I hadn't thought of doing that. I'm in 2-3 different hotels a week. It always drives me nuts being in a hotel where the A/C doesn't have a constant fan setting. Helps mask outside noise since I usually am sleeping during the day and makes the compressor kicking on less abrupt sounding.
Big Ford EV Announcement Coming Aug 11th
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True real-time pricing would make electricity unaffordable to certain populations during heat waves, or other significant supply/demand imbalances. Rather than rollling blackouts, the method for distribution of a scarce resource would be just to cut off people who can't pay more.
It's fine discussing in a classroom or other theoretical settings (i.e., message forum), but unworkable for real human beings in real housing. There needs to be some limits. I think we're past acknowledging this as a society.
Thats a hollow argument because we could simply give currently subsidized people their own RTP rate schedule or cap or whatever. How much electricity you want to give away is a simple societal question. Well simple technically at least.
The question is why should the bulk of actual payers be the ones to subsidize infrastructure build out additionally for those 1.4% that want to double their electricity use by using EV's?
Its a simple question?
What about data centers?
I have toured the innards of Microsoft's San Antonio datacenter and they have told me that when ERCOT calls during summertime shortages, they will fire up every single one of their Cat V-16 quad-turbo generators and run off grid for as long as ERCOT requires it. IIRC they had 20 of these on premise, it's a lot of juice with them all running, don't remember how much per generator. They have contracts with local diesel fuel suppliers to keep the trucks rolling in the event that they are required to keep their generators running for a longer period of time than they have fuel for, IIRC they maintain 20,000 gallons of diesel on-site for generator operations, but I wouldn't bet money on that 20K figure, it may be be more. I did physically see the fuel silo and it looks like a huge one that they have at busy airports, but not multiples like they have at depots and refineries.
Microsoft uses enough power for roughly 50,000 homes at this one individual data center, they said.
Thus far in our shared grid lives, which is GenXer for me, individual homeowners have been spared from such mandates other than, my local grid ERCOT sends out alerts "asking" folks to conserve. But even in the "asking" for conservation, our local Nextdoor gets filled with whiny crap posts about this "socialist/communist" crap. It's entirely possible that this doesn't even happen once this calendar year, with all the floods we've had around here this year, the humidity has been much higher which usually keeps temperatures below 100, although, we still have most of August to go and extreme temps aren't unknown in early September as well. Anyway...
I'm personally willing to unplug my EV and turn up my thermostat during these cases where ERCOT needs conservation, which is usually less than 1% of all grid operations for the year. Our household follows the ABC protocol for charging our EVs, that is, Always Be Charging when the cars are at home. I also follow this protocol when I take my truck the office, assuming there is an open charging spot in the garage. Therefore, we should almost always have sufficient power in our vehicles to meet basic needs.
I'm just kind of wondering where the line is here between personal freedom and consideration of shared usage. We, as a society could build out enough generation capacity such that we never had to send these conservation alerts, but does planning for the 1% of use cases really benefit us? Are folks willing to pay more for their power every day in order to plan for such scenarios?
It is picking a point in time; 1.4% will change.
It also assumes EV charging is the only reason to improve the grid. Challenges include aging infrastructure, a shift towards renewables, and overall rising energy demand, particularly from data centers.
See my other post. Entire data centers are mandated to go on generator power when ERCOT is short, I can't speak for your local power grid, maybe you can?
Are folks willing to pay to build out more power generating infrastructure so they don't have to get ERCOT conservation alerts currently? I would argue, no.
I don't accept the argument that one type of usage, in this case EVs, is causing the electricity rates of non-EV users to go up. What about AI datacenters, there are lots of those coming with high power demands. Or simple population growth? Bottom line, more power infrastructure is going to have to be built period regardless of the status of EVs.
Why can't we stay on budget when we build out power infrastructure, be it nuclear or otherwise? Why do the rate payers generally have to pay for it when the energy companies can't effectively manage large scale projects?
What makes power cheap and not cheap beyond construction costs? I would argue efficiency of generation usage is one of those things, powering supply up and down is relatively inefficient.
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Your comparing something exigent with something that is convenience. But I can still answer your question
For example as a society have decided we will pay for a poor persons medical care because they can't afford to. I am happy with this - its a matter of life or death, and that person has no other alternative. No different than cutting back on power usage during an ice storm, for example.
Now contrast this to 98.6% should pay so 1.4% can have enough electricity for their EV. There are two simple alternatives to the EV dilemma in this case, the owner can pay for the increase in required electrical infrastructure, or they can buy a gasoline powered car. Easy.
A third would be to simply say you can only charge your EV during periods of excess electricity. This of course gets pushback like you see above about "no one should be able to tell me when I can use power / freedom argument." When there is a draught and they say you can't water your lawn, there is always one guy that thinks there lawn is too important. There green lawn sticks out like sore thumb but there too self absorbed to care.
Its simple - where its exigent and urgent and there is no alternative, society should step in. EV's don't solve any exigent or urgent societal issues, therefore whomever wants them should pay for them.
Saying everyone should pay for expansion to the grid to power EV's is like saying that we collectively should pay for everyone to go to Disneyland.
Then your arguing against math.
Google tells me the average household uses 10,791kWh per year - more than me but OK.,
Google also tells me that the average EV get between 3 and 4 miles per kWh and the average american drives between 13K and 15K a year. So if we average that out its about 14,000 / 3.5 = 4000,kWh About an 40% increase in electricity. 2 car household = double it. You don't think adding a 40 to 80% increase to the residential grid isn't going to cost money to improve?
So far the overall numbers have been small enough to absorb, but the extra is gone. So now were trying to figure out who or how to pay.
As for the datacenters - I wouldn't concern yourself over them. They will generate their own, or move to the UAE, for example https://www.reuters.com/business/fi...us-deal-far-finalised-sources-say-2025-06-06/
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