Tuesday, March 1, 2022

DOT Earmarks Over $5B to a National Electric Vehicle Charging Network

Let me start out by saying that the headline over Electronic Design 's news page is "U.S. Earmarks $5 Billion to Create National EV Charging Network" and I added the word "over" - because the article adds adds this line in the second paragraph.

Of these funds, $4.75 billion will be distributed by formula to states. An additional $2.5 billion will be distributed through a competitive grant program that will support innovative approaches and ensure that charger deployment meets a number of priorities. These include supporting rural charging, improving local air quality, and increasing EV charging access in disadvantaged communities.

Since I take it as a given that anybody with an electrical engineering background (and most of their authors have such) is capable of recognizing at a glance that 4.75 plus anything more than 0.25 is more than $5 billion, I assume they're separate piles of money.  You know, the old idea that says money in your left pocket is different than money in your right pocket and not just all "your money."  

So I say $7.25 Billion. Somebody is paying for it, and if you pay taxes, you're one of 'em.

The article reads like quite a bit of a press release, complete with a photo of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, but it's full of all the legislative techno-jargon that you'd need if you're trying to comply with the new money giveaway. 

They note that the pair arrived in a Mustang Mocky (sorry one of my most favorite posts ever).  Make that a Mustang Mach-E.; the Electric Mustang.  I understand they made an electric generator to take advantage of how Carroll Shelby is spinning in his grave. 

Of course, the emphasis of everything Brandon's team publishes is just how progressive they are.  It's the first National EV Infrastructure EVER (did anyone building gas stations near the interstate highway system ever get federal handouts?) and how much it emphasizes the "underserved" including people who live in apartments and can't charge an electric car.  Under what they're calling the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, for which funding will be available this year, states must submit an EV Infrastructure Deployment Plan (IDP) before they can get any of those funds. A second, competitive grant program designed to further increase EV charging access in locations throughout the country, including in rural and underserved communities, will be announced later this year.  There are requirements that EV charging stations can't be more than 50 miles apart and can't be more than one mile from an Interstate.  

Unfortunately, I don't see a single word about increasing the power grid's generation capacity to serve these stations.  The article never mentions where the charging power comes from, just what the EV charging stations must do. 

Each station would need to have at least four fast-charger ports, which enable drivers to fully recharge their vehicles in about an hour.

The infrastructure bill, under which the EV charging station program is funded, also allocates $3 billion in competitive grants to accelerate the development of a North American battery supply chain. Furthermore, an additional $3 billion in grants is aimed at expanding the United States’ battery-manufacturing capabilities as well as establishing battery-recycling facilities.

Another $6 billion?  Does that make it $13.25 billion and not $5 b?  

Back in January, I posted a piece where I attempted to derive how much power capacity would need to be added to the national power grid if all cars went electric.  For budgeting big cars vs. small cars I went looking for battery sizes and found a spreadsheet of EVs and the median battery is 69 kWh (kilowatt*hrs).  My house isn't rated to a third of that.  That means those four fast charger ports will have to deliver 280 kWh.  Real life will say whether or not that number has to be continuously available all day or how many hours of the day, but I really doubt that the conventional gas stations around my town have that much service.  Where does the power to run these charging stations come from?  I'd bet money that at the very least impact end, the power utilities need to run new cables and the upper end runs to needing to build new generators.

Like I said in that January article, the answer for how much more power the grid would need to generate depends largely on your assumptions, but I think that in the range of doubling to tripling seems to come up on a variety of sites thinking about this problem.  



21 comments:

  1. Biden must have loved Carl Sagan - billions and billions . . .

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  2. Is this Solyndra 2.0?
    Instead of fedgov picking winners and losers, slough it off to the states.

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  3. And $5 Billion later there still won't be anywhere to charge your vehicles when traveling. The Fed Gov has been shoveling cash at the telecom industries to get
    "internet" available to everyone everywhere and that still hasn't happened aside from some small private companies filling niche markets and Musk's Skylink system. Just another cash cow boondoggle to fatten up already fat wallets.

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  4. It's the government. Most all of that money will go to slush funds, payola, back-door deals, cut-outs, and cost-overrun projects that will make NASA blush.

    All for naught.

    I feel like Cassandra, shouting the truth but cursed that no-one will believe me. I have talked to my leftist acquaintances over and over about EVs and they still believe in solar and wind power and how they are all so better than nuclear or fossil fuel plants. Even the idiots that have sat through brown- and black-outs due to loss of generating power caused by going 'green.'

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  5. Of course, this was announced back when $7B was considered a lot of money.

