Quote:
Originally Posted by zamler
If every car in Canada was electric could we realistically improve the grid to handle it? Elon Musk has said if every car was an EV the grid would have to double in capacity. Is that feasible?
Call me crazy but we should be producing oil as much as possible and using the revenue to become a world leader in clean energy. The amount of oil used globally will not change if Canada stops producing it, so why not leverage the resource?
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I suspect doubling is slight exaggeration, we do need to double the grid, but not only for EVs. Owning 1 EV that we don't really use public stations to fill up I suspect that 2 EVs would represent ~60% of our pre-ev energy tab. And I believe industry vs truck freight would be a comparable number, if/when those areas start to convert
Probably where you get to double is looking at the electrification of heavy industries like metal making, that are still largely using coal and gas. those probably account for the other 40% when guys like Musk talk about the need to double our grid.
My opinion of expanding the grid has always been; easy problem, big effort. We know we can build the grid we have, because we have done it once. All we are asking is to do it a second time, lots of cost, lots of effort, but not really a giant engineering problem
Edit: I should say lots of upfront capital cost, that does have a return in investment.