Will Electric Cars Overload Local Grids?

1) Most domestic charging will be done at night, when the grid is at its lowest demand.

2) Electric cars are so scarce that there is no reason for utility companies to pump billions of dollars on speculative adventures. Investors and businesses in electric cars are hoping the public buys in, but the technology is like LED light bulbs; really cool, but totally unaffordable.

Actually, it is worse. To really get consumer buy-in the price of the car needs to compete with cars selling $10,000 to $15,000 and have a driving range of hundreds of miles between charging. People generally buy one car that does day to day as well as vacation trips, so range is an important consideration just as price is. Mass acceptance of electric vehicles is many years away.

In addition to that, who among us wants to pay a higher electric bill just so a few percentage of the population can charge their cars during the day? It will be a hard sell to beef up an infrastructure that no one really knows if we will need it.

3) As battery technology improves there will be little reason to recharge during the day on peak hours, so again, the recharging cycle takes place at night.

4) The grid is not the rate limiting step for selling electric cars. Price and battery range are the single most stumbling block to market acceptance. Potential buyers do not even think about pole pigs on telephone poles.

I just don't see this as an issue right now or even in the foreseeable future.

I was thinking of one of those pink dunking birds mounted on the roof, but I guess it would interfere with the solar panels.

You can mount it in front of the radiator

I have recommended to people sinking in a swamp to pull at their hair as hard as they can not to go under. Not that I ever watched the result but going by the screams my recommendations must have failed.

What a shame, Ky.

In fact I applied for a UK Patent in 1980,s.Before me several others have applied for similar systems.

I made these so that I can recharge my mobile phone in strong winds in a marine application. (Connectors not shown). I hope it collides with your 30 year old patent and keeps my attorneys happy. Patents are for suckers and mean nothing in the real world.

They also work when standing on ones head, just another application.

Innovative ideas should be welcome

Here in Aus, Toyota Australia is joining a world wide qualification of plug-in hybrid vehicles. The test cars are modified Prius hybrids. "The trial will be based on Toyota's petrol-electric Prius equipped with lithium-ion batteries which can be charged using an external power source such as a 15-amp electric outlet. Toyota says using a 220V power source, recharging time is about 100 minutes."

We're fortunate that our standard power supply is 220-240vac.

The advantage of using Prius is that they can still be driven after the (plug-in) electric charge has been depleted.

Disclaimer:- I have nothing to do with Toyota - but I would accept one of their Prius ! - the I-tech model retails for about A$50,000 - or just under that amount in USD.

Different partial subject: we don't see many LED light fittings, but CFL's have been mandated for sale as replacements to 'ordinary' light bulbs.

The fossil fuels are going to end one day but on that day electricity will be avaliable because of the sun, wind and rivers (rain). Let us think of the future not the immidiate future alone. If we can develop a battery technology which has a high power density to mass ratio the future for all electric automobiles is bright.

I wonder who came up with the half a house value. Our electric car (a NICE Mega City) is recharged using a standard 13 amp plug adaptor. It needs 8 hrs overnight to fully charge. I suspect my normal nightly usage (I often run the dishwasher / washing machine overnight) is similar and if during the evening I have the oven, stereo (I have components so thats three power users) etc etc etc is considerably more than the power used in recharging the car.

My guess less than 1/5 of a house. And as the take up is tiny I dont see any need any time soon for additional indrastructure

As was made above its at night the time of min usage we are doing the power companis a favour by bringing up the night load to make the power generation more efficient

If there is a load challenge to local transformers (I would like to see the facts that support this notion); time share technology already exists for power companies to control peak demand (i.e. electric water heater demand control).

The video covers charging stations; a much different problem than neighborhood transformers. This approach suggests higher current fast charging. If this is a problem, solutions include energy storage cells at gas stations (cells are trickle charged at night).

Other approaches include solar energy (again charge storage cells at house during the day, cells are then used to charge vehicle at night).

What's THE solution?

1) get the facts on charge demand (1/2 house?)

