Intro<\/u><\/p>\n
Last week, I wrote an article debunking the EPA\u2019s blatantly misleading \u201c108 MPG equivalent highway\u201d claim<\/i><\/a> for a particular electric vehicle, the 2020 Chevy Bolt. But part of a comment to that article<\/i><\/a> made by longtime TAH reader rgr769<\/i> caught my eye \u2013 and made me wonder:<\/p>\n . . . . If everyone in the country had electric vehicles, there would be rolling brownouts daily . . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Well, longtime readers can probably see what\u2019s coming. (smile) Yeah, I decided to do a reasonably \u201cquick and dirty\u201d estimate to see whether or not that statement is likely correct.<\/p>\n Consider yourself forewarned. And yes, as in the previous article there\u2019s some math involved. But as before, for this level of analysis the math also turns out to be pretty straightforward and simple.<\/p>\n Data and Assumptions<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n Here are the data and assumptions I used in doing the estimate. Where they\u2019re likely not realistic, I\u2019ve indicated so \u2013 and wherever I know I\u2019m being unrealistic, I believe I\u2019ve consistently erred on the side favoring electric vehicles.<\/p>\n Assumption 1<\/i><\/u>: the 2020 Chevy Bolt\u2019s battery pack capacity of 66kWh (Source 1 below) is representative of what would be required for the average electric vehicle’s (electric vehicles will hereafter be referred to as \u201cEV\u201d for brevity) battery pack capacity. Frankly, that\u2019s probably a \u201clowball\u201d figure for a fleet-wide average for at least two reasons. First, many vehicles in the US are far larger than the Bolt and\/or haul or tow cargo. Those larger vehicles \u2013 and those hauling cargo \u2013 would require higher-capacity batteries than the Bolt if they were EVs.\u00a0 Second:\u00a0 a one-way range of between 200 and 250 miles – followed by a multi-hour charging period – IMO probably isn\u2019t sufficient to convince much of the general public to make the switch to an EV. Longer range also will require a higher-capacity battery pack, in turn requiring more energy to charge. (EVs are already quite efficient with respect to using energy that has already been generated, transmitted, converted, and stored in their batteries<\/u> – provided you don\u2019t use heat or AC – so we\u2019re likely not going to see much more improvement on that score. It\u2019s the production, transmission, and conversion of the energy needed to charge those additional EV batteries in the first place that\u2019s the \u201clong pole\u201d.)<\/p>\n Still, ya gotta start somewhere. So 66kWh per vehicle battery capacity is what I\u2019ll go with below.<\/p>\n Assumption 2<\/u><\/i>: EV charger efficiency and transmission line losses (Sources 2 and 3 below) remain at 92% and 5%, respectively. Frankly, IMO those aren\u2019t likely to change much at all unless we either develop room-temperature superconductors or achieve a major technological breakthrough in AC-to-DC conversion technology. (Wanna become obscenely<\/em> rich? Invent a material that does the former or come up with a technology that does the latter, then patent it.)<\/p>\n Assumption 3<\/u><\/i>: there were 1,500,000 EVs in the US at the end of 2019. That\u2019s probably high; Source 4 below indicates 1,000,000 as of late 2018. But I\u2019ll be generous, even though I\u2019d be surprised if the actual figure for the end of 2019 was more than about 1,150,000 or thereabouts (a 15% increase from near the end of 2018).<\/p>\n Assumption 4<\/u><\/i>: all US vehicles \u201cgo electric\u201d \u2013 including buses, trucks, motorcycles, etc . . . . This is the proverbial \u201cwet dream\u201d of the EV \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Per Source 5 below, there were approximately 284,500,000 total vehicles registered in the US in 2019. (Other sources give somewhat different numbers, but they\u2019re all in the same ballpark, give or take.) Per that source, around half of them were trucks, buses, etc . . . \u2013 but that\u2019s likely very misleading. Many common vehicles used for daily personal transportation (e.g., pickup trucks, SUVs, and minivans) have been classified as \u201clight trucks\u201d for years; they’re likely carried in the same category as trucks and buses.\u00a0 So we’ll assume that they’re all covered under that 66kWh battery pack average above too.<\/p>\n Bottom line:\u00a0 if every motor vehicle in the US was electric, then we’d need to charge around 283,000,000 more<\/em> EVs than we’re charging today.\u00a0 So that’s the number I’ll use for additional EVs below.<\/p>\n Assumption 5<\/u><\/i>: each EV on average gets the equivalent of a full charge once a week, except for 2 weeks annually when the owner is \u201con vacation\u201d. Seems to me to be as good a guess as any for an average. Yes, some vehicles are \u201cgarage queens\u201d that don\u2019t get driven much; these might require one charge monthly, or even less. Others, however, get driven substantial distances daily and will thus require charging multiple times weekly. And larger EVs, even if they only get one charge a week, will be charging much larger capacity batteries (and thus require more electricity per charge). So I\u2019ll assume all of that balances out and go with this assumption.\u00a0 My guess is that this is overly optimistic, but maybe not.