alt Hacker News> This will be a logistical challenge for the grid but absolutely fantastic for BYD owners in particular.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
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> batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak"
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
Tesla often does this too.
One of the wonders of vertical integration.