Smart charging absolutely critical to plug-in success

A new Better Place study suggests that smart grid charging will be critical to plug-in success.

Plug-in charging requires some smarts

The grid is not ready to embrace plug-in cars

What happens if you start charging 1 million electric cars in a large urban area like Washington, DC? Wholesale energy costs increase by $750 million according to a new Better Place/PJM study.

However, if managed charging via a Central Network Operator (CNO) is added into the equation, extra whole sale energy costs are cut in half, reducing the cost to drive by one-fifth.

While electricity is still cheaper to purchase than gasoline, electric cars are considerably more expensive than their conventional counterparts. Today, MSRP on a loaded Nissan Versa is about $16,000. For a Nissan Leaf it’s twice that amount. Even with tax credits, it still takes years to recover the extra upfront costs of electric cars, and consumers simply aren’t willing to accept that kind of math, especially considering the limited range of EVs.

Consequently, making EV charging as cheap as possible is probably the most effective way of reducing EV costs, beyond a battery breakthrough of course. Fortunately, this study suggests that smart technology is a wise investment for energy providers to make, especially when the reality of some kind of VMT tax will eventually have to be added to the cost of EV charging as gasoline taxes decline.

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