Quote:
Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture
well if there are all of a sudden 2 million cars charging over night, i could see that being an issue. that is on-top of the natural gas replacement.
i know BC Hydro doesn't have time-dependent rates but from what i have heard is that at night they can shut down a lot of turbines and save on maintenance/wear and tear and buy very cheap power from down south where they use thermal systems unlike hydro like us.
if BC Hydro were to use turbines 24/7 and more then they do now i could see prices going up since there will be an increase in maintenance requirements. will it be that large? mehh, maybe not. but it is still something that adds up. this is also on-top of a world where we need more and more power constantly and where we have politicians who want to do green-washing by banning natural gas and forcing electricity.
i do think it will have an affect, though, and then there is the fact our power system is now mostly from the 1960s and older so it is only going to get more costly to maintain.
really, we shouldn't have used electric cars, they are terrible compared to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. but that is a discussion for another forum.
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It's not the maintenance. Hydro only has so much water that can go through the turbines. So depending on how much snow or rain or whatnot, they know how many GWh they have to sell in a year. Any more than that and we're importing power for elsewhere. Most of the big dams only spill excess water a couple times a year, the rest of the time it's all going through the turbines.
Hydrogen is also ridiculous flop of a technology. You should read into it a bit more. Right now, they only get about 30% of the energy that goes into hydrogen production to turn into useful work. With batteries that's over 90%. The fuel is either cracked out from natural gas or electrolysed out of water. The NG option produces a fair amount of carbon dioxide emissions, while the electrolysis option is essentially just making a shitty, explosive, inefficient battery.
It's far easier to just keep making batteries better. They just need to keep working on the charge times, and gas will effectively be toast. Give it 10 years.