Perfect application and apropos name for ‘surge’ pricing
Comment on Chinese EV maker BYD says new fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank
asbestos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I always think about an “imaginary” scenario where we all have ultra fast charging like this and plug our cars in at the same time. Would the grid experience a brownout?
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Atom@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I studied this a bit in my MS and the answer is… probably not. “The grid will collapse” has been an anti-technology or pro fossil fuel talking point for a very long time, weather its arguing against renewables or against personal computers or against AC units. The most recent was solar. Grid operators were adamant that solar would crash the grid if it accounted for more than 10%, then 20%, then 30% and so on and it never happened. Now it’s onto EVs being the grid destroyer.
The reality is that production and use is not all that hard to predict. Ultrafast charging will eat some power, but that isn’t going to be the norm for wide EV adoption. Public charging will cost more money and be less convenient than charging at home or work over a longer duration. Home chargers are capping around 30-35 amps, generally overnight when grid demand is low. Couple this with the combined low cost for residential solar to change at even lower rates depending on your state/nation’s hostility to solar.
Now, if every car was replaced with an EV tomorrow, the grid would struggle. But that’s not going to happen. Adoption will be a long slow process and energy producers will increase output on pace as demand forecasts increase. A good parallel to this is Air Conditioning adoption. That’s another high demand appliance that went from rare to common. The grid has its challenges, but now the AC usage is forcastable and rarely challenges the grid.
Is it a challenge, especially with higher renewable mixtures, yes. Can utilities fumble? Of course. Will it be a widespread brownout every day during commute hours? Not likely.
Novocirab@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Also, just to indicate the orders of magnitude: The German electiricty grid roughly operates at a power of 200 000 MW.
Source (the graph at the bottom of the page). (Be mindful that the absolute numbers in the graph are given in “MWh per 15 minutes” (power*time/time), so to get the Watt number (power), one has to multiply all numbers by 4.)
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
If you truly have an “MS” then it should be trivial for you to do the math and calculate the power requirements of even a dozen of cars being charged at the rate of 1 Megawatt each.
A bare 12 chargers, the equivalent of a single small gas station, would certainly collapse the grid its attached to. These kinds of charging rates aren’t possible except maybe in the parking lot of an actual power plant.
asbestos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Great reply, thank you!