California Asks Residents Not To Charge Electric Vehicles 312
New submitter xwin shares a report from WTVO: With California's power grid under strain due to extreme heat and high demand, the utility grid operator is asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles. This comes days after the state announced a plan to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. The California Independent System Operator is asking residents for "voluntary energy conservation" over the Labor Day weekend.
According to the National Weather Service, the western United States is facing a "prolonged and record heat wave." "The top three conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights,â the American Public Power Association said, asking residents to limit energy usage during 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. "Today, most people charge their electric cars when they come home in the evening -- when electricity demand is typically at its peak," according to Cornell University's College of Engineering. "If left unmanaged, the power demanded from many electric vehicles charging simultaneously in the evening will amplify existing peak loads, potentially outstripping the grid's current capacity to meet demand."
According to the National Weather Service, the western United States is facing a "prolonged and record heat wave." "The top three conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights,â the American Public Power Association said, asking residents to limit energy usage during 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. "Today, most people charge their electric cars when they come home in the evening -- when electricity demand is typically at its peak," according to Cornell University's College of Engineering. "If left unmanaged, the power demanded from many electric vehicles charging simultaneously in the evening will amplify existing peak loads, potentially outstripping the grid's current capacity to meet demand."
Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a simple solution here, just pass along the peaking costs to consumers. If people are charged more for electricity between 4PM and 9PM, then they'll use less of it, especially things like dishwashers and electric cars.
Asking nicely doesn't work as well as providing a financial incentive.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
It's a standard EV feature to only charge at certain times for exactly this reason. Most EVs let you set a "charge time" and will only activate charging during those hours, with an easy way to start charging immediately if you need to charge during the day.
Even if your EV doesn't let you do that, home chargers should also provide that feature, only turning on during off-peak rates.
The fact that this is an issue anyway is just a further reminder of how our grid is not at all ready for everyone to own an EV.
Re: Simple Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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"should have that feature" doesn't mean it does. I know several folks that don't have that feature.
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Are they just SOL...and have too stay home because they don't fit the defined schedule of when you can charge and when you can't?
Yes, if you pretend, really, really, really hard that this is an actual ban rather than a recommendation/request. If you're in the real world, rather than the world of make believe though, then you just charge your car at that time because you need to when those specific circumstances happen. Then you have your car charge itself on a schedule the rest of the time and it evens itself out.
It turns out, you see, that not everyone gets home from 3-4 with their gas tank empty and a need to go out that evening. A
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
PG&E (northern california's power utility) have special electric vehicle rate plans. They make it highly advantageous to charge your cars late at night. Many EVs have options to shift charging to whatever time you'd like. Tesla, for example, supports this quite well. Owners who take advantage of this save a lot of money. This has been the situation for years. https://www.pge.com/en_US/resi... [pge.com]
Some smart thermostats support off-peak timing too (eg. ecobee). And they interact with some utilities (like PG&E) to take extra measures on days with expected high demand. One strategy is to pre-chill the house/building before the peak hits, then hold back afterwards. It works quite well.
The market provides (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, basic market features such as prices are often good solutions. Prices are signals: when prices are high, they encourage consumers to consume less and producers to produce more.
Unfortunately, the consumer needs to know the price before they can be affected by it. They can assume that peak prices are between 4pn and 9 pm, but that may not always be true. And what happens when all EVs start charging at 9:30pm? Providing near real-time prices to consumers would allow for better decision-making.
And realistically, the human doesn't even need to know. They can just set an acceptable price in the app for their car: "charge when the price is $0.06/kWh".
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In California, market prices are irrelevant to consumers. Our rates are set in advance and are not subject to fluctuation in supply/demand. They may differ by time-of-day or be a single fixed rate 24x7 depending on your chosen rate plan, but today's price is the same as yesterday's. Changes to offered rate plans require advance notice and approval by the california public utilities commission.
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And what happens when all EVs start charging at 9:30pm? Providing near real-time prices to consumers would allow for better decision-making.
You don't need a realtime price, you just need to know when peak and offpeak occur. My smart meter already tells me this and I can read it out wirelessly from my computer on the other side of the house.
It's a trivially easy problem to solve and I wouldn't be surprised if charging systems already do that. What's the point of intelligent chargers, and internet connected cars if they are fucking dumb?
