Time to restart some coal fired power stations ?
Time to restart some coal fired power stations ?
Wouldn't help one bit, as it's the distribution net that is overloaded. The energy companies simply didn't plan for this amount of power being consumed way out at an endpoint (aka, house).
What I find really interesting is that they're running into this issue with "only" 4% of the cars in Norway being electric.
I wonder, if you would spend that money on the power grid, make it redundant and resilient, move it underground where needed, if that would pay back. In a year.
I went to Croatia for a vacation this year, to an island (with a bridge to mainland EU). 3 out of 10 evenings, the power went down for 30+ minutes. Are you kidding me? What is this, early 19 century?
I think the electric car charging problem is pretty predictable. I was commenting about it 15 years ago, about why everyone having an electric car is not viable, just purely considering the power demand for charging them.
It's very clear. If a car charger is going to draw 10 or 20 kW continuously for several hours overnight, and every house is going to have one of these chargers installed (or more than one charger for multi-car families), then the distribution network absolutely cannot handle that demand. The existing network is sized for much lower average power demands than that, probably 10% of that.
Consider that in hot parts of the USA the power grid is already stressed during the day by people running air conditioners, and they use far less power than car chargers.
Not viable if power production and distribution network remains the same. I don't see why it cannot be viable given there is a time for them to be upgraded.
Thing is. I doubt they planned for the increase in demand, so if we end up having the same issue as Norway (highly likely), they'd have to dig everything up again to put down bigger cables.
Localised batteries may help in the short term. Longer term is going to be a major headache for national network infrastructure.
Ignoring legacy, I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to simply have PVC pipe big enough to walk through below each public street to install everything in. I wouldn't be surprised if you could pay for it simply to save digging up a street one extra time for not having it.
Little wonder that the population is encouraged into denser/closer living arrangements of flats and apartments where it's not practical to own or find parking for a private vehicle.
Little wonder that the population is encouraged into denser/closer living arrangements of flats and apartments where it's not practical to own or find parking for a private vehicle.
With sufficient land available building up is not economically interesting. Which most first world countries have, in theory. If it weren't for our governments selling us to global political interests. New Zealand being one of the absolute champions, your country is being literally given away to foreigners.
Good for primary exporters but not so for anything we need to import.
[SNIP]
I'm fighting a different issue at work. Too many solar installations cause the voltage to increase, at some point the inverters have to switch off to avoid overvoltage. This decreases the voltage for others, who can switch on, and they start bouncing on-off until the situation changes. Some people loose 50-100 EUR a year because of this, sometimes even without knowing about it.
Of course instead of replacing the cables with just thicker cables, they want software solution. Great planning.[SNIP]
So tax exporters, oh wait that's expropriation of the foreigners owning your exporting industry ... ISDS says hi. That is New Zealand's problem, even people who fight the symptoms in government aren't allowed to mention the causes and what is truly necessary to solve it.[SNIP]
[SNIP]
I'm fighting a different issue at work. Too many solar installations cause the voltage to increase, at some point the inverters have to switch off to avoid overvoltage. This decreases the voltage for others, who can switch on, and they start bouncing on-off until the situation changes. Some people loose 50-100 EUR a year because of this, sometimes even without knowing about it.
Of course instead of replacing the cables with just thicker cables, they want software solution. Great planning.[SNIP]If the grid connection at each solar inverter looks like it has an inductive reactive characteristic (inductance of transmission lines, leakage reactance of transformers etc), then each solar inverter can have some influence on voltage by either sinking or sourcing reactive power (sink VAr to reduce the voltage and source VAr to increase the voltage - like adjusting excitation on the synchronous alternators in a power station...). Think of it as a distributed STATCOM.
Replacing all the cables (and distribution transformers etc) would be rather expensive. "Smart grid" with peak demand charges (just like AMD & RCPD charges for large commercial/industrial customers) would help "encourage" customers to spread their loads out throughout the day (and slow charge electric cars during off-peak times instead of fast charging them during on-peak times)
IMO the most efficient way would be to charge batteries directly at power plant and swap them at filling station.
It's very clear. If a car charger is going to draw 10 or 20 kW continuously for several hours overnight, and every house is going to have one of these chargers installed (or more than one charger for multi-car families), then the distribution network absolutely cannot handle that demand. The existing network is sized for much lower average power demands than that, probably 10% of that.