Upgrading the power lines isn't the full answer, certainly some upgrades will be required, but the wires are designed for peak demand. EVs have flexibility, and can mostly be charged in non-peak times, drastically reducing the powerline and power station upgrades required.
This flexibility has to be managed, and there are many companies working on this. For example: https://ev.energy/
I did a back of the envelope calculation some time back for both Canada and the UK (I imagine the US numbers are proportionally similar to Canada). If we replace all private passenger cars with EVs, using average mileage, it increases annual electricity demand by about 20%. The difference between daytime peak and nighttime off peak is more than 20%. In a lot of cases, there will be no need at all for new power plants or distribution networks. The reality, of course, is more complicated as we are electrifying much more than passenger cars.
You better believe, however, that the distribution networks are planning around this. I was in a meeting with someone from the National Grid (UK central grid authority) who is responsible for planning for the transition. Basically, all new housing developments are being provisioned assuming heat pumps and EV chargers. Existing areas are being monitored and upgraded as they near the grid limits. Plans go out years in advance. It is a lot of work, but I am confident that it is being well managed. I cannot say that everywhere is as well managed, but I think it is safe to assume that many of these people and organisations do, in fact, know what they are doing. It sounded like the biggest problem in the UK was NIMBYs fighting against the new distribution networks needed to land the power from the offshore wind farms which are rapidly replacing the old fossil fuel generators.
NIMBY is indeed the issue here as well. People don't want wind and solar arrays and they don't want to pay even 20% more for electric distribution or electricity itself.
The power distribution company is competent, I have full confidence in that. Yes, they have plans and know what they're doing and what's coming - but they need money to do it, and they're not going to get it anytime soon.
The post title misses the important "without investment and changes in charging habits". Most EVs can already be controlled to set charging preferences to match lower cost, off-peak charging overnight. However, this isn't the full solution as it can create secondary demand peaks. For example, if everyone in one region has an off-peak rate starting at midnight, you will get a step-change in demand at that time. Midnight onwards may also not be the lowest carbon time to charge as this will change every day as renewables are not predictable. In California right now, charging during the day would have lower emissions Source: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO
Many people are already thinking about this problem, including https://ev.energy. We go one step further and actively control EVs and EV Chargers to match their charging to when the grid is most clean. This may be overnight, but it could also be during the daytime when solar generation is highest. It is better for the grid not to use simple peak/off-peak pricing, but instead create tariffs that reward flexibility and move the exact charging times to best suit the grid.
I would like an API which provides consumer electricity cost data globally. There is a huge amount of potential for internet connected energy consumers to optimise their usage against carbon emissions and energy costs. Carbon emissions are available for a lot of countries through APIs like https://app.electricitymaps.com/map and https://www.watttime.org/, but consumer energy costs is much harder to find. There are some APIs that give some pricing data for the purposes of comparing suppliers in competitive markets, but few of these give accurate time-of-use costs for energy. https://www.genability.com/signal/ covers the US and a few other markets quite well, but doesn't have complete and global coverage.
ev.energy | Senior Backend (Python/Django), Senior ReactNative, React Web, Platform Engineers, Lead Engineers and more | Remote | Full-time | https://ev.energy/careers
ev.energy is making electric vehicle charging greener, cheaper and simpler for everyone.
We’re a small team, but we already serve electricity companies and their customers across the world. Our users are across Europe, North America and Australia.
Since we started three years ago, we’ve grown to 100,000+ users, raised a funding round, collaborated with 15+ energy companies and saved many tonnes of CO2. We were part of Microsoft’s first AI for Good cohort, won the EDF Pulse Innovation Challenge, and were named “Best Energy Startup in the World” by Free Electrons 2019.
We are hiring across our technology stack which includes Django, Python3, React Native, React JS, TypeScript and AWS. If you are interested, see the full list of roles and apply at https://ev.energy/careers/ and mention that you saw this post on HN.
Small Robot Company have a robot called Dick which uses "Non-Chemical Weeding", i.e. they zap the weed to kill it, and it's root. They use other small robots to do the mapping and planting. I really like the idea of small, specialised robots for different tasks.
The text "to take place in early 2020" and "AVAILABLE 2021" on that site, in November 2022, does not inspire confidence.
I guess in the near term dozens of specialized robots for each task will be necessary, but the idea I like is teams of general purpose robots using simple tools to perform almost any task "manually". It's too early to implement that now, but I think it will be feasible within my lifetime.
Generality is probably one reason why this robot sprays instead of hoeing. In addition to killing weeds, by changing chemicals this thing can fertilize, and they also mention pollinating and preventing pollination of flowers. (Preventing pollination avoids overburdening some kinds of trees. Currently instead people have to do "thinning" which is simply pulling half of the crop off the tree before it's ripe and throwing it on the ground).
Weed zapping is fascinating - but putting the kind of power electronics required to deliver sufficient voltage in a mobile robot is terrifying from an OHSA perspective.
One group I'm familiar with are using 50kv (and "more than enough" amps) for the purpose.
It's not really. Plenty of people have handheld tasers powered by 9v batteries and plenty of farm equipment can (and does) mangle people not being careful around very dangerous machines.
This is just a misunderstanding of the risks involved in various things.
