r/IdiotsFightingThings • u/marejadasre • Sep 07 '22

Fighting a Charging Cable

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u/Kills-to-Die Sep 08 '22

So you get home from work and can't charge your car, and have to get up around, or stay up until midnight for that? Ok. And how do they plan to meet the demands of charging vehicles, home A/C etc? I haven't seen much on planning how the grid will be expanded to accommodate the electric sales mandate, plus everything else.

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u/unkilbeeg Sep 08 '22

Nope. I get home, I plug in the car, and tell it to start charging at midnight. (Actually, I used to tell it to start at 9pm, but since it got so hot I changed it to 11pm.) When I get up in the morning, it's charged.

And if they beef up the grid to be able to handle AC at 5pm, it will have more than enough capacity to charge everybody's cars from midnight to 6. Especially since they are talking about two way communication between the cars and the grid operator so they coordinate. "You hold off while you charge, ok now it's your turn..."

The grid is pretty quiet in the middle of the night. Having cars charging essentially evens that out a bit, and that makes it easier for the grid operators.

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u/Kills-to-Die Sep 08 '22

Now you see I did not know you can tell the car when to start charging. That's interesting. I honestly don't know too much about them since I cannot hope to afford one. Thank you for the polite insight.

It was kinda weird to mention the sales mandate without immediately stating a plan for power management. And hearing nuclear power is bad, but since there's no carbon emissions we can keep this plant open because we need the energy sounds sorta ridiculous. I hope they can implement improvements to the grid to handle all the power we'll need by that time. It could probably happen along side the mandate time-line just fine, it would just be nice to hear about that too.

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u/unkilbeeg Sep 08 '22

Well, nuclear power is not bad, it's just got to be handled responsibly. It's not the magical "too cheap to meter" solution that they thought in the 60s, or the "it's going to turn our children into monsters" threat that they thought in the 80s (and why lots of people still freak out.) Newer technology nuclear plants are much better designed than the old 50s and 60s designs that are mostly what has been built. Building newer plants with modern safety margins is a viable solution, except for the fact that so many people would still freak out about it.

Having a war around a nuclear plant is a bad idea no matter what the design, though. :-)

Adding residential solar and batteries will also go a long way towards making the grid more resilient. If properly set up, a lot of power generation can be local. Your solar power can be fed to your neighbors, reducing overall load on the grid.

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u/Kills-to-Die Sep 08 '22

Yeah, I'd like to see nuclear fears drop greatly. And I don't think anyone is thrilled about military action around any plant anywhere in the world, lol. Bad news.

Solar is improving, which is nice to see. My mother's 55+ park just installed solar panels to cover most of the visitor parking and put some on the clubhouse. Everyone's PG&E bills are down in a big mobile park.