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You are forgetting about the poorer people that NEED to use power during that time, because they work (elsewhere) and sleep all other hours of the day. Asking some well-off folks to charge later is currently easier than creating different rates for rich and poor. And sorry, but the power company is invading your privacy enough YET to tell whether you're charging your car or running the dryer or over. Don't feel bad though, the electrification discussions I hear in the utility industry are strangely at od
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To do what? Laundry? I set the timer on the washer so it finishes early in the morning, then when I wake up I hang my clothes on the drying racks outside (because clotheslines are prohibited in my neighborhood).
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Even better, incorporate a Power Wall style "virtual power plant" feature for your home charger.
Get home, plug in your car, and make money helping power the grid for a few hours (typically considerably more than the cost in battery degradation.)
Then later that night once grid demand falls, start charging the battery so it's waiting fully charged in the morning.
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Can you say surge pricing? I know ya could
limit energy usage during 4 p.m. and 9 p.m (Score:2)
n/t
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It's kind of weird how "not between 4pm and 9pm" instantly turns into just "not."
5 words is too many for haters to remember?
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They know. They just like lying.
Evacuation time? (Score:2, Insightful)
What if residents have to evacuate due to a bush fire?
how are they expected to do so if their likely main mode of transport might be on empty?
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Good engineering isn't about "that'll never happen"
More like "What do we do if it does?"
BEVs have NEVER been sustainable. They an endpoint part of a much larger system that is not taken into account.
Re: Evacuation time? (Score:2)
So in that narrow window of time they didn't charge. And uh they live absurdly far away from work so they exhausted their EV range. And they live right in a fireprone forest.
Well I guess they die then. On a serious note the first answer is don't live in a tinderbox it inevitably will burn. If you can't afford to live somewhere safer move to a cheaper state than CA. The second answer is have a plugin hybrid - EV day to day, with an engine and reserve of fuel when you need it.
Re: Evacuation time? (Score:3, Informative)
The second answer is have a plugin hybrid - EV day to day, with an engine and reserve of fuel when you need it.
Aren't those soon to be illegal to sell in CA in a few years, just like ICE vehicles?
Re: Evacuation time? (Score:3)
Good thing natural disasters always occur on a convenient predictable schedule!
Re: Evacuation time? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The vast majority of Californians don't live anywhere near the zones that are threatened by wildfires. Amongst them, I would be willing to bet electric cars are not the most popular form of transportation because these are fairly rural areas. Electric cars are most popular amongst the crew who live on a giant cement slab and have a 1-hour commute that is less than 7 miles long.
Re:Evacuation time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you suppose people fleeting a brush fire will have time to stop for gas if their tank wasn't full when they had to leave?
Just curious...
=Smidge=
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What if residents have to evacuate due to a bush fire?
how are they expected to do so if their likely main mode of transport might be on empty?
You mean like people who run their gas tanks almost dry before filling up?
Charging in the Evening vs the Night. (Score:2)
>Today, most people charge their electric cars when they come home in the evening
That's because it starts when you plug it in and there is no incentive to do otherwise.
Make electric cheaper at night, electric car owners will have no problem adjusting the charging schedule of the car. I don't know of an EV that doesn't support setting a charging schedule.
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> Make electric cheaper at night, electric car owners will have no problem adjusting the charging schedule of the car
They already do. They have off-peak plans *specifically* for incentivizing people to charge their EVs at certain times. It doesn't sound like the EVs are the problem per se, but just a general request that people be mindful of their energy use in the early evening.
=Smidge=
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There is cheaper overnight tarrifs.
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At least with Tesla's they have a setting to charge during off-peak hours and don't start charging as soon as you plug it in. Not sure about other manufacturers.
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At least with Tesla's they have a setting
How many Tesla owners have VCR clocks blinking 12:00?
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0.0
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As does (er, did) my 2016 Volt. I would think delayed charging is a common setting, but maybe not.
My peak PG&E rates are from 5-8 pm (.45) and then .34 otherwise. I just charge my Tesla 3 starting at midnight, plenty of time to be full tank in the morning even at less than 50%.
Rates here are ridiculous compared to the rest of the country but even with that the numbers are better than gas on my other family cars.
Between 4pm and 9pm (Score:2)
Pretty sure your EV will get enough charge for tomorrow even if you wait until 9:30 before plugging it in. Many power companies (I don't know about California) have higher rates for peak times so waiting like this is then a good, money-saving strategy on any day, even without a heat wave.
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You don't even need to wait, you can schedule charging times.
