Posted on 09/22/2022 12:07:38 PM PDT by Red Badger
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. Credit: Amy Adams/Stanford University
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.
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 percent, 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 1 million, accounting for about six percent of cars and light trucks. The state has targeted 5 million EVs on the road by 2030. When the penetration hits 30 percent to 40 percent 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 Ph.D. '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 percent 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.
Explore further
Integrating electric vehicles into the grid could prevent blackouts
More information:
Siobhan Powell, Charging infrastructure access and operation to reduce the grid impacts of deep electric vehicle adoption, Nature Energy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01105-7. www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01105-7
Journal information: Nature Energy
Duke Energy is building a square mile 75 megawatt solar farm down the street from my house. It can never pay off but it will provide electricity in the event of an ‘event’.
As John Kerry-Heinz would say: “DUH”.
Gassing up an ICE car: 5 minutes. Ten if you use the bathroom.
Charging an EV at home "over night" = 8-12 hours.
Charging an EV at a 120kW "supercharger" station: 1/2 hour.
Charging an EV at a typical 50kW charging station: 1 hour.
[But these will greatly shorten the life of your EV's batteries, "totaling" the car when they need to be replaced. So, buy a new EV!]
[Physics is a bitch, ain't it?]
{Not to mention: What happens when 100s or 1,000s of EVs run out of juice between cities during a hurricane or other evacuation????}
[Personally, I think that Greta Thunberg should be “renditioned” to Angola and forced to work with the other child laborers in a lithium mine.]
How do you say “Solyndra” in Bidenese?
I wonder who is buying Gulfstream Vs and diesel megayachts with the govt-directed profits?
How are we different from Venezuela, other than in scale?
I’ve seen that ski slope. Never understood it....in a middle of a desert. Fools and their money...About as foolish as Politicians here in the States.
Why do you think I’m interested in seeing lithium batteries get recycled???
The mining process is atrocious, even at Mountain Pass. I know more about it than you think I do.
One look at the summer load curve of virtually ANY utility shows this study is complete BS. There was barely enough capacity to meet load in a LOT of parts of the country during the peak afternoon hours. Why would they want people to add the burden of charging cars at that time frame?
Much better to do so at night when the demand is less.
Now, come winter, those demand curves are significantly different, with very cold temperatures bringing in a demand that peaks in the first couple of hours of daylight as the need for heat is added to the normal load increases associated with people getting up to make coffee and such. So in that time frame, it might make sense to charge in the afternoon when the heating load is less, but before evening when the sun goes down and lighting/cooking demand rises again.
"We need to move quickly toward decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for the bulk of emissions in California," Azevedo continued.That ridiculous assertion is ALWAYS casually thrown out as fact. The student authors should go back to first principals and question that. Everything proceeds from the cultish, naive, child-like belief that that is true.
I'm almost certain that natural gas has passed up Nuclear as a source in Ohio, and quite likely coal too. There are several newer combined-cycle gas-fired power plants scattered around the state, and I know that they've de-commissioned several coal-fired plants in that state (along with most every other state).
ICE vehicles do not spontaneously combust.
Big diff.
But you know that.
It takes the same amount of electricity when ever you charge it. The laws of physics do not change with the clock.
Reread 76. We totally agree.
We are now into total corruption. Lawlessness escalates.
An EV pollutes FAR more than ANY ICE vehicle on the road.
The experiment has already been run, under optimal conditions, and it failed.
The island of El Hierro, in the Spanish Canary Islands (as Spanish as Hawaii is American) has an abundance of:
1. Steady wind.
2. Full solar (latitude and weather)
3. “Gravity lakes” for pumping water uphill during peak wind/solar, and “harvesting” hydro energy by gravity off-peak.
There was probably no first-world, technological spot on the plant as perfect for a “sustainable green energy” experiment.
It failed. El Hierro still needs to import hydrocarbons. With literally everything going for it, max wind and solar, it could not run independently. El Hierro was probably as close to a perfect closed system experiment as we will ever find.
https://inhabitat.com/el-hierro-the-worlds-first-renewable-energy-island-or-is-it/
At the top of the atmosphere. At the equator. At midday.
It gets worse from there ...
Some of the "renewables" crowd just don't get that.
They're the stupid ones.
Their leaders are perfectly well aware ... and that's the plan. They want us jammed into urban tenements, owning nothing and being miserable. Or just dead ...
They're the evil ones.
“Spain’s El Hierro island finishes 2019 with 54% renewables share”
[54%: with the maximum conceivable on earth wind/solar/gravity hydro power combination. Anywhere else will be FAR under 54% max renewables.]
A "Line City" where, by "accident" (or on purpose) they can "forget" to keep the tank clean, or feed the fish, or keep it in the right temp range, etc.
"CONTROLLED BY AI! What could be better than that!
"Saudi Arabia To Build A New 105-Mile-Long Linear Zero Emissions City" 
See 99.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.