New VW diesel engine

[IndigoBlueWagon]

CA has been threatening rolling blackouts every day for the last several days. You could say this weather is unusual, but I'd say it used to be, it isn't now. So they can't support exisiting demand.

 

[nwdiver]

CA has been threatening rolling blackouts every day for the last several days. You could say this weather is unusual, but I'd say it used to be, it isn't now. So they can't support exisiting demand.

..... yes.... between 4pm and 10pm. They can support over 200GWh of additional demand during the other 18 hours of the day....

Even on the worst day over half the cars in the state can be electric and with smart charging it would be fine.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

You're interpreting the news incorrectly. The supply crunch isn't limited to those hours. It's just at its worst at those hours.

Just one of the many reports: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article265350931.html

 

[nwdiver]

You're interpreting the news incorrectly. The supply crunch isn't limited to those hours. It's just at its worst at those hours.

Just one of the many reports: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article265350931.html

I'm not 'interpreting' anything. I'm getting that data directly from CAISO. Look at their resource adequacy. Demand varies from 30GW at 4am to 50GW at 7pm. Do you think that available supply magically matches that? No. The CA grid could supply another ~15GW of load at 4am but there's probably going to be rolling blackouts at 7pm. If you look at the total available resources outside 4pm - 10pm there's over 200GWh of additional energy that could be supplied.

If you read the flex alert issued by CAISO it specifically says DO charge EVs... before 4pm.

 

[showdown 42]

I have an idea have 1/2 the people in Calif work the day shift the other half work the night shift. Solves the problem.
Calif has more than power to worry about like H2O. Forget the EV issue.

 

[oilhammer]

You assume half the people in California actually work.

 

[Tyler.ayala]

You assume half the people in California actually work.

Having lived in California my entire life, I SHOULD take offense to this. But I won’t because, from what I’ve seen, you’re not wrong. At least in the majority of Silicon Valley.

 

[kjclow]

You assume half the people in California actually work.

As the song says, "we love to work at nothing all day!"

 

[atc98002]

That is the key to using the infrastructure wisely. People need to program their cars to charge within the low load time periods. To my knowledge, every EV has that sort of programming capability, or at least the newest ones do. My Bolt charges within windows that Puget Sound Energy requests, and I get a $10 monthly credit for remaining within those times. That might not seem like much credit, but it's anywhere from 25-35% of my total monthly charging cost, so it really is significant.

 

[atc98002]

CA has been threatening rolling blackouts every day for the last several days. You could say this weather is unusual, but I'd say it used to be, it isn't now. So they can't support existing demand.

Yeah, we had one airport control tower that shut down in the Bay area last night because the power went out and without HVAC the tower cab was too warm. That particular tower doesn't have a generator backup. All the larger ones do. Had a second one further inland also close early because of a power outage. Neither airport supports air carrier operations, so not a significant impact to the NAS (National Airspace System).

 

[NSTDI]

The electrical grid is all about redundancy and California doesn’t have enough redundancy. When you have unusual events happening that take out a slice of the grid, flood, fire, heat, cold, low water levels affecting production of hydro power, etc. , they currently do not have an acceptable level of redundancy to keep the grid working. Adding capacity to the grid takes 5-10 years.

Texas is another example of not enough redundancy, that snow storm event they had a while back and they had no backup, like pulling power from neighbouring systems.

 

[nwdiver]

The electrical grid is all about redundancy and California doesn’t have enough redundancy. When you have unusual events happening that take out a slice of the grid, flood, fire, heat, cold, low water levels affecting production of hydro power, etc. , they currently do not have an acceptable level of redundancy to keep the grid working. Adding capacity to the grid takes 5-10 years.

Why can't EVs be a huge part of that redundancy? Initially as demand response but soon with vehicle to home (V2H) and eventually vehicle to grid (V2G). Tesla is already testing a virtual power plant. CAISO was short by ~4GW and 16GWh yesterday. ~500,000 EVs with V2G could have easily covered that deficit. Spot prices were ~$2/kWh, imagine being getting credited $60 to sell half your battery into the grid and just buying it back 4 hours later for ~$5.

 

[turbobrick240]

Insufficient redundancy wasn't really the problem in Texas during that cold snap. Inadequate winterization of the nat. gas supply at the power stations was the problem. I mean it's nice to say there should be full redundancy, but it's really just not practical or necessary in a well managed system.

 

[NSTDI]

Redundancy is necessary in case of system failure for any reason, fire, flood, or failure due to a cold snap.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Why can't EVs be a huge part of that redundancy?

Because the electric utility doesn't control EVs. And although you can use EVs for transportation or for emergency power, you can't do both. It's easy to bet that if consumers fear that they're going to lose power they're not going to dump their EV charge back into the grid.

 

[nwdiver]

Because the electric utility doesn't control EVs. And although you can use EVs for transportation or for emergency power, you can't do both. It's easy to bet that if consumers fear that they're going to lose power they're not going to dump their EV charge back into the grid.

There are plenty of places where the utility can control EVs. Plenty of people opt into programs where the utility can control their thermostat in exchange for a credit on their bill. What do you think is less intrusive? The utility making your home ~2 degrees warmer or pausing your car from charging for 2 hours? Unless you have a long trip planned the next day why would you not discharge half your battery into the grid for ~$60? There's ~no chance it's going to have any negative effect on you. If something comes up you still have >100 miles of range and most people have a second car anyway.

