'Infrastructure Bill' Pushes Electric Cars, Takes Over Regional Power Grids

P. Gardner Goldsmith | August 18, 2021
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Last week, the $1.2 TRILLION “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” emerged from the Senate bowels, and as more and more of the 2,700-page pork and regulation proposal is revealed, the mind boggles at both the specifics and the authoritarian philosophy of the bill.

Some of the most alarming are the slew of regulations and funds the feds want to throw at their boogeyman, “Climate Change” – regs and cash that the politicians appear to be pushing not just to play favorites with certain corporations and state politicians, but to entirely reshape the way Americans travel and get their electric power.

First, if the Senate bill is embraced by the House, we’ll get the lovely sight of “charging stations” popping up like fungus all over the US. As CNet’s Sean Szymkowski writes:

(T)he bill includes $7.5 billion to create charging stations all across the US, which would inevitably help spur EV adoption in the country.

This, despite the fact that there’s no “power” in their US Constitution to do it, and despite the fact that even the high-end electric vehicles such as those sold by Tesla require people to stop, plug-in, and wait for “recharge.” If you have $200,000 to spend, you can buy a 2022 Tesla Roadster, which, as the top of the “battery-charge/mileage” lot is purported to travel 325 miles before drivers have to pull over and wait...and wait, as they charge the car.

Waits for the most efficient electric vehicles begin, at the low end, at fifteen minutes for what is called a “fast charge”, but that’s not a full charge, and that’s under the best charging conditions outside the home. Charge time in such conditions usually takes much longer than fifteen minutes, and not only depends on the make and age of the electric vehicle, it depends on the capacity of each charger at a charging station, on how many chargers there are, and on how many people are trying to use the chargers. 

Inside the home, it will take longer, because household electrical systems are not made to rapidly transfer high amounts of power – and the potential for fire increases, as well.

As Eric Peters wrote for The Spectator in December:

You cannot just pour in electricity, as you do with gasoline. Electricity doesn’t sit ready to go in storage tanks, underneath the pumps. It has to be transmitted as demanded — via cables from the generating source — and this requires cables of much greater capacity than your household extension cord.

And he added:

This is why it is not possible to ‘fast’ charge an EV at most private homes. You can reduce the waiting time from eight or more hours but not to 15 minutes. Not without upgrading your house to commercial-grade electric capacity.

As Peters observes, the problems with electric vehicle charging are deep, interconnected multivariants. Take, for example, the physical, at-the-station, problems posed by recharge need, recharge time, the population at a recharge station, and “throughput,” or the process of each person achieving his or her charge, and clearing out of the charging space:

At a gas station, a car occupies its spot at the pump for about five minutes; thus, in 15 minutes it is possible for a single pump to refuel three cars. But if it takes 15 minutes to recharge a single EV, it would take two more places to plug in — and the space for those additional two cars — to equal the throughput capability of the gas station’s single pump.

And Peters, who runs the liberty-minded auto-news site EPAutos.com also notes numerous fallacies underlying the belief that the recharge time can be reduced without heavy consequences:

Well, they’ll figure out a way to reduce recharging time so it’s about the same as the time it takes to gas up a non-electric car. The problem there is that the faster you recharge a battery, the more you reduce its life — and increase the odds of a fire.

There is a reason why you trickle charge batteries — if possible.

This is usually not a problem — with lawn mower batteries, for example — because you have the time to wait. But it’s a problem with electric car batteries, if you don’t like to wait. Unless you don’t mind risking a fire. Or reducing the useful life of the battery — which costs a great deal more to replace than a lawn mower battery.

And Peters notes the importance of remembering that these batteries are huge and heavy, requiring intense work to collect raw materials, especially things like cobalt – facts the Senate Eco-Fascists either don’t know, or don’t want YOU to know. Raising EV’s to the efficiency and energy capacity of non-electric vehicles is a Herculean task, as Peters writes:

To do that requires about 1,000 pounds of batteries on average, which increases by several orders of magnitude the demand for the raw materials that go into batteries. More energy is also required to make the batteries, the materials for which are among the least renewable things on the market.

