First Electric Cars Have Power Industry Worried 450
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Fahey writes for AP that as the first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, the power industry faces a huge growth opportunity, with SoCal Edison expecting to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015 and California setting a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020. But utility executives are worried that the difficulty of keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers — and their neighbors — could slow the growth of this industry because it's inevitable that electric utilities will suffer some difficulties early on. 'We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now,' says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America. When plugged into a home charging station the first Leafs and Volts will draw 3,300 Watts and take about 8 hours to deliver a full charge, but both carmakers may soon boost that to 6,600 Watts. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 Watts. That means that adding an electric vehicle or two to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses. The problem is that transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about 12,000 watts so the extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block."
Worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem they're talking about is energy distribution, not generation.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
The brownouts in CA were caused by the lack of supply. That's why CA has to buy electricity from other states.
If it were a hardware problem, buying electricity from other states wouldn't help.
Re:These numbers don't make sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats the difference between your car sucking power hour after hour and your air conditioner along with many other devices running all summer/winter?
Where the US power industry faces some issues is sales/trades of limited gas and other input fuels. The regional/state "needs" of "expensive" gas at a set time vs another states ability to offer gas shareholders more profit
No power for you or your car or air conditioner until your utility can pay more.
But its nice to blame the electric car for overload issues
Re:These numbers don't make sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. I can see how distribution before you reach the home might be taxed, since while most new homes get 200 amp service I doubt the infrastructure is designed for every home to pull all 200 amps at the same time.
Also, consider that most charging is likely to take place at night. That will have a huge leveling effect on the grid. Rather than going into panic mode the electric utilities should just work with auto-makers to build timers into their chargers (maybe give the car a charge up to 25-50% if it is really low right away, and then defer the rest of the charge until the middle of the night, or have a switch to select the charging mode). They should also educate electric car owners on rate plans that charge less for power consumed at night.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
The brownouts in CA were caused by the lack of supply.
Re:Stop thinking conventional , the problem aint ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Time to refit your house (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alarmist (Score:3, Insightful)
And you actually think the service into a neighborhood can take everyone drawing 200 amps?
Not even remotely close.
Hell, the generation capacity for most power companies is carefully managed to meet the expected peak demand of the customers they have, at a specific rate of typical peak usage.
Increase that by ten percent, and you'll get rolling brownouts or blackouts during the summer when people are running their A/C.
The US has a 3rd world power infrastructure that is cobbled together to work in exactly the environment they're in.
Hell, the climate shifts are already causing grief to power companies because they're getting even small percentage increases in the number of peak days or the length of the heating or cooling seasons.
Add a 7kw charger to 10% of their customers and you're in BIG trouble, especially if it makes the generation profile change substantially. (A lot of hydro plants, for example, shut their outflow off at night to maintain water levels behind dams because the demand is low at night -- if its not, then water will have to be drawn down 24/7 -- something they aren't set up for.)
Re:Worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
A single modern coal-powered plant is better than hundreds of thousands of individiual internal combustion engines it replaces in this case.
What's more, the plant can be monitored and upgraded all at once, in one place. An individual vehicle's spark timing is off and they're blowing unburned fuel out the back and it doesn't get fixed 'till they next fail inspection, and that assumes they're complying with the law by bringing their vehicle in for inspection at all.
Seriously -- I'd take nuclear over coal any day, but centrally burned coal is far better than the status quo. (What's especially fun is how folks make the same argument you do here in Austin -- where our electricity is natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, and less than 30% coal).
Lights out at night (Score:5, Insightful)
Most charging will be done at night, when electricity use (home and business) is otherwise low.
Fuck the Power Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
The Telcos & ISPs have already solved this (Score:5, Insightful)
The power industry needs to pay attention to what ISPs are doing to solve similar problems.
1.) Spend upgrade money on creating new classes of service, rather than worrying about upgrading low profit transformers. The electricity for your lights, which you need right away, should be tagged differently than the electricity for your car, which can wait for delivery. Then, make more money by charging extra for uninterrupted "light electricity."
