Electric Utilities can Tell your EV when to Charge

So imagine that you get home, the batteries on your electric car are near an empty charge, but you do not immediately begin charging because the electricity prices do not come down until after midnight. Your charger may even be on a preset timer to not start charging until midnight.
You arrive home at 6:00 in the evening. But then before your car begins charging, something unexpected comes up and you have to go out again, at 7:00, 8:00, or even 10:00. But the batteries in your car are not charged, even though you've been home for hours.

 

I'm going to point out that, if the cars need to be charged at night due to excessive power load on the infrastructure during the day, then it is going to be less likely that the power is going to come from renewable energy. Solar energy does not work during the night.

What a lot of people do not realize is that storing huge amounts of energy in batteries is very expensive. If solar energy had to be stored in batteries to be used at night, it would probably be more than twice as expensive. You'd basically be using solar panels to charge a battery, which will then send energy through an inefficient power distribution system, to finally charge the other battery in a car.

 

1, Most Americans have a second car. Use it.
2. This seldom happens with everyday driving. You're looking at a fraction-of-1% scenario. So I would suggest, in this rare case, to override the Utility algorithm with the APP, and pay a few more dollars to charge upon arriving home. This is akin to running an ICE out of gas in a small town where prices are about 50% higher. You have to pay the piper.
3. Ride your bike instead

 

That will not work for all people in all situations.
Maybe the person's spouse is working the late shift, or one of their teen children has borrowed the other car.

More Americans are living alone in single person households these days and only have one car.

And take a look at a lot of the homes built in the newest developments that are crammed together, with no available parking on the street and driveways too small to park a car into. And the majority of Americans don't have enough space in their garage to park two cars, since they're using it as a storage room. Many areas are so overcrowded that it can be a real aggravation to be able to find parking on the street.

And plus there's a push by the Left to ban conventional cars. Obviously if a family has two electric cars, it's probably not going to solve the problem.

 

Totally unrealistic in many areas.

 

Yes, but most of renewable electric power is from wind. That said, the Utility controls the charging based on all factors. If they have a lot of wind at midnight, they might enable charging then. If they have a lot of solar input, at 1 pm, they might enable the charging then.

Peak loading is the name of the game with Utilities. Whatever source you are charging from is irrelevant to them. They would most likely never give you a discount between the hours of 4 -7 pm on a summer evening. You will pay top-dollar. I used midnight as an example. In reality, there is a wide range. See this graph (Massachusetts Utility). Actually, all customers can take advantage of this situation. For example, start the laundry before leaving for work in the morning, instead of the evening.

 

I commuted to work by bike, year-round, for 30 years. But agreed- not for the squeamish. I was a professional, and was still involved in some not-my-fault accidents with cars.

 

My point is that charging times require some preparation and planning, and life circumstances cannot always be predicted.

If it takes an hour to charge a car, and you suddenly find out that you have to leave in 5 minutes, then there is a problem.
(This is assuming you have a fast charger, which many electric car owners do not, due to the greater expense and power draw that require special electrical outlet wiring. Slower chargers could take 4 or 5 hours)

 

Yawns appealing to yourself as an authority is yet another non-answer. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory say it is sustainable only to about 25% EV penetration and that a neighborhood transformer connected to 6 households can only charge 11 EVs at level 1 charging but starts to see demand exceed nominal capacity as soon as 1 Level 2 charger is turned on. Uncoordinated charging is a real world world problem that a phone app isn't going to magically solve.

 

I am waiting for EVs to go at least partly solar - well, being an Aussie it makes sense to us. And we are the ones who have been running the World Solar Challenge since 1987



if you can get a car to run on solar that distance then what next for the world??

https://worldsolarchallenge.org/the-event/history

 

Absolutely, I mentioned this on one of these threads. EV's could easily make their roofs, and probably their hoods, out of solar panels. EV's have regenerative braking, so they already have the circuitry to generate power back to the battery. Incorporating solar into the circuitry would be relatively simple.

My initial reaction to this idea was that "it's so little energy". But I don't think that's entirely the case. Every time the EV is pulled over to park, it could be recharging the battery for hours and hours in the sun.

And when you think of this on a National level, it could amount to a huge amount of energy - maybe 5-10% of EV charging throughout the country.

 

Surprising claim.

 

Surprising, because I've often demonstrated the efficiency that would result from electrifying our society, and the waste and inefficiency that would be eliminated from society by transitioning from fossil fuels.

 

They could go partly solar, but it wouldn't be a very big part. Even assuming the solar panels could provide 7% of the car's power would be extremely optimistic.

So it probably would not really be seen as worthwhile.

Those 100% solar cars used for races are extremely lightweight. Even the bigger ones weigh only 150kg, which is six times less than the very tiny Japanese kei car. And kei cars are too small to be street legal in the U.S.

If you look at those Australian solar race cars, they have very tiny cabin areas.
And of course the Australian outback is a very optimal place for solar panels, with intense sun and constant clear skies.
The inside of these solar cars can get quite hot and uncomfortable, since it is too difficult for the solar panels to provide enough power for air conditioning.

 

Sounds like an outline for a novel.

 

I'm not sure what the percentage would be, but 7% would be a lot of power, from a national standpoint (300 million cars in US). The circuitry is already there to reverse electrical current into the battery. Regenerative braking does that. That said, I'm not sure if the solar would charge the vehicle if the vehicle wasn't running. Additional circuitry might be required to allow that to happen.

 

Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.

 

But isn't the problem that the EV charging will typically occur at the same time as homes also increase demand for lighting, heating, cooking, entertainment etc?

 

Just the opposite. Utilities control when charging occurs - during low demand.

 

Yup. Fiction.

 

Electrification is the key. So much inefficiency would be eliminated from society by transitioning from fossil fuels. The scenario mentioned in the title of this thread is just one example. Regenerative braking in EVs and Hybrids - all wasted power in ICEs. Solar is a peak load electrical producer, resulting in less construction of new power plants. Residential solar, when producing a surplus, transports its current onto the grid, where neighbors use it to power to power their home, with negligible voltage loss, compared to 5-10% voltage loss from current delivered from the Utility source. Many other examples.

 

Nonsense. The primary product of renewable energy schemes is charlatanry.
Officialdom Responds To Doubts That A Renewables-Based Electricity System Will Work
March 24, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  The single biggest problem with the Left’s “climate” agenda is that the proposed response to the alleged crisis — replacement of fossil fuels in the energy system with intermittent wind-and-sun-based electricity generation — is not going to work. This is obvious to anyone who considers the subject seriously for any amount of time.
  
  
• Yet any mention of this issue has been almost completely banished from the mainstream media, from academia, from government, and from social media. It remains to a few lonely voices (such as, here in New York, myself, Roger Caiazza, and Ken Girardin of the Empire Center) to keep the subject in the public consciousness.
  
  
• As small and lonely as our voices may be, somehow we must be getting under their skin. We know that because increasingly officialdom feels a need to respond publicly to our criticisms.
  
  
• But how can they give a plausible response, given that we are absolutely right and a wind-and-sun-based electricity system is never going to work?
  
  
• Easy! — Just treat the public like morons.

READ MORE

Starting To Notice That The Energy Transition Is Not Happening
March 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates.
  
  
• Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?
  

• No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.
  
  
• A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14.
  

READ MORE

 

He is so clueless because he doesn't realize the increase in Solar and Wind power MUST be backed up by an increase in NG, Coal, Nuclear power to keep the system reasonably stable.

 

You've got a new bogus source!

 

Do you dispute the facts of the matter?