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by _ph_ 3541 days ago
What makes you think the German grid would not be up to charging electrical cars? In most places it is in an excellent state and as electrical consumption overall is sinking (getting rid of incandescent bulbs and wasteful electric devices helped there). On average, an electrical car would need about 10kWh/day to recharge, based on the average mileage. This does not put high loads on the electrical networks, especially as most cars would recharge over night, where the networks are mostly idle.
1 comments

My informations from Germany are 6 years, but it probably still applies:

- electricity is produced by wind farms in north, and transfered to industrial south. German grid does not have enough capacity and has to transfer through Czech grid. That is often pushing it to edge of safety limit. Safety breakers are not possible for political reasons (Poland installed something like that).

- Building new high-voltage power line is almost impossible

- Atomic plants are being decommissioned. There might be a problem to satisfy existing demand.

- Germany is planning to use Russian gas to make power in future (baltic pipe...). But Russia stated they might not have enough gas in 30 years to supply their own internal demand, and will stop exporting.

- More recently there is a huge political instability associated with Russian gas.

- Poland (or Estonia?) buys liquid gas from Katar and transports it on tankers. But that is very expensive

- Building new power plants in Germany is very problematic.

I am from Germany. Yes, to move forward with renewables we need more north-south connections, which are being built. But that concerns the further switch of the grid to renewables (currently 30%). This does not affect the charging of electrical cars - which would rather help to stabilize the grid.