unclejack

CLAIM: California asked residents "to avoid charging electric cars amid power grid strain."

AP'S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The headline being shared was from a June 2021 heat wave — not mid-March 2022 — and was a voluntary recommendation that residents charge electric vehicles and do other activities outside of certain peak periods.

THE FACTS: A months-old headline is spreading online anew, wrongly suggesting that California is currently requesting electric vehicle car owners to stop charging their cars.

"California Asks Residents to Avoid Charging Electric Cars Amid Power Grid Strain," reads the headline shared on Facebook in recent days, as gas prices in the country soar.

But that headline is actually from a June 2021 story by the conservative outlet Newsmax, which the posts do not make clear.

The story was referencing alerts at the time by the California Independent System Operator, which manages much of the state’s power. Those Flex Alerts asked residents to conserve electricity during certain hours to reduce stress on the grid.

robertv3

It's not surprising that misinformation is spreading around in such a way, as it often does.

I live in California. I remember hearing about "peak" demand hours for electricity being between 4pm and 9pm. That was many months ago when I was hearing or reading about that.

The system will be _less_ stressed if we can move some of the heavy usage out of the peak demand hours.

But on days when the weather is not severely hot or cold, demand isn't such a big problem, I think.

robertv3

U.S. middle-and-upper-class living is wasteful in some ways. I expected gasoline prices to eventually get much higher. We will eventually have to live in more sustainable ways. Driving big heavy objects to each errand, or polluting the air a lot, is wasteful. We will adjust either smoothly or roughly, and learn to live with what we've got.

Electricity is also costly; now in some states, wildfires sparked by above-ground electric lines have been a problem. That's a cost _related_ to the electrical grid. Maybe eventually they'll have all the lines below ground.

A few people learn to generate their own electricity and just use that much electricity. One of them I met in New Mexico lives apart from the electrical grid and gets enough electricity to meet her needs from her own solar panels. Maybe more of us will be living like that in the future. I think that would be more sustainable than what we do now.

I noticed that the same person drove a (gasoline-powered) car to work every day. So, while she's apart from the electrical grid, she's still part of the car culture which is wasteful in a different way.

One friend in France lives close enough to the shops and businesses she needs to just walk to them. My in-laws there don't use an electric clothes dryer. Instead they hang up their clothes to dry in a sun-room they built. Even drivers' licenses are different; my friend there, like many other people there, was only licensed to drive up to 35 miles per hour, and there's nothing unusual about her -- it seems to be a different national idea about how to balance safety with necessary driving. Some of these ideas should probably be adopted over here in the U.S. A nation-wide or world-wide energy-conserving attitude would be helpful for preserving future prosperity and future stability, but would be detrimental to the short-term profits of the powers in the current status quo.

steve66613

In some instances, it sounds like you’re suggesting we revert back to living the way folks did in the 1930’s and early 1940’s…..maybe earlier. The Model T Ford ran about 35mph and grandma used a washboard and hung the clothes on a line.

Horse and buggy t***sportation(?) Yeh….not thinking it’s going to work.

robertv3

Washboard washing would take time and effort. There's probably a better way. I use my electric washing machine often, but I use my electric clothes dryer only rarely. In the case of drying clothes, it's pretty easy to just hang them up to dry. Washing by hand's probably a lot harder than that.

Horse and buggy t***sportation had a problem in cities, so I heard: too much horse dung. Out in the countryside it's probably good though. The cities have another option: mass t***sit. That's more energy-efficient than doing all t***sportation by cars.

The model T Ford or other early cars had one big advantage over the cars of today: ordinary people could maintain them without a lot of special equipment and sophisticated learning. Even a 1956 Chevy was easier to work on than a car of today. We who use cars of today are too dependent on a whole industry that maintains them.

35mph isn't bad if you don't build everything so far apart that it takes a half hour of driving to get fresh vegetables, or to get to the hospital. We have a whole infrastructure built around the notion that we should drive 60 miles per hour just to go do things.

Walking, bicycling, and mass t***sit are probably the ideal forms of t***sportation, except that I'd still want a car nearby to take my kids to the hospital.

There are ways to improve on the earlier times without being wasteful. Changing the layout of new housing and other new developments, so that people can walk more to where they need to go, would be an energy-efficient and low-pollution way of living which could be as comfortable as what we have now, or more so.

One idea that surprised me was this one, from the pages 226-227 of _Off the Grid_ by Nick Rosen:

"The horse stands on a treadmill ... the motive power of the horse is t***sformed into mechanical power ... the machine-tool company is run entirely on mechanical power, supplemented by compressed air."

