I think there is a big misunderstanding here. The power grid suffers from a distribution problem not a production problem. The concern with households with EVs is getting the power from the power plants to the houses. During high demand, the powerlines overheat. It’s a delicate power regulation dance to keep the flow at maximum capacity without having fully shutdown any power routes in order to cool. If you do not, you will lose the lines which means a significant downtime for that path.
Datacenters are getting direct lines from the production sites. I believe that for some datacenters, retired nuclear power plants are being spun up in order to serve them exclusively.
SOURCE: Grid management is one of the things my firm specializes in.
EDIT: Believe it or not, households with solar panels that feed back into the grid can be a problem sometimes because the unexpected capacity in the lines can also overheat the lines and hampers the ability of the utility company to regulate lune temps. If you are doing solar, consider adding battery banks to catch the excess.
Makes me wonder how the Chinese and European power grids can handle it just fine so far, with Norway being not that far away from full transition for example.
If the network is a limiting factor, why not push for dynamic pricing in combinatio with wall boxes that automatically use targetted loading during better prices. If that is implementrf on a large scale, they would stabilise the network rather than destabilising it.
You guys seriously need to let the wires cool down?
Meanwhile here every house built in the last half century gets 3x230V three phase service with 3x25A main fuses at minimum and can go up to 50A. And that’s just normal residential stuff.
The fuses protect the lines upstream to the next protection device. That doesn’t mean every house could max out their breaker at the same time. Just like you can’t pull the max amperage on each circuit breaker in your panel without popping the mail breaker.
To answer your question, most American homes I’ve seen have 240V at 200A. Some older homes have 100A.
I’m not a expert, but I think EVs could actually help with this too though. It’d be a challenging technical problem, but if the battery control software can communicate with the grid, they can be used as temporary storage, and local sources when needed. I doubt this will ever happen, especially since it takes some extra infrastructure to work correctly all the time, but it could be done if we made it a priority.
It is a real and very common problem that gets no press because a lot of people work very hard to ensure that the line temps do not reach critical. That said, it only becomes a real problem during times of high demand like heat waves and cold snaps. Our infrastructure is absolute dog shit at the moment, and I think the fear is that if every home had one or two EVs charging overnight, then every night would be a high demand event.
We need to bring our infrastructure up to adequate.
Home, residential, and business located batteries will help with this. You don’t need to rely on transmission as much if batteries are supplying power physically close to the demand.
And if that was the main concern we would be incentivizing people building out their own solar with battery setups, but the plebs paying less for energy isn’t the goal.
I think the main thing you are missing about OPs post is that when it came to reducing costs for consumers, pollution, and greenhouse gasses, building out infrastructure for electric cars wasn’t a priority and was vehemently fought. Now that its about making a bunch of billionaires 5% wealthier, there is nothing that will stop the build out. Energy infrastructure is now a major priority and this time at the expense of consumers.
Then build out more infrastructure, for Gods sake. Take the Texas grid for instance. It’s held together with duct tape and spit. Just the wind blowing the wrong way and suddenly half the state’s without electricity.
The answer is to use public spending, because the power companies want artificially low supply, since that means they make more money.
Of course you also need to install new infrastructure to let consumers also offset the grid, but again: artificially low supply.
It’s basically a rigged market at the behest of the power companies. You could innovate, but there’s less money in that in the long run - so you won’t.
The distribution limits are almost always an afternoon/evening thing. Early afternoon for warm climates (aircon and cooking dinner) and evening for cold climates (cooking dinner, showers, heating).
Midday for solar injection.
Hence the famous ‘duck curve’.
The distribution network has plenty of capacity overnight; we just need people to wait until about 11PM before we start charging.
At that point we get the question of whether we have the generation.
The point being made seems to be that the distribution network doesn’t need upgrading for AI loads, but does need upgrading if you want to charge EVs at peak times. That’s accurate. Nothing more, nothing less.
The name you are looking for is Residential Time-of-Use. A lot of customers are not aware that their utility company offers Residential Time-of-Use rate plans. Some even offer multiple options, but many do not advertize it. If you are not subscribed to a Residential Time-of-Use plan, you are over paying.
At least in NZ, the law forbids cross-subsidisarion i.e. customers on one plan paying more/less than is proportional to the cost of serving them, averaged across the group.
This means that here, if you are a cookie-cutter use-power-at-peak-times household, it’s going to be cheaper to use a flat 24hour plan than a ToU plan, because the peak rate will be higher than the 24UC rate.
If you have an EV, you’ll almost certainly be better off on a peak/off-peak plan.
Note that for a while, plans where you pay the current wholesale spot price were called ToU and those can be painful to be on.
I think there is a big misunderstanding here. The power grid suffers from a distribution problem not a production problem. The concern with households with EVs is getting the power from the power plants to the houses. During high demand, the powerlines overheat. It’s a delicate power regulation dance to keep the flow at maximum capacity without having fully shutdown any power routes in order to cool. If you do not, you will lose the lines which means a significant downtime for that path.
Datacenters are getting direct lines from the production sites. I believe that for some datacenters, retired nuclear power plants are being spun up in order to serve them exclusively.
SOURCE: Grid management is one of the things my firm specializes in.
