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| The Electric Vehicle Future: Where is all the power going to come from? |
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| Neilm:
--- Quote from: peter-h on February 14, 2020, 09:18:36 am ---A few Teslas on a street, each charging at say 20kW (which itself needs an upgraded feed to the house, probably 3 phase) and the transformer at the end of the street will blow up :) So there is no way EV will work for serious commuters. --- End quote --- I have just bought a Tesla Model 3. Installed a 7 kW charger on my house. Park my car in front and plug in each night. It takes about 4 hours to charge the car for my commute each day. Total commute distance, just under 100 miles. Before I bought it, I calculated that I could plug into an ordinary 3 pin outlet and it would charge the car although I would have to start charging as soon as I get home. If I have gone to see my reletives (150 miles each way) plugging the 3 pin overnight certainly gets enough range to get home again comfortably. [edit] I saw an interview with a representative from some electrical generation company. They noted that the total demand on the grid in the UK had gone down over the last decade or so. The estimates of the total power EVs would use would push it back up to where it was then, so there would be no issue with the distribuition. The use of smart charging to regulate the demand could be used to flatten the peaks in the demand. I think that interview was at Fully Charged Live last year, but I can't find it with a quick look. |
| DBecker:
This is such a non-issue that grid-load-sensitive charging is on a slow development cycle. Most residential EV charging already happens overnight, when the rates and load are lowest. We have both solar and EVs. Our net energy use is still positive, but we are providing power to the grid during peak times rather than being part of the load as we were five years ago. Chopping off the peaks and filling the valleys is a huge benefit to the power grid, and it's happening widely enough to eliminate the need for infrastructure expansion. |
| SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: Dundarave on February 14, 2020, 01:34:43 am ---I haven’t heard of any plans from any governments anywhere about building new capacity for electrical power to replace the energy currently supplied by automobile gasoline, --- End quote --- Probably because there isn't any. What makes you think that governments have long-term plans for everything? ;D (or for anything) Maybe it'll all come from the Moon or something, given how getting there again is becoming a thing. Jokes aside, there are a few hints already to partially answer your question: if electric vehicles become the norm (which is likely at this point, although not 100% certain), it's very likely that a lot fewer people will own individual vehicles, so the overall energy consumption for transport should decrease. This is rather sad, knowing that individual transport was an essential tool of individual freedom (IMO), but this trend is already there. So if there is any "plan" (which I don't think there is, at least not any precise plan), I think it's probably this: drastically decreasing the use of individual transport over time. That may not be something many of us want to hear, but yeah. If it's not an actual plan, it will just be a natural consequence. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: DBecker on February 14, 2020, 05:34:17 pm ---This is such a non-issue that grid-load-sensitive charging is on a slow development cycle. --- End quote --- Welll... as it happens an article got published today saying that the public charging points in Amsterdam are providing less power between 18:00 and 21:00 to prevent overloading the grid. And this is with just a handful of electric cars. |
| SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: nctnico on February 14, 2020, 05:52:35 pm --- --- Quote from: DBecker on February 14, 2020, 05:34:17 pm ---This is such a non-issue that grid-load-sensitive charging is on a slow development cycle. --- End quote --- Welll... as it happens an article got published today saying that the public charging points in Amsterdam are providing less power between 18:00 and 21:00 to prevent overloading the grid. And this is with just a handful of electric cars. --- End quote --- Of course. Most grids already get easily overloaded during winter at some hours due to heating, and in summer due to air conditioning. This isn't going to get any better if we draw even more power without adding significant production. How can anyone deny that? ::) |
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