Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, Stanford study finds

[fhteagle]

definitions and boundaries of questions have to be agreed first for resulting discussion to be meaningful.

Reminds me of this scene...

I’m instead saying that this incorrect assertion from 2011 continues to be regurgitated ever since

I think the concept keeps getting regurgitated by pro and anti EV people alike because facts and figures about it are so hard to put your hands on, and innuendo, guesses, and FUD abound. If those of us who are passionately for EVs are messing it up, what hope do those clutching to the fossil fuel fandango have of digging up realistic and convincing comparisons in the tiny amount of time they are willing to spend looking into it?

I recently attended a public information session from a company that wanted to put a huge 100MW solar array and a few batteries south of my tiny little town. The way the company went about it, the site they chose, all of it was a very poor fit, and doomed from the day they published the plan on Farcebook. But the reaction to the project from the populace was incredibly telling. We have super red state thinking people, very blue state types, those who bleed green, and even quite a few I would describe as black as a pirate flag politically. From pretty much all directions, the sounds correct if you weren't paying attention but falls apart with any real knowledge of how the grid works sound bytes were astounding through amazing.
Winter Storm Uri was used as evidence by no less than 5 people to support 8 different largely incorrect conclusions. But most importantly, people talked about the local ~170MW coal power plant that closed 4 years ago with the same reverence they would of a recently passed WWII vet grandfather.

This is why I want a definitive, real, easy to understand persuasive analysis of this is how much energy we're wasting just from producing fossil fuels, and this is how much we could get instead by using that energy smarter. Because such a work doesn't exist as far as I can find (yes there are communications that come close, like RethinkX, but...), because it's sorely needed to get those on the fence off of it, and to get those way on the other side of the fence to see it's in their best interest after all. I know I can't convince every single person of the environmental significance of the changeover, but if we can win the economic argument instead that's good enough. Even if Tesla Master Plan 3 misses here and there on some of its guesses, the message is an important one and one that needs supporting and proving and reproving: clean energy will be cheaper when we're done with this process if we do it right from the start and right from the start.

That's why this isn't academic mastication that only produces food for thought. It's a very real, very democratic, vote with your dollar public policy debate that needs to be lived out from a very thoughtful and well reasoned way. We have a fantastic standard of living in most parts of the developed world. I've been to third world countries that should have our standard of living but have had it stolen away by incompetence, corruption, and not so blissful ignorance. I do not want us to revert back that direction by accident, nor by design, nor by malice, and especially not by simple misinformation. I want us to go through the changeover with something cleaner, cheaper, and even more abundant than what we started with.

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[Crissa]

Yeah, the big utility scale solar installations in NV and CA have been... Weird.

They're like, 'we'll put these in this part of the desert no one is using' and then site it in one of the few remaining untouched valleys hundreds of miles from anyone who can use the power, or select the only spaces in the valley where the deer graze and the rare trees grow, and they always want to scrape the ground clean of soil, sterilizing the land or pouring concrete before putting up the panels.

It's like... They're just trying to make projects that get funding to be studied but not implemented.

All the while we know that solar can be installed over grazing, homes and parking, and even over greenhouses with little impact.

-Crissa

 

[Old Pro]

Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, Stanford study finds
The move to electric vehicles will result in large costs for generating, transmitting, and storing more power. Shifting current EV charging from home to work and night to day could cut costs and help the grid, according to a new Stanford study.
By Mark Golden
The vast majority of electric vehicle owners charge their cars at home in the evening or overnight. We’re doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study.

