(01-19-2021, 03:43 PM)jeffster Wrote: Finally. Really looking forward to this. Clean travel.

(01-19-2021, 05:28 PM)tomh009 Wrote:

(01-19-2021, 03:43 PM)jeffster Wrote: Finally. Really looking forward to this. Clean travel.

There will be some work that will need to be done to ensure we have sufficient generation and transmission capacity to support a massive shift to EVs in the coming decades. How much of that incremental generating capacity will be carbon-free is something no one knows yet.

I do wonder how large an EV population could realistically be charged overnight (considering that few cars will have completely empty batteries each night) given our current spare overnight generation capacity.

(01-19-2021, 05:39 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:

(01-19-2021, 05:28 PM)tomh009 Wrote: I do wonder how large an EV population could realistically be charged overnight (considering that few cars will have completely empty batteries each night) given our current spare overnight generation capacity.

In theory, overnight charging is a no brainer, and basically amounts to free capacity, I don't think transmission capacity is a concern here. Local distribution capacity might be more of a problem, but fairly easy to solve.

However, the projection is that the electrical grid will become less and less clean in the next few years as there is a shift to more natural gas away from some nuclear. I think EVs efficiency should be based on the average energy emissions, rather than emissions at the time of charging...I suspect getting that detailed is probably irrelevant and at that level of detail, is going to be missing other side-effects like infrastructure investments to support charging anyway.

Interesting and unrelated tidbit. The small town I am in right now has a DC fast charger in their municipal parking lot. It makes a lot of sense because this is a destination that is at the extreme range of EVs from much of the GTA, so to support round trips a fast charger would be necessary. But it is the least efficient of EV charging, albeit also most rare.

(01-19-2021, 05:53 PM)Rainrider22 Wrote: Talk to people who work in the electrical distribution field and you will get a different answer.  If everything goes electric, we dont have the capacity to generate the electricity  let alone distribute it.  Also in terms of oil, we still need it.  All the cheap stuff you want to buy from China requires immense amounts of bunker fuel to ship. The average car right now has 350kg of plastic in it and expected to increase, that plastic comes from oil.  I am happy to see we are working on better alternatives however, we are still along way away from saying good buy to gasoline.

(01-19-2021, 06:18 PM)tomh009 Wrote:

(01-19-2021, 05:39 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: In theory, overnight charging is a no brainer, and basically amounts to free capacity, I don't think transmission capacity is a concern here. Local distribution capacity might be more of a problem, but fairly easy to solve.

However, the projection is that the electrical grid will become less and less clean in the next few years as there is a shift to more natural gas away from some nuclear. I think EVs efficiency should be based on the average energy emissions, rather than emissions at the time of charging...I suspect getting that detailed is probably irrelevant and at that level of detail, is going to be missing other side-effects like infrastructure investments to support charging anyway.

Interesting and unrelated tidbit. The small town I am in right now has a DC fast charger in their municipal parking lot. It makes a lot of sense because this is a destination that is at the extreme range of EVs from much of the GTA, so to support round trips a fast charger would be necessary. But it is the least efficient of EV charging, albeit also most rare.

There is some available overnight capacity indeed (though much less so in the daytime, and especially so in the summer), and it is pretty much "free". This is snipped from https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/Ontarios-Energy-Dilemma-Apr-2017.pdf.



It might be a gigawatt, or it might be five, depending on the time of year, time of day and the weather. But suppose we have 5 GW of available capacity, and 5M EVs. That's only 1000W (1 kW) per vehicle available for charging. Assume 10 hours of charging time, and 20% of cars need to be charged, and maybe the numbers work (it would provide 50 kWh per car). But it would only work when there is 5 kW of capacity available. If there is less than that, the gas generation has to kick in, or else the power available for charging will need to be curtailed (how?).

At the local level, the biggest bottlenecks will be the transformers and distribution stations, which were not designed with this level of usage in mind. Most multi-residential buildings have little spare capacity, and I suspect the neighbourhood substations may have the same challenge.

(01-19-2021, 07:38 PM)plam Wrote: I'm going to be a bit of a downer and point out that EVs are a massive step forward in terms of carbon emissions but they still have all the terrible effects on the built form that ICE cars have. They also still have emissions from tire and brake particulates. Should we move to EVs? Absolutely. But we also have to fix the built form (eg grocery store in DTK).

I have the RoW climate change policy direction paper open which I should read and comment on.

As for the thing about diesel buses: Wellington NZ doesn't have LRT and they have only some electric/hybrid buses (they are buying more). It sucks to sit on a bench in the CBD and have 3 diesel buses waiting at the light.

Being ahead of the curve would have been more expensive, probably significantly so. Maybe we still should have been but people don't like paying taxes. (I think people should pay more municipal taxes).

Shipping overseas is incredibly efficient in terms of fuel, although bunker fuel is quite dirty. I think that the shipping from the port to your house is more carbon than from China to Canada.

(01-19-2021, 07:26 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I think you are drastically overestimating the amount of charging that is needed. Load balancing is necessary yes, but ultimately most vehicles are driven only a short distance each day. Average commute distance is around 12 km by some sources I found. So 24 km total round trip. With an average of 6 km / kWh, we need 4 kWh per vehicle per night.

