Engineering Explained: If Gas cars are banned, Can The Grid Handle Electric Cars?

[Sirfun]

I’m not sure how you go about charging your car at night using solar.

Like I was attempting to explain. With Net metering you plug in your car, or ALL your energy needs at night from the grid/power company for free, as long as you have more energy CREDITS sent to them during the day with your solar.
Your hookup to the grid is 2-way street. you send them your excess power from the solar. They send you back energy at night or times when the solar isn't making enough.

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[Luke42]

Like I was attempting to explain. With Net metering you plug in your car, or ALL your energy needs at night from the grid/power company for free, as long as you have more energy CREDITS sent to them during the day with your solar.
Your hookup to the grid is 2-way street. you send them your excess power from the solar. They send you back energy at night or times when the solar isn't making enough.

True from an individualistic point of view, which is a very important way to look at things.

However, from a systemic point of view, installing a lot of solar quickly in the US would mean that our power grid would run on solar during the day and on peaker plants at night (or during periods of bad weather).

At first glance, this looks like failure -- but cutting our fossil fuel use by more than 50%-ish is a huge win (and shifting it onto cheaper / cleaner NG) is an enormously huge win at an environmental/climate/society level, even if it's not a complete solution.

In the future, big batteries could allow time-shifting of kWhs from daytime to night time, and would be even better than running on fossil fuels at night -- but making that many batteries is a huge undertaking.

If you use net-metering to sell kWhs during the day (and buy them back at night), all of this becomes someone else's problem. It doesn't make the problem go away at the systemic level, but it does put solving the problem it in the hands of the energy pros -- which is a perfectly reasonable decision for an individual to make, if they so choose.

 

[Dids]

Won’t most people be charging their car at night?

Yes. But what has that got to do with the possibility of powering the grid totally with solar and wind? I didn't say you don't also need storage... I mearly made the point that it's possible.

 

[Dids]

Norway’s Energy Use Is Through The Roof Due To Widespread EV Adoption
By: Andrei Nedelea
February 10, 2021

Believe it or not, Norway’s per-capita electricity consumption is twice that of neighboring Sweden.

If you like to stay up to date on what matters in the world of electric vehicles, then you know Norway is a world leader when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. Well, as you can imagine, the country has much higher per-capita energy consumption numbers compared to any other country.
Norway has the second highest per-capita electricity usage in the world after Iceland. The average Norwegian used around 23,210 kWh per year in 2019, almost twice what the average American used in the same year. In case you were wondering which country is the world's largest electron guzzler per-capita, well, it’s Iceland, a small and cold country where the vast majority of buildings are warmed using electricity (most of which is renewably generated by harnessing clean geothermal energy, though); plug-ins are growing in popularity in Iceland too.

And if current trends continue, it is estimated that Norway’s power usage will grow by some 30 percent by 2040. This northern European nation that also happens to have vast offshore oil reserves, has been pushing for electrification harder than any other country. It is not only offering people excellent incentives to not buy ICE vehicles, but it’s also been electrifying any and all forms of public transport. In Norway, around 85 percent of households rely on electricity for heating too, way more than most other countries (except Iceland, of course).

https://insideevs.com/news/487186/norway-energy-use-soars-because-evs/

This article has a major flaw in that it starts by calling electricity energy.... it is but it should have said electricity use is through the roof... it deliberately makes it look like Norway uses more energy per capita than Sweden and that is just plain false. Norway uses more electricity but Sweden uses almost the same amount of energy per capita. Finland uses more energy per capita than Norway, although it's almost the same. The energy difference between Norway and Sweden is equivalent to about 180 gallons of gasoline per person. The article implies that this is a huge difference that isn't accounted for climate, topology, and population density.
Indeed this article is misleading garbage.

 

[BillyGee]

If only we had been opening new nuclear reactor a with safer construction and designs, then we wouldn't even be having these conversations.

 

[Cyberman]

"After all, it will be somehow! It has never been so, that nothing happened." (C

So true.
(Not really, umm, I'm unable to grock what you are saying)

 

[Luke42]

If only we had been opening new nuclear reactor a with safer construction and designs, then we wouldn't even be having these conversations.

Nuclear power definitely has a place in a low-carbon-emissions world.

The devil is in the details, though.

