The latest problem with EV charging stations: Power supply



The transition from gas-powered automobiles to electric vehicles has been a gong show, even though Democrat bans on new gas cars have not yet gone into effect. The trouble is not simply that EVs — which require the mining of many times more minerals than required for a conventional vehicle — are less environmentally friendly than promised or that they are both expensive and unreliable.

Electric vehicles require charging stations. Unless Americans are to be confined to 15-minute cities, there needs to be a juiced network of such stations.

The infrastructure is not in place, however, thanks in part to the Biden administration's bungling of its promised national rollout of EV charging stations. The Democratic administration has established fewer than a dozen of the promised 500,000 charging stations across the country.

Even if there was a satisfactory number of active stations, there is no guarantee they would be useful on account of power supply issues.

Last month, the California-based software company Xendee released the results of its survey of leaders "involved in the development, operation, and commercial use of EV charging infrastructure."

75% of respondents said electric grid limitations were a "significant roadblock to the rollout of EV charging infrastructure for commercial EV usage." Despite uncertainty about whether the charging stations will have the power to charge the cars, 84% of fleet owners indicated they expect to draw grid power from the utility.

A new report from ISO New England Inc., the transmission organization that oversees New England's bulk electric power system and corresponding transmission lines, revealed that EV vehicle adoption over the next decade would significantly drive up electricity demand — demand satisfied mostly with natural gas, reported the VTDigger.

Vermont is hardly an exception. Princeton University recently projected that the U.S. will need 3,360% more electricity on hand to satisfy the Biden administration's EV goals, reported the Daily Mail.

"Right now, our infrastructure is likely 'OK' for the slow trickle of EV adoption," Robby DeGraff, the manager of product and consumer insights at AutoPacific, told the Mail. Increased demand shaped by government mandates will, however, mean that "the grid will certainly need to be revamped."

Already states like Georgia, Arizona, and California are buzzing their way toward capacity, and the costly infrastructure needed is far from established.

Michael Stadler, chief technology and marketing officer at Xendee, told Utility Drive that not only have numerous prospective EV charging station developers acknowledged they would be unable to acquire adequate electricity from utilities, electricity prices in some regions make it uneconomic to link up.

"Time of use rates and power charges are a really big problem," said Stadler. "If you end up paying more for electricity than gas, then something is wrong."

Many of Xendee's clients have apparently opted to install fossil-fuel-powered generators to power their charging stations. So in effect, there's a good chance that EVs whose drivers manage to find charging stations are powered by the same energy source EV is supposed to have made redundant — if not by a generator on-site, then by a predominantly gas-powered grid.

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Trump slams Biden's electric vehicle mandate, vowing to eliminate it on day one



Former President Donald Trump skipped the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday, instead making a familiar populist appeal to a crowd of autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan. In his remarks — which the Biden campaign deemed "incoherent" despite the worrying standard set by their 80-year-old candidate — Trump condemned the Democratic president's electric vehicle mandates, vowing to eliminate them on day one.

Trump, who leads those Republicans he elected not to debate Wednesday by at least 39 points in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, doubled down on the economic nationalism that helped secure him the White House in 2016, telling autoworkers at Drake Enterprises, a non-unionized automotive parts manufacturer in Macomb County, that the Biden administration was perpetrating a "government assassination" of the American auto industry.

"Joe Biden claims to be the most pro-union president in history," said Trump, referring to the octogenarian Democrat who ratified legislation blocking a U.S. railroad strike last year. "His entire career has been an act of economic treason and union destruction."

"To the striking workers, I support you and your goal of fair wages and greater stability, and I truly hope you get a fair deal for yourselves and your families," said Trump. "But if your union leaders will not demand that crooked Joe repeal his electric vehicle mandate immediately, then it doesn't matter what hourly wage you get."

President Joe Biden, who spoke to striking United Auto Workers members on a picket line nearby a day earlier, has set a target to have 50% of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. The Biden administration's update to emission limits for cars means that by 2032, EVs will have to make up two-thirds of all new cars sold.

