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Will the electricity provides be capable of supplying EV demand?

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We have surplus energy only at night, during the day we have to bring online peaking plants to meet demand. And the current night surplus will be the first thing an expansion of EVs will eat up. The reason we are building more nukes is because our energy supply will soon be outstripped by demand. We do NOT have other good options that are both carbon free and reliable. If you know of some, please let us know.
Sounds like you work in energy industry, if you do please post details.

Your location is Atlanta? Is it due to lack of power plants, RN and FF?
How much in your area is PV supplied?

EDIT: Apparently you do, reading a follow-up post.

You said:
While running existing plants at night will do the job, over time we will need to increase base load, and we do have time. But base load plants are expensive and take a long time to build and, unfortunately, the only base load option that is both clean and reliable is Nuclear, which remains controversial and is very, very

Personally I am not opposed to Nuclear, the safety of plants in US is far improved in last couple of decades, and the USN has an immaculate record.
Just as you said, it is controversial (due to idiots and surprise natural event) making cost and time to build almost suicidality expensive.
It is now about 10 years just to gain permission to build a NPP, let alone building one.
And then what to do with waste radioactive materials? 1000x worse than the NPP alone.

PV and Wind can be installed in a couple of weeks to a month. Storage systems can be built in as little time.
So primarily for expediency I am strongly for renewables, being carbon-free is added benefit.

And if people want to use FF, fine. We cannot trash ICE simply because of CO2 emissions, there needs to be a transition. It will be about 20 years before EV will be accepted by super majority.

I volunteer for a aviation museum, there will be no replacing FF for that (and there is a very good reason for the AvGas used today too, applies to ICE in future) ((Post coming.))
 
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Sounds like you work in energy industry, if you do please post details.

Your location is Atlanta? Is it due to lack of power plants, RN and FF?
How much in your area is PV supplied?

I used to work in the industry and yes, Atlanta, so I am not as up on the current issues / plans. But when I was involved planning for future power generation was always an important concern, as it should be. The plans I saw and decisions made were before anyone really considered the impacts of EVs since growth was very slow. Fortunatly, for the most part, EVs charge at night so we should be fine by tapping intermediate power plants, if needed. The Nuke being built here is Georgia is intended to increase the base load capacity, but as usual the project is very late and way over budget.

The power industry is actually very good at planning expansions - well maybe not Texas (sorry) - so I have no doubt it will not be a problem. In my mind the bigger issue is finding ways to move to / add carbon free power generation that is also reliable.

Ivan
 
I used to work in the industry and yes, Atlanta, so I am not as up on the current issues / plans. But when I was involved planning for future power generation was always an important concern, as it should be. The plans I saw and decisions made were before anyone really considered the impacts of EVs since growth was very slow. Fortunatly, for the most part, EVs charge at night so we should be fine by tapping intermediate power plants, if needed. The Nuke being built here is Georgia is intended to increase the base load capacity, but as usual the project is very late and way over budget.

The power industry is actually very good at planning expansions - well maybe not Texas (sorry) - so I have no doubt it will not be a problem. In my mind the bigger issue is finding ways to move to / add carbon free power generation that is also reliable.

Ivan
All the common forms of generation are pretty reliable, but they have varying failure rates, failure periods, maintenance downtime and consistency of fuel/energy supply.

What you need is reliable power supply, not reliable generation. Isolated thinking about reliability of generation sources is how people get trapped into thinking that a particular type of generation is necessary. But we have the generation sources we need, it's really just a question of finding the cheapest overall solution.
 
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The power industry is actually very good at planning expansions - well maybe not Texas (sorry) - so I have no doubt it will not be a problem. In my mind the bigger issue is finding ways to move to / add carbon free power generation that is also reliable.

Ivan
Thanks Ivan (added to my previous post, if not notice)

Texas is actually rapidly expanding wind (Tx may now have more wind then rest of US?). I frequently see rail shipments of turbines.
The winter disaster of Feb 14 was arrogant belief Texas does not get super cold (wrong!). One of our 4 nuke reactors had to emergency shut down because it froze! (water pipe apparently was too cold)

Adding PV on warehouses, Super Retail shops, and parking lots will go very far to supply power, and most used where generated so transmission loss if eliminated.
 
