Roughly speaking, 7-8 million new cars are bought every year in the US. Likely even more as people dump giant gas guzzlers, new and used alike, en masse for Electric Vehicles (EV) or plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEV) which will draw their power from the residential grid, typically around 10kWh for an average 30-mile round-trip commute.

10kWh isn't a whole lot. A car with a simple 15A 120V plug would recharge in 6 hours. 240V 30A would recharge that in less than 90 minutes, and could recharge a 300-mile battery overnight. I don't see this being a terrible strain for most houses.

The problem is that within 10 years, there is a potential for 50-100 million EV/PHEV on the street, each adding 10kWh of load to the grid every day. Now, proponents have said "that's OK, look at all the excess capacity we have a night, we'll just use that!" but the truth is that time of day (TOD) metering is only in a very small number of areas, and everybody else is just going to plug in their car simultanously as soon as they get home, which will double the demand on residential electrical distribution in the early afternoon when AC demand is still near peak, and power generation and distribution are all about maxed out...

Thoughts?

Steve:
Based on your comments, I have to agree with you in part, as this could be an issue, IF that many EV's are in the hands of the public. TOD metering for resi is basically unheard of around here (NJ), we used to have separate meters on SFD's for water heaters a long time ago, but today, they are very few, and far inbetween.

That said, I for one would consider an EV for my commute, IF one was available with at least 140 mile capacity, or facilities were available to charge it while I'm at work.

I read about a GM EV that was in test market (as a lease) in CA quite a few years ago, but it vanished.

Over the years as an EC working at a few large golf clubs, I installed timeclocks to only allow the regular charging of the golf carts at night, solving demand issues, and in turn lowering costs for energy. I'm sure that others have implemented the same type systems.

As to the grid, and nite usage, perhaps similar setups could be implemented; designed by some engineer, and securing a patent, and lobbying NFPA Code panels. (ie: bubble covers)

Your thoughts?

Chevy's EV1 was out in small numbers about 10 years ago, but they abandoned it and destroyed all the cars.

The Chevy Volt (~2010) is supposed to have an electric range of 300 miles, which is reasonably achievable with the new lithium battery technology. PHEVs all have gas or diesel primary engines. A lot of EVs will include them as well; just a small highly efficient engine as a range-extender to let you keep going for long trips.

As the digital communication over the power lines becomes more installed, I am sure that chargers will become smart enough to wait until a signal from the PoCo to start charging. They could even go to a cell phone model where the vehicle charger won't turn on until an account number is given to the power company.

If it will only take 90 minutes, I don't care if the car charges at 7 PM or 3 AM. If I get a discount from the utility to charge my vehicle after 10 PM, I would pay for a smarter charger.

Larry

The other problem with EVs is the gasoline tax. If there are ever a significant number of these the government will want to tax the "fuel" to pay for the roads.
That alone will require separate metering and I am not sure how you keep people from cheating. I think the bottom line will be much higher electricity rates across the board and the only real answer is probably the dreaded nuclear power.

Ah, the joys of "unforeseen consequences." That's the most common problem with miracle solutions.

If you thought we had problems with missing caps on light pole bases ... just wait until folks hillbilly-tap the parking lot lights, to 'fill up' while at Wal-mart!

The Reno area has a fairly primitive, maxed out distribution system now; it's not even a proper grid. Yet, every proposal to make the slightest change is opposed.
We have out senior senator opposing the construction of coal plants - right next to massive coal deposits that he opposes mining.
We have substantial opposition to storing Nuclear waste - which inhibits making nuclear power.
Oil? Sure, while we have the most expensive gas prices in the "Lower 48."

Then there's the massive amounts of toxic waste, whenever one of these wonder-cars gets junked - or even made.

Don't expect making them to be easy. Where do you think the battery materials come from? Ask any anti-mining activist.

Save me from good intentions.

