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Originally Posted by ianoob
Our grid rarely runs at capacity, most of it is reserved for surges.
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I'm going to guess you've never watched real time grid load, let alone the modeling used to manage it. It peaks and falls every single day.
If we design around peak load, and the load beyond peak occurs, is that ever OK? You ever trip a breaker in your house?
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Anything in excess is currently wasted.
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So, yah, it seems you don't understand the grid, or how it's regulated by the fed. Spinning reserve? Load shed contingencies? It's not wasted, it's required.
It's like looking at the freeway at 2AM and thinking we can add more cars to the commute and not have traffic problems. That the freeway is vacant at 2Am says nothing about the gridlock at 7:30AM and 5:30 PM. You have to design around the max load, and like traffic, there is a max load that plays out every single day. Those empty lanes on the highway at 2AM aren't wasted.
Looking at averages obscures the peaks, and the peaks are the problems.
Do you know when people charge their EV's? It's not when there is solar power in the grid. Timing the supply to the demand is far more complex than most realize, and we are about to upset that balance profoundly.
Texas and California have both had to ask EV's to not charge this year so their grids won't collapse. It's not a future problem, it's a today problem.
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While your usage may double, the grid demand will not.
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The distribution system that feeds these residential loads is far more miles and far more complex than the grid, and a lot of it is buried in the ground so it's hard to change. Even if you could generate the watts and move it on the transmission lines to the substations (many of which are already overloaded), how do you plan to deliver it on the distribution system?
Also, Where will those watts from from - faries or pixie dust? It's probably going to come mostly from natural gas. Hydro is actively being removed from the grid supply mix due to environmental issues, and curtailed due to droughts. Nobody want's Nuclear in their back yard, and coal is being retired too. SOlar and wind doesn't always work, and we can't decide when or where to make it work.
38.9% of the total US electrical load is residential :
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...lectricity.php
There is also a push to use electric Semi's, and to recharge a tesla Semi is more watts (1 megawatt) in a 30 minute charge cycle than the average US home consumes in an entire month. How many times will it charge in a month ? 15 ? 20?. There are ~2 million semi's in the US. You ever see what a 1 mega watt load demand does to neighboring electrical customers? On a 480V commercial service that's a couple thousand amps.