5 ms·
tipping point, indeed... and not in a good way: let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh
by jackhack 7y ago
tipping point, indeed... and not in a good way:
let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh load each night!
100,000 Mega watt-hours is roughly the output of about 10 nuclear power plants in a 24H period.
Unless a lot of new capacity comes online, it could easily overwhelm the existing electrical grid's capacity.
Let's hope this is a gradual transition.
- 7952 7y agoConsumption is lower at night and peaks during the day. So there is already spare capacity in the system, although it might not be clean energy.
- ryacko 7y agoResidential net consumption is more complex than that due to solar and wind. There is a duck curve, and sometimes the lowest energy prices are in the middle of the day, for wholesale it could be negative.
- 7952 7y agoI don't understand what you mean? Surely the duck curve just relates to renewable production rather than consumption.
- coralreef 7y agoDo delivery trucks typically consume 90%+ of their battery on a daily basis?
- afterburner 7y agoI mean, if they're not being used most of the day, you bought too many...
- torpfactory 7y agoDelivery trucks run during the day mostly. Cities may prohibit deliveries at night for noise reasons. Deliveries at night might be more likely to be stolen, etc. Could be able to fix the first issue with the quietness of EVs perhaps.
- bradlys 7y agoAnd if they start putting dampers on the doors. There are two ways I can tell UPS is delivering: * The extremely loud engine and exhaust. (They are loud and unpleasant to listen to - it ain't no Ferrari) * The slamming of the doors open and closed. If I hear a loud agricultural sounding engine and then a loud slamming sliding type door... I know it's UPS - 100%. I don't even need to look outside.
- jlmorton 7y agoNote that 100kWh/day * 100,000 vehicles is 10,000MWh/day. If a typical nuclear power plant output is about 500MW, that's 12,000MWh/day.
- windsurfer 7y agoGood. That's a lot of oil that would need to be burned that this is replacing!
- alex_duf 7y agoAlso that math is assuming a full charge every day. I doubt that would be the case Edit That would be between 400 to 500 km a day. I would be surprised delivery vans need that much
- ttkari 7y agoIsn't it more like 10,000,000 kWh, i.e. 10000 MWh? New nuclear units go up to 1600 MW of output, so it's less than 10 hours of output from a single reactor.
- Glawen 7y agoYes, parent is mixing energy with power. If charge is done at night, there's ample available energy for these trucks
- 693471 7y agoIt costs 6kW to refine a single gallon of gasoline. We can shift our energy away from the refineries as their demand tapers off.
- fallous 7y ago6kWh to refine a gallon of gasoline? That's not a bad conversion rate given that the energy in a gallon of gasoline is 33-34kWh.
- benj111 7y agoI suppose you'd want to include transportation 'costs', and off gassing (edit: I meant flaring), etc, etc.
- danhak 7y agoThe typical internal combustion engine is only ~30% efficient, getting only ~10 kWh of energy out of that gallon.
- fallous 7y agoIndeed. That does not, however, impact the actual energy available in a gallon of gasoline. Technically the 6kWh of energy spent on refining (or any other work) is itself subject to inefficiencies in generation, transmission, etc. It would also suffer from inefficiencies in the electrical storage and motive portions of an electric vehicle as well. And at the end of the day even if there were perfect 100% conversion it would still only be 6kWh of energy available vs 33-34kWh.
- qqqwerty 7y agoI think the point is that the energy inputs required to produce a gallon of gasoline could approximately power an EV vehicle roughly the same distance that a typical ICE could go on a gallon of gasoline. A quick google search seems to back that up.
- TylerE 7y agoTesla is adding over 100k vehicles a quarter to the fleet. 100k trucks over 5 years is a drop in the bucket.