2.) Spend more money investigating people's power usage, and threatening to shut off everyone who uses an electric car. (The power companies do this already looking for marijuana grow-lights, so this should be cheap to implement.) Couple these "deep power inspection" with blockage measures so that electric cars only get a trickle charge. Cap people's usage so that the power to the "bad actors" gets shutoff when they exceed their cap.
3.) Implement a propaganda campaign castigating electric car users for actually using the electricity that they paid for.
4.) Demand public subsidies to upgrade the power system, and use the resulting money on items # 1 - 3 above.
With these simple measures, both our power system and our broadband Internet delivery can continue to slide to third-world status, and useful employment can be extended to armies of consultants.
Re:Worried? An excuse for poor planning (Score:3, Insightful)
What mistake? Would it have made more sense to go around randomly upgrading neighborhoods years ago when it wasn't yet clear that electric cars were going to reach the market in any significant numbers??
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These numbers don't make sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe that'll cause inflation, but heck at least you all will get something out of it. Rather than just making a few rich people richer and still getting inflation.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the humor of an industry worrying about having to actually invest in, you know, itself.
This is actually another fearmongering, just like RIAA, VHS, etc all over again.
I expect in a year or two they're going to make comments like "charging your car can place hospitals at risk!" etc etc.
What about road taxes? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read a lot about electric cars and _electric_ infrastructure, generating capacity, etc. However, I haven't seen a single article addressing the loss of taxes from gasoline. Gas taxes pay for road maintenance. Heck, there were stories awhile back about people who were using biodiesel or waste fryer oil in their cars who had to get some special license or permit to cover the taxes they weren't paying. It's why red diesel fuel is so cheap... only farmers who don't drive on roads can use it.
So... where will the revenue come from after hundreds of thousands of people switch to electric cars or plug-in hybrids? Will there be a tax on electricity? Special metering for rechargers? A general flat-tax added to all electricity prices?
Re:Worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
You recall wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article you linked:
"Before this week's power outages, California Governor Gray Davis's efforts to secure adequate supplies of electricity appeared to have stabilized the situation, at least until summer. The state is paying $45 million a day to subsidize energy purchases by the state's two major utility companiesSouthern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).
Recently the governor announced that some long-term contracts have been negotiated in the $70-80 per megawatt range."
The state spending $45 million a day hardly seems like DEregulation to me.
What they call "deregulation" of the power industry in California was actually a change in regulations, not the elimination of regulations. For instance, Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says:
"The California energy market allowed for energy companies to charge higher prices for electricity produced out-of-state"
"the Death Star group of scams played on the market rules which required the state to pay "congestion fees" to alleviate congestion on major power lines"
"in 2000, wholesale prices were deregulated, but retail prices were regulated for the incumbents as part of a deal with the regulator, allowing the incumbent utilities to recover the cost of assets that would be stranded as a result of greater competition, based on the expectation that "frozen" rates would remain higher than wholesale prices".
"By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation. In February 2001, California governor Gray Davis stated, "Believe me, if I wanted to raise rates I could have solved this problem in 20 minutes."
That's over-regulation, not deregulation. Deregulation would be letting anyone produce, transmit, and sell electricity at any price the consumers would pay.
Re:Good! (Score:2, Insightful)
It was sent to Iraq where it was kidnapped and held for ransom, suicide bombed, kidnapped and beheaded, looted, and 90% of the funds for it disappeared while in the hands of contractors.
Re:Fuck the Power Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because all you need to build a new power plant is some money. Oh wait, except that it's one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, particularly in California, and that you're asking investors to wait a very, very long time for a return on their investment.
