Michigan Public Service Commission to study PHEV effect on grid
Plug-in electric vehicles obviously aren't very common right now but if they do become widespread the stability of the electrical grid could become a major issue. Although analysts expect most EVs to be plugged in at night when electrical demand is typically lower, it's inevitable that we will see daytime plug-ins as well, particularly for drivers who have longer commutes and access to a socket at work. The Michigan Public Service Commission that oversees and regulates utilities in the state is kicking off a pilot program to study the integration of plug-in vehicles with the grid.
The investigations will look at what is necessary to implement intelligent grid technology so that deployment of plug-ins will actually help stabilize rather the stress the grid. Working with electricity suppliers, the commission will study the environmental impact of electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid (VTG) technology and how it will affect power generators and the grid. Commission staff will produce annual reports beginning in June 2009.
[Source: Michigan Public Service Commission]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Erik Ness 12:12PM (3/12/2008)
Regardless of the outcome, this is great news because it demonstrates that there's a real and increasing demand for plug-in hybrids and pure EVs. Hard for even the American car manufacturers to ignore the signs.
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BoomBoom 12:49PM (3/12/2008)
I'll be interested to see the results. I've never seen any numbers on the percentage of our total US electricity supply that would be consumed by PHEVs if we all drove EVs. We might jump out of the frying pan and into the fire by overloading our electrical grid (and building more coal/LNG power) in an attempt to reduced our gas consumption in cars.
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steven 1:28PM (3/12/2008)
I'd be interested to see some real dollar amounts that show for a car that gets X miles per gallon and goes Y miles per year, here is the amt of electricity that your going to have to use (and pay for) for an EV or PHEV and what that cost is gonning be. Everyone assumes that if I spend $2500 per year on gas a PHEV is going to mean I'll save X dollars in gas, but I want to know really how much more my electric bill is going be going up. So don't just say, it is going to be less,or you'll take the money you used for gas and pay the electric bill, or do math olympics to show how HP converts to KWh....
Hopefully there will be new window stickers on PHEVs that show the amt of electricity used and estimated annual cost in the manner that they show the fuel consumption numbers.
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Tim 1:31PM (3/12/2008)
BATTERY-POWERED, ELECTRIC-DRIVE VEHICLES PROVIDING BUFFER STORAGE
FOR PV CAPACITY VALUE
http://www.ases.org/divisions/fuels/asesvg2.pdf
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BlackbirdHighway 2:11PM (3/12/2008)
The Tesla has a 53 KWH battery pack (aka ESS). It has a range of 220 miles, which works out to 240 WH, or .24 KWH per mile.
If I drive 40 miles a day for a month, that's 1200 miles a month, @ .24 KWH per mile is a total of 288 KWH per month.
My utility charges $0.09 per KWH, so that's an extra $25.92 on my utility bill per month. This doesn't take into account losses in the charging process, which Tesla has provided hard numbers for. Figure about $35 a month, everything included.
Running 1200 miles in a 20 MPG car takes 60 gallons of gas, which at $3.50 each will run a total of $210 a month.
Total monthly savings: 210 - 35 = $175.
Of course, nobody buys a $100,000 car to save money, but at least you can see how electricity is cheaper than gasoline.
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BlackbirdHighway 2:17PM (3/12/2008)
Whoops, I meant to say Tesla has not provided numbers on losses in the charging process.
Still, figure a saving of about 14 cents a mile if your paying 9 cents a KWH. I understand power in CA is much more expensive.
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steven 4:51PM (3/12/2008)
@5: I think that qualifies a Math Olympics and not a real world test.
I wonder how many sub-4 second 0-60 mph sprints folks will get in on single a charge.
My electric company charges .096/kwh, but then you have to add customer charges, distribution changes, demand side mgt surcharge, public service franchise fees, electric usage service charges, and environmental surcharges. It comes up to $.138/kwh
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GoodCheer 5:16PM (3/12/2008)
steven, any real world test is going to end up with data. The data provided by BlackbirdHighway is right on: EVs, whether the EV1, Rav4-EV, Tesla, eBox or Phoenix all consume about 200-350 W-h / mile. (The Aptera, being super aero and light only uses about 100). That's hard data from (say it with me) real world tests.
Everything else BlackbirdHighway wrote is 4th grade math based on fairly reasonable values for MPG, cost/kWh, and miles driven. The only thing left out was the charging losses, which BlackbirdHighway mentioned specifically and for which he made a probably very conservative allowance. While your numbers may vary, I'm really not sure what else you could want.
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meme 6:44PM (3/12/2008)
For those who've never seen the numbers before, the answer, according to a PNL study conducted for the DOE, is 84% of all cars, trucks, and SUVs could be converted to PHEVs without any new infrastructure:
http://www.pnl.gov/energy/eed/etd/pdfs/phev_feasibility_analysis_combined.pdf
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jake 10:02PM (3/12/2008)
@steven
You can count that as real world data. The process in the gasoline car is the same. You only need to know how many miles you travelled and how many gallons you used in a tank to calculate your gallons/mile and you can get cost per mile if you multiply cost/gallon; it is 4th grade math as GoodCheer mentioned. In an PHEV it is that same, except you need to know how many kilowatts you used for a charge. On the sticker I think it is most appropriate to show the full EV range and then the kWhrs required to charge it.
@Blackbirdhighway
Tesla did provide hard numbers in a post:
75kWh to charge the battery full.
It is in a response to the second comment in this link:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=60
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Ralph 12:53AM (3/13/2008)
While I suspect that a good majority of future PHEV owners will charge their vehicles on off hours (evenings), not everyone will. Coming up with accurate percentages for something that a group of people 'will do sometime in the future'...that's a challenge ;)
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