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Originally Posted by chad86tsi
You sure about that? This is the system load in California yesterday. And it looks worse than this in Winter. (tip, imported energy in this grapy isn't very green either).
https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
Scroll down to supply trend and set the date to yesterday.
Then set the date to 6 months ago and you can see what it's like in winter.
You do realize the sun isn't always out, right?
We aren't at the limits everywhere, but we are in many places, and we are only adding "unstable" supply to fill in the gaps. Imagine taking a job that paid less, and your spouse got a new job that only paid on sunny days. You might clear the same income per year, but it wont be stable. You can save your money, but you can't efficiently save watts at this scale. It's also not economical to send California sun watts to North Dakota on a windless North Dakota day, nor north Dakota wind watts to California on a cloudy California day.
The normal reply I hear is "don't worry, they will figure it out". I'm one of those "they's", and I'm saying "good luck with that..."
Get ready for brownouts and rolling blackouts. |
I see now. Your argument seems to be that charging many EVs with power supplied only from renewable sources certainly isn't going to match the demand. Of course, anyone can agree to that for the foreseeable future.
Adopting a new way of doing things doesn't have to be perfect in every aspect before it's acceptable. I'm not caught up in the false marketing of EV's being "green" so we can certainly continue to power EVs with coal or natural gas to meet the gap. It's awful for the environment, but the alternative is awful for the environment as well. Not a big deal.
The long term goal is significantly reducing oil imports and gaining energy independence so we're not reliant on a bunch of lunatics to live life normally. The greenhouse gas emission reductions are certainly an added bonus.
Car companies are going electric, utility companies are upgrading and adding renewable capacity. Utility companies will continue to want to make money so they'll provide that energy, one way or another. Similar thing happened when air condition systems started becoming popular.