Re:Between 4pm and 9pm (Score:5, Informative)
Depends, if you only have a level 1 charger, then you pretty much need to be plugged in for every minute they can get. This isn't an unusual scenario, since getting equipped for level 2 can be non-trivial and level 1 can be enough for 30 miles of daily driving so long as you can run it all the time. Of course, in this case, you are using 1.2 to 1.9 kw, so it's not as big a deal as some guy that has a 11 kw circuit going.
If you are level 2 with 11 kw of capacity, then sure, off-peak will be plenty enough time to recover enough range for the next day, and on a grid like California's, seems like it'd be a solid idea to schedule charging.
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I am not saying that out of theory, I'm saying it out of plugging in my own car and using level 1 charging. I can't charge during the day so I pretty much need every moment from getting home to driving the next day plugged in. I *generally* can keep up on average, with the weekend being a chance to overcome any deficit. I'd say my car gets more like 2.5 miles per hour of charging given the charger it came with.
It's generally *adequate* for my purposes, but before I'd feel comfortable ditching my backup g
Headline incomplete (Score:5, Informative)
California Asks Residents Not To Charge Electric Vehicles between 4-9pm
Just charge overnight/morning if at all possible.
But California really, REALLY needs to get it's shit together with regards to power generation if it thinks its ICE ban is going to have any chance of becoming reality in 2035.
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California has spent a rather large fortune installing renewable energy sources that cannot meet its needs. Seasonal variation means one will always need overcapacity on the collection/generation side and ever-increasing capacity on the storage side. Renewables are only a solution in the academic sense, unless one is using them as a supplement. Sure, we can build lots of storage, but a 1,000 lb battery requires 500,000 lb of dirt. So, I suppose we will use our electric cars to provide community power at nig
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I love how in your world technology never changes.
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Improving technology doesn't change how much dirt we need to mine for the materials we need to make things. We are always going to have to move a lot of dirt to get the small amounts of stuff in the dirt that we want. That is unless we start building everything out of dirt.
We do have a technology that means we'd have to move less material for the energy we need. It is called "nuclear fission". But California is full of people that don't believe in technological advancement. That nuclear power plants ha
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Improving technology doesn't change how much dirt we need to mine for the materials we need to make things.
It kinda does. If a battery can be made using half the lithium needed today, you'll need half as much ore to produce it.
Re: Headline incomplete (Score:2)
Now you are running up against the laws of physics. If you mean a battery chemistry other than lithium, ok. At the moment that means sodium ion (experimental) and iron phosphate.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is always a neat widget that's just out of reach and if only we can get MOAR FUNDING we can have it ready in 10-20 years. Fusion called; it wants to talk. In all seriousness, the math here is very simple. We demand X watts, and we can produce Y watts. If Y is greater than X, then we can store the difference in a battery. The problem is that a battery is only as efficient as the source used to charge it. The best coal plants we can build - ultra super critical - are less than 45% efficient. The best so
Re: Headline incomplete (Score:2)
Re:Headline incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
Your 500,000 pounds of earth for a 1,000 pound battery scenario is probably the result of multiplying the complete weight of your imaginary pure-lithium battery (1000 lbs) by the prevalence of lithium in the Earth's crust (0.002%). This sort of dumb and lazy factoid manufacturing is borderline trolling, and you can't launder it by claiming that you heard it from The Manhattan Institute or something. Just own it. If I am incorrect, and you actually understood the origin of the 5000:1 ratio you asserted, please explain.
Similarly, you ask us "What's the carbon footprint of massive 'rare earths' mines and the logistics to haul these materials around?" If you cared about the answer you wouldn't be asking: 10 to 20 thousand miles to the break-even point. [reuters.com]
So you're complaining that people don't take you seriously while you're jaqing-off, and stroking your neckbeard with your free hand, asking: "How will anybody be able to drive at night if all the car batteries are powering our homes?"
It is worth a chuckle, and in my weaker moments, a response. But now that you have your answers, I hope you'd quit the malarkey. No thanks needed.
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Nice stab at deflection and snark. I absolutely simplified my calculation, because lithium-ion batteries and the "green electric economy" all require rare earths that are difficult to mine and refine and that these operations require a cost in combustible fuel that is difficult to quantify for the sake of an online forum. Fortunately, your comments about my nonexistent neck beard have totally disproven the impact that weather and seasonality have on renewables collection and generation, and completely demol
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California has been working on the problem for a while. If you count nuclear and hydro as renewable, the state is at about 50% renewable in terms of capacity. When demand doesn't reach capacity, the non-renewables get shut off first. The state sometimes hits 100% renewable sources. There are some big projects going on. One of the more interesting is the project to cover California aqueducts with solar panels. That will both generate a huge amount of power, and conserve a lot of water by reducing evapo
Re:Headline incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hydro renewable?
