Its not even clear how we are supposed to produce the necessary amounts of electricity if a significant amount of cars are EVs.
This feels like it has been written for the upper class, ignoring the reality of 80% of the people :-)
As an example, the UK grid yesterday saw a peak of about 30 GW, but was sitting at 20 GW for most of the night. (https://gridwatch.co.uk/). That's about 70 GWh of overnight capacity that could have been used (the grid has to be sized for peak loads).
The average car in the UK drives about 7000 miles a year (https://www.bymiles.co.uk/insure/magazine/mot-data-research-...). An average EV might get 3 miles per kWh.
So the average car, on an average night, needs 20 miles of range - which is about 6.4kWh. Our grid excess capacity of 70 GWh means we can charge just under 11 million cars before we're using more than our current peak electricity demand.
The UK grid is designed for more capacity than todays peak, though. The maximum delivered power in the last year was 47.275 GW. If we maximised the grid at that level all year we'd be adding an additional 17 GW compared to yesterday. That's 408 GWh, or enough power for an additional 63.7 million cars (on top of our 11 million) - a total of 74.7 million average cars. The UK currently has around 32.9 million registered cars.
There is undoubtedly going to be hotspots which need more work, but overall the additional load of electric cars (with smart chargers which can shed load if needed) is within the limits of the current grid and generation capacity.
You've ignored all losses. Transmission and distribution losses, the latter of which are worse for low-voltage customers (ie, domestic use, and is over 10%), total around 15% for domestic use. As well as that, charger loss is around 15%.
Adding all that up, a car that needs 20 miles at 333 Wh/mile needs 9kWh of generated supply power, or barely 8 million cars (assuming this power is actually available).
There is also the obvious problem that there is no solar availabe at night, which makes up a relatively large percentage of the UK's energy mix (over 8GW right now, as I just looked).
>The maximum delivered power in the last year was 47.275 GW
How much of that peak power was from peaking plants, for example, the 1.8GW pumped hydro storage at Dinorwic?
A huge part of the problems with EVs are related to unrealistic and misleading estimates. Please be careful with the maths.
You can argue about efficiencies (which it's true, should be taken into account) - but the point remains. The current grid already has very close to the capacity required for electric cars. Maybe we'll need to add a few power stations or interconnects, maybe we'll need to upgrade some local infrastructure here or there, but it's not like we're an order of magnitude off.
There's currently close to 100 GW of installed capacity on the UK grid (https://www.statista.com/statistics/496283/total-electricity...) - even if you completely stripped out all the variable-supply renewables like solar and wind, you'd still be left with a substantial margin. There's no solar overnight - true - but there's also very little solar on dark cloudy December days (when demand is often high) and the grid manages to deliver ~40GW peak then without issues. The pumped storage couldn't have been more than 2.8GW - because that's how much is installed. In fact, apparently overall demand has dropped year on year - the overall peak was 62 GW, in 2002.
At least in the UK, National Grid (the grid operator) agrees - https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-m.... There's not an issue with overall capacity.
We're also apparently in the process of nuclear decomissioning, and I'm not sure where that lost power will come from.
At the moment, we just ramp up gas-fired power stations to meet demand, so yes, we can just burn more gas to generate more power. In this scenario, transmission/distribution and charger losses wipe out a lot of the CO2 gains.
We also haven't even touched on the idea of commercial EVs - I'm not sure of the figures, but I suspect that the energy requirements for making all vans, trucks, and lorries electrically powered will outstrip EV domestic usage (and, for that matter, should be more important from a CO2 reduction point of view).
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Engl...
I don't know to what extent the infrastructure itself has changed - but given National Grid themselves don't think it'll be a big issue, the grid itself is probably still capable of that 62GW (even if generating capacity is less).
I haven't mentioned CO2 in my comments because that was not part of the original discussion. "Its not even clear how we are supposed to produce the necessary amounts of electricity" is patently false in the case of the UK. Maybe overall CO2 production would be less, maybe more - that's a different (though important) discussion. At least with electric vehicles there's a clear technological roadmap to 0 emissions - there's no credible roadmap for 0 emissions with internal combustion engines.
Vans aren't likely to be vastly different from cars - eg the Ducato Electric claims 235 km on a 47 kWh battery - vs a Model 3's claimed 265 km on a 50 kWh battery. HGVs are much heavier vehicles though - the path for electrification for those is likely to be slower.
