Powering Electric Vehicles

Max Dunn — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:34:00 -0700

One question that is often asked is that if we start to have a lot of electric vehicles, won’t this strain our electric system and require us to build a lot of new electric power plants?

The answer is no – at least at first. The reason is that electric usage goes down considerably at night. By simply charging at off-peak times, then we can use electricity from the plants that would have otherwise been idle.

Let’s look at the math. An electric vehicle consumes 1 kWh from the wall socket for every 2-4 miles driven. The average car is driven about 30 miles per day – so the average daily energy needed per car is only 10 kWh. If these vehicles are charged over 10 off-peak hours, the average power consumption per car is 1 kW. Since California has 25 GW of spare off-peak electric capacity, this can power 25 million electric cars in California alone.

This is just a rough calculation, but the same conclusion was reached in a detailed analysis which found that 84% of all cars in the US could be powered by the existing electricity infrastructure.

Eschew Obfuscation: Powering Electric Vehicles

Powering Electric Vehicles