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Comment by BirAdam | Hacker News Reader

He raised a valid point. Industrialized countries have power grids and the like that were built before such demands for power existed. Adding millions of electric cars in a short time would be a problem for sure, and it would likely lead to coal and gas turbine power plants as those are cheap and quick to set up. Gas turbine actually isn’t too bad but coal is. Also, the need to somehow recycle and dispose of all of the internal combustion engine cars would be a problem. The thing is, these laws only prevent the sale of new vehicles using petrol, not driving the ones that already exist. Toyota does have hybrids and those seem to be acceptable under many of these laws.

The main thing bothering me currently is just the battery tech. I would prefer something that didn’t involve destructive mining and crazy foreign policies like oil and lithium do. But, wants are infinite and technology and resources aren’t.

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> Adding millions of electric cars in a short time would be a problem for sure, and it would likely lead to coal and gas turbine power plants as those are cheap and quick to set up.

In LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) terms new coal plants aren't cheap, in fact they are much more expensive than solar and wind [1]. New combined cycle gas plants are cheap, but the global natural gas price spike has changed the opex situation considerably, so LCOE will trend upwards.

EVs are actually a great match for intermittent renewables since they provide their own storage, and are therefore time dispatchable. They are also usually charged overnight when wind is typically available and demand is lowest.

1. https://www.lazard.com/media/451905/lazards-levelized-cost-o...

Yes, let's completely ignore fact, that solar does not work over night, time when most people are instructed to charge their EVs.

You might have missed this sentence I wrote:

> They are also usually charged overnight when wind is typically available and demand is lowest.

There are also other overnight carbon free sources of energy like hydro.

Solar PV can be deployed more rapidly than coal, 5B having just achieved 1.1 MW in a day (with 10 people)

https://5b.co/news/2022/1mw-in-1-day-5b-smashes-its-speed-re...

They have a system whereby a solar array is concertinaed off a truck.

https://5b.co

At that rate 4 x 660 MW, equivalent to a coal power station, could be deployed in 66 person-years. 130 people could not build a coal power station with 4 large generating sets in 6 months.

Suncable is expecting to complete the Australia-Asia Power Link by the end of 2028, starting construction in mid-2023. It will involve installing 3.2GW in 5.5 years, which is a rate of 1.5 to 1.6 MW/day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

That's not including the manufacture of the PV and extraction of components to make it, or shipping times, etc, is it?

No. That's all done in a factory off-site, so I didn't consider it as part of the deployment. I'd argue that scaling a (centralised) factory is easier that scaling deployment.

According to Google 178 GW of solar modules was produced in 2020, which is 487 MW/day and capacity is growing exponentially, so production of modules probably won't be a bottleneck going forward.

I assume these are all MW-peak on the solar side, which means the sustained average capacity over a day is 20% of it? While the coal plant manages 4x660MW 24/7 outside maintenance windows?

What about storage?

Electric vehicles charging at home will draw a lot of power when solar panels aren't providing any power.

Lithium is mostly sourced from Australia[1]. In terms of destructive mining and crazy foreign policies that is probably one of the better places.

Lithium batteries are almost completely recyclable now but aren't for reasons: include[ing] technical constraints, economic barriers, logistic issues, and regulatory gaps[2]

Recycling batteries would be one of the great steps forward in environmental progress. It would also reduce dependency on cobalt mining, which is currently done in Congo where your concerns about "destructive mining and crazy foreign policies" are fully justified.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_lithium_p...

[2] https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re...

Reliance of cobalt is already reducing.

Half of all new Tesla’s now use Lithium Iron batteries which are cobalt-free and have improved safety.

Interesting! I didn't realize that.

>Lithium is mostly sourced from Australia[1].

Thats likely to change.. its only mostly sourced here because we have the skills and infrastructure AND its fairly easy to get to.

the industry is already looking at many other places around the world that have easy to get to resource bodies but not the skills and infrastructure. Those last two are very easy to transfer and build. Lithium mining also wont slow down if Hydrogen goes gangbusters (I'm bullish on Hydrogen)...

100% agree, also I wish the batteries didn't turn into garbage within only a few years (10-20 yrs max), many vehicles stay on the road much longer than that today.

Batteries don’t turn into garbage when you look real life data:

https://maartensteinbuch.com/2015/01/24/tesla-model-s-batter...

Quote:

  On average the batteries have 91% remaining at 270.000 km (170,000 miles). If the linear behavior would continue, then the ‘lifetime’ (still 80% capacity left) can be calculated as follows: 91-80 = 11% times 50.000 km =  550.000 km, plus 270.000 km, gives 820.000 km (510,000 miles)! Note that a ICE car has a average lifetime of 220.000 km (140,000 miles)… And remember: if an ICE fails after say 300.000 km, you have a problem. The battery in a Tesla EV after the suggested 820.000 km (ok, lets take 500.000 km, still great!) still has 80% capacity left!

That may be. We'll need to wait for the data, which could go off a cliff still. But what we do know is if you have an outlier, it's pretty damn costly.

https://people.com/human-interest/tesla-owner-blows-up-his-c...

There are cheaper ways to repair it outside Tesla:

https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacemen...

