Weird how that works
(midwest.social)
Programmer Humorcross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/46124852
I think there is a big misunderstanding here. The power grid suffers from a distribution problem not a production problem. The concern with households with EVs is getting the power from the power plants to the houses. During high demand, the powerlines overheat. It's a delicate power regulation dance to keep the flow at maximum capacity without having fully shutdown any power routes in order to cool. If you do not, you will lose the lines which means a significant downtime for that path.
Datacenters are getting direct lines from the production sites. I believe that for some datacenters, retired nuclear power plants are being spun up in order to serve them exclusively.
SOURCE: Grid management is one of the things my firm specializes in.
EDIT: Believe it or not, households with solar panels that feed back into the grid can be a problem sometimes because the unexpected capacity in the lines can also overheat the lines and hampers the ability of the utility company to regulate lune temps. If you are doing solar, consider adding battery banks to catch the excess.
Then build out more infrastructure, for Gods sake. Take the Texas grid for instance. It's held together with duct tape and spit. Just the wind blowing the wrong way and suddenly half the state's without electricity.
The answer is to use public spending, because the power companies want artificially low supply, since that means they make more money.
Of course you also need to install new infrastructure to let consumers also offset the grid, but again: artificially low supply.
It's basically a rigged market at the behest of the power companies. You could innovate, but there's less money in that in the long run - so you won't.
Yes, but...
The distribution limits are almost always an afternoon/evening thing. Early afternoon for warm climates (aircon and cooking dinner) and evening for cold climates (cooking dinner, showers, heating).
Midday for solar injection.
Hence the famous 'duck curve'.
The distribution network has plenty of capacity overnight; we just need people to wait until about 11PM before we start charging.
At that point we get the question of whether we have the generation.
