State intends to find out how much stress plug-in hybrids would put on grid
Judging by the vast array of plug-in hybrids at the past few auto show, it's reasonable to assume that at some point in the next ten to 15 years there could be millions of vehicles plugging into our nation's power grid. The Michigan Public Service Commission will be looking at this issue over the course of the next several years as part of its effort to assess the state and region's future power needs. The MPSC will use real plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to judge how the vehicles will effect the power grid at different times of the day, and the study will also gauge the possibility of plug-ins giving power back to the grid during peak times. The MPSC is inviting Detroit automakers, the utility companies, advocacy groups and others to participate in the ongoing study, and the group's first report is scheduled to go public in June 2009.
If the plug-in electric vehicle is going to be a major means of future propulsion, it's good someone is studying whether our aging power grid can actually handle the extra load.
[Source: Detroit News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
_Jon 8:10AM (3/12/2008)
They need a study to do multiplication?
Demand = projected sales * electricity needed per car
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Allen 8:30AM (3/12/2008)
Ummm they do need to know how much electricity each car will use, hence the study. Also they have to look at the impact the cars will have on the already fragile infrastructure (Audust 2003, anyone?) We don't want brownouts and blackouts.
Time for nuclear energy scardy cats!!!
jim 10:22AM (3/12/2008)
If the only concern was power generation, then doing the math would be fine. But the real concern is the effect of added demand to the grid, both to the transmission portions and the local delivery grid, i.e. what happens on your block when when a dozen electric cars are plugged in.
Chevy Nick 8:55PM (3/12/2008)
Enron is no longer in business, I think the electrical grid will do just fine.
Gardiner Westbound 8:32AM (3/12/2008)
It's hard to imagine how plug-in electric cars will help the environment in areas where coal powers generation plants. It's potentially a bigger fraud than ethanol, the mother of all boondoggles.
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BlackbirdHighway 9:18AM (3/12/2008)
So, how is it that coal plants don't make any polution when powering homes, but when you plug in an electric car they suddenly start pumping out all kinds of nasty stuff. How does the coal power plant know?
Or, maybe, just maybe the coal plants produce polution all the time, regardless of what we have plugged in. But that would mean the coal plants are the problem, not the electric cars, wouldn't it? At least with EVs we have choices of where the electricity comes from, coal, nuclear, solar, hydro, natural gas, wind, etc. With gasoline the only choice is which unfriendly country we're going to send all our money to.
There aren't any panels I can put on my roof to turn sunshine into gasoline!
FSM 9:28AM (3/12/2008)
BlackbirdHighway you are spot on with that analysis. Its not the plugin=green its that the potential is there to be greener than gasoline and also take the middle east out of the equation.
PJ 9:47AM (3/12/2008)
The drilling and refining of oil isn't an energy-neutral process, either. Where does that electricity come from? Why not cut out the middleman (for the portion of oil used for auto fuel)?
Anyway, what I find appealing about electric cars is that cleaner technology (wind, solar, hydroelectric) is extant and viable; it's just a matter of its spreading. We can only get so far scrubbing the by-products of exploding gasoline.
Wasn't a study very similar to this one already published a couple years ago? Was its methodology flawed? IIRC, it found our grid could handle a couple million plug-in hybrids easily.
boulderhorn 8:57AM (3/12/2008)
I agree with Allen; it's time for some new nuclear power plants to be built in the good old USA. No strain on the grid if the grid has nearly infinate (and clean) power available.
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rgseidl 9:07AM (3/12/2008)
Nuclear power doesn't produce airborne pollutants incl. CO2, but it does produce radioactive waste for which there is still no long-term repository. In other words, it is in fact not clean, either.
As for the EVs, they represent no capacity problem at all as long as they are trickle-charged at night. It's only because someone decided in their infinite wisdom that EV owners would expect rapid recharges during the day and wrote that into the ZEV legislation that utilities are concerned about the impact on the grid.
E-REVs like the GM Volt will not require recharging during the day, at least not rapid recharging.
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Mike 9:18AM (3/12/2008)
One of the reasons that nuclear produces so much waste is that the US doesn't recycle its nuclear fuel. The reason is that some of the recycle byproducts can be used to build warheads.
Accourding to this website:
http://nuclear.inl.gov/gnep/
"Recycling nuclear fuels for reuse reduces the mass of unusable fuel by a factor of 20; only 5 percent of used fuel is unusable."
Not the only answer, but it does go a long way towards making nuclear a solution. We'll have to consider the risk of extra plutonium being produced.
FSM 9:27AM (3/12/2008)
You are spot on with that analysis. Its not the plugin=green its that the potential is there to be greener than gasoline and also take the middle east out of the equation.
In2uition 9:20AM (3/12/2008)
Perhaps this is a chance to venture into alternative energy sources (i.e. hydrogen) for key infrastructures.
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Das Boese 9:58AM (3/12/2008)
Hydrogen is *not* an energy source. It can be used to *store* energy, yes, but it's not a very efficient way for even that.
Chevy Nick 9:06PM (3/12/2008)
Hydrogen is certainly a source of energy, see - Hindenburg disaster.
SPG 9:28AM (3/12/2008)
Wow, never thought of this.
But then again when E-85 became common there were strains on the worlds corn producers.
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Rick 6:33PM (3/12/2008)
I would think the same person that would buy a plug-in might also buy a solar panel charging setup for that plug-in? Why go electric if just to save gas, they'd also do it to save energey. That becomes moot if you plug-in and use electricity to re-charge the car. Just a thought.
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Whiplash 10:10AM (3/12/2008)
Electric cars are the way to go. But here in California where we go through rounds of rolling blackouts every summer, I think we'll have major problems charging them.
It's time to go with nuclear power and we really need to pull our heads out of the sand on this issue. The waste from modern nuclear plants is small. Europe is putting them in everywhere. They have almost 200 plants. France alone has 60! What's our problem?
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Avinash machado 10:21AM (3/12/2008)
The problem could be opposition from the environmentalists or the green lobby.
Jim 10:38AM (3/12/2008)
Add solar panels to the hood, roof and decklid of every electric, plug-in vehicle
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