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Electric Cars Won't Strain the Power Grid

Posted by kdawson on from the plug-it-in-don't-worry-be-happy dept.

thecarchik writes "Last week's heat wave prompted another eruption of that perennial question: Won't electric cars that recharge from grid power overload the nation's electricity system? The short answer is no. A comprehensive and wide-ranging two-volume study from 2007, Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles, looked at the impact of plug-in vehicles on the US electrical grid. It also analyzed the 'wells-to-wheels' carbon emissions of plug-ins versus gasoline cars. The load of one plug-in recharging (about 2 kilowatts) is roughly the same as that of four or five plasma television sets. Plasma TVs hardly brought worries about grid crashes."

2 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. No problem, long as they charge at night by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the electric cars go home and charge at night, no, they won't strain the grid. Power is overproduced at night (you actually can't spin down the generators all the way, so they produce power even if nobody wants it.)
    If they decide to charge during the day (for example, if people charge them at work), it could strain the grid. Particularly if they charge during hot summer afternoons.
    Unless a significant part of the grid goes to solar, which produces the highest power during the daytime at summer, of course.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  2. Re:Is this future tense? by copponex · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout

    Though the term did not enter popular use in the U.S. until the California electricity crisis of the early 2000s, outages had indeed occurred previously. The outages were almost always triggered by unusually hot temperatures during the summer, which causes a surge in demand due to heavy use of air conditioning. However, in 2004, taped conversations of Enron traders became public showing that traders were purposely manipulating the supply of electricity, in order to raise energy prices.

    The DoE has stated that most of the Eastern Seaboard could support the energy requirements of every single car used for commuting today, without any changes to transmission or power production, as long as the cars are charged at night.

    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html