Besides the commonly discussed disruptions that adoption of electric vehicles poses, such as the incredible strain they will likely place on the electric grid, Yen Chen, principal economist at the Center for Automotive Research, told WBUR-FM that they will be job-killers, at least in Michigan.

"Traditional internal combustion engines, vehicles. You need two major components. That's engine and transmission. Of course, along with the engine and transmission, you have a fuel system and exhaust system that go with it," said Chen. "Those [do not] not exist in the EV. EV has none of them. And in terms of the union and employment, making engine and transmission require a significant amount of the labor to put it together."

Ernst & Young estimated that vehicles with conventional power trains have as many as 2,000 components in their power trains. Tesla's drive train, by way of comparison, reportedly contains only 17 moving parts.

In addition to containing fewer parts, EVs rely on construction techniques that are often more automated, meaning not nearly as many workers will be needed, according to Chen.

Ford and other industry experts prophesied in 2019 that an estimated 30% less labor will be required to build electric cars, reported CNN.

City Journal recently suggested that "the total EV ecosystem involves more labor per vehicle, though most of the increase is found in the manufacturing chain," meaning that while jobs may be lost in America, many will likely be created overseas.

The Financial Times indicated that just as there might be fewer American auto worker jobs, there will also be fewer union jobs in the EV ecosystem.

Trump suggested in his speech Wednesday that a wage bump won't "make a damn bit of difference because in two to three years, [auto workers] will not have one job in this state."

"[Biden is] selling you out to China. He's selling you out to the environmental extremists. All the radical left people have no idea how bad this going to be also for the environment," said Trump. "You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics, but you can't really be loyal to both. ... Crooked Joe is siding with the left-wing crazies who will destroy automobile manufacturing and will destroy our country itself."

Trump, who made a show of threatening to eliminate tax credits for EVs while in office, vowed to the crowd in Michigan, "On Day One, I will terminate Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandate and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers."

The former president vowed also to "unleash a thing called American energy" and "stop the ban on the internal combustion engine."

Axios reported that Trump-voting states are less likely to embrace EVs.

Trump speaks to auto workers in Michiganyoutu.be

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Report: Kinetic attacks on US power grid spiked 71% in 2022



A division of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation indicated in a recent study that physical attacks on the U.S. power grid spiked by 71% in 2022 over the previous year, reported the Wall Street Journal.

According to the grid oversight body's Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center division, vandalism, ballistic damage, and intrusion drove the increase.

What's the background?

NewsNation noted that Duke Energy Florida experienced several "substation intrusion events' in September. For instance, on Sept. 21, an intruder busted into the Zephyrhills North substation in Pasco County, Florida, sabotaging equipment that resulted in a nine-minute-long outage.

Substations convert high-voltage electricity into lower voltages for use by businesses and residences.

According to Central Oregon Daily, one of the Bonneville Power Administration's substations in Clackamas County, Oregon, was hit on Nov. 24.

John Lahti, BPA transmission vice president of field services, said, "Someone clearly wanted to damage equipment and, possibly, cause a power outage."

In early December, vandals attacked substations in Moore County, North Carolina, with gunfire, leaving 45,000 people without power.

Four electric substations in western Washington were reportedly attacked on Christmas Day, depriving over 17,000 of power in Pierce County alone.

Pierce County sheriff's deputies observed signs of forced entry at all four substations, noting that equipment had been vandalized, but "nothing had been taken," reported USA Today.

Additional attacks have been prevented.

TheBlaze reported earlier this month that a Florida man with neo-Nazi links and a Maryland woman were charged with conspiracy to attack the Maryland power grid. Brandon Clint Russell, of Orlando, Florida, allegedly planned to trigger a "cascading failure" by attacking a small number of substations. He reportedly discussed hitting multiple substations simultaneously to maximize the impact of the infrastructure attack.

There were at least 108 human-related events reported during the first eight months of 2022, compared with 99 in 2021. WSOC-TV reported that by year end, there were 163 reported incidents of physical attack, vandalism, suspicious activity, or sabotage on the U.S. grid.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation suggested that these attacks are part of a worsening trend.

