I am sorry, Yobigd, but I have to call you on this one. As the late lamented editor of the New Yorker might say, it strains credulousness. I think I can come up with the counterproof fairly readily - I know that out there are data on gigajoules usage of energy by the various sectors in NoAm - but am a bit hogtied at present. Here's my recollection, though: Passenger vehicles account for 20-25 percent of the energy consumed in the US. Canada should have a similar breakdown. If that number is correct to within just about a degree of magnitude, that "two percent of the continental grid" would be just flat out wrong.
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Norbert
TSLA will win
A number I heard many times is that about 140 million electric cars can be supported by the grid as is (with night time charging). Since there are about 240 million cars in the US, that's about 100 million remaining.
If an electric car uses about a quarter of the energy of an ICE (20%), then that would be 5%. 5% * 100/240 is 2.08%.
The big "it depends".
In my case, my existing cables (2/0 AL) were encased in flexible conduit that was laid when the house was built - one of the first to use it, according to my Co-Op. The Co-Op ordered some 350 kcmil compact conductor cable and used my existing cables as the pull rope to pull the new cable through to the pad transformer, using their bucket truck material handler arm as the winch. Our backup plan, should something have failed, was a directional borer - although we purposely tried to avoid that because of how congested that particular corner of my home is (there are 10 different conduits of various type coming to that corner of the house).
If you have direct-burial cable, you have a riskier proposition, and you'll likely have to resort to directional boring to place new conduit in the ground, in which new conductors can be run.
Who pays for that depends upon the area and the provider. In my case, the Co-Op is responsible for everything up to my meter pan, at their expense. They even provide the meter pan, I just have to provide the labor to install it and connect it to my service panels. In my case, the Co-Op replaced my cable and supplied all labor for free as part of the service. In other areas of the country, expect to pay upwards of $3-5k+ for that type of change.
Here are some first sets of data backing up my skepticism. US only; I did not look into the Canadian numbers:
1. Electricity production accounts for 40% of total US energy (39,346 out of 97,301 trillion BTUs in 2011). Source: Total Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
2. Gasoline accounts for 18% of US total energy consumption. Source: Use of Gasoline - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration
3. I'll use gasoline as a proxy for passenger vehicle energy consumption: a vanishingly small fraction of US autos use diesel (or CNG/LNG or electric!); and only an extremely small amount of commercial vehicles use gasoline.
4. So our first two data are 18 parts and 40 parts - so to start with, we're at vehicular demand being 45% of current electricity production. We now need back that off by the factor by which electric vehicles are more efficient than ICEs - Norbert is suggesting 4X but I'll let others chime in - and then add back the inefficiencies in increases to the national electrical grid theoretically caused by this hypothetical rise in demand.
I am doing no more than trying to keep this thread from running off with unsupported data here. I'll be as happy as the next person to learn of the validity of that two percent number...but I think my suspicions of it are valid.
1. Electricity production accounts for 40% of total US energy (39,346 out of 97,301 trillion BTUs in 2011). Source: Total Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
2. Gasoline accounts for 18% of US total energy consumption. Source: Use of Gasoline - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration
3. I'll use gasoline as a proxy for passenger vehicle energy consumption: a vanishingly small fraction of US autos use diesel (or CNG/LNG or electric!); and only an extremely small amount of commercial vehicles use gasoline.
4. So our first two data are 18 parts and 40 parts - so to start with, we're at vehicular demand being 45% of current electricity production. We now need back that off by the factor by which electric vehicles are more efficient than ICEs - Norbert is suggesting 4X but I'll let others chime in - and then add back the inefficiencies in increases to the national electrical grid theoretically caused by this hypothetical rise in demand.
I am doing no more than trying to keep this thread from running off with unsupported data here. I'll be as happy as the next person to learn of the validity of that two percent number...but I think my suspicions of it are valid.
Both the Volt and the Leaf can be programed to "charge based on departure time." This helps owners minimize time at high SOC to improve battery life and to leave with a warm battery when it is cold outside.
It also helps utilities handle the load, since the cars will charge during the night with randomly different start times. I hope the Model S gets a firmware update to add this feature to catch up with the Volt and Leaf! :smile:
I agree the article is accurate, and it is a good idea to check your electrical service to make sure it can handle your EVs. However, there also is no need to worry about this, it is not a barrier to EV adoption, the utilities will handle it just like all of the other new loads they have already handled, either proactively or reactively.
