When we all start driving electric cars...

[anonymous-user]

Nimby said:

How many new power stations will we need to charge 30 million electric cars?
I thought we only have about 5% surplus generation capacity today.

Our PEAK generating capacity is quite close to PEAK demand, but not our average demand. In fact, studies show that today, with zero changes to the overall generation mix (but possibly some changes to local distribution infrastructure) we can charge something like 10 to 15 million EVs overnight!


Let me also float this idea, namely, we should charge our EVs at work from solar power. Currently, most people charge at home, drive to work, leave car parked at work, then drive home and recharge over night.

This is silly, because there is no solar capacity available at night, and if we want to power our homes from renewables we need to add additional storage battery systems to our houses.

But, charge at work during the day, and drive home, then use your EV to power your household over night, drive back to work the next day and recharge! Simples!

Take my i3, even with it's small 22kWH battery. i use about 7kWHrs per day on my commute, so i could 'take home' something like 15kWhrs, more than enough to power our entire house over night! As EV batteries get bigger, but peoples commutes don't get longer, there will be more and more capacity for this approach. If companies got tax breaks or benefits to install small (<1MW) solar systems for employee charging we could move a hugh proportion of our domestic and commuting energy consumption to renewables with very little effort or Co2 overhead.......


For example, Prodive the motorsports firm, have installed 636kW of solar generation on their new HQ in Banbury:


Which could be used for such a purpose