Addendum: Remember the above-mentioned washing machine. The horse on the treadmill supplies power to run a washing machine and a variety of other things, including a Coleman cooler "that is charged (by the horse) three times a week for four hours ... It stores milk and meat to feed the family."

My point is not that any one idea is necessarily a big solution; rather, my point is that there are a variety of ways to do things, probably including some ways which can allow us to live better, more economically, more conserving of energy, and without polluting much. The fact that a horse or horses can power a machine-tool company is so surprising, and yet so simple and effective, that it is a good example to show that we haven't thought of everything yet, and that there are a variety of solutions that might help us.

unclejack

There are lots of ways to generate electricity. The best way so far is nuclear power. I also liked fuel cell technology
( they use that on the space station). Why did we stop researching that?

The bottom line is we are not ready for electric vehicles yet. There is no system available today to support it.That article is making us aware of the problems we will face. It is a problem in California because that's how they do things there. Let's push this feel good idea on the people and when everything breaks we'll build it back better with everyone's else's money. Sound familiar?

unclejack

How many days per year is it not too hot or not to cold? What do you think is going to happen when more electric cars go on the road? robertv3 this is just the tip of the iceberg.

robertv3

The interesting question (in my opinion, at least) is not who's ready or not; rather, it is the question: is the idea intrinsically good, and worth getting ready for it?

You're "not ready for electric vehicles yet". I have a plug-in hybrid that gets me better than 40 miles per gallon when it's running its internal combustion engine, and between 50 and infinity miles per gallon total (depending on how long the trips are between charging). As you say, there are lots of ways to generate electricity.

My next car, most likely, will be an additional step further away from f****l f**ls and an additional step closer to economical non-polluting t***sportation.

You describe "California". I live in California. So what if I "feel good" about some idea.

When you say " 'we' are not ready for electric vehicles yet" you're just behaving like a boat anchor holding back progress. Electric vehicles have been proliferating and so is the infrastructure that supports them. What we've got already would have been hard to believe 30 years ago.

Whether the progress turns out to be electric vehicles or something else, some of us will support it, and then the people d**gging along with their " 'we' are not ready yet" (as though they speak for all of us!) will finally adopt it after it's established and they'll take the credit for it, or try to.

unclejack

so robertv3 according to you , you said you're allowed to have your view and ideas but me and people like me can't have our views just because we are not stupid to waste our money on a feel good idea. if you're dumb enough to buy another electric car; go ahead it's your money do what you want with it. You might want to purchase a gasoline generator for those rolling brown outs.

You called me and people like me a boat anchor. Ok with me and people like me if you want to say that. We on the other hand think of ourselves as guardian angels. We are trying to stop you and people like you from walking off the edge of the plank you're walking on. Because if we don't warn you about it we have to save your sorry asses AGAIN, and we're getting tired of bailing you guys out.

Kunbaya my friend, Kumbaya

robertv3

"How many days per year is it not too hot or not too cold?" Perhaps 300. The issue there was to not charge electric cars at times of highest demand for electricity from the grid. We can either live with what we've got, or increase capacity, or find other methods.

"What do you think is going to happen when more electric cars go on the road?"

People will drive them and use energy much as people nowadays or 30 years ago have driven cars and used energy.

You seem to think that the electrical grid is, or will be, less reliable than gasoline or less good to use than gasoline is good to use. That may be true for some times and places, but it doesn't have to be.

For now, the electrical grid in the U.S. sometimes has trouble keeping up with demand. For the past 50 years, burning gasoline has been polluting the air. Each mode of energy has its problems.

Electricity is relatively flexible in that there are a variety of ways it might be generated. Gasoline used to be more convenient for long distance travel by car, but that advantage of gasoline is slipping away as electric car ranges are getting longer.

There didn't used to be a big infrastructure for gasoline-powered cars. Such a thing would have been hard to imagine existing, before it got started. And yet people did build the whole cumbersome thing, along with the attendant pollutions and wasteful uses of energy; and including the rubber-tire industry and hard smooth roads and parking lots taking up land. An infrastructure for electric cars is no worse, and will probably be better, but only if people decide they want it enough to try it (basically the same situation as that regarding gasoline cars when they were starting). It _could_ possibly be squashed if there were a big enough propaganda campaign (most likely by the oil industry) against it, but I think the cat is out of the bag by now, such that enough people have seen enough undeniable evidence that electric cars work.

Mass t***sit is another good idea; but, unlike mass t***sit, electric cars preserve, or can preserve in the future, the convenience and individual independence and privacy that gasoline cars have given us.

