It’s time to plan for electric vehicles on the grid

Santa Monica, California, USA – May 18, 2013: Row of electric vehicles being recharged in a parking station

Rocky Mountain Institute

New report identifies important best practices for utilities, regulators, and other stakeholders

If you think electric vehicles are still a niche technology, think again. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that more than 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) were on the road in 2015, including 400,000 in the United States. In order to limit global warming to 2°C or less, the agency says the world will need 150 million EVs by 2030 and 1 billion by 2050, implying a 21 percent compound annual growth rate from now until 2050.

India is considering a state-financed plan that would let drivers buy EVs for zero money down, then pay for the vehicles out of gasoline savings. The plan aims to transition India’s entire fleet to electric vehicles by 2030.

China is also aiming to have a fully electrified fleet, eventually, and has a target of putting 5 million battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road by 2020. EV sales there quadrupled to more than 247,000 last year, more than double the 115,000 sold in the U.S.

EVs already have a larger market share in Norway, at 17 percent, than anywhere else in the world, and although the country is not banning the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles, asrecent reports suggested, it is formulating targets for zero-emission vehicles in order to reach climate goals.

EVs currently have a 10 percent market share in the Netherlands, which is discussing the possibility of banning the sale of gasoline vehicles and only allowing EV sales by 2025.

PROGRAMS AND INCENTIVES DRIVE BOOMING MARKET GROWTH

In the U.S., a variety of state and federal tax incentives, other local benefits, and deployment targets are supporting double-digit growth rates in EV adoption and charging-station installation:

  • California aims to have 1.5 million EVs on the road by 2025—a more than 600 percent increase over the roughly 200,000 EVs it has today—along with the supporting charging infrastructure. And the three big investor-owned utilities in California are developing programs to radically increase the number of charging stations available in their territories, under a variety of innovative programs.
  • Nine states have followed suit on California’s Zero Emissions Vehicles program, which sets goals for manufacturers to sell EVs. Several states have begun to transition their fleets of state vehicles over to EVs.
  • The Drive Clean Seattle program aims to increase EV adoption by 400 percent and get 15,000 EVs on the road in the city by 2025, as well as to triple the number of publicly available fast chargers.
  • The City of Indianapolis intends to replace its entire gasoline-powered fleet with EVs by 2025. The City of Houston now has one-quarter of its fleet plugged in. New York City plans to create the largest municipal electric vehicle fleet in the country.
  • Group purchase programs in Colorado for Nissan LEAFs quadrupled sales in Boulder, and increased sales by a factor of six in Northern Colorado.

So although EVs are a small part of the fleet (0.16 percent) and of new vehicle sales (0.7 percent) in the U.S. now, watch out: Their adoption could follow the path of other disruptive technologies, like cell phones and Internet access, and become ubiquitous in an astonishingly short time.

This is particularly likely as the world begins making real strides toward its climate change targets. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that electric vehicles could account for 35 percent of all new vehicle sales worldwide by 2040, as the price of long-range EVs falls to less than $22,000 and drivers begin to appreciate how much cheaper they are to drive than internal combustion vehicles.

UTILITIES: BE PREPARED

If utilities and their regulators are not prepared for such a rapid expansion of the EV fleet, it could have negative effects on the grid. The life of grid infrastructure components could be shortened and greater investment in peak capacity could be required, making the grid less efficient, increasing the unit costs of electricity for all consumers, inhibiting the integration of renewables, increasing grid power emissions, and making the grid less stable.

But if utilities and regulators anticipate rapid EV growth and plan accordingly by implementing the right incentives and tariff structures, EVs could become an incredibly valuable grid asset, and actually reduce the cost of electricity by helping to optimize the grid so that it operates more efficiently.

EVs can enable the growth of wind and solar on the grid by absorbing their output when it is greatest, helping utilities avoid new investment in grid infrastructure, reducing electricity and transportation costs, reducing petroleum consumption and emissions, improving energy security, and supplying ancillary services to the grid, such as frequency regulation and power factor correction.

Utilities should prepare for a rapid adoption of EVs for another reason: avoiding undue stress on the electricity distribution network. EVs with high-capacity batteries, such as the 30 kWh 2016 Nissan Leaf, can consume as much electricity as the average U.S. residence consumes in a day. In order to avoid overloading distribution grid components, utilities will need to either invest in expensive grid upgrades or offer electricity rate structures that encourage vehicle owners to recharge their vehicles when grid power demand is low. Managing charging patterns is already important for neighborhoods with more than three or four EVs in places such as San Diego and Silicon Valley.

HOW WILL YOUR DECISIONS HELP OR HAMPER THE GRID OF THE FUTURE?

But the EV revolution will need more than utilities and regulators to support it; many of us have important roles to play. A new report from RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab (eLab), Electric Vehicles as Distributed Energy Resources, developed in conjunction with the Regulatory Assistance Project and San Diego Gas and Electric, identifies best practices for elected officials, vehicle manufacturers, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders, as well as important considerations for consumers and consumer advocates.

Among other things, we have to ensure that charging stations are installed and available at the right time and place for drivers to use them. But what that means may vary by state and utility grid. We have to ensure that EVs are affordable and practical for the broadest possible cross section of drivers, as a matter of social equity. And we need to influence, with increasing precision, where and when EVs are charged through a combination of partnerships, incentives, and market structures. In its early stages, the interesting challenges and opportunities related to vehicle grid integration will be local or even hyperlocal, at the scales where grid-related issues will first emerge.



By working together and managing EV charging so that it happens at the right times and places, EVs can be integrated into the electricity system in ways that deliver net benefits to utility customers, shareholders, vehicle owners, and society at large.

Source: Rocky Mountain Institute. Reproduced with permission.

