[tonybelding]

Originally Posted by Rich H

Your link is to a press release from an electric car advocacy group, not the DOE.

Not true. My link is to a green transportation blog which reported the release of a study from the DOE. It was also reported by other outlets; that was just a convenient one for me to find.

Unfortunately, electric cars in the West cannot be charged using power from the Midwest and East. And I think that if you research the matter you'll also find that cars in the Midwest cannot be charged using power from the East, and vice-versa.

I don't see a problem with that. We're talking about tens of millions of electric vehicles, just in that region alone. Today there are more like dozens in use (not counting NEVs). That's a huge opportunity to displace petroleum fuel

Unstated is the unavoidable balance of the conclusion that, if the currently available off-peak Midwest and East capacity were absorbed today to charge batteries to run all existing vehicles, then any future off-peak load growth of any kind, including "an all-out move to PHEVs", would force the addition of coal and natural gas plants.

Why is this is a problem? Even in those areas -- such as in the West -- where they found off-peak power is tight, we're still talking about a gradual influx of electric vehicles over a period of years. It's going to be hundreds at first, not millions suddenly appearing overnight. At some point they'll have to bring more generation online, okay.

So, put in practical context, your press release says, in effect, that if ohm's law were suspended (an impossibility), and it is assumed that there will be no future off-peak load growth (a most unlikely future), then there is enough off-peak capacity in the Midwest and East to charge all of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries.

No, it doesn't say anything remotely like that. The fact that you would somehow spin that out of this report just shows that you have some kind of axe to grind against electric cars.

What the study shows is that the USA has significant off-peak capacity which could be used to power a large number of electric vehicles -- apparently tens of millions. In doing so, it directly contradicts that you wrote earlier, when you implied that off-peak capacity is some kind of a myth, that it's somehow not available for this purpose.

Some regions have more off-peak capacity than others. I get that. That is not a valid argument against starting to build some electric vehicles today.

The real "myth" is that all of our gasoline cars overnight with electric cars will overwhelm the grid. (And to be fair, you may not have written exactly that -- but others have, it's how this off-peak power debate usually arises.) But so what? It will take decades to turn over the automotive fleet. It took 10 years for Toyota to sell their first million Priuses. By 2012 they expect to be selling a million per year. It's a ramp-up curve, and plug-in vehicles should follow a similar trajectory.

The argument, then, is that we can begin that process today without immediately over-stressing the power grid. There is some buffer of off-peak capacity available to begin with, and later there will be time to add more capacity before it's needed.

Incidentally, a fair amount of that off-peak power is currently being "used", if that's the right word, to light up the night sky with inefficient and poorly designed (unshielded) street lights and security lights. There's another opportunity to reduce waste and redirect it to something beneficial.