[brk]

All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs.

I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim.

I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation, which could be new plants, and/or residential solar.

Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or permanently parked, we are decades away from a scenario where pure EVs are the dominant vehicle type on the road. There are just too many serviceable ICE vehicles in play to expect them to really go away in the next quarter century or so. That allows plenty of time for anything the current power generation and distribution infrastructure lacks to be adequately addressed.

[delecti]

The global energy usage from crypto was in the ballpark of 120-240 TWh/year, but a couple figures repeated the specific 150 TWh/year figure, so I'll use that.

The US's annual gasoline consumption is 135 bn gallons (2021 figure). At around 20 mpg (random estimate because I have to pick something), that works out to 2.7 trillion miles. At 30 kWh/100mi (figure from google), that works out 800 TWh if every gas vehicle in the US was suddenly switched for an electric one, or about 20% of the US's annual electricty generation of 4222.5 TWh (2018 figure). Also, that's about 5x the global crypto energy usage, vs just America's cars. [Obvious disclaimers: some of those estimates are arbitrary and not perfect, but they're in the right ballpark, and we obviously wouldn't switch to electric cars overnight]

Crypto was bad because it didn't actually accomplish anything with that power usage, but it was a pretty small footnote on the grand scheme of things.

[megaman821]

If it is only 20% more generation, that seems pretty feasible. The widespread usage of air conditioners caused a greater increase in electricity usage than that.

[phpisthebest]

As more and more people switch to Electric Heat (heat pumps i.e AC run backwards) off of NatGas more and more energy companies are pleading with people to turn down their heat in the winter and up in the summer as the grid can not handle it

For the first time I can remember, my power company was sending out Texts here in the midwest during that last Arctic blast telling people to use less electricity because the grid was over taxed.

Our National Energy grid is very very fragile.

[megaman821]

That is such a misrepresentation. It has nearly nothing to do with heat pumps, it because there is a large amount of electrical resistive heating used in Texas.

Converting natural gas furnaces to heat pumps and replacing resistive heating with heat pumps, would not increase the total electricity usage at all. Last I looked 40% of heating in Texas was done through resistive heating, heat pumps would be 3-4x more efficient. There is current power devoted to resistance heating to run heat pumps for every home.

[phpisthebest]

I was not aware that Texas is in the midwest... I am not sure what Texas has to do with anything here.

That said, no one isreplacing NatGas with Electric Resistive Heating, that would be crazy, NatGas is still cheaper in most cases for people north of say KY but there are alot of HeatPumps going in

I am unclear why you think replacing a NatGas heater with a HeatPump "would not increase the total electricity usage at all" that is just false, and I am not even sure why you would claim other wise, NatGas is not an Electric Fuel Source so when you change from a non-electric fuel source to an electric fuel source you will use more electricity. Now changing from Resistive Electric to heatPump would actually drop your electrical usage in some cases (above 0degrees anyway)

Around here it is not uncommon to have a HeatPump with a Gas "emergency" heater for when it gets too cold for the heatpump, as Electric Resistive is TERRIBLE and expensive. The problem is when that combo is sold normally it is wiht 80% furnances or they just leave the old furnace in place and just upgrade the AC/Heatpumpt

[Kirby64]

Not OP, but changing from natural gas heat sources to heat pump does increase your house electricity demand, but then that natural gas is no longer consumed. Natural gas is commonly used as the 'peaker' energy source today... so it's likely that you're just going to be burning natural gas at a plant somewhere else to power your heat pump in the peaky cold snap situation. Natural gas power plants are going to be more efficient than your furnace, unless you have one of the very modern furnaces, and the amount of gas needed to be burned and turned into electricity is going to be a ratio (3:1, 4:1...) lower than the natural gas needed to be burned to heat your house.

Overall that seems like a reduction in total emissions, since you're using less natural gas overall to heat the same amount. Yes, it increases power demand, but is also lessens demand on natural gas by a greater amount.

This could be a overall net negative if the power mix is heavily polluting (coal... etc), but largely we're moving away from that over time and it will only get better.

[megaman821]

I read Texts as Texas.

Anyways in areas where it regularly goes below 0F, the transition will not be smooth (but probably still necessary). Heat pumps that operate efficiently down -20F are just coming out and will be even more expensive than normal heat pumps. Also most residential energy usage in really cold areas are from burning natural gas, so electricity generation is quite low compared to warmer parts of the country.

[ianai]

Texas has its own electrical grid separate from the rest of the US.

[phpisthebest]

Why is every commenting about texas? No where in my comment did I mention texas, the closest was "texts" i.e SMS messages, not texas.

I do not live in texas.

[readthenotes1]

it makes for a funny read. people are very passionate about your Texas errr Texts

[mmoskal]

Interesting to note that there is ~30kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline, so the reason EV would only take 20% of US electricity consumption is that they are 5x more efficient (than the 20mpg gas figure used).

Indeed seems manageable.

[AtlasBarfed]

I did not verify his figures, but his methodology was BEV efficiency, not the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. Electric drivetrains and cars are designed ground-up for efficiency to a degree that ICE cars are not, as well as the fact that something like 80-90% of energy in a gallon of gasoline is wasted (60-70% due to Carnot efficiency alone).

[AtlasBarfed]

Crypto was 1/5th of the ENTIRE US CONSUMER TRANSPORTATION (BEV efficiency converted)????

That is an astonishing amount of electricity for something of so little value.

But anyway, to the larger point, I agree the grid impact is overblown, especially since we should be coupling consumer BEVs with home / business / warehouse / commercial solar.