Comments

7 responses to “It’s time to plan for electric vehicles on the grid”

  1. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    You have got to ask yourself the question: how much electricity would Australia need to run an all electric vehicle passenger fleet? The answer is simple. The average tesla type EV uses 200Wh/ km. There are 244 000 million km travelled by passenger vehicles per year ( 19 000 million litres of fuel) ABS.com.au . 200x 244 000 000 000 = 48.8 x 10^12WH 48.8 thousand GWH. What sized baseload station running constantly 24/365 can produce this much power? 5.6GW.

    That’s it, using Ball park figures: 6 GW of 24/365 baseLOAD electricity generation is required to power the whole passenger fleet of Australia. Given that wind power is roughly 40% capacity factor we would need 15GW of wind farms.

    What is the cost to construct 15 GW of wind? @$3/W $45 billion

    What is the cost of fuel? @ $ 1.40/ l x 19 000million l= $ 26.6 billion

    Seriously, 2 years to pay off the electricity generation capacity for a national passenger EV fleet?

    17.7 million cars x $10 000 subsidy per car would cost $ 177 billion about 7 years of fuel savings!

    A payback period of 10 years on fuel costs to convert the whole nation’s passenger fleet to EV and provide renewable electricity to power it!

    Please someone expand on this or fine tune these assumptions.

    Tesla is aiming to make their vehicles comparable in price to similar ICE vehicles. $5 billion will buy 1 gigafactory which can produce 35GWH of battery packs a year. Our 17.7 million cars will need about 60KWH each= 1000GWH. Three gigafactories working flat out for 10 years would supply the battery packs. Instead of a subsidy the government could build, own and heavily subsidise battery packs

    1. john Avatar
      john

      The efficiency of an electric propulsion unit is where the ICE vehicles lose out.
      Here is a quote taken from Tesla Owners Forum.

      https://forums.teslamotors.com/en_AU/forum/forums/how-many-kms-can-tesla-model-s-2013-travel-1-kwh

      “One US gallon of gasoline is about 36 kWh of energy and one US gallon of diesel is about 41 kWh of energy. If a gasoline car have 20 MPG (like Mercedes S class) it will go 20 miles while consuming 36 kWh. This mean it will go 1.8 miles per kWh. Tesla Model S will go about 3 miles per kWh. These numbers can be compared and relates to both ICE-cars and electric cars. It also shows that electric cars are much more efficient than ICE-cars.”

      Update on the information on that site.
      “I calculated the 20 MPG wrong, it should be 0.56 miles per kWh for the ICE car compared to 2.6 miles per kWh for Tesla taking the number from this site:”

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S

      So yes the underlying efficiency of EV will mean that ICE vehicles will be replaced particularly in the fleet buying situation rapidly.

      1. Ian Avatar
        Ian

        Oh, the efficiency of EV is not in question, it’s just that they are scarce and so far very expensive to buy. For Australia’s situation, we import almost all our vehicles and the fuel to run them. We have copper, iron, aluminium, lithium, silicon , engineers, skilled builders, electricians, mechanics, IT and other skilled people. We have abundant land and infrastructure better than most. We have allies and friends with the right technology and we have plenty of money. Why the @&$ don’t we build the necessary battery factories, at the very least and get on with electrifying our transportation system. A gigafactory is not that expensive – far less than the amount of money we haemorrhage to the oil states every year. Has no one got any fr@&$ing vision in this place ?

        1. john Avatar
          john

          Scale of production would come to mind as a barrier.
          Yes the import bill for petroleum products is very high.
          The cost of a factory is going to be the same for any country it is only the soft costs that would be higher in Australia.
          I have a strong feeling that graphene may prove to dramatically change the whole picture for battery production.

          1. Ian Avatar
            Ian

            No one can say for sure how cheaply batteries can be made, but Musk is showing us that the factories to make them can be very cheap indeed. Only $5 billion to produce 35GWH of batteries a year. That enough batteries for 500 000 cars per year. 5% interest on $ 5 billion is $250 million, that’s $500 per car.

            Some say that batteries can be produced at $150/KWH. If that’s the case then our hypothetical Ozzie Gigafactory could gross $5.25 billion a year- less the interest payment of $250 million that’s $5 billion. I cannot see the yearly running costs of such a factory would be as much as the initial construction cost. Probably 1/2 to a 1/4 of the initial outlay. Say 1/3 the building and manufacturing equipment cost. That would mean this factory would make batteries at $50/KWH a nice Tesla model S with a humongous 90 KWH battery would have a wholesale cost of its battery pack of $ 4500. Plug this into the end of your street and your whole neighbourhood could use its power overnight.

            We could give Musk $5 billion to build a factory for us in Australia and export batteries to America,Europe and Saudi Arabia! We could make our own batteries very cheaply, and produce the chassis to house them and only import the fancy cabin “skins” from our favourite car manufacturers.

            Check out Tesla’s figures and see the remarkable potential for their factory.

            65 million passenger cars are produced every year in the world. if each required on average 50 KWH of battery packs that ‘s 100 gigafactories required – plenty of buyers for one Ozzy gigafactory’s output.

          2. Alastair Leith Avatar
            Alastair Leith

            Musk is ripping off the battery tech from what was A123 (now Chinese owned B456 (he and Apple settled out of court for poaching their engineers). Why pay him for something he just took from elsewhere? I’m sure he isn’t the last word on battery tech, but maybe if Tesla turns out to be the major EV maker for a while to come he’ll have the battery business in his pocket too.

          3. Alastair Leith Avatar
            Alastair Leith

            +1 Graphene. The joker in the pack. In the mean time one of the largest lithium mines in the world is in WA, don’t suppose we could value add into product and charge it with PV in the bright WA sunshine?

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