by frog
While I fully support the government’s vision to move New Zealand to an electric vehicle fleet, at least in principle, I have often wondered what kind of behaviour changes this would require of the citizenry. I have also enquired how much more electricity generation we would need to make the switch. The off the record answer has always been “We’re not exactly sure. If we recharge only at night, none. Otherwise, it depends on people’s charging behaviour.” New research in the US supports this vague statement.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that supporting a 25% market share of light-duty (cars and SUVs) plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks in 2030 could require either up to 162 new power generation plants (if recharged during the day) or no new power plants at all, if recharged after 10 p.m.
In aggregate, the model predicts an increase in demand, generation, electricity prices, and emissions from the utilities created by the introduction of PHEVs. It also suggests that by 2030 almost all regions (10 out of 13) will need to add capacity to provide for charging PHEVs, mostly in the scenario where PHEVs are charged at 6 kW in the evenings. In all likelihood, to avoid these problems the utilities in the regions would expand their capacity, increase their imports, or establish demand response programs beyond the level that NEMS had calculated, but these factors were not modelled in the scenarios.
Some assessments of the impact of electric vehicles assume owners will charge them only at night, said Stan Hadley of ORNL’s Cooling, Heating and Power Technologies Program.
That assumption doesn’t necessarily take into account human nature. Consumers’ inclination will be to plug in when convenient, rather than when utilities would prefer. Utilities will need to create incentives to encourage people to wait. There are also technologies such as smart chargers that know the price of power, the demands on the system and the time when the car will be needed next to optimize charging for both the owner and the utility that can help too. (Peak Oil News, March 14 2008)
Will New Zealanders be any different than Americans when it comes to plugging in at convenient times? I doubt it. We are going to need some serious demand side incentives to keep people from plugging in at will. Does our government have the courage to dictate to the market or will simple price mechanisms be enough? I don’t have an answer or a strong view either way. I just think that we should be discussing this now rather than waiting for the cars to roll off the ship from Japan.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Society & Culture by frog on Tue, March 18th, 2008
Tags: cars, electricity, government, hybrid, market, PHEV, policy, power staion
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
A scheduling system on the car itself, methinks. Pretty easy, really…
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BluePeter – I thought you might rebuff that as too nanny state. Why should the state tell me when to charge my car when I can afford to pay anything for electricity? That’s not to say I am arguing with you. I agree that a simple prohibition during peak times would be the easiest solution. It just might not be palletable to the electorate.
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Hi Peter
Try telling people that they can only buy petrol after 9pm. I’d like to hear how you get on
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The problem isn’t as simple as “needing no new power stations”.
Although the peak power required my not change if everyone recharges at night, the total amount of electricity required will increase. Which means, for the fossil stations, more coal or gas. For the hydro stations, still a very significant part of our power generation, it means more water. Thats a big ask.
Ideally, we could build more wind, and then schedule car charging to match capacity available. That would work, as long as we get some wind somewhere…
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Well maybe…tidal? Turbines at the bottom of Cook Straut *sigh*
Wondering if the power companies would prefer to charge less at night rather than build new capacity…? I don’t imagine this would change people’s other behaviour much, as we’re hardly going to become nocturnal.
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What ever happened to ripple control?
I’d be very happy to have some powerpoints in the house which I knew would provide me with cheap power, but only when it was available. There are plenty of appliances (not to mention recharging electric car batteries) which I’d happily give up when power is expensive.
I guess you could also pay for certainty of supply so, umm.. a certain price for power which is guaranteed to be available for at least 6 hours between 10pm and 6am and no guarantees the rest of the day, cheaper if it was a smaller guaranteed chunk and so on. Presumably there are a couple of sensible configurations for this and households could pick one in addition to expensive 24×7.
Either way I’d be very happy to avoid adding to peak load, but at present I have no way of knowing when it is, let alone avoiding it.
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>>I agree that a simple prohibition during peak times would be the easiest solution
I don’t like the “prohibition” word
It would seem natural to me to charge the car overnight. How many people use their cars between 1am & 6am? However, there may well be a need for people to charge during the day.
