Regards,
Posted on 08/14/2023 9:11:43 AM PDT by Signalman
The state of California, which has struggled to reconcile its aggressive "green energy" agenda against its unreliable and blackout-prone power grid, may have an admittedly "unconventional" solution thanks to a proposal from Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E): Using electric cars to charge the power grid.
PG&E, which provides power for around 16 million California residents, sees "great potential" for EVs to act as power grid backup generators. "The grid needs those electric vehicles. We need to make it available, and it can be a huge resource," he added, per The Orange County Register.
Just the News contacted PG&E for more details. A spokesman responded by lauding the supposed benefits of "bidirectional charging."
"PG&E believes in a future where everyone is driving an electric vehicle (EV) and where that EV serves as a backup power option at home and more broadly as a resource for the grid," the statement to Just the News read. Not only is this a huge advancement for electric reliability and climate resiliency, it’s yet another advantage of clean-powered EVs, which are so important in our collective battle against climate change."
The company also said tapping electric cars eliminates "the need for non-renewable resources" like fossil fuels.
The state is widely regarded as the most green energy-driven state, but it is also infamous for its rolling blackouts. In August 2020, ABC reported that hundreds of thousands of Californians briefly lost power in rolling blackouts. Many times, the state uses a diesel generator to supplement the grid during peak energy usage.
Nonetheless, PG&E’s 2030 Climate Strategy Report has a goal for the grid "to quickly and safely power at least 3 million EVs— or about 12,000 GWh of EV-related electric load." Two million of those EVs are being sought for "vehicle-grid integration (VGI) applications, allowing EVs to be a cornerstone of both electric reliability and climate resilience for PG&E customers broadly."
According to the Pacific Research Institute, California isn’t able to generate enough electricity to meet its pending EV mandate. 12,000 GWh is nearly 18% of its total renewable electricity generated in 2021.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has openly referred to his state’s power grid as having a reliability "issue" that "has to be addressed." Even though it has an abundance of oil, it still imports more electricity from outside the state than any other state in the nation because of its green agenda pledge. Data culled from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that California led the nation in power outages last year, with 142 major events.
Because the state has notoriously high energy costs—with some reportedly paying triple the providing cost—three utility companies have proposed charging residents based on income rather than energy consumption.
We’re gonna need to add a rectifier to make that work.
I am trying not to LOL......
These people have truly lost their minds. My fear is that they are gonna run Newsom instead of Biden and they will cheat again to install him. It’s all over for this country if we lose in ‘24.
So your EV sends electricity to the power grid. But the next day, you’ve got to get to work so you drive to the place where you “fill up” with electricity, which then sends the same energy you sent to the grid, back to your EV!
Net gain: zero.
Makes a lot sense, doesn’t it?
LOL 😂😆
Residential solar already does this.
Think of all the engineers just facepalming every day there.
I do electrical distribution design, but not inside the utility anymore.
The decision making stupidity is off the charts.
When a management position is given to a black female, no EE degree and 7 years in the workforce over a PE with 30 years, but white, the game is about over.
I collect my checks and do bare minimum. Reality is going hurt bad.
I tried to give good ideas before, and it only got me yelled at, so…
About 5% loss going AC to DC if you do it at about 9 or 10kW, which is about the high end of what EV owners call Level 2 charging. I don't know about going AC to DC.
I get about 7% loss going AC to DC the way I usually charge my EV at home, which is slower at 5.6kW (low end of Level 2 charging).
That is literally using a battery to charge itself.
What PGE hopes to do is to charge up cars during the day and then say use a goodly amount of the car battery power to power the PGE grid at night.
This is partially possible because the car might have 200 miles of range but is only driven 40 miles each day typically.
Unfortunately, people with solar panels on their roof will just dispense with PGE at home.
I see the makings of a great business plan:
Like those folks with grid tied solar systems know. You pay one rate for electricity from the grid and the power company pays you a different, lesser rate for the power you sell to them.
The power company could just alternately charge and then discharge your car continuously, thereby generating a net positive cash flow with no effort on their part.
You may be on to something significant here - a new source of energy, completely solving the problem.
All we need to do is install generators on all the engineers arms and wire them all up to the grid. The facepalming will more than be enough to power entire cities. Note, the generators will garner electric power from BOTH the facepalming AND the de-facepalming.
Note to self: Unplug my car from the grid when I go to bed at night. The one element crazy leftist plans always forgets is personal choice. No one is going to let their charge be involuntarily depleted after paying to charge up the car.
Personally, I will stay in Texas and keep going to the gas station once a week.
Just like buoys harnessing wave power...
Wow this sounds like an electron daisy chain. Line just by that name will enforce it.
Have any of these fools considered the simple loss of energy by resistance?? Must have been away the day they tough impedance In electrical engineering 101.
It is also like filling the holding tanks at gas stations by draining the gas from the cars that just fueled up there.
It is so stupid it makes my head hurt.
Regards,
It reminds me of people who signed onto their power company’s “free” smart thermostats. Little did they realize after signing up, they had no control over their thermostats on hot days.
I know someone that did this and instantly regretted it. Of course, she didn’t listen to me when I told her NOT to sign up. She had a house renovation done on her house and got rid of that smart thermostat. There was a day where it was 105 F and she couldn’t lower it below 88 F. I would have ripped that damn thing off the wall that day.
Nah. PG&E is regulated to the extent that it is essentially an arm of the state government. No extortion required for the dog to obey its master
Nope. They’ll change the law that you can’t disconnect. Won’t grant an electrical permit if you try to add disconnect device.
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