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Comment by buckle8017 | Hacker News Reader

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buckle8017·

Have you seen the price of electricity?

That's with only about 5% of cars being electric.

We've consumed nearly all of the slack in transmission capacity.

I'm expecting transmission costs to balloon.

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Is that from the popularity of evs, or from data centers?

The thoughtfull hyped reality downvoter must know before doing the deed ..

At least in California it is felt really among people who have private power providers that need to both turn a profit and appease shareholders while also paying out various lawsuits and penalties from causing wildfires with poorly maintained equipment. Compare those rates to what you'd get under a municipal power company like LADWP and the difference is dramatic.

It doesn’t really matter if, at the end of the day, our current usage is too high and consumers see EVs as a pro-social purchase. I don’t really think they’re a problem, personally, but it IS the topic of this comment thread, so it’s an appropriate place to complain about this particular issue.

Edit: also, the problem with charging vehicles isn’t really home owner cars, it’s tractor-trailers.

The article discusses how the biggest problem is peak demand, but that midday electric prices have fallen as solar has grown. EVs are perfect for charging during solar peak and making use of energy that would have had to be curtailed, they can even feed back into the grid helping during peak demand.

The price of electricity in Seattle has effectively dropped - we went from a flat 13.4c/kWh to an opt-in time of use system with an overnight rate of 8c/kWh. My bill dropped by a third.

It's more like 2% of cars on the road you are thinking about portion of new cars sold.

Is capacity a static quantity?

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