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What you need is reliable power supply, not reliable generation. Isolated thinking about reliability of generation sources is how people get trapped into thinking that a particular type of generation is necessary. But we have the generation sources we need, it's really just a question of finding the cheapest overall solution.
In the industry the single most important aspect is reliability and not the overall cheapest. And I do agree that overall reliability it what we should be taking about, but we cannot ignore reliable generation. Consider Solar: we can plan for the daily ramp up and down of Solar, but what happens on a cloudy day? This is something that can be planned for based on the weather and in such a case we need a plant standing by (if we cannot ramp up others with excess capacity). But even worse, what happens when a cloud passes over the field (surprise!) and generation is reduced for a period of time? Not only do we need to replace that generation, but we need to do it very rapidly - very few plants can respond fast enough.

Thus in order to ensure the overall reliability of a Solar farm we need alternative generation on standby, and that costs money. We have the same problem with Wind. Now of course most of our current plants are not faced with this issue, but we still have plants with generators spinning under a small load and others just on standby to ensure reliability should a plant trip offline, and all of those add to the cost in order to ensure reliability.



Ivan
 
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Not only do we need to replace that generation, but we need to do it very rapidly - very few plants can respond fast enough.

That's where demand response comes in and EVs at scale will be the rulers of demand response. If you have 100,000 EVs plugged in suckling on 6kW that's 600MW of flexible load. If a cloud passes over a solar farm and drops the output by 100MW you can drop EV load by 100MW in mili-seconds to keep the grid balanced.

And... yeah... we need ~32% more electric generation to make all vehicles electric. Good thing we can already increase electric generation by ~100% with existing generators if there was demand for it at the right time. The US has >1TW of generating capacity. That equates to ~8700TWh/yr of annual electric production but the we only consume ~4000TWh/yr. For the ~23rd time.... THERE. IS. PLENTY. OF. OFF-PEAK. CAPACITY. FOR. EVERY. VEHICLE. TO. BE. ELECTRIC.

Screen Shot 2021-11-02 at 2.59.37 PM.png
 
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Interesting question by the OP. And as Tesla owners lets not fool ourselves where Electricity comes from.



View attachment 728433

Yep. The answer is 'not grid mix'. If the 24 hour average is 20% renewable since from 10am - 7pm it's 5% RE but then from 11pm to 5am it's 70% RE since there's more wind than the grid can handle but ~90% of my charging is done from 11pm to 5am.... is the portion of energy I used to charge from Renewable sources closer to 5%, 20% or 70%?

.... and if increasing the load on the grid at 2am to charge simply means less curtailed wind energy not more gas or coal consumed?
 
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Here's another way of looking at this to really highlight the absurdity of this argument. The US from 2019 to 2020 increased wind generation by ~37,000,000MWh and solar by ~25,000,000MWh. That rate of increase is also trending up so this year expect the increase to be even higher. That's 62,000,000MWh more clean energy produced in 2020 over 2019. 62TWh more. How many MWh does the average EV use annually? 4. 4MWh. That's 15.5M EVs worth of additional clean energy. In 2020 there were ~300,000 EVs sold in the US. So in 2020 ~50x more generation was added from wind and solar than EVs to consume it. ~50x.

AND.... AND on top of THAT. EVs will INCREASE the ability of renewables to produce by creating additional demand during the hours that wind and solar are being curtailed.
 
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Only if EVs charge during the day, which they should not do, so this does not help improve reliability for say a solar farm. EVs should charge at night when there is excess power and it is at a lower cost.

CAISO is already curtailing hundreds of GWh of solar because it has no place to go. Why not use that to charge EVs? The only time EVs shouldn't be charging is ~4pm - 9pm for most areas. Plenty of day before that.
 
