Remote Starter for Leaf ?

[cwerdna]

California is having rolling blackouts, and that is without going 100% EV.

As someone in CA, no we are not.

That said, if were to go to 100% of new light passenger cars and trucks being ZEVs by 2035 (which won't happen IMHO), I do agree we will have electrical supply issues.

 

[LeftieBiker]

You need localized power generation anyway, as the last few years have shown. A push to add home solar and wind along with EVs would help a lot.

 

[WetEV]

California is having rolling blackouts, and that is without going 100% EV.

100% EV doesn't change that, much. Charging is usually a deferable load, most of the time. You come home, plug in, and usually don't care if the car charges at 11pm or 3am. Or in a solar heavy grid, plug in at work and charge while there is excess solar.

Grids always have periods of excess capacity.

 

[salyavin]

This is an example of paying EV owners to charge their cars.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/29/uk-ev-owners-got-paid-to-charge-their-cars-over-the-holiday-weekend/

 

[StanS]

Please tell me an exact name for an Android App that can control my 2018 LEAF.

Android Smart Phone is sufficient.

Windows 10 App is even better.

You can access NissanConnect through any web browser
https://www.nissanusa.com/owners.html

 

[cwerdna]

Charging is usually a deferable load, most of the time. You come home, plug in, and usually don't care if the car charges at 11pm or 3am. Or in a solar heavy grid, plug in at work and charge while there is excess solar.

Grids always have periods of excess capacity.

There are sometimes long periods (many hours) when they don't. Sometimes http://www.caiso.com/ issues alerts. Here are some such tweets:
https://twitter.com/california_iso/status/1302789196051034112
https://twitter.com/California_ISO/status/1316550657994903553

Flex alerts are issued actually not that infrequently during CA heat waves, esp. if one monitors http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx or if work sends out alerts that they're going to turn down HVAC due to alerts.

https://twitter.com/california_iso/status/1302790867699167232
https://twitter.com/california_iso/status/1302746155814588417
https://twitter.com/California_ISO/status/1302774220695298048

https://twitter.com/california_iso/status/1294468177800224769?lang=en
https://twitter.com/california_iso/status/1294828860316332032?lang=en

I haven't had a chance nor that much interest to read the final report at http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Final-Root-Cause-Analysis-Mid-August-2020-Extreme-Heat-Wave.pdf that https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/13/agencies-release-final-report-into-californias-heat-related-blackouts/ points to regarding rolling blackouts that did happen in parts of CA Aug 14 and 15, 2020. AFAIK, the previous time rolling blackouts ever occurred in CA was in 2001 (I was living in WA state at the time) due to the whole Enron scandal.

The below is from my utility (Pacific Gouge & Extort) which serves much of Nor Cal.
https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20200814_pge_completes_rotating_power_outages_conducted_at_direction_of_state_grid_operator
https://www.pgecurrents.com/2020/08/15/as-statewide-heatwave-continues-pge-encourages-customers-to-conserve-energy-through-wednesday-night/

Not all EV drivers need to charge at work each day, but as you could imagine, if you care about the grid, then that causes extra headaches and coordination hassles at work if you want to limit charging. We have dozens of dual handle ChargePoint CT-4000 EVSEs so I believe our admin could turn down the max allowed load (https://www.chargepoint.com/products/power-management-faq/ is buggy, we have plenty of experience w/the bugs, long story) but if we turned down the rate, then some cars will take much longer to charge and others may not be able to at all. Each handle has its own 40 amp feed.

Not all our EVs drivers monitor communication channels (e.g. Slack or email list).

We also have some Tesla wall connectors in our parking structure (5 100 amp circuits) and I don't know the arrangement under another building of the other WCs. We can't manage those other than by cutting power to them via breakers.

 

[WetEV]

Charging is usually a deferable load, most of the time. You come home, plug in, and usually don't care if the car charges at 11pm or 3am. Or in a solar heavy grid, plug in at work and charge while there is excess solar.

Grids always have periods of excess capacity.

There are sometimes long periods (many hours) when they don't. Sometimes http://www.caiso.com/ issues alerts. Here are some such ...
rolling blackouts that did happen in parts of CA Aug 14 and 15, 2020.

So let's look at August 14, 2020. Demand curve:
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

And supply:

And demand less solar and wind production, aka "duck curve":

The system had little excess capacity from about 3pm to about 10pm (15 to 22), with the shortest supply at about 7pm (19).

The system had excess capacity from about midnight to about noon, half of the day. I plug that day's data into a spreadsheet, and there is still more than 200,000MWh available, making the assumption that natural gas production can be at the peak level all day. At 3 miles per kWh, that is more than 600,000,000 EV miles per day. The average miles per day for California is 892,968,093.

https://data.ca.gov/dataset/annual-miles-traveled/resource/4697c01c-630d-4164-934d-8f13d6eebf9c

So yes, on a bad day there isn't enough generation today to supply 100% BEVs, only about 67%. On a bad day.

Notice of course that this requires that all BEV charging is deferable (only about 95% is) and that enough BEVs are plugged in and ready to charge when the grid has excess capacity. The second requires workplace charging.

Non-deferable charging will require an increase in supply. Increasing solar will shift prime charging hours into the daytime. Whole lot of other things are going to change over the future decade.

Not all EV drivers need to charge at work each day, but as you could imagine, if you care about the grid, then that causes extra headaches and coordination hassles at work if you want to limit charging. We have dozens of dual handle ChargePoint CT-4000 EVSEs so I believe our admin could turn down the max allowed load (https://www.chargepoint.com/products/power-management-faq/ is buggy, we have plenty of experience w/the bugs, long story) but if we turned down the rate, then some cars will take much longer to charge and others may not be able to at all. Each handle has its own 40 amp feed.

Not all our EVs drivers monitor communication channels (e.g. Slack or email list).

We also have some Tesla wall connectors in our parking structure (5 100 amp circuits) and I don't know the arrangement under another building of the other WCs. We can't manage those other than by cutting power to them via breakers.

Tesla drivers are of course more far important than the rest of us, so let us move on to the rest.

Grid aware charging needs to include information to the driver. For example, if you plugged in at work at 9AM 14-Aug-2020, you would ideally see a message informing you that your charging time might be limited... and perhaps giving you an extra cost option for more time. Or perhaps some notification if your charging will be limited and giving you the option of extra cost charging if it is truly not deferable.