Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity. Programs like replacing your inefficient old fridge, or incandescent to LED bulbs and such.
This is going to be especially true as EV adoption takes off. It could be hard to keep up with increases in demand.
> Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity. Programs like replacing your inefficient old fridge, or incandescent to LED bulbs and such.
I don't think there's anything wrong with going for the cheaper option first (reducing demand via consumer incentives), before building more infrastructure when it's truly needed.
Re: EV adoption - I think smart charging will play a large role. E.g. if you come home from work at 1800, do you need to start charging immediately if you're going to leave the house at 0830 the next day? Spreading out EV charging demand over the evening and early morning could reduce the need to add more capacity.
The reasonable option is probably to trickle charge in case you need to go to the store, then ramp up after peak hours.
From a public policy standpoint that matters more while you’re grid powered, but with batteries peak draw affects overall power availability, so you’d still want to charge the vehicle slowly while the AC is on and cooking is happening. Same class of problem, different scale.
It could also be ideal for many people to charge at work during the day. Fleet vehicles would need to charge at night. Plus, if we're using renewable, that's less energy storage needed for the solar generated during the day.
> Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity.
It's not just that. For society at large, the less electricity is consumed the better for the environment - all power generation comes at a serious cost: nuclear may be the most efficient but raises the question of security (especially in earthquake-prone areas or potential hurricane/flood zones), environmental contamination caused by mining, waste storage and nuclear weapon material proliferation; solar takes up a lot of space and requires energy-intensive and polluting production steps; windmills are a danger to flight; all fossil fuels are bad due to CO2 and the impact of however they are mined; running water is bad for fish migration; dam water consumes large amounts of land and is a perfect target to hit in a war (as the Russians showed in Ukraine a few weeks ago); geothermal carries a risk of earthquakes.
That still doesn't make sense to me. There won't be any reduction in load. Load will continue to increase as we electrify more things. Currently, increased load is what is leading to power outages in certain areas.
This is going to be especially true as EV adoption takes off. It could be hard to keep up with increases in demand.