Besides all that, even today we have plug-in hybrid cars, like mine. I can use the electric grid or the gasoline grid, either one, at will. So far my electric-only range is 50 miles, which is just barely enough for "necessities" (in my current manner of living). In the future I'll very likely have a car with electric-only range up to a hundred or two hundred miles. Battery technology is getting better and less expensive.

I'm sure there's some pollution associated with batteries, but I have no reason to think it will be any worse than the pollution associated with gasoline. I expect a lot less pollution and a lot less complication, with electric cars, than with the gasoline cars.

Personal cars (together with the supporting infrastructure for personal cars, and the city layouts and lifestyle) are mostly a luxury (there are more economical ways that all of it could have been done). I could (and have in the past) live without a personal car. With my current plug-in hybrid car, I've achieved this level of luxury while partially reducing its harmful effects on the environment (with more reduction, of harm, to come with future developments).

I cannot (not easily) do it all myself (I suspect that some of my electricity is coming from dirty coal burning), but I can do my part and v**e for people who will do their part.

unclejack

WOW,robertv3 Your feel good laws have you thinking you got the perfect answer. OK lets get the power to charge your EV from the grid like you suggest and save the world from the pollution of combustion engines. Oh man, just typing that gave me tingles all over my body. OH, O wait a minutes. I just thought of something. The electricity being generated to charge your electric car is from a power plant burning coal, and or oil. OMG, we're polluting the world again. What happen to the wind mills? the wind is not blowing and they are only about 45% efficient and they have to be replaced every 10 years not to mention all the petroleum oil they use for lubrication. One big hazard waiting to happen. How about all that solar BS. all yeah it's raining no sun beside solar power is only 30% efficient. robertv3 get real it's time to leave your Utopian work and come back to earth.
Kumbaya me amigo Kumbaya.

robertv3

Maybe you had been more polite and I had been more rude, and I'm sorry for that, but I don't change the meanings or argument.

I notice some things about your arguments which are off-point (or, not good arguments). I shall re-emphasize or clarify a few points. I shall try to be more brief this time (many people favor brevity here; maybe you do too), but that means I won't explicitly connect all the dots, and I might leave out a few things.

We both agree that "there are lots of ways to generate electricity".

My summary, a few posts back, was: "My point is not that any one idea is necessarily a big solution; rather, my point is that there are a variety of ways to do things, probably including some ways which can allow us to live better, more economically, more conserving of energy, and without polluting much."

I was already aware that much electricity these days is generated by coal burning, and had mentioned it.

It makes little difference whether we "feel good" about an idea; it's either a good idea or not, regardless of feeling good.

There's more, but I'll stop there for the moment. Thank you for your posts & feedback.

unclejack

Just hold on there Bubba Loowe: for the record I pointed out a news article that stated "California Asks Residents to Avoid Charging Electric Cars Amid Power Grid Strain," I said we aren't ready for EV. You came after me claiming that It's not surprising that misinformation is spreading around in such a way, as it often does. (you words) Calling me a liar when in fact you're the one with misinformation. IF THE SHOE FITS; WEAR IT

robertv3

Your Original Post includes this:

"AP'S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The headline being shared was from a June 2021 heat wave — not mid-March 2022 — and was a voluntary recommendation that residents charge electric vehicles and do other activities outside of certain peak periods.

"THE FACTS: A months-old headline is spreading online anew, wrongly suggesting that California is currently requesting electric vehicle car owners to stop charging their cars."

It is describing misinformation (it refers to "Missing context" and "wrongly suggesting").

Upon reading that in your Original Post, I believed what it says about "Missing context" and "wrongly suggesting"; and so I agree with it that what it's describing does have "Missing context" and does "wrongly" suggest.

Therefore I referred, to what it describes, as "misinformation".

unclejack

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT IN YOUR DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTICLE, BUT, BUT, BUT

You argued that me and people like me are an anchor; accusing us of holding back some kind of life changing experiences. When in fact all I did was try to alert people that California ask the people "NOT TO CHARGE THEIR EV DURING PEAK HOURS" WHICH IS A FACT, THAT NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY, YOU CAN NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT CALIFORNIA ASKED THE PEOPLE NOT TO CHARGE THEIR EV DURING PEAK HOURS.

I don't care what day, what hour, what year it was when the article appeared. Stop trying to deny something that happen and stop trying to deny that there is a problem with our current electrical grid system.

You changed the subject several times now, and I nailed you for it every time and I will continue to nail you for it because "CALIFORNIA ASK THE PEOPLE TO NOT CHARGE THEIR EV DURING PEAK HOURS". What part of that statement don't you understand?


GET A LIFE PAL. I h**e discussing something with someone who doesn't know their ass from first base.