Electrify America Will Be 100 Percent Solar-Powered By 2023 (arstechnica.com) 80
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the best things about electric cars, other than their power trains, immediate torque, and relaxing quiet, is the fact that as the electrical grid becomes cleaner, so too does every EV that uses that grid to charge. That process took a step forward this week with the news that by next year, the Electrify America (EA) charging network will be entirely offset by solar energy.
On Wednesday, EA signed a 15-year agreement with Terra-Gen to purchase electricity from a 75 MW solar farm being built by the latter in San Bernardino County, California. The Electrify America Solar Glow 1 project will break ground later this year, and when it's fully operational in 2023, it should have an annual energy production of 225,000 MWh. That's more than enough to account for the annual energy use of the EA charging network. In fact, EA says that as of April, its electricity is already 100 percent renewable thanks to purchases from various suppliers, but with the commissioning of Solar Glow 1, the charging company should have complete confidence that it's putting more solar energy into the grid than it uses to charge our cars.
On Wednesday, EA signed a 15-year agreement with Terra-Gen to purchase electricity from a 75 MW solar farm being built by the latter in San Bernardino County, California. The Electrify America Solar Glow 1 project will break ground later this year, and when it's fully operational in 2023, it should have an annual energy production of 225,000 MWh. That's more than enough to account for the annual energy use of the EA charging network. In fact, EA says that as of April, its electricity is already 100 percent renewable thanks to purchases from various suppliers, but with the commissioning of Solar Glow 1, the charging company should have complete confidence that it's putting more solar energy into the grid than it uses to charge our cars.
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They're a car charging company. THE STORAGE IS IN THE CARS.
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Re: Natalie Portman, naked and petrified (Score:2)
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The 'storage' mentioned is where they would have to pull from at night or on cloudy/windless days, to then charge the car batteries.
This is a step forward, but not at all 100% green sourced. Just 'offset' which is still emitting CO2 somewhere else.
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This is a step forward, but not at all 100% green sourced.
Trying to go 100% green-source is stupid. It makes no sense to store energy in a battery and then later discharge the battery to charge another battery.
Just 'offset' which is still emitting CO2 somewhere else.
"Offsetting" is actually reducing CO2 somewhere else, so you net to zero emissions.
The net emissions are all that matter.
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That depends on the conversion factors. With the new battery technologies coming online, there may well be reason to do renewable -> battery -> battery charging.
Re: Natalie Portman, naked and petrified (Score:2)
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While it might not make sense if it becomes more common, at the moment, time of use pricing of electricity makes energy storage quite reasonable
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It makes no sense to store energy in a battery and then later discharge the battery to charge another battery.
So you've never charged your phone battery off a USB power bank while away from mains power?
The entire point is you need to run electric things when supply isn't available. If I can produce 200% of need for 12 hours, and store 100% for later use, then yes batteries are how you do that.
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That's the nature of the grid. Every power source adds to the overall power available. At any given time, if you're on the grid, you're getting power from coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar (during daylight), hydroelectric, and maybe geothermal, oil, and even wood. Without dedicated non-grid connections--which is a bad idea--yes, you're offsetting what you get from fossil fuel sources, but if you didn't offset, you'd be getting more from fossil fuel sources. Ideally, over time, you'll get more and more from re
Subtle (Score:2, Insightful)
Subtle Slashvertisement is subtle. Who?
Electrify America installed their 200th charging station in November.
Tesla at the end of 2021 had 3500 charging stations in the US, with more than 31,000 individual chargers available.
Got a little ways to go, kid.
Re: Subtle (Score:5, Informative)
Per Wikipedia :
Electrify America is an electric vehicle DC fast charging station network in the United States, with more than 730 charging locations and over 2,438 individual charging units as of March 2022.[1]
Those stations are usable by our non-Tesla EVs, also.
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We use Chargepoint around here, which is open to all, and Teslas do come with adapters to use standardized chargers. Whereas the charging stations for Teslas are Tesla-ony.
Re: Subtle (Score:4, Informative)
We have a lot of Chargepoint chargers around here as well. Wikipedia says they have 174,000 chargers.
Electrify America has far fewer locations, but some are very strategic. For example along I-5 in California, they are the only significant player for fast chargers other than Tesla. We started driving EVs in 2012s, and lack of fast chargers along I-5 was a very perplexing problem, which is now thankfully resolved.
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In Europe anyone can use many Tesla chargers. They are opening them up to other vehicles. They aren't cheap and the very short cables mean people have to park at some interesting angles, but still...
