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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."
Good! Maybe one the shit blows up they can replace the 50 year old hardware that's been causing brownouts in California since the early 80s.
Worried? Build more capacity then. It's not like your customers have been or will be getting all that electricity for free (or even cheap in some cases).
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
often designed to handle 12,000 watts? Hogwash. That's 50 amp service (in North America, where homes are almost always supplied at 240VAC). Most new homes in North America receives at minimum 200 amp service. Even my rural 1956 rancher has 70 amp service.
And this is a single home. Most transformers supply several houses. If there are any transformers rated at 12KW, they are very few and far between, and probably service locations that aren't likely to have electric cars anyhow.
... And apparently we are again not ready for it. Electric cars were common decades ago, and the electric service did not collapse. Now we have two large auto manufacturers debuting cars that can be charged at home - even though few people will be able to afford the entire setup right now - and for some reason the power companies are proclaiming that the sky is falling. Hell the power companies have a solid business model right now, as few people are in a position to maintain their lifestyles without the electricity they currently pay for. So the problem for the electric companies then is what, again?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Assuming the cars charge with 220v, this represents 15 amperes, 30 amperes and around 75 amperes. Most houses will have a 15 amp circuit available - probably you have some appliance plugged into it. Not all that many will have an extra 30 amp circuit, and none have a 75 amp circuit anywhere.
As far as the worries of the power companies: if the greens were serious, they would get behind this. Of course, if you want to reduce our usage of oil, we do need a few new power plants. Nuclear would be best, but even if you try to go full-on green, the eco-nuts will oppose them all. Don't bother asking what they would support - most of them apparently think that power magically comes out of the wall-socket, with no need for nasty things like power plants...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Most charging will be done at night, when electricity use (home and business) is otherwise low.
They had plenty of time to invest their profits into upgrading the power grid to anticipate future demand, and didn't. Those short-sighted sons of syphilitic bitches can go fuck themselves with a Saturn V rocket and no lube.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
"and it'll also keep electric cars in the bin where they should be - what we *really* need from an ecological point of view is a lithium shortage right now"
WTF? There's NO shortage of lithium whatsoever. Absolutely NONE.
You can mine it indefinitely from seawater for about $70 per kg. Ecological footprint of lithium mining is also trivial - it's mined from salt planes which are not known for their rich ecology.
I've already started converting my house to run on gasoline, thus leaving enough electricity for charging my car.
Mostly random stuff.
The power industry needs to pay attention to what ISPs are doing to solve similar problems.
1.) Spend upgrade money on creating new classes of service, rather than worrying about upgrading low profit transformers. The electricity for your lights, which you need right away, should be tagged differently than the electricity for your car, which can wait for delivery. Then, make more money by charging extra for uninterrupted "light electricity."
2.) Spend more money investigating people's power usage, and threatening to shut off everyone who uses an electric car. (The power companies do this already looking for marijuana grow-lights, so this should be cheap to implement.) Couple these "deep power inspection" with blockage measures so that electric cars only get a trickle charge. Cap people's usage so that the power to the "bad actors" gets shutoff when they exceed their cap.
3.) Implement a propaganda campaign castigating electric car users for actually using the electricity that they paid for.
4.) Demand public subsidies to upgrade the power system, and use the resulting money on items # 1 - 3 above.
With these simple measures, both our power system and our broadband Internet delivery can continue to slide to third-world status, and useful employment can be extended to armies of consultants.
From the article you linked:
"Before this week's power outages, California Governor Gray Davis's efforts to secure adequate supplies of electricity appeared to have stabilized the situation, at least until summer. The state is paying $45 million a day to subsidize energy purchases by the state's two major utility companiesSouthern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).
Recently the governor announced that some long-term contracts have been negotiated in the $70-80 per megawatt range."
The state spending $45 million a day hardly seems like DEregulation to me.
What they call "deregulation" of the power industry in California was actually a change in regulations, not the elimination of regulations. For instance, Wikipedia says:
"The California energy market allowed for energy companies to charge higher prices for electricity produced out-of-state"
"the Death Star group of scams played on the market rules which required the state to pay "congestion fees" to alleviate congestion on major power lines"
"in 2000, wholesale prices were deregulated, but retail prices were regulated for the incumbents as part of a deal with the regulator, allowing the incumbent utilities to recover the cost of assets that would be stranded as a result of greater competition, based on the expectation that "frozen" rates would remain higher than wholesale prices".
"By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation. In February 2001, California governor Gray Davis stated, "Believe me, if I wanted to raise rates I could have solved this problem in 20 minutes."
That's over-regulation, not deregulation. Deregulation would be letting anyone produce, transmit, and sell electricity at any price the consumers would pay.