Energy demand with a sharp increase (such as that which suddenly replacing gasoline cars with electric cars will require) is going to lead available capacity by a considerable distance. Renewable technologies aren't going to be good candidates for supplying this demand because they have limited time availability, and require a considerable footprint (with considerable end-of-life waste) to provide the same output as one multi-turbine nuclear plant.
Bulk power generation that is available 24/7 without storage is needed for this type of consumption. As bulk generation goes offline, it becomes difficult to meet normal consumption, let alone the high demand curves required by charging electric vehicles.Here in the states, some places are finding it difficult to meet normal demand and require rolling blackouts.
Energy demand with a sharp increase (such as that which suddenly replacing gasoline cars with electric cars will require)
Luckily we can't "suddenly" replace the gasoline cars with electric ones, either. These things take time. As long as utilities don't sit on their asses it will be fine.
Utilities want to replace all of their power plants with "green" energy.
Wind and solar take a lot of space comparatively for the amount of power the generate.
Once cars are nearly all EV the grid would have to physically be larger. More powerlines, more transformers, more switches to handle more energy and more peak power demand.
They will most certainly raise the cost of electricity to do this. Demand for panels will skyrocket, and so will the price.
The US uses 330 million gallons of gasoline per day, that is a huge amount of energy in joules to be transferred over. This isn't including diesel.
Now with the EV push, using your AC or fridge will get expensive. Solar people don't realize solar panels and related will rise in cost a lot worldwide, and the government will look to tax people on the total solar area to 'support the infrastructure'.
If you think about it, gasoline and diesel should be encouraged and prices kept low. Liquid fuel is a great hedge to everything electric.
As long as utilities don't sit on their asses it will be fine.
What, like in California?
And Texas. Yes.
All fun engineering problems for us to solve IMO.
We already solved them. Nuclear power. But that's a NIMBY's bad dream.
I agree - Thorium reactors are the way to go. I wouldn't mind having one in my basement, self SCRAMing.
Or simply use coal and instead of spending money on renewables, use the funds to scrub coal completely. The entire exhaust can be broken down to the elements and maybe even sold for another application.
This is why they always measure emissions in CO2 nowadays, because they know CO2 will always be a harmless emission and they never use the word pollution anymore.
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