I guess they aren't doing it in the US because they use a proprietary connector. In Europe they have to use CCS, it's required by law the same way mobile devices must support USB charging.
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Nice. We don't have that regulation here, unfortunately. California decided to stay out of the way in this respect. Many early EVs, like the Nissan Leaf, don't support CCS, also. There is no adapter to charge a Chademo vehicle on CCS or Tesla charger. Many chargers that support CCS also have Chademo plugs, though.
A lot of charging stations on Chargepoint are just level 2, and thus much slower. Electrify America is all CCS, as I understand.
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Chademo is also allowed in Europe, but even Nissan seem to have abandoned it.
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And yet Tesla has far further to go [twitter.com] to live up to their hype.
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For a guy who claims to be a free speech absolutionist, Musk sure does like NDAs.
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I am sure he believes very strongly that he should have absolute free speech.
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I think be believes that money should allow him to control other people's speech.
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The wealthy did lobby for and receive the right to have their political spending considered speech in the USA "Even though" (because) it drowns out other voices, so he's essentially not wrong from a legal standpoint.
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Oh yes, he's definitely right. I'm glad that guy posting his private jet movements didn't take the money.
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Yeah probably. I don't reckon he cares about anyone's free speech but his own. And he wants to be able to run pump and dump schemes without the SEC getting in the way.
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And yet Tesla has far further to go [twitter.com] to live up to their hype.
Thanks for the interesting link. I recall reading years ago that powering an EV from electricity produced by burning fossil fuels is more environmentally friendly than driving a fossil-fuel car, but that was using grid-scale generators. Based on the tweet, I was curious whether the same applied to using a smaller diesel generator. A Google search turned up the following article that shows using a diesel generator to recharge a Tesla car and drive that car still works out to be (slightly) more diesel efficie
Nice to know (Score:1)
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Well if the solar went to storage and was discharged at night maybe. But since the grid is mixed it's more like a loan the price of electricity is high during the day and cheap at night since the demand is lower, when the cheaper producers can take the load, this might include hydro bio gas and wind. doesn't matter really as long as the solar producer is a net exporter of energy.
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These stations are often used by businesses or offices. Thus usage is during the day, as opposed to home chargers.
Re:Nice to know (Score:4, Interesting)
Both electricity and carbon emissions are fungible; Not burning X tons of natural gas during the day because you have solar panels is just as good as not burning X tons of natural gas at any other time, including at night.
=Smidge=
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Both electricity and carbon emissions are fungible
Indeed. Focusing on "purity" rather than net emissions is silly.
Not burning X tons of natural gas during the day because you have solar panels is just as good as not burning X tons of natural gas at any other time, including at night.
Actually, it is better. Demand for power is higher during the day, so marginal generators which emit more CO2 are online. At night, the marginal producers shut down and a higher percentage of power comes from wind, nukes, hydro, and the most efficient gas turbines.
So people installing a home battery system for the sake of "purity" are making things worse.
Shouldn't be too hard.. (Score:1)
That's like 4 charging stations with 2 permanently out of commission right?
How bad can that be?
(kidding but not about the broken ones)
Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
They are offsetting their non-solar power usage with the power from this plant. They can, after all, still provide charging services when the sun is not shining. That is mostly due to the availability of carbon-based energy sources at night, though some other non-carbon sources are in the mix, too.
We still have no realistic means to provide grid-level storage for intermittent sources of energy such as wind and solar. Until we do, we will always need another source to make up the shortfall when the intermittent sources are not producing.
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It would theoretically be possible to have charging stations throttle back or cease charging if the solar source isn't available. But I don't know how many drivers will put up with waiting the extra time for the sun to come out.
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If EVs are denied reliable charging, more people will stick with their gas cars.
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Well then, that charging won't be anywhere near 100% solar. It still depends on thermal, nuclear or hydroelectric sources with which to interchange energy. Particularly when most EVs charge at night.
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Well then, that charging won't be anywhere near 100% solar.
Who cares? The available solar power is still being used for something else, such as making toast.
The net emissions are the same. It makes no difference.
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The net emissions are the same.
I thought the goal was to reduce net emissions. Not just to shift the blame to my toast.
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I thought the goal was to reduce net emissions. Not just to shift the blame to my toast.
The options being discussed are:
1. Store excess power in batteries to use later.
2. Feed excess power to the grid to use now.
The net emissions are LOWER for #2 because you don't have the battery charge/discharge losses (but you do have transmission losses), and daytime power is generally dirtier than nighttime power.