How about seeing how it goes? There might not be an issue.
If the load does get too high during the day, then either increase capacity and/or create price differentials. Seems sensible….
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StephenR said: I don’t imagine this would change people’s other behaviour much, as we’re hardly going to become nocturnal.
Dunno about that. Peronally, I’d prefer to sleep between 1pm and 5pm, and get another couple of hours sleep between 2am and 4am. Work between 5am and 12noon, with any extra necessary being done from home between 6pm and 8pm. Then evening meal and social/family time.
Maybe I’m different in my body clock from most Kiwis, and this is probably a bit more extreme than is practised anywhere in southern Europe or Asia, but would work for me.
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Watch the price differential for electricity use change as the cars get more numerous. There’s already an off peak rate. With a little work that can be made into a plug with a timer on it that starts the chargers around 1AM and leaves them on until 5 or so… and a little more “smarts” would stagger/balance the loads so as to keep the generators ticking over nicely.
Could even make them sensitive to the availability of local wind… not really a problem guys. You don’t have to be awake for your electric water heater to work, why be awake for your car to charge?
respectfully
BJ
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Exactly.
Erm…are people under the impression you need to supervise charging?
Tesla Motors acknowledge “time of us” charging (US) “In general, there is a trend towards “time of use” pricing. This means that it will be cheaper to charge at night, when the demand on the electricity grid is lowest.”
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Hmmm. I’ve woken up to cold shower on a few occasions because the water heating has been switched off overnight.
If you need to get to work and the car hasn’t charged for same reason, might be a 3 hour walk for some (I’ve chosen to live 10m walk from a train station, so don’t use a car anyway, but this not an option for most people).
Maybe these should be sold with wind turbine and photoelectric charging as optional extras to mitigate against grid electricity outages. Usually, when there is no wind, there is sun (apart from Hamilton when there is fog all day).
But still need the ability to feed excess electricity generated back into the national grid to provide a real incentive for people to go there. Which we don’t currently have, but easily could.
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>>the car hasn’t charged for same reason, might be a 3 hour walk
Same as if a car breaks down. Sh@t happens.
However, standing next to a car at 3am isn’t going to help. Charging times are a lot longer than filling a tank with petrol.
>>But still need the ability to feed excess electricity generated back into the national grid
There is talk of using the car to feed energy back into the grid. i.e. the car acts as a power source to flatten peaks. You leave it plugged in all the time, and the car decides if it’s worthwhile selling some energy or taking more on.
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I saw an article by Monbiot where he solved the whole charging problem. You don’t. Rather you change batteries in your car at petrol stations when they need to be charged. Would take only a few minutes to do and you pay for the service/ electricity as you would with petrol today. The petrol station then charges the batteries when the power is most abundant and cheap. Would also work well with renewable energy as the batteries could be recharged when the wind is blowing or the sun shining.
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Putting solar cells on the roof of the car seems a good idea now that ceels are getting a lot cheaper. at least a good idea for those that park in the open.
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We still have to pay RUC on electric cars. This government has no clue how to actualy encourage elecric cars.
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The problem of the car battery not being charged when you need it isn’t a major problem if the car is a PHEV – just use the engine.
I would want to charge any PHEV that I buy when I get to work, so I have plenty of range driving home to give me the option of detouring to the shops, take-away, etc. It wouldn’t need to be charged immediately, but sometime in the 8+ hours that I am at work. Of course I would also charge it when I get home, but again sometime overnight rather than straight away. There would be some days that I would like the option of charging immediately I get home and I would expect to pay a higher price but still cheaper than paying for petrol. If this was at peak demand, then I wouldn’t want to pay the peak demand price and would use the petrol instead….
Trevor.
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New Zealand’s electricity supply system is very different to that of most countries. In most countries, the limiting factor is the amount of generation plant, so higher peak demand requires extra power stations, which are then available the rest of the day and night. In these countries, no additional power stations are needed to charge PHEVs if they can be charged at off peak times. Also many of these countries have a maximum peak demand in the afternoon running air conditioning on hot summer days. New Zealand’s peak demand is in winter, in the early evening, making charging PHEVs at work less unattractive.
