Electric Cars: Where Will The Infrastructure Come From?

This week's announcement by General Motors that it has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to work on issues related to electric vehicles got a great deal of media play. But the coverage only began to scratch the surface of the complexity of bringing plug-in electric vehicles to market in mass quantities.

In reality, the GM-utility conversation isn't entirely new. It began in January, at a Vehicle Electrification Workshop held at GM's research center in Warren, Michigan. I had the privilege of attending the meeting, which was facilitated by my colleagues at the sustainability strategy firm GreenOrder. The meeting included more than two dozen utility executives, including a team from the Electric Power Research Institute, the industry-funded consortium that served as the co-convener of the meeting.

Read the full story here

Comments

[psgoodguy]

i live in the desert where it's sunny 350 days a year. do you see solar panels on every rooftop? no way.

palm desert, ca. offers homeowners the chance to install solar panels on their home then adds the cost to their mortgage. it averages out to around $90/mo. that's a pretty smart solution to an expensive problem if you ask me.

a lot of folks around here drive electric golf carts in the winter (when the weather is nice). i'm sure a lot more folks would buy an electric car when they figure out they can have the "gas pump" sitting right there on their own roof.

we drive a prius. we'd probably get an electric car as a grocery getter if we could get one with a/c. it's too painful to drive around in 115 degree heat without one.

[KillTheMessenger]

Living on a desert retirement development is not a particularly energy/resource conserving way of living. It will surely not help you to become carbon neutral. Putting the solar panels on you roof is at best a marginal improvement. And I don't even want to know where the water for all those lawns and the dozen golf courses or so comes from... But if paying $90/month makes you feel good about yourself, it's money wisely spent.

[SmellyOne]

More pessimism!!!!!

You seem very ignorant, too. A person can put enough solar panels on their house to fuel all their energy needs.

Educate yourself!!!!!!

[CintiBlue]

I thought of this a couple of weeks ago.:

I'm a very low mileage driver. It takes me approx. 3 weeks to use 3/4 of a tank. If I could travel 30 to 40 mi. on a single charge, in the past 3 years I would have needed , at most, 2 or 3 tanks of gas. And, that's a generous estimate.

I've lived in the same neighbor for years, so this is a pretty good estimate of need.

How cool would this be?

[KillTheMessenger]

Except that the economics of a car (no matter what kind of engine it has) does probably not work out for you to begin with. The production cost of a vehicle that drives a couple ten thousand miles over its lifetime will never be amortized. You would probably be better off taking a cab. That is not a bad thing, by the way. It works quite well in Singapore where almost nobody has a car and almost everybody can afford the cheap cab rides.

[CintiBlue]

I've got a '99 with 71,000 on it and plan to have it until it falls apart.

The economy has changed my habit of jumping in the car to go look at something in a store. It's tough to have a tight wallet, but can open eyes to how little is necessary. And, I'm not even much of a spender.

[DRaymond]

Have about 40 thousand dollars to buy a Chevrolet Volt?

That's the uncool part right now, just too darn unaffordable.

[CintiBlue]

Well aware, DRaymond!

I knew when the Prius arrived I'd be waiting a long time to recoop the initial payout.

[Eric8869]

If you haven't seen the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" - you need to rent it NOW.

GM has no intention of putting electric cars on the road again. This is all PR.

[SmellyOne]

Stop being dramatic. Electric cars will happen with our without GM. Market forces are at work, and enough people want them that there will be other people willing to sell them.

[KillTheMessenger]

You can buy plenty of electric cars. They either perform like luxury golf carts or are designed as toys for the rich. Between the two extremes there is a gaping engineering hole that nobody knows how to fill, cost effectively, yet.

[ScottPalmer]

Aptera fill part of the gap. Aptera.com

[ccpostman]

You can watch it on Youtube. It is in eleven parts.

Part one -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vD33UMAtBY&feature=related

[SmellyOne]

Hasn't anyone heard of the "Smart Grid"?

