Posted on 09/21/2022 11:21:13 AM PDT by citizen
In the scenario of 4 people driving EV's and charging them (I took 4 from "...a surburban family with mom, pop & children all driving EVs". Well, it's possible to charge them all at once at least with the power service I have, but I wouldn't recommend it. Especially not all of them using 240V chargers. I guess the 120V chargers would be enough to get Johnny and Jane to school and back, given that my 120V charger gives 6 miles for every hour charged, but charging at that slow a rate results in a horrible conversion loss going from AC to DC. So using 120V chargers too often adds to your power bill way more than what you get out of that power. That means you're left using 240V for almost all charging. And even that is also better when you set your EV to charge as fast as possible (mine about 9.5kW) instead of the lowers (about 5.2kW), again because the faster charge rate = higher efficiency in conversion from AC to DC, which means charge them at 9.5kW whenever possible.
If all 4 were to charge at 9.5kW at the same time, we're talking a total of 38kW just for charging. Can your panel handle it? Probably yes (100A service X 480V on 2 legs = 48kW). But that leaves only 10kW left for the rest of the house, which ain't much (my clothes dryer draws 6kW when running on high, and my old A/C unit would draw 4kW, then there's the oven, stove, and whatever else the family of 4 has turned on, and the incidentals we forget about like all the electric clocks and the internet equipment, etc. So no to charging all 4 EV's at once unless you drop the charge level lower and make it less efficient. Perhaps the best way is to charge them only 1 or 2 at a time. And you can do that unless all 4 family members each came home with a completely drained EV late at night and needed a full charge by 7 AM in the morning. EV's have scheduled charging to allow you to use off-peak hour rates. Each EV owners could schedule his EV to charge at times different from the others. To replenish the charge from a day of 30 miles of driving, my EV would take a hair over an hour to charge at the highest speed from my home charger.
As far as "...the insurance companies will note these systems and surely raise their rates accordingly." Not in my case. When my wife and I sold her old used car and decided to replace it with a new EV, her insurance went up only because we changed the coverage from liability only to full coverage, and because the replacement cost is higher (the EV cost more than a comparable ICE car). That's it. There's no EV surcharge added to either our car insurance or our homeowners insurance. (I did raise my home owners coverage to higher amount to account for replacement cost increasing both from property values going up anyway, and from the solar and EV equipment added to the house. That raised my premiums, but again, not solar rider or EV charger rider added.)
About Scenario 2: Yep. My kids are grown and moved out, before EV's became a thing. But given how often my kids offered everything in the pantry and the fridge to their friends I have no doubt they would have done the same for free EV charging. LOL You can pay a little extra for chargers that require passcodes (think apartment chargers). But I don't know much about them.
About upgrading the electrical capacity to a neighborhood if a lot of EV's are charged there: yup! That is definitely an issue.
Now imagine the problem at an apartment building...
*********
You’d have to have your own charging station...
Apt 102 parking/charging spot, etc. Towing
business would have a blast, steady work.
In larger cities that wouldn’t work with high
rise apartments, etc.
The wiring in your house will be fine. What's not up to the task, most likely, is your main service. Most older houses will have 100 amp panels (yes, some are larger, some are even smaller), but if you want to drive your car more than once a week, you'll want, at minimum, a 240 volt charger, which draws 50 amps. So, run new wiring to the location for your charger, and you're good to go, right? Well, not so fast. It's easier to use Watts to do the math, so 100Amp main panel, X 120 volts = 12,000 Watts. The Car charger at 50Ax240V = 12,000 Watts, which is the same as the entire panel that runs your lights, your air conditioner, your electric stove etc. etc. etc. Need to charge 2 cars simultaneously? Welll, there's another 50 amps gone. Yes, with service diversity you may well be able to add one car charger without having to add a new main panel, as long as you don't want to run your airconditioner and charge your Tesla at the same time, but bottom line is that wide adoption of at-home charging will require at least one new main panel.
The greenies are forced to grossly undertate the infrastructure costs of a rapid switch to electric cars, and they have to know this. Their real solution is both short term (hide the costs to achieve their political ends), and long term (an end to near-universal car ownership). The fact that this would force people back into relying on public transport is a feature, not a fault to these people.
“I have read in many places that super, fast charging cuts down on the overall life of the battery”
Yep....heard the same.