<\/p>\n That\u2019s really all we need. From that info, one can calculate a reasonable estimate of how much additional US electric generation capacity would be required to charge those 283,000,000 additional EV batteries given the above assumptions.\u00a0 And yes, it’s really additional<\/span> generation; we’re already using the electricity we produce today.\u00a0 Additional EV charging means we’ll need additional electric generation capacity to do said charging.<\/p>\n Calculations<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n Step 1<\/u><\/em>: Determine how much electrical energy must be generated to charge all those additional EVs completely one time<\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n Under Assumption 3 above, we already have 1.5 million EVs in the US; presumably we’re already charging those. Since we have approximately 284,500,000 registered vehicles in the US, if the entire US vehicle fleet were electric that means we\u2019re talking about charging an additional<\/u> 283,000,000 EVs – each requiring 66kWh of energy per full charge. \u00a0(Like Joules, BTUs, and ft-lbs, a kilowatt-hour – or kWh – is a measure of energy, not power. Power is defined as the rate<\/em> at which energy is consumed, transferred, or converted and is specified in terms of the amount of energy consumed\/transferred\/converted per unit time.\u00a0 Typical units for power are watts\/kilowatts\/megawatts and horsepower.) Doing the math indicates those additional EV batteries will collectively store<\/p>\n 66 kWh\/EV x 283,000,000 additional EVs = 18,678,000,000 kWh (battery)<\/p>\n of energy for future use each time they are fully charged.<\/p>\n Now, that\u2019s the amount of energy stored in those additional EVs batteries after each full charge. As I noted in my previous article, battery chargers are not 100% efficient. Let’s assume again that the EV chargers are about 92% efficient (that figure may be higher than actual, based on data from 2014, but I’ll use it anyway to account for potential improvements in charger technology since then).\u00a0 Doing so we end up with the following amount of energy required at the wall socket:<\/p>\n 18,678,000,000 kWh (battery)\u00a0\u00a0 \/ \u00a0 0.92 = 20,302,173,913 kWh (wall socket)<\/p>\n A further correction is required for the average 5% of electricity lost in transmission from generating plant to wall socket:<\/p>\n 20,302,173,913 kWh (wall socket) \/ 0.95 = 21,370,709,382 kWh (generated)<\/p>\n That’s how much electrical energy must be generated<\/u> to charge fully each those additional 283,000,000 EVs one time.<\/em><\/p>\n Step 2<\/u><\/em>: Determine how much additional electricity is required annually.<\/p>\n Under Assumption 5, on average each EV gets the equivalent of a full charge once per week, except for those 2 weeks per year when the owner is presumed to be on vacation. That means annually we need<\/p>\n 21,370,709,382 kWh (generated) x 50 = 1,068,535,469,108 kWh<\/p>\n of electrical energy to charge all those additional EVs.<\/p>\n (For anyone checking the calculations by hand, the apparent “extra” 8 kWh didn’t appear by magic. Rather, it is due to decimal fractions of a kWh hidden by rounding in an earlier step. The actual figure for electrical energy generated was rounded down from 21,370,709,382.151+ kWh. Multiply that number by 50 and round to the nearest kWh and you get the number above – including the apparent “extra” 8 kWh.)<\/p>\n Step 3<\/u><\/em>: Determine how much additional electric generation capacity is required.\u00a0 As noted above, the kWh is a unit of energy; generators are typically rated in terms of electrical power generation capacity – e.g., kW or MW.\u00a0 We thus need to know how much generation capacity is required to generate that amount of electrical energy.<\/p>\n However, power is merely the rate at which energy is transferred, consumed to do mechanical work, or converted to another form of energy.\u00a0 Thus, for a given time interval average power supplied multiplied by the length of the time interval yields the energy used during that time interval.\u00a0 Conversely, to determine the additional electrical power generation requirement to charge those 283,000,000 EV batteries each year, that means we need to divide the above annual kWh figure (total energy required) by the amount of time, expressed in hours, during which that energy must be provided. (For simplicity, I\u2019m ignoring AC power factor effects<\/i><\/a>. Power factor effects will raise the amount of generating capacity required. How much would power factor effects increase the generation capacity required? Good question, and one I’m not going to attempt to answer; I don’t have data concerning the typical transmission grid and battery charger power factors.\u00a0 I\u2019d guess<\/i> the increase to be not more\u00a0than 15-20%, and probably less. But that’s a guess, and I could easily be wrong.)<\/p>\n Looking at the above, we have three cases to consider.