minor reduction in gas prices without regard to the cost of replenishing that oil which was intended for emergency use only. Increased solar and wind power will help but are very dependent on climate conditions and the technology for energy storage is still evolving. Germany is heavily dependent on foreign energy after a policy of shutting down nuclear plants, yet France uses nuclear energy to supply 80% of its needs.

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6 hours ago, Harley Lover said:

 I didn't miss anything - if you  believe the 'average' consumer is paying attention to 'peak hours', you have more faith than I do.

 

Utility companies, working with automakers for BEV, EVSE providers, and governments, are increasingly offering and informing consumers of TOU plans for their electric billing, including those dedicated specifically for EV charging (as opposed to whole house TOU). Attached is a presentation summarizing 3 case studies.

 

Highlights from Austin Energy case study in Texas.

  • Austin Energy developed a $30 monthly subscription titled EV360, that offers customers with a capacity demand of less than 10 kW the ability to use unlimited off-peak (7pm-2pm weekdays, anytime during weekends) kWh’s for EV charging.
  • Customers are able to charge on-peak, but will incur a bill adder of $0.14/kWh during the winter and $0.40/kWh during the summer.
  • To date, the rate has resulted in 99% of participants using off-peak electricity.

Residential_EV_Time_Varying_Rates_Highlights_from_3_Case_Studies_Slide_Deck.pdf

Edited by rperez817
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American economy is totally dependent on low cost energy and labor to function, when we start changing that dynamic, the whole system steps outside of decades of trending and predictability. Increasing the cost of coal, gasoline, diesel, gas and electric production costs, throw in an under capacity electric distribution new work and you have a recipe for disaster. The US is not ready for the massive change that some think is coming in th e next five years…….the answer is that it’s going to take much longer for everything to transform and switch over.

 

I don’t know what the immediate answer is but maybe efficient hybrids have a bigger role to play in the transformation, jumping straight to 100% BEVs might not be the smartest move……which is why I like Ford multi electric strategy………..

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26 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

under capacity electric distribution new work

 

For clarification, U.S. electric distribution network/grid isn't "under capacity", but it can benefit from better resiliency. Earlier in this thread, I shared this explanation that Blue Oval Forums member bzcat wrote in another thread.

 

Smart people have already studied the grid capacity and the general consensus is we have plenty of generating capacity to accommodate EVs since most of them charge at night when the electricity is just wasted. We can add resiliency to the grid with more storage capacity but we don't really need a whole bunch of new capacity. Now, if you get your news from rightwing fake news peddler, I can understand why you think we have widespread blackout problem but the truth is we don't have them very often except for real disasters like the recent Texas deep freeze that took out conventional power supplies. And the texas blackout could have been avoided if their grid was connected to the rest of the country so it was a self-inflicted problem (and yes, I'm in the energy industry... it's my job to know)

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1 hour ago, rperez817 said:

 

For clarification, U.S. electric distribution network/grid isn't "under capacity", but it can benefit from better resiliency. Earlier in this thread, I shared this explanation that Blue Oval Forums member bzcat wrote in another thread.

 

There’s a difference between sufficient generation capacity and the distribution grid, the distribution grid can barely handle today’s increasing load, big infrastructure spending needs to happen to enable more public charging outlets to supply at the charging speeds required. The latter is simply not sustainable without that distribution network improving.

 

One of the basic assumptions being made is that most people will home base charge at night, this might be true for the first few years but as we see more and more electric vehicles on our road, those people are going to want to fast charge when they need it, not 240 volt trickle charge at night.

 

Edited by jpd80
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WHY would anyone do that? That makes zero sense. If your daily fill-up consists of a five second unplug and five second plug in, why would you trade that for a return to visiting a fueling station? Usually your posts are good reads, but again, this makes zero sense to me.