From smartgridnews.com:

"The Smart Grid will:

· Enable active participation by consumers

· Accommodate all generation and storage options

· Enable new products, services and markets

· Provide power quality for the digital economy

· Optimize asset utilization and operate efficiently

· Anticipate and respond to system disturbances (self-heal)

· Operate resiliently against attack and natural disaster"


The Smart Grid will be like the internet. It's coming. Prepare yourself by thowing up some solar panels and making your home as effecient as possible.

[SolarPowerGuy]

I've already got most of this in place. I've made many efficiency upgrades. My home solar photovoltaic system produces 6,000 kWh per year, 94% of my family's total use.

Most of that power is produced on sunny summer weekday afternoons, so I have a time-of-use electric meter, today's version of the "smart grid". Since no one is usually home on weekday afternoons but that's when businesses need power the most, I sell my excess power to the grid at a high price. In the evening, when demand drops, we come home. We buy power back from the grid, but it's cheap then.

From the standpoint of my electric bill, my system is over-sized. I earn nearly $300 in excess energy credits each year that I can't spend. It's a shame that I got my system before California law changed, and required the utility company to cut me a check.

BUT I own a Prius. All I need is a plug-in hybrid, or a conversion kit, that can be charged from a standard outlet. Depending on the size of the car battery, I could then drive up to 25 miles/day, for free, on sunshine.

[KillTheMessenger]

The smart grid is not what you can do at home. It is a controlled, continental electric grid with multiple times the capacity of our current electric grid that can shift electricity with little loss over 2000 mile distances and more and allows regional, as well as per customer load control. Without the ability to re-route generation capacity over the continent, a smart grid amounts to little more than the control freak's version of rolling blackouts. In other words: you let the electricity company remotely turn off your AC or tv set on a hot summer day. And when you try to turn them on they will tell you that the electricity you are using right now is ten times more expensive than regularly...

Sounds like fun.

[truthynesslover]

Can someone tell me why they havent built a battery that is stored in your home to hold the energy created during the day,that way we could get off the grid?I have a friend who works for G.E. ,he says they have it but are holding it back till they squeeze every last penny from us.

[way2muchsense]

So I guess this means some weird plug with a voltage other than 110 AC, where converters to ordinary 3-prong household plugs and 110 AC would be proscribed by law, and where the price per KWH is some ridiculous multiple of what your local utility is charging you, the household consumer.

[KillTheMessenger]

The voltage other than 120AC would be 240AC, the weird plugs are in use for power equipment for decades all over the world, they are reliable and dirt cheap. You will need them to charge a real PHEV because your household plug is not nearly powerful enough to get the job done in less than 18 hours or so for an even moderate driving range.

And yes, electricity will cost a lot more after we increase demand and couple the electricity market to the oil market. That's just economics 101.

[DRaymond]

Most home have a 240AC service, usually know as the 'dryer plug'. In all honesty though I think that a 20 amp 120 volt service will be fine for recharging an electric car because the limiting factor is how fast the battery can accept charging current.

[OldKnute]

Well,,, I like the Electric car AND the Home based,, Distributed Model for the Grid,, Wind and Solar. As far as powering our cars LONG TERM,, I still favor running them ultimately on Water.

NASA is producing a conventional Jet aircraft that is WATER Fueled. Water captured from the moisture of air it flies through.

THREE TIMES the speed of sound and ALL on water.

NOW if it is good enough for NASA,, why not our cars?

Not in the Future,, but TODAY!

Yep!

Good enough for me!

All the best

Knute Neo-LIB

[jvarga]

Perhaps because we don't drive jet engined cars around.

[KillTheMessenger]

Cute, more people who have failed science class and are now standing in line to buy my Brooklyn Bridge.

[sf101]

It's a pointless question. All that matters is which giant corporation is going to get a lock on the patent for this process. Name other examples (HDTV standard, browser standard and others), and it always comes down to the same thing. Money and power first. Then, save the world.

[KillTheMessenger]

What process? Of making electricity? That's your utility, already. No big deal. If you don't want to charge anywhere else than at home (which is almost useless for realistic early PHEVs), then a simple 240V AC plug will do. If your employer is willing to pay for recharging your car for free, a simple 240V AC plug will do, too. If you want to recharge somewhere else where the juice is not for free, you need the equivalent of a gasoline pump. And that is usually a piece of equipment with a credit card slot of some sorts. This is all they are talking about: a convenient way for you to recharge just like you now have a convenient way to refuel.