Why can't you use an EV for transportation and emergency power? You have ~80kWh of battery. Most homes only need ~20kWh/day. ~5 will keep your food from spoiling. If your power goes out you can power your house from your car for 24 hours and still have ~200 miles of range. The Ford Lightning and Ioniq can already do this.

Think of the power of demand response. The average EV charge rate is ~8kW, if 500,000 people are signed up that's 4GW available for the cost of software. Diablo Canyon is only 2GW. Lots of ways to entice people to sign up.

Duke Energy starts V2G pilot with Ford pickups in Florida

Unlimited EV Charging As Low As $19.99 Per Month — Really!

 

[quartersaw]

You assume half the people in California actually work.

.........The 6th largest Economy, in the World?
That must be one hellofa Magic Wand, that they have, in Ca....

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

I was talking to a colleague about this today and your point makes sense. Powering your home for a few hours will only take a fraction of the EV's battery storage, so if power companies could provide incentives to have people plugged in it would help. He also told me that in Vermont one power company is putting battery packs in homes so they can switch them to the battery at peak usage times. It's saving them money because it postpones upgrading the utility's production capacity, and the consumer gets the benefit of never being without power.

 

[turbobrick240]

We should see a lot more EVs with V2G capability as LFP and LFMP become the dominant battery chemistries. Many manufacturers were probably hesitant due to warranty and battery lifespan/degradation concerns with ternary chemistries up to this point. At the rate the batteries are improving, that won't be a concern pretty soon.

 

[showdown 42]

Power is power, the charging of EVs takes capacity from the grid,when plugged it to the grid you just put back energy with a lost between the 2 sources , nothing is free when it comes to energy,except maybe the sun. Switching back and forth is wasteful use of energy. Speak to a physicist about energy loss.

 

[nwdiver]

Power is power, the charging of EVs takes capacity from the grid,when plugged it to the grid you just put back energy with a lost between the 2 sources , nothing is free when it comes to energy,except maybe the sun. Switching back and forth is wasteful use of energy. Speak to a physicist about energy loss.

Yep. Which is why batteries are charged when Supply > Demand (off-peak) and discharged when Supply < Demand (on-peak). Taking 1,100MWh off-peak from a 15,000MW reserve and providing 1,000MWh on-peak when reserves are only ~4,000MW is still a win despite round trip losses because math. Increasing load on an efficient generator by 10MWh at 2am to charge a battery to reduce load on a peaker plant by 9MWh at 7pm that uses ~twice as much fuel/MWh is still a win because math.

Even better is that this increasingly comes from surplus wind or solar. 9MW from 10MW is a win if that 10MW would have been curtailed to 0MW at 2am.

 

[Jwager]

nice

 

[TheDRog]

If you just had children it is expected that the planet will run out of oil during their lifetime. The environment will be fine.

 

[vwishndaetr]

If you just had children it is expected that the planet will run out of oil during their lifetime. The environment will be fine.

Been hearing that for 20+ years. Still plenty to go around.

 

[d2freeman]

Hell we have been running out since the 70's, evidentially a lot more dinosaurs died than they figured.

 

[oilhammer]

Heck, the cap off wells that ran dry 30 years ago, and come back to them and they start pumping oil out again.

 

[tikal]

Our TDI's help by using less oil so it last longer, and there is more to go around for aviation (also diesel based)

 

[J_dude]

Heck, the cap off wells that ran dry 30 years ago, and come back to them and they start pumping oil out again.

True that

 

[Richard416282]

So, in 2023, where is this new VW Diesel engine being delivered to? It only was announced in 2017-2018, and it now has been 5+ years.

The DW (Deutche Welle[Germany World] article references the excess pollution over the prescribed limits as set then, and using the Worldwide death figures.

it combines the two categories of vehicles together, and breaks out the total sum of deaths as being 107,626 and the fraction that is from cars and vans as being 10%, while from trucks and busses it was at 26%.

The actual estimate of EU-28(the 28 countries that comprise the EU) deaths were 28,458 and from USA emissions were 2,982.

from the USA emissions , 3% were attributable to cars and vans, and 34% of the total were from trucks and busses.

This showed how *statistics* can be taken out of context.
Ok, now suppose I accepted that of the 2,982 deaths attributed to NOx pollution in 2015, how many actually were registered as “death by NOx pollution”?

I would speculate that of that lot, none are registered as such, since there are other causes that can give rise to more deaths than excess NOx and PM2.5 emissions.

From the USA’s own statistics department for 2015 ( insert reference)we know that annually approximately 50,000 motorists die each year due to motor vehicle accident(collisions).

So, while I agree, NOx pollution could be reduced, in N.America, that is not such a profound issue, since there are larger sources of causes of death than emissions from motor vehicles.

But, why do we not have available for rent or lease, a network of tow behind range extenders, where the fuel is used to drive a generator, that provides 25-40% of an active trip, of a typical EV car?

There must be some stumbling block that prevents the implementation of auxiliary power sources being hooked into the primary power pack.

 

[dieseldonato]

To your last thought, there is a guy that added an apu to his Tesla. Little gas powered generator that ran the whole time he wad making a cross country drive. Obnoxious loud thing. (I think he did it for the attention) it worked but needed some bugs hammered out. He still had to watch his speed and frequently needs to pull over to give the generator time to charge up the ev battery. This just brings up the point, you just made your ev a overly complicated hybrid. There's a you tube video from the guy.