3 - 5 plug-ins in one neighborhood could "overwhelm" grid
A solar-powered PriusThe Toyota Prius is hot in California. So, as they become available, it isn't hard to imagine some wealthier California neighborhoods sporting multiple plug-in vehicles, such as a plug-in Prius or a Chevy Volt.
No problem, right? The grid has massive excess capacity, as long as you charge up after midnight.
What happens, however, if a few neighbors with plug-in hybrid vehicles return home from work on a hot summer day and need a quick charge before heading out to run errands?
"You're going to overwhelm the circuits," claims Peter Darbee, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. in California, "you would create a peak load on top of the peak load."
Labels: plug-in hybrid vehicles
posted by Dahcredyns at
8:49 AM
24 Comments:
we knew that - right? Did we have to have someone tell us that folks would charge up when they needed it - at work or at home rather than only in the early a.m. hours?
and what does that mean?
it means more coal use.
more mercury, more mountaintops blasted off to mine the coal.. more GHG, etc
to supply fuel for "green" cars.
does anyone know what exactly the "partnership" between the auto plug-in companies and the power grid suppliers is - specifically.
what have they agreed to do - to deal with this problem?
Bonus Question:
should we wait to introduce plug-ins until we have figured out how to get them re-charged without requiring additional grid capacity during the daytime?
The conversations I've heard coming out of GM PR is that the approach is smart metering with customer agreements to delay charging during peak load times. I would think that especially in the neighborhoods of earlier adopters there will be an awareness of being a good Plugged-in citizen. As plugins become more mainstream, there will be more options including things like Vehicle to Grid, and of course a greener electricity supply in many states.
I'm not claiming these are sufficient solutions. Just passing along the state of the dialog as I see it.
Here's the latest on GM's grid efforts.
http://gm-volt.com/2009/10/20/electrical-infrastructure-and-the-chevy-volt/
I only mention GM because it is what I read this morning.
we kind of knew it, but you don't hear either party really making an issue of it. i already don't really trust the big 3 or utility companies, so this is a bit disturbing.
it's also another reason why i've been more open to fuel cells/hydrogen and natural gas than i was a year ago, for instance.
this 'revelation' points out the need for massive infrastructure funding, but we really aren't having that kind of national conversation.
is america ready to spend nearly a trillion upgrading the grid?
it might be worth it, but there isn't any national conversation around such an idea.
perhaps that fact that the feds and states make nearly a trillion dollars per decade off gas taxes has something to do with it?
still, i think we should push ahead with plug-ins as fast as they can become cost-effective. unfortunately, that probably won't be very fast without massive incentives.
more importat, it seems to me that short range plug-in hybrids, such as the toyota prius, is the right idea. likewise, there should be more focus on conventional hybrids. they can have a much more cost-effective effect on today's energy paradigm while investing in the batteries of tomorrow.
either that, or we have a national conversation about ending foreign oil dependence as fast as possible.
what would it cost, what would be the benefits?
right now, we're leaving in some aimless world making fairy tale decisions.
alcatholic -
and such a plan works for how many? certainly not enough to even think about scalability.
gm and the utilities are telling us that any serious adoption of plug-in vehicles, without massive incentives, without massive changes in consumer behavior, and without massive upgrades to the grid, really isn't that possible.
resolving this issue for a few hundred thousand plug-in users has very little relevance towards making these technologies cost-effective and providing a real impact on today's energy paradigm.
sure it provides tons of green hype, many angles for billions in government subsidies and loans, but very little real energy change.
in some ways i feel we're pretending we're on the verge of some game changing technology.
yet, reality says we're decades away from the beginning of any real change.
why don't we just call a spade a spade and get serious about US energy policy?
This article doesn't reflect any of the reality we experienced through the EV1, S10 Electric, etc, development at GM. The math is quite simple, even a massive EV pack is only 26kWh (for 120 miles) and a standard charger would draw 30 amps at the very most on a 220V circuit, or about 6.6kW for a medium fast (4 hour) charge. This is only a bit larger than a 5 ton air conditioner. Is the article suggesting that if 3-5 neighbors add air conditioners the same problem would happen?