<\/p>\n Case 1<\/u>: the additional load required to charge those 283,000,000 additional EVs is perfectly evenly distributed<\/span> during the day and throughout the year. While this case is almost certainly unrealistic, this is the best case scenario from the perspective of minimizing the additional generation capacity required. Under this case, the annual energy required in kWh to charge all those additional EV batteries is divided by the number of hours in a year (24 x 365 = 8,760) to find the total additional electric generation capacity required. Doing this yields<\/p>\n 1,068,535,469,108 kWh \/ 8,760h = 121,978,934.83 kW, or 121,978.93 MW<\/p>\n Assuming 93% power plant availability, generating that much additional electricity would require approximately 131 additional<\/em> 1,000 MWe nuclear plants – “additional”, as in “plants that don’t currently exist”. Alternatively, it would require about 328 additional 400 MWe combined cycle (gas turbine + steam cycle secondary) generating plants.\u00a0 (Obviously, some other combination of generating capacity totaling roughly 121,980 MWe would also satisfy the additional demand.)<\/p>\n Case 2<\/u>: for reasons I discussed in the previous article, it\u2019s extremely unlikely that the charging of those 283,000,000 additional EVs would be uniformly distributed during a typical day.\u00a0 (The daily charging distribution requirements would also almost certainly vary throughout the year and by location due to varying local AC and\/or heating requirements for each EV, but these variations in the grand scheme of things would IMO likely be dwarfed by the time of day variation.\u00a0 I’m thus going to ignore those sources of variation.)\u00a0 Rather, given human nature much if not the vast majority of EV charging would likely occur between the hours of 9AM and 10PM local \u2013 or, in other words, during peak load hours. In this case, the energy required must at best<\/em> be generated during a 1\/3 shorter period (16 hrs daily \u2013 13 hrs plus the 3 hr time difference between Eastern and Pacific times).\u00a0 This yields a far larger generation capacity increase. It also limits the technology choices we have to generate that power – e.g., we won’t be using nuclear in this case.<\/p>\n To a simple (and somewhat unrealistically low) approximation, however, accounting for that eventuality is doable. Rather than 8,760 hours annually, in that case we need to produce the energy required for EV charging during 16 x 365 = 5,840 hours annually (13 hours, 9AM to 10PM, plus 3 hours to account for the time difference between Eastern and Pacific time). That in turn means we need<\/p>\n 1,068,535,469,108 kWh \/ 5,840 h = 182,968,402.24 kW, or 182,968.40 MW<\/p>\n of additional peak load<\/em> generating capacity. Again assuming 93% availability, that\u2019s the equivalent additional electric power requirement of 492 additional 400 MWe combined cycle generating plants. (Nuclear generation wouldn\u2019t be an option under this scenario because current nuclear plant designs simply can\u2019t start up and shut down quickly enough to handle peak load variations. That\u2019s why nuclear power is used almost exclusively in satisfying the US electric grid’s baseload.)<\/p>\n Even that\u2019s probably quite optimistic, because it assumes the EV charging load to be distributed uniformly between 9AM Eastern and 10PM Pacific time. Human nature says it\u2019s far more likely that a large portion if not most of that EV charging will instead occur during a much shorter period:\u00a0 between 4 and 10PM daily, when people arrive home from work\/school\/activities\/errands\/etc . . . and plug in their EV so that will be fully charged for the next day.\u00a0 Since the total energy required remains the same, that temporal “bunching” in charging those additional US EVs would add even more to the additional peak generation requirement imposed by EV charging.<\/p>\n Doing that new calculation is more complex (you have to make assumptions regarding what fraction of EV charging occurs during each hour of the day), and in any case the result above is already so ugly I\u2019m not going to present that more detailed and realistic case.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that for that case the required additional generation capacity would almost certainly be significantly larger than either figure above.<\/p>\n Case 3<\/span>:\u00a0 everyone charges their EV during “off peak” hours from 10PM to 6AM local time (more precisely, for the entire nation EV charging would begin at 10PM Eastern time and would end at 6AM the next day Pacific time).\u00a0 In theory, this could be done, either manually (not likely) or using a time or “smart” charger – provided everyone did so of course.\u00a0 And at first glance, it seems like a “no brainer” solution.<\/p>\n In reality, this isn’t all that good an idea either.\u00a0 Doing this means you have to generate all the electricity required to charge those 283,000,000 additional EVs in an 11 hour time period daily – not in 16 or 24 hours.\u00a0 That works out 4,015 hours annually.\u00a0 That in turn means that the minimum additional generation capacity required is<\/p>\n 1,068,535,469,108 kWh \/ 4,015 h = 266,135,857.81 kW, or 266,135.85 MW<\/p>\n Now, it appears that part of that additional required load could be handled by existing peak load generation capacity that’s not currently used between 10PM and 6AM – but much of it could not.\u00a0 What that means is you’ve just created a new daily peak load – one that is somewhere around 130,000 MW higher<\/em> than was the previous daily peak load (there appears to be somewhere between 100,000 MW and 150,000 MW typical difference between the US baseload and maximum peak load; the 130,000 MW figure I give above assumes it’s 130,000 MW and thus “splits the difference” in terms of total additional generation required).