Sounds like you don't want the convenience...

[GreyFlcn]

We already have enough infrastructure to power 70% of the US Car fleet if it were electric.
http://greyfalcon.net/plugins4

And even if you powered an electric car exclusively on the dirtiest coal plants we got, it'd still be greener than a conventional car.
http://greyfalcon.net/plugins7

As for where will the energy come from, that should be pretty obvious. Our big giant fusion reactor in the sky.
http://greyfalcon.net/energy2.png
http://greyfalcon.net/solarthermal
http://greyfalcon.net/ausra
http://greyfalcon.net/ausra2

[KillTheMessenger]

Now that is what I call a load of nonsense. You could bring down the electricity nets all across the East Coast and the Pacific West by plugging in a few million PHEVs. Why? Because it takes smart nets do shift the additional peak load to non-peak load times. And as far as I know, such smart nets do not exist. Many of the power nets we have operate within a few percent of capacity during peak times. Plug in some more loads and you will trigger vast outages during these peaks.

[SolarPowerGuy]

Greyfalcon's numbers may be a bit optimistic, but the basic concept is sound.

Watch this graph for a while:

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

This shows supply and demand on California's energy grid, day by day, hour by hour.

Even on the hottest days, when electric demand is high, the surplus power available between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM exceeds 50,000 megawatt-hours. (Today it's 90,000 MWh.) Right now, that power is turning into WASTE heat.

A Toyota Prius consumes 250 watt-hours per mile. Let's make conservative assumptions about plug-in vehicles, and get up to some round numbers. Let's assume highway travel only, and bump the figure up to 450 Wh/mile. Add in transmission losses and we'll call it 500 Wh/mile.

50,000 MWh / (500 Wh/mile) = 100 million vehicle miles. Per day. Without adding ANY new generating capacity. In California only. Just make sure you charge only at night.

There are 35 million people in California. If EVERYONE had a personal plug-in vehicle and drove somewhere every day, they could each travel 2.9 miles. Obviously, that's unrealistic and silly.

But, can you imagine 20% of the population traveling 14.3 miles/day on surplus electricity -- again, assuming that every EV/PHEV driver stubbornly clings to driving solo, 7 days/week? I can.

There's no reason not to get started on vehicle electrification right now. Infrastructure considerations do not need to slow the introduction of EV's.

[DRaymond]

Most electric car recharging will be done at night, so peak load concerns actually run in the other direction.

[markie1111]

i certainly hope the the author of the headline meant: From where will the infrastructure come. otherwise a bitchslapping is in order.

[BlackbirdHighway]

Shouldn't it end with a question mark? "From where will the infrastructure come?"

Yes, and Obama's campaign slogan was meant to say "Change in which we can believe".

Although, I can't see that wording going over well in the Midwest.

[HippyGourmet]

The very best infrastructure for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are solar arrays.

Here's a great partnership between Ethical Approach Electric Car dealers and Akeena Solar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atG1tWvfMhQ

Yes, the sun powers your home, and your home powers your car - and all your local errand driving is done for less than pennies per mile! Plus there are so many local businesses (wholefoods, Banks, even city offices) that let you plug in and park for free!

[mlaiuppa]

Solar Trees. Kyocera in San Diego has a solar grove in their parking lot. Some of the local malls are putting them in. No reason you can't plug in and charge up while you're shopping.

As is the current grid can support charging 150 million cars off peak.

The only challenge is where to get 150 million EVs.

[norkas]

Good and true post Hippy. If someone here would make a petition that would give tax breaks for auto companies who sell electric autos and tax breaks for those who purchase them we will he ahead of the game. Also they could use solar to charge the electric auto. One click and a solar panel displays itself on the roof of the car. Obama could make his economic policy based on tax breaks for solar homes and electric autos. This tech is here now and in parts of California they are giving large tax breaks for solar power homes.. This will produce strong economic growth and no doubt change the future of our domestic economy. Why is the hell the DUMMIES that are guiding Obama not figured this out. It is not space age and is here already. I would fire a few of the players working for Obama because i feel they are DUMMIES.