(01-19-2021, 06:18 PM)tomh009 Wrote:

(01-19-2021, 05:39 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: In theory, overnight charging is a no brainer, and basically amounts to free capacity, I don't think transmission capacity is a concern here. Local distribution capacity might be more of a problem, but fairly easy to solve.

However, the projection is that the electrical grid will become less and less clean in the next few years as there is a shift to more natural gas away from some nuclear. I think EVs efficiency should be based on the average energy emissions, rather than emissions at the time of charging...I suspect getting that detailed is probably irrelevant and at that level of detail, is going to be missing other side-effects like infrastructure investments to support charging anyway.

Interesting and unrelated tidbit. The small town I am in right now has a DC fast charger in their municipal parking lot. It makes a lot of sense because this is a destination that is at the extreme range of EVs from much of the GTA, so to support round trips a fast charger would be necessary. But it is the least efficient of EV charging, albeit also most rare.

There is some available overnight capacity indeed (though much less so in the daytime, and especially so in the summer), and it is pretty much "free". This is snipped from https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/Ontarios-Energy-Dilemma-Apr-2017.pdf.



It might be a gigawatt, or it might be five, depending on the time of year, time of day and the weather. But suppose we have 5 GW of available capacity, and 5M EVs. That's only 1000W (1 kW) per vehicle available for charging. Assume 10 hours of charging time, and 20% of cars need to be charged, and maybe the numbers work (it would provide 50 kWh per car). But it would only work when there is 5 kW of capacity available. If there is less than that, the gas generation has to kick in, or else the power available for charging will need to be curtailed (how?).

At the local level, the biggest bottlenecks will be the transformers and distribution stations, which were not designed with this level of usage in mind. Most multi-residential buildings have little spare capacity, and I suspect the neighbourhood substations may have the same challenge.

(01-19-2021, 09:55 PM)tomh009 Wrote:

(01-19-2021, 07:26 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I think you are drastically overestimating the amount of charging that is needed. Load balancing is necessary yes, but ultimately most vehicles are driven only a short distance each day. Average commute distance is around 12 km by some sources I found. So 24 km total round trip. With an average of 6 km / kWh, we need 4 kWh per vehicle per night.

If you assume 18,000 km/year (a convenient number but probably not far off the annual average), that's 50 km/day. That would be about 8 kWh/vehicle/night. Anyway, I did post earlier that I was hoping that someone had done some real work on this, rather than me making gross assumptions. I haven't found anything yet, though.

I don't know how to achieve load-balancing (or, really, power management) at the municipal hydro level, especially since EVs are mixed in with standard residential and commercial consumption: there is no simple way to reduce charging power (only) when the capacity is limited. There is software for doing it at the building level -- it's what our building does, as out transformer and panel have limited capacity for adding chargers, maybe 600 kW at best, which is only good for 20 level 2 chargers.

(01-20-2021, 08:51 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: As for load balancing, there is actually a fair bit of research on smart grid stuff. But it really isn't a technical issue, building software for it isn't hard it's kind of an understood task. The big problem is that it is contrary to the self interest society we have built. It requires cooperation of a majority of the population.  So we either need regulations or economic incentives, and I suspect there needs to be considerable policy research into this.

(01-20-2021, 08:51 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: As for load balancing, there is actually a fair bit of research on smart grid stuff. But it really isn't a technical issue, building software for it isn't hard it's kind of an understood task. The big problem is that it is contrary to the self interest society we have built. It requires cooperation of a majority of the population.  So we either need regulations or economic incentives, and I suspect there needs to be considerable policy research into this.

(01-20-2021, 10:01 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: I would start by just making pricing information available in the electrical socket. Then you could tell your dryer a maximum price it should wait for before starting. Same for air conditioners etc.

This is way simpler than trying to design protocols for the power company to turn off your stuff, and also decentralizes the problem: all the power company has to do is provide the correct pricing information (which they should be doing anyway), and every device manufacturer can compete to use that information in the most effective way.

For heating/cooling, one can even imagine a thermostat where you can tell it to cool to 25° for example if power is one price and 23° if it is a cheaper price.

The trick is to harness self interest. Self interest always exists and cannot be entirely eliminated, nor is it clear that one would want to do that. Instead, appeal to a majority’s sense of cooperation to put in place a system that harnesses their natural self interest.

(01-20-2021, 10:01 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:

(01-20-2021, 08:51 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: As for load balancing, there is actually a fair bit of research on smart grid stuff. But it really isn't a technical issue, building software for it isn't hard it's kind of an understood task. The big problem is that it is contrary to the self interest society we have built. It requires cooperation of a majority of the population.  So we either need regulations or economic incentives, and I suspect there needs to be considerable policy research into this.

I would start by just making pricing information available in the electrical socket. Then you could tell your dryer a maximum price it should wait for before starting. Same for air conditioners etc.

This is way simpler than trying to design protocols for the power company to turn off your stuff, and also decentralizes the problem: all the power company has to do is provide the correct pricing information (which they should be doing anyway), and every device manufacturer can compete to use that information in the most effective way.

For heating/cooling, one can even imagine a thermostat where you can tell it to cool to 25° for example if power is one price and 23° if it is a cheaper price.

The trick is to harness self interest. Self interest always exists and cannot be entirely eliminated, nor is it clear that one would want to do that. Instead, appeal to a majority’s sense of cooperation to put in place a system that harnesses their natural self interest.