Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 460303 times)

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Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1600 on: August 06, 2018, 05:57:08 pm »
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Unfortunately that means that the distribution network needs to be much beefier than it is now. That also requires a hefty investment.
Yes, I agree.

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The way I see it is that solar and wind are nice supplements but they can never become the primary energy source.
It’s true they can never fully replace fossil fuels. Nothing can. But they (along with hydro) are our best bet in easing the transition off of FF.

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When you add everything up then nuclear will be cheaper.
No, nuclear is more expensive now and will remain so. That is why it is slowly but surely dying out (see references I’ve previously posted in this thread). But we’ve covered this ground before  :horse:
« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 06:03:22 pm by mtdoc »
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1601 on: August 06, 2018, 06:00:06 pm »
The US is notorious for not investing in infrastructure.

Yes, sadly true. Signs of an empire in decline.
 
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Offline SeanB

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1602 on: August 06, 2018, 06:05:45 pm »
The US is notorious for not investing in infrastructure.

Yes, sadly true. Signs of an empire in decline.

Not the only place.......
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1603 on: August 06, 2018, 06:07:40 pm »
The US is notorious for not investing in infrastructure.

Yes, sadly true. Signs of an empire in decline.

That's right.  US citizens are known for not paying taxes and protesting when we do.  Instead of spending money on infrastructrure we have lots more spending money than you.

You folks could do the same.  But then again folks in Europe don't seem to spend money of infrastructre either.  Have you seen how many castels they have which are lying in ruin?   And many have been waiting to be fixed up are older then are country.  What's with that my European friends? 
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1604 on: August 06, 2018, 06:15:28 pm »
The US is notorious for not investing in infrastructure.

Yes, sadly true. Signs of an empire in decline.


You'r bashing us for empires in decline....  What about Portugal, Spain, French, Brittish, German and Nazi, Ottmam, Japanses, Hapsburg (okay, they was reaaly a House) Holy Roman and I'm sure I've missed many others empires.  We aren't even an empaire.  We are a demcratic republic.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1605 on: August 06, 2018, 06:20:57 pm »
The US is notorious for not investing in infrastructure.

Yes, sadly true. Signs of an empire in decline.

That's right.  US citizens are known for not paying taxes and protesting when we do.  Instead of spending money on infrastructrure we have lots more spending money than you.
True but it doesn't help long term planning. One of the potential problems I foresee in the US is that there is a very large group of people who are poor and remain poor. Their violence and disrespect of the law will grow.
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You folks could do the same.  But then again folks in Europe don't seem to spend money of infrastructre either.  Have you seen how many castels they have which are lying in ruin?   And many have been waiting to be fixed up are older then are country.  What's with that my European friends?
Castles are not critical infrastructure. BTW there are also modern castle ruins:


More serious: in most parts of Europe a lot of money is spend on keeping infrastructure in top notch condition. Reading this thread it occured to me that many people take infrastructure for granted without realising there are limits to it and it has been designed for a certain amount of traffic/load. Charging an EV from a single home in a street works without a problem. Charging an EV at every home suddenly shows the limitations to the infrastructure. Judging from recent news articles it seems that some people finally start to see how much money will need to be spend on the infrastructure alone to use EVs and switch to wind & solar for electricity. It is not just the solar panels and wind turbines but the whole chain in between needs to be altered radically which adds a huge amount of costs.

@mtdoc: if you factor in storage and rebuilding the distribution grid into the costs I'm not sure nuclear will be more expensive compared to wind & solar.

edit: typo
« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 10:21:55 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1606 on: August 06, 2018, 06:23:46 pm »
You want to compare privately owned out of use castles to day to day necessary infrastructures as bridges and roads, really?  :palm:
Have you ever been to Europe? The most historically important castles are open to the public as sorts of museums and they are financially doing fine and are being taken care of.
But many not so important castles and houses esp privately owned are deteriorating, but then we have so many.....
Other historically important sites can not be kept since nature is cruel, so for instance pompei and heracleon they stopped escavating since they are impossible to maintain. Perhaps in the future there are new conservation techniques.
 