[ohnoyoudidnot!]

Check out the Tesla Motors electric - http://www.teslamotors.com/

Amazing car. Be sure to watch the clip of Jay Leno with his.

[only1Demvoter]

ohno : Sexy, huh ?

Got $125 K. ??

( Plus they're hand made... Production numbers are low. )

Still...


I want one bad. -ralph

[KillTheMessenger]

Except... it's not even a car. It's just a manhood enhancer. It only becomes a car once you can put a shopping cart worth of groceries in.

[WASanford]

The question this piece asks is intriguing to put it mildly, but Joel should be asking where will we get the infrastructure to run our HD TV's, they use more energy than our electric cars will.

As for electric cars being clean, that depends how the electricity used to charge them is generated. If you believe that our dependence on foreign oil is our only problem then they are the answer. If you worry about climate change, then you may want to consider some other solution.

[research]

my HD tv uses only 150 watts and it;s a projector.

plug in hybrids will use 1/4 of all of our electricity.

all these plans assume wind and solar replacing dirty coal and nukes.

[NL207]

"dirty coal"

Examine the operation of one of these: http://www.cogeneration.net/Coal-Gasification.htm

Conventional coal fired planst are about 35% efficient. These can achieve 50% efficiency. That's like increasing the amount of coal you have by 42%.

[sheila]

thanks for raising this point about fueling TVs (i think plasma's suck huge wattage, even when off)...

another point i raised below is - why is it all of a sudden a "problem" to have clean plug-in cars, solar panels and microwind systems at our homes, but it is "no problem" to mine coal, drill for oil and gas, refine them all, transport them thousands of miles, combust them, kill a bunch of miners, start a bunch of forest fires, heavily pollute the planet and hijack consumers? we are doing far more complicated, expensive, wasteful and polluting things now than EVs call for!

oh right, it's a problem because Big Energy has monopolies it is not willing to allow us into, including Big Renewables. Big Renewables will pretend they are like you and me, with euphemistically named "solar and wind farms," but really? they are just Big Energy with a new fuel. Local, point of use renewables must be fully built out before big Renewables get to kill our wilderness and steal all our money!

[coyote4]

“As for electric cars being clean, that depends how the electricity used to charge them is generated. “

*
Actually your concern is misplaced. Since gasoline engines are typically only 20 to 30% efficient, most of the energy potential is wasted by the use of this obsolete device. If we include exploration, infrastructure and refining costs, the gasoline automobile is a drug addict wasting available resources.

In comparison, burning oil to generate electricity, transmission and charging your electric car's batteries are as much as 3X more efficient after all is said and done.

So, to argue that coal fired generators should be phased out before electric cars are phased in is false logic. The real devil in the energy spectrum is the obsolete 100+ year old gasoline engine.

[KillTheMessenger]

A typical electric car will suck 2kW for 6-12hours a day. Your big screen tv needs maybe 350W for 8h, on average.

I would say you better do your math, again.

[noneIn2008]

Where is the power generated? From coal fired power plants.
So what is the purpose of an electric car?
And, they cost more to operate than gasoline.

Net, they cost more and have a negative environmental impact. But, they make good headlines and help neogreens feel good.

[research]

Hybrids and plug in hybrids cost less to operate. If charged from coal, they create slightly more pollution then a gas or diesel hybrid. So we should replace coal plants with wind ASAP.

[mouselion]

"replace coal plants with wind ASAP"

That would be a *mighty* big political hurdle to get over.

The more electricity demand from the grid, the more Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Nuke are going to fight for a larger piece of the pie.

[ScooterLiddy]

The overall mix of power plants in the U.S. is 55 percent coal, 9 percent natural gas, and 4 percent oil. The other 32 percent include nuclear power and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal. However, although half the country uses coal-fired plants, EVs recharging from these facilities are predicted to produce dramatically less CO2 than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. According to the World Resources Institute, EVs recharging from coal-fired plants will reduce CO2 emissions by at least 17 to 22 percent.

