RAM REV XR ... You can't make this stuff up!

[HammaMan]

CATL says their solid state battery is going into mainstream production in 2026. LFP is a great safe cheap tech, but the solid state stuff is a whole other realm with capacity that doubles Wh/Kg coming in at 500Wh/Kg. LFP is below 200Wh/Kg, though doped LMFP does approach 200. Sodium is cheap and has its advantages so it could displace LFP for stationary purposes.

Given the ass dragging at least on public info regarding purpose-built power plants for this use case, we may just end up in a scenario where battery tech advances to the realm of 5-600 mile range becoming ubiquitous, and gasoline cars just don't really do much for the next decade or two. That 500Wh/Kg realm however makes short-haul E-aircraft a reality and that opens up competition for the cells. Curious to see the cost aspect as well as just how easy can existing lines convert over to such tech.

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[v8440]

One thing none of this directly addresses is the power grid capacity to SUPPLY all this energy to charge these wonderful batteries. Not just generation capacity, but transmission capacity. These huge charging rates of 100's of kW sound nice, but if both the generation capacity to make that power and the line capacity to transmit it to the EV charging station isn't there then either those high charging rates can't happen or you must install batteries at the charging station which are then charged at lower rates for longer so that the required energy is available onsite for the high charging rates. If this scenario happens then you must factor in the cost of the extra batteries at the charging station(s) as well as the conversion losses of charging/discharging those batteries, since that represents an extra step in the process of getting energy from the power line into a car battery. All of this is possible of course, but it's often skipped or glossed over when discussing such things. People act like if the OEM's could just make cars accept megawatt charging rates that everything would be fine, and that isn't so.

 

[powerboatr]

One thing none of this directly addresses is the power grid capacity to SUPPLY all this energy to charge these wonderful batteries. Not just generation capacity, but transmission capacity. These huge charging rates of 100's of kW sound nice, but if both the generation capacity to make that power and the line capacity to transmit it to the EV charging station isn't there then either those high charging rates can't happen or you must install batteries at the charging station which are then charged at lower rates for longer so that the required energy is available onsite for the high charging rates. If this scenario happens then you must factor in the cost of the extra batteries at the charging station(s) as well as the conversion losses of charging/discharging those batteries, since that represents an extra step in the process of getting energy from the power line into a car battery. All of this is possible of course, but it's often skipped or glossed over when discussing such things. People act like if the OEM's could just make cars accept megawatt charging rates that everything would be fine, and that isn't so.

well stated

 

[HammaMan]

One thing none of this directly addresses is the power grid capacity to SUPPLY all this energy to charge these wonderful batteries. Not just generation capacity, but transmission capacity. These huge charging rates of 100's of kW sound nice, but if both the generation capacity to make that power and the line capacity to transmit it to the EV charging station isn't there then either those high charging rates can't happen or you must install batteries at the charging station which are then charged at lower rates for longer so that the required energy is available onsite for the high charging rates. If this scenario happens then you must factor in the cost of the extra batteries at the charging station(s) as well as the conversion losses of charging/discharging those batteries, since that represents an extra step in the process of getting energy from the power line into a car battery. All of this is possible of course, but it's often skipped or glossed over when discussing such things. People act like if the OEM's could just make cars accept megawatt charging rates that everything would be fine, and that isn't so.

The power grid is ever-changing. It's not a static 70yr old monolith. Modern distribution transformers are amazing --- they're able to dynamically adjust the voltage on the fly. This can be done at several points along the grid even down to the meter-at-the-customer level. Power contracts for large loads are known up to 2 years in advance which is plenty of time to make changes. Right now there's bidding wars going on for statistically relevant power usage in states for monster data centers.

We do still need more/better base load but batteries can take up a lot of the slack. Tesla megapack installations can pay for themselves in as little as 2 years. Newer EVs have the capability to backfeed ~10kW and can act as distributed peaker plants without any need for infrastructure changes -- they're distributed after all. My PoCo allows anyone with an EV to sub to a plan where they can buy as much power as they want from 11pm-7a for 3 cents / kWh. That combined with ~30kWh worth of LFP batts ($3k) and 10kW worth of solar ($6k) is enough to not have to buy any power outside of that window. That's roughly $40/mo to be super wasteful with power or with proper utilization not need the grid at all (if they weren't so greedy on backfeeding compensation, it'd make a lot of sense to plus size the systems and sell power back).

I hope they get nuclear regs under control and have standardized reactor designs so that buildout can be 4 years and not 15+. The incoming administration will be prioritizing such things. Furthermore they need to build gas fired power plants in the northern part of the country and divert all of that flaring into baseload power. US oil fields flare enough methane to cover half of California's power needs. The next 4 years is going to see a massive energy boom in the US as well as a large spike in consumed power. We've already brought on tremendous amounts of new energy tech but at the same time we're shutting down perfectly functioning power plants under the radical green new deal nonsense.

We need to utilize ALL FORMS OF ENERGY to their maximum potential while clearing bureaucracy BS to usher in a new age of abundance and American energy dominance.

