Alan Stainer

Tech head through and through.

Electric Nation

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Electric Nation

Electric cars need a lot of electricity, which is going to put a strain on the grid. Electric Nation is looking at the problems and trying to come up with a solution.

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Comments

  2. Paul Wayper says

    I think this is another of those myths that anti-EV people spread about EVs – that they’re somehow “a drain on the grid”. That everyone’s going to come home and plug their car into charge full speed right in peak time.

    I don’t have a big problem with charging EVs with off-peak power – if such a thing exists in a world where grid power storage becomes more common. But let’s be clear here – all the refineries are currently also using power; all the service stations use electricity in their pumps. No-one looks at those and says “hey, you shouldn’t be pumping petrol at peak time, that might hurt the grid”.

    I’m going to ignore the other major issue – that moving electricity is far more energy efficient than moving any fuel. That’s irrelevant to time of use, it just increases the cost of fuel.

  3. Alan Stainer says

    Paul Wayper and not forgetting that a lot of EV owners also have solar panels that help to alleviate any drain that may be caused. I agree the problem may not be as much of a problem as people think, but that’s a good reason for projects like Electric Nation. Without them running trials, we can only guess at the future.

  6. Mario Garcia says

    EV owners charge at night and create another revenue stream for power plants that wasn’t available before. How can that be a bad thing?

  7. Mac Baird says

    I have owned a Nissan Leaf since January 2012 and have driven more than 52,000 miles. I plug it in when I return home, usually with only a partial discharge. A full charge is only 25 kWh, which at $0.10/kWh is only $2.50. Since I average 5.2 miles/kWh and drive only about 50 to 60 miles per day, That adds about $1.15/day to my electric bill, which is already more than $7/day in the summertime due to my Florida air conditioning load. The operating cost of my wife’s 30 mpg Nissan Rogue is 10 times more than my Leaf. My charge usually takes about 2 hours from 5 pm to 7 pm after the peak a/c load has dropped off. Currently, I pay the same price regardless of when I charge, but if the public utility wants to give me a lower rate to charge later at night, I would be happy to set my timer for the lower rate.

  8. Mario Garcia says

    I guess living in Florida (like much of the rest of the country) is cheaper than CA. Here we are given a discount to charge at night (11c per kW/hr) as opposed to 24c ~30c at peak times. We’ll see what longer range/higher capacity batteries and increased adoption do to charging habits.