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Notes -
Culture war in building codes?
In most of the United States, the building codes are based on codes issued by the ICC (International Code Council), including the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code). Apparently, the committee in charge of updating the IECC for 2024 attempted to insert a bunch of mandatory provisions that were not directly related to energy conservation. The NAHB (National Association of Homebuilders) summarizes the objectionable provisions as follows:
Electric-vehicle charging infrastructure in both residential and commercial buildings
Solar-readiness provisions in residential buildings
Electric-readiness provisions for electric cooking, clothes drying, and water heating
Penalty for using natural gas for space or water heating in commercial buildings
Electrical energy storage system readiness in commercial buildings
These insertions were appealed to the ICC's board of directors, which (by votes of at least 10 to 7) ordered that they be moved to nonmandatory appendices of the code.
Build it and they will come. If we want electric vehicle - and they are superior to ICE cars in every way but the charging speed and range - which I think will be solved in a decade or so - talking in principle - why current. Removing friction for buyers is good strategy. Putting solar panels on every roof in sunny area is also a good idea. In my corner in europe - we cook and dry and very often heat water with electricity. So once again - a good idea.
Natural gas is incredibly efficient when used for heating building - the real thermal energy we capture from the potential is 90% or so. So this is not a good policy if gas is readily available.
Energy storage for buildings will arrive 12 months after room temperature superconducters and 6 months after nuclear fusion. Whatever solution we come up with for grid storage and balancing will have one thing in common - will be incredibly bulky. Putting it on prime and expensive land makes no sense for a commodity that travels at the speed of light
I don't think it was culture war - probably just well meaning people with tentative grasp of current tech and the normal bureaucratic tendency to expand your authority.
If the charging speed and range problems are solved (i.e. electric cars charge as fast as normal cars do, on the same schedule normal cars require it) at-home charging becomes a moot point for the same reasons people don't recharge their normal cars in the garage right now. So that requirement is just added expense for zero benefit.
It isn't possible.
Consider that the biggest battery you can get on a Tesla Model 3 has a capacity of 100 kWh. They claim it'll do 362 miles on a full charge. Which is indeed nearly as far as small European hatchbacks will generally make it on their 9-gallon tanks, except of course that in the case of the hatchbacks that's the real-world figure and in Tesla's case it's the marketing figure.
If you wanted to charge that battery in six minutes (for easy math), you would need to supply a megawatt of power continuously for those six minutes (in reality even more than that, accounting for losses). Even assuming you could find battery tech that could withstand that, where are you going to get that power? A big, modern, new American house will generally have a 44kW connection (200A at 220v). Charging the one Tesla in 6 minutes works out to the equivalent of the maximum allowed power draw of about 23 houses.
An electric charging station with 10 chargers would need a 10MW grid connection, as much as 227 houses, that is to say as much as a whole neighbourhood. And again, even more, as residential power networks are generally quite a bit undersized on the (for now correct) assumption that not everyone will be drawing the maximum amount all at once.
If you wanted to charge it in three minutes (at which point it would actually approach the time it takes to fill up) you can go and double all of that again.
You've given reasons it wouldn't be possible in a residential setting. But supplying megawatts to commercial charging stations should be quite practical.
Assuming you can figure out a way to deliver megawatts to the battery without melting it or otherwise damaging the vehicle, yes.
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