New Zealand’s electricity supply is generally fuel-limited, rather than plant-limited, since about 2/3 of our generation is from renewable resources and we are hoping to increase this. If we charge PHEVs, then we use some of this fuel (water in hydro lakes more likely) irrespective of the time of day or night. Therefore we will need more generation to provide the power for these PHEVs, including more despatchable generation.
We should get on with it.
Trevor.
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Of course you pay RUC on electric cars, they use the road, contribute to congestion and should pay for their share of the cost of maintaining and upgrading them. Cars shouldn’t be subsidised over other modes.
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The government wont have to regulate to make people charge their cars (and phones, PDAs, laptops, etc) at night. They already own the technology to make behavioural changes happen with good old market forces.
http://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/AboutUs/News/Strong+interest+in+smart+meter+initiative,+says+Meridian.htm
http://www.arcinnovations.co.nz/about-us.html
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Frog ‘wondered what kind of behaviour changes this would require of the citizenry’ and then the kicker phrase towards the end: ‘Does our government have the courage to dictate to the market or will simple price mechanisms be enough?’
Do we worry about this for food? Oh, wait, the ‘Placement of Undesirable Grocery Items Well Away from Gullible Consumers Regulations (2008)’ are in the wings.
Sigh.
As well as smart metering and other feedback mechanisms, it seems feasible to use an autonomous house (wind, solar, whatever) as the power source at whatever darn time the owner feels like. Bit like that Hummer-equivalent of a fridge which said consumer could run if they were prepared to juice it up themselves.
In fact, there’s a phrase for all this.
‘Individual Freedom’.
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I’m not sure that waymad appreciates how much drain PHEVs could put on our electrical system. I don’t have any reliable figures but an off-the-cuff estimate suggests that each day over 1 million cars are used. If 25% of 1 million cars are PHEVs and these are plugged in and charged at 6kiloWatts each, the additional load is 1.5GW. New Zealands peak demand is only about 7GW, so this would add more than 20% to our peak demand. Unless we build multiple new power stations, our alternatives are to control this extra demand or face power cuts.
Even if we do provide more generation, power cuts could be closer to home – many houses are fed via power cables that are rated for only about 15kW. Add 6 kiloWatts at peak time and the house main supply fuse may blow. If the house wiring is upgraded (e.g. to 3-phase), the extra load on the local substations could cause them to partially shut down and black out the street or block.
Eventually we may upgrade enough infrastructure so PHEVs aren’t a problem. Until then when faced with a choice of limiting charging times or blackouts, I know which I would prefer.
If waymad wants to pay for enough batteries for his(?) autonomous house so he can charge his PHEV when he gets home around sunset (when his solar panels stop working), that is fine by me, but I think he will find that the cost of battery maintenance/replacement will hit hard.
Trevor.
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On thinking further about waymad’s desire to be autonomous, the preferred engineering solution might be to have a second set of batteries for the electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and charge these when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Then when the car is parked, simply swap the batteries and the car is ready to go again. Of course the batteries aren’t going to be light, so some form of mechanical assistance might be needed such as a trolley with jack.
Such a solution would also address the problem of everyone else plugging in their cars at peak demand times and the long time to recharge the batteries.
Trevor.
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I don’t know if this is available in New Zealand, but in the United States a company named GridPoint has got a pretty good solution:
GridPoint Energy Manager in conjunction with PHEVs enables utilities to offer PHEV customers value-based differentiated pricing, billing lower rates for utility-controlled off-peak charging and higher rates during peak hours. Utilities can optimize a new revenue stream, while offering customers significantly reduced charging costs and limiting peak load growth.
Additionally, utilities gain complete control over when and how fast PHEVs are charged, allowing utilities to optimize generating assets.
Link at: http://gridpoint.com/smartgrid/capabilities/phev.integration.aspx
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