The issue of road use taxes is a critical one .... not to mention the entire industry that has sprung up regarding smog tests! You can be sure our legislatures and ministries will love the opportunity to "fix" this problem.

What happened to the Hydrogen fuel cell research? Has there been any new breakthru on getting it going? That seems to me to be closer to the answer than a car you plug into the grid every night.

Where do you get the hydrogen?? RIght now I think they are using Natural gas to get hydroegn.It takes more energy than they get out of it, thats for sure. Maybe wind or solar could be used for making Hydrogen??

GM has a fuel cell vehicle coming out in the near future.

Where are they going to gas it up??

Hydrogen was a dead-end when it was proposed. The whole idea of a hydrogen car was nothing more than a distration to hide the reversal of CAFE standards and all the slashes in research into technologies that would actually have made a difference these last 7 years. Fuel cell technology is still out there and ongoing with many promising developments (and commercial applications), but don't look for it for cars anytime soon. With electricity so cheap and available, there's very little incentive to use hydrogen and every incentive to continue with plug-in technology.


The biggest problem is that hydrogen still isn't a primary source of power, just a means of storing it- either way you cut it, batteries or hydrogen or flywheels or supercapacitors, etc, we need about 120 new nuclear power plants to generate the juice required.
These battery packs can be quick-charged at electric filling stations, too, in as little as 15 minutes. Not as fast as filling up a gas tank, but enough that normal people might consider driving a 300-mile pure EV on trips further than 300 miles.

Re: the gas tax. It doesn't have to be on gas, you know, they could get road maintenance in other ways, like income tax or sales tax or any number of things. They could just raise the rate to compensate and chock it up as a sort of EV subsidy. With $12/gallon gas at that point, what's another 15 cents anyhow, right?

A gas tax is a reasonable way to fund roads. At least the people who use the road the most pay the most.
I suppose once we get over the idea that all cars will have transponders some day (and I bet they will) we will pay the tax directly in the way of tolls. This is already becoming true in a lot of places. They are talking about privatizing the section of I75 called Alligator Alley and totally funding it with tolls. The new lanes of I75 in Ft Myers will be toll too. The bridge to Sanibel and 2 of 3 bridges to Cape Coral are toll. The transponder idea does seriously chip away at the idea of personal privacy but I think that ship sailed long ago. It certainly won't be long before the cop can be driving in traffic and select any car from his head up display, click it and get your whole computer record, based on the transponder ID ... including if you paid your tolls last month.

Hydrogen was a distraction to hide slashes in research? If what has been achieved lately is the result of slashes, then we need more slashing.

Maybe my glass are too rose tinted, but I see:

3rd Generation Prius

Killacycle demonstrating electric isn't just for crawling to the organic food co-op in a clown car.

Tremendous improvement in lithium-ion batteries, and that's before late-2007 when Stanford researchers announced technology that would improve capacity by maybe a factor of 10!

Chevy Volt announcement.

Ford Escape hybrid demonstrating hybrid technology in vehicle types people actually want. Once again erasing the "nerd factor".

Huge growth in the number of flex-fuel E85 vehicles from mostly US manufacturers (and a few Japanese models). http://www.e85fuel.com/e85101/flexfuelvehicles.php

Wind energy actually starting to look meaningful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms#Operating_or_under_construction

Renewed interest in nuclear.

And even hydrogen has seen big improvements, to the point it may be feasible.
http://www.physorg.com/news2273.html

Maybe all the slashing was on wasteful government programs, because this combination of private/public advancement we have seen lately is pretty impressive. And if this was done without taking more money from me (ultimately under threat of violence - that's what the tax code is) then I'm all for it.

Hydrogen from a nuclear reactor is about the only way hydrogen makes any sense. I doubt that is what most hydrogen people are thinking this miracle will happen. They still believe the perpetual motion machine guy's schemes to simply "get" the hydrogen from sea water for free.

