By Chris Black
Who needs gas pumps when you’re constantly locked down?
Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting article about a California city which seems to be totally sold on Elon Musk’s pipe dream. More precisely, Petaluma’s City Council unanimously moved to ban new gas stations, and existing stations will not be allowed to add any new gas pumps.
Here’s from the article via Electrek:
Petaluma’s Ban on New Gas Stations
Existing gas stations aren’t being shut down in Petaluma. It’s just that no new ones will be built, because there are enough – one within a five-minute drive of every residential area in the city, in fact, as the Santa Rosa Press Democrat writes. The plan is to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and Petaluma’s City Council, with a population of around 60,000, feels its 16 existing gas stations is enough.
Electrek’s Take
Petaluma is the first seed planted, and many will follow and sprout, first in California, and then in other US states like Washington. For example, the Coalition Opposing New Gas Stations (CONGAS) is working to ban gas stations in Sonoma County, California, and its nine cities.
Just as the world is moving away from coal and other fossil fuels and toward green energy, so too will towns and cities follow in Petaluma’s footsteps by deciding they have enough gas stations as EV numbers rise and ICE cars fall. The number of charging stations will multiply, and the number of gas stations will shrink.
What can I say other than: come on, man, will you shut up, man?
Here’s the deal:
The average power line in a residential neighborhood is capable of transmitting around 500 simultaneous amps before the pole transformers start blowing. That is why you start getting brownouts when everyone uses air conditioning in the summer. As the lines heat up, they get less efficient.
Most American homes have a 100amp service, even though a lot of new construction doubles this. The normal draw of a house is around 20-30 amps, unless you are running a high draw appliance. Then you might hit 40-60 amps.
We barely have enough generation capacity to run everything now.
In states like California, they don’t have enough and have to siphon energy from other states.
Where is the energy going to come from to charge all the electric cars? Nearly all of them will be plugged in at the same time.
It doesn’t matter how far the technology goes, the power need is there. The faster the charge, the higher the amperage needed.
Current fast charging systems use just over 70 amps, requiring most homes to install a second 100 amp service. But that is only good for one car.
To charge two cars and have enough power for your house, you’ll need at least a 300 amp service. You start to notice a problem if you and your neighbor both have a 300 amp service and charge two cars at night.
That pole transformer down the street will blow in a few seconds.
The function of that transformer is to step down the voltage from a few thousand volts to the 240v your residence runs on. There are larger transformers that handle more amps, but they are in the local substation. To handle a neighborhood of electric cars, you’ll need a substation for every block and a pole transformer outside every house.
It just isn’t feasible.
The infrastructure needed for 200 million electric cars in the USA will cost trillions. It won’t happen.
The electric dream of blogs like Electrek and their brainless authors is really a nightmare for everyone. This kind of stupidity is part of the reason why China is growing and the West is collapsing.
This isn’t about gasoline, it is about getting people away from independent sources of electricity and fuel so if you behave badly, the government can turn off your grid.