According to most EV proponents, that is the entire point. We are being slowly forced to switch to EVs that are much less convenient, and incur a much higher manufacturing cost (in materials, rare minerals, and energy), because the overall CO2 reduction will (help) stop the planet overheating. If that's not certain, then what is the point?
I'll say it again - yes, we may have some capacity to generate enough electricity so that domestic vehicle usage can change to EVs. However, that would be done by burning more gas, which obliterates any CO2 benefits, and does nothing to address the (I assume) higher commercial usage of petrol and diesel.
>At least with electric vehicles there's a clear technological roadmap to 0 emissions - there's no credible roadmap for 0 emissions with internal combustion engines.
Which is what? In my opinion, the only credible roadmap involves nuclear power, and it looks like the UK is mostly decommissioning its nuclear plants.
tl;dr: average capacity is not going to be an issue, however peak power could very well be, and may need to be managed.
I am going to assume this is going to be very country-specific though. I've looked for the same info for France for example, which is more clear cut as it uses very little gas/oil/... in its energy production, so a priori I would have thought there is no argument of pushing the pollution from cars to power generation (but actually there may be because of peak power requirements).
Also note that this goes beyond national grids, the EU electricity market smooths things out at continental level. The UK is not synchronised with the EU grid, but it is connected. France has an excess production in general for example but all that excess is exported to other countries. Supply and demand have to be equalised at all times, and there is a real time market that can tap into quick-to-start power plants for flexibility.
I've found a very interesting 2019 report from RTE (who manages the grid). [0] Note that the highest EV transition scenario it envisages is 15 million EV by 2035, so ~35-40% of all cars, which is probably realistic, but it's far from covering requirements to change 100% of ICE cars to EVs.
1. It should hold just fine even in the high estimates of 15 million EV by 2035, which means an extra 50 TWh per year, ie 10% of the total production.
2. They also expect to grow the green power generation (nuclear, hydro, solar, wind...) by 20% during the same period, from ~500 TWh to ~600 TWh.
3. The main risk is peak power consumption, if it's not managed. If people all start charging when they come home in the evening, which matches the existing peak power usage between 7-9 pm, especially during winter, it could cause supply issues. In the worst scenarios, it could be up to 8 GW extra during what are already the highest peaks. This can be worked around by steering usage to other hours of the day, possibly even help with peaks if actively managed with vehicle-to-grid power flow, the batteries could actually flow electricity back to the grid during those peak times (there are concerns of battery life though). But this management of when people charge their cars MUST be done in the worst scenarios for at least 50% of the charging, otherwise it could threaten electric supply safety.
In short, average capacity should not be a problem in France (significant increase, but manageable and other consumption is going down). However peak capacity usage will require some adaptation, but can be handled.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20190515131031/https://www.rte-f...
A solar farm is capable of producing 350 Mwh per year/per acre and it takes 18 kwh to power a Tesla for a 100km ride [1], so a single acre of solar power can produce enough energy for 19,000 of those rides, or power 190 cars (10.000 km per year) just by putting a bit more than the roof of their parking lots in solar cells.
Furthermore, people do want to have their own car, and they are going to become the more affordable than their ICE counterparts and the polluting and flammable oil they need.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/support/european-union-energy-la...
Pretty damn exciting.
Yeaaaah, I kinda think smartphones were bigger change than this. It's nice, but not a flying or self driving. Just different, cheaper source of energy. It does not enable anything new, other than charge.
Think of someone in a village in Africa.
But what never gets dull is laughing at people paying to fill their cars with liquid explosives.
You can hit the open road and just keep driving - as long as a complex global energy distribution network keeps up just-in-time fulfillment of fuel to gas stations along the way.
Whereas an electric car, powered with charge gathered from the sunlight that struck the roof of your own home? That’s truly independent.
You can get a car, that you can charge at home, for free, AND you can also use it to run your house if the grid goes tits up again? Sold!
Without regulations or any sort of push, these vehicles will probably keep chugging along for another few decades. A benevolent leading country like the USA that seem to only exist in myths and legends of the past would probably push the poor countries by coupling economic aid with environmental regulations, and then selling them "new and clean" vehicles made in Detroit.
Maybe China will step up, although of course we in the West attribute their actions to wanting something in return, unlike the benevolent USA. ;) Let's not talk about the EU government, which is just a stupid club of paper pushers...
"We will produce cars for the millions instead those that cost millions".
Let's see how far they go.
/s