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Scientists caution against charging electric vehicles at home overnight
(www.thebrighterside.news)
this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Technology
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You're missing that the researchers recommend charging during daytime business hours, which means people who use EVs to drive to work would need public or workplace provided chargers to accommodate this.
Setting a timer to charge around noon wouldn't help if you're parked at your job with no chargers nearby.
You just need to avoid peak evening hours to avoid overloading the grid, and a timer set to start at 1am solves this perfectly fine.
Depending on where you live, night time is also lowest load on the grid.
I'm not sure you're talking about the same thing the paper is about. The overall load is lower, but the mix of power types is different.
Specifically, in California, there's a HUGE difference in power generation types overnight than during the day. There's excess capacity until the sun goes down due to solar. If you look ahead to everyone driving EVs, and then assume that everyone charges at night, then the power problem is completely different than what it is today.
So the researchers are saying there is more load during mid-day but there is also excess capacity due to solar, and that is better than charging at 3am with low load but also low generation from renewables?
That's how I read the article, yes.
It's a little confusing, because they seem to also be speculating on how power generation and load will be in the future as well as people's charging habits.