What's giving you trouble is the fact that, barring error, all utility capacity was built to serve forecast load. The subtlety is that capacity additions require a long time to plan and build, and necessarily come on line in large block increments (i.e., say a 2,000 megawatt baseload plant), whereas load growth occurs gradually in small bits, as consumers add appliances one at a time.
So if a utility always maintains at least its planning reserve margin for reliability, it will inevitably experience significant stretches of time where, arithmetically, it appears to have more capacity than needed while load growth catches up to large increment capacity additions. And that capacity can reasonably be used to serve temporary loads. But that capacity cannot suddenly be declared "excess" in a snapshot analysis and earmarked for new permanent loads that were not in the forecast, without ultimately leaving the utility short of capacity to serve all anticipated loads.
There is no doubt that, technically at least, sufficient capacity can be timely added to the US utility systems to charge vehicle batteries in the future. The problem is to integrate those vehicles into utility load forecasts, and then plan, finance, and build the needed additions. And the problem with that comes down to building sufficient confidence that future electric vehicle chargers will actually be willing to pay the cost of those addititons in charging prices - they will not be cheap - and that the load will actually materialize to justify the capacity additions.
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Originally Posted by tonybelding
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.
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
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.
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.
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