Imagine if, when people plug their big battery into the grid, the grid and the millions of big batteries talk to each other to negotiate electicity flows. Then the EV fleet could help even smooth the power supply and shift load and supply to match. Sun comes out, loads of EVs are charged at that point. A bit of cloud. The EVs give some back. To incentivise you could choose a cheaper per kwh "keep me topped up if you can" and more expensive "definitely fill the battery asap" and even a "hey not using this car for a bit, make use of my battery and pay me!".

This is in addition to, if the battery is plugged in at home with solar panels, the home can self-smooth and do a lot of this locally, giving the grid the net in/out it desires from the house based on sum of: battery, appliances, solar as a whole unit.

Because of scale, an EV running off of coal-powered electricity is better for the environment than a gas powered car, not even taking into account emissions that aren’t carbon dioxide.

That aside, there are a variety of electricity storage mechanisms that have been becoming more and more efficient, like normal batteries, hydrogen electrolysis, and pumped water. With some clever engineering, solar power works at night.

I wish California would keep their nuclear plants open, but the loss of them is not an impediment for electric vehicles.

Most people charge their cars at night because utility companies incentivize to do so via time-of-use rate plans. There's nothing natural or convenient about delaying the charge until the middle of the night, what's most convenient is plugging in the car as soon as you park it.

Wind farms generate the most power at night, so that'll continue to work. If solar becomes dominant, then they'll make it cheaper to use electricity when the sun's still up, and we'll stop delaying charges until after sunset.

It's going to take decades to fully transition to electric vehicles, plenty of time to build all the renewables needed, all the storage needed for time shifting, and all the smarts needed for cars to participate in the smart grid.

The grid needs 30% more power generation. If all cars are EV. CA is doing rolling blackouts as it is.

Maybe Californians will be riding horses in the next 10 years ;)

I am curious how a voluntary "please conserve power 4 hours a day during a historic heat wave" request turned into "CA is doing rolling blackouts because they don't have enough energy" in the minds of millions. Residential electric use doubled over the past 30 years without issue.

The NYTimes The Daily podcast described the voluntary request as “the state asked people to not charge their EVs” (paraphrase). Poor quality information everywhere.

Rolling blackouts are separate from Flex Alerts.

Hence me asking why they're being conflated in the public consciousness.

Are they? Both of these things happen regularly in California and have been for decades.

California is a big state. In Southern California, neither of those things happen regularly (source: I've lived here since 1980). The last time they did happen regularly was with Enron.

There is substantial unused grid capacity overnight and during the day that the most basic of smart grid logic can schedule the car to turn on charging during.

In other words, shift the demand from the 4-9PM slot that is the hot spot.

For what this doesn't cover, this is not rocket science. We will build the capacity. It's just wires and generators.

And storage.

I work at an engineering firm that is heavily involved in these efforts in SoCal, and this is probably boring to say (without details) but the storage component is fascinating. Not my sector, though, so I won’t/can’t elaborate (I do work in sustainable transportation planning, though).

Even if all new cars were 100% electric from now on, it'd take twenty years to convert all cars. 30% more power generation in 20 years is 1.5% per year. Not a big ask.

Enjoy your substantial power cuts.