Knocking your lights out

The NERC is a not-for-profit international regulatory authority mandated with assuring the reliability of the North American grid, which powers both the United States and Canada, as well as the northern portion of Baja California, Mexico.

The NERC 2022 Annual Report released Tuesday states, "Increasingly bold adversaries regularly employ new tactics, techniques, and procedures; they are also exploiting new and legacy vulnerabilities. As a result of sector interdependencies, grid evolution, and an expanding supply chain, the threat surface as well as the potential magnitude of impacts has increased."

E-ISAC, a division of the NERC, recently noted a 20% spike in physical security incidents involving power outages since 2020.

E-ISAC's confidential analysis, obtained by CBS News, suggested that the "smaller 20% increase (2020 to 2022) is due to the high number of serious incidents that occurred during 2020 that can be attributed to the onset of COVID, increased social tensions and a decline in economic condition."

In 2022, however, an "unusual" number of "repeat and clustered attacks" beset energy infrastructure in the Southeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest with "individual sites being repeatedly targeted or multiple sites being targeted within close proximity to one another."

E-ISAC reportedly "assesses with medium confidence that the recent uptick in serious physical security incidents is likely to continue into 2023 based on the number and nature of recent attacks combined with the overall current heightened threat environment."

Manny Cancel, E-ISAC's chief executive, told the Wall Street Journal, "There seems to be a pattern where people are targeting critical infrastructure, probably with the intent to disrupt. ... Going back to the 2020 presidential election, as well as the recent midterm elections, we’ve seen an uptick in chatter and an uptick in incidents as well."

While there is an alarming number of ideologically-motivated attacks, Cancel told WSOC, "The overwhelming majority are petty vandalism, theft, particularly copper theft. ... A lot of break-ins to do that, occasionally arson or damage, but that is primarily what we’re seeing."

According to E-ISAC, 97% of incidents "resulted in no disruption of service."

Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told CBS News, "It's important to note that new fencing, cameras, or better lighting isn't going to prevent attacks. They will continue to happen. ... This is why we must invest in resilience, adding redundancy, and removing single points of failure. Certain attacks on critical infrastructure should be legally treated as domestic terrorism."

Extra to physical attacks, the U.S. has to contend with virtual threats.

While the "U.S. electric grid is actually very resilient ... cyber-risks are increasing constantly because as we become more connected, more digitally controlled, that does introduce a cyber-risk that we have to start to manage," Puesh Kumar, director of the Energy Department's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy, Security and Emergency Response, told NPR last month.

Power grid stations in Washington falling victim to recent attacks after FBI warning youtu.be

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Horowitz: The energy crisis is worse than you think — and it’s by design



We can’t wait until after the election to deal with a looming winter electricity crisis. Republicans must make demands on energy production in the continuing budget resolution to promote nuclear and coal power plants, terminate all of the onerous regulations that have stifled their productivity, and turbocharge our natural gas delivery capabilities. Anything short of an immediate deregulation plan will place Americans in the same predicament as Europe, where they are discussing group showers, eating bugs, and drinking sewage, as they face a $2 trillion surge in electricity prices.

Thanks to the controlled demolition of coal and nuclear power, there is record demand on natural gas for electricity. And although our production and exports of natural gas are at record levels, they are not as high as they should be given the regulations and the stifling of pipelines, and they are not sufficient to compensate for the sudden embargo of all Russian gas supplies. This is why inventories in underground storage are operating well below baseline levels of the pre-COVID years.

As such, the Energy Information Administration is predicting a 7.5% increase in electricity rates over 2021, and that is before the next man-made or manipulated global crisis. However, in parts of the Northeast, rates have already more than doubled because of a lack of sufficient pipeline systems in place, with many proposals on the table having been blocked for years. New England gets almost no electricity from coal any more and relies heavily on natural gas. But these same states have banned fracking and gas pipelines as well! So absent robust infrastructure to transport and store natural gas, which the Northeast lacks, the people have failed to reap the benefits of increased natural gas production. Rather than piping the gas in straight from the Marcellus basin, New England was importing gas from Russia!

