>>current grid
Well, it's totally inadequate whether you're looking at capacity, flexibility, ability to resist a Carrington event, etc, etc, etc. It needs upgrading.
But to your point, where I work they just put in 8 superchargers and it's a significant infrastructure upgrade. That much juice is an amazing thing and even when idle you can hear the hum of those transformers at a substantial distance. In a rural area like ours, at a certain point the lines will have to be upgraded.
I remember when the ski area I worked at years ago launched their new snowmaking system. They fired up the compressors and literally blew lines right off the poles. They had to switch to phased power up which would brown out the whole valley for several minutes as the compressors came up to speed.
>>spikes
Long term, having lots of EVs could even this out. If your EV is parked, you leave it plugged in and sell electricity back during spikes, then buy at cheaper prices at night. We need to get there. Right now consumers typically pay the same cost anytime of the day, but the costs to the utilities can vary wildly. You can't even say "by 10x" because there are times at night when power plant operators *pay* the utilities to take their power, because it's cheaper than shutting down. Meanwhile, during peak times, a KW can cost literally 1000x what consumers pay.
So we need smart metering that encourages people to even out their load. If meters know the auction price, people with batteries can buy low and sell high and even out use. For example, you could park your car at work and say "sell if the price goes above 20 cents per KW, but make sure I still have 2x what I need to get home"
I just saw an article about some promising developments in this technology ;-)
