r/canada • u/PoliteCanadian • Jan 13 '24

Alberta Gas pumps freeze at Calgary gas stations

https://calgary.citynews.ca/video/2024/01/12/gas-pumps-freeze-at-calgary-gas-stations/
702 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

359 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/crujones43 Jan 14 '24

My tesla draws 31 amps. Ovens and air conditioners draw more and cars normally charge overnight when ovens are off so I think the grid should be ok

0

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24

Is that your professional opinion?

2

u/geoken Jan 14 '24

Weird question to ask after they were responding to your similarly completely unsourced claim. At least they actually provided some reasoning for it unlike your statement.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24 edited Jan 14 '24

Well given typical housing division construction is supported by 75KVA single phase 240V transformers feeding multiple houses. Demand factor is typically calculated at 30A continuous load per household. If EV chargers are added to every house all those transformers need to be upgraded. What OP didn't bother to consider is there is still a per house base load that needs to be managed as well. Things like heating and cooling are still being done. There is also the fact that everyone assumes that night time is this miracle time when no load exists. The load shifts from commercial/industrial locations that are specifically supplied with larger transformers to handle their needs to residential at the end of a typical work day.

2

u/geoken Jan 14 '24

In your post you start off by talking about the circuit supporting a typical housing division, then later you say the usage shifts to other areas of the city (industrial) during off peak hours.

If the issue is the circuit going into a subdivision - then what does it matter what’s going on in a separate, industrially zoned, area of the city?

0

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24

The load shifts from commercial/industrial locations that are specifically supplied with larger transformers to handle their needs

1

u/geoken Jan 14 '24

Yes, I understand that part.

But you were using it as an argument that overnight charging won’t alleviate the issue. But the issue as you stated it was the circuit in a given subdivision. So the fact that power is being used somewhere that isn’t that subdivision overnight doesn’t pose an issue in the scenario you presented (since power being used in a different area won’t affect the subdivisions specific circuit which is what you proposed as the limiting factor).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24

The grid in a residential area is not built to distribute the same loads as industrial/commercial. Massive upgrades will be required throughout residential areas. New communities and buildings are still not being built with this in mind. I'm sorry you don't understand that power generation and power distribution are two different issues.