This nonsense about 'California power companies pocketed all their profits when they should've been building plants' is not even very imaginative leftist fantasy. California has had a huge demand for electricity for years now. In any normal market, that would equalize with supply over time, but California suffers from a paralyzing combination of regulatory bodies and NIMBY. There is a post above this one that explains how even the supposed 'de-regulation' of the California energy market a while back was in fact just a re-regulation (in that wholesale prices were deregulated but retail prices were not). But don't let that get in the way of your populist righteousness.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
And here I was planning on spending mod points on this one instead, but I just can't let this one slide...
Keeping in mind that I'm an environmentalist myself when I say this... the reason that the power industry in California hasn't moved at the rate it needs to is because of the enviro-nazis blocking the construction of nuclear and coal plants, and the NIMBY folks refusing to allow wind farms to be built near them. Solar's an option, but it uses a *lot* of real estate, which is at a premium in California, and there simply isn't enough moving water in California to supply the state's need with hydro-electric power.
There's large swaths of desert in eastern California that'd be perfect for solar plants, but you'd run into transmission problems, because most of that territory is nowhere near where the electricity is actually needed. Similarly, tidal power is an option off the coast of California, but that would be a tourism nightmare: there's tons of dive sites in California that attract divers from around the world, myself included.
If the power grid in California is going to evolve to meet the needs of the state, then one of two things need to happen: people need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that coal power is nowhere near as dirty as it was even 15 years ago (and *that* was a far cry from the level of pollution produced 50 years ago by coal), or they need to understand that the wind generators need to go somewhere and find a way to build it into the landscape.
I'm lucky: I live in an area where almost 100% of the electricity on the grid is provided by hydro. (Quebec). But that isn't an option in California, and they need to look into other options.
Re:Worried? Don't! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem they're talking about is energy distribution, not generation.
That's absolutely correct. However, since people will tend to charge their cars at off-peak hours, you'd think that the distrubution issues are less than they are making out. Sure, it's like adding hundreds of additional houses, but most of those "houses" are going to be charging at a time when all the lights and appliances are off in the real houses because everyone is asleep.
Re:Advertisers spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:32kW? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
People are leaving California. It's not JUST the rotten schools, the traffic jams, the lack of jobs, the rising budget deficit, with no solution in sight [sfgate.com], the huge stockpile of underwater homes - it's all of them combined.
A destitute California won't be able to continue to offer state $$$$ (or IOUs, since they won't have any "real" money) for switching to an electric car.
Re:The Telcos & ISPs have already solved this (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't forget charging the electric car companies for delivering power to their customers.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
the NIMBY folks refusing to allow wind farms to be built near them
tidal power is an option... but that would be a tourism nightmare: there's tons of dive sites in California that attract divers from around the world, myself included
I think you've demonstrated that we're all "NIMBY folks" in some form or another. You dive, so you recognize the value of preserving dive sites. The folks who object to wind farms surely have their own reasons that many of us just don't see or understand. Ditto for the cohorts opposed to hydro or nuclear.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer that everyone seems to be gravitating towards is the obvious one - just use less.
From a guy using an electricity powered computer to post an electronic message over an electricity powered Internet.
"You First" doesn't begin to cover it.
Base load problem solved (Score:3, Insightful)
The power companies are clearly complaining about this now, because they're angling to have the Gov't step in and pay for their infrastructure upgrades. So they can "meet the needs of the new green economy, etc". Whatever, but it'll probably work. The power utilities are probably the only industry that can get away with charging the customer for the ability to sell the customer more product--most other industries require that the producer build infrastructure on spec, and then recoup that cost through sales. You think that when the Gov't does pay for this infrastructure upgrade, it will be restricted to green consumers? No. The utilities will be happy to take that payday and turn around and sell the power delivery to anyone, including polluters, and bitch about Gov't regulation of a private industry, when the Gov't attempts to legislate the delivery back to the original intent--the reason they paid for the infrastructure upgrade in the first place.
