That why a) they do it neighborhood by neighborhood and b) why many a/c systems monitor the power and won't kick on until the line voltage stabilizes.
To make the argument that electric cars will inevitably cause problems that will keep the grid down is to assume that the power companies won't change anything in response to an on going and predictable increase in baseline demand.
That's as silly as a liberal politician assuming than no one will change their behavior to adapt of a doubling of their tax rate.
One issue with that is that it takes a long time to get the permits and planning done to expand the power grid as would be needed for a significant fraction of the US vehicle population to convert. As it is right now, 1) almost nobody is interested in doing so, not least of which because of the envirowackos and 2) just 5% of the US vehicle population converting will crash grids.
The only exception is Texas, which took a winter rolling blackout that happened a few years ago *extremely* seriously and is now frantically expanding our grid.
>> “OK, but that’s little different than restoring power on a hot summer’s day in the south. If they tried to do it everywhere at once the strain of all those air conditioners kicking on at the same time will pop breakers” <<
Yes.
I recently bought an AC unit that only runs the fan for the first 5 minutes. I hate it, its stupid in my opinion, since if all of them did it it still wouldn’t help, it would just delay the impact point.
>> “To make the argument that electric cars will inevitably cause problems that will keep the grid down is to assume that the power companies won’t change anything in response to an on going and predictable increase in baseline demand.” <<
.
The logical approach to that issue would be to tax the purchase of electric cars to fund the expansion costs attributable to their operation.
That would at least be an incentive for the power companies that wouldn’t burden the more sensible people with the bill for satisfying the fools.