miata
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Bill
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2021
- Threads
- 0
- Messages
- 82
- Reaction score
- 42
- Location
- california
- Vehicles
- miata, towncar, highlander
- Occupation
- engineer
Most public utilities support home solar incentives because solar's production peak is also when peak customer demand is high. Otherwise the utilities have to build more generating infrastructure just to meet peak demand and so when others bear this investment, it's a good thing for them.... I have analyzed solar every way I can, and the payoff isn't sufficient for me...
But it's really part of a bigger picture of demand smoothing. The public utilities would also like you to help them with energy storage at nighttime. This is when charging an EV at home at night becomes attractive to them. So we really should work with them to get RF-communicated metering and negotiate for a better deal to charge in the wee morning hours when the PoCo's demand is minimal.
Tesla wants to sell you batteries in their car for transportation and then and then also sell you batteries in a PowerWall to store your solar power at night. Great if going off-grid is a Big Deal for you. But any home-charged EV acts as a rolling energy storage device. We just need to charge when the utilities can give us the best deal. It's like the last room on a cruise ship...it goes to waste if no one buys it, so a very good deal can be had.
Conversely, if we need a charge in the middle of the day, we'll pay peak rate whether at home or at an EA or Tesla station.
I don't think the market has adjusted yet to where this is all headed. It could be the full EV is best suited to the typical commute 350 days per year. In fact, lighter, cheaper, lower-capacity battery packs (resulting in highly-maneuverable EV's!) may be the next big thing. Carrying around batteries for a round-trip range you don't need makes no sense. The best solution for Road Trips (the other 15 days a year) may be a mild Hybrid while maintaining a vastly decreased, but well-distributed, gasoline station economy.
It seems quite reasonable to me that the only consumer demand for gas-based vehicles will end up being for these Vacation or Road Trip vehicles. And a lot of folks may decide that renting a vehicle for those Road Trips (instead of owning one) makes the most sense. If you like the idea of a Time-Share for a vacation, you may feel you really want to own your vacation vehicle as well. But if you like variety and the idea of "renting" a camp site or hotel seems totally natural to you, then renting the vehicle to get you there probably will too.
Plus that approach leaves the consumer owning the low-maintenance (ie electric) vehicles and someone else maintaining the high-maintenance (gasoline-based) ones. Which is pretty much the normal model when I travel (and pay) to visit a museum, roller-coaster, world-class garden, etc. It's also not a lot different from "paying for a seat" on a commercial jet to travel long distances. How many want to hassle with the headaches of their own jet?
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