BTW, I built my model many years ago, way before anyone was talking about this. While it seemed to be a reasonable rough-order-of-magnitude model, it wasn't until the end of last year that I finally got confirmation that my model produced reasonable numbers. This by non other than Elon Musk himself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcI6FaaDp8g&t=3510s
In this interview he says we at least double our power production capacity. We (US) have 1200 GW of installed capacity. That means we need at least another 1200 GW. Which means 1200 nuclear power plants.
That number, for me, gives the problem a dimension, a scale, that is difficult to understand in any other way. 1200 nuclear power plants is nothing less than daunting. In the context of not even being able to build a high speed train, I am not sure what the reality of nuclear power in this nation might look like in the next 50 to 100 years.
Of course, Elon is pushing solar. Great for some areas, not so for a good deal of the nation. Imagine, for example, if Florida depended 100% on solar. Yes, that's an extreme example, of course. Sometimes these are necessary to jolt people away from thinking about the fantasy of something and focus on reality. Solar in Maine or Illinois has very different prospects when compared to solar in Southern California, Arizona or Texas.
Solar isn't the solution. It is part of it, of course.
Can you clarify what you mean by this?
I read it as "EV's are storage that can feed energy back to the grid". The problem with this is that it assumes you charge your car and use it as a battery, rather than drive it. I don't think that's realistic at all. In addition to that, they still have to be charged. Which means we need additional power, over and above current demands, in order to do so. The energy has to come from somewhere, and we don't currently have it.
Also, the idea of charging at peak solar is a fallacy. This is what solar production looks like during an ideal and non-ideal day (source: My own 13 kW array):
https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png
https://i.imgur.com/pB1WgQ0.png
The peak lasts minutes, if not seconds. Peak solar, in this context, is pretty much useless. What you need is steady power delivery over a period of many hours (for slow to mid charge rates).
What a lot of people tend to ignore is that the current grid and power generation capacity is pretty much built to supply current needs. A large EV installed base expansion requires an equally large expansion of power systems at all levels. Solar isn't the solution. It's part of it, of course, just not the solution. The same is the case for wind. We need nuclear. Lots of it.