GSP
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Southern California Edison has a lot of experience with EVs and recently published a report on the subject. Upgrading their service to homes with EVs has been minimal cost to them. As others have pointed out, this is not charity, they also get additional revenue. That revenue that formerly went to oil companies and petroleum imports.
http://newsroom.edison.com/internal_redirect/cms.ipressroom.com.s3.amazonaws.com/166/files/20136/SCE-EVWhitePaper2013.pdf
GSP
Does the Model S not have a 'charge based on departure' setting? As GSP notes, this would randomize the load to the grid and local transformers.
Furthermore, the Chevy Spark has a "priority charging" mode which "is designed to ensure that the high voltage battery pack has a minimal amount of energy prior to delaying a charge." That means that if you have less than a 40% charge, even if you have a "charge based on departure time" or "TOU" setting, the Spark will start charging immediately and charge up to 40% before it stops charging and goes back to the "delayed departure" or "TOU" setting. I really would love to see the Model S add these features ('delayed departure' and 'priority charging') before my Volt lease is up! :wink:
What I've read is that there is enough spare nighttime capacity to charge 80% of the US fleet. Now spare nighttime capacity is not the same as total capacity. The other big big reality is that EVs are designed to be more efficient and are not equivalent vehicles to current fleet. It isn't realistic to think someone is going to make a Suburban EV with no changes in aerodynamics. Since EVs range is such an issue, they are always going to be designed with greater efficiency in mind compared to average current vehicles. So the extra 20% is very easy to accommodate.
And while we are talking averages, you should be considering average miles driven. If charging at 40A, I suspect most people are fully charged in 1 hour. In 10 years, when maybe 20% have a Gen III equivalent, it seems it would be easy to give people incentives to charge at various times in the night. They might have rolling TOU rates. Imagine even addresses with cheap rates from 9-1 and odd addresses from 1-5. Instantly it becomes 50% less of a problem. And this Joe came up with that in 5 minutes. Imagine what people who analyze this as a full time job can come up with....
I am on a TOU-D rate which was designed by the utility with grid stability and plant construction in mind. I have zero incentive to moderate demand in off-peak times. I can pull 100A all night long. It would be easy to change this in the future if EVs became a problem. I could turn down my charging rate or make sure that I am not heating hot water when I charge. All very easy to do.
And while we are talking averages, you should be considering average miles driven. If charging at 40A, I suspect most people are fully charged in 1 hour. In 10 years, when maybe 20% have a Gen III equivalent, it seems it would be easy to give people incentives to charge at various times in the night. They might have rolling TOU rates. Imagine even addresses with cheap rates from 9-1 and odd addresses from 1-5. Instantly it becomes 50% less of a problem. And this Joe came up with that in 5 minutes. Imagine what people who analyze this as a full time job can come up with....
I am on a TOU-D rate which was designed by the utility with grid stability and plant construction in mind. I have zero incentive to moderate demand in off-peak times. I can pull 100A all night long. It would be easy to change this in the future if EVs became a problem. I could turn down my charging rate or make sure that I am not heating hot water when I charge. All very easy to do.
Norbert
TSLA will win
There are two ways to calculate this which I am familiar with:
1) The EPA energy equivalent of 1 gallon gasoline is 33.7 kWh. The current average mpg of an ICE is about 25 mpg (AFAIK). So that is 1348 Wh per mile.
An EV uses roughly 270 - 330 Wh per mile (depending, the Model S can use a bit more, whereas the Roadster's numbers were quite low). 1348 Wh divided by 4 would be 337 Wh.
2) Converting in the other direction: According to EPA, the electric 2013 Nissan Leaf returns the mpg equivalent of 129 in city driving and 102 on the highway.
That's about 5x and about 4x, respectively, compared to 25 mpg. I think this method even includes the charging efficiency. When measured by the EPA, the Model S' numbers were about 10% lower than 4x, IIRC, however Tesla intended to improve the charging efficiency (at that time, post-EPA-measurement).
The gain in efficiency is in reality closer to an order of magnitude. The use of test circuit figures leads to a marked underestimate of consumption per actual Km driven. Main reasons are:
- large influence of short haul traffic under less than ideal conditions
- large proportion of short trips driven with cold engines
- less than perfect car maintainence
- substantial proportion of older vehicles in fleet (they get worse)
- as the fleet renews itself, the new and better electric car will often replace an older an less efficient car.
