Australia Developing Massive Electric Vehicle Grid

blairerickson writes "A US firm Thursday unveiled plans to build a massive one-billion-dollar charging network to power electric cars in Australia as it seeks cleaner and cheaper options to petrol. Better Place, which has built plug-in stations for electric vehicles in Israel and Denmark, has joined forces with Australian power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital to create an Australian network. Under the plan, the three cities will each have a network of between 200,000 and 250,000 charge stations by 2012 where drivers can plug in and power up their electric cars. The points would probably be at homes and businesses, car parks and shopping centres. In addition, 150 switch stations will be built in each city and on major freeways, where electric batteries can be automatically replaced in drive-in stations similar to a car wash." I hope they're talking to the car companies about the necessary standardization it would take to make this work, too.

Comments

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[erikina]

Indeed. The summer air condition puts too much strain on the system. It's not uncommon for the hottest days to be without power (at least where I live in Brisbane)

Shai Agassi

[PCM2]

This is the electric-car effort spearheaded by Shai Agassi, formerly of SAP. He was profiled in Wired a couple of issues back.

The gist of it is that the cars are all-electric (not hybrid), the energy companies sell the power, and the cars are basically free (or close to it). To get around the runtime problems of current electric cars, he envisions filling stations where you pull up in your electric car and instead of waiting for your battery to fully charge, the company swaps out your drained batter with a brand-new, prefilled one, and off you go. This is possible because they own the batteries anyway.

In short, the idea is to move away from the Gillette razor model for cars, toward the cell phone model.

Re:Shai Agassi

[mcrbids]

The gist of it is that the cars are all-electric (not hybrid), the energy companies sell the power, and the cars are basically free (or close to it). To get around the runtime problems of current electric cars, he envisions filling stations where you pull up in your electric car and instead of waiting for your battery to fully charge, the company swaps out your drained batter with a brand-new, prefilled one, and off you go. This is possible because they own the batteries anyway.

This is perhaps the "elevator pitch" but in reality there is much, much more to it than just this.

1) Other comments have posted about rolling power outages - these electric cars will help *prevent* rolling power outages! The truth is that the power grid is massively overbuilt. There is about 25% of the grid built to handle perhaps 12 hours of usage per year - the dreaded mid-summer air conditioning spike. These cars "talk" to the grid. They charge when power is plentiful (eg: at night) and can even backfeed into the grid if there's a shortage. The result is that they make better, more consistent, and more even use of the grid 24x7, while also providing embedded resiliency.

2) The cars are rented. You pay for usage. Yeah, much like the cell phone model. But because of this, you don't have to worry about batteries, you don't have to worry about mechanic bills, and the cost for usage (per mile) is less than your existing car, anyway. Since nearly all cars are either financed or leased nowadays, anyway, the effect on the consumer is negligible. Day-to-day, you wouldn't notice the difference!

3) The reason why electric cars bomb is the dreaded long trip. Even with 250 or so miles per charge, roughly equivalent to most cars' "full tank" range, the electric cars to date are utter fail for trips that are farther. You have to find a place to charge. You have to wait 4-8 hours. Etc. But with these electric cars, you can swap batteries in less time than it would take to fill the tank on your existing car. The problem of replacing batteries just.... goes away.

I'm not just sold on this plan. I'm sold and sold and sold. I wish California would jump on board - I'd finally have a good reason to replace my aging (but perfectly operational) 10 year old 200,000 mile Saturn SL2!

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[kaos07]

Sigh, from the article:

"AGL will power the system with renewable energy."

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[Firrenzi]

In Brisbane:

This is why ripple controllers are being installed on air conditioners by Energex to alleviate the transformer load. It will be interesting to see what effect turning off an airconditioner for 15 minutes will make on the network.

  Things have changed since 2004 from a management perspective. It used to be cost cut as much as possible. Now tranny upgrades are occurring as a preventative maintenance meausre. If a maximum demand indicator gets close to the limit, it gets upgraded, not left to the last minute when it falls over. Of course spending (or not spending) on the network can be a political thing aswell. Having said that the network is still under significant load during summer. Hopefully the firies won't be hosing down pole transformers to keep them cool this summer. At least it's not the Joe Bjelke-Peterson days that it used to be.

You'd need a LOT more plugs than gas pumps.

[plasmacutter]

Because of the time required to charge vehicles, we'd need a cord station at pretty much every parking space everywhere for widespread use of pure electrics to be tenable.
(even if we implemented amazing recharge rates through capacitors, we wouldn't be able to utilize them because, without a completely separate, ultra-capacity utility network, the grid would overload)

How expensive is this per capita vs a carbon trapping device from the government for everyone and a massive fuel subsidy program?

In the long term they're financially better off rolling out a complete rebuild of the power grid to support "burst charging" of ultra-capacitors so cars can be charged in a couple minutes at "stations", the same way we do now with gas.

Re:I'd prefer a water-powered car!

[Carbon016]

The notion of a "water-powered car" is stupid conspiracy theory touted by those who never took a introductory chemistry course because electrolysis consumes energy. It might be novel (which is its only real value) but inside all those cars are batteries which are doing electrolysis and then the resulting mixture is burned, which is vastly less efficient than using that power to drive the car or using hydrogen created by wind or solar.

Hydrogen is not an energy source.

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[Merls the Sneaky]

Maybe he/she did but the anti-nuclear zealot mob is unstoppable.

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is mute

Moot.

Re:Proprietary networks are bad

[notknown86]

Hey, I'm sure that Macquarie (the "millionaires factory") has only noble intentions... for that matter, the author of this article (money.cnn.com/2007/09/17/news/international/macquarie_infrastructure_funds.fortune/index.htm) don't get much right, either...
If you don't note the sarcasm... google.

Re:Where are they getting the power?

[Vexar]

Nuclear power plants have an ROI timeline, unburdened by government perks, of about 18 months. Furthermore, the power they generate can be slightly cheaper than coal, per kilowatt-hour, depending on how cheap the coal is in the area. Newer reactor designs (Gen IV) have higher operational efficiencies, which mean cheaper power than ever. Meanwhile, newer coal plants require greater environmental tooling, and so they are consequently less efficient and more expensive. Go Australia! Show America how to do things, like you did with the SCRAM engine!