I have been considering the potential demands on the grid from a fast increase of electric vehicles, I wonder if anyone else has considered this or seen any papers on the subject. My business Energy Descent must constantly try to determine the future of energy as we advise clients on the returns from alternative energy and this carries the risk of (for example) new technology reducing the cost of grid energy or policy changes reducing the validity of 'green' energy.
Hence I got to thinking that while we all know the temporary down-sides of charging electric vehicles with 'dirty' grid electric; what about the extra strain they will put on the grid itself if their growth is maintained at expected levels?
I agree that while they are efficient users of energy and therefore they will use less energy by KWh than conventional vehicles do we must consider distribution losses and especially the capacity for the grid to supply and distribute this level of energy.
From 2012 the UK is expected to see around 12% energy gap between supply and demand (I assume this does not include substantial numbers of electric vehicles?).
So can we calculate the demand from electric vehicles in this thread?
I think the assessment should be determined on the following framework;
1) Predict the number of electric vehicle sales in the UK.
2) Get a consensus on the expected combined mileage for these vehicles.
3) Get the details of efficiency ie Miles per KWh.
4) Extrapolate the total KWh per annum consumed by the new transport demands.
5) Express this as a growing percentage of national electrical demand.
I would think we should either included all the completed calculations in every post or create a wiki page for it and link to it in every post?
I will start the ball rolling with the fact that according to the department of transport and the RAC; cars sales have increased road traffic by around 3% year on year for the last few years.
Discuss ....
