I still don't see EV's Replacing ICEs.

frenchyd said:

Well said.  Only 5% transition losses?  I can understand that out East . Most power plants are close to urban centers  and the greatest chunk of the population is east of the Mississippi.  
  But the further west you get the greater distance  between end users it is.  To the point where some utilities would need to cover places like the whole state of Wyoming just to have 500,000 customers. Or do they run long lines from Colorado and Utah?  
  Then what about New Mexico?   Or Alaska, Where do they get power from?   They really only lose 5% from transmission?  
    

It's less than I would have guessed, but not much less. I had seen lots of numbers thrown out in various interweb venues (50/60/70%) that felt completely unrealistic so I figured I'd look it up. It must be a common question since the DOE put it on their FAQ.

To be clear, that's an average. Yeah, wyoming might need hundreds of miles of t-lines to feed 500k customers, but higher losses for those customers won't move a weighted average much. Additionally, long lines run at very high voltages (500kV, 750kV) and have large, bundled conductors, so even then the losses are probably pretty minor.

As an aside, electrical losses are exponential in nature. That means if you double the current (which doubles the power if voltage is held constant), then you quadruple the losses. So if you have a line with a design (maximum) loss of 2%, when it's running at half capacity, power loss will be 0.5%.

rslifkin said:

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Does the state asking you not to charge your EVs at a certain time even register to you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/california-heat-wave-flex-alert-ac-ev-charging.html

Now multiply that by however many EVs you want to charge and explain how it has no effect.

FWIW, by most sources Seattle gets <1% of its power from nuclear.  But again, don't let reality interrupt you.  

Things like this aren't a new problem.  In at least some places, many commercial buildings (office buildings, etc.) are part of a demand reduction program.  The office I'm based out of has to run an annual test of the procedure for it, although I don't know of a situation where they've actually been requested to do it.  Basically, if the utility company requests demand reduction (due to trouble keeping up with the load on the grid), they shut down most of the lighting in areas of the building with windows, HVAC is cut back significantly outside of lab and manufacturing areas, and some other non-critical stuff gets shut down. 

This is also not an un-solveable problem.  If demand is pushing the limits, supply and transmission abilities need to be increased.  And/or systems that can be designed to do so should be designed to time-shift their loads (when practical) to times of lower grid demand or higher supply availability. 

You hit the nail on the head.   It tends to be a local problem not a nation wide problem.  
     My state is ahead of the curve switching to renewables. No we aren't there yet but we way are ahead of the curve.   So we don't get threats of brown outs or actual power losses. ( except weather caused local ones). 
     Places like California with as much as 300 days of sunshine a year  shouldn't  be having problems.  Or any of the Southern states. Wind blows there too. Maybe not as strong as on the prairie  but all it takes is a 5 mph wind to generate electricity. Considering most towers are well above the tree line,  that's a lot of wind being wasted.  
  It's being replaced with fuel that costs money.  Natural Gas, oil, coal, and even uranium.   

EV boating?  
     I found a U tube site that introduced me to narrow boat.  Those canal boats over inEngland  that cruise around England on the canals.
  Now it's become a full time  thing where people live on them year around.  It certainly looks lovely and very scenic.    
   Anyway the traditional use is a diesel engine.   Lately the fuel has become HVO instead of diesel. ( hydrogen Veg Oil. ). Used cooking oil treated with hydrogen. Less smelly and renewable. 
  But now  there are. Hybrid systems where solar panels on the roof are charged by  the sun and sent to battery packs. That run Electric motors.  Or charged by a HOV motor  which charges the batteries than run the electric motor. 
 Or pure EV solar panels on the roof  charging lithium batteries  running the  electric motor. 
      These are nearly 60 feet long,  6? Feet wide, and weigh around 10 tons.   
   A days worth of sun shine gets you almost a days worth of boating.  But I understand the full timers rarely travel more than 2-4 hours a day.  
    I guess you can tie up most places for up to 14 days.  Some places only  for 2 days. And near fresh water and "bins" ( where trash is thrown away) for only an hour.  
    The one person I followed for a bit said she spent £3400 ( $4000)  a year to do this.  And earned  that money selling badges  and trinkets at fairs during the summer. But she had a very old and noisy diesel from the 1960's. 

