DarthPuppy said:
If we are going all EV by 2040, Cali better get cracking on building out the power grid and charging infrastructure. I'm fairly certain our present power grid won't handle converting all of the miles driven in California daily to being powered by the grid. It wasn't that long ago we had rolling outages because the grid couldn't handle summer HVAC needs. Now lets require all movement to be powered by that grid.
Summer HVAC loads are fairly well matched to PV electric generation. When it is sunny and hot, HVAC loads are high, as is PV generation. About 10 GW of solar have been added in California. Oh, and Enron is now bankrupt. So rolling outages are now much less likely.
How much power is needed for all the passenger vehicles?
The average driver in California drives less than 15,000 miles. At 3 miles per kWh, that is 5000 kWh per year. Divide by 365 and 24, and the average usage of less than 0.6 kW per person. Plus some for TMS in hot or cold weather. Less than 1 kW average per person.
Car charging usually doesn't need to be done at the peak hour, usually can be deferred until night when the grid is less loaded, or until day when the solar power is in excess. New generation capacity isn't needed until the total load (less solar and wind) is more or less constant. Charge at 11 PM to 5 AM, when little power is used. Or between 9 AM and 4 PM, when there is often too much solar power on California's grid.
Of the less than 1 kW per person needed needed, at least 0.5 kW could be supplied by load leveling. The rest might be handled by utility scale solar, at a cost of $2 per watt installed, would need roughly 6 kW added (assuming 1/12 available) or $300 per person per year spent for the next 20 years. Or adding wind or nuclear power plants at a similar cost, if you don't like utility scale solar. Double or more for roof top solar.
Other costs would include smart charging stations or putting the smart charge functionality into cars, adding to some local grid capacities and crushers for all the old ICEVs. Battery storage for charging is mostly useful for peak hour charging, a tiny fraction of charging. All of this is fairly minor. Adding cars to the grid if charging is mostly deferrable, reduces the need to adding battery storage to the grid. Grid stabilization can come from source control, load control, or adding storage.
the vast wilderness of the gas-loving, no EV infrastructure midwest.
There is a reason why that is called "fly over country". :lol: :roll: But actually, really, it isn't all that way. If they want the business, and they will, they will need to add the infrastructure to support it. I'm not saying nothing will change for the worse. But this is a very solvable problem.