Sure, Greg ... I'm still waiting for Delorean to come out with the "Mr. Fusion" powerplant

Where's my hydrogen car, though? Where's the nuclear plants required to produce all that hydrogen? The only fuel cell cars on the road right now are demonstration models, as there's no distribution infrastructure. It was always a dead-end technology that merely sounded good.

Imagine what good might have come if all that money was invested into developing PHEV technology. And the market pressures that would have accellerated it if CAFE standards hadn't been dropped. The recent advances we've seen should have come about 5 years ago.

But that's all water under the bridge, now, the question is what lies ahead. When I posted this thread, I was curious to see what ideas you all might have about the residential grid itself. As it stands now, no PHEV is sold with a timer, nor is any legislation like that planned. Without TOD monitoring, there is no incentive to install a timer, either- I don't know about you all, but I'd sure like to get home at 5pm and be able to drive my car again at 7pm.

What is the impact to the grid going to be? Will it be slow failure that the pocos can keep up with, or are we going to see massive simultanous failures across the nation that will leave the pocos and equipment manufacturers standing around haplessly? I don't see any financial incentive for the pocos to upgrade the infrastructure early. It's in their best interest to just wait for it to fail- the week or so those customers are without power isn't enough of a loss in income to justify the payback time on a transformer and upgraded line. TOD metering is the easy quick fix, but that's going to be wildly unpopular... I sure as hell don't want one on my house.

Steve:
Wow, the side effects that this subject broaches didn't sink-in at the start of this thread!
The area I live in had local grid issues, and it seems the state had to jump up & down to have improvements made. We had a major fail on the barrier island over a holiday weekend that created major financial issues to the tourist industry. That was corrected, another transmission line installed, and additional (local) trans work is being done.

Situations of resi additions, and conversions of what were 'summer homes' to year round residences, with a lot of toys added demand to the local transmission and secondary lines, and one hot day....transformer failure.

Solutions? Upgrade the grid? Upgrade local sub-stations? Upgrade local primary and secondary systems? Sure! It should happen; but when? and who picks up the tab? Higher electric rates are coming here, along with natural gas, propane, and ALL other fuels or forms of energy.

Had we not had the SUV craze of the 90's, and had CAFE standards been toughened up to require 40 mpg average on cars, we might not being seeing many of the recent developments. There's a fair bit of irony there. Had we (the entire world, not just the U.S.) been better about saving resources and protecting the environment, we would not have had such large increases in energy costs. Without expensive energy, money poured into alternative energy research would look wasteful to private investors and vote-conscious short-term-thinking politicians. Odd that.

We won't really get serious about alternate energy sources until oil prices get up to the cost of the alternate.
Some things like hydrogen from any source than nuclear and most biofuel will probably never make sense but we may be using more wind and solar. The problem is still what you do when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Hydrogen come from electricity which comes from coal, nuclear etc. Run the proper electric charge through water and get hydrogen and oxygen.

That method is inefficient at best and it is going to put quite the load on the water delivery systems. We can scrub hydrogen from petroleum fuels but that leads to other issues. Breaking apart other hydrogen bearing compounds gets rather interesting also.

Also that little thing about storing all them itty bitty tiny H2 molecules. High vacuum containers are rated in the number of Hydrogen molecules per minute that leak thru them. Hydrogen migrates thru SOLID METAL!!

Analogy time. Try building a tank to hold BB's with chain link fencing. How sucessful are you?

So once you produce all of this Hydrogen, how are going to transfer it to your car gas tank?

Just my .00000000000000000000000002 cents

Larry C

Electech put his finger on it, if you can get your hydrogen using waste heat from a nuclear reactor you might have a sustainable source but the volume we would need to put a dent in gasoline use is so great I doubt we will ever have that amount of reactors.

If there's enough waste heat from a reactor to do something with it seems like making electricity with it is the thing to do since that's what the reactor is there for. Bleeding off some of the available heat to make hydrogen instead of electric isn't really saving anything.

You need relatively hot water to make steam but there is plenty of heat left over in the discharge water. That is why they need all that cooling water and those big stacks.