2) understand concepts of operation (charge at home or charge along the way); trade studies to include (capacity versus storage medium size, weight and power). Perhaps an around town mode versus a long trip mode (i.e. different density batteries for different modes).

After some 20 years of this "idiocy" - I find the question predictable.

Although to anyone actually interested in saving the biosphere, as mankind needs it, would be understandably astounded at the "grid" tunnel vision it is based in.

If you use fossil, at it's pathetic conversion rates, to charge your transport, the step efficiency drops from around 30% for 'petroleum step efficiency', to around 14% for 'coal step efficiency' minus battery efficiency, so "system efficiency" around 7%.

If you use PV to charge your battery-powered transport, the system efficiency is closer to 50%.

Or what the implied understanding behind this "OP question" says is; "we are truly dead".

What's the Solution?

Though by them - not that.

Well it is not about energy efficiency - it's about energy density!

Current technology in batteries lose big time compared to gasoline.

Don't believe it? If you think about it, that is why 120 pounds of gasoline (about 20 gallons) can propel you 400 miles in a car and 386 pounds of battery in a Chevy Volt only gets you 40 miles.

You may be able to drive cheaper using electric (if you ignore vehicle cost), but pound for pound you can go 32 times further using gasoline.

Why are you telling me this?

Hey fossil fuel is great - took millions of years and vast energy to get that density.

Just look at what we get out of coal, ignoring the energy it took to create it, it's a fantastically dense fuel. Some is near pure carbon.

Unfortunately man can't affordability 'renew it' because the overall process from solar through photosynthesis to your power point is around 0.05% recovery of Watts input - and no one would invest in such a low energy density massive concentration infrastructure/process.

Now let's see 20 gallons, 400 miles - so 20 mpg - just need coup-la hundred pounds of engine to break it down to plant food and in a few million years, given some free teraforming, we can do the recharge.

Well Chevy Volt sounds like State of the Fart - more coal for less miles - but what if you used PV to charge and some on the run?

Oh

University of Michigan wins American Solar Challenge

26 June, 2010: Finishing more than two hours ahead of its nearest competitor, the University of Michigan Solar Car Team has won the American Solar Challenge for a third consecutive North American title.

The week-long, biennial 1,100-mile competition for solar-powered vehicles started in Broken Arrow, Okla., on June 20 and ended in Naperville, Ill., on Saturday, June 26. The U-M car was the first of 13 to cross the finish line at around 2 p.m. ET, for a final time of 28 hours, 14 minutes and 44 seconds.

Um, nearly 3 times the range, average speed seems to be near 40 mph - Wonder what that is in mpg or battery lbs

It's not like no one's got the smarts.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Because my point is what sells cars (electric versus gas or diesel) is not efficiency, it's range.

Few want to buy a car limited to 40 miles per charge when they can buy an equivalent in luxury and size for less initial cash layout and goes 10 times or further between refueling.

The solar challenge is as it says a 'solar challenge'. We have a very similar race here in Aus [been going 10 years +]. BUT if I'm correct, the vehicles don't run at night; true they do get up to 100kph + [67mph] on full solar days. As yet none of the competitors have built a multi-seat vehicle [probably nothing in the rules about it]. Current commercially built EV's are short ranged, but then the manufacturers claim MOST driving is done within 40 miles of 'home'! So as other posters say - which I agree with, 'it's about the range'. I would expect that when re-charge stations are built, they will source some of their energy needs from renewable sources including PV.

Why do people suppose the problem will go away by using PV? They don't work at night, and using them to charge batteries to then charge vehicle batteries is so inefficient and expensive that only a politician, spending other people's money, could advocate it.

If PVs are so good, why are they not replacing fossil fuels for powering the grid?

