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.
And if that was the main concern we would be incentivizing people building out their own solar with battery setups, but the plebs paying less for energy isn’t the goal.
I think the main thing you are missing about OPs post is that when it came to reducing costs for consumers, pollution, and greenhouse gasses, building out infrastructure for electric cars wasn’t a priority and was vehemently fought. Now that its about making a bunch of billionaires 5% wealthier, there is nothing that will stop the build out. Energy infrastructure is now a major priority and this time at the expense of consumers.
And just like colonialists in Africa, they aren’t building a railroad to help people get around their country or make their lives any easier, they’re building a railroad from the mines to the port. Investment in infrastructure is not fungible; building new power plants and lines to service data centers does little (not nothing) to help the average person and if anything resources that would have been put into maintaining and expanding civilian service are being reallocated.
It is a real and very common problem that gets no press because a lot of people work very hard to ensure that the line temps do not reach critical. That said, it only becomes a real problem during times of high demand like heat waves and cold snaps. Our infrastructure is absolute dog shit at the moment, and I think the fear is that if every home had one or two EVs charging overnight, then every night would be a high demand event.
We need to bring our infrastructure up to adequate.
You guys seriously need to let the wires cool down?
Meanwhile here every house built in the last half century gets 3x230V three phase service with 3x25A main fuses at minimum and can go up to 50A. And that’s just normal residential stuff.
The fuses protect the lines upstream to the next protection device. That doesn’t mean every house could max out their breaker at the same time. Just like you can’t pull the max amperage on each circuit breaker in your panel without popping the mail breaker.
To answer your question, most American homes I’ve seen have 240V at 200A. Some older homes have 100A.
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.
And if that was the main concern we would be incentivizing people building out their own solar with battery setups, but the plebs paying less for energy isn’t the goal.
I think the main thing you are missing about OPs post is that when it came to reducing costs for consumers, pollution, and greenhouse gasses, building out infrastructure for electric cars wasn’t a priority and was vehemently fought. Now that its about making a bunch of billionaires 5% wealthier, there is nothing that will stop the build out. Energy infrastructure is now a major priority and this time at the expense of consumers.
And just like colonialists in Africa, they aren’t building a railroad to help people get around their country or make their lives any easier, they’re building a railroad from the mines to the port. Investment in infrastructure is not fungible; building new power plants and lines to service data centers does little (not nothing) to help the average person and if anything resources that would have been put into maintaining and expanding civilian service are being reallocated.
Is overheating an actual problem or a hypothetical? The reason I ask is
It is a real and very common problem that gets no press because a lot of people work very hard to ensure that the line temps do not reach critical. That said, it only becomes a real problem during times of high demand like heat waves and cold snaps. Our infrastructure is absolute dog shit at the moment, and I think the fear is that if every home had one or two EVs charging overnight, then every night would be a high demand event.
We need to bring our infrastructure up to adequate.
Glad to know about the work being done. I suppose this is one of those situations which you don’t hear about until failure occurs.
How bad is the American power grid?
You guys seriously need to let the wires cool down?
Meanwhile here every house built in the last half century gets 3x230V three phase service with 3x25A main fuses at minimum and can go up to 50A. And that’s just normal residential stuff.
The fuses protect the lines upstream to the next protection device. That doesn’t mean every house could max out their breaker at the same time. Just like you can’t pull the max amperage on each circuit breaker in your panel without popping the mail breaker.
To answer your question, most American homes I’ve seen have 240V at 200A. Some older homes have 100A.
Proposed data centers using >4GWs, so production is a problem.