I saw a story yesterday where a guy had used electric current in a jar of water to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen and then piped the hydrogen into his injecters to increase his gas milage. Quite a little set-up under the hood. He says he was getting from 37-75 mpg. I don't know if it could work permanently or how hard it would be on the engine but a neat idea to try none the less.

Cogeneration is pretty common and extremely efficient. In a rankine cycle engine, all the energy than can be converted to electricity is, but the "spent" steam coming through the back of the turbines is still extremely hot and must be cooled and condensed to reduce the entropy levels. In some plants, they just use cooling towers. Where they can, though, the steam is used for building heat, as it's too cold for use as much else, but works great as a heater; extremely high efficiencies are gained from electric/steam heat cogeneration. If some of this waste heat can be used for processing oil shale into oil, or water into hydrogen, it's essentially free energy.

Another one of those perpetual motion machine schemes.
The fact still remains you don't get as much energy when you burn hydrogen as it takes to get it out of the water.

I believe the sizing of the cooling towers is based on dissipating all of the heat from the reactors without being able to convert 1/3 of it to electricity, as it is typically done during normal operation.

Most commercial power plants have steam use/reuse systems to increase plant efficiency. Typical items include preheating feed water, using steam driven pumps, steam driven vacuum pumps, etc.

Unfortunately, most applications require high pressure steam. The available "waste" steam is generally low pressure and high volume. Those characteristics makes it difficult to transport the energy any great distance where it can effectively utilized.

Direct conversion of nuclear heat towards hydrogen gas by way of sequential thermo-chemical transformations has been studied for years. Google around, you'll find plenty on it.

Such a system is many, many years away... just on the politics alone.

The next BIG thing is not hydrogen but Compressed Natural Gas (CGN). Honda is ALREADY selling a car build to run ONLY on CGN through their regular dealer network. You can go down right now and buy one.

CNG powered vehicles cost about half as much per mile to drive based on todays price spread between gas and natural gas. And yes, road tax is collected at the CNG pump. UPS has long converted their fleet, and normally will let you fill up at their system -- in their off hours, only. Other fleet refuelers are expanding all over. A major one is in Rancho Cordova, CA... South of I-50, east of Sacramento.

Electric vehicles are going to come like an express train in urban areas. They excel in heavy traffic: being stopped does not ruin their fuel economy.

You can expect that within ten years 400 Amp 240/120 single phase service will be the norm in upscale new homes. More than one EV will need charging.

At the current time Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and others are FLARING ( burning it off to get rid of it ) enough natural gas to cause the oil markets to crash. ( If the energy was made available to motorists globally.)A

At some juncture, a global grid of natural gas pipelines will permit this gas to be sold into the global marketplace.

In the near term: the MASSIVE natural gas deposits ALREADY available in Alaska ( equal to three times the energy content of the North Slope oil deposits ) will be brought down to the lower 48 within the next twelve years.

As the vehicle fleet shifts over to CNG and electricity gasoline demand will drop. The price surge of the last two years is already causing noticeable drops in motor fuel demand.

As electricians: study up on Division 1 Code issues. Many new CNG distribution facilities must be built.

Get prepared for a whole new round of 'heavy-ups'.

One additional note: Honda is also selling a CNG plug-in compressor that taps a homeowner's residential natural gas system and refuels the Honda overnite. (4,000 PSI)

So, an owner need rarely even visit a commercial refueler.

The compressor keeps track of the delivery... so that any tax due can be paid. Presumably, the road fuel tax would be paid with your income tax return as just another line item and calculation.

I looked at a propane conversion in the 70s. Once the cars got Stellite valves there was no good reason not to, except the lack of filling stations and the cost of the conversion (over $1000 in 74). Right now I am not sure propane is that much cheaper than gasoline. I don't think there is any LNG around here. When I was in Md I had natural gas at the house but not the compressor to make it liquid.