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Comment by shaky-carrousel | Hacker News Reader

We have the means to balance grid usage by telling specific families at which time they should charge their vehicles.

This doesn't work unless you pay them to charge at specific times. We tried it at my company, a large gas & electric company. Believe me, everyone is grappling with this issue in the industry and researching ways to identify EV charging and anticipate future EV purchases among customers.

I'd say that plugging in a car should mean - charge it enough to get me to a hospital. Beyond that wait for the optimum charge time. However there should also be a screen that overrides this if you are going on a trip or something.

Yup, let the tech overlords plan your life for you for the greater good. Fuck that fishing trip - your energy company decided you’re not important enough to have a charged car.

Simple answer is just "congestion pricing". You want fast charging at peak hours, pay double. If not, set some price optimization. And set it to prioritize the first 30% of charge to never be stranded but always wait for cheaper power to fill to the top. If you've got a fishing trip, plan ahead or pay extra. That's just free markets.

Is there currently distinction between electric for charging vs traditional uses at the residential level?

The grid has no idea what you're doing with your power nor does it send different modes of electricity to different appliances. It would be the responsibility of the home or the vehicle being charged to modulate the amount of current (or type of current) they're pulling.

But the pricing is set at the grid level. So you'll have people being charged extra for "normal" uses.

That already happens. PG&E charges differently at peak times in California, for example. People just pay for it anyway because they can’t plan their daily lives around the power company’s preferred times.

Cheaper electricity at night has been around for decades in some European countries.

My parents would regularly set the dishwasher to run at ~5am, and sometimes the washing machine. In the 1990s this used a timer plug. Nowadays these appliances have built-in delay-start functions.

I use delay-start to do the exact opposite - only run things in the middle of the day when the solar panels are generating the most power. Though it's less ideal for the washing machine as you need somewhere to hang the clothes overnight so you can dry them the next day (unless it's peak summer where there's enough daylight/warmth to dry clothes even if you don't hang them out until 4pm or so).

Sure they can and anyone who is aware of it does. We do it in NYC and I save things like dishwasher and laundry for off-peak times. But things like car charging are unique because there may be a 12-hour window in which you need to do 4 hours of charging and the timing is very flexible and has diminishing returns if you don't have a lot of miles to cover any time soon.

An even more elegant option is to force every customer to adhere to variable rates that accurately reflect the real-time value of electricity.

I was on a wholesale program in Texas for about 2 years. Every 5 minutes my rate would change to reflect the wholesale pricing. There were certainly issues - winter 2021, but at the same time I was forced to conserve energy due to the economics.

Until we can actually store energy at grid scale across multiple days, I feel like consumers should pay what the real-time cost is. Right now, fixed rate electricity is effectively fraudulent.

You mean like how companies have always decided who gets gasoline, when and for how much anyway?

I have access to many gas stations run by many distinct firms. I only have a single choice of electricity provider.

I actually agree with you. I'm building a house (personally as in I am the one hammering in each nail) that is 100% off grid - probably only going to be using Gas and Diesel for the next few years also. But I do enjoy talking about tech and future EV technology.

EVs already have the capability to schedule charging around time-of-use electrical pricing and also a way to charge now regardless of price.

I suspect this capability will only improve over time up to an including the ability to dump power back into the grid from the battery if the electric co is willing the pay enough to make the battery wear worth it.

I thought that was already the standard? Most people here in Sweden I have talked to do like that. It first charges to some threshold and then automatically the rest when it is as cheap as possible.

You just configure a time in the morning you want it to be fully charged and the charger do the rest.

Edit, people with their own house and thereby their own charger.

Families who are not at home during the allotted time won’t be able to charge.

People charge at night because home charging is the only practical way to own an EV and most people work during the day.

Fix the charging situation first — but be aware that more convenient charging will induce more demand for EVs from apartment dwellers, which will increase demand for electricity overall.

The only real solution is to improve the power grid so that EV owners can charge whenever they want.

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