Our existing level of natural gas production would have been sufficient had our government not purposely set fire to our coal industry for a decade and then decided to engage in a thoughtless war with Russia without a contingency plan. In the U.S., coal once composed roughly half of our electricity source just 15 years ago, but has dropped precipitously because of destructive eco policies. Now it only accounts for 21% of our electricity source, so shocks to the system are going to harm American consumers. Yet thanks to the reduced inventories, we are struggling to even supply a smaller percentage of our grid with affordable rates. The price of thermal coal is now at an all-time high of $439 per metric ton.

Our electricity generation from coal power plants is down by nearly two-thirds since 2008. Thanks to numerous regulations during the Obama administration, 250 coal plants closed between 2010 and 2017, leaving us with just 240, less than a quarter of China’s inventory. Thus, while our recoverable coal assets are enormous – 60% greater than China’s reserves – our coal electric power inventory is running between 85 and 90 million tons, down over 30% since 2020 and more than 50% since 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

As you can see, our production is at a record low, as are our inventories:

It would be one thing if our government planned ahead in its destruction of coal by ramping up natural gas pipelines and building more nuclear power plants. After all, if clean energy is the goal, those two are great candidates for clean and effective sources of energy. But clearly that is not the goal. Scarcity is the goal. Thanks to endless regulations by the same people who claim to want clean energy, no new nuclear reactors have come online in decades, while numerous others have been retired. At the end of 2021, there were 93 active reactors, down from 104 a decade ago. Our monthly nuclear utility generation is down 5% compared to 2019.

The only forms of energy that have been increasing, at a painful cost to taxpayers, are solar, wind, and electric vehicles. However, they are impotent during our time of need, and the obsessive push for electric vehicles to reduce gasoline consumption further exacerbates the strain on electricity, which is even scarcer, and further drains the already low utility of green energy that relies on batteries (now in great shortage) to run.

During the California heat wave, one would think Californians would have enough solar energy to power the entire state, given how much they invested in it and how strongly the sun was shining, particularly during those hot days. But as the Washington Post reports, so much of it went to waste because the batteries and transmission lines needed to feed solar power are too expensive, especially with the scarcity of batteries (in itself due to mining regulations as well as the contrived demand for electric cars).

At some point, it becomes clear this is being done on purpose. Government regulators are cutting off all the useful sources of energy and jamming the feeble renewable energy grid with further demand precisely at a time when they are cutting off all Russian energy. To top it off, Biden has drained nearly 40 years of Strategic Petroleum Reserve inventories headed into the winter. This can’t all be an accident. To quote Diederik Samsom, chief of staff for Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice president, “The two basic needs of life – food and energy – we have paid way too little for in the past 40 years.” In other words, this is being done on purpose.

So where are Republicans in all of this? Why are they not holding up the budget bill in the Senate until the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which raised numerous taxes and royalties on oil and gas exploration, is repealed? One of the provisions institutes a “methane fee,” which some estimate will single-handedly increase consumer natural gas bills by 17%. The tax will not only apply to the production of oil but also the transmission, storage, and exporting of natural gas, which is the worst thing you can do at a time of record high natural gas prices.

Moreover, the bill created all sorts of new incentives to promote electric vehicles, which will not only fail to ease the energy crisis, but will exacerbate it. It’s become clear that the electricity crisis is an even bigger deal than the spike in gasoline prices. Electric vehicles will create a tsunami of new demand on the electric grid at a time of record high prices, after people are already forced to pay a fortune for the vehicles. We are already witnessing this dynamic – of one green fascist policy running into the headwinds of another – playing out in California, where grid operators advised people not to charge their vehicles during the heat wave.

At a time when polls show more Americans than ever aren’t buying the global warming narrative, Republicans continue to agree to its premise and even pass new pernicious anti-consumer policies based on their agreement with the pseudo-science, just as they did with the response to COVID.

Mom claims her child communicated being transgender 'at the earliest moment that she actually had words'



ABC news on Thursday (which was "transgender day of visibility" for those who weren't aware of the special day) featured a mother who claimed her child "communicated to us" that she was transgender "at the earliest moment that she actually had words and language."

