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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

A mere 6 fast chargers at 20% utilization would roughly double the electricity needs of a store.

Double.

Not to mention, we haven’t had to increase the capacity of our electric grid in decades (and it’s still falling down regularly), yet getting everyone in EVs quickly would increase the average need by a fair bit.

I did the calculations some time ago, and it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.

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First I don't think EVs will ever fully replace ICE. There's use cases for gas.

But when I hear about the grid load, I have no pity. Or fear.

Imagine going back to 1800 and describing to an engineer the vast scale of gasoline production, distribution and consumption. Billions of ICEs distributed around the globe. The scale of fuel distribution! The network of trucks. The massive holding tanks. The inshore and offshore refineries. The pipelines and wells. The geopolitics. The strategic reserves, and prodigious tanker fleets. All because we need something everywhere that is only available in a few places.

We can send a rover to Mars for less cost than a prospecting well in the ocean, and there are lots of oil wells in the ocean. Trillions have been spent.

It seems unfathomable to go to such lengths from scratch. To invent and maintain so much, and for what? And we did.

Now imagine all that exists and you just want more. That's not unfathomable. It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.

When you put all this in perspective, it makes sense. Electricity usage will probably tripe or quadruple and I think we can handle that.

But I'm going to miss the sweet petrol and diesel engine cars.

> It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.

Sure. If you let the market operate. But at least in Sweden we don’t. So we’re stuck in this loop of conflicting requirements: “no greenhouse emissions, no nuclear, no wind farms close to my home, and double the capacity - thanks!” It’s not going to happen.

TL;DR: Market forces have been proven to be insufficient to force changes on public utilities.

I agree, nothing technological blocks the grids from growing. But there are plenty of political and profit driven blocks which are preventing it.

To continue with my theme of CA power grid bashing - PG&E is still starting forest fires due to poor quality infrastructure (pushing too much power through lines not rated for it, causing sagging). PG&E does constant rolling blackouts over the summer because of their lacking capacity. PG&E imports about 20% of the electricity that CA requires yearly. They do this because it's cheaper than fixing their infrastructure.

And there's no reason they won't just continue in this fashion in the face of their 2035 electric car replacement deadline. They have a government-created monopoly, and have no reason to build out their capacity.

Rinse and repeat for most states and countries.

But why would a store need fast chargers? 22kW is perfectly enough for any place where you stop for an hour or more.

Fast chargers would require you to leave your shopping cart in the middle of Costco and run back to your car to unplug & move so you don't get idle fees :)

Counter argument: Why would I want to spend an hour in a minimart? The equivalent of gas stations will be required to support long-distance travel. And there are a lot of gas stations out there today.

And I'm guessing you mean 20W, not kW? Fast chargers are 300W as a point of reference.

You really think you can charge a car with a phone charger ? Of course it's 20kW...

You're right, my memory messed that up.

To avoid looking like more of an idiot, I went back and found the official DC Fast Charge levels and wattages (level 3 DC fast charge is up to 350kW, level 2 is up to around 18kW). Which, thankfully, didn't change my conclusions above, I was of a more sound mind when I did those calculations before.

But here they are again.

Level 2, at 18kW, would be around 157,680 kWh/y per charger at full utilization. (18*24*365)

Level 3 would max out at 3,065,000 kWh/y per charger; but it's much more likely to be intermittently used. (350*24*365)

Compare to these commercial building utilization numbers (the units are thousands of kWh/y): https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/cfm...

There are exactly zero cars on the road today that won't be 100% full from 0.1% battery in under 24 hours when plugged in to a Level 2 charger.

Depending on the car's internal charger (1 or 3 phase) most charge from "towed to charger" empty to absolutely full in well under 10 hours.

Doing it like that is like trying to calculate how many fuel trucks would a gas station need if all its pumps were being run 24/7/365 at full blast. It'll never ever happen.

That's more related to the the calculation from my statement a bit back up the comment tree:

> it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.

But the numbers I posted that you're directly referring to are still important, as they indicate the need for improved electrical infrastructure for individual buildings who may want to put in chargers. Your grocery stores, apartments, motels, etc.

If just one 18kW charger can double demand on a motel's power, what happens when you add ten? Twenty?

If you're just grabbing a coffee and protein bar, of course it doesn't make sense.

But I said "Costco" on purpose, it's not a place you just drop in real quick and grab one thing. You're gonna be there for a while. Target is another good reference for US people. Maybe even Ikea.

And yes, it's kilowatts. They're not mobile phone chargers =) The Hyundai Ioniq 5 charges at 350kW, 800 volts.

>we haven’t had to increase the capacity of our electric grid in decades

Who's we? In China, generation has doubled in a decade. What a sad time to be alive if even existential failure isn't a strong enough motivator to get a developed country to pay for some infrastructure.

The US. Since I was posting statistics for CA, I had hoped that was clear. Sorry if it wasn't.

Here's CA, a state well known for its rolling brownouts throughout summer, as an example:

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

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