Offline f4eru

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1607 on: August 07, 2018, 08:43:19 pm »
Charging an EV at every home suddenly shows the limitations to the infrastructure. Judging from recent news articles it seems that some people finally start to see how much money will need to be spend on the infrastructure alone to use EVs

Nope.
Charging EVs at home happens mostly at night, when the grid load is very low.
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IPL found that approximately 76% of the electricity used for charging occurred during
off-peak period
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The vast majority of in-home charging participants charged their vehicles overnight during off-peak periods.
Where offered, time-based rates were successful in encouraging greater off-peak charging.
https://www.smartgrid.gov/files/B3_revised_master-12-17-2014_report.pdf
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Scheduling electric cars recharging for the period of non-peak demand, a principle called valley filling, can save utilities millions of dollars by reducing their dependence on costly peaking plants, which are left standby and only run when the demand is high.

In fact, after coordinating home charging,the only thing that needs a big update is the generation capacity. it's about +15% if all the cars convert to pure EV (calculated for germany as an exemple). And the power grid companies are eager to get parts of this new market :)
switch to wind & solar for electricity
Yep, that's necessary. Very necessary.

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1608 on: August 07, 2018, 08:48:27 pm »
Charging an EV at every home suddenly shows the limitations to the infrastructure. Judging from recent news articles it seems that some people finally start to see how much money will need to be spend on the infrastructure alone to use EVs
Nope.
Charging EVs at home happens mostly at night, when the grid load is very low.
In your dreams. Just do the math. Charging EVs is like everyone turning on their washer, dryer and electric cooker at the same time. The grid towards the residential areas has not been designed for this kind of load. It litterally takes changing the wiring to the doorstep of each home. Who is going to pay for that?
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1609 on: August 07, 2018, 09:13:10 pm »
Charging an EV at every home suddenly shows the limitations to the infrastructure. Judging from recent news articles it seems that some people finally start to see how much money will need to be spend on the infrastructure alone to use EVs
Nope.
Charging EVs at home happens mostly at night, when the grid load is very low.
In your dreams. Just do the math. Charging EVs is like everyone turning on their washer, dryer and electric cooker at the same time. The grid towards the residential areas has not been designed for this kind of load. It litterally takes changing the wiring to the doorstep of each home. Who is going to pay for that?

You are absolutely correct on this one.  I have a Volt and can program charging start/stop times.  And I'm sure everyone else who has an plug-in EV will set their charging start time to be the exact same time as mine, when the electricity rates are lowest or at 2300.  Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.  Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs.  I would assume all other Volts would finish charging at about the same time.  Wonder what that would do to the grid.






 

 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1610 on: August 07, 2018, 09:23:06 pm »
Now someone will likely chime in and propose some kind of charging scheduling solution but trust me: everyone wants to have a car fully charged in the morning and use the low electricity rate.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline f4eru

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1611 on: August 07, 2018, 09:54:58 pm »
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Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.
Your math is really broken.
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Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs
. Yep. And by shifting or spreading it, so it finishes at 6:00 before you leave the grid companies will be able to manage their grid, and avoid a harsh peak.

And as I said, and as the electricity grids are anticipating: the future is on managing the EVs as a load, shifting them appropriately. That will smooth out the grid.

Grids work by balancing two factors : loads and genration. Since over 100 years.
They today have influence on a small amount of big loads. That influence will grow with EV adoption.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2018, 10:02:44 pm by f4eru »
 

Offline The Soulman

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1612 on: August 07, 2018, 09:56:03 pm »
Now someone will likely chime in and propose some kind of charging scheduling solution but trust me: everyone wants to have a car fully charged in the morning and use the low electricity rate.

Without having read this entire page nor the 64 previous ones, imho it is the task of (larger) employers to let the employee's charge their ev's at a slow rate during the day time, perhaps aided with some pv on the company's roof (when the sun shines...).
Who would use a ev for something other than driving to work?  :)
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1613 on: August 07, 2018, 09:57:44 pm »
Now someone will likely chime in and propose some kind of charging scheduling solution but trust me: everyone wants to have a car fully charged in the morning and use the low electricity rate.

Agreed.  But here's my thought....  How much electricity does a powerplant produce?  And what if the people charging cars do it during the day?  Then you have the regular load, plus the EV load all at the same time - solar generation.


Not saying this won't work..... But with existing infrastructure, don't think so.

