Can the US go 100% BEV new car sales by 2035?

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Yes, President Biden did restore California's rights to set its stricter standard. There's no question about it.

However, take a look: The Judicial Supremacy has been overruling President Biden's executive powers:

CDC enforcing eviction moratorium due to Covid-19
OSHA enforcing workplace vaccine mandate.
EPA limits on greenhouse gases

With this trend, Judicial Supremacy will be able to overrule President Biden's order that restored California's rights to set its stricter standard.

You're right, they could be evil and decide like the Trump administration that "(B) such State does not need such State standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions", but it should be pretty easy for California and the EPA administration to argue that they have identified compelling reasons to take action. After all, pollution from transportation sickens and kills a lot of people, Congress refuses to take aggressive action to deal with it, EVs reduce pollution and the mandate raises EV sales.

I think it would be harder to overturn a decision of the EPA in a hostile administration, but such an administration might make it easier by whining about how California's decisions are forcing their will on other states (which they did), even though that isn't a basis on which the EPA can refuse to allow California to have a waiver. (The power of California's rules actually comes from _other_ states choosing to adopt their rules. California is only 12% to 13% of the light vehicle market, but the bloc of states is over 40% of the market, and growing, as Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico joined)..

 

[DrLOAC]

Only if only the top 10% are the only ones allowed to drive. Grid won’t support it.

This is a another standard fallacy. The problem isn’t with the grid. The grid can support charging a 50/50 mix of EVs/ICE today without much of any change.

Don’t believe me? Follow along

We’ll use Texas’s crappy grid as an example.

Here’s a standard summer day for Texas’s grid:

Demand at midnight is ~ approximately 14GW lower than the committed capacity. (a good reason for the power companies to offer cheaper power overnight since they don’t like large swings in demand)

By 8AM the delta is about 9.5GW

At 8PM the delta is about 7GW rising to 9GW by midnight.

So from 12:00AM - 8:00AM let’s call it an average of 11.75GW x 8 hours = 94GWH

And from 8:00PM - 11:59PM another 8GW x 4 hours = 32GWH

Now most EV owners charge their cars at night. For Texas today that’s a total of 126GWH of overnight margin.

My 2021 M3 LR gets about 4 miles / kWh while something like an F150 Lightning will get around 2 miles / kWh. SUVs like the Y will get around 3.5miles/ kWh

Out of the the 24 million registered cars in Texas about 4.5M are pickups so let’s assume an average BEV fleet economy of around 3.5 miles/kWh

That means the 126GWH of overnight margin could recharge 441M miles of range.

The average Texan drives 45 miles / day so that’s enough power to recharge 9.8M EVs or 41% of the total number of vehicles in Texas. That’s without changing how the grid is operated except for maybe maintaining a slightly higher committed capacity as demand narrows the margin.

They try to keep a minimum 3.5GW margin between demand & supply. Today there’s an average of 7GW of difference between the forecasted demand and the committed capacity. That’s enough To charge another 3.2M cars for a total of 13M cars or 54% of all cars on the road in Texas.

The Grid is fine. 50% of cars could be BEVs without increasing the peak power used today. Not the all time peak, just the peak today. If they were to run the grid at it’s all time peak 24 hours a day they could easily replace 100%.

The real issue is the availability of level 2 charging for people who don’t have access to driveways & garages.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Out of the the 24 million registered cars in Texas about 4.5M are pickups so let’s assume an average BEV fleet economy of around 3.5 miles/kWh

You need to lower the average to account for charging losses. Knock off 25%.

But still, it's true it's a fallacy. National Grid in the UK wants _more_ EVs.
It's not just that you can shift demand, but also lots of EVs implies lots of cheap batteries, and that will change generation and distribution markedly.

 

[bruce4000]

Utilities are in the business of providing electrical infrastructure. For a city with a stsble population, demand has been getting more efficient ie appliances, led light bulbs etc. so having new demand for electricity is generally a good thing for them. Like Lays says, eat more chips, we’ll make more.