Plug in hybrids will have a much smaller pack than the old EV1. The ones I worked on at GM were around 1/4 size and smaller. The chargers will most likely run on 20Amp circuits and charge over a couple hours. This would equate to around 3.25kW draw, equal to about a 4 ton AC unit. Trickle chargers (4-8 hour charge) would be a fraction of that. Possibly as small as a refrigerator.
Also, if you added 4-7 PV systems in the same neighborhood as the 3-5 cars, assuming simultaneous charging in the daytime, you would cancel out the car loads.
Unless we suddenly get incredible market saturation (say 50% of homes get plug-ins), and a large portion of those people decide that charging at 2-6pm in the summer is best (assuming a cooling climate and AC use), I don't think we are going to see any grid overloads anytime soon.
Steve Br
Former EV Battery Applications Engineer for GM, currently a home energy efficiency designer, consultant and educator
" is america ready to spend nearly a trillion upgrading the grid?"
re-word - are Americans willing....
well.. the first step is to put a number on it at the household level....
then.. as I have argued before... show them the strategies they can use to drive that number in their own case to more revenue neutral.
You know - this is like trying to convince people that the compact florescent that costs 10 times more than the incandescent is really 10 times cheaper in the longer run.
California used to provide incentives and discounts for such lights - on the premise that it saved them money also but California is one of the few states that has decoupled it's electricity rate structure such that they don't kill their own profits if people end up using less.
I went looking or what Toyota had to say about the grid because I'm not sure I trust GM either.. but also because I wanted to see if Toyota agreed with GM and the electric companies about what would be needed.
I'm less and less convinced that plug-ins are the next gen in fuel efficient cars because it's pretty clear that that efficiency comes at a price that I don't think many have seriously understood.
The greenies are going to come out like hornets from the nest if the plug-ins end up causing more coal-plants.
" Is the article suggesting that if 3-5 neighbors add air conditioners the same problem would happen?"
yes if they are going to be used at peak hour.
it's peak hour that's the problem.
peak hour requires more generating capacity to be added and unless it is added as NG.. then it gets added as coal.
Peak hour power costs about 7 times as much as non-peak hour power.
I don't think this happens unless we end up with smart meters and a smart grid that can reach out and turn off certain power-consuming devices.
this is at all an impossibility. Right now, my water heater has a box on it that allows the power company to turn it off and the deal with that box was that in return for allowing it to be installed, they agreed to fix the water heater whenever it broke (if fixable and not replace).
I have no clue what percentage of the power grid is for water heaters but I'm willing to bet - just cutting power to them at peak hour is not an unreasonable strategy.
steve-
that's a scenario suggested by the CEO of PG&E, not me. if you want to question his expertise, go ahead.
i'm not saying he's right, but i've heard this before from California utilities, and it was early evening charging that was being discussed, not even peak hours.
certainly, that's not an every day situation. still, as a SoCal resident, i can tell you that i've experienced many black and brown outs.
Larry G,
It is bad being purely gasoline and it is still not perfect the other, electric, way? What do you suggest as a solution?
Dahc & Stevebr242,
I agree with the math. An electric car makes around 3-4 miles per kwh, for a daily 40 miles commute, you need only 10 kwh, which hardly overwhelms the system.
solutions?
we can't get there form here if we don't have enough clarity on the issues.
I look for contradictions in thinking - because that's how you know when you're going around in circles and don't have clarity.
but it should not be a situation where we say that hybrids are better because they have advantages - when those same advantages are also available to the other choices.
it's not an honest approach to basic issues in my view.
