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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."
Are we really solving global warming by transferring vehicular energy consumption to the powergrid? All we are doing is moving the emissions from the tailpipe of a car to the smokestack of a powerplant. Where concentrated pollutants can have a far more devastating effect on a smaller regional area. A smaller regional area that is, For as long as demand remains relatively low. What's the efficiency of producing electricity to charge cars and the amount of Co2 expelled by the powerplant vs smaller as needed usage?
Remember that power generation isn't produced exactly as needed. Engineers guesstimate what the peak usage is going to be and produce power up to that point. Charging cars will make the changes in requirements even more random and extreme. Regardless if all available power is used or not those generators will be turning at whatever rpm it is they will turn, to produce x amount of power, even if y is only being used at the time. This is waste Co2, Wasted fuel, Time on the generators, payroll for the engineers to run and maintain, etc, etc, etc..
I had to leave California, because it was too expensive to live anywhere near the jobs. My power bill was a grand a month in Morgan Hill Ca, it was $400 a month in any other state ( Tested Florida, and now Texas ) We won't go back unless we make 6 digits or more. And we expect that's just to break even.
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