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Charging Infrastructure

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More on Infrastructure.

Ecotality's eTec
Spotlight on EV Charging Infrastructure Company eTec - All Cars Electric
"We’ve got like 5000 chargers deployed throughout North America in industrial applications," he said.
Level 3 chargers typically can out put 40 kw at 200 amps. He notes a charger like that could fully recharge a Nissan LEAF's 24 kw of usable energy in about 40 minutes. He also notes these chargers cost about $20,000 to $40,000 each, which incidentally is the same as the price of a typical gas station pump.


Coulomb
A Car Charging Infrastructure Takes Shape - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com


Nissan Leaf, eTec
Scrambling to Prepare Charging Infrastructure for the Nissan LEAF - All Cars Electric
 
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Washington is one of five states with metro markets selected to participate in the 36-month study funded by a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy under the economic recovery program.

About 1,000 of the nearly 5,000 Nissan zero-emission electric vehicles, dubbed the LEAF, will be deployed to cities around central Puget Sound. More than 2,000 charging stations will be installed mostly in homes, but also in public and commercial areas.


Sound cars about to get plugged in | Northwest News - The News Tribune | Seattle-Tacoma News, Weather, Sports, Jobs, Homes and Cars | South Puget Sound's Destination
“We are still in the early generations,” he said. When that happens, he said, the project is “very seriously considering” an electric corridor stretching along Interstate 5 between Eugene and Seattle, with an eventual extension to Vancouver, B.C. Recharging stations would be available along the corridor.
...
The first corridor that will be developed runs between Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, a distance of just over 100 miles. Other corridors could be developed between San Diego and Los Angeles and Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga in Tennessee. Reed said a corridor running along I-5 between San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., might not be possible because there are no major population centers in far northern California and southern Oregon.
 

Found by following links in the article above:

Plug In America
Plug In America commends Gov. Schwarzenegger for signing SB626 into law on Monday (10/12). This measure, authored by Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego), will accelerate the market for plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles by supporting the development of charging infrastructure for these vehicles.

SB 626 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED

The commission, in consultation with the Energy
Commission, State Air Resources Board, electrical corporations, and
the motor vehicle industry, shall evaluate policies to develop
infrastructure sufficient to overcome any barriers to the widespread
deployment and use of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.

For example:
(d) The existing code and permit requirements that will impact the
widespread use of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles and any
recommended changes to existing legal impediments to the widespread
use of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.
 

Scare, scare, scare and scare.
electric cars may result in higher power rates for consumers in the state,
Southern California Edison, the state’s largest, have to install new transformers and meters to handle greater demand and prevent blackouts when autos are being charged at outlets.
The spending may total “multiple billions” of dollars over a decade or more

How much do we spend each day on oil?
A typical Santa Monica circuit, which serves about 10 households, may be overloaded should two or three of those customers charge vehicles simultaneously, even if they do so overnight during off-peak hours,

“If all those people do it at off hours, in the middle of the night, a lot of our system is designed so the transformers cool down at night,” Craver said. “That’s part of how they are able to function at full capacity during the day.”

Expenses will start next year for plug-in “readiness efforts, and will require a reasonable process for seeking recovery of these costs,”

Nobody asked for recovery of costs when everyone started buying Plasma TVs...

The second half is more even but after all the above it's too little, too late.
 
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That sounds like BS if ever I heard it.

Perhaps not entirely far fetched?

R0908009 To Consider Alternative-Fueled Vehicle Tariffs, Infrastructure and Policies to Support Calfironia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Goals

In our July 15, 2009 electric vehicle workshop in R.08-12-009, we were warned that distribution system impacts, more so than transmission and generation system impacts, may arise in the early electric vehicle market. There is some evidence that in certain neighborhoods, clusters of early adopters of electric vehicles exist. Under certain charging voltage and timing assumptions, an average of less than one PHEV per household could increase asset overloading on the neighborhood transformer.20 A commonly used 25 kilovolt-ampere (kVA) neighborhood transformer serves the typical household load for five to seven homes. Level 2 charging (for example, at 6.6 kW) for a BEV can increase the load served by the transformer by the equivalent of an additional household load; a PHEV charging at 120V (1.4 kW) is the equivalent of a third of a household load. DC charging, if as ubiquitous and used as often as a gasoline filling station, may place acute stress on multiple local circuits and transformers. Distribution system stress is particularly of concern if customers charge when they arrive home after work when the transformer would otherwise cool down with declining household evening load.21 Consequently, vehicle charging level and charging timing is relevant to the rate of transformer capacity and transformer aging. For electric reliability purposes, this Commission intends to address this important issue to see how to encourage sequential charging during hours that will not adversely impact local circuits and transformers.


