Posted on 11/26/2010 5:04:26 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
ECOtality and Coulomb are the leaders in the emerging EV-charging market. They convinced the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) they were well-equipped to put a charging infrastructure in place quickly and gather important driving and charging data for the department about early EV users. In turn, the feds showered ECOtality with a $115 million grant to install, at no cost, around 15,000 charging stations in homes and public locations through the EV Project; Coulomb, meanwhile, got $37 million for a 4,600-charger program called ChargePoint America.
These aren't the only two companies making chargers. Nissan has partnered with AeroVironment to equip new Leaf buyers for $2,200, and GM hooked up with SPX Service Solutions, who will sell and install their charger for around the same price. And there are others. But why buy what you can get for free? If you have a garage or carport, with the EV Project and ChargePoint, free charging stations "should last through 2011, so it'll be a good year to buy a vehicle," Lowenthal said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Also, will someone watch the stations? Think of this, you go to work and plug-in your glorified golf cart. While you are at work, someone unplugs your car and uses the same plug to charge their car. You get to pay for someone else charging their car.
With the price of copper soaring, the plug and cable will be targets for thieves.
I will bet Bill Ayers has an investment in it. His father headed one of the power companies.
Your questions are spot on, but one of the things the utilities like about this is presence of a whole lot of battery capacity they might be able to draw on for the minutes-long periods between when "renewables" (solar and wind) drop down and they have to fire up some other generation, rather than keeping some of the latter spinning all the time.
Likely this would have to be done by contract with the car owner, for the promise of lower rates, and for periods short enough that the car owner never notices.
So, even more charge cycles for your battery. Will that not reduce their lifespan?
Well, of you work up the value chain to the source of energy used to charge EVs, then I’d say the biggest player is Peabody Energy (the largest privately owned coal company in the world).
Very true.
Probably several factors, based on what I've learned of large-scale commercial/industrial consumption:
- Kilowatt-hours consumed
- Peak kilowatts (fast-charging will hurt here)
- Power quality (the negative effect of your station on the local grid)
” Some 70% of electrical energy is lost in transmission, according to the DOE.”
You’re off by over an order-of-magnitude, dude.
Yes, but a savvy customer would see that that's factored into the rate reductions. Of course...
I agree. It’s not going to happen, but the power grid is totally incapable of handling the increased demand if we all quickly converted from gasoline to electricity and still put on the same number of miles. Smart grid and EVs are closely tied together in the minds of those behind the porkulus - by making it easier to manage demand from existing consumption (and pushing a share of it into off-peak hours), they hope to be able to accomodate a gradual transistion to EVs.
Power is power, and for every watt consumed something more than a watt will be needed to replace it (owing to battery and charger efficiency being less than 100%). There will be no free lunch.
Sounds much more complicated than spending five minutes to fill the tank of my car and going whenever and wherever I wish.
Dead on the money!
The key term to have in mind when you’re reading about EVs is: “Energy Density”. It’s a simple concept, just the amount of energy per unit of space or volume...think of dynamite vs. a D cell. It’s damn hard to beat the energy density we’re accustomed to by making a trip to the corner gas pump.
To drive the point home, take a look at this chart, and especially note the position of the Lithium Ion battery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg
And far closer to the efficiency of internal combustion engines, which is about 20-25%. The vast majority of the chemical energy of gasoline goes into waste heat.
Hm, Where did that 70% number come from... grrr... ah, found it (a more recent version of the chart I'd filed away several years ago). It includes conversion losses which are considerably larger.
No way the feds (or states) are going to allow you to charge with household electricity. There will be separate metering so as to apply the appropriate highway taxes.
True enough. That have to recover the loss of fuel tax revenue somehow.
They have to recover...
[which will charge the batteries on a Nissan Leaf to full power in 30 minutes. ]
How many cycles do you think they can pull that off before frying something?
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