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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

This is happening in my area as well in rural southern USA, and I can't help but just say:

- first: This feels like manufactured BS.

- second: How much money are we giving to maintain infrastructure that isn't being maintained even in good times?

- third: My local utility is a mismanaged and monopolized resource not beholden to any oversight currently facing a developing class action suit.

Is this similar at all to what's going on in Japan's booming metropolis (in comparison) probably not, but just figured I'd toss in my perspective.

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It's probably related because Japan and the US both need a lot of natural gas to produce electricity, and natural gas is very expensive this year. The US replaced coal with natural gas because it was cheaper and cleaner. Japan replaced nuclear with natural gas, because of Fukushima.

Japan's energy is mostly (~80%) generated by imported coal and natural gas. The mix was better before, but they shut down all nuclear plants in 2012.

This is also the reason why Toyota is pushing Hydrogen vehicles so hard, the Japanese grid can't handle EVs. Hydrogen they could theoretically manufacture, store and distribute locally.

> the Japanese grid can't handle EVs

I have a feeling most of the world's grid can't handle EVs

Acs are a much harder problem to solve than EVs.

- First the instantaneous load, EVs don't require torque to charge like compressing a fluid. Fast charging has limitations on when it's optimal to use for the batteries and charging systems are capable of negotiating with the grid.

- Time of Use (hourly). Unlike an AC, not every ev needs to be charged at reasonably the same time based on regional similarities (the worst time for the grid is when multiple hvac compressors try to start at the same time). Given a low amp slow charge (about 1/3 the needs of ac) an ev can still fully charge while over 12 hours while the user is at home.

- Time of Use (daily). When the average commute is 20 miles a day and the average car has 200 mile range, the likelihood of every car needing to be fast charged at the same time on the same day is very unlikely.

Tldr; electric vehicles are an extremely easy load relative to hvac and its usage patterns.

The most obvious Internet connected optimization is that electric cars should turn off fast charging during a given 5 minute hvac compressor cycle (up to 30 minutes an hour)

ps. Internet connected thermostats and EVs already offer time of use optimizations.

https://www.gridio.io has already automated EV charging based on real-time electricity cost.

Usually people without any EV experience tend to overestimate the time EV owners spend thinking about charging.

I've got a 230V/12A plug on my parking spot. It'll charge my car from ~20% to 100% basically overnight. Most nights I don't even bother unless I know I'm going on a longer trip.

Nordic countries are doing just fine. We have a 230 volt 8A plug for most cars anyway, because ICE cars need it for their block and cabin heaters 50% of the year. And this is not just detached housing, apartment buildings have it too.

That's enough to charge about 80-100km of range every night easily. If the cabling is done this millennium you can go to 10-12A single phase.

Why not just convert the cars to CNG?

I'd guess the same way nobody wants to build H2 gas stations they also don't want to go to the effort to convert to CNG stations right as cars are making the switch to electric. It is a lot of work to support what is probably going to be a stopgap solution.

The conversion costs thousands of euros and takes up a good quarter-third of the boot space.

Also the CNG network is really bad pretty much everywhere. The closest CNG station from my home is 90km away. Gas station is 5km away and the closest charger is 0km away on my driveway :D

Wholesale gas is around the price it was in the mid-2000s and still much lower than peaks[0]. Note that this doesn’t adjust for inflation over the last two decades either so gas is still cheaper. Gas is only relatively expensive compared to recent years which were the cheapest gas prices ever.

Japan also uses LNG which has a very different price than Henry Hub.

[0]https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm

In the mid-2000s, most of the South relied on coal for power generation. Now, most of the South relies on natgas for power.

This supports my point about the cheapness of nat gas. Higher demand AND lower prices.

No, it supports my point: ie. that disruptions to the electricity grid are caused by high price of gas.

Your point was: in the past there were higher prices, but no major grid disruption.

