{"id":7678,"date":"2017-08-04T16:05:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7678"},"modified":"2017-08-04T16:05:44","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T15:05:44","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-electric-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7678","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – electric dreams again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"charging<\/a>Electric dreams again.\u00a0 The grid is changing and our means of transport is also changing (or at least what powers it).\u00a0 The problem is a fully electric road system will lead to a big increase in electricity demand.\u00a0 Possibly as high as 88TWh a year or 8GW at peak demand times.\u00a0 That’s a lot of electricity, about 25% of what we use now.\u00a0 Charging all the possible cars will be an issue since the rapid\u00a0 chargers use a lot of electricity so require a 3 phase supply.\u00a0 Even if they don’t use rapid charging then demands will be high as in theory everyone comes home in their car and puts it on to trickle charge overnight.\u00a0 A 50Kw battery is some night-time\/evening demand compared with now spread over 8 hours (do the math!).\u00a0 The easiest way would be to reduce our driving as George Monbiot<\/a> suggested this week and we wrote about in our book.\u00a0 Electric cars are not a solution to many of the problems caused by driving.\u00a0 However as I wrote last week at the moment this seems unlikely.\u00a0 At the moment as few as 7 cars charging in a neighbourhood could cause a brownout according to the green alliance.<\/p>\n

A number of solutions have been proposed.\u00a0 One obvious one is to combine home battery storage with charging your car.\u00a0 So during the day when you are out at work your battery system is charged from the solar panels on your roof.\u00a0 When you get home and plug the car in then this is used to charge your car.\u00a0 Advantages; less strain on the grid.\u00a0 Problem you need a pretty big battery system to fill a car and there will be other calls on the batteries as well such as lights\/cooking\/heating etc.\u00a0 A major problem of this type of system is winter.\u00a0 Electricity demand is at its highest when solar production is at its highest.\u00a0 Nevertheless such an idea will mitigate the grid strain issue to an extent.<\/p>\n

The second solution is smart charging and involves the heavy use of smart meters.\u00a0 When your electricity is cheap then your car would charge.\u00a0 The problem is many people would overrule this since they would want their car charged this relies on a lower more laid back approach to car use.<\/p>\n

The third solution is using the car as grid storage.\u00a0 The opposite of above.\u00a0 Your car would be called upon to power the grid when power is short.\u00a0 The government have see-sawed on their approach to this one. \u00a0 Ten years ago they were keen on it, then they went off the idea, now they are keen on it.\u00a0 The advantages are twofold.\u00a0 With millions of electric cars there will be storage available on a vast scale.\u00a0 All funded by the consumer.\u00a0 Second if you could persuade lots of people to forego their cars at any one time then congestion would be less.\u00a0 The problems are also twofold.\u00a0 You have to persuade people to do this and to do so will take large amounts of money, pushing up power prices at peak demand times.<\/p>\n

In practical terms though grid reinforcement is going to be required on a mammoth scale.\u00a0 If electric heating takes off and we go totally electric we will need enough generating capacity for about another 800TWh of power a year, an even bigger challenge.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Electric dreams again.\u00a0 The grid is changing and our means of transport is also changing (or at least what powers it).\u00a0 The problem is a fully electric road system will lead to a big increase in electricity demand.\u00a0 Possibly as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,15,4,1],"tags":[74,84,61,177],"class_list":["post-7678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-practical-low-carbon-living","category-renewables","category-uncategorized","tag-energy-costs-2","tag-energy-storage","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - electric dreams again - 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