| >What if offices suddenly have 50 EVs charging at the same time? They do. No problems so far. >Will this not lead to a capacity constraint? No. Batteries and rooftop solar. >If you broaden the horizon, can this not lead to a localised collapse of the grid due to a demand surge? Not with batteries and rooftop solar, no. We good? >It would also lead to a huge surge in power It's not a "huge surge." Many other appliances are off at night. The grid has excess power at night. The larger problems are in the day, caused by things like massive use of AC, which problems will be ameliorated by installation of more rooftop solar. Win win. >at the times when solar output is literally zero. Batteries. And, sometimes, when needed, you also, wait for it… use fossil fuels or other non-solar sources! We can cut fossil fuel use drastically and cut carbon emissions, but still use them when needed, and everything will be OK! |
Not to detract from your core point as there are ways to solve this[1], but long term the necessary level of solution is 99.9% reduction over all sources of CO2, so no, it isn’t OK unless it’s no more than 8 hours per year[1].
[0] hydrogen, synthetic hydrocarbons, even burning wood instead of coal works in this situation, so long as the costs are lower than for fossil carbon
[1] on average, with a margin of error of way more than 100% depending on all the carbon sources that aren’t electrical