The grid will need expanding and upgrading, you have no arguments from me there. Still, home charging uses nowhere the energy as HVAC units use during peak periods. Tesla charging stations begin to regulate power usage as they start getting busier (you get a notice as you are charging) and will limit your charge to 80 percent automatically. Level 2 chargers and EV's (Tesla's are already smart ) will have to get smarter as well as to not strain the grid

 

you keep writing this so i decided to see if i think it's true.

so a 4 ton a/c unit uses 3kw when it's running. a tesla can use 10kw continuously while it's running. how is the a/c unit more?

https://homeapricot.com/how-much-pow...nditioner-use/

 

You are talking about draw. I'm talking about total usage in kWh's. My AC uses about 40 to 48 kWh a day when temps reach about 90F, while at the high end we use about 21 kWh for charging. If I look at summer usage, it's double my winter usage. The difference is, we use the HVAC unit 3 months in a year and we charge our EV's pretty much 365 days in a year

 

Good question and my point on the grid already being stretched with existing demand.

My work, we burn some fossil fuels to power some charge boxes. We’ve had protestors. It seems there are people who are opinionated but don’t quite get that you have to make electricity. I don’t mean here and I’m not saying anyone on CL has said anything of the kind. Some of the appearances by our execs draw this kind of opposition.

 

Oil land gas infrastructure has been built out in the last century using trillions of dollars, but we can't divert any money to improving the grid?

 

Ok I have another crackpot idea after looking at that Ultium home charging from the Silverado thread.

Electric cars act as load balancing for the electrical grid. Most of the time, EVs are stationary and generally spend most of their time sitting around doing nothing anyways (home, work, shops, etc). They are basically enormous rolling power banks that hypothetically can also backfeed power into the electrical grid.

So you put a bunch of EV chargers absolutely everywhere. Electric utilities incentivize EV owners to keep their vehicles plugged in and owners get paid for the % they'll allow utility to draw. Let's say in my case, 30% since I spend most of the time in town and my commute isn't that long. My car backfeeds into the grid during times of peak demand. I get some money back (or credits on my electric bill) so I can charge my car for free when there is less demand on the grid.

 

Margate has a point.....I totally agree with it, and it is something I have been extremely concerned about for several years. Regardless of the price of electricity, the more that electric vehicles become part of the vehicle-market, the more they are going to tax the available electric-grid, period when they are recharging. The more vehicles you have all trying to be recharged at once, the more electricity will be needed....particularly at night, when many owners will be charging up their vehicles for the next-morning commute. If this is combined with, say, a lot of other heavy electrical grid-use from things such as very hot or cold weather and heat/A/C, or a lot of cooking on electric ranges for holiday meals across the country, it doesn't take a genius or college-professor to see, at a glance, what is going to happen.

 

Articulate exactly what is going to happen.

 

Most likely............

 

Where? Everywhere? For how long? When will this happen?

 

Come on. Obviously, wherever demand for electric-power from too many vehicles being recharged (along with other high-demand electrical uses) exceeds the capability of power-companies to produce it. This is not just some Pie-on-the-Sky comment, but a REAL possibility. You saw what happened in Texas last winter from overuse of the grid......and what sometimes happens in California.

 

So what about constant expansion of cities and suburbs? Where my brother lives, it was nothing but farmland 15 years ago, now there's like half a million people living there, houses so big they need two AC units to keep them cool in 90 degree plus summers. And now they are expanding another 100,000 homes on more land that used to have nothing but cows. Not concerned about that expansion, but just EV's that maybe charge and use 11 to 15 kWh per day?

 

These "EV'S are going to destroy our power grid" arguments sounds like an environmentalist screaming about oil drilling being bad for the environment, but saying Monsanto helps small farmers LoL

 

Exactly.
Our nations infrastructure is already weak and has been waaaaaaaay before EVs due to population growth in general and if not today, eventually.

No excuses,
No blaming,

Build some dam power stations, they're charging by the KWH anyway! lol

 

Problem with your argument is the 2021 grid failure in Texas happened because of frozen natural gas lines.
Electric vehicles are constantly singled out I honestly can't explain why. What about oil refineries no one talks about the massive amount of electricity they use.

My take is instead of pointing fingers how about we go about improving the grid, installing grid scale battery farms, put solar everywhere it is practical. To be clear I have nothing against natural gas fired power stations in fact that's the best way* to produce electricity outside of solar and hydro.

* I know what you're thinking, what about nuclear. Unfortunately nuclear plants are extremely expensive and take a long time to build. Ideally we'd be doing that but it's not going to happen.