Electric vehicles are largely unaffected by some of these factors.
The variance is of course not the same everywhere and credible statistics are hard to come by. There are some references to the issue in a report by Deutsche Bank(US) e.g. The simplest is to take the Roadster and compare it with a similarly quick ICE vehicle in local traffic and this relationship becomes quickly very evident.
- large influence of short haul traffic under less than ideal conditions
- large proportion of short trips driven with cold engines
- less than perfect car maintainence
- substantial proportion of older vehicles in fleet (they get worse)
- as the fleet renews itself, the new and better electric car will often replace an older an less efficient car.
Electric vehicles are largely unaffected by some of these factors.
The variance is of course not the same everywhere and credible statistics are hard to come by. There are some references to the issue in a report by Deutsche Bank(US) e.g. The simplest is to take the Roadster and compare it with a similarly quick ICE vehicle in local traffic and this relationship becomes quickly very evident.
Not really.
1. Electric motors are far more efficient that heat engines, so you have to reduce the total energy used by something like 75%.
2. Most electric car charging is done at night when other electrical loads are lower. Power companies have base load and peak load. Base load is provided by the large generating systems such as nuclear, hydro, and large coal/NG generators. These are hard to adjust for load but the cost per kWh is small. Peak load is provided by small generating systems and can be turned on and off quickly as required, however, the cost per kWh is high.
Actually, EVs help lower the total cost of electricity by allowing more of the total electricity to be produced from base load generators. Right now the base load generation has to be smaller than it should be because otherwise they have to dump the excess generation using schemes like pumping water during the low use hours.
Al Sherman
It's about THIS car.
I'm not an engineer. When I called my electrician and told him what I wanted to do, he said "you'll need a service upgrade and your transformer is too small." He said he wouldn't do the work unless both were upgraded. We called the PoCo and they put a new transformer in. It didn't seem like that big a deal.
If you call your energy company and tell them what you will be doing, get a qualified electrician that tells them the same thing and they ignore you then if a transformer blows it really isn't your fault. They were given warning about a change in usage and chose not to upgrade in a timely manner.
GlennAlanBerry
Member
Right now, in the still relatively early days of large battery capacity EVs (with about 13,000-14,000 Tesla Model S and maybe 1500 Roadsters in North America), this is not a huge issue yet. Given the cost of the Model S, that also means that most Tesla owners probably live in newer homes with adequate electrical service, or that they can afford to get their service upgraded if they need to. A pretty decent percentage of Tesla owners probably have grid-tied PV electric systems (or they afford could get them if they wanted to), which can offset some or all of their overall electrical usage from charging.
It also makes sense to do some of your own demand side management and reducing your household electrical usage by doing common-sense conservation measures, such as getting an energy audit, and taking care of the top issues that come up. These are usually adding insulation and improving the sealing of your house, but other things like getting LED light bulbs, using energy efficient appliances, etc. can make a big difference without making you feel like you are suffering. Using something like a TED 5000 gives you real time and historical information about your total electrical usage, which is very useful.
What I think about is what happens in 4-5 years as the Gen III comes online and there are also other large battery EVs available from other companies? Imagine it is 2018, and gasoline costs $6.00-7.00/gallon, while the Tesla Gen III costs $35K (before any tax credits) with a 200 mile range. By then, the Tesla Super Charger network is completely built out, and there are 3rd party commercial fast charging "electric stations" patterned after old-fashioned gas stations in most cities and towns (perhaps using licensed Tesla SC technology). By then, utility companies will have had some time to plan and react to changing grid usage patterns.
As more middle class families make the purely economic decision to switch to an affordable EV as time goes on, how will that affect the grid, both nationally and locally? If you could get a full charge in 5-10 minutes at an "electric station" (that also has a convenience store), I wonder how many people may decide to do that on a regular basis rather than always charging at home?
It also makes sense to do some of your own demand side management and reducing your household electrical usage by doing common-sense conservation measures, such as getting an energy audit, and taking care of the top issues that come up. These are usually adding insulation and improving the sealing of your house, but other things like getting LED light bulbs, using energy efficient appliances, etc. can make a big difference without making you feel like you are suffering. Using something like a TED 5000 gives you real time and historical information about your total electrical usage, which is very useful.
