The Washington Post ran a lengthy article last week bemoaning the fact that AI (artificial intelligence) is sucking up so much power that it’s already straining the nation’s electric grid and is bad for the environment.
Seriously?
So, how will the grid be able to handle the millions of electric cars environmentalists want to force on the road? The answer might shock you.
The Post reports that:
“As the tech giants compete in a global AI arms race, a frenzy of data center construction is sweeping the country. Some computing campuses require as much energy as a modest-sized city, turning tech firms that promised to lead the way into a clean energy future into some of the world’s most insatiable guzzlers of power. Their projected energy needs are so huge, some worry whether there will be enough electricity to meet them from any source.”
The article quotes Tamara Kneese, a project director at Data & Society, saying: “Coal plants are being reinvigorated because of the AI boom. This should be alarming to anyone who cares about the environment.”
Yet, at the same time, we keep being reassured that the power grid will have no problem handling the millions of “clean” electric cars that President Joe Biden and his climate-crisis pals want to force onto the market, each of which draws massive amounts of electricity off the grid as they recharge.
“A question that frequently comes up when discussing electric vehicles (EVs) is: ‘Can the grid handle it?’ The short answer is ‘yes,’” writes the left-leaning Consumer Reports in a typical article on the topic.
Really?
Stanford University researchers predicted that rapid EV adoption could increase peak net electricity demand by 25% by 2035. Does anyone believe we can build that much extra capacity in less than 11 years?
The Stanford study points out the challenge of supplying this much new energy will be greatly amplified because “uncontrolled charging has been shown to … cause transformer overloading, force early replacement of equipment, overload transmission lines, worsen power quality or require substation upgrades.”
That’s to say nothing of the fact that environmentalists are attacking every form of reliable energy, from oil and gas to hydroelectric and nuclear.
We are already seeing the strain this puts on the grid.
A couple of years ago, California had to beg EV owners not to charge their vehicles in the evening to avoid the risk of brownouts and blackouts during a heat wave.
That was when a mere 2.5% of the cars on the road in California were electric and only a quarter of its power came from less-reliable wind and solar.
What happens when 22 million EVs are whizzing around California in 2045, the same year the state is supposed to have a zero-carbon grid? The Pacific Research Institute reckons the supply of electricity will fall 21% short of demand.
The rest of the country will face similar power gaps. And it won’t take long for begging to turn to forbidding owners to charge at certain times.
Nevertheless, EV advocates insist that massive EV adoption will be good for the electric grid because of something called “bidirectional charging.”
The idea behind “bidirectional charging” is that all these electric cars are just energy-storage units. So, if the grid gets overloaded, all you have to do is tap into this energy reserve rolling around on city streets.
“With careful planning and the right infrastructure, parked and plugged-in EVs could become mass power banks, stabilizing the electric grids of the future. In this way, we can think of EVs as big batteries on wheels, helping to make sure that there is always enough energy for everyone at any given time,” says one advocate.
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This has been predicted by electrical experts and also applies to home batteries and roof top solar systems.
I expect demand for electricity in say 2040, to be much greater than the best predictions today. Data centres in addition to all the new electric devices coming onto the market, including battery cars, vans etc., will require much more electricity vs the highest demand periods of today.
We know that renewable systems are also intermittent systems that product energy around 35% of the time. Solar is said to be 2 days out of 5. Wind is less predictable, so what will a state with a population of ~ 40 million do to make sure the grid does not fail when renewables aren’t working? Where will all that electricty come from?
One thing we should be certain of today is installing more wind and solar gear isn’t the answer. It is obvious that we need technology that pumps our plenty of electricity 24/7, is reliable in all high demand situations and is cheap over the long term.
I can think of only one system that can do that and it nuclear.
People who have spent a lot of money on home batteries and RTS are in for a shock and they are going to feel ripped off.
One error that is continuously made is the prediction of the number of electric vehicles we are going to have. Most families can not afford them. Between the court action and the democratic process many of the current mandates are not going to last. That means where will not be a huge battery reserve in peoples’ garages for the utilities to tap into. In addition, the action of bidirectional charging degrades the life of the expensive batteries. Once the policy of the utility is known, most EV owners won’t plug in their vehicles until just before they go to bed which misses the time the grid has the greatest short fall of power. I wouldn’t be surprised if some company develops a black box to go between the EV charger and utility power that would prevent reverse charging.
These global warming freaks will say anything to keep thir bs afloat.