General > General Technical Chat
The Electric Vehicle Future: Where is all the power going to come from?
nctnico:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 14, 2020, 05:55:03 pm ---
--- 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.
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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.
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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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Well... in Amsterdam most homes are heated with natural gas. And this is not a production problem but a distribution (wiring) problem.
bdunham7:
It is always amusing to see people running numbers and so forth to show how something just won't be practical when in fact some of us have been doing it for years. Here in SoCal, EVs and solar power work just fine and it doesn't seem likely that there will be any need for infrastructure changes to accommodate future EV growth. I fully understand the problems faced in other areas related to grid capacity, climate, space, etc. EVs won't work everywhere for everybody--but they don't have to. The answer to the OPs question is that EV adoption is likely to take several decades and even then won't be a 100% conversion. There will be plenty of time to make changes if they are necessary.
As for the exact source of the extra power, the easiest solution is to use the excess overnight capacity that exists almost everywhere. That alone will suffice for any imaginable EV expansion here for quite some time.
Marco:
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on February 14, 2020, 09:52:44 am ---"Needed"? How about changing our lifestyle. Start by decentralising and stop consuming so much.
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Capitalism creates discipline and I don't think we can abandon it on the scale needed without falling into chaos, especially in a democracy. Continuing civilization for much longer is turning out to be an intractable problem and climate change is the least of the worries.
tom66:
--- Quote from: peter-h on February 14, 2020, 09:18:36 am ---The immediate issue is distribution at street level.
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.
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20kW charging is really unusual for domestic EV charging. My PHEV has a 16A charger, i.e. 3.6kW. A bigger pure-EV car might have a 7.2kW onboard charger; some cars have 16A 3ph chargers which support up to 11kW but as you state would need 3ph. Most EV users will be perfectly cared for by a 7.2kW supply and indeed many will be fine on a 3.6kW charger.
The average UK commute is about 20 miles, assume both ways have to be covered by EV charging then 40 miles of range will require around 10kWh of energy to provide (4 mi/kWh). That can be done in under an hour and a half on a 7kW supply and within 3 hours on a 3.6kW one.
I think it's likely we'll need spot upgrades of the DNO network in places as the assumption is generally 6kW average per home, but likely only on crowded older estates.
New UK homes are also to be built with 3 ph supply directly which should help. Old UK homes generally have 80A or 100A 1ph supply; some homes are stuck on 60/63A feeds which will likely need upgrades as 32A car chargers are installed.
--- Quote from: peter-h on February 14, 2020, 09:18:36 am ---EVs will work for little cars doing short journeys, and a lot of people do that. What we don't know is how many people are willing to limit themselves to a little runabout vehicle, with little or no heating or aircon, when everything suggests people want the opposite. They could also run a big car like a Tesla but again only if they don't drive it much.
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Well I do try to maximise the EV-only range on my PHEV but still use heating and air con. As EVs become more commonplace they will start to look and drive more like normal cars. Cars like the e-208/Corsa-e and e-Golf show that manufacturers are still interested in making "normal cars that happen to be electric". Which really is what we need, not weirdmobiles like the Leaf and Peugeot iOn.
And as Tesla has shown, there's a large market for luxury/high-end vehicles that are electric.
benst:
I have seen arguments that the conversion to EV's will actually lower the total power consumption. This is because to refine 1 liter of gasoline, it takes between 2 .. 5 kWh of electrical power. (Numbers I found online vary wildly, unfortunately.) There are some huge power plants next to the oil refineries here on the Maasvlakte in the Netherlands, for example.
Assuming a new EV replaces an ICE car, and assuming it takes 3.5 kWh to refine 1 l of gasoline, this means that:
* The EV at (say) 150 Wh/km would go for 23.3 km on that 3.5 kWh used to refine 1 l of gasoline.
* The ICE car at (say) 7.5 l / 100 km would go for only 13.3 km on 1 l. (plus it would use the 3.5 kWh also.)
Lots of assumption here, I know. Only part of the puzzle, but interesting. I do not think that generating power for all those EV's is the problem. Distributing it and making it conveniently accessible is.
Ben
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