However, 400kwh times 500+ cars in a town does begin to approach datacenter territory. My place is 16mw. My point is that other uses are ignored in the discussion of rising usage.
30 years ago, most houses in my town had 100 amp service. Now almost all have 200. I had to upgrade mine when I purchased it in 2015. Also, many folks here have mother-in-law suites, which means two kitchens and often an additional laundry room. Most forego gas and have all electric appliances and heat. Power usage is way up all over. Our society is moving forward and uses more than the projections of the 1980s. Power generation projects rarely get approved by locals all over. Especially nuclear. We have painted ourselves into a corner.
The thing to keep in mind with that 400kWh times 500 cars is that that is the amount of power used over the course of a month, but generated in an hour. My charger at home is set up on the beefiest breaker it can support at 240V 60A (but only using 48A because 80% rule for continuous load) charging at only ~11.5kW. So that 400kWh is trickled out across well over 30 hours.
It’s a good thing that modern homes are electrifying. Rather than exploding things on site at individual homes, we have power plants do that at scale and send the electricity to the homes, which is more efficient. Even better if wind, solar, or hydro are used. Also, modern electric heat pumps are capable of being effectively like 500% efficient since they are manipulating energy spikes of phase change to move heat instead of making it.
Idk what you mean by your “place” being 16MW. Do you work at a power plant producing that or a data center using that or something else? In any case, the implication is that that 16MW is a rate of power, so at that continuous rate it would be 16MWh (16,000kWh) moved over the course of that hour. 16,000kWh every hour compared to my car needing an extra 11kWh in those hours that I’m plugged in.
I’d say that 500-1000MW is pretty average for a power plant that isn’t wind, solar, or hydro. The nuclear plant I worked at before was 2 units, each about 900MW, so 1800MW total. And that plant was built in the 70s, so imagine what we could be doing with modern nuclear innovations if we would just fucking build some new plants. If we assume each home uses 1000kWh in a month with continuous power usage (unrealistic, but easy math to make a point so let me cook), then that one plant from the 70s can power 54,000 homes. Cut it in half to allow for spikes and that’s still 27,000 homes. That plant also just used the bay it was built on for it’s circ water system, so it doesn’t even impact water use by much. Bay water came in, went through heat exchangers to condense steam, and carried that heat back to the bay where a lot of fish enjoyed the warmer water, and the fishers enjoyed the congregation spot lol.
I agree. On all points. It is a small effect.
However, 400kwh times 500+ cars in a town does begin to approach datacenter territory. My place is 16mw. My point is that other uses are ignored in the discussion of rising usage.
30 years ago, most houses in my town had 100 amp service. Now almost all have 200. I had to upgrade mine when I purchased it in 2015. Also, many folks here have mother-in-law suites, which means two kitchens and often an additional laundry room. Most forego gas and have all electric appliances and heat. Power usage is way up all over. Our society is moving forward and uses more than the projections of the 1980s. Power generation projects rarely get approved by locals all over. Especially nuclear. We have painted ourselves into a corner.
The thing to keep in mind with that 400kWh times 500 cars is that that is the amount of power used over the course of a month, but generated in an hour. My charger at home is set up on the beefiest breaker it can support at 240V 60A (but only using 48A because 80% rule for continuous load) charging at only ~11.5kW. So that 400kWh is trickled out across well over 30 hours.
It’s a good thing that modern homes are electrifying. Rather than exploding things on site at individual homes, we have power plants do that at scale and send the electricity to the homes, which is more efficient. Even better if wind, solar, or hydro are used. Also, modern electric heat pumps are capable of being effectively like 500% efficient since they are manipulating energy spikes of phase change to move heat instead of making it.
Idk what you mean by your “place” being 16MW. Do you work at a power plant producing that or a data center using that or something else? In any case, the implication is that that 16MW is a rate of power, so at that continuous rate it would be 16MWh (16,000kWh) moved over the course of that hour. 16,000kWh every hour compared to my car needing an extra 11kWh in those hours that I’m plugged in.
I’d say that 500-1000MW is pretty average for a power plant that isn’t wind, solar, or hydro. The nuclear plant I worked at before was 2 units, each about 900MW, so 1800MW total. And that plant was built in the 70s, so imagine what we could be doing with modern nuclear innovations if we would just fucking build some new plants. If we assume each home uses 1000kWh in a month with continuous power usage (unrealistic, but easy math to make a point so let me cook), then that one plant from the 70s can power 54,000 homes. Cut it in half to allow for spikes and that’s still 27,000 homes. That plant also just used the bay it was built on for it’s circ water system, so it doesn’t even impact water use by much. Bay water came in, went through heat exchangers to condense steam, and carried that heat back to the bay where a lot of fish enjoyed the warmer water, and the fishers enjoyed the congregation spot lol.