Yeah there are tons of really dangerous things on farms, like Paraquat, or power take-offs. Power doesn't have to be electrical to kill you. Mechanical power will do the job just fine.
I'm well aware that it's far from the only thing that'll kill me on a farm.
That said, comparing a 50Kv shock to a handheld taser (which typically run at 300-500v) makes me think I might not be the one who misunderstands the risks.
You're off by three orders of magnitude. You need about 32 million volts per meter to overcome the resistance of the air. For a gap of a centimeter, it's about a few hundred kilovolts.
And I grew up farming, I'm quite familiar with the dangers.
For example harvesting equipment... the big ones are sort of up to a 30 food wide chainsaw with conveyors and other grabby bits to suck you in. People need to be many meters away from those things while they're running for any sense of safety. A hot spark has nothing on many other dangers and if designed with any sense would only result in severe local burns. Plenty of farm equipment will effortlessly rip a limb off if it doesn't tear your entire body into bite sized chunks.
You know the machines that do that and you don't go near them. When you're the operator you must know where everyone is at all times and know what they mean to do... and be able to communicate with them with a series of gestures, eye contact, short yells, etc. If you don't it's trivially easy to kill your helpers.
Maybe this is a false equivalence, but I think industrial scale leaching of poisons into the water supply is more terrifying and anything that can replace that is worth looking into.
ev.energy | Senior Backend (Python/Django), Charger Technicians, Senior ReactNative, Platform Engineers, Lead Engineers and more | Remote | Full-time | https://ev.energy/careers
ev.energy is making electric vehicle charging greener, cheaper and simpler for everyone.
We’re a small team, but we already serve electricity companies and their customers across the world. Our users are across Europe, North America and Australia.
Since we started three years ago, we’ve grown to 80,000+ users, raised a funding round, collaborated with 15+ energy companies and saved many tonnes of CO2. We were part of Microsoft’s first AI for Good cohort, won the EDF Pulse Innovation Challenge, and were named “Best Energy Startup in the World” by Free Electrons 2019.
We are hiring across our technology stack which includes Django, Python3, React Native, React JS, TypeScript and AWS. If you are interested, see the full list of roles and apply at https://ev.energy/careers/ and mention that you saw this post on HN.
ev.energy | Senior Backend (Python/Django), Charger Technicians, Senior ReactNative, Platform Engineers, Lead Engineers and more | Remote | Full-time | https://ev.energy/careers
ev.energy is making electric vehicle charging greener, cheaper and simpler for everyone.
We’re a small team, but we already serve electricity companies and their customers across the world. Our users are across Europe, North America and Australia.
Since we started three years ago, we’ve grown to 80,000+ users, raised a funding round, collaborated with 15+ energy companies and saved many tonnes of CO2. We were part of Microsoft’s first AI for Good cohort, won the EDF Pulse Innovation Challenge, and were named “Best Energy Startup in the World” by Free Electrons 2019.
We are hiring across our technology stack which includes Django, Python3, React Native, React JS, TypeScript and AWS. If you are interested, see the full list of roles and apply at https://ev.energy/careers/ and mention that you saw this post on HN.
ev.energy | Senior Backend (Python/Django), Charger Technicians, Senior ReactNative, and more | Remote | Full-time | https://ev.energy/careers
ev.energy enables consumers to charge their EVs in the most cost-effective and least carbon-intensive way possible!
We’re a small team, but we already serve electricity companies and their customers across the world, with users in Europe, North America and Australia.
Since we started three years ago, we’ve grown to 50,000+ users, raised a funding round, collaborated with 15+ energy companies and saved many tonnes of CO2. We were part of Microsoft’s first AI for Good cohort, won the EDF Pulse Innovation Challenge and were named “Best Energy Startup in the World” by Free Electrons 2019.
We are hiring across our technology stack which includes Django, Python3, React Native, React JS and AWS. If you are interested, see the full list of roles and apply at https://ev.energy/careers/ and mention that you saw this post on HN.
Ripple Energy (https://rippleenergy.com/) in the UK are offering exactly that, but with Wind Farms. You buy into a cooperative that builds and owns the wind farm. The generated energy is sold back to your utility and taken off you energy bill. It's very much like having local renewable generation, but can be used by those like me who live in an apartment and have no way to install solar.
ev.energy | Senior Backend (Python/Django), Charger Technician, Engineering Managers, Senior ReactNative, and more | Remote | Full-time | https://ev.energy/careers
ev.energy enables consumers to charge their EVs in the most cost-effective and least carbon-intensive way possible!
We’re a small team, but we already serve electricity companies and their customers across the world, with users in Europe, North America and Australia.
Since we started three years ago, we’ve grown to 50,000+ users, raised a funding round, collaborated with 15+ energy companies and saved many tonnes of CO2. We were part of Microsoft’s first AI for Good cohort, won the EDF Pulse Innovation Challenge and were named “Best Energy Startup in the World” by Free Electrons 2019.
We are hiring across our technology stack which includes Django, Python3, React Native, React JS and AWS. If you are interested, see the full list of roles and apply at https://ev.energy/careers/ and mention that you saw this post on HN.
This flexibility has to be managed, and there are many companies working on this. For example: https://ev.energy/