I was visiting in the New York City metropolitan area this weekend. While I was there Consolidated Edison, the regional electrical power company, was doing a thorough job of contacting pretty much everybody in the area and asking them to use less electricity. The problem? it was hot out, weather in the 90's (32.°C) and humid. They were afraid they couldn't handle the load from people turning on their air conditioners. Judging from cars on the road they have maybe 1% electric vehicles in that area right now. The state has forbidden the sale of gassers after 2035. If they can't support air conditioners now, how do they expect to handle thousands of EVs a decade from now??
Good question. Until recently, they had a lot of somewhat cheap power coming down the valley from the Indian Point plant. (wiki link) My silly idea: find a site slicghtly down the transmission line from IPEC and put in some of thos snazzy new modular reactors. Smaller and safer, and in the same area that is already used to being near a nuclear plant.
I am guessing NYC has far fewer housing units with garages where owners can charge. As such, EVs will be adopted more slowly there. As for the energy, EVs typically are not charged when air conditioning is in heavy use. As long as the majority of EVs are charged overnight, this shouldn't be an issue.
Set the EV charge timers to start several hours after sunset? Implement time-of-use rate structures to strongly encourage this time shifting?
I lived in NYC for about 5 years. It is extremely uncommon to have any sort of reserved parking included with the lease (or title) to a dwelling unit. Even more rare for that parking to be indoors & electrified. I like cars and driving, and I like NYC. The right answer for NYC is to allow fewer cars overall. Sections of Broadway really flourished when they were made car-free back in 2009. In other words... Don't handle charging EVs. Use this to get rid of the cars, at least in the densest parts of the 5 boroughs. All the areas that would be hardest to equip with electrified parking stalls are already well served by electric trains.
Born and raised in Queens. The city has been squeezing out cars for years now by replacing car lanes with bicycle lanes. With "congestion pricing" on the horizon in an effort to increase the use of mass transit, people will find alternate ways of moving around midtown. I don't expect electric vehicles, except for scooters, to take hold for many years. Edit: Two of the biggest travesties caused by both Mario and Andrew Cuomo were the shutdowns of the Shoreham and Indian Point power plants. "We don't need no stinkin' power (badges.)"
our daughter lives in murray hill. she said con ed has been asking everyone to turn off a/c during the day all summer. no one is paying attention, the city would burn. they have yet to lose power. her car is in a garage, but idk if there's any place to plug in.
Does ConEd have a voluntary program, like many other utilities, to shed some customer loads during peak demand hours? Examples include remote controls to turn off hot water heaters or electric car chargers, or turning up AC thermostats 2 or 4 degrees. The later created a furor somewhere (Texas?) a summer to two ago, from people who were happy to sign up for the annual incentive, but outraged when the utility actually exercised it for the first time during a heat wave. When reminded that they had voluntarily signed up for it, and had received an annual cash incentive ($25/year?) for as much as 5 years, they claimed that they "forgot" about it. They were allowed to immediately opt back out, though I hope that meant that the utility would claw back the incentive payment for that year.
idk, but there is (was) a program here where the power company would subsidize an evse that they could control remotely. i wouldn't touch that (or any incentives) where i wasn't fully in control.
First answer is 2035 is far enough out for NYC to upgrade its infrastructure. The real answer is it will be very expensive, and I expect it will take a long time and that timeline is aspirational. I don't think it will happen.
There's plenty of cars on NYC streets, but most of them don't reside there. There are probably statistics on auto ownership for all 5 boroughs.
Manhattan is at 22% of households. Staten Island is at 83%. NYC average is at 45% although only 27% commute by car, truck or van. New Yorkers and Their Cars | NYCEDC (Published in 2018)
They're working on one of these in Massachusetts as well, but no details. I'd probably go for it provided the installation of the smart charger isn't too onerous. It wouldn't be the first time we'd signed up for something like that. Back about 20 years ago, when we lived in Maryland, there was a program where you could get a very substantial discount on power if you allowed them to turn your AC off during the workday. It had a maximum number of times they could do it during a year. It was a really good deal for us. With the hideous DC commute, the AC would already be back on by the time we got home, and the only evidence would be that the upstairs was still noticeably warm.
yeah, if the deal is right, you never know. but i could never do that with our a/c, it is only designed to maintain temp. it takes all night to get the temp back down again.
I never run my AC when we are out of the house for the day. It stays on only if we are out for brief errands. But then I usually don't run it during the heat of the day either, unless inside temperatures rise to about 80F. It gets run more during the evening and overnight, when the outside temperature cools so it can save energy by working against a smaller temperature difference, or even go into more of a heat exchanger mode when the outside temperature falls below the inside. Ever since our energy efficiency improvements 8-10 years ago, if the interior is cooled to 70F overnight, then there is enough thermal mass that it won't climb above 80F during the heat of the next day unless the outside reaches around 100F. Or above mid-90s if there is a lot of activity and door openings. On the north side, the master bedroom rises only about 5F per hot day, but with its own mini-split, can be cooled separately for sleeping comfort. If this were a hot climate, we would be using the AC significantly more.