Don't plug in your EV, you'll knock out the city!
 

What will they think of next?

Utilities thrilled, worry about electric cars | Tulsa World


My favorite line is: "The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood"

They go on to say that plugging in is 1500 watts. I wonder how come my blow dryer, at 1850 watts, doesn't knock out the grid?:rolleyes:

Perhaps the next articles in the series -

*Irresponsible Family Cooks Christmas Dinner On Electric Stove - Browns Out Neighborhood (Stove + Oven - 7,200 watts)
..."We hadn't had a hot meal for years, and thought it would be OK just this one time"

*Airing Up a Tire, Man Explodes Utility Transformer (Compressor - 3,000 watts)
..."All I wanted to do was get a few more MPG"

* Teen Attempts Household Chores, Starts Small Fire (Vacuum cleaner - 1,200 watts)
..."Mom had been after me to sweep the floor for weeks, and I thought I could get it done faster by using a prohibited electric vacuum cleaner"

* Shameless Man Seen in Public with No Wrinkles (Iron - 1,000 watts)
..."I got tired of using warm rocks to press my dress shirts"

* Cleanliness Lands Family in Hot Water (Water Heater - 9,000 watts + dishwasher 1,500 watts)
..."The state utilities commission fined a local resident for knocking Oklahoma off the grid by taking a shower and running the dishwasher at the same time"

It's a real pity you have to leave your microwave and hair dryer on at night while you are sleeping, otherwise you could use the unused capacity of the grid to charge you EV at night..

It is actually a possible big problem for electricity distribution. An electric car is a big drain on the electricity grid, it may only be 1500 watt but it is connected for many hours.
With the amount of EV's around at the moment its not much of an issue but if for example 100,000 people purchase an EV over the next year in america (i think that is close to the prius numbers) Then that is 150 MW.
Also everyone will connect their EVs when they get home from work which is typically at peak power time (When the highest amount of power is being used). That means that everything in the system has to be sized to supply whatever the current peak power rate is and the extra energy used for EV's.

Having said that, the electricity distributors should be taking this into account, that is what they get paid for. So as long as they do their job then there is no issue.

You might be right, but I have found no statistics to back that up. All the information I have looked through on the subject suggests that peak energy usage is from about noon to 5PM. And although it would make more sense to charge overnight when electricity is cheapest, you're probably right that most people would ignore that and charge as soon as they get home. In any case, grid impact is minimal:

EPRI | Abstracts > Abstracts

The most important line, IMO, is: "The project's first-order analysis proves that even in a very aggressive PEV market penetration scenario of hitting 30% market share and a combined installed base of 52M vehicles in 2030, the impact on the grid capacity is about 5-6% in the absolute worst case (all PEVs charging in summer on-peak periods at the same time)".

It sure would be nice if we had 52 million EV's on the road by 2030, but even then the impact would be minimal. This of course, does not take into account all the electricity that WON'T be needed to drill for oil, pump oil, refine oil, etc that would no longer be needed if so many EV's are on the road. Also, in this age of information, the Leaf will undoubtably charge ITSELF when it decides to: when it's cheapest, when demand is low, etc. And like you said, if it really did become a problem, it's the distibutor's job to fix it, and not the people's job to turn their backs on EV's for fear of knocking out power in the neighborhood.:p

Isn't part of the reason they are charging $2,000 for a charging station is so that you can turn on the delay so your car starts charing at night even if you plug it in at 5pm? the most recent EAA (electric auto association) news letter has an article about using the Iphone app that lets you control the charging station, check your state of charge, check to see what public charging stations are in use, I don't see it here but it seems like there was mention of adding a delay for off peek charging and just like air conditioning, you can get a utility installed control box that will cycle your high load device off for 15 minutes at a time to help avoid brown outs if the utility is nearing peek load, I thought I heard that this was also built in to the $2,000 extension cord... I mean charging station!