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Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

This makes me wonder though wheather the grid infrastructure in Uruguay is ready for a scenario where a substantial percentage of the countries cars need to charge their batteries regularly?

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The (state-owned) power company owning the grid and much of the generation for the country has been pushing this change forward. The country has transitioned from almost pure hydro to wind and has an excess of this type of generation, especially at night when it would be the ideal charging time.

There's also initiatives to encourage permanent grid use by the cars since the batteries can provide capacitive load which locally counters the grid's natural inductive load which is beneficial if it can be leveraged.

Charging at night at home - and that is your main option when charging infra is lacking - may even be an improvement for the nation grid's overall health and economics.

This is unfortunately problematic in places where the grid is transitioning to solar power. It really depends on what the makeup of your base load is.

And I'll also add that night-charging can only scale up to a point, there's a point where the country would end up consuming more at night than during the day.

So it really depends on the local situation, local energy mix, local infrastructure.

Charging at a couple of kW for the night is enough for almost everybody. Very few people drive hundreds of kilometers every day and the typical EV needs 10-20kWh/100km. The grid should handle that without a problem in most places, I think. Cars are parked most of the day. If most of the parking spots offer a kW or two charging becomes a nonissue.

Solar power is new development, and it would be naturally to do it in parallel with charging infra in business districts thus providing another sink for all that daytime generated power.

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