Quote:
Originally Posted by dvarapala
* long time
As an engineer, I know about things like solar panels which can charge an electric car without any additional load on the grid.
I also know about history. The first electrical generating plants were built to power electric traction (streetcars and interurbans) starting in the 1890s. They immediately ran into the problem of what to do with these plants during the times when the trains weren't running. That's when smart people like Samuel Insull started running wires to everyone's homes, giving the power plants something to power at night.
Fast forward to today, and we still have the same problem: the peak power demand occurs during the afternoon, and falls to a minimum overnight. Oddly enough, overnight is when most people will be charging their electric vehicles. Turns out you can charge a shitload of electric vehicles during off-peak hours without adding any additional grid infrastructure.
But the haters won't let any of these facts get in the way of a good rant. 
As for the gas tax, that system is already borked beyond repair. Heavy truck cause the vast majority of wear and tear on our roads, yet they have never paid their fair share of taxes to pay for road maintenance. The only fair way to charge for road use is going to be based on actual miles driven as well as a weight factor. A simple odometer check once a year at license renewal time will reveal how many miles you drove, and your annual registration fees would be calculated accordingly.
This is how an engineer would approach the problem. The politicians, of course, will come up with something completely different and full of loopholes to favor their cronies.  |
your assertion about power is, or at least was true about commercial demand, which is why things like thermal storage-ice build systems were integrated into commercial hvac systems, to shed peak load. these days, much of the commercial load is used by data centers which are constant, not dependent upon the 9-5 workday. further, home usage actually tends to go up as commercial load drops off, right up until a bout midnight or so when folks are in bed. i have extensive experience in this from doing performance contracting for the last 30 years.