  Tesla tried to charge $22,500 for new battery pack when a $5,000 repair did the trick

  While Tesla recently started opening up some of its diagnostic tools to third parties, the automaker still has a lot of limitations when it comes to powertrain diagnostics. Electrified Garage uses some hacks to get past that and figure out what is wrong with the pack. In this case, they detected some voltage imbalances in 2 of the 16 battery modules:


  So how much did it cost? The modules were $1,500 each, for a total of $3,000. Another $750 in parts for contractors and fuses, with the main one being upgraded to the ones introduced in the Model S Ludicrous.

  With diagnostic and labor, it came up to about $5,000, or about 75% less than Tesla was quoting for a full battery pack replacement.

I'm more curious how much money he made off the youtube video. If it was anywhere close to $5K, it would seem that maybe exploding Teslas at their end of life would become a profitable thing to do.

>Batteries don’t turn into garbage when you look real life data

Not really the same thing, but anecdotally my hybrid Camry just ticked over 220k km the fuel efficiency is a good way to check (NiMH) battery performance over those 10 years.

when we first got it, we got about 4.6lts per 100km. in the middle there it blew out to about 6ltrs for a while but discovered the injectors were screwed, replaced them (au$2800) and ever since we've been hovering around 4.8 to 5.2 (depending on weather for heating and cooling requirements).

"many vehicles stay on the road much longer than that today."

Do they really, though? Per https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/average-age-of-vehic... the average age on cars on the road now is 12.2 years.

My cars are all older than that and they are still pretty awesome.

Subaru and a Highlander. Not particularly valuable but they get the job done for my family and I for A-to-B.

Outside of Silicon Valley, I see a lot of old cars on the road.

The above poster used a referenced published average and you responded with your 2 hyperlocal anecdotes.

Averages are averages, medians are medians, and anecdotes are not data.

Sure, lots of people just want a newer car and can't or don't care to reuse or recycle.

If someone is disposing of a perfectly good used car to buy a new car, then someone else is going to buy their used car. And if they sell their old car and it's still decent, someone will buy that too. On down the line until you get to a car that isn't worth owning. And then that car is largely recycled, which is a better use for it than staying on the street polluting. No one is throwing out working electric cars, or gas cars that get good mileage and are in good operating condition.

12 years average means there're plenty of 20 year old cars. And many old cars stay on the road, just exported to poorer countries.

No they don't. They spend very little time on the road, most of the time stationary. Obligatory link to Donald Shoup and the "High Price of Free Parking". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

The cost of solar technology is dropping at an exponential rate [0] [1]. I've heard (and I believe) that solar has undercut coal (and maybe gas?) [2] by at least a year ago, if not more.

In the US, and I imagine Canada and other European nations, we talk about putting solar on an individual house scale and, at best, earning 'credits' to give back to the grid if we have a surplus. Often times there are locations that can't push more energy into the grid from solar because the local grid can't support it.

Nations without this historical infrastructure don't need to be limited by the infrastructure created to support coal and gas plants as a distant and centralized building. They can build solar power plants next to cities or towns and potentially build a decentralized grid. This is analogous to cell phone service vs. land line service. Without the legacy infrastructure, cell phone adoption is much quicker and easier.

Battery technology is also seeing an exponential drop in price [3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new...

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

California has a net metering plan that has only gotten worse over time. We're on the verge of enacting NEM 3.0 which will make just having solar have a much higher monthly connection fee, but also will reduce even further the amount of credit you get for sending power to the grid.

Are there any disincentives in creating a solar system that's completely separate/disconnected from the power grid?

Off the top of my head, sure. I'd imagine it would be harder to resell an off-grid home in suburban California, I'd certainly be hesitant to buy a home like that. Any issues could cause outages until you get it fixed, which may or may not be as quick as you'd like. Battery-backed PV systems are more expensive. More energy management would be required of the user, it's not as simple as never really worrying about whether you have power. None of those prevent most people from being able to go off grid, but they would be disincentives.

A lot of what you says makes sense. Except " Also, the need to somehow recycle and dispose of all of the internal combustion engine cars would be a problem. "

We are already well equipped to recycle and otherwise dispose of worn out combustion vehicles. I don't think anybody expects electric cars to accelerate the need for that - existing cars will continue get used by the increasingly less affluent until they are worn out, just like they do now. They aren't going to all just get scrapped tomorrow because electric cars become more common - they will continue to age out of the fleet, just like they do now.

> Industrialized countries have power grids and the like that were built before such demands for power existed

This stinks of fake news to me.

At least for locations with air conditioning systems this seems false. Hvacs require more inrush (start capacitors) and run energy (run capacitors) - and coordinate very poorly with neighbor and industry use (during the heat of the day)

Electric Cars require none of it, 90% of use cases can charge 1-3 nights a week off of a standard 120v 15 amp circuit.

It's also possible to coordinate both your hvac and Bev to not turn on at the same time and to deprioritize for your utility or rate plan.

Here's a real and recent news article about how potential risks and opportunities are being explored regarding electric vehicles and the grid [1]. It basically says they're looking into stuff and working on it. Neither doom and gloom, nor the future is now.

Just like the grid adapted to the growing use of HVAC, it will have to adapt to the growing use of electric cars.

[1] https://californiamobilitycenter.org/latest-california-mobil...

This is a press release by an organization mostly supported by quotes from those organizations.

It's definitely not investigative journalism.

It's the grid reliability organization for the US and Canada. There are more details in the reliability reports they publish.

https://www.nerc.com/news/Pages/California-Mobility-Center,-...

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