Ah, yes, the nirvana of plug-in electric cars! Marvelous idea, but one critical factor is missing in this story: How will all the electricity be generated for this vision, which essentially substitutes electricity for petroleum? What would be the total demand and from what sources?
Without addressing this requirement, the scheme is a little like Will Rogers' WWII plan to destroy all the German submarines by heating up the ocean and boiling them. When asked how to do that, he essentially replied "I'm a strategy guy, implementation is for others."
I support this electric vehicle idea, but the only realistic way for it to come to pass is additional large scale generation of electricity, probably nuclear, and upgrading the grid to handle it. Or you can decide to charge your car only when the wind blows or the sun shines and plan your travel accordingly.
2 comments:
I have to say, I think this blog entry is intellectually lazy or dishonest. I'm going to assume lazy. . .
You've written it in a manner implying that nobody has addressed the questions electric cars raise for electricity production or the requirements of the power grid. Fifteen minutes of research with Google and Wikipedia would reveal that these questions have been studied and answered many times over.
How will the electricity be generated? A government study found that today's electrical grid and generating plants could support up to 84 million electric cars, charged at night while electrical demand is (otherwise) low. Right now electric cars on the road number in hundreds, not millions. Clearly we are a long way from stressing the grid with these things.
Of course there is a widespread feeling that we need to clean up the power grid and move away from coal toward sources like solar, geothermal and nuclear power. I trust that will happen. As it happens, electric cars will benefit.
I admit to not having done the reserach on the capacity of the grid to support vehicle recharging. But assuming that all vehicles will be charged at night is incorrect. The Times article does not even mention load on the grid. That's my complaint, about the journalism, not about the feasibility of electric vehicles.
I believe the grid is a proper way to substitute electricity for petroleum, and, yes, we are not stressing it yet. One way to control grid use when there are millions of these silent electric cars is to price in a way that distributes the load according to costs of generation and away from peak periods. The last thing we need is a new grid load exaggerating the peak grid usage.
Post a Comment