Furthermore, in a study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, EVs were significantly cleaner over the course of 100,000 miles than ICE cars. The electricity generation process produces less than 100 pounds of pollutants for EVs compared to 3000 pounds for ICE vehicles.

Why?

Because EVs are significantly more efficient in converting their energy into mechanical power.

Even though there are emissions associated with coal- and oil-fired power plants, smokestack emissions associated with charging EVs are extremely low, and in fact, EVs can charge from zero emission sources such as nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, and wind power.

[BlackbirdHighway]

We import 70% of our oil from overseas, at prices up around $140 a barrel. That's about $700 billion dollars leaving the US each year.

We can make electricity right here from a variety of sources: wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, natural gas, coal, oil, etc.

There aren't any panels you can put on your roof that turn sunshine into gasoline.

[joebhed]

ummm, we don't use imported oil to generate electricity.

[coyote4]

noneIn2008: you are blowing smoke and hoping that mirrors will hide your ignorance. Every statement you made was incorrect.

[sculptor]

The notion of using the batteries of electric cars to back up the grid has a negative effect on the car owners. That is, even the best batteries, even ones on the horizon, wear out with use. These batteries will more than serve to their purpose to propel a car but will they as well stand up to being used 24/7 to back up the grid? Even if these batteries do survive this abuse it will undoubtedly degrade their effectiveness in a vehicle. My question is, will auto owners be compensated for what would happen to their batteries when hooked to the grid?

[mouselion]

Making cars become an integral part of the power grid is very unwise.

[sheila]

once the battery tech gets there, owners can elect to feed the grid or not, and should be fairly paid for doing so.

same with generating power on our properties. Europe pays 60-80 cents/watt to residents who install PV on their roofs and roughly 20 cents/watt for small windmills. WE GET NOTHING. Even in CA, which pretends to be green, the best we can do is "zero out" our bills, which means NO incentive for conservation, we are NOT ALLOWED to oversize our systems to feed excess renewable power into the grid, and we can only pay off the system if we overconsume power then act like we would have paid for that power...

we need to look at the 40 other nations who have been doing this right for YEARS now. Big Energy is counting on uninformed, xenophobic Americans who won't realize how completely ripped off they are by our government refusing to institute high feed-in tariffs and guaranteed loan programs for US to participate in the energy free markets.

smart grid technology already exists so we can know real-time availability and pricing of power on the grid, and make good decisions, so why aren't we allowed to have it?

at that point, you can feed in from your panels, mini-windmill, EV battery or nothing at all...

[sculptor]

I agree that buyback is more fair, but remember CA helps subsidize the installation. I'm waiting for a $4.50/w rebate check as I write this. By the way, I assume you mean 60-80cents/kwh (peope would get rich off the rate you posted.)

[joebhed]

Sheila,
What is a fair price?

The avoided cost of what was replaced would be cost neutral to the utility and other consumers?

The retail rate for electricity would be a costly subsidy by the other ratepayers who would be paying for billing and operating costs in their rates?

If net-metering was designed to so that the "returning" power to the grid was priced at the kWh it was replacing, there would be no opposition to having as much re-generation as we could support.

When the generator-customer wants the RIGHT to sell kWh TO THE OTHER CUSTOMERS, then the other customers should not have to pay more for their power.

Just the same cost as if the utility was doing the investmnt in all of that micro-renewable energy on the grid. And no more.
The least cost solution would virtually eliminate whatever opposition there is right now to net metering mandates.

Electric cooperatives seem like the most natural vehicle for this. The people who benefit from such a policy would be those who pay for it.

It would be foolish for any utility not to pursue all of the micro-generation it could get if it was done on a least-cost basis.

With taxpayer-funded subsidies to the generation side, there is no subsidy needed from the other consumers.

Let's limit the wind and solar generators to the same "subsidy" rules that we have for the coal and nuclear generators.

[marijam]

Where did the infrastructure for gasoline powered vehicles come from? It'll come from the same place, in the same way.

[Viper]

it took decades. Cars were here before the highways and gas stations. You really think we can wait to change infra sturcture over 50 years?

Regards

[research]

That's why the plug in hybrid is ideal. It uses the existing infrastructure, while accepting new infrastructure in the form of more electrical outlets.