EDIT: Believe it or not, households with solar panels that feed back into the grid can be a problem sometimes because the unexpected capacity in the lines can also overheat the lines and hampers the ability of the utility company to regulate lune temps. If you are doing solar, consider adding battery banks to catch the excess.
Makes me wonder how the Chinese and European power grids can handle it just fine so far, with Norway being not that far away from full transition for example.
If the network is a limiting factor, why not push for dynamic pricing in combinatio with wall boxes that automatically use targetted loading during better prices. If that is implementrf on a large scale, they would stabilise the network rather than destabilising it.
How bad is the American power grid?
You guys seriously need to let the wires cool down?
Meanwhile here every house built in the last half century gets 3x230V three phase service with 3x25A main fuses at minimum and can go up to 50A. And that’s just normal residential stuff.
The fuses protect the lines upstream to the next protection device. That doesn’t mean every house could max out their breaker at the same time. Just like you can’t pull the max amperage on each circuit breaker in your panel without popping the mail breaker.
To answer your question, most American homes I’ve seen have 240V at 200A. Some older homes have 100A.
I’m not a expert, but I think EVs could actually help with this too though. It’d be a challenging technical problem, but if the battery control software can communicate with the grid, they can be used as temporary storage, and local sources when needed. I doubt this will ever happen, especially since it takes some extra infrastructure to work correctly all the time, but it could be done if we made it a priority.
https://youtu.be/ol07hIAtfR0
Is overheating an actual problem or a hypothetical? The reason I ask is
It is a real and very common problem that gets no press because a lot of people work very hard to ensure that the line temps do not reach critical. That said, it only becomes a real problem during times of high demand like heat waves and cold snaps. Our infrastructure is absolute dog shit at the moment, and I think the fear is that if every home had one or two EVs charging overnight, then every night would be a high demand event.
We need to bring our infrastructure up to adequate.
Glad to know about the work being done. I suppose this is one of those situations which you don’t hear about until failure occurs.
Home, residential, and business located batteries will help with this. You don’t need to rely on transmission as much if batteries are supplying power physically close to the demand.
This. I have a whole house battery system and make it a point to run off battery during peak hours.
And if that was the main concern we would be incentivizing people building out their own solar with battery setups, but the plebs paying less for energy isn’t the goal.
I think the main thing you are missing about OPs post is that when it came to reducing costs for consumers, pollution, and greenhouse gasses, building out infrastructure for electric cars wasn’t a priority and was vehemently fought. Now that its about making a bunch of billionaires 5% wealthier, there is nothing that will stop the build out. Energy infrastructure is now a major priority and this time at the expense of consumers.
Proposed data centers using >4GWs, so production is a problem.
Then build out more infrastructure, for Gods sake. Take the Texas grid for instance. It’s held together with duct tape and spit. Just the wind blowing the wrong way and suddenly half the state’s without electricity.
The answer is to use public spending, because the power companies want artificially low supply, since that means they make more money.
Of course you also need to install new infrastructure to let consumers also offset the grid, but again: artificially low supply.
It’s basically a rigged market at the behest of the power companies. You could innovate, but there’s less money in that in the long run - so you won’t.
1000% I get to see some of the budgets for projects we are involved in and they are pathetic (IMO) given the importance of what we do.
Yes, but…
The distribution limits are almost always an afternoon/evening thing. Early afternoon for warm climates (aircon and cooking dinner) and evening for cold climates (cooking dinner, showers, heating).
Midday for solar injection.
Hence the famous ‘duck curve’.
The distribution network has plenty of capacity overnight; we just need people to wait until about 11PM before we start charging.
At that point we get the question of whether we have the generation.
yep. at some point we’re gonna realize that a modicum of storage will smooth out so many issues.
Getting the energy to/from the storage can still be a big issue. You potentially even end up double-storing it.
ok let’s just peg technology as done and live with the same buildout we have, now, forever and ever amen.
?!
funny how easy it is to get power companies to hook up data centers but god for fucking bid we improve the grid to deal with these problems today
When did I ever say that?
The point being made seems to be that the distribution network doesn’t need upgrading for AI loads, but does need upgrading if you want to charge EVs at peak times. That’s accurate. Nothing more, nothing less.
Distribution network != the grid.
Pretty simple for most EVs to set a schedule I’d think. My Tesla allows that so I avoid peak
Even my 12 year old plug in hybrid lets me set a charging schedule. I pay the same rate 24/7 so it charges as soon as it gets plugged in.
You might be able to pay less if you move to a time of use plan.
The name you are looking for is Residential Time-of-Use. A lot of customers are not aware that their utility company offers Residential Time-of-Use rate plans. Some even offer multiple options, but many do not advertize it. If you are not subscribed to a Residential Time-of-Use plan, you are over paying.
That depends on how the plans are set.
At least in NZ, the law forbids cross-subsidisarion i.e. customers on one plan paying more/less than is proportional to the cost of serving them, averaged across the group.
This means that here, if you are a cookie-cutter use-power-at-peak-times household, it’s going to be cheaper to use a flat 24hour plan than a ToU plan, because the peak rate will be higher than the 24UC rate.
If you have an EV, you’ll almost certainly be better off on a peak/off-peak plan.
Note that for a while, plans where you pay the current wholesale spot price were called ToU and those can be painful to be on.