I was mind-boggled to read about a proposed "solution" to California's electricity woes.
California’s largest electric utility PG&E wants to suck the batteries of electric-vehicle owners plugged into charging stations to stabilize the grid during unstable periods. The Ford F-150 already allows for bidirectional charging, but that was sold as a benefit to the owner as a kind of independent generator for households during blackouts. PG&E wants to use it to commandeer all EV batteries and use their power to prevent grid collapse.
. . .
Does anyone see the problem here? California’s power grid is destabilizing for a number of reasons, mainly from nonsensical and hypocritical public policies. Chief among those are (a) a refusal to use scalable power sources (oil, gas, coal, nuclear) for demand at current levels, and (b) forcing Californians to transfer their vehicles to the grid rather than use gasoline for independent power, thus escalating demand on the grid dramatically.
This proposal doesn’t solve either of those problems. It instead creates a kind of three-card Monty with the grid — shifting power to the vehicles, and then pulling it back when the state decides to apply it elsewhere. It’s only an illusion of a solution; no additional power gets created. PG&E and the state would simply confiscate that power for their own uses as they see fit. Technically, the grid would operate more efficiently if it never charged the EVs at all, considering the inevitable power losses that would take place in regional “bidirectional charging.”
It’s the ultimate in authoritarian redistribution — no real production, and lots of opportunity for losses and scarcity rationing.
And what does that mean for car owners? PG&E argues that cars are parked 95% of the time, a rationalization for energy seizure which may be true but is irrelevant. The issue for car owners is having the car function the (arguable) 5% of the time they need to travel — to work, school, social functions, and commerce.
What happens when car owners wake up in the morning to go to work to find that their car has been drained overnight to “stabilize the grid”? What happens when they all plug them in at the same time to get them charged enough to go to work? Wouldn’t that sudden demand destabilize the grid?
Nor is that the only issue for car owners in this new proposal. Unlike gas tanks, which can last for decades, batteries have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles before they begin to fail.
There's more at the link.
I can envisage situations in which this proposal might actually kill people. For example:
- You need to evacuate your home in a hurry due to an approaching wildfire - but you find that your previously fully-charged vehicle is now charged to only about 30%, because the rest of the battery's capacity was sucked into the power grid the night before. You no longer have enough range to evacuate to a safer place. Sucks to be you, I guess.
- A member of your family needs to get to hospital at once, if not sooner. Ambulances are tied up on other emergency calls, and can't get to you for an hour or more. You decide to drive your family member yourself - only to find there's not enough battery charge to get there, thanks to PG&E having drawn it down to help deal with an overstressed electrical grid.
Still, I guess that doesn't matter if you're a patriotic Californian (as that state's power operators and politicians clearly expect you to be). It's for the good of the state! The good of the people! You should be pleased and proud to do your bit to help out!
Yeah. Riiiiiiiight . . .
Peter
27 comments:
It's so spectacularly stupid I was wondering if it's satire.
Imagine if a gas station chain was saying they'll siphon the gas out of every conventional car in a parking lot because they're not using it at that moment. It's the same thing. Do you think it might get a different reaction?
What idiots. So EV's charge from the Grid, at a net loss of total available energy, because there's always loss inherent in the system. Then they pull the power back to the grid. At a net loss of total available energy again, because there's always loss inherent in the system.
Makes total sense.
What's the old expression? "robbing Peter to pay Paul".
Progressives can ONLY see the problem in front of them, and the solution to THAT problem is determined by how it makes them feel about themselves. Use that yardstick and the solutions proposed make some sense.
Add in the Left's urge to keep the masses in their "15 minute neighborhoods" and you can see why the power engineers ignored the mobility effect if you took half the energy out of a BEV battery while it was plugged in. At least you can put gasoline in a PHEV or HEV to add range.
Plus a battery only has a limited amount of uses. So the state using it could prematurely exhaust the battery.
The Stupid is strong in California and in the Democrat/Leftist group.
Discussion and comments about same over at Old NFO's place--
https://oldnfo.org/2023/08/12/some-days-2/
Umnnnhhhh.....peak power usage happens during the DAY, when nobody will be reverse-charging their Ford into the grid--after all, they want to get home after work, right?
