Slashdot Mirror
First Electric Cars Have Power Industry Worried
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Fahey writes for AP that as the first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, the power industry faces a huge growth opportunity, with SoCal Edison expecting to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015 and California setting a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020. But utility executives are worried that the difficulty of keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers — and their neighbors — could slow the growth of this industry because it's inevitable that electric utilities will suffer some difficulties early on. 'We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now,' says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America. When plugged into a home charging station the first Leafs and Volts will draw 3,300 Watts and take about 8 hours to deliver a full charge, but both carmakers may soon boost that to 6,600 Watts. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 Watts. That means that adding an electric vehicle or two to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses. The problem is that transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about 12,000 watts so the extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block."
Part of the green enviromentalist mentality is to whine and rant about the horrible long-term unsustainbility of everything while entirely ignoring the long term and mass market viability of their own propaganda.
When it all collapse and catch fire, they'll blame big oil for sabotaging it and push some new flavour of disaster.
No where in the original article or any of the links is the number 12kW mentioned. At Slashdot, don't assume the article synopsis has anything to do with the actual content. I would assume most modern houses could handle an additional dedicated 220V/20A circuit for the slow charge, but don't underestimate the hassle of plugging in the car every night. Ooops, forgot to plug-in last night, now I can't make it to work this morning.
And a Single well run NUCLEAR plant is better than 5000 Coal plants.
Yet we still have large numbers of idiots running around fighting against building new nuclear power plants.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
are you a republican by chance? The philosophy of "it didn't happen to me so it must not be happening" seems to be very common among repubs. I didn't lose MY house, so people aren't losing houses... I didn't lose MY job so job loss is a liberal lie...apologies if you are not republican...
on topic... it's sad that SOP for many industries these days is to ignore reality, then beg for public money when ignoring reality bites you in the ass.