# Electric Cars, Batteries Not Included



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

John Gardner surveys various schemes to reduce the cost of electric cars.

More...


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Dumb article.

First he says, 



> What the electrification of our automobile fleet will not accomplish, however, is a significant impact in our overall greenhouse gas emissions, unless the increased electricity required by electric vehicles is supplied by sources other than coal or natural gas.


That is ridiculous. If every vehicle in America were converted to electric and then powered by coal, emissions would be reduced over 50% compared to all those individual ICE vehicles.

Big loss of credibility.

Then he goes on to say that all electric cars should be made part of the "smart grid." First off, this will be unacceptable to customers who, already facing significantly reduced range in their vehicles, may come back after hours of charging to learn that there is no more charge than when they left. Second, managing the grid is a problem for the energy companies, not the consumer. There are much better battery technologies more suitable to co-locating at local substations than LiIon car battery packs. An expense to the energy companies? Certainly - but also better service to their customers, since it reduces or even eliminates brownouts / blackouts at peak use hours.


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## Voltswagen (Nov 13, 2008)

Another fact which nearly never comes up when discussing EV's and Electric Utilities is that all Electric Utilities *DUMP* electricity at night during slack demand. What!????? 

There is a little known phrase in the electric production business called: "Base Load". This is a point from which a utility can ramp up production to match demand without creating "Brown-Outs" across their service region.

Think of it this way: We all get up in the morning and start taking showers, turning on lights, coffee pots, tv's etc. This sudden activity creates demand spikes which cannot be met by just flipping on some extra generation at 6 or 7am. The supply has to be ramped up slowly so as not to blow the hell out of all the sub-stations.
By maintaining a higher supply level during slack demand the spikes in demand are more easily met.
It's lots more complicated than this but you get the general idea.
So.....during the period of "slack demand" utilities dump the extra generation capacity they need to maintain the "Base Load".
What percentage do they dump you ask? No electric utility has been forth-coming with those facts. 

Now lets add Electric Vehicles to this seeming insanity.
Most of us in the future would be charging our vehicles during those periods of slack demand because those would be the hours of least use of our vehicles. And hopefully we would all have graduated to Lithium or some other yet to be announced "magic bullet" which fully charges in 5 or 6 hours. So, unless you work the night shift, or suffer from EV insomina, your charger which you religiously plugged in at 10pm  is shutting down at about 3 or 4am.
It wouldn't take long for the local utility to notice and the more of us who convert to EV's the more they would notice and could possibly make a few dollars on the juice they would otherwise waste.

This would benefit you and I. 
Why? Because nationwide electric utility rates are controlled by each states Board of Public Utilities. 
When a utility applies for an increase in rates the first thing the board looks at is their Profit & Loss statement for the past year. Improved profits usually results in less rate increases. Not always.......but usually.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

That's good info. I knew that there were limits to how quickly coal plants can ramp power up and down, but didn't know that they ran significant slack.

That's yet another reason why I suspect the utility companies will start placing "smart batteries" at substations in the near future. They can then bill for the power they are now wasting to offset the installation costs - no change in profit (at least not initially) so they don't have to wrangle with the regulators.


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## Jason Lattimer (Dec 27, 2008)

If you figure in the cost of maintenance of an ICE car vs. an electric car, not to mention the life time of the electric, there is no need to reduce the cost. They are already cheaper in the long run. You would go through several gasoline cars vs. one electric.


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