It's not in California, but I offer you Lake Meade.
We have deserts with LOTS of sun (PV farms possible) not to mention malls with acres of parking lots and freeways with no PV covers.
We have plenty of wind off shore for wind farms. The Sierra Club and Coastal Commission LOVES to block those projects too.
Something has to give.
Re:Headline incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you really expect California to know what it's left hand (conserve electricity) is doing while the right hand (buy electric cars) is doing something else? I mean, they have to collect taxes on foreigners and visitors [palmspring...awyers.com] for their income in other parts of the country, and even the world!
Do people really charge in the evening? (Score:3, Informative)
From the article: "Today, most people charge their electric cars when they come home in the evening"
Do people really do that?
I charge in the early hours of the morning since I'm on the PG&E EV tariff. I assumed most other people in California would be on the EV or some other TOU plan as it's a lot cheape per kWh.
Hyperbolic article title (Score:5, Informative)
They're being asked to reduced usage, including charging, during peak hours. So don't come home from your commute and plug in. Wait til after 9PM.
Same thing in Texas during our heat wave, my Tesla came up with an alert asking me to avoid charging during peak times. ERCOT also sent out alerts. So don't run the electric dryer for example during that time.
My Tesla app has an option to setup charging schedules to make this trivial.
Shame on Slashdot for putting up this clickbait title.
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my dishwasher also has a timer mode to have it start after midnight (based on my electricity time of use rates)
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Conflicting narratives (Score:2)
Don't feed the trolls (Score:4, Informative)
Don't feed the trolls!
Non-geofenced link (Score:2)
TFS claims a Californian power company made the request, not "California" but I can't see the article because it's geofenced.
Don't feed the trolls!
Non-geofenced link [yahoo.com].
The request is being made by the California ISO, which is not the power company.
Sounds like an oppertunity for a business... (Score:2)
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those exist. They're called Load Controllers. They became fairly common in the nineties, specifically for electricity customers that would sign-up for demand-load pricing. The Load Controller would be configured for time-of-day where electricity prices are highest, and would restrict the amperage that could pass through particular circuits. Once the threshold was reached, additional circuits were shut off.
WTVO (Score:3, Informative)
"WTVO is a television station in Rockford, Illinois, United States, affiliated with ABC and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements with Nexstar Media Group, owner of Fox affiliate WQRF-TV"
Right, we should completely trust anti-California hyperbole from a TV station in Illinois that is associated with Fox.
Wire piece if you prefer... (Score:2, Informative)
CA put out a Flex Alert. News outlets (including this one) are just reporting on that.
Yes, CA really is asking [businesswire.com] people to charge their EVs after 9pm or before 4pm.
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Sure, with this headline:
"California asks residents not to charge electric vehicles, days after announcing gas car ban"
And this first sentence:
"With California’s power grid under strain due to extreme heat and high demand, the utility grid operator is asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles."
The entire second paragraph reads:
"The California Independent System Operator is asking residents for “voluntary energy conservation” over the Labor Day weekend."
It is not until the
electric cars should have solar panels on the roof (Score:2)
There was a GM solar car that drove all the way across the continental US on only solar power in the 80s.
Is this the future or not?
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Well, allegedly, Aptera is striving for that sort of thing, solar on the roof that can keep you topped up if you stop after driving 40 miles until the next day. Further it's a three wheeler, two seater at most, largely to get out of safety requirements that would not allow their efficiency goals (the closest competition to their claimed numbers is 2.4x more energy per distance.
In short, even an impractical, potentially less safe vehicle trying its best to be solar contends with the reality of physics.
Of co
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Yes, it did it... Slowly.
78? (Score:2)
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We are learning new terms from all this. (Score:2, Informative)
There was the "duck curve", the supply/demand curve created by an abundance of solar power on the California grid. It was said to look like the back of a duck with the tail sticking up to show the morning demand peak then going down the duck's back, hitting bottom about noon, then going up the duck's neck and hitting a peak at the duck's head shortly after sunset, then slowly ramping down as the curve slopes out to the tip of the duck's beak.
Then is the "Nessie curve". This is like the like a duck curve b
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There should be OCGTs to backup solar/wind installations. As you pointed out, Texas has them, but apparently they were non-operational when ne
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We need storage that relies on minimal mining.