So, infrastructure...

I never thought of old parking garages being affected by EVs weight. I read today that that is the thought on the garage that collapsed in NYC.

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Since 1% of cars are electric and most electric cars weigh less than a pickup truck  or a limo  I doubt you can blame EV 's.   
 PS a Jaguar XJS weighs 4664 pounds. 

NJ just had to suspend their tax credit program for EVs. Demand outstripped funds.

https://apnews.com/article/new-jersey-electric-vehicle-rebate-02c6965ef22f23ffc88fcc4f68857955

Fupdiggity (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

Well said.  Only 5% transition losses?  I can understand that out East . Most power plants are close to urban centers  and the greatest chunk of the population is east of the Mississippi.  
  But the further west you get the greater distance  between end users it is.  To the point where some utilities would need to cover places like the whole state of Wyoming just to have 500,000 customers. Or do they run long lines from Colorado and Utah?  
  Then what about New Mexico?   Or Alaska, Where do they get power from?   They really only lose 5% from transmission?  
    

It's less than I would have guessed, but not much less. I had seen lots of numbers thrown out in various interweb venues (50/60/70%) that felt completely unrealistic so I figured I'd look it up. It must be a common question since the DOE put it on their FAQ.

To be clear, that's an average. Yeah, wyoming might need hundreds of miles of t-lines to feed 500k customers, but higher losses for those customers won't move a weighted average much. Additionally, long lines run at very high voltages (500kV, 750kV) and have large, bundled conductors, so even then the losses are probably pretty minor.

As an aside, electrical losses are exponential in nature. That means if you double the current (which doubles the power if voltage is held constant), then you quadruple the losses. So if you have a line with a design (maximum) loss of 2%, when it's running at half capacity, power loss will be 0.5%.

 

That's nice to know.  Except it's the old, If a Billionaire walks into a bar thing.  Yes the average wealth  of everyone  goes up massively but nobody has anymore money.  
     So here in the prairie region where the sun shines decently and the wind blows faster and steadier than almost anyplace on earth.  Does that mean we can power New York City?  
 Chicago definitely. But the extra 1000 miles to New York?  
     Power generation is funny.  There are still power plants that use coal simply because that's how they are built.   Yet Natural gas would be cheaper.   And wind and solar would be free.  ( except for maintenance and initial cost). 
 To keep generating power  some plants don't care. They just want the money, income from customers without any further investment.  

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Since 1% of cars are electric and most electric cars weigh less than a pickup truck  or a limo  I doubt you can blame EV 's.   
 PS a Jaguar XJS weighs 4664 pounds. 

Garage was not for big cars. I bet would not fit many pickups and if the smaller EVs weigh as much as them it would over load the 1927 building. If it could fit only pickups and be OK at 6000 per imagine it filled with 9000# EV Hummers. My extended cab 1st gen Tacoma had issues in a hotel garage in Phili.

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

In reply to frenchyd :

Thats a pretty terrible way to frame your description of wind and solar. Every power source is free except for maintenance, intitial cost and fuel.

In reply to frenchyd :

What part of "small cars does not fit SUV's" did you not comprehend?

In reply to frenchyd :

Why would you compare a subcompact to suvs and limos. Another subcompact would be the rio at like 2800 pounds.

My fullsize pickup is light compared to a semi, but thats not important to this conversation. It is a concern with infrastructure, may be nothing but it alteast needs to be explored especially in the transportation industry.

