I don't think the nighttime load of cars charging up will be anywhere
near peak loads in evening, with ACs running, and all that kind of
stuff. The grid can handle that easy enough. Plus, if there get to be
too many of them, they can put controllers on the chargers that the
power company can load-manage, like your elec hot water heater (we get a
rate discount for having a controller on the water heater, it doesn't
seem to ever kick in, but they can shut off the water heater instead of
brown-outs or other load shedding at peak times). I don't know what the
charge time of a car is, maybe 6 hr or so? Say over 10-12 hr at night
that load could be modulated easy enough. And the idea to use them as
mobile storage, if they are plugged in during the day, the grid could
suck power from them instead of spinning up peaking units. Course that
might reduce your charge to get home, but there are lots of interesting
things you could do with that much manageable capacity.
--R
Allan Streib wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:27 -0400, "Rich Thomas"
<richthomas79td...@constructivity.net> wrote:
Actually electric cars would probably be good for power utilities, esp
if they are being charged at night -- kinda like the rural night
lights that allow baseload plants to operate at a higher capacity.
(we have one, I don't think we get charged for it, or maybe something
like $5/month) The utility can keep baseload power plants running at
higher output (or have more baseload capacity installed and operating)
at night, dumping power into car batteries, that will help lower
costs. Baseload plants are generally coal or nuke. Less peaking power
(more expensive oil or gas-fired) will be needed during the day time
when loads are higher, as there will be higher loads at night which
can be met with baseload plants.
Hm, perhaps. But isn't it also about the load-carrying capacity of the
grid itself? Even with more generating capacity, won't we need to
upgrade substations and transformers and the like all over town?
You are assuming that the nighttime load of all these charging cars is no
higher than the current daytime peaks. I'm not so sure that will be the
case, but admit I have not even attempted to calculate anything.
Allan
--
1983 300D
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