California has a
high adoption rate for electric cars. That’s cool. EV
adoption will prevent a lot of carbon pollution. (Other states have a
high adoption rate too, but we’re just using California to point out an issue.)
California also has a high adoption rate for renewable energy. During
2024 there were 100 days where all the electric power needed, for at least a
portion of the day, was provided by renewable energy, mostly wind and
solar. Again, great solution for protecting the atmosphere.
Problem. How
do we want to charge our EVs? We want to plug them in overnight, so
they’ll be ready to go the next morning. When does California produce the
most renewable energy? During the day when the sun is out. That
means for California to meet the growing overnight energy demands, it has to
increase the amount of petroleum-based energy it produces overnight.
Renewable energy production and energy consumption are not matching up.
It's interesting how two good solutions come together and result in a new
challenge. Not a dealbreaker, it’s still progress, but we sure could use
some kind of affordable grand scale energy storage to cover the gap.
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