Asked for her advice to other parents with transgender kids, Jen Grosshandler answered, "When Chazzie, our daughter, really started to communicate to us — and that was at the earliest moment that she actually had words and language — to communicate to us who she truly was, we were a little surprised because we didn't expect it."

She went on to add, "You know, that surprise evolves into something just really cool and important, and that is the realization that she's our daughter. So, I would say, to all of those parents out there, and all the folks, by the way, millions of folks still in our country who say they've never met a transgender or non-binary young person, I would say this ... these children are here and they are wonderful. All it takes is love."


For 'transgender day of visibility,' ABC news featured a mother who said her "assigned male at birth" child started to communicate being transgender "at the earliest moment that she actually had words and language"pic.twitter.com/kWcNZruBEN
— Washington Free Beacon (@Washington Free Beacon) 1648753250

The "millions of folks" on Twitter were not convinced. More than one brought up Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as "a mental illness in which a person acts as if an individual he or she is caring for has a physical or mental illness when the person is not really sick."

Mom wanted to buy dresses and bows after all those boys. It\u2019s that simple.
— i drink and i know things (@i drink and i know things) 1648753516


this mother has serious problems
— SarahConnor2022 (@SarahConnor2022) 1648763567
The ones I feel bad about are those that experiment, wear dresses, play with 'boy toys', etc, and usually go back to their gender. These days parents and/or teachers latch on and all but forbid them from going back. I was a 'boy' for a few weeks and got tired of it.
— Sailor Skuld (@Sailor Skuld) 1648772691


groomer
— NonConform (@NonConform) 1648763200


Nope, not a coincidence at allpic.twitter.com/ogvVQk8bI8
— biglezreturns (@biglezreturns) 1648766098


Mostly moms do this. Strange.
— Freder Kamen (@Freder Kamen) 1648778649



Thats exactly what this is. These moms are sick and need to be jailed. I wonder how many kids are going to come out in 10 years to talk about mental abuse from parents?
— Electric Girl (@Electric Girl) 1648763126


pic.twitter.com/Vt2VMjxe38
— TearsofLeBron (@TearsofLeBron) 1648770620

Biden administration set to ban imports of Russian oil and gas



The Biden administration plans to ban imports of oil and natural gas from Russia as soon as Tuesday.

Two people reportedly with knowledge of the matter told the Washington Post that President Joe Biden intends to punish Russia for invading Ukraine by implementing an import ban.

Biden is scheduled to speak Tuesday morning and announce “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine.”

These new sanctions will ban imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal, Markets Insider reported.

The administration’s decision to ban these products came after lengthy discussions with European allies. However, at this time, those European nations are not joining the United States in banning Russian energy imports with the exception of the United Kingdom, per Politico.

Western nations have been particularly hesitant to stop importing oil from Russia since Russia provides them with a substantial amount of their energy. The European Union, for instance, gets around 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Russia accounts for roughly 12% of global oil production.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that a Western ban on Russian oil would yield “catastrophic consequences” for the global market and cause oil prices to surge beyond $300 a barrel.

Oil prices were already reaching historic highs before the White House considered barring the import of Russian energy.

Last week, crude oil futures listed prices at more than $113 per barrel. This is the highest that oil has traded since 2011.

And for the first time since 2008, the average price of gas in the U.S. is over $4 a gallon. In some states, like California, gas is well over $5 a gallon.

Despite the skyrocketing costs of energy consumption, the Biden administration is adamantly opposed to increasing domestic oil production.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued that instead of increasing domestic production, the U.S. should pivot away from fossil fuels altogether.

“It’s a reminder that real energy security comes from reducing our dependence on fossil fuels," Psaki said. "Domestic production has not insulated us from the price volatility of fossil fuels or the whims of those who control them such as President Putin. Americans know that."

The Biden administration has even floated the possibility of buying oil from countries that are openly hostile to the United States, like Iran and Venezuela, instead of increasing domestic oil production.

Senior American officials are even meeting with representatives of the Maduro regime in Venezuela to discuss the possibility of purchasing oil from the Venezuelan reserves.