Anyways, I digress. Part of the problem of "green" energy production is that two of the favorite methods of generation, wind and solar, do not provide "base load"--neither provide for power generation all of the time, which is a problem since a consumer could want to use power all of the time. Well, one way to "flatten" out the delivery of that power is by storing the power when it's being generated, and pulling out of the storage when it's needed and the wind isn't blowing. Batteries are one form of storage.
What we have here is a group of consumers willing to purchase the most expensive part of the storage system--the battery. If the utilities were smart, they'd take advantage of this volunteerism. Perhaps by simply only charging these batteries only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining; if it takes 8 hrs to charge, but I have it plugged in for 12 hours a day, a smart sensor would opportunistically charge for those first 4 hours. If the wind is blowing during that time, fantastic. If it's not, then when it gets down to the 8 hr min charge time it starts pulling from any available resource. Or, even more aggressively, those car batteries could provide charge back to the grid during periods of unuse. They'd be opportunistically charged until full, and then provide power back to the grid when the wind stops blowing and there are other customers with demand.
The second strategy is a lot less likely to happen, at least at first. Consumers aren't going to be too happy to have a variable amount of available power in their cars at any given moment that they might want to go down to their movie rental store, so it might require some tight time zoning, etc. But I think the first is practical and reasonable--EV car owners would be a receptive demographic to agree to have their car charged only by alternative energy sources, even if that means that it might take a little longer and be a little more unpredictable, within reasonable standards. If the wind blows, on average, 30% of the time, I would be willing to wait around for the 5 hours of wind power out of the average 14 hours that I would have it plugged in.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
From a guy using an electricity powered computer to post an electronic message over an electricity powered Internet.
What's the issue here? Computers these days do use less power than they did in the past. Laptops, iPads, mac minis, netbooks, etc... they all use less than the ugly tower machines of past years. Ditto with LCD screens instead of CRTs, OS's with intelligent sleep modes, etc.
So likely the parent poster has already 'gone first'.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
You might not call that a crisis, but the California legislature certainly did, and moved to try to fix the problem. They failed because they kept doing the thing that caused the problem... price fixing.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Coal? you think Coal is a better option than Nuclear?
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Are we really solving global warming by transferring vehicular energy consumption to the powergrid? All we are doing is moving the emissions from the tailpipe of a car to the smokestack of a powerplant
Yes, you can lower the environmental impact by moving the generation from a car engine to a powerplant. A powerplant is much more efficient at using fuel to generate energy than a car engine. It can be highly tuned for maximum efficiency and since the pollution is produced at one spot it can be scrubbed, collected, and dealt with. A car has wildly-varying loads that reduce its efficiency and spews pollution across the landscape with almost no means of collecting and cleaning it.
As far as the new usage patterns they will be discovered, modeled, and the generators will be tuned to those new patterns. The power companies have a lot of experience in predicting usage patterns and are fairly competent at it.
Not that electric cars are a panacea, there are tons of problems that have to be solved and the health of the powergrid is one of them. But, in theory at least, centralizing energy generation should be more efficient and cleaner overall.
Re:Regulation protects industries, not people (Score:3, Insightful)
True deregulation wouldn't allow anyone to manipulate power supplies and prices, that would have been left to the market.
That's precisely false.
True deregulation allows EVERYONE to manipulate the supply and prices of the power they generate. That's the definition of deregulation; they can do whatever they want.
I realize you're claiming that a free market tends to prevent such manipulations, because if one vendor artificially inflates their prices, consumers will simply buy from someone else, forcing them out of business.
Unfortunately, what you, and most free-market-invisible-hand preachers don't seem to understand that only works if there are
1.Many Suppliers
2.The ability to switch between vendors without significant cost
3. The time and ability for consumers to make rational purchasing decisions
If any of the above are violated, "free market" principles do not apply, and do not work. That's the case for health care, roads, sewage, water, and it's also the case for power.
Perhaps our grid could be modified to accommodate a free market system (as they've tried to do with telecommunications)... but for the moment claiming that the free market could regulate itself is simply ludicrous.