And then you get to buy that $12,000 replacement battery. WOOHOO!
Suddenly the peak grid drain time will start around 6 pm local time. As soon as people get home from work they will start charging their cars. Nearly every car in the area will be getting charged at the same time.
You drive home, plug in your car, then go into the house. It might be too much for the local grid. The only answer would be to stagger the houses permitted to use their home chargers, but how would they enforce that? Smart grid?
“Winston, it is 0200, you are now permitted to charge your car”
Right and most homes have 2-3 cars. So are going out at 2:00 am to move cars around? How about apartment/condo complex’s?
Thanks! And btw, are Teslas like Apple phones, where they require their own charging cable connection...or are all charging ports standardized?
I’m an old dog and don’t want to learn new tricks :) All that improvisation is for the youngsters.
You can’t escape the laws of physics.
10 gallons of gasoline ~==> 334 kWhr = 334000Whrs
pumping 10 gallons of gasoline requires ~3 min == 0.05hr
Transferring 10 gallons of gasoline equivalent electric energy in the same time will require a power supply to deliver 334000/0.05=6,680,000 Watts or 6.68MW.
Only about 20% of gasoline energy is converted to motion, so we only need to deliver 6.68MW *0.2 = 1.336MW for 3 minutes. OTOH, conversion of battery energy to motion is only about 90% efficient, so we really have to deliver 1.336MW / 0.9 =1.484MW.
At 440V, the connector cable will be handling 1.484/440 = 3374 Amps.
That should be interesting.
Alternatively, we can regain control of our government, and transfer energy into our vehicles by pumping liquid fuels.
Too bad you can’t just swap the battery out like you can with a cordless drill.
“To add a 220v circuit should not cost that much. A 40amp 220v curcuit would require 8/2 awg wire which is around $2/ft. The 40a breakers would be about $20/per( 2 needed ).”
P = V * I
A maxed out 220v circuit would provide 220 * 40 = 8,800 watts.
A 150Kwatt hr batteery would therefore requir 150,000 / 8,800 = 17 hours to charge.That’s not counting for line losses.
So you probably need two circuit breakers plus an AC to DC conditioned inverter.
Now add a second car for the wife, or two if you have a highs school kid.
Yup. EVs are free!!
“Suddenly the peak grid drain time will start around 6 pm local time. As soon as people get home from work they will start charging their cars. Nearly every car in the area will be getting charged at the same time.
You drive home, plug in your car, then go into the house.”
Take a large Texas city say Houston. Everybody gets in at 5:30-6PM, and plugs in EV. Maybe you have supper but for many it’s get back on the road for baseball, football, band practice etc. in 45-60 minutes. These trips are not always to the local ball park 2 miles away could easily be 20 miles for an away game. Going to be doing some fast food and maybe some shopping with the trip so maybe 50 miles total round trip would not be uncommon. So at about 8-9PM you have another surge in demand for power. You add in a August 100 degree day in Houston with 90% humidity till 11PM or so I don’t see how the existing grid handles that
Naw.... Two plug ins, #1 runs for x hours, shuts down
and #2 begins running. No telling what battery capabilities
will be in a few years. Hell one charge may get you 500 miles.
My understanding is that every manufacturer has its own plug. If you want to convert from one to another it costs a couple of hundred dollars. (What I’ve heard.) The people who build the charging stations may or may not be able to service your model. You’d have to bring your own plug converter and my guess is when you leave for lunch someone will steal it.
“If 25% of the auto fleet were electric and even if there were enough generating capacity to accommodate all the necessary recharging ( and there isn’t), the transmission distribution systems could not handle all the charging especially if it were done in the evening. “
Actually, there is.
“Just make sure you put the charging station outside”
I believe the colder it is, the longer it takes to charge.
This is where Starbucks has not caught on yet... the should place mega-Starbucks next to charging facilities. Not only do you have trapped customers, that can use a coffee. They happen to be the right type of people. So while Starbucks in inner-cities are shutting down, this is an area of a growth market.
This is where Starbucks has not caught on yet... the should place mega-Starbucks next to charging facilities. Not only do you have trapped customers, that can use a coffee. They happen to be the right type of people. So while Starbucks in inner-cities are shutting down, this is an area of a growth market.
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