 

[v8440]

Modern distribution transformers are great, and voltage adjustment is a good thing, but the grid still lacks the capability to transmit all the power we'd need it to for some of the stuff being proposed. Being able to jack up voltage at the load end is not a cure all for anything. I'm an electrical engineer at a power transmission coop, I do actually see this kind of stuff every day and I'm involved in system planning. In fact, SOME (not much) of the grid really IS the same as it was 70 years ago. I mean that literally-we just rebuilt some lines a couple of years ago that were installed in 1950. The rest of the stuff you said about using different power sources and speeding up the nukes I agree with, as well as what you said about the next administration.

 

[Sig Oris]

Trains have been doing this for a really long time. Super efficient. That concept is what Ford should have done in the first place. You have an electric platform that doesn’t need a transmission(so no way to couple the ICE to the drive. That electric platform has decent range that will handle 90+% of commute driving(pulling a target number out of my ass). Then when you get to the edge of that electric range you have the ICE kick in to take you further than any battery on the market could.

I didn’t get a lightning because of range anxiety for long trips to the mountain, if Ford had an option to reliably extend the range on those trips I would have pulled the trigger when my number was called.

battery tech isn’t there for heavy vehicles and long ranges yet. This should have been done in 2020 as a way to ease us into the electric realm while battery tech evolved.

from there we can argue what powerplant is most efficient to be an onboard generator.

I worked on a new class of Surface Ship that has an electric drive propulsion system similar to a diesel/electric locomotive

 

[HammaMan]

Modern distribution transformers are great, and voltage adjustment is a good thing, but the grid still lacks the capability to transmit all the power we'd need it to for some of the stuff being proposed. Being able to jack up voltage at the load end is not a cure all for anything. I'm an electrical engineer at a power transmission coop, I do actually see this kind of stuff every day and I'm involved in system planning. In fact, SOME (not much) of the grid really IS the same as it was 70 years ago. I mean that literally-we just rebuilt some lines a couple of years ago that were installed in 1950. The rest of the stuff you said about using different power sources and speeding up the nukes I agree with, as well as what you said about the next administration.

It's not so much adjusting the customer POP up, it's adjusting it down to reduce consumed power for resistance loads. If you increase primary transmission voltage, you increase the energy the lines can carry. At the same time if you droop the voltage to customers say from 120 down to 110, it can buy ~5% reduction in power required for customers at large assuming they're not using inverters that are able to just eat more amperage.

Now put some methane thermal plants up at the gas fields and pipe that shit south w/ some HVDC that can also span E/W to better distribute the power, especially if we get a region that's perfect to plop out a dozen nukes plants w/ 4 reactors each (it shouldn't be just a dream). Combine that with some new dual-purpose coal plants throughout appalachia (plants designed to burn coal while also keeping future expansion in mind for another thermal source as warranted be it fission or fusion). It'd be a lot easier to retrofit an existing thermal plant over to fission/fusion than it would to build dedicated nukes especially if that's the goal in the first place. In-fact, personally if made king for a week I'd do just that. Put in a bunch of new thermal plants specifically for the purpose of plopping down reactors in short order. Shhh, don't tell nobody.

 

[v8440]

A lot of our biggest loads are industrial or data center; neither lends itself much to decreasing power consumption through voltage reduction. Yes, that will work to an extent with big resistive heat loads, at least until the longer time they have to run to make up for having less power causes them to overlap to an extent they otherwise wouldn't. The data center stuff we have all runs a power factor of around .99, but not because it's resistive; rather because it's all pf corrected switching supplies I guess. Industrial loads are what they are-mostly motor loads that draw more current if voltage decreases. The transmission for a bunch of stuff coming down the pike really isn't there yet, and won't be there for some years best case. Even reconductoring an existing line, which doesn't involve getting any new right of ways or franchising, is often a multi-year undertaking from start of project planning to finish. Have you seen what the lead times for conductor are? They're not as bad as they were a couple of years ago, but it's not good. A lot of what you're saying is good in theory, but the way I observe things actually working in the industry kinda prevent a bunch of it.

 

[HammaMan]

Musk's new data center in TN (already the most powerful in the world and about to undergo a doubling of size) has shit loads of batteries to be able to shift their demand curve. They didn't go into detail as to what exactly they're doing with loads of megapacks but the most likely use is they're able to use its infinitely variable output to shave off 5-10 hours worth of peak demand and recharge it at night.

Not sure if you've looked into megapacks for peaking/instantaneous transient balancing, curious your insight into it

Article is dated -- he's doing some odd stuff up there
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/9952...-power-generators-grid-isnt-enough/index.html

 

[Samson16]

Perfect time for a mini clean water nuclear reactor.

 

[ReverendQ]

Perfect time for a mini clean water nuclear reactor.

or this...

