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Electric Vehicles - Impact on electrical network. Survey of vehicle uptake.

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Dear IET forum,

I am carrying out research into the impacts of the projected surge of electric vehicle uptake on the local network infrastructure. The results will be used as part of my Technical report for Ceng. Please could you spare 2 minutes completing the survey in the link below? Its very short I assure you and completely anonymous. My aim is to understand a sample of peoples views on them personally taking up ownership of electric vehicles and if the pandemic may have changed their future car ownership behaviours. 

When complete i can post the results here and if you are interested make a comment and i can send you the finished technical report.

Much appreciated, thank you in advance.!
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CC7GJSB

  • 0
    The management  of our (Swiss) apartment complex recently sent around a questionaire asking how many people would consider an EV in the future so they could plan the infrastructure. Adding 60+ charging stations is not trivial, probably doubling the load on the substation.
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    Remember that there were more electric vehicles in Britain back in the 1970s than there were just 5 years ago.
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    The truth is that the national grid and power stations will have to double in size if we all drive electric vehicles and treble in size if we outlaw gas heating in old as well as new houses.

    Heavy transport will probably always be diesel or petrol and so will long distance car journeys. 

    We need to be realistic about EV's ,they are necessary inside cities to stop pollution but not in the countryside where there is plenty of vegetation to absorb the CO2 and even convert it into food to eat.
  • 0
    Most of this just simply isnt true. petrol and diesel vehicle also emit many other serious toxins as well as CO2. And the other thing that’s constantly not mentioned is the fact that mining, transporting, refining, transporting, and distributing the petrol/diesel to the end user, huge amount of energy is wasted - way more than the energy used to get electric to a car. Oil will eventually run out, it is only finite. They way we live today is not sustainable, and resistance to change is futile... sorry, that’s the Borg, but despite change being difficult and costly, it will happen. 


    I also don’t believe such huge changes to the grid are required. I have seen no evidence of this outside of the hysterical media. Most studies conducted by experts serving the grid and large DNOs show that gradual infrastructure upgrades, combined with rebalancing of the networks by shifting energy usage times and smoothing of peaks over the next 15 years will be sufficient. 


    I know this is a hot topic and people can get very worked up over it but the future is exciting - there are always new things, and I’m sure there are unknowns, but the only thing that is constant is change.
  • 0
    In what way is it not true we will need to upgrade the generation and the distribution network quite substantially , exactly ?

    If you have Numbers and can quote your sources please, and perhaps you'd like to compare your requirement to the rate of update over the last decade to your projections.

    Oil  and gas will run out I agree, but sadly not before we have burnt enough to cock up the climate comprehensively by any respectable calculation . Right now electric cars are cheap because they are small in number and can ride on the back of infrastructure that is already there. (much as the internet rides on the back of fibre laid under the sea for the phone network, it is far from free, just someone else is paying. ) As market fraction changes, that will cease to be true.

    M.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    CliveS, do you have any backup for the assertion that CO2 released in the countryside is captured by local vegetation to any extent? I would like to believe that this was true, and saw it reported as such on Tomorrow's World in the late 1980s. However the evidence of the last 30 years is that the rate of release of CO2 far outweighs the capacity of the natural world to capture it. Absorption of CO2 by the oceans is being blamed for acidification, which could lead to the collapse of that ecosystem in the coming decades. Furthermore, I suspect that most exhaust gas streams rise fairly quickly due to the residual heat that they contain, so they have minimal local effect on vegetation. Deposits of soot and other toxins clearly do fall out locally, however. If you have any evidence that local capture of CO2 is a significant effect, it would be great to see it.
  • 0
    Lee Morris:


    I also don’t believe such huge changes to the grid are required. I have seen no evidence of this outside of the hysterical media. Most studies conducted by experts serving the grid and large DNOs show that gradual infrastructure upgrades, combined with rebalancing of the networks by shifting energy usage times and smoothing of peaks over the next 15 years will be sufficient. 

     


    There are a lot of studies/calculations that aim to show that the electricity supply for charging EVs is no problem, They usually contain somewhat dubious assumptions. This is one from The Engineer:

    https://www.theengineer.co.uk/utac-ceram-millbrook-ev-testing-blog/

     



    • Peter Farley 27th April 2021 at 2:44 am

      The investment required is trivial compared to the investment in the vehicles or even the current liquid fuel distribution systems. Most houses and workplaces have more than sufficient grid capacity tied with smart charging to provide 90-95% of charges. Even a large bus or delivery vehicle depot might need Pds 5-10,000 per charging bay and they don’t need a charger for every vehicle. An electric bus is in the order of Pds 200,000.

      High speed chargers on motorways and A roads are necessary but there are already plenty of companies installing them well ahead of demand. As destination charging becomes almost as common as parking meters, the proportion of charging done at high speed chargers will fall.



      As for the grid it was built to handle at least 350 TWh per year and is currently supplying about 260 TWh. Over the next 10 years the UK might add 10 m EVs each of which will use an average 1,500 kWh per year for a total demand of 15 TWh. Even if that is increased by 50% to account for buses and delivery vehicles 22 TWh is easily handled, particularly as smart charging will be used to smooth the load.

      Then we come to generation capacity. The Uk is planning to increase offshore wind by 24 GW by 2030 and the pipeline for onshore wind is around 16 GW and utility solar is 5.7 GW. At conservative modern capacity factors that is around 180 TWh of new supply over the next 10 years, that is enough to replace all current coal and gas (100 TWh) and more than enough to supply new transport demand of 20+TWh and enough left over to provide heatpump heating for 20m dwellings



      Roger B 27th April 2021 at 3:14 pm

      Peter, your electricity consumption per EV seems somewhat low. Typical consumption is 3 to 4 miles per kWh giving a suggested milage of 4500-6000 miles per year. The most likely purchasers of EVs are high milage users as they will 1) get the most savings and 2) have the shortest vehicle replacement cycle. A real number is probably more like 15-20 000 miles per year so around 60 TWh.

      A ‘ reverse’ (looking at the energy comsuption of petrol and diesel) study I made of Germany a few years ago suggested and automotive consumption of around 100 TWh per year for full replacement . that is a significant proportion of the grid capacity.







  • 0
    An odd set of units - what is a PDs ? - surely not Planetary Defense System. (maybe its just the company I keep...)

    Mike
  • 0
    I guessed pounds sterling, but why not use the normally accepted GBP if you haven't got the £ symbol?
  • 0
    ahh, maybe. I had wondered about Pferdestärke (PS) but for an English speaking poster I'd expect bhp.. and the numbers made no sense,

    even than they make not much sense as pounds... but differently,

    A new substation is not that cheap..

    M.

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