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Here's another way of looking at this to really highlight the absurdity of this argument. The US from 2019 to 2020 increased wind generation by ~37,000,000MWh and solar by ~25,000,000MWh. That rate of increase is also trending up so this year expect the increase to be even higher. That's 62,000,000MWh more clean energy produced in 2020 over 2019. 62TWh more. How many MWh does the average EV use annually? 4. 4MWh. That's 15.5M EVs worth of additional clean energy. In 2020 there were ~300,000 EVs sold in the US. So in 2020 ~50x more generation was added from wind and solar than EVs to consume it. ~50x.

AND.... AND on top of THAT. EVs will INCREASE the ability of renewables to produce by creating additional demand during the hours that wind and solar are being curtailed.
Tables and graphs would be most welcome. :)
 
CAISO is already curtailing hundreds of GWh of solar because it has no place to go. Why not use that to charge EVs? The only time EVs shouldn't be charging is ~4pm - 9pm for most areas. Plenty of day before that.
Varies by where you are in the U.S., of course. Interesting that they are curtailing power. Control areas buy the lowest cost power so either the price of that power is higher than other resources, or the base load is sufficient. This could well be the case when outside of the summer months.

Sounds like they need to get the word out and make it desirable for EVs to charge-up during the day. Better to make some money to defray costs then nothing.
 
But even worse, what happens when a cloud passes over the field (surprise!)
Easy to develop monitoring system to monitor / anticipate a cloud enough in advance to compensate for loss.
Thus in order to ensure the overall reliability of a Solar farm we need alternative generation on standby, and that costs money. We have the same problem with Wind. Now of course most of our current plants are not faced with this issue, but we still have plants with generators spinning under a small load and others just on standby to ensure reliability should a plant trip offline, and all of those add to the cost in order to ensure reliability.
Ivan
Or have storage systems.
IMHO storage systems are critical for renewable to work.

Will not eliminate need for non-renewable generation, just greatly reduce.
 
Easy to develop monitoring system to monitor / anticipate a cloud enough in advance to compensate for loss.
Actually it is not. Most people do not understand that clouds are not static formations that move and can be predicted, at least not at the local level. Clouds are in fact continually forming and evaporating; you can see this with Timelapse photography.

But let’s assume we created such a system, it will never be 100% accurate so we still have the problem of loosing a large amount of power, very quickly, and that power must be made up immediately.

Or have storage systems.
IMHO storage systems are critical for renewable to work.

Totally agree!
 
IMHO storage systems are critical for renewable to work.

Far less so than most people think. A gas turbine is perfectly capable of responding fast enough to make up for renewable variations due to weather. If demand is 50GW and you have 30GW of solar storage isn't really gonna do you much good. What's going to charge the batteries? Why expend 10GWh into a battery only to get ~9 later when you can displace 10GWh of fools fuel now? Even with 60GW of solar and 50GW of demand you're probably still better off investing in more solar and just curtailing surplus than batteries.
 
Actually it is not. Most people do not understand that clouds are not static formations that move and can be predicted, at least not at the local level. Clouds are in fact continually forming and evaporating; you can see this with Timelapse photography.

But let’s assume we created such a system, it will never be 100% accurate so we still have the problem of loosing a large amount of power, very quickly, and that power must be made up immediately.
Yes, that is true.
My studies included weather patterns and conditions that favor cloud formations.
The science of and devices for cloud monitoring is varies and very mature, short term predictions are very precise, and it will only get better. I am sure it will only improve for the reasons you point out.
 
Yes, that is true.
My studies included weather patterns and conditions that favor cloud formations.
The science of and devices for cloud monitoring is varies and very mature, short term predictions are very precise, and it will only get better. I am sure it will only improve for the reasons you point out.

Variations in supply due to weather are a rounding error compared to variations in demand due to humans.

TV pickup

 
Even with 60GW of solar and 50GW of demand you're probably still better off investing in more solar and just curtailing surplus than batteries.
I meant when RE offers surplus, and your suggestion is diminishing because then its basically a waste of money.
There is many low cost storage methods as I listed, and a minimal effort needed to tap into it.