 

[v8440]

Musk's new data center in TN (already the most powerful in the world and about to undergo a doubling of size) has shit loads of batteries to be able to shift their demand curve. They didn't go into detail as to what exactly they're doing with loads of megapacks but the most likely use is they're able to use its infinitely variable output to shave off 5-10 hours worth of peak demand and recharge it at night.

Not sure if you've looked into megapacks for peaking/instantaneous transient balancing, curious your insight into it

Article is dated -- he's doing some odd stuff up there
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/9952...-power-generators-grid-isnt-enough/index.html

We have a megapack in our system. It's a small one, we were basically just dipping our toes into the water to see how well it works. I think it works ok. These things take up a pretty good bit of room for their capacity and they're presumably not cheap at all, especially if they're not subsidized by some government program or other. In my opinion, and that of some other power engineers I've talked to, needing to use energy storage to overcome transmission and generation constraints is really a bandaid in lieu of actually fixing the problem and making the system strong enough from the start for the load it needs to support. As a whole, the power industry is cutting it gradually closer and closer so far as maxing out equipment, and reliability is suffering. We have FAR FAR more frequent energy alerts occurring now vs just 4 or 5 years ago, situations in which we're notified that power reserves are lower than optimal. Renewable energy is a huge part of that, perhaps the biggest. The reason for this is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, so if you want to replace say 1000 MW of baseload generation (a nuke plant, coal, gas fired, etc.) with renewable, you must actually build a number of times the amount you're replacing because you can only count on a relatively small portion of it to be available at any given time. So, that 1000 MW coal plant you're retiring? You're gonna need to build several 1000's of MW of solar or wind to replace it. I forget the exact figures on that, but it's way over 2 times the amount you're replacing that must be built. Likewise, we're cutting it closer and closer with transmission capacity as well. FERC order 881 is a direct consequence of that. That's ambient adjusted transmission line ratings, and the purpose is to get every little bit of capacity out of existing transmission lines by taking into account ambient temperatures and wind for purposes of calculating cooling of the lines. This sounds good, right? But, stand back and look at the big picture, it's another way to cut safety margins thinner on the existing hardware instead of upgrading the hardware to maintain the same safety margins while supporting future loads. The direction the industry is headed, spearheaded partly by government mandates, is pretty clear.

 

[780]

or this...

 

[Suns_PSD]

I always particularly enjoy HammaMan's posts. Dude is a real asset to the forum.

Anyways, ignoring the general known quality of Stellantis products (a bit subpar, but always lots of bang for the buck) the intentions of the Rev make perfect sense.

The issue I have with all of the EV/ hybrid/ PHEV products is that if the price is such that you are just paying for a lifetime of fuel up front, or the upcharge to the batteries is such that it cost more than the mpg difference costs, what's the point?

I mean I love driving an EV as they are so fast/ smooth/ quiet, but once you take in to account the depreciation, extra registration costs in TX, inconvenience, public charging costs, they are just a terrible deal!

It's debatable if EV's save the planet, and frankly it's not a winning sales strategy, so these types of vehicles need to offer: 1) better driving dynamics, 2) more practicality, 3) & lower lifetime operating costs compared to their ICE counterparts.

Not necessarily all 3 of those, but some combination that makes them practical to actually buy.

There was a time (pre-divorce) where I had a lot more money, and I would have stroked a huge check just to have the most-bad ass technically advanced truck made even if it wasn't cheaper over its lifetime, after all who hasn't bought the nicer truck just because they wanted it? But I'm not spending an extra $40K up front to save $200/ month in fuel costs, as that's just dumb.

 

[Larrymoe]

I always particularly enjoy HammaMan's posts. Dude is a real asset to the forum.

Anyways, ignoring the general known quality of Stellantis products (a bit subpar, but always lots of bang for the buck) the intentions of the Rev make perfect sense.

The issue I have with all of the EV/ hybrid/ PHEV products is that if the price is such that you are just paying for a lifetime of fuel up front, or the upcharge to the batteries is such that it cost more than the mpg difference costs, what's the point?

I mean I love driving an EV as they are so fast/ smooth/ quiet, but once you take in to account the depreciation, extra registration costs in TX, inconvenience, public charging costs, they are just a terrible deal!

It's debatable if EV's save the planet, and frankly it's not a winning sales strategy, so these types of vehicles need to offer: 1) better driving dynamics, 2) more practicality, 3) & lower lifetime operating costs compared to their ICE counterparts.

Not necessarily all 3 of those, but some combination that makes them practical to actually buy.

There was a time (pre-divorce) where I had a lot more money, and I would have stroked a huge check just to have the most-bad ass technically advanced truck made even if it wasn't cheaper over its lifetime, after all who hasn't bought the nicer truck just because they wanted it? But I'm not spending an extra $40K up front to save $200/ month in fuel costs, as that's just dumb.

This, save the last paragraph, sums up my feelings on this subject. At this point, IMO, people are buying these vehicles just to make themselves feel better. The $$ doesn't add up to a win for the consumer and the tech isn't there yet, or maybe in the rest of our lifetimes, for this to make much of an impact on CO2 emissions.

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