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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: July 1st, 2023
  • Billegh@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•Hmmm
    3·
    1 day ago

    So, working for a power company, I have some insight for you on this. This is still the power companies doing bullshit, but there is some truth to the grid being unable to handle electric vehicles. We are seeing the same issue with electric tankless water heaters.

    Most companies, unless you ask and pay for it, will size a transformer for your house as small as they can get away with. 15 to 25kVA is kinda standard for overhead, while 50 to 75kVA for padmount is usual (because the same transformer will serve two to four houses).

    If you install a fast charger on your house, and run the dryer, and the water heater turns on, the fuse will blow on the transformer. Then you call in an outage, they have to put a new fuse on, and usually don’t tell you what was wrong. Then once you figure it out, they have to tell you that you can’t do all that (and lose revenue from all the downtime and sending a technican) or they have to put up a bigger transformer.

    It’s far easier to say “lol our grid is old and bad” than “we don’t want to spend out profits on needed upgrades and maintenance”. Meanwhile, data centers are exclusively connected directly to a substation that can handle their needs or to their own dedicated transformer banks directly off of transmission lines. Never are they on some back woods tap fifteen miles from their substation.