Thursday, January 7th, 2010

If electric cars such as the Chevy Volt are successful,do we have power station capacity to charge them all? ?

Can we charge several million electric batteries daily??
IF by chance it works, and I do have doubts, wouldn’t it cause massive
increase on electrical demand at out power generation facilities?

Of course it would, so my real question is can we handle it without a massive infusion of cash into building new power plants?
Sounds like building dams would drive environmentalists absolutely crazy.
Some hard decisions must be made on our energy choices

By the Way- I would probably buy at least one electric car for the family if the economics work out.

Yes, studies have shown that we have sufficient capacity during off-peak hours (energy which is currently wasted) to charge millions of plug-in hybrids and EVs.

In order to exploit these off-peak hours (during which electricity is also cheaper), people can either plug their cars in for recharging overnight before going to sleep, or better yet, we could make it easier by creating a smart grid infrastructure which would charge during off-peak hours automatically.

See the links below for further details.

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6 Responses to “If electric cars such as the Chevy Volt are successful,do we have power station capacity to charge them all? ?”

Edg1 Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

It would not be too much of a stretch to put solar cells on top of every gas station in America just for this purpose. The extra "juice"could go right into the grid making more dams unnecessary.
References :

Dana1981, Master of Science Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:02 pm

Yes, studies have shown that we have sufficient capacity during off-peak hours (energy which is currently wasted) to charge millions of plug-in hybrids and EVs.

In order to exploit these off-peak hours (during which electricity is also cheaper), people can either plug their cars in for recharging overnight before going to sleep, or better yet, we could make it easier by creating a smart grid infrastructure which would charge during off-peak hours automatically.

See the links below for further details.
References :
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/plug-in-hybrids-no-new-power-plants.php
http://earth2tech.com/2008/07/22/plug-in-2008-san-jose-partners-with-coulombs-smart-charging/

winterrules Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:15 pm

Charging during off peak hours is part of the equation. Dana has that right. Another piece of the total is the electricity that won’t be used in refineries, gas pumps, pumps in the pipelines and other electricity used in the production and distribution of gasoline.
References :

bestonnet_00 Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:35 pm

Using off-peak power it should be doable, the problem there is that a lot of people are going to try charging using peak power which is going to cause a lot of problems for the grid.

I can easily see businesses offering charging points for their employees to charge their cars up during the day in their car parks so the idea that off peak will be enough is probably wishful thinking.

Building new dams wouldn’t be necessary, though new nuclear power probably will be (even if you don’t have to increase electricity production coal and natural gas need replacing for environmental reasons and fission is the only clean power source available everywhere that is reliable enough to do it).
References :

MasterPython Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:57 pm

In some places in North American the power grid old and decrepit and can barely handle the current load. It would need serious upgrading if electric cars ever became popular. There are lots of mothballed power plants, some companies figured out that if you lower the supply you can jack up the price and make more money.
References :

Pat Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 8:13 pm

If we added 2 million electric vehicles and they were all plugged into a 15 amp circuit at our houses (see the link below) and *IF* we were all actually drawing the full 15 amps the circuit could handle (doubtful) that would add 3.6 gigawatts of load onto the grid. This would be spread out over the several grids that the US has.

To put 3.6 gigawatts into perspective that is just over one Palo Verde size nuke plant, or one-half of Hoover Dam at full capacity, or 2/3 of the power Las Vegas uses on a 110 degree summer evening. The power usage in California regulated by the California Independent System Operator (Ca-ISO) on 9/17/2008 went from 23GW to over 36GW of usage with almost 44GW being available for usage at peak.

Currently we have the capacity, but there is also the need to keep a surplus of capacity to take into account planned maintenance and unplanned plant outages, system faults, and unexpected load. At a million dollars a megawatt to build a power plant it is taking a lot of capital to try to keep up with demand.
References :
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/01/07/detroit-auto-show-full-specifications-on-the-chevy-volt/
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html

Power Plant Maintenance Electrician

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