Some time ago, I was researchig PVs for use on the moon, to beam power back to Earth. The proposal was to build a PV factory on the moon and then use PVs to power the factory which would make the many square miles of PVs needed. It would have taken 18 years for the initial batch of imported PVs to produce enough electricity to reproduce themselves, so it would have taken hundreds of years to have a viable space-power system. Even if production processes have advanced to the point where it only takes, say, 10 years to make as much electricity as it took to make the PV in the first place, and PVs don't last forever, will it ever be practical to rely on PV generated electricity?

This is one of those subjects where many think themselves expert, because they know a little. Use power as your metric: a typical battery pack is less than 40 kwh. Your electric dryer is 6 kw. You'd be running its equivalent for about seven hours. Most of the electrical NEIGHBORHOOD grids, especially transformers, were sized for greater consumption than is used today by the more efficient appliances and lighting. Most homes have at least a 200 amp panel, at 220v, which can be used at 25% load, or fifty amps, giving 10 kw available. Thus, a 40 kwh battery pack, even at 80% efficiency, can be charged in five hours. Smart meters could be configured to sum and control the local load (they're interconnected to give greater data transmission reliability, like the internet). This could be a mandatory option, only turning on the high output charger when the LOCAL grid is ready for it. The macro grid will change as necessary. There will be plenty of lead time, greater local PV, smart load tripping, etc. EV cars will become more efficient, range increase, etc. I'd just carry my 2 kw Honda generator if I was worried. I suspect an onboard generator would be available pretty quick if there was a market. In sum, this worry is phony, generated by the coal and oil industry to scare people away from electric vehicles.

I don't think you have to scare people away from electric vehicles. Simple economics will do that very well.

In no way are electric vehicles economical when you consider the large upfront cost.

If economy is your goal, go buy a nice used Toyota or Honda for $2,000 and you will have $28,000 left over to buy gas compared to the cost of the Volt.

I know Ur just doing this to bait me, 'cause you are way better at 'true comparisons' than that, and you know perfectly well it's 'new car' comparison - or soon you've got no "nice 2nd hand" ones either.

You also know it's finite fossil verses the big 'very safe' (un-finite in Earths life terms) reactor in the sky.

Meaning the full transport infrastructure has to be revised to capture, store and use that.

Not 'expanded' to 'fall back' on the cheaper more plentiful - but still finite fossil - coal - as petrochemical prices soar, as will LPG and similar "not from recycled waste" fuels.

You also know that doing this 'electric car development' needs sales, to earn, to develop the technology and the fossil independent infrastructure.

You also know the first motorists were limited in range by the availability of refueling points, for what was by comparison their "super gas guzzlers" (that cost 1 to 5 years wages).

And you also know you are being very naughty by continually exampling perhaps the least competent design in the market.

The real issue is that electric cars would have been great as an urban alternative if the same people who had bumper stickers on their cars in 1970 that said "split wood, not atoms" had been visionary enough to listen to engineers who told them they were destroying the exact nuclear industry that would have made their children's electric cars a viable alternative. Unfortunately it's the same ignorant people who can't get their heads around the fact that when they plug in their Chevy Volt tons of coal get hoppered into the power station up at Four Corners and the Navajos down wind get a nose full of the smoke from their "zero carbon" EV.

Having read the question and the answers, I will answer the actucal question first - Only if non environmentalist buy the cars, or in short lazy b____ds. Solar power easilly recharges electric cars, so if not by common sense then by having manufacturers required to provide them as part of the car package (not some grid connect rubbish either where the energy companies get the power and the money)

Problem solved, no grid use at all.

The truth of the matter is the real Buisness men an women give discounts in prices when their volumes increase as cost go down, tyrannts and scumbags like energy companies put prices up and call it supply and demand.

Go off grid - give them nothing

Good answer, but It may be better to rely on natural gas to run generators that will charge your vehicles. Of course other alternatives are available too! The point is that we need not rely on the grid at all. Also, the grid is wasteful through line loss, especially to serve rural areas. Competing with the grid is also one way to keep prices down. That includes petrol prices.

Natural gas can include biomass that we can make ourselves, with a variety of waste materials, peat, garbage, sewage, wood waste etc.