    By a couple of years hence, that will be the price of a burger and fries.

    QED

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  6. I see a market for large and mid size diesel generators. Of course the other solution is (in Sweden) service vehicles towing 100kW generators and saving those who's EVs have temporarily given up the e-ghost (this is what happened this winter).

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  7. And with the price of copper, I can see all those chargers being "recycled" by the local vermin.

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    1. I was thinking something similar. I read something about the large amounts of copper and platinum in 5G antennas too.

      If they really want to make these charger stations as plentiful as gas pumps, there will be no way to protect them all. Just look at how ATMs are targeted.

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  8. "... I went looking for battery sizes and found a spreadsheet of EVs and the median battery is 69 kWh (kilowatt*hrs). My house isn't rated to a third of that."

    I think you mean your house (with 100 Amp service) could only supply 1/3 of the energy in the battery in 1 hour. No doubt your house has consumed many time that energy over the years.

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    1. Of course. I didn't think that need to be said since kWh were the units.

      A rule of thumb that I've talked about before is that a suburban neighborhood has a 25kW transformer that serves three homes. All three homes have 25kW service, but clearly 25 divided by 3 isn't 25. They can't all use that at the same time. It's this way because the power utilities think that there will never be a time when the three houses are all using their full allocation. This is based on their actual usage, so it's not a guess.

      That's essentially the same concept as the phone companies use when they provide one twisted pair in the central office for 10% of the phones they provide. That started to break down when everyone started using dial up modems. In the case of the electric power utility, that assumption breaks down when everyone is charging their car overnight.

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    2. Hence Erlangs ... one of the most confusing unit calculations ever!

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    3. I always append "you learn something new every day" with "if you're lucky." This is a new unit to me, so a lucky day.

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  9. EVs won't work! There are not enough materials to build all of the EVs to replace gasoline and diesel vehicles, in particular lithium and copper. And as pointed out, the electrical "production" capabilities even with coal, gas and nuclear will not meet the needs to provide energy via electricity for vehicles and homes.

    There was an interesting piece on Ace of Spades yesterday, that essentially stated that all of this "environmentalism" is a plot by Russia/USSR and China to bring down the West. It has been adopted by the WEF to bring about their "Great Reset" and place the Elite in power while riding the world of "billions of useless eaters" (Klaus Schwabe).

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    1. There's now got to be thousands of web pages going into how unsustainable EVs and Green Energy sources are. I won't bore you with examples.

      The greenies talk about renewable energy like some sort of Godsend. Burning wood for fuel is renewable energy and it was the technological improvements that came from moving from burning wood to burning hydrocarbons that dramatically improved the quality of life and improved lifespans of the last couple of hundred years.

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  10. That's one way to make our transportation system even more vulnerable to grid problems. Solar flare, EMP, attacks on the grid. No charging for you!

    At least gasoline and diesel still burn once they are in your fuel tank, and can be manually pumped out of service station storage tanks.

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  11. BABA Plan says it right. Also, I'm not following how the "underprivileged" score a significant number of legal, working electromobiles.

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    1. Perhaps they weren't clear: those electric vehicles for the masses are called "busses and trains".
      Cars only go to the elite.
      Just like dachas and caviar.

      Everyone else gets a concrete box apartment and cold potato soup, and once a month a dollop of horsemeat, Comrade.

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  12. Until I read otherwise, I'll assume this is essentially a giant corporate giveaway - since the companies who install these chargers charge people to use them, people will pay for them multiple times.
    Also, note that the plan assumes interstate travel; there are many areas of the country that requires traveling significant distances off the interstate.

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  13. I work in a small mid west city where we installed a couple EV chargers for free use to draw folks to shop local, shop downtown. It's not an "under privileged" town, we have money and the project was a success drawing people from the big box stores to shop our little town. I don't agree with the federal government installing charge stations nationwide, let the free market create those charge stations. Beside, do you think an under privileged is going to charge his $60K Telsa outside of the projects?

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  14. China will no doubt reap much of this money as they will source most of the materials. You can bet backup propane powered generators will be installed after the first natural disaster destroys the above ground utility distribution system and EV drivers are stranded for days or until a guy with a mobile Diesel generator shows up. The EV is not viable for long distance travel. Try a cross country vacation in an EV to the Rockies. Or a Jeeping the back country in a battery powered Jeep. The only way most of the population will drive an EV is if the Feds buy them or force them on us. Follow the money. Biden and comrades are sure to have a financial stake in this. Hunter will suddenly become an expert in the field. We are being led down the road of no return with the dismantlement of the petroleum oil industry.

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