With temperatures exceeding 35° Celsius, Texas is currently experiencing an extremely hot summer. Temperatures are expected to rise even further in the coming days. As already experienced in winter, many now fear that the ailing energy network will not be able to withstand the load caused by the higher-level air conditioning systems and that another massive power outage could occur.
In a message to its customers, Tesla asked them not to use a supercharger to charge the popular e-cars between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time. The message states that this is an attempt to regulate statewide consumption. Because it is particularly hot at this time of the day, air conditioning systems are running at full speed and the power grid is under maximum load. But the e-car company even goes one step further.
As the Teslarati portal reports, Tesla gives its customers a 50 percent discount if they want to charge their car with a Supercharger outside of peak times. This isn’t the first time the company has tried to manage its customers’ consumption. In California, Tesla drivers have already been asked not to charge their vehicles between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. The peak time was adjusted in April when wildfires and an extreme heatwave threatened to leave the state with energy shortages.
The basic problem that electric cars actually have to be disconnected from the grid when there are problems with grid stability is of course not only found in Texas. Great Britain is already preparing power cuts. In Germany there was a bill similar to that in Great Britain, which the last federal government, however, did not want to touch before the election. The draft from the then Ministry of Economics spoke of “peak smoothing”, which is nothing more than a paraphrase of forced charging breaks. In Germany, network operators warn of problems caused by the increase in e-cars as electricity consumers. Wall boxes that can communicate with the network operator are required to be able to turn off the juice of e-cars remotely. Significantly less than two percent of all cars in Germany are still powered by electricity, but the number of e-cars is growing rapidly – and with it the potential for network problems.
With the possible gas and thus also electricity bottlenecks in Germany – many power plants from the grid reserve run on gas, so that gas shortages can automatically also result in electricity shortages – electric car drivers in Germany will have to be prepared in the future not to go to everyone Time to be able to charge your Stromer. In theory, however, the whole thing could also be used in the other direction, so that the batteries in electric cars serve as a kind of mobile power buffer and feed energy into the grid. Ideally, charging in certain time windows would then be rewarded with lower electricity costs – or even a fee – similar to the Tesla initiative.
Range according to WLTP: Anyone interested in e-cars knows this information – and hardly trusts it. Because only rarely do these range values correspond to practice. EFAHRER.com took ten popular e-cars from the VW e-Up to the Renault Zoe to the Tesla Model 3 and checked how much the actual ranges in our tests deviate from the WLTP ranges.
How far do e-cars really go: WLTP desire and reality