Let me see if I have this right. The Grid can't produce enough electricity, so they're going to take back some (due to inefficiencies in inherent in the system) with a promise they will be able to recharge your battery a later date.
Do I get a rebate for the power I purchased to charge the battery in the first place?
Or will they credit my account for the electricity they are using?
I'm starting to think one would want a wood fired steam powered generator.
It is like the govt of Massachusetts wanting citizens ti give illegals rooms in their private houses.
Well, it will provide a painful education to those stupid enough to buy a battery-powered car, so in that respect, it's useful. And, a second plus is that when the utility drains part of the car's charge, there won't be enough left for the Stupid People to come to your state and inflict their idiocy on you and your neighbors.
Why do I foresee a heavy buying binge coming on very large capacity diodes?
I doubt that it's fluff. I'm sure that the proposal is on the table. And it's so funny. I mean, really. Shakespeare couldn't have written satire at that level.
Would be child's play for any decent electrical engineer to create something to prevent the power from flowing back into the grid. And if they try this someone will build them and sell them.
Every problem (usually gov't-created) is an opportunity. I believe charging stations provide DC (IOW, the rectifiers are in the charging station, not in the car), so I foresee a sudden appearance of consumer electronics incorporating high-power diodes, which block electron flow in the reverse direction, on the market. The diodes are available, here and other places:
https://www.vishay.com/en/diodes/med-high-diodes/on-state-current-gteq-800-a-lteq-1200-a/
:-)
People being people, as soon as they figure out when their EV's juice is being siphoned, will pull the plug. Cali officials will be stumped as to why their solution isn't working as planned.
It's been said that politicians are people who think that, with enough votes, they can repeal the law of gravity. This is another in a very long list of examples of just that sort of thinking.
Why is this even a topic for discussion? Except for the blessedly rare rant from nurse ratchet types no one of sane mind is still in California, amiright?
In Japan, Nissan offers a saner version of this. You can use your EV's battery to power your own house in a power outage as essentially a building sized UPS. Now there are (obviously) issues with this too and you clearly don't always want to have this happen but it makes sense for the majority of (rare) power outages where the power is out for under an hour - minutes usually - and there's no need to use the vehicle to evacuate. If the power goes out in the middle of a major typhoon or earthquake that's obviously different but either way you the owner have control and can decide instead of having the power company decide for you
A BIG diode on the input line.
The types of people who purchase EVs are more often than not the same types of people who vote for this type of radical environaziism. There's a small part of me that actually hopes their batteries get drained involuntarily.
The technical term for this scheme is fraud.
Are they going to backfill your bank account for the money it cost you to charge up?
So now it's also robbery.
If they did that, were I fool enough to buy an EV, I'd reserve the right to drop by corporate headquarters of SCE and PG&E, and round up miscreants at the muzzle of a shotgun.
Escape attempts and resisting arrest would be dealt with harshly.
Do we have a deal, corporate lackwits?
But the guy who invents an instant disconnect the minute reverse siphoning is detected is going to make a small fortune.
Ditto anyone who's charging from solar panels and battery banks, off-grid, the only way these things even make sense in the first place.
@Anonymous soopergenius @ 01:14,
There are more sane conservatives living in California than the total of those living in all the other states west of the Rockies, combined.
Mathematics and demographics: still a thing.
From each according to his charge level..
It’s called a diode………😏
TMF Bert
I saw this coming when they mandated all new cars produced be capable of backfeeding the home "for safety."
Presumably, they'll have to be able to signal the vehicles to begin backcharging the grid, right? So, they'll also presumably be able to decide WHICH SPECIFIC vehicles to signal. So, if someone has a lower social credit score, I'm betting they'll be picked first.
Don't firget that they are working twords mandating EVs
I foresee a market for a device that monitors the state of charge of your car's battery and disconnects from the grid when the battery is fully charged. Small, discrete, and affordable, one could make millions.
Surprised?
This exact same scenario is a big part of the proposed German "Energiewende".
No kidding.
As of now chargers that allow for this but afaik new chargers have to be able to suck the amps out of your car if the state demands it in the future.
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