Larry G, I wish I knew such alternatives. Well, of course, public transportation, biking, and changes in the infrastructure will help to alleviate the issue. As well as more efficient engines, smaller cars, and lighter materials. Natural gas, may also be a part of solution, if shale is not going to be another bubble. Yet, at some point we will need even more efficient solutions. And internal combustion engine with maximal efficiency of 50% will be an obstacle anyway. You have no choice, but replace it.
you might think I don't have optimism but I do - a lot, in fact but we're at a place right now where there is a lot of data, some of it conflicting, some of it not understood and some hopeful expectations that may not match up with the realities.
When I drive down the road and I start to see almost as many Prius as some other brands, and I hear other companies getting into hybrids then I know we are changing for the better .. not fast enough for a lot of us but we are changing
Just that one little hybrid idea means cleaner air for the cities because less and less cars will run their ICE in stop & go traffic...
so we're getting there.. but it's frustrating that we seem to be moving at a snail pace sometimes..
How big of a solar array would users of plug-in & electric cars need to power there cars?
Carmaker BYD says that its new E6 electric car due out before the end of the year will do 250 miles on a single charge. They are not using a lithium battery but a ferrous battery. Seems like we need more information to see if they are telling the truth here but this could be interesting.
.... in pursuit of the holy grail here..
;-)
For some background on this subject you can go look at a typical day in California at this site.
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
This the actual website for the Independent System Operator [ISO] for the California grid. You can see the actual and spining reserves and actual times when the loads peak and when the loads stars to decrease.
However just because you happen to be on the downward side of the grid load doesn't mean the power is actually available at a moments notice. It can take up to several hours to bring additional generation on line. What is the old story, prior planning prevents poor performance LOL.
If at the beginning of the day you have not planned for the charging of plug-in hybrids then it MIGHT be possible to have some small affect on a very localized grid if you plugged in all hybrids at the same time which were all feed from the same transformer. For example, if you go look at the transformer in your backyard that transformer is probably feeding your home and three of your neighbors homes. If everyone was doing the laundry, running the AC units, just finished showering and watching TV at 2:00 p.m. and then you all plugged in your hybrids all at the same time is might be possible to overload that local transformer. However if you waited to plug in those same vehicles at say 6:00 p.m. after you finished cooking dinner on your electric range, the laundry was done and the AC was cycling off and on you would not have a problem even if you did plug in all 4 at the same time. That I believe is what the CEO is trying to describe in as few words as possible when he said "you would create a peak load on top of a peak load".
Since I only lived in southern California and worked for a utility in that area, I can't comment with any authority on the grid conditions in the PG&E territory. There maybe some localized areas where grid capacity is limited by distribution or substation transformer capabilities. Even then plugging in 5 hybrids to 120/240V AC circuits running at 30 amps is such a small load I have a very hard time believing it would have any significant affect on the overall condition of the ISO grid.
30 Amps is about the same amount of electricity an electric water heater draws after someone takes a shower.
If the grid in central California is that fragile Californians have even more serious problems than I thought, LOL.
Tom G.
Dahc,
I was only commenting on the specific issue of grid overload. I won't even attempt to discuss overall energy policy in every thread or defend plugins for that matter. Just looking to react to a simple article about a piece of the puzzle.
Anyway, I noticed that in the article and presumably in the panel discussion the PG&E exec did not claim that the peak on peak scenario was an argument against plugins or even that this scenario was likely given proper planning. The impression I got was that he was making case for planning and customer education, which I think would work! :)
absolutely not, alcatholic. the future of utilities is probably dependent upon the plug-in vehicle.
many billions in infrastructure dollars are eventually going to hit the utilities via the taxpayer.
and, as long as plug-in technology matures at a slow and gradual pace, all problems should, relatively, be easy to overcome.
it's the 'slow and gradual' pace that bothers me.
in my opinion, it's time for America to accept that its going to take a number of decades before plug-ins achieve real change, unless we significantly increase our investments into this area.
otherwise, we should be thinking about more interim options as plug-in technology matures.
our current pace and plans, however, seem akin to russian roulette in my opinion.
in some ways plug-ins have become an accepted form of greenwashing.