If the common charging of electric vehicles at home in the evening or overnight shifts to daytime at work as more cars go electric, then that would restrain extra costs for electricity systems, according to a new Stanford University study. (Image credit: Amy Adams)
In March, the research team published a paper on a model they created for charging demand that can be applied to an array of populations and other factors. In the new study, published Sept. 22 in Nature Energy, they applied their model to the whole of the Western United States and examined the stress the region’s electric grid will come under by 2035 from growing EV ownership. In a little over a decade, they found, rapid EV growth alone could increase peak electricity demand by up to 25%, assuming a continued dominance of residential, nighttime charging.
To limit the high costs of all that new capacity for generating and storing electricity, the researchers say, drivers should move to daytime charging at work or public charging stations, which would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This finding has policy and investment implications for the region and its utilities, especially since California moved in late August to ban sales of gasoline-powered cars and light trucks starting in 2035.
“We encourage policymakers to consider utility rates that encourage day charging and incentivize investment in charging infrastructure to shift drivers from home to work for charging,” said the study’s co-senior author, Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.
In February, cumulative sales of EVs in California reached one million, accounting for about 6% of cars and light trucks. The state has targeted five million EVs on the road by 2030. When the penetration hits 30% to 40% of cars on the road, the grid will experience significant stress without major investments and changes in charging habits, said Rajagopal. Building that infrastructure requires significant lead time and cannot be done overnight.
“We considered the entire Western U.S. region, because California depends heavily on electricity imports from the other Western states. EV charging plus all other electricity uses have consequences for the whole Western region given the interconnected nature of our electric grid,” said Siobhan Powell, lead author of the March study and the new one.
“We were able to show that with less home charging and more daytime charging, the Western U.S. would need less generating capacity and storage, and it would not waste as much solar and wind power,” said Powell, mechanical engineering PhD ’22.
“And it’s not just California and Western states. All states may need to rethink electricity pricing structures as their EV charging needs increase and their grid changes,” added Powell, who recently took a postdoctoral research position at ETH Zurich.
Once 50% of cars on the road are powered by electricity in the Western U.S. – of which about half the population lives in California – more than 5.4 gigawatts of energy storage would be needed if charging habits follow their current course. That’s the capacity equivalent of 5 large nuclear power reactors. A big shift to charging at work instead of home would reduce the storage needed for EVs to 4.2 gigawatts.
Changing incentives
Current time-of-use rates encourage consumers to switch electricity use to nighttime whenever possible, like running the dishwasher and charging EVs. This rate structure reflects the time before significant solar and wind power supplies when demand threatened to exceed supply during the day, especially late afternoons in the summer.
Today, California has excess electricity during late mornings and early afternoons, thanks mainly to its solar capacity. If most EVs were to charge during these times, then the cheap power would be used instead of wasted. Alternatively, if most EVs continue to charge at night, then the state will need to build more generators – likely powered by natural gas – or expensive energy storage on a large scale. Electricity going first to a huge battery and then to an EV battery loses power from the extra stop.
At the local level, if a third of homes in a neighborhood have EVs and most of the owners continue to set charging to start at 11 p.m. or whenever electricity rates drop, the local grid could become unstable.
“The findings from this paper have two profound implications: the first is that the price signals are not aligned with what would be best for the grid – and for ratepayers. The second is that it calls for considering investments in a charging infrastructure for where people work,” said Ines Azevedo, the new paper’s other co-senior author and associate professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, which opened on Sept. 1.
“We need to move quickly toward decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for the bulk of emissions in California,” Azevedo continued. “This work provides insight on how to get there. Let’s ensure that we pursue policies and investment strategies that allow us to do so in a way that is sustainable.”
Another issue with electricity pricing design is charging commercial and industrial customers big fees based on their peak electricity use. This can disincentivize employers from installing chargers, especially once half or more of their employees have EVs. The research team compared several scenarios of charging infrastructure availability, along with several different residential time-of-use rates and commercial demand charges. Some rate changes made the situation at the grid level worse, while others improved it. Nevertheless, a scenario of having charging infrastructure that encourages more daytime charging and less home charging provided the biggest benefits, the study found.
Rajagopal and Azevedo are also co-directors of the Bits & Watts Initiative at Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy. Other co-authors of this study are Gustavo Cezar, PhD student and a staff engineer at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; and Liang Min, managing director of the Bits & Watts Initiative.
This work was funded by the California Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation, and the Bits & Watts Initiative with support from Volkswagen.
To read all stories about Stanford science, subscribe to the biweekly Stanford Science Digest.
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https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2022/09/22/charging-cars-honight-not-way-go/

Can't believe everything you read.

 

[gtlimer]

Agree with all of this. Two additional points I'd like to add.

1. You've not seen my mother-in-law doing laundry. That dryer absolutely is capable of being run 5+ hours per day!! .

OMG I thought it was just me!!!! During Covid when they were living with us I had to buy a new washer/dryer as the old (3yrs) LG dryer burnt out. I bought the new Whirlpool set with 5 yr extended warranty. They now visit us 3 times a year and my mother in law puts them thru their paces. I feel like she was head of quality control testing in a past life.

 

[Old Pro]

OMG I thought it was just me!!!! During Covid when they were living with us I had to buy a new washer/dryer as the old (3yrs) LG dryer burnt out. I bought the new Whirlpool set with 5 yr extended warranty. They now visit us 3 times a year and my mother in law puts them thru their paces. I feel like she was head of quality control testing in a past life.

My wife is the head of quality control testing in this household. If it can be bent, broken, dented, set on fire, or chipped she will do it! She once pulled the face off a sliding kitchen drawer! Not a Hot Flash, a Power Surge! Interestingly enough, the only thing she has dinged on her 2018 Tesla Model 3 LR purchased new is to scratch the rims within 15 minutes of picking up the vehicle. Other than 3 broken windshields, it's all good!

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