It’s a big change, but not as big as "BUILD ALL THE POWER PLANTS AND ADD MORE CABLES"nin short to mid term. Long term yes, but since it’s LONG TERM we have time to ramp it up.
Afaik, in power plants hey have 2 methods of power generation. the steady and efficient but less flexible main power source. And then the less efficient but more flexible power source that’s usually used to supply more power during peak demands.
Battery technology is already helping with these by acting as a buffer and “smoothing out” the demand and lessens the need for these extra power generator to make the whole power plant more efficient without consuming much more resources. The tesla power packs helps accelerate this change too.
So in the short to mid term, it’s gonna be just delivering power from a battery pack in the power plant, to a battery pack in your vehicle. And we can drive the current power plant slightly higher without sacrificing as much efficiency as using an extra generator
@Koolkei is correct; Asides from incalculating stupid politicians and in powerplants.
Powerplants
Main power plants are very often nuclear ones and water energy ones, those are the bread and butter of the electricity grid. Then you have secondary power plants: gas and coal ones, which fill the demand that the main power plants can’t fulfill, some indeed are fully flexible ones, often the gas power plants, as their turbines can boot up in a whim (relatively speaking, not like we can start our car’s engines, we’re speaking of minutes rather than seconds). And then you got the occasional ones which we can’t relay on yet: solar panels and wind turbines. These can lighten the load on the secondary power plants. Before these can become reliable secondary power sources we need huge electricity buffers, even bigger ones for them to become main power plants. We’re speaking the mothership of all batteries here, or a lot of powerplants like Coo-Trois-Ponts Hydroelectric Power Station, which pump water up when the demand is high, and let it flow back down to generate electricity when the demand is high.
When will that happen? probably never, I place my bets on nuclear fusion technology.
Stupid politicians
In Belgium for example there has been a discussion going on for over a decade whether to build a new nuclear powerplant or not. The old ones already are so old they’re getting dangerous and we have to pay a fine to the EU to keep them running. The greens are hoping green energy will replace the nuclear powerplants we got, but I doubt that; probably we’ll leech off France’s nuclear powerplants instead once the connection to France is upgraded, paying a steep electricity bill.
Now not every place is as politically inept as Belgium in decision making, but electric cars sure will add a huge load to the electricity grid. There have been ideas for using old electric car batteries as huge batttery banks for the change in electricity demand; Which is decent, but probably expensive.
I heard Denmark’s sustainable energy company DONG is making an absolute killing of resurgent investment in ocean wind farms (maybe? correct me if I’m wrong). Couldn’t others follow that example?
On the other hand let’s just say the energy requirements if Australians were to replace their petrol cars with EVs would be absolutely devastating. We’re all about that coal (and a bit about that gas, unless you’re in Tasmania, then it’s hydroelectric), and Not Fixing Even Broken Stuff Because It’s Too Fucking Hard, hence the famously fatal South Australian Power Grid failure of this Summer just gone by is fresh in our minds. Worse yet our government seems keen on ensuring our actual destruction by doubling down on Trump’s vision of coal everything.
Is my impression correct that the car battery is probably one of the least environmentally friendly components to dispose of?
Well, my 2 cents here. A friend owns a Tesla, and he drives it every day. His daily commute is under 150km, and it’s more than enough to cover his driving needs. The thing looks good, is quick and is cheap to run, is comfortable and he has absolutely zero problems coping with the “inconveniance” of the thing and really likes it. But oh no, it is soulless, and is an appliance, and how can he call himself a petrolhead?! You’d ask about a guy who is a Pro-Am drift pilot in a V8 supercharged e36 pushing 650hp to the wheels. You need to drive somewhere - you drive a tesla, you need a “mode of transport”, you want your petrolhead needs to be satisfied - get a weekend toy, nobody is stopping you. In my opinion he’s got the right idea, which is why I’m waiting for the Model 3 to drop here so I can order one.
The cost of the batteries and their typical life span to supply power when the solar/wind is not generating. I originally did the calculations for solar about 5 years ago, and came up with $5.00 per kwh which was lower than the $10.00/kwh that an EE professor had told me he had calculated not long before. I figure it might be able to come closer to $1.00/kwh but will depend on taxes and whatnot.
No, I do not have the exact numbers, but we have charging stations outside shopping malls (which is pretty much a daily stop), they cost nothing. He did say he spends more money on washing the car than it costs to charge it.
Not sure what it was they did, whether it was giving the car an extra juicy charge or what, but it appears to have pushed out a time that makes more sense.