I know here in Forest Fire teritory/California the power comapany would to upgarde the grid to a smart grid would be a 150% replacement cost.  Not only do you have to factor in 100% replacement of existing equipment, but the pruchase of spares.  (Adds another 50%.)  And then they would have to throw away all of the existing brand new unsuded spares.

Want to pay?


 

Offline f4eru

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1614 on: August 07, 2018, 10:08:54 pm »
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And what if the people charging cars do it during the day?
That's good. Approx 10% of EV charging happens during the day. that represents 2% of the total grid load for 100% BEV adoption.
Basically it's the "long trip fast charging" issue. Which is not an issue for the grids but a sane growth opportunity which uses the ever more available solar power.
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I know here in Forest Fire teritory/California the power comapany would to upgarde the grid to a smart grid would be a 150% replacement cost.
That's marketing BS for saying that a TOU "smart" meter costs more than an old style meter. Doesn't really affect load balancing yet, only the pricing.

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How much electricity does a powerplant produce?
Depends. small residential PV plants produces typically a few kW. Large steam plants are at multi-GW scales.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2018, 10:12:38 pm by f4eru »
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1615 on: August 07, 2018, 10:50:07 pm »
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And what if the people charging cars do it during the day?
That's good. Approx 10% of EV charging happens during the day. that represents 2% of the total grid load for 100% BEV adoption.
Basically it's the "long trip fast charging" issue. Which is not an issue for the grids but a sane growth opportunity which uses the ever more available solar power.
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I know here in Forest Fire teritory/California the power comapany would to upgarde the grid to a smart grid would be a 150% replacement cost.
That's marketing BS for saying that a TOU "smart" meter costs more than an old style meter. Doesn't really affect load balancing yet, only the pricing.

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How much electricity does a powerplant produce?
Depends. small residential PV plants produces typically a few kW. Large steam plants are at multi-GW scales.

No it's not marketing BS.  Just think about it.  All of the meters are now smart-meters.    Why means they can bill and plan for electricity usage in 15 minute increments.  Now as for the distribution equipment they are using some old stuff.  As in 300 baud Hayes modems still today.  (Yes they are cheap.)  And some of their equipment goes back to the 1970s if not earlier.  For power compnay to have a smart distribution system they would need to moderinze and standardize.  Thus the 150% price tag.  I think that's a low but fair estimate.  To really understand why the girid in Californona is the way it is would be to understand the history of power companies.  When cities were electricfying there cities 100+ year ago there was not grid.  Each city was there own power company and had a couple of street lights to power at night.  Next city might be 100 miles away.  No need to inconncet.  So each compnay did their own thing. 

Just before World War II the electricfation of America was underway.  (Bad for the Japaneese and Germans.)  But this is when the grids were starting to appear.  So now you had one city which might have DC and the next city over using AC.  Each city/power company wnated politicaly to remain independent but they also needed to be connectoed to each other or the grid.  Fast forward to 2015 and California still has nearly 80 different power companies all connected via the grid, but all using unique ways of doing things and unique equipment and protocols.  We didn't have a war that wipped out our grid so it didn't need to be rebuilt.

Now we are stuck with a mix of 1950s - 2018 technologies. 

I took a college class in understanding the power grid.  It was actually very intersting.
Cisco, Microsoft and Apple all thought they would make a fortune with the smargrid once smart meters were installed.  What they didn't do is talk to the power compnaies.  Cisco had designed and built custom powergrid equipment and protocols thinking the entire power indsutry would standardize on Cisco.  Then the saw the pricetag...... 
 

Offline a59d1

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1616 on: August 07, 2018, 11:36:06 pm »
Interesting historical perspective, Doug. I don't think this necessarily means that widespread adoption of EVs is infeasible over the next decade, though.
 

Offline ahbushnell

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1617 on: August 07, 2018, 11:43:00 pm »

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You are absolutely correct on this one.  I have a Volt and can program charging start/stop times.  And I'm sure everyone else who has an plug-in EV will set their charging start time to be the exact same time as mine, when the electricity rates are lowest or at 2300.  Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.  Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs.  I would assume all other Volts would finish charging at about the same time.  Wonder what that would do to the grid.
I think you got your decimal point off by three orders of magnitude.  That's 3.5 MW.