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

 

What's a 50mpg Geo Metro egg weigh?

re: parking garage collapse.  The non-snarky, useful response would be to do a reality-check: find pix of the collapse, ID as many vehicles as possible, estimate an avg weight for each vehicle, and compare ratio of weight due to ICE vs EVs (with calculated uncertainty and somehow factoring in HEVs, etc)
Without doing any real work, a random sample of vehicle weights from pix of the collapse (see below, unless these are from a different collapse or AI generated or something), I'm expecting it  to be more or less a wash.  The pix are not showing a lot of small cars.  These are some typical curb weights in lbs:
tesla s = 4800; x= 5400; 3= 4100; y= 4500; 2018+ suburban= 5500, transit=5000..6000, grand cherokee= 4900, explorer= 4300..4900

From a practical, legal, and engineering POV: 1) it does not matter if every vehicle is a Hummer EV, the owner of the building must make sure that safety is not a problem  2) your E36 M3 is seriously weak if your building has a factor of safety less than the <<100% difference in weight between an ICE and EV  3) as a lesson learned for everyone else: yes, trends in average vehicle weight must be considered anywhere it could possibly matter

The snarky/ shiny-happy response: Batteries are heavy, so all EVs are heavy.  The total weight of 50 vehicles on the roof of a 100yr old building (which was not originally designed to be a parking garage, and had known structural problems) made it collapse.  There was at least one Tesla on  the roof.  So therefore the entire collapse was caused entirely by all the weight from all the EVs.  That's just common sense*.

*off topic/ political: any person trying to use "common sense" as an argument anywhere should never be trusted on anything.  The person either does not really  understand the complexity of what they are talking about, they do not understand the common level of ignorance/ stupidity in people, or they are intentionally trying to manipulate all people who are at the level of common ignorance/ stupidity.

preach (dudeist priest) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

 

What's a 50mpg Geo Metro egg weigh?

1st gen Metro was sub-1700lbs, 2nd gen Metro was around 1800lbs

Edit: FWIW, it's diesel but also 50mpg-ish: a VW Mk4 TDI is around 2900lbs, has better performance than a Metro plus ABS and airbags.

Wow 28 pages and closing in on 700 posts........not the kind of GRM forum record I wanted not be known for.

In reply to Oapfu :

How many to collapse a parking garage?  

Oapfu said:

preach (dudeist priest) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

 

What's a 50mpg Geo Metro egg weigh?

1st gen Metro was sub-1700lbs, 2nd gen Metro was around 1800lbs

Edit: FWIW, it's diesel but also 50mpg-ish: a VW Mk4 TDI is around 2900lbs, has better performance than a Metro plus ABS and airbags.

And the lightest modern car was the Fiat 500 at just under 2400 pounds.

Seen at NJMP yesterday.  The owner told me his tow was 80 miles and he had 30% left on arrival.  He had the bigger tires that hurt range.  They have 50A hookups for RVs so recharging was not a problem.

Also noticed a "No electric vehicles on track" sign at pit out.

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

 

That's a couple hundred pounds lighter than my Volt!

mfennell said:

Seen at NJMP yesterday.  The owner told me his tow was 80 miles and he had 30% left on arrival.  He had the bigger tires that hurt range.  They have 50A hookups for RVs so recharging was not a problem.

Also noticed a "No electric vehicles on track" sign at pit out.

I like rivian, I hope they produce a smaller RT2. The RT1 is just too big for my needs.

Alpha Wolf for me please. Or one of their car offings. IF and when they come out.

mfennell said:

Seen at NJMP yesterday.  The owner told me his tow was 80 miles and he had 30% left on arrival.  He had the bigger tires that hurt range.  They have 50A hookups for RVs so recharging was not a problem.

Also noticed a "No electric vehicles on track" sign at pit out.

Just did an 860 mile tow with my Sequoia pulling home  a non-running Tacoma.  4 stops less than 10 minutes each. Total time of under 14 hours.  Again, I have no doubt that EV's will get there and more importantly the infrastructure will get there.  But they don't meet the needs of some of us yet.  

You have to admit the number of people making marathon tows with a minimum of stops is pretty small.

frenchyd said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

Chevy Bolt weighs 3589 pounds. It has the biggest battery of any EV that doesn't have a Tesla badge.  
now check the weight of common SUV's.  Limo's etc.    

 

The closest* in size to the Bolt is the Kia Soul.  The Kia weighs in at about 2850lbs.

For a fun exercise for the class, what happens when you increase the weight, but retain the same area/footprint?

EVs are very possibly a cause for this collapse, however the 20-30 years of failed inspections probably had more to do with it