A Yellowknife man bought a fully electric truck, expecting to install the 80 amp Level 2 charger it came with at his home. Then he found out he’d need to pay $12,000 to upgrade a transformer in his neighbourhood to make it work.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Northland Utilities told him he’d have to pay $12,000 to upgrade the transformer in his neighbourhood as well.

      He can be forgiven for not asking if he would have to upgrade his grid

      • sik0fewl@kbin.socialOP
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        6 months ago

        It’s hard to imagine Canada being fully electric by 2035 if the consumers need to upgrade the grids themselves. I’m definitely gonna wait for my neighbour to buy one first!

        • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          We don’t need to upgrade the grid ourselves, we need to push the government to force these companies that make astronomical amounts of money off of us to upgrade their network. There’s no reason why they need to have even a single drop of profit flow out to investors if they can’t modernize their grid.

          Maybe we just need to set a deadline for grid upgrades or they get nationalized.

          • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            No, no. I’m ok with us uograding the grid ourselves.

            Re-nationalize the power companies.

      • baconisaveg@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        I’m sure the dealership that sold him the truck didn’t bother to make sure it would work either.

      • Oderus@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        He clearly didn’t do his research and now he’s bitching about paying to make it work.

        I do find it unrealistic to pay to upgrade a transformer. That’s the utility’s job ffs.

        At least he can use a regular outlet until then but he should have asked more questions before buying an expensive electric truck.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Like how we ask pointed questions about the airplane we’re about to fly on instead of just assuming some level of competence, maintenance and capacity improvements and safety.

      Hey, when you were taking the course and attending the meetings describing everything you may ever need to know about your power grid so you could ask all these questions, did they serve lunch? Was it hard to schedule with the similar courses and meetings with the water company? Mine were so hard to get scheduled, but I think they just didn’t have enough people to present the infrastructure and code compliance docs that space just seemed tight.

      • archengel@nichenerdery.duckdns.org
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        6 months ago

        Lol, that must have been after the courses describing all the laws in my country, how to pay taxes, and general adulting - which somehow I missed. As a kid I thought that might be how that worked, but it turns out there is too and you have to go out of your way to learn some of those things.