[tigeroil]

The main thing your comment highlights for me is how much of a push we need for more sustainable methods of transportation in general.

There's always going to be people who will need to drive, but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.

[phpisthebest]

>>but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.

Never going to happen for 80-90% of the US. It is neither economically feasible, culturally feasible, or practically feasible for most people in the US.

Work places are too spread out, homes are not located near workplaces, and there is no desire from anyone (my self included) to increase density.

I want less density not more, "walkable" cities only work if people actually want to live in a walkable city. Many many many dont

[s0rce]

The grid seems fine from my non-expert view, its sized for peak loads on the highest capacity days. EV charging can be done at night once AC use drops off. In my 5 years in California there was maybe 1-2 days midsummer when there wasn't enough power and still was entirely due to inadequate generation and high usage in neighboring states as well which limited imports.

[mfer]

Two important things to note…

1) where power is generated and used for crypto isn’t the same as needed for electric cars. Locations matter when you’re dealing with the creation of and distribution of electricity

2) moving electricity to all of the locations where it will be used is another problem. That deals with transmission lines, transformers, the last mile, and all of that stuff. That we don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It is Andy the lack of awareness and planning concerns me.

[kybernetyk]

In Germany the government asked people not to use electric heaters this winter because the grid could break down.

An ev drains way more power then a 2kw space heater.

[Retric]

An average EV averages far less power than an average 2kW space heater over time.

A 2kW space heater used just 12 hours a day uses the same power per day as 4 mile per kWh EV driven 35,000 miles per year. Many space heaters see more than 12h/day of use but 35k miles per year is extremely rare.

EV’s are like microwaves, they use a lot of power when on but the grid cares about average load across millions of them not what’s happening in any one home.

[jodrellblank]

> “as a 4kWh/mile EV”

“The battery size for a Tesla Model 3 ranges from 50 kWh to 82 kWh” that would give the largest a range of 20 miles.

Ev-database.org says they use 151Wh/km which is about 240Wh/mile.

[Retric]

Just a typo. A reasonably efficient EV is 240Wh/mile or ~4 miles per kWh.

[D13Fd]

This is a ridiculous comparison. Google tells me an electric vehicle uses around 14kWh per day if you drive ~14k miles per year, and is much more efficient than an internal combustion engine.

Your hypothetical 2kw space heater uses 24kWh a day and is drastically less efficient than a heat pump.

[kybernetyk]

Peak loads let the grid collapse. Not constant loads over N hours. If everyone starts charging their EVs at roughly the same time (like when getting home from work) it won't matter that the EV uses less power over 24hours than a space heater.

EV zealots are just blind to the issues their silver bullet creates. Just like the "walk-able cities" folks.

[theshrike79]

This is why we have different pricing for different hours. Only those that actually need the capacity will use the expensive power from 16-20.

Others will use dirt-cheap night time electricity.

And with Vehicle to Grid smart people can sell the extra energy in their car battery during peak hours and use the credits from that to charge their car overnight.

None of this is some kind of magical tech that's hard to use. Gridio (https://www.gridio.io) already exists and works directly with multiple EV brands.

[raisedbyninjas]

It looks like Germans drive an average of 19 miles per day. Charging an EV to cover that would only need 7kwh at 100% efficiency. So a space heater could use more or less overnight depending on its duty cycle.

[Semaphor]

Well, yes. If tomorrow everyone replaces their ICE cars with EVs, then the grid won’t be able to handle that. Completely different situation, though.

[hasmanean]

We should not replace ICE cars with EVs, but something smaller. Steam engines were large because that was how they got efficiency up. ICE cars could afford to be smaller and more efficient. If they had just replaced steam locmotives with diesel ones that would have been stupid...instead they built a whole new infrastructure around smaller cars that was much better than the rail network and redesigned our entire cities. Existing cars are the optimal configuration for a given engine cost and gas price.

Electric motors are even more efficient, but using them in the form factor of a car is also stupid. With robotics we can now make tiny self-driving vehicles that can do chores for us. Why should I drive a 2-ton car to the store to pick up a gallon of milk, when the store can send a small robot to deliver it to me? Similarly a large empty bus can be replaced with smaller ATV sized EVs that drive me from my house to the main artery and merge to form one train. That reduces the size of the EV engine and battery pack by 10x. Some of the problems to be solved are not merely technological but organizational and cultural.

[vfclists]

Why should the store send a small robot to deliver it you?

You can ride a bicycle to the store to pick it up. Just think of the cardiovascular benefits.

And you know what? Think of the energy cost of the robot's manufacture, and the energy the delivery takes.

[decafninja]

Because rain, snow, heat, lack of fitness, security, amongst other reasons.

Cycling is my most common mode of transportation these days. I love it. But I also know it's not going to be practical primary means of transport for a huge slice of the population. And the "danger from cars" ranks pretty low in my list of reasons.

[hasmanean]

A bike cannot compete in terms of energy efficiency with a slow robot that delivers multiple packages to people along a route.

Human food is the most expensive fuel on the planet when you factor in agriculture.

[theshrike79]

My EV is currently charging at 2.4kW power. Or was, I'm pretty sure the battery was already at limit a few hours ago.

The next time I need to plug it in is maybe on Saturday.

You need to use your electric heater 24/7 to not freeze.

[themitigating]

A Tesla Model 3 charges at the rate of 3~ per hour using about 1.2 kw. Over 12 hours that's about 36 miles each night.