Those line pole transformers tend to have the windings submersed in a large drum of oil. The oil evens out the temps and does have a rather slow warm-up/cool-down cycle.


By the way, I have heard of some neighborhood transformers blowing out when groups of roadsters were charging. There will need to be some infrastructure upgrades to support roll-outs of more EVs.





 
My house is one of six served by a 50 kVA mini pad transformer. There is a cable that runs from the transformer to a connection point across the street serving three houses. As part of my solar installation, and planning ahead for EVs, I upgraded my electrical service to 320 A. The cable from my meter to the connection point is now twice as thick as the cable to the transformer!

Since my house is now all electric (ground source heat pump, ETS heater for backup during load control, etc), my peak winter nightime load is 27 kVA, or more than half of the transformer capacity. Add two EV's charging at 40 A, and that goes to 47 kVA. That leaves 600 VA for each of my 5 neighbours... :eek:
 
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Perhaps not entirely far fetched?

R0908009 To Consider Alternative-Fueled Vehicle Tariffs, Infrastructure and Policies to Support Calfironia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Goals

Those line pole transformers tend to have the windings submersed in a large drum of oil. The oil evens out the temps and does have a rather slow warm-up/cool-down cycle.

By the way, I have heard of some neighborhood transformers blowing out when groups of roadsters were charging. There will need to be some infrastructure upgrades to support roll-outs of more EVs.

Looks like there are more issues than we thought, hopefully it isn't TOO expensive and that some of the additional revenue from new demand from EVs will pay for some of these upgrades. Good to know this BEFORE the anti-plug-in crowd uses it for more fodder.
 
Good to know this BEFORE the anti-plug-in crowd uses it for more fodder.

And they will. Better come up with some counter arguments now. To fix this, we will need smart grid. The transformer will have to tell your car how much current is OK to pull at any given moment. Eventually, as EV numbers grow, the impact will spread from distribution lines to transmission lines and eventually the power generating stations. I am pretty sure more generating capacity and transmission lines will be needed to meet this new and large demand. Utilities will have to control your car's charging current to make sure there is enough power for everyone. Oh, and no one will want to have more power lines and power stations built. This is going to be interesting...
 
That sounds almost as if the utility companies are non-profit organizations. :)

Ideally the smart grid will be smart enough to communicate with EV chargers (and hopefully even air conditioning units during summer days), to turn these off selectively when required to prevent a black out. In any case, the grid should be able to selectively turn off connections which draw more power than they have reserved for them, if really needed. However, in general, the utility companies should be happy about the additional demand (and hopefully cover it by utilizing the sinking costs of solar PV or wind power plants).

Of course, the upside will be that we will eventually need fewer gas stations, tankers, etc, which will far outweigh such initial investments.
 
This is sounding like cable modem.
If you are the only customer in the neighborhood you get fast downloads.
If all your neighbors have cable modem then the bandwidth gets shared and you have slower service.

With Smart grid and more mass deployment you could get slower charging if your neighbors all get EVs too.
 
However, in general, the utility companies should be happy about the additional demand (and hopefully cover it by utilizing the sinking costs of solar PV or wind power plants).

Additional demand that they do not have the supply for. Sinking costs of PV and wind are non existent.

Of course, the upside will be that we will eventually need fewer gas stations, tankers, etc, which will far outweigh such initial investments.

Except that utilities do not own tankers, gas stations...
 
This is sounding like cable modem.
If you are the only customer in the neighborhood you get fast downloads.
If all your neighbors have cable modem then the bandwidth gets shared and you have slower service.

With Smart grid and more mass deployment you could get slower charging if your neighbors all get EVs too.

Nice analogy. Electric grid today is like internet without the QoS. With smart grid you get slower charging rate and without it you get a blown fuse (or transformer).
 
Nobody asked for recovery of costs when everyone started buying Plasma TVs...

Kind of off topic but this kind of reminded me of this article: (I found it again after some hard looking)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/payback-dilemma-campus-climate.php
Short summary:
In short, since climate-mitigation projects can pay back, they must pay back quickly.
And other projects which don't pay back, don't have to pay back, for example:
one campus sustainability director who pointed to the wall in a well appointed meeting room and asked rhetorically, "What’s the payback period for that beautiful wood paneling."
There is just some bizarre mentality that whenever we do "green" projects we always have to recover costs or it doesn't make sense, but when it is for luxury then it doesn't matter. We see it here, and we see it in cars too.
 
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We'll need to think on a much larger scale. I believe those who say that it won't take much more than a decade until we will have a huge shift towards EVs. A lot of things will (need to) change, not just a few transformers. I expect that in 3-4 years, this will already be very obvious.