IF nukes are used, they can't be the current engineering design. In the long haul it's filthy (radioactive stuff that takes thousands of years to detoxify). There were cleaner designs but they didn't make stuff to allow making bombs too. Nukes are a VERY long ramp.
Hydrogen tanks and fuel fells have their issues too, but fewer than nukes or batteries
I will do my part to help out (Score:3)
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Whataboutsim is always convincing.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:3)
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Interesting)
But what about Arizona? Arizona has more heat than California. Unlike California's power grid, Arizona's power grid actually works. What's California's excuse?
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:4, Informative)
Grid's smaller, and the biggest city in the state has America's largest nuclear power plant next door.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah Arizona didn't cry NIMBY when that was built. And on the other side it has hydro power. Hey, what do you know? Low carbon footprint! I thought that's why California elects democrats, so that they can be low carbon footprint too? Nonetheless, the grid really isn't all that small, and it's also home of the 5th largest US city by population.
Aside from the electrical grid, Arizona's roads aren't in constant disrepair, and there aren't any toll roads to be found anywhere in the entire state.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't give them anymore ideas. AZ is filling to the brim with CA refugees now, each ready to vote for the same shite that created the shithole they are fleeing from.
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You mean running low on water because California wastes so much, sucking the Colorado river dry to grow high water usage cash crops in a high plains desert?
Is that what you meant by "drought in states that share the Colorado river with California"?
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Forget all the farms, what about all the golf courses in the middle of the desert in places like Palm Springs?
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:4, Informative)
Farms use 85% of California's water.
Golf courses use far less than 1%.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Informative)
- don't charge your electric vehicle, the grid can't handle it
They aren't saying, "don't charge your EV." They are just saying don't charge it when you get home from work at 5:30 pm.
Anyone with half a brain isn't going to do that anyway since electricity prices are lower late at night. I pay $0.12/kwh during the day, and $0.07 between 2 and 4 am when my EV is programmed to charge.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:4, Informative)
What's California's excuse?
PG&E is corrupt and incompetent -to the point that all the other energy providers in the state struggle to make up for their failures.
The headline leaves out the part where people are asked not to charge their EVs between 4pm and 9pm -not a "don't do it at all" as implied.
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, this is such a red meat article for troglodytes.
Asking people to charge at night is a nothing ask. And something people should for the most part be doing anyway. Heck, it'd be a nothing ask to ask people not to charge at all in periods of tight supply. I mean, I use like 5% of my battery or so each way on my daily commute. Not plugging in at all for a couple days if it'd help some someone keep their lights on? Um, of course? Why not?
Just put these articles in fuel language. "There's a shortage of fuel trucks to deliver fuel to petrol stations. Please don't fill up your car between 4pm and 9pm". Actually, that'd be less convenient than asking people not to charge during the day, since that's at least at your house. Or the worst case: "Please don't fill up for the next few days if you can" - um, okay, fine. Except, again, with an EV you started out the day you heard that news with a "full tank", while everyone getting said "petrol news" would have some random amount of fuel left at that point, with a lot of people near empty and really needing to fill up.
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Asking people to charge at night is a nothing ask.
Only if you charge at home. For folks who live in houses that can't get high enough amperage service to add a proper 240V charging outlet (like me) or who live in an apartment complex and have not yet convinced their landlord to add one, and thus rely on the supercharger network, this is tantamount to California asking us to stop driving our cars. So they can ask all they want to, but the answer will still be "no".
F**k PG&E. Their decades of gross incompetence are their problem, not ours. If they ca
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Well, that's the thing..the govt is heavily PUSHING people to switch from ICE to EVs....
Didn't Newsom just sign a law outlawing the sale of ICE vehicles in like 2030 or 2035??
That's not that far away and I don't see the grids being improved up to spec by then, so, this will still be a problem.
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That's like announcing a ban on all new gas stoves.. with the don't use electricity from 4pm to 9pm... Don't make dinner either
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Go Go Go Green (Score:2)
Linking a Texas headline article is not going to solve California's electric infrastructure or power generation problems.
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You got any idea take to actually expand the grid itself in NIMBY/Sierra Club land?
And I LIVE here!
Re: Before anyone opens their big mouths (Score:2, Insightful)
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I guess "communism" is a code for, "I can't comprehend 5 words, so I didn't understand they were talking about 4pm to 9pm."
"to manny wurds, must be commies"
Re: Well, this will be fun... (Score:3)
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Ahhh... But the scheduling IS something far worse than rocket science. Statistics.
And every standing casino will prove how few understand what that means