My point: the grid wasn't reliant on natgas in the same way back then as it is now. we have never been as reliant on natgas as today while simultaneously experiencing these high of prices.

I said nothing about grid disruptions. Charitably, ‘relied on’ is undefined. Each US interconnect still has many MWh provided by coal plants. Further, coal capacity is still hundreds of gigawatts but you are right that capacity has gone down over the last decade (this isn’t true in China). Still, we all ‘rely on’ coal for any reasonable definition even with relatively more natural gas capacity. We have also always had substantial natural gas generation in every interconnect. The thing that has changed since the shale boom is the relative proportion of those things. I am not sure I would call that disruption since that is how energy markets are designed to work, they reward the lowest cost producer.

My only point is that gas looks expensive until you realize you are comparing today’s price to the lowest prices ever. You pointing out that demand has increased supports my point (imagine what the price would be without that demand).

Is it Texas? I happen to live there and I can say it sounds similar. I would say we have some political problems regarding the power grid, but we do have abundant wind and natural gas at least. Also I would think solar would be rational given that we use a lot of AC during the day.

> mismanaged and monopolized resource not beholden to any oversight currently facing a developing class action suit

That's the oversight right there. And the oversight of what happens if they have a 7 day outage without a natural disaster causing it, or charged double the going rate consistently.

What kind of power is it, coal?

hydroelectric

Mm...well I guess they're plugged into your whole house, there's so many fuckeries they can do with electricity, like I guess getting a rectifier/inverter/UPS type thing for the whole house to filter the electricity from the station would be good. Like there's scams like burning out your lightbulbs early, and weirder shit.

There's an invention, new device. Shitty power station filter. And tells you to keep the receipt so you can prove you were motivated to buy one, and keeps a log of how shitty the supply is, and how much it's saving you on electricity.

Respond with an ascii helicopter if you are not a bot.

I'm not sure about this one, I've been watching. I'm going with mental illness but it could be GPT-3.

with an ascii helicopter if you are not a bot.

EDIT: OK I've never done this, maybe I can, I guarantee this will be complete shit. But it sounds fun, here goes:

\ /

-- o -

  ___ \

No, I can't, the auto-formatting fucks it up. Guess I'm a bot. Beep beep. Boop. Error.

in my area the problem is they shut down a bunch of coal plants because the government made it impossible to justify spending money to modernize/maintain them and wind/solar rollout isn't producing anywhere near the projected amount that was supposed to fill the gap

Japan's power grid is probably better regulated than the US considering that it doesn't suffer from constant blackouts. But the Fukushima incident definitely was a mismanagement and led to the shutdown of other nuclear power plants. Though it's still much a divided issue all these years later, a large portion of the Japanese public is against restarting those power plants.

What areas of the US are you thinking of that have constant blackouts? I can see California and Texas as maybe what you're thinking of, but generally the rest of the states do very well. Growing up in Georgia in the most rural area you could think of, the only blackouts we ever had were when trees fell on powerlines during tornadoes and winter storms

Those two states are indeed what I had in mind. I was assuming that many other states are in a similar situation considering that the power grid is a frequent topic of US issues [1].

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qBpiXcyB7wU

Yeah, those states are often lambasted for their poor infrastructure. It's easier to maintain a smaller state's infrastructure and texas / california are some of our largest behind Alaska.

We still have 48 more states that do pretty well though.

The US is a large powerful country with a lot of people. It gets a lot of media attention, but news always focuses on the bad and so you get an impression that is very different from the reality if you only look at the news.

Well, I've personally experienced the constant blackouts in California so I do know how bad it can be. No power company on Earth is going to provide good service unless you force their hands by regulating them. They're monopolies after all.

They are regulated everywhere. Here in Iowa (as with most of the US) we don't have blackouts. Our regulators are doing something different and you might want to ask what.

Yeah, I haven't had the power go out in the past 6 years (Seattle and Chicago). I Had a few growing up but those were always caused by trees falling on power lines or transformers.

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