Dahc,
What's going on here? I comment on the grid issue, and you start to ride the whole plugin = green washing hobby horse. Are you trying to make some kind of point about my understanding of energy policy? That is kind of insulting actually.
OK, let's see if we can get past this. It is starting to bother me.
Let's see, the subtext to your bringing up green washing when I was talking about the grid is that I am some kind of plugin fan boy who doesn't understand the "serious issues". You can stuff that. The comment from the utility exec is not a serious issue in the short term, and you know that. Planning and customer education will likely suffice for the small number of plugins in the beginning, and you've said as much.
Then you jump to the issue of whether plugins are a panacea, as if I've ever claimed they were. Do you think that just because I hope to buy a Volt as my first new car, that I think plugins are a solution to our national energy issues? Let me disabuse you of that notion. I'm the one that posted the spreadsheet numbers analyzing fuel savings from hybrids vs plugins given expected sales rates, remember? That spreadsheet pretty much settled the question for me, and it is simply a question of numbers. Plugins are not sufficient. I'm also the one that read the study you linked to about Plugin adoption rates and pointed out the little footnote that high gas prices actually reduce plugin adoption, remember? So whatever the plugin adoption rate will be, I am aware of the arguments. Finally, I have always argued that plugin tax credits are driven by jobs and industrial policy not energy policy, however Wes Clark is trying to sell it today. I'll agree with you that if we wanted to spend trillions we could get off foreign oil using plugins, but I'm not advocating that and never have. I have supported plugins as strategic industrial policy.
Do you think that just because I don't parrot all the issues involved in plugins that I am unaware of them? For me they are assumed parts of the conversation, and it gets dull to retread that ground unnecessarily. I am by no means an expert. But it doesn't take an expert to understand the information discussed on this blog the first time around.
I hope the next time I comment about a specific issue we don't retread all these plugin issues. It would make for a more respectful dialog, IMHO.
alcatholic-
i'm sorry you took it that way. i didn't mean it that way at all. my apologies.
i guess i went off topic. i wasn't writing my comments as any sort of statement about your knowledge or opinions.
i was taking your point about utilities, which i thought was a good one, and running with it.
i guess i need to stay more focused on the core topic. thanks for the moderation.
and, seriously, my apologies. i greatly respect your thoughts and very intelligent comments.
just FYI - I did not see Dahc as disrespecting either.
and if someone thinks I'm guilty of similar, my apologies also.
Crap. I must have taken my Assertive pill today!
Guys, just know that I usually don't have the guts to speak up like that, so I appreciate you not flaming me back. I went a little overboard and my feelings say more about me than they do you.
I do appreciate the kind responses, and I won't worry about this anymore.
Carry on with the spirited discussion!
Indigo Incarnates
Our country REALLY needs to get off coal. That energy source is dirty and it has insufficient density for high-drain applications like electric vehicles. Nuclear power does have the required energy density and emits no CO2 in the process.
My frustration with the debate over which energy sources to use (or not) ends up with a lot people picking "none of the above" which is not a solution.
People - as a society - will not pick the best of the choices that are available.
one of those choices includes nukes and another one means paying a lot more money for renewables.
so we have folks opposed to:
coal
nukes
natural gas
solar/wind (if more expensive)
so - we ...drift... on energy policy..
we seem to have few people willing to commit to a course that involves picking the best from the worst choices.
like I said - "none of the above" wins - hands down.
i think that's a critical point, larry.
i think one problem is global warming. it simply isn't an issue that resonates with most Americans, especially not in a way that results in change. yet, too much of the energy conversation starts with global warming.
this discussion, at least in america, needs to be built around foreign oil dependence. it simply resonates with the people.
moreover, without doubt, it seems to me, a compromise that is focused around foreign oil dependence could be carried out in a way that achieves some reduction in co2 emissions, without being about co2 emission.
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