Power Starved California Could Require Bidirectional EV Charging

First, the People’s Republik Of California implements lots of restrictions on affordable, dependable energy. Then they require all Comrades to purchase electric vehicles, which means way more power being consumed, rather than being pumped separate from the grid. And then

Bi-Directional EV Charging May Become a Requirement in California

Electric vehicleOfficials are starting to realize the power potential that EVs have. As global warming brings more extreme weather, EVs can potentially be used to bolster the power grid in some states with blackout-prone grids. One state that has recognized the potential for this is California; KTLA reports a bill is being proposed that would require bi-directional charging capability on EVs in a few short years.

Bi-directional charging is an EV’s ability to both take power from the grid and to give power back to it. Only a handful of EVs are currently capable of bi-directional charging: the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 and Ford F-150 Lightning to name a few. California has already experimented with the technology. In the summer of 2022, GM partnered with Northern California energy company PG&E to deploy a fleet of EVs to bolster the power grid there.

The bill, SB 233, is being proposed by State Sen. Nancy Skinner. Under the bill, all new EVs sold in the state would have to have bi-directional charging by 2027. The bill would also establish a fund for bi-directional charging infrastructure and establish a set of goals for the charging.

In other words, the state can take the energy from your car at will, and there’s f*** all you can do about it. Plus, the requirement will increase the cost of already expensive cars.

With the California Energy Commission estimating that EVs will have 60,000 megawatts of stored energy by 2030, state officials see big possibilities for the technology. Skinner said that the energy stored in EV batteries shouldn’t be wasted.

Isn’t that rather the point? Having charge in the battery of your vehicle so you can go places? Do Democrats think of that energy like the money you have in various accounts?

“EVs are energy storage on wheels. Why waste that battery, given how few miles most people use the vehicle in any given day,” she said. But she noted that the ability to do so would need to be as easy as possible and that the potential to use an EV as a battery for one’s home may make EVs more attractive.

So, she’s kinda alleging that people will feed that power back into their home. Because the PRC power grid is a crap sandwich. But, they won’t take it from you to feed it back into the overall grid, thinking it’s community energy, right? Wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean.

If the PRC needs so much help by taking power from EVs how are they going to provide power to charge them in the first place? And, when they do take it, will residents be compensated?

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8 Responses to “Power Starved California Could Require Bidirectional EV Charging”

  1. Dan says:

    The leftists want this so that while your napping getting ready to drive to work thinking you’ll have a full charge they’ll be sucking the juice out of your battery leaving you stranded. And what do you bet the per KwH charge you pay to charge your battery will be significantly less than any per KwH payment you get for them taking the charge. And don’t forget….batteries have a lifespan. Enough charge/discharge cycles and you have to replace them. The state stealing your juice after you charge it counts as a discharge cycle.

  2. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    In general, electricity is not sitting around in a tank like gasoline. It’s generated as needed, meaning their are peaks and troughs of demand. So, at night when demand is lower you can charge your EV and home battery, and the next afternoon cool your insulated home with your new efficient heat pump.

    • JimS says:

      In general, yeah. But an EV’s battery is electricity sitting around in a tank like gasoline. In this case CA wants to install a siphon tube.
      Load leveling can be done. Here in Michigan we have a pumped storage facility near Luddington that pumps water from Lake Michigan into a reservoir during low load time and releases it back thru generators at peak times.

  3. Dana says:

    So, if you had a plug-in electric vehicle which was capable of ‘bi-directional charging,’ and the Pyrite State was experiencing power shortages, what would you do?

    1 – Pump that power back into the grid;
    2 – Hook the power into your own home, saving it for yourself and f(ornicate) the neighbors; or
    3 – Unplug your fully-charged Chevy Dolt when the state needs the help but the power is still on, and consume power from the grid until the power goes out, saving your batteries until you can revert to option #2.

    Option #2 is easy enough to do: just flip the main breaker on your house! In a way, that does help your neighbors, because you’re not taking power out of the grid when it’s scarce.

    • JimS says:

      I’d run power to my EV thru a relay controlled by a sensor that detected which way the power was flowing. Either that, or find a hack for the car’s firmware to prevent it backfeeding the grid.

  4. Professor Hale says:

    There is massive loss whenever the power is converted from AC to DC, stored, and converted back to AC, then collected in large enough amounts to convert back to grid-level voltages. It is barely enough power to create a hazard to linemen fixing downed power lines. If you calculate the entire point of generation to point of use, it is probably the most expensive and least efficient use of electricity that money can buy, other than radioactive elements they put in satellites to generate trickle electricity from trace amounts of heat from radioactive decay. In other words, it is another good idea from some shallow thinker that produces zero actual benefit in the real world.

  5. DCE says:

    So rather than actually building more generation capacity to help charge all these mandated EVs, they’ll maintain the status quo and use the mandated EVs to provide power when the grid cannot?

    Yeah, that’ll work…until they finally shut down the last of the generation plants like Diablo Canyon (which they have delayed doing because they realized they had nothing to replace the capacity lost if they did so), any of the remaining hydroelectric facilities, and any plants still using fossil fuels. That will leave only wind and solar which anyone with a modicum of arithmetic skill will be able to calculate won’t meet the needs of even the elite.

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