Re:US utilities have finally realized electric cars may save...
by lolwhatitis on Friday March 16, 2018 @09:51AM
(#16600594)
If you live in a subdivision built within the past couple decades, your electric runs underground, making it quite expensive to run a second or third primary phase. You also then need a three-phase transformer, which is considerably larger than a typical one-phase. Oh, and your service will be commercial/industrial, which typically comes with demand and energy charges that can be quite steep: https://www.northwesternenergy.com/docs/default-source/docum...
Re:US utilities have finally realized electric cars may save...
by blattimwind on Friday March 16, 2018 @11:03AM
(#16601132)
That's true, for North America, but entirely misses the point I made (i.e. when you try to push dozens of kW into a house, single phase becomes worse than a below-average idea).
Re:US utilities have finally realized electric cars may save...
by hinkley on Friday March 16, 2018 @12:18PM
(#16601645)
Which is one of the logical conclusions of products like the PowerWall. I think the current model can only run like 25 amps but an in house fast charger that can pull 10 or 20 amps during off peak hours and dump 60 amps when charging the car could be a cheaper installation.
Hell if the PowerWall 3 could dump 40 amps you could pull 20 from the wall at the same time and hit your 60 amp total.
However, when more and more people try to have fast chargers in their homes for EVs, then not only the residential installation poses a problem, but utilities would need to rebuild ~two layers of distribution to accomodate for a 100-200 % increase in residential power consumption.
[1] Not just because high currents are more difficult to handle properly, but also because you need a lot less copper.