 

[ThomasD]

You could install charging street side and charge people to park and charge. Set a time limit. A65fter the time expires you get a ticket. Just like parking meters. These chargers aren't even being used. Wonder why.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395931472125587457

 

[ElectricIAC]

You could install charging street side and charge people to park and charge. Set a time limit. A65fter the time expires you get a ticket. Just like parking meters. These chargers aren't even being used. Wonder why.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395931472125587457

Only if the tents have to pay parking too.

 

[ThomasD]

Where are all of the battery backup systems to the grid we keep hearing about?

 

[ElectricIAC]

Where are all of the battery backup systems to the grid we keep hearing about?

Waiting on permits.

 

[ThomasD]

The Governor won't step in and speedup the process

 

[ElectricIAC]

The Governor won't step in and speedup the process

Too busy telling people not to go to Florida and Texas.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

You could install charging street side and charge people to park and charge. Set a time limit. A65fter the time expires you get a ticket. Just like parking meters. These chargers aren't even being used. Wonder why.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395931472125587457

Hey, at least they're not ICEing the spots.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Where are all of the battery backup systems to the grid we keep hearing about?

Gradually being added.

Of the 6.1GW of utility-scale battery systems at the end of June 2022, 3.3GW was installed in the 12 months to June 2022.
California has 3,3GW of all non-pumped-hydro utility-scale storage, and 1.7GW of that was installed in the 12 months to June 2022.
Texas added 0.6GW, Florida 0.5GW, Nevada 0.2GW and Massachusetts 0.1GW.

Only solar PV, wind and CCGT have had more capacity added in the past 12 months and only PV has more planned for the next 12 months (21.9GW v 7.8GW).
(Although those plans don't always pan out. The planned battery additions for 12 months to June 2022 were 4.6GW. Sometimes they get delayed or dropped late.)

 

[nwdiver]

Where are all of the battery backup systems to the grid we keep hearing about?

Waiting until their existence makes sense mathematically. Why spend $1B to add 4 hours of 500MW battery generation when you can get 9,000 hours of 1GW with gas turbines for the same price? Why spend $1B to reduce gas use by 100GWh/yr with a battery when you can reduce it by >2,000GWh/yr with wind or solar?

We need more surplus wind or solar before battery backed systems make any sense.

 

[ThomasD]

You also have to overcome the not in my backyard.

When Residents Support Solar—Just ‘Not in My Backyard’

While the American public broadly favors expanding renewable energy, that support doesn’t always extend to the photovoltaic panels next door.

www.route-fifty.com

 

[ThomasD]

Should the Energy Companies and the Government use Emanant Domain to get land for Solar and Wind Farms

 

[ElectricIAC]

Should the Energy Companies and the Government use Emanant Domain to get land for Solar and Wind Farms

Absolutely not.

 

[Tam]

Should the Energy Companies and the Government use Emanant Domain to get land for Solar and Wind Farms

There are so many unused lands with no civilizations nearby to justify such drastic measures.

 

[israndy]

We need more surplus wind or solar before battery backed systems make any sense.

California Has Too Much Solar Power

In 2020, CAISO curtailed 1.5 million megawatt-hours of utility-scale solar, or 5 percent of its utility-scale solar production because supply…

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org

 

[israndy]

There are so many unused lands with no civilizations nearby to justify such drastic measures.

And wind is best put on hillsides that concentrate the wind, too steep to build housing on.

Solar is best on people's roofs or neighborhoods so the power gets used where it's generated.

 

[nwdiver]

California Has Too Much Solar Power

In 2020, CAISO curtailed 1.5 million megawatt-hours of utility-scale solar, or 5 percent of its utility-scale solar production because supply…

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org

It's a dynamic metric since the cost of solar, wind and storage changes but I think generally you need curtailment on the order of >20% on a regular basis for reducing curtailment with batteries to be cheaper than just adding more solar and wind.

It gets even more complicated if you 'value stack'. Curtailment reduction might only be worth ~$100M/yr but there's also value in resiliency and reducing transmission constraints.

Of course the cheapest solution to reducing curtailment is just shifting more demand to when the curtailment is occurring.