{"id":12583,"date":"2016-08-12T20:24:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T20:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pluginamerica.wpengine.com\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2023-03-07T13:00:23","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T18:00:23","slug":"electric-cars-and-the-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pluginamerica.org\/electric-cars-and-the-grid\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Cars and the Grid"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nLeft: Guest Blogger Andy Silber with his wife, Catherine, and her dog, Montse, at Mount Si outside Seattle, WA<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the things that we hear as owners of electric vehicles (EVs) is that we\u2019re just causing more coal and gas to be burned. Is this a fair complaint today and does it\u00a0have to be in the future? What if there are 100 million EVs driving around the US? Can we charge them\u00a0all using renewable power?<\/p>\n

Chevy, Tesla, Nissan and others are soon planning to offer EVs with a range of at\u00a0least 200 miles costing\u00a0less than $40,000. Bloomberg did a study of the growth of EV sales, predicting an explosion in growth\u00a0and that by 2030 there will be 100 million EVs on the road. When Tesla began accepting preorders for\u00a0their Model 3, over 350,000 people made a down payment of $1,000, suggesting that Bloomberg\u2019s\u00a0prediction is reasonable.<\/p>\n

The electricity needed to charge all of those EVs is about 10% of current consumption. Meeting this\u00a0demand over the next 15 years, while reducing climate pollution, will not happen without preparation,\u00a0but it is not an insurmountable task.<\/p>\n

If utilities just kept installing wind turbines at the rate that they did in 2012, they could meet this need in\u00a0just 10 years. Another way to look at it, if we captured half of all of the commercially viable wind power\u00a0in North Dakota that would generate the electricity needed to power 100 million EVs.<\/p>\n

We could also power the EVs with solar power, which has been dropping in price faster than anyone\u00a0predicted. Currently installed panels produce 12% of the power that will be needed to charge 100\u00a0million EVs. If solar panel installation keeps growing at the current rate, that will produce\u00a0more than enough electricity to power 100 million EVs in 2030.<\/p>\n

Electric utility operators have a difficult job. At every moment they must precisely balance the energy\u00a0coming into their grid from generators with the energy leaving the grid to power air conditioners,\u00a0computers and everything else that\u2019s plugged in. If you turn on a light switch and nothing else changes,\u00a0a little more power must be provided. As our grid becomes more dependent on renewable energy\u00a0sources, managing the grid may become increasing difficult. Currently if the wind isn\u2019t blowing and the\u00a0sun isn\u2019t shining utilities respond by turning on a natural gas plant that emits CO. And if the wind is\u00a0blowing and there aren\u2019t enough customers, the power is wasted.<\/p>\n

This is where EVs come in. Rather than respond to the imbalance between supply and demand by\u00a0changing supply, you can change the demand. Some appliances, like your computer or TV, aren\u2019t well\u00a0suited to this, but charging your EV is. Imagine you have a 200-mile range EV and a level 2 charger at\u00a0home. You arrive home at 6 pm after driving 80 miles and plug in your car. Since demand is high at that\u00a0time, your car (which still has 120-mile range) doesn\u2019t start charging until midnight when demand has\u00a0dropped so low that the utility has a challenge finding customers for its wind power. By 4 a.m. your car is\u00a0fully charged. Even if you go out at 7 p.m., you still have plenty of range for your evening activities and\u00a0every morning you wake up to a fully charged car. This encourages the development of more wind\u00a0power, since the operators know there will be customers for their power day and night. By helping the\u00a0utility integrate more renewable sources of energy, your EV has helped the environment twice, by\u00a0reducing fossil fuel consumption at the pump and at the power plant.<\/p>\n

The concern that EVs just move the pollution from the tail pipe to the power plant does not have to be\u00a0true. Today\u2019s technologies, deployed at the rate that we\u2019re currently deploying them, could easily power\u00a0100 million EVs in the USA by the year 2030. And if these EVs are connected to the Smart Grid, then they\u00a0actually make the transition to a low-carbon electricity grid easier, by allowing the utilities to power\u00a0them when electricity is cleanest and cheapest.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Andy Silber is a physicist, engineer, project manager, and amateur energy wonk living in Seattle with his\u00a0wife, son, and 2015 Nissan Leaf.<\/p>\n

This article is a synopsis of a larger piece (with references and math) at http:\/\/www.asilberlining.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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