 

[LoPro]

And from what I have heard electricity gets very expensive in the winter time when it is needed for heating, kinda like So California in the summer

I wonder if Norway ever suffers from brown/black outs?

The average price of electricity is very cheap in Norway compared to other countries. And it’s all renewable and mostly based on hydropower. We’re also net exporting. It’s all based on controlled production from watching dam fill rates and expected need. Some winters are cheap and some are more expensive when projections are missed and weather is dry for long. Electricity isn’t a worry for most. It can be three times the cost of in summer though but varies highly.

 

[azjohn]

Like I was attempting to explain. With Net

The average price of electricity is very cheap in Norway compared to other countries. And it’s all renewable and mostly based on hydropower. We’re also net exporting. It’s all based on controlled production from watching dam fill rates and expected need. Some winters are cheap and some are more expensive when projections are missed and weather is dry for long. Electricity isn’t a worry for most. It can be three times the cost of in summer though but varies highly.

Thank you for your response. I was quoting info I have received in internet reports, good to get info straight from the horses mouth

What are the power rates in Norway per KWH?

 

[LoPro]

Thank you for your response. I was quoting info I have received in internet reports, good to get info straight from the horses mouth

What are the power rates in Norway per KWH?

Looked up statistics now and the average price for this winter mind you, 2020Q4, was 0.02 USD per kWh and 0.09 USD per kWH including fees to the grid owner and tax. An hour yesterday it was unusually 0.35 USD per kWh before it dropped again I noticed in the paper. It was supposedly because of transfer problems between regions in Norway and underwater power cables to Germany.

Charging at a Tesla supercharger is about 0,18 USD per kWh. Makes sense to charge at home but it is still something like 4 times cheaper than fuel for the same range.

Seems we waste more electricity than our neighbors which is a bad thing. I have noticed my family in Germany is very strict about turning off lights and down heat in rooms which aren’t occupied. Which makes sense but not something I feel people grow up learning here. Unless you are very environmentally aware (or just more sensible than most with this kind of thing). I was very into home automation so I have programmed this sort of thing though, and you do get a reimbursement (credit?) if you install control systems that save electricity. Or if you remove an old oil burning heater and install some sort of larger heat pump or environmentally friendly pellet burner. Actually oil burning heaters are forbidden from this year.

Like many I heat my house with a heat pump. Mine is a 21kW air-to-water heat pump (+built-in 9kW resistive) standing behind my house (reaching me to my chest and wider than I can reach with my hands) as I live at the relatively mild coast and have water based radiators and floor heating. But many have (drilled in rock or long cable down the fjord) ground water-to-water or ground water-to-air heat pumps where the source underground water holds around 6-7°C all year round.

EDIT: As you may notice I enjoy taking a shot at writing English at length ?

 

[CybertruckAgent]

Fool's gold?

Putting solar (150watt per square meter) on every suitable roof (8 billion square meters in the US) would get us 6 terawatt hours of power every day, on average, or over two trillion kilowatt hours per year.

And that's without wind, without using our natural gas generation (which doesn't need fracking), without solar farms...

-Crissa

Less than half of what we currently use, and not including moving the entire transportation and logistics sector onto that grid as well. Solar panels on every single roof in America is definitely not something that could happen quickly with the stroke of a pen by a politician. Solar panels are also highly dependent on weather patterns. Where I live, my roof may not get direct sunlight for 4-5 days for example.

 

[Crissa]

Solar panels on every single roof in America is definitely not something that could happen quickly ...

Nor could replacing every car with a battery EV.

-Crissa

 

[Luke42]

EDIT: As you may notice I enjoy taking a shot at writing English at length ?

Your English is far better than my Norwegian! Thank you!

 

[LoPro]

Your English is far better than my Norwegian! Thank you!

Thank you. Tell me when my “In Norway...” posts get really old. I just feel a kinship with the would-be CT people on this unusually fine forum, and that’s my context for comparisons. I have enjoyed and learnt a lot.

I have never been to the United states but a friend wants me to come along on a road trip vacation in the USA in 2022 or 2023. I suggested renting a CT ? Which may be the only CT I get to drive if it’s not coming here in the end. So rooting for you anyway.

 

[Crissa]

One thing the US does well is vacation ^-^

-Crissa