Posted on 11/28/2010 5:55:32 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
Imagine: It’s Friday evening, and the sun is down. You are rolling home in your environmentally responsible EV after an honest day’s work, emitting exactly zero greenhouse gases. You give a wave to your likewise electrified neighbor who’s bringing home the bacon to wife and family. You put the car in the garage and hook it up to the charger that nice electrician had installed. You shout “daddy’s home!” Suddenly, all hell breaks loose.
A huge fireball shoots into the sky as the transformer on the pole out on the street explodes. Down at the corner, another explosion. A block down, a substation throws angry arcs into the night, then goes up in flames.
Suddenly, it is pitch dark and dead silent. Minutes later, the silence is pierced by the sound of sirens …
This is the nightmare scenario that flashes through the heads and across the spreadsheets of managers at the nation’s electric utilities. While some of them already draw hockey stick graphs and count the money they will make from all those electric cars that will hit the road soon, others are very, very worried.
“Electric vehicles have the potential to completely transform our business,” says David Owens, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group. He’s right. It could blow it up.
Not since air conditioning spread across the country was the power industry faced with such a potential surge in consumption. We all know what can happen on a hot evening when everybody comes home and turns on the A/C. This is nothing compared to what that Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt can do to the circuitry.
“Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home or a neighborhood,” explains Associated Press, here via The Toledo Blade.
The drivers of any market are fear and greed. So much for the fear.
Now for the greed part: Last year, Americans spent $325 billion on gasoline. Your friendly utility company would like to have a slice of that monster pie.
So as you are reading this, power companies are scratching their heads and are sifting through what little data there is to divine where the first pockets of EVs are most likely to appear. That’s where they will put in beefier equipment.
Utilities think they have enough plants and equipment to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars. The problem is in the grid. And in a phenomenon long known as keeping up with the Joneses, or what car makers and utilities now call “clustering.”
Thick pockets of EVs could suddenly crop up where
Generous subsidies are offered by states and localities The weather is mild, batteries perform better in warmer climes, but A/C cuts down on range in really hot ones High-income and environmentally conscious commuters live And if your electric company doesn’t do something now, this is where the transformers will go kaboom.
California cities including Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, and Monrovia could suddenly have several vehicles on a block.
Down South, Progress Energy Inc. plans for clusters in Raleigh, Cary, and Asheville, N.C., and around Orlando and Tampa, Fla.
Duke Energy is expecting the same in Charlotte and Indianapolis. The entire territory of Texas’ Austin Energy is expected to be an electric-vehicle hot spot.
But look at the bright side: “Sorry, can’t come to work today. We had rolling brownouts all night, and my charger was taken off the grid remotely. Better luck tomorrow, boss!”
The absolutely most nightmarish scenario? Nobody buys the EVs and the hefty equipment has been put in for nothing. You’ll read it in your electric bill, one way or the other.
I don’t expect a large demand for EV’s until battery technology and life have a quantum leap over what’s available today and until pricing is competitive with GPVs.
We have all charged the batteries on our vehicles at one time or another and some of us have a golf cart we charge, We plug them in and hey don’t create a large draw on the grid. In fact not much more than a light bulb, because they charge slowly.
Will these electric vehicles create a tremendous draw??
If they do then they are going to be really expensive to operate and gasoline will probably be cheaper than the electric bill.
Unintended consequences, or the reason enviroweenies shouldn’t make policy.
Yes, more draw than just charging your 12v battery in your car.
Click keyword EFV, or recharging, for more info.
As long as gasoline remains under $3.00 a gallon, people won’t switch. But at that price point, an EV becomes financially viable.
To a liberal all the world is static. Nothing is connected to anything else.
I didn't realize those electric cars were going to be such a drain on the power grids. Wow, sure looks like we have another ethanol on our hands.
I grew up with 25 cycle electricity, crank (Magnito) phones, no TV, no AC, and sleeping porches. We technology collapses, I won’t like it but will be physiologically better equipped to handle it - at least better than my techno dependent daughter and her family. My wife, who grew up without home electricity, will do better than I.
We all should start in with a "Build Nuke Power Plants NOW campaign" And we can use the "Its for all the electric Cars that America will be driving..." Argument!
Oh really. I suggest you take a look at your electric meter’s spinning disk when you turn on your golf cart’s charger. I have, and my meter spins at least three times as fast. It looks only a bit slower than when my two 4 ton AC units kick in during the summer. There are 6 eight volt batteries in that golf cart, all being charged at the same time.
The energy equivalent to all the gas not burned in the EV's will have to come off the grid. One or two cars on a block, probably OK. If every house has 2 cars, that is a whole lot of energy.
At least the extra load would be largely at night, not during peak hours. But expect your power bill to increase to pay for the new power plants/lines to handle the load.
It is not right that those of us who are already subsidizing the purchases of these things are also being forced to pay more for electricity to help charge them as well.
I disagree.
Instead, let all the neighborhoods go dark where these rubes own these gadgets.
Something else that few people have thought about is recycling 600 pound batteries made from toxic metals. If people are concerned about breaking a 10 watt CFC light bulb, wait until a 600 pound battery is scattered all over the pavement in an automobile accident.
When power grids start blowing all over the place due to EV’s look for the general populace to turn hostile and make the owner’s lives hell.
Also, a car is a pretty large, massive object, requiring a lot more power than a cell phone. How many kWatts does a car require to travel 60 miles.
That will happen. The power companies and the local governments are looking for excuses to jack up the rates.
Earlier threads today will provide you an answer to your question -- and yes, one vehicle alone can more than double your instantaneous draw for an extended period of time. Depending on the car and charger (and other factors) it seems only 2 cars could blow out your pole transformer leaving you powerless until your utility gets a new higher-capacity transformer shipped out and installed.
Look on the bright side. Your utility bill will go down.
The only problem is that nobody is going to buy them now that the cat is out of the bag that they really don’t run on “free” electricity. The outrageous pricetags are another matter entirely.
I’m also curious to see some serious crash testing results. Exactly how durable is that battery when you T-bone it with an F-150 doing 60?? What happens when you run it head-on into a bridge abutment at the same speed??
Anyone want to invest in my natural gas powered generator home charging station business?
Greener than gasoline, cheaper than the grid, no taxes ... yet. 8~)
I’m ahead of T-Bone one this one.
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