EV Grid Impact

Wouldn't EV increase electricity demand in the evenings when people get home and plug in their cars?

If power grid goes out, you can run your house off an EV. so goes both ways

I don't see any outages on the map you linked. However I think this is a case where, believe it or not, the invisible hand is going to do the right thing. Most (all?) electric cars have settings to prioritize charging in the daytime or late night, when TOU power is the cheapest (the grid is most stressed around 5-9pm, when solar is less productive but demand is still high).

You wouldn't fully discharge it. The car has way more power than your house needs in a single night. You could probably run your house for a few days, even if your house has the AC on full, is huge, and poorly insulated. In which case you'd have a huge incentive to do something about your grid electricity cost. Installing solar panels and batteries is a way to do that. Driving an EV makes total sense if you have those. And adding that battery capacity to the mix makes even more sense.<

The grid is sized to handle peak loads in the early evening. Electric cars tend to be driven during peak hours and charge at night so while total energy used (kWh) will go up substantially, the grid itself does not need to handle substantially more power (kW) than it currently does.

V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Car charging is a steady, predictable usage of electricity. People don't all arrive home at the exact same time.Additionally, being giant batteries, electric cars have the means to charge when most advantageous to the national grid. Most electric cars already have an option to wait to charge until off peak rates happen. (Off peak rates being cheaper because low overall demand.)But electric cars may be useful to the grid as giant surge protectors for things just like that cup of tea el

EV's as a rule don't charge after work. Most (all?) EV's allow you to charge when the electricity is cheapest -- at night.An average daily charge for an EV is So any grid that can handle A/C charging on a hot day can handle EV charging at night. Not all grids can, but that means that they'll need to be upgraded whether or

That’s not a useful observation regarding the grid - yes, if EVs magically appeared in everyone’s driveways tomorrow then there might be a problem, but over a decade or so it’s basically no issue. All this is factored into planning. Even just a little demand management helps a lot too (like incentivising people charging at certain times by making it cheaper).

Yes it's still true. To charge an EV the average person needs around 10kWh a day, distributed over 23h of parking time. That's not a lot of current. You just need to teach the car to talk to the grid so that not all cars charge at once.