What I think about is what happens in 4-5 years as the Gen III comes online and there are also other large battery EVs available from other companies? Imagine it is 2018, and gasoline costs $6.00-7.00/gallon, while the Tesla Gen III costs $35K (before any tax credits) with a 200 mile range. By then, the Tesla Super Charger network is completely built out, and there are 3rd party commercial fast charging "electric stations" patterned after old-fashioned gas stations in most cities and towns (perhaps using licensed Tesla SC technology). By then, utility companies will have had some time to plan and react to changing grid usage patterns.
As more middle class families make the purely economic decision to switch to an affordable EV as time goes on, how will that affect the grid, both nationally and locally? If you could get a full charge in 5-10 minutes at an "electric station" (that also has a convenience store), I wonder how many people may decide to do that on a regular basis rather than always charging at home?
Hey no problem . I understand. I work with this guy so I'll see if I can find the actual research reports to back up these claims with actual numbers. I'm simply just relaying the info from the industry expert
Two of the six major learnings SCE unveiled in its research indicate
- Of nearly 400 upgrades made to local grid circuits since 2010 that serve areas where plug-in vehicles exist, only 1 percent of this work was actually required due to additional power demands. The rest fell into regular maintenance.
- Drivers have less overall power grid impact when they program electric vehicle charging to be complete by a specific time, as this seems to randomize the start time of their charging. This prevents a large number of vehicles from coming online at the same time and avoids power-load spikes
Al, did the utility company foot the bill for the new transformer, or was it all on your nickel?
OK maybe I'm missing something. So help me out here. Less than 2% is not matching what I'm estimating.
239,800,000 cars * 12,500 miles/year/car * 0.350 kWh/mile(1) = 1,049 billion kWh/year World Vehicle Population Tops 1 Billion Units | News Analysis content from WardsAuto
Total electricity consumption in the U.S. (2011) = 3,856 billion kWh/year Electricity - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Percent electricity usage if all cars in U.S. were BEVs = 1,049 billion kWh/year / 3,856 billion kWh/year = 24%. Not less than 2%.
I found an interesting report "Impact of Widespread Electric Vehicle Adoption on Electrical Utility Business - Threats and Opportunities" that suggests significant constraints on our electrical generating capacity for widespread BEV adoption both nationally as well as regionally.
http://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/s...lity Business – Threats and Opportunities.pdf
Depending on how BEV time of day charging is managed, the report indicates that California's electrical generating capacity can accommodate a transition to 15-23% BEVs, while the U.S. overall can accommodate 43-73% BEVs. It appears that we have some work to do on our electrical generating capacity to go 100% BEV.
I'm glad I added solar PV on my garage :smile:
And I'm glad California will be adding a lot of new generating capacity to the grid as a result of the Renewable Portfolio Standard mandate.
(1) estimate that includes transmission and charging losses in addition to BEV consumption. YMMV.
mknox
Well-Known Member
Once again, speaking as a utility guy, FlasherZ is right on the money.
What I will add to the conversation is yes, absolutely utilities see EVs as a revenue opportunity, but there is clearly some trepidation over how to predict and manage these large continuous loads. Dense urban areas, including high-rise condos present different problems from suburban single-family subdivisions but all can be managed with proper planning. Here in Ontario, Canada the government is providing rebates for EVSE. This ensures they are installed and inspected according to code (a requirement of the rebate program) and that the owner's Postal Code (Zip Code) is provided to the local utility so that we can plan accordingly. (Typically, the local distribution transformer and service conductors are the choke point). The additional revenue from the new load will fund the infrastructure upgrades that are required.
We also have new tools in our arsenal that weren't available when residential air conditioning loads crept up on us. We are 100% deployed with Smart Meters that provide near real time data back to the utility. We can create "virtual" meter points at transformers that sum up all of the connected loads and quickly see and respond to overload conditions. We are also in the early stages of connecting HAN devices to the smart meter (air conditioning/water heater demand response devices, in-home displays and the like) and the control/scheduling of EVSE is a natural next step. One of the large universities in our city is actively working on Smart Grid and EV issues.
Many Ontario electric utilities, including the one I work for, are actively promoting EVs. It is one of our strategic imperatives.
My little beach town waives the feee for an EVSE instalation permit. However, they do require a signoff from SCE, so any transformer upgrades can be scheduled. SCE has also installed smart meters and I suspect this gives them useful load monitoring data.
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