[ExI] diesel powered tesla charging stations

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat

Subject: Re: [ExI] diesel powered tesla charging stations

,,, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> ... too few charging stations, and the number of Teslas is 
> increasing faster than the number of charging stations available.

>...I don't know enough about this and despite having the Internet, I'm going to charge forward in ignorance. I presume one can hook charging stations up to already existing electrical infrastructure...

You can, if the existing infrastructure can carry the extra peak load.  Currently a lot of rural areas are not set up for high peak load, so the notion would be to set up Diesel powered electric car charging stations out there so that proles could go cross country in their Teslas, not that they would, but if they can, they are more likely to buy them, which is a good thing.

Note that the peak load on the grid a problem in some urban and suburban areas.  The biggest utility in California had always run temporary over-capacity loads on their transmission lines (they can do that for short periods (if it is toward the end of the day (so that there is a cool-off period available))) but a coupla years ago they started a fire doing that and now... no more over-capacity allowed.  Result: we don't have enough peak power on the hottest summer days.  We are back to the rolling blackouts that were so popular about 20 yrs ago.

I was thinking at the time that train locomotives could perhaps be modified to dump power into the grid, but that was never built.  Someone put in a peaker plant along the local freeway, but LED lighting came into fashion and the peak load went down, so that plant went outta business.  It's still there however, and I hope some angel investor comes in and gets that going again.  There are lots of Teslas humming around here.

>...Yeah, I can imagine there might still be some gain from running it at a constant load... But then do you need to run it when no one's charging?

No, you would run it only during peak load times.  So it would run at constant load while proles charged their Teslas probably in the daytime, and keep them under load even slightly after the Teslas hum away, dumping power into the grid perhaps, then turning them off as soon as they aren't needed.  The value of individual Diesel stations is that they are the best (not the cheapest by far) peak load generators: they can be cranked up and ready to rumble on one minute's notice.  They can be set up outside of town (where you want them (because they are not good neighbors (no known form of power generation is a good neighbor.)))

>...What about diesels used for other things -- transport or whatever? Is the extra load of charging (presumably power a dynamo) drawing so much power away from the diesel that it can't still efficiently do other work?

Sure.  A Diesel engine can simultaneously generate power and do mechanical work.  In trains they don't directly drive the wheels but rather just generate the power with the Diesel and drive the wheels with electricity, but it doesn't need to be that way.

Another thing that might work during transition is using Diesel generators to even out the output of a wind plant.  Noise and emissions are irrelevant out there, because wind farms are already noisy (oh mercy) and they are far enough from population that no one would smell it.  If we really want to commit to wind power, we need a dang near equal generation capacity in natural gas or Diesel right there on site to even out the power production for when the wind drops off, particularly during peak load hours.

>...Yeah, it's probably transitional.  Regards,  Dan

Because of its efficiency, low cost to install and speed of transition, I can see Diesel generators playing a big part as electric cars become mainstream.

spike