But more importantly, the COST is MUCH lower for #2, which means you can afford more panels instead, offsetting even more emissions.
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It will take at least 15 and more like 30 to convert the the majority of the US car fleet to electric....*if* we get started in earnest. And we haven't done that yet.
The other significant factor is the amount of storage in *cars* will dwarf a full grid scale battery install. So that's also an option to bridge th
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People are not going to charge their car during the day to make it available to others without some significant compensation
Then compensate them. Duh.
Tesla is planning to provide the capability to feed power back to the grid in 2023 or 2024.
I don't know what kind of regulation you expect to make that happen.
I expect no regulation will be needed. Just the self-interest of everyone involved.
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Already utilities are pushing back against accepting power from residential solar production. I don't think they'll be particularly keen on residential energy storage feeding the grid either. Regulation is the only reason utility companies allow as many credits as they do for solar.
You'd need regulation if you expect the power companies to compensate residential storage. Of course, the reasons they have for not liking residential storage may mean it makes sense for more centralized energy storage managed
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Already utilities are pushing back against accepting power from residential solar production.
That is because government regulators set the price rather than the utility, and the price is set artificially high to encourage residential solar installations.
Utilities are much more willing to accept feed-in power at market prices.
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Re:Misleading headline (Score:4, Interesting)
> We still have no realistic means to provide grid-level storage for intermittent sources of energy such as wind and solar.
Megawatt scale grid batteries have been a thing for decades, long before Tesla came along. Pumped hydro is even older.
We have the tech, we just don't have the motivation to spend the money.
=Smidge=
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We should not see investment in grid scale storage because so much volatility in the spot price of electricity that one cam make a profit buying electricity low and selling it high later is a failure in energy policy.
I agree that the technology for grid scale batteries existed for decades but the low cost of batteries, high price of energy, and the volatility of spot prices is a combination of technological development and bad government policy.
The tech for electric cars existed for decades too but without
And that ladies and gentlemen... (Score:2)
...is an example of a rant induced by a (probably undiagnosed) mental illness.
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Electrons are fungible.
Classic Infomercial from Ars Technica (Score:2)
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Let's be clear, that electricity is fungible, and power input from any source at any location in a contiguous grid is indistinguishable from power from any other source on that same grid.
So everything you said is bullshit: All the power that goes into the grid comes out of the grid. If my solar panels generate X megawatt-hours a day, that necessarily means X megawatts were not generated by some other means.
If 100% of the money for the energy I use is explicitly given to solar produces, it's perfectly justif
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> But regardless of when I charge my PHEV, that coal plant is still going to have to burn a little more coal to meet the demand
Incorrect. Because electricity is fungible - a point we just agreed on - then every kwh generated by solar is a kwh not generated by burning coal.
And you just said that there is a solar farm with battery storage that provides 10% of local demand. That means the coal plant is burning significantly less coal when the sun is shining, resulting in a huge reduction in carbon emissions
So is Volkswagon still up to it's old tricks? (Score:2)
So who is willingly buying coal and gas power? You and me. Well unless you signed up to do the paper shuffle like big corps do.
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It's the same virtue signaling that many corporations use. They contract to use a certain amount of power and they are given that allocation from a renewable plant. Their allocation does not change the makeup of the grid in any way. It's just that other people will not have their allocation attributed to that plant. It's nothing more than accounting shell games. That plant was going to be built regardless. It was going to be mixed with the grid regardless.
The only way this makes any sense is if EA put
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It may seem silly, but paying a premium to 'virtue signal' means those energy producers have more revenue to work with to expand capacity and signals to the broader investment community that there's more profitable benefit for pursuing certain approaches beyond the simple picture of 'just another energy source'.
It's true that at some point you run out of stuff to shuffle and ultimately have to sort out the gap (a well ranked 'solar' state may be 15% solar, and 50% natural gas, a huge gap to close), but bols
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> Only with US electricity can you 'buy solar power' off the grid.
That's a silly way of saying "I don't know how electricity wholesale markets work" [pjm.com]
Wholesale electricity markets work more or less the same around the world, not just in the US. In case it's not clear, Electrify America would be the "reseller" in this situation, and they would buy their electricity exclusively from solar energy providers.
=Smidge=
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Only with US electricity can you 'buy solar power' off the grid.