Then, we have the fact that most, if not all, state-regulated, cronyist electric grids simply aren’t anywhere near being able to provide the energy needed to run a population-level fleet of EVs while providing essential electricity to homes, city streets, and businesses.

Simply remember back to late June, when the California-government-favored power giant, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) called on EV owners to restrict their automobile use and recharge because, of course, PG&E is so poorly run, it can’t handle high power needs during heat waves.

This doesn’t even dig into the problem of a power-provider initiating “rolling blackouts,” as PG&E has, due to the fact that its spark-tossing power-lines run over government-run land that is so badly handled, the vast majority of western wildfires start and spread on them.

Good luck escaping a dangerous locale when the power grid is shut down. Unlike gas or Diesel, battery juice can’t be stored for weeks in portable containers.

But this isn’t stopping the Senate, Biden, or Biden’s head of the Department of Energy (you’ll find that post in Article 8,000 of their US Constitution), Jennifer Granholm (she the leftist former Governor of Michigan), from stage-diving straight into the “green-sustainable-electric-mandate” mosh pit by showering oodles of tax money at favored corporations, and attempting to federalize the already-politicized regional electric power systems we have in the US.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote in February, Granholm entered the Nixon-created “office” to discover a slush fund of $40 billion already waiting to be handed out to “green” corporations in the forms of below-market rate loans, loan guarantees, and grants. It’s “money” that the Trump Administration refused to spend, but, under Biden, it will be shockingly burned, along with much more. 

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) reports that the Senate Infrastructure Bill promises even more cash for Granholm to grease the “green” gears:

There is $21.5 billion to create the Energy Department’s new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which will provide for Secretary Granholm’s green-energy venture-capital fund. This funding should bring to mind the Obama Administration programs that funded with tax dollars companies that failed including Solyndra, A123 Systems, Fisker Automotive and other solar manufacturers. Granholm’s fund includes $2.4 billion for advanced nuclear reactor projects, $3.5 billion for carbon capture, $8 billion for ‘clean hydrogen’ and $5 billion for projects that ‘demonstrate innovative approaches to transmission, storage, and distribution infrastructure to harden and enhance resilience and reliability.’

Remember when folks promoting new “ventures” had to approach potential investors and show them the promise and validity of their ideas before the investors gave them loans and grants?

Well, under Fascist USA, you’ll be made to invest – in whatever the politicians want.

And in Fascist USA, Jennifer Granholm and her pals could be given the power to take over all regional power systems. Reports IER:

Ms. Granholm is also charged with creating a ‘smart’ and ‘clean’ grid that provides reliable electricity despite heavily federally subsidized, inherently intermittent renewable energy. The grid (currently) is the job of regional authorities, which coordinate wholesale markets with states and utilities—not the Feds. In addition to providing $9 billion for grid-balancing technologies, the bill ‘loans’ the Department of Energy (DOE) $2.5 billion to enter ‘capacity contracts’ with transmission developers that will backstop their projects if there is insufficient demand for renewable energy. The bill also allows DOE to designate ‘national interest electric transmission corridors’ where there are constraints in delivering excess renewable energy to markets, which will allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to overrule states on power lines and their placement.

Yeah. You thought it might be bad now… Just wait.

This is all part of the federalization goose-step that has been going on for over a century in the US, and is being driven by international socialist-cronyist efforts to impose “sustainable living” infrastructures by re-routing roads, controlling zoning, controlling electric provision, restricting the ability to move using gas or Diesel fuel vehicles, closing off vast swaths of land, and attempting to monitor our home energy use through invasive “smart grid” tech.

But, have no fear, it’s all in good hands. Why bother allowing freedom of choice and market competition when guys like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg can decide FOR US and pump $7.5 billion into building charging stations, thanks to the Senate “Infrastructure Bill”?

The Constitution doesn’t allow any of this. And, on a deeper level, these brilliantine political overlords cannot begin to replace the dynamic system of preference-revelation, demand, and competition provided by the free market. Valuation only can be revealed by free choice, and that is the one thing this monster of a bill does not contain.

 

Related: California Officials To Clear Underbrush To Prevent Wildfires - After Mocking Trump For Suggesting It

 

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