 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1618 on: August 08, 2018, 12:06:32 am »

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You are absolutely correct on this one.  I have a Volt and can program charging start/stop times.  And I'm sure everyone else who has an plug-in EV will set their charging start time to be the exact same time as mine, when the electricity rates are lowest or at 2300.  Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.  Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs.  I would assume all other Volts would finish charging at about the same time.  Wonder what that would do to the grid.
I think you got your decimal point off by three orders of magnitude.  That's 3.5 MW.


Duh...….  Thanks, my bad.  I didn't mean 1,000 cars....  I meant 1,000,000 cars.  (Is that a nice save?)

Took me years to switch computer hard drives from MB to GB.  And RAM from KB to MB to GB.  Now I'm thinking in G's all of the time.

 

Offline ahbushnell

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1619 on: August 08, 2018, 12:12:16 am »

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You are absolutely correct on this one.  I have a Volt and can program charging start/stop times.  And I'm sure everyone else who has an plug-in EV will set their charging start time to be the exact same time as mine, when the electricity rates are lowest or at 2300.  Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.  Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs.  I would assume all other Volts would finish charging at about the same time.  Wonder what that would do to the grid.
I think you got your decimal point off by three orders of magnitude.  That's 3.5 MW.


Duh...….  Thanks, my bad.  I didn't mean 1,000 cars....  I meant 1,000,000 cars.  (Is that a nice save?)

Took me years to switch computer hard drives from MB to GB.  And RAM from KB to MB to GB.  Now I'm thinking in G's all of the time.
GM will love that.  1E6 volts in one city. 
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1620 on: August 08, 2018, 12:26:47 am »

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You are absolutely correct on this one.  I have a Volt and can program charging start/stop times.  And I'm sure everyone else who has an plug-in EV will set their charging start time to be the exact same time as mine, when the electricity rates are lowest or at 2300.  Max power draw for a volt is 3,520 watts.  Now if there were 1,000 Volts which all began charging at the same moment the wattage draw would be 3.5 GW.  Now my car finishing charging around 0200  0300 hrs.  I would assume all other Volts would finish charging at about the same time.  Wonder what that would do to the grid.
I think you got your decimal point off by three orders of magnitude.  That's 3.5 MW.


Duh...….  Thanks, my bad.  I didn't mean 1,000 cars....  I meant 1,000,000 cars.  (Is that a nice save?)

Took me years to switch computer hard drives from MB to GB.  And RAM from KB to MB to GB.  Now I'm thinking in G's all of the time.
GM will love that.  1E6 volts in one city.


Yup - But fat chance of that happening in 2E1 or 3E1 years.  Maybe 1E10 years. 
Chevy has only sold just over 1E5.  I think there are more ICE cars sold every month in the San Francsico Bay Area than all of the Votls and Bolts every sold.

 

Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1621 on: August 08, 2018, 07:58:39 am »
I love volts.
The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1622 on: August 08, 2018, 08:18:11 am »
Without having read this entire page nor the 64 previous ones, imho it is the task of (larger) employers to let the employee's charge their ev's at a slow rate during the day time, perhaps aided with some pv on the company's roof (when the sun shines...).
Who would use a ev for something other than driving to work?  :) 
This is not a core business for employers, some don't even provide parking spots for their employees, others like those of my partner charge a monthly fee for the possibility to park the car. Times are changing....
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1623 on: August 08, 2018, 08:22:04 am »
Volts just as Teslas are sold with huge losses.
I don't think GM likes 1e06 Volts sold, it would bankrupt them.
 

Offline f4eru

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1624 on: August 08, 2018, 09:24:59 am »
Volts just as Teslas are sold with huge losses.
I don't think GM likes 1e06 Volts sold, it would bankrupt them.

Nope, and Nope.

1) Tesla makes an average of 24% on each and every vehicle sold. The losses come from investing more than that profit into growth.

2) GM/Opel make huge losses on the Bolt/Opel Ampera-e because they produce it in homeopathic quantities. If the volume would go up to 1e6/Y,  many things would happen to reduce the costs, and make that a profitable business:
- High dilution of fixed costs
- Better sourcing agreements, especially for batteries -> much cheaper battery
- redesign of the car to produce it at a lesser cost
- every year, the cost of batteries drom 25-30% anyway.
etcetcetc...

This will all happen next year as EVs are now seriously taking off due to financial, market pressure, and regulations on emissions.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2018, 09:26:52 am by f4eru »
 


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