The capital of Australia has done it since 2019. 100% net zero. Not all solar, of course, some of it is wind and hydro. https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
225,000 MWh? that's small potatoes (Score:1)
Go see how much a little 250 MW fossil plant makes in a year and get back to me. (hint multiple by 8760 to get MWh) This is gnats fart in hurricane.
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So they're supposed to buy more electricity than they need to make it more impressive?
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Math shows this is inconsequential for energy, pollution, carbon load... they're supposed to shut up and quit making meaningless hooplah
A drop in the bucket (Score:2)
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Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The major problem cited with EVs is that grid power is frequently 'not green'. Except it's easier to migrate centralized power generation, and easier to mitigate/capture emissions thanks to their stationary nature. I don't see how EVs do 'nothing' to reduce particulate pollution.
Trying to tell everyone they should be walking, biking, or taking mass transit everywhere isn't going to win their hearts and minds. It's not just some big conspiracy that did this, p
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Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Ever heard of misdirection & opportunity cost? This isn't a rational, open, evidence-based public debate. Far from it. We've got every vested interest doing their best to control the narrative & preserve/expand their business models - coal, oil, gas, construction, car manufacturing & sales, etc.. They're trying to steer us into doing as little as possible as late as possible to preserve their profit margins & share prices, while our plane
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I got 'do nothing' from your comment:
"EVs also do nothing to reduce very harmful, pervasive, & persistent particulate pollution."
As to the whole 'BEVs are pointless, just do trains, buses, walking, and bicycles' sentiment, I'll say I personally couldn't get around on that alone, and the lifestyle changes required to get there would be expensive and dramatic and not necessarily desirable by everyone. If you tell me 'leave your personal vehicle at the edge of a city center, and take this more efficient,
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Re: particulate pollution, apparently EVs produce just as much of the stuff as ICEs. It mostly comes off the tyres.
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It's not just some big conspiracy that did this
Don't look now... [wikipedia.org] but actually it was. [wikipedia.org]
The fact that the current state of a literal Ponzi scheme [youtube.com] of debt [youtube.com] (while it's also a different Ponzi scheme [youtube.com]) is an unintended consequence of "people *wanted* this" [wikipedia.org] doesn't make it any less of a conspiracy.
Nor does people's complicity in the conspiracy provide a moral umbrella - just as it didn't the Germans. [wikipedia.org]
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We need to stop building roads & car parks & start building tracks & platforms, walkways, etc.. It's relatively easy to close off a few streets in modern "grid system" cities & dedicate them to trams. It reduces congestion, speeds up travel times & produces less particulate pollution, as
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What's not to like about that?
Riding with other people - countless millions of Americans grew up driving themselves anywhere they want to go, they won't just give that up.
Going where you want to go - trains, buses, trams, etc by definition only travel to certain destinations, causing trips to many destinations to require multiple services to be coordinated (bus to train station, train to destination city, then a ride to final destination).
Going when you want to go - mass transit operates on schedules, and travelers today (in America fo
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Re: rubbing shoulders with other me
Re: A drop in the bucket (Score:2)
Fact: The fastest way to get around cities that have built out public transport systems, e.g. London, New York, Toronto, Madrid, Moscow, & Paris, is on public transport.
Of course, I never said anything different.
Car ownership is very low in the major cities you mention, but the NYC bus/subway infrastructure doesn't scale up to a place like Ohio, which have existed for 100-200 years without mass transit.
For example, Light rail projects are typically built with OPM, are staffed with politically-connected appointees, and subsidized by the local taxpayers that never wanted it in the first place.
Re: A drop in the bucket (Score:2)
Getting around manhattan is one thing, getting around Ohio is entirely different. Not everyone wants to live in a multi-dimensional chess board like NYC and shuttle around underground. There's a reason virtually every major American city does not have a subway system, and it isn't because they don't see the value, it's that they can't justify the cost.
A fricking bicycle path can cost a half-million dollars/mile, now just think what happens if you decide to put that bike path underground and lay RR track (n
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Solar power on the grid will soon be too expensive (Score:2)
Anyone claiming 100% renewable energy today is using bookkeeping tricks because we do not have enough power from wind, water, and sun, to fulfill all these contracts. They simply claim they are buying electricity supplied today from renewable energy that will be provided on the grid next Tuesday, and therefore provided to some other consumer, next Tuesday.
That is unless they happen to be close to a pumped hydro facility and solar power plant that agreed to provide this electricity.
Pumped hydro is popular a
dumb idea (Score:2)
Either these people are too stupid to know how the electric supply works, or they're dishonest. Read "Shorting The Grid" by Meredith Angwin.