People forgot that there is loads on unused grid and generation capacity at night that could be used for EV charging.

I think we need plugs where people park their cars at work rather than at homes. As that is the peak for solar power and also the point where power prices go negative in some countries because of excess production. Night time charging unless your grid is mostly nuclear or wind is probably the worst in terms of pollution.

In UK and Norther europe solar is of minimal use, so the situation is reverse. Night time electricity is cheapest.

I am not talking about cheap but about pollution. As more cars go electric it would be better if the car charging is done at peak solar. UK is getting out of europe with brexit but the other remaining countries are connecting their grids with each other so even northern european countries would be using more solar even without having much sunlight

Price is low because there is unused power.

Many powerplants run thought the night because they cannot be turned on and off. The most polluting time to use the grid is during peak demand in the evening, when every powerplant has to be brought online, even the most polluting ones.

Northern Europe relies on Wind, not Solar for renewable energy. Yes, we are integratingg powergrid, but you can't pull 100 GW from Spain to UK. Yhat would require absolutely monstrous infrastructure.

What your assertion for night time charging based on?

In the next decade a few million electric cars will be charging of the world's grid. Currently you need peakers most using Fossil fuels for just the evening period with the few million electric cars charging at night you will be needing those plants to run all night long that's my main point. So promoting day time charging during peak solar is the way to. Car batteries are not good enough yet but in the future these same car batteries could be used for peak demand instead of using peaker plants. But to be able to do this the countries need to start planning for this now instead of a decade from now when the duck curve becomes worse. BTW in my first post I did say unless the base load is nuclear and wind. As far as infrastructure for 100gw solar for UK goes Singapore is planning to buy 10gw of solar power from Australia by undersea cable so the possibilities are there.

I haven't heard of the Singapore project before, that is impressive indeed.

I think the proper way to solve a problem should be smart charging, where the car chooses the cheapest energy through out the day, making much finer decision than a consumer ever could. And grid should be (it usually is) managed in such a way that lowest price corresponds to highest % of clean energy.

We could take this even further: usually the grid responds to demand and predict demand based on past patterns, but we could have a protocol for IoT devices and cars to request power they will need in the future, and ask the grid for the best time to draw power in the next X hour window.

why do you think gas plants will be turned off, especially given the low gas prices?

Because despite the low gas prices, solar and wind prices are trending down as efficiencies increase and as economies of scale improve the economics. Prices are already dipping below those prices for new bids.

So, if you are planning a gas plant that needs to be operational for decades, the economic outlook is pretty grim. That's why lots of plans for new gas plans are getting shelved.

Existing plants run quite economically. But when cheaper clean energy becomes available at scale, it becomes more expensive to operate them. Selling expensive energy during low demand is not going to be an option because cheaper energy will be preferred. Spinning plants up during peak demand takes time and battery + solar is already cheaper and faster for that as well. A gas plant that isn't running part of the time is going to be more expensive. That's why a lot of them will be taken out long before their planned end of life.

Currently people are shutting down the most expensive plants first (nuclear & coal) but once that is gone, gas will be next.

None of this adresses the storage problem. Unless/until storage gets a lot cheapet, there are going to be baseline/peaker fossil/nuclear plants. (No peaker nuclear, ofc.)

Storage is typically included in those low bids I mentioned. We already crossed the cheap enough mark in some areas for solar + battery.

Lithium Battery prices are also dropping by about 10%-20% a year. Something that cost $1000~ in 2008 costs $200~ today.

Solar/wind doesn’t compete with gas because it cannot provide dependable base load.

Solar/wind + massive energy storage is what competes with gas. And in that category it’s not even close to competitive because batteries are still way too expensive.

I keep hearing this. How many twh do you think you need and why? And how much are you willing to pay for it? The sun comes out every day. On a bad day there are clouds and your panels are less effective but still produce power (except in the arctic regions). Wind blows every day somewhere but not necessarily everywhere. Well known facts. However, continent wide black clouds without any wind whatsoever is pretty rare and unlikely to last very long if it happens at all. So instead of storing energy locally, you can absorb a lot of this by moving energy around via wires.

So, you need batteries locally for fluctuations and you can cross connect sites with wires so you can import excess energy from elsewhere. Conveniently when it is cloudy, it's usually also pretty windy. Global warming is oddly helping here by creating even more wind.

So, a combination of a some over capacity, some wires for moving energy around, and some battery for short term fluctuations would be all you need. If it's not enough on the worst days, just add more windmills/solar/batteries. At the rate prices are dropping installing 2-3x the needed capacity would still be cheaper than keeping gas plants around. Those prices are projected to continue to drop of course making the whole thing only even more affordable.