Edited by AGR
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59 minutes ago, AGR said:

WHY would anyone do that? That makes zero sense. If your daily fill-up consists of a five second unplug and five second plug in, why would you trade that for a return to visiting a fueling station? Usually your posts are good reads, but again, this makes zero sense to me.

Yes, home charging will remain but I have a feeling that as BEVs get more common,

people are going to do more daily miles which will require more away from home charging.

Thats when the need for those fast charging stations comes in to get you home.

Edited by jpd80
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28 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Because 240 volt overnight charging won’t be enough for people who do more than a small daily commute.
Please remember to read more than the first line of my post when responding……

 

No, sorry, you are just plain wrong. Unless you have a 100 mile each way commute, charging overnight on 240v is going to take 4-5 hours max. On shorter commutes, you could probably recharge every other night for the amount same of time.

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34 minutes ago, AGR said:

 

No, sorry, you are just plain wrong. Unless you have a 100 mile each way commute, charging overnight on 240v is going to take 4-5 hours max. On shorter commutes, you could probably recharge every other night for the amount same of time.

Many people now commute + 2 hours each way these days with either AC or heating so that chops int advertised range and then if those people use their vehicles during the day to get to different places as part of their work, you’re looking at a whole different scenario.

 

And to get more than Level 1 charging (7kw) you have to pay for upgrade to Level. 2 22 kw charging. I agree that home charging will be the main focus of EV owners but don’t think it will suit as many as you think. There are a lot of assumptions about peoples vehicle use and habits that may not be true when generalised across the many…the basic premise is that the vehicles sits in the garage and folks don’t go out at night….

Edited by jpd80
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24 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Many people now commute + 2 hours each way these days with either AC or heating so that chops int advertised range

and then if those people use their vehicles during the day to get to different places as part of their work, you’re looking 

at a whole different scenario.

 

You're talking about probably less than 5% of commuters. Add in the driving FOR work and it's about 0.05%

Maybe Oz is different, but I'm talking about the USA..

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21 minutes ago, AGR said:

 

You're talking about less than 5% of commuters. Add in the driving FOR work and it's about 0.05%

Less than 5% of Commuters? I thought that those commuters doing longer distances  would be the prime candidates for EVs.

 

You’re obviously very passionate about this so I’m going to give you final reply and step back…

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1 hour ago, AGR said:

 

No, sorry, you are just plain wrong. Unless you have a 100 mile each way commute, charging overnight on 240v is going to take 4-5 hours max. On shorter commutes, you could probably recharge every other night for the amount same of time.


Oh for Pete’s sake.  A VERY large portion of the population cannot charge at home.  Apartments, condos, older houses.  Everybody likes to ignore this but it’s reality.  Not a big deal today as most BEV owners today have home charging but in order to expand BEV ownership and market share this market has to be addressed and their only choice is public charging.

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2 hours ago, akirby said:


Oh for Pete’s sake.  A VERY large portion of the population cannot charge at home.  Apartments, condos, older houses.  Everybody likes to ignore this but it’s reality.  Not a big deal today as most BEV owners today have home charging but in order to expand BEV ownership and market share this market has to be addressed and their only choice is public charging.

The only problem I see is houses and apartments without their own parking.

Eventually, any apartments or condos with their own parking will have to install chargers if they want to keep or attract tenants. Old houses will have to rewire if the owners want decent resale value. (old houses have to be rewired eventually anyway)

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44 minutes ago, AGR said:

The only problem I see is houses and apartments without their own parking.

Eventually, any apartments or condos with their own parking will have to install chargers if they want to keep or attract tenants. Old houses will have to rewire if the owners want decent resale value. (old houses have to be rewired eventually anyway)


That is not feasible at all.  The solution is faster public charging.

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3 hours ago, Chrisgb said:

Theoretically, you could charge at home during off peak hours and return it during peak.  in practice, who knows?

You still lose energy in the charging- discharging cycle.  That was the point.  You will lose 10-20% in the process depending on how efficient the power conversion is.

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