\u00a0 That new daily peak now occurs between 10PM and 6AM – not during the early evening as it did previously.\u00a0 The upshot is that we’d need an additional 130,000 MW or so of peak load generation capacity to satisfy the new demand – and probably more.<\/p>\n Or, alternatively, since the US baseload is now much higher (the US grid’s daily minimum load under this scenario would occur somewhere around noon-ish vice during the early morning hours) you could simply build a load of nuclear plants and use the existing peak load generation at different hours instead, adding more peak load capacity if and where required.\u00a0 Based on the graphs of US daily load variation for March (Source 6), my “eyeball” estimate of that split would be around 100,000 MWe nuclear (to satisfy the new additional baseload) and the remaining 30,000 MWe from other sources to satisfy the part of the higher peak not met by currently-existing peak load generating assets.\u00a0 Assuming 93% plant availability, that works out to 108 additional nuclear plants with 1,000 MWe generation capability and 75 combined cycle plants with 400MWe generation capability.\u00a0 (Other combinations could obviously work too.)<\/p>\n That’s not as bad as Case 2, but in terms of additional generation capacity required it’s still a bit worse than Case 1.<\/p>\n Effect on Power Grid<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n So, what would this additional load do to today\u2019s power grid? Glad you asked.<\/p>\n It ain\u2019t that pretty at all.<\/p>\n From eyeballing the graph of US daily electric grid load for March 2017 – 2020 presented in the previous article (Source 6), during the month of March the US electric grid’s baseload (the term is defined and discussed in Source 7) appears to be about 350,000 MW.\u00a0 That means under the best<\/span> case above (e.g., completely uniform distribution of EV charging throughout the day and year, enabling the charging to be handled by baseload generation while minimizing the total additional generation capacity required), an additional 121,978.93 MW of baseload generating capacity would be needed \u2013 or an increase of nearly 35% <\/i>. Ouch.<\/p>\n And remember:\u00a0 that\u2019s best case<\/u>. More realistically, a large part if not the vast majority of additional EV charging load will likely occur during peak load (defined and discussed in Source 8) hours. If all that charging is done between 9AM Eastern and 10PM Pacific time, that means we more likely need an additional 182,968.40 MWe of peak load generating capacity to satisfy that additional EV charging. That\u2019s an increase in peak load generating capacity of 146.37+%<\/b><\/u> – or an increase that represents somewhere between doubling and tripling current peak load generation requirements<\/b><\/u>. And we probably need even more of an increase in peak load generation capability than that in this case, since that figure assumes the load required to charge all those additional EVs is evenly distributed<\/em> between 9AM Eastern and 10PM Pacific times.\u00a0 In reality, it probably won’t be.<\/p>\n Ouch, hell \u2013 that\u2019s \u201cOh, sh*t!!\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re joking, right?\u201d territory.<\/p>\n The “everybody charge between 10PM and 6AM local” is a bit worse than the first case in terms of additional generation required – but it’s far better than the second case.\u00a0 But it’ still worse than the first case – and good luck with getting everyone to comply with that case voluntarily.\u00a0 It’s also not exactly feasible for those who work a “graveyard” shift and don’t have access to a charging station at work.<\/p>\n Why Not Produce\/Store\/Use Later?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Don’t even ask. \u00a0 Storing the equivalent of even one<\/span> large electric generating plant\u2019s daily output is, simply, in general not a particularly attractive option today for both technical and economic reasons.\u00a0 And we’d need way more than one additional such storage facility.<\/p>\n To put things into perspective:\u00a0 the largest currently operating pumped hydro storage station in the world<\/em> – the Bath County Pumped Storage Storage Station in Bath County, VA (Source 9) – can store a net total 24,000MWh of electricity for later use.\u00a0 That is one day’s output of a single 1,000 MWe generating plant.\u00a0 To store the energy needed to charge 283,000,000 additional EVs, you\u2019re talking storing a significant fraction (e.g, around 20%) of the entire US electric grid\u2019s average daily<\/strong> electrical energy production after it has been increased to support EV charging<\/span>.\u00a0 Specifically, you’d need to store 121,978.93 MW x 24 hrs = 2,927,494.32 MWh of electrical energy. And that’s not the total additional electric power that would be required to do that, either (and which would have to be generated). Pumped storage stores electricity after it’s been generated elsewhere.\u00a0 Pumped hydro storage has losses due to evaporation, energy used in pumping, and electric generation efficiency that is always less than 100%.\u00a0 These losses typically mean that in only somewhere between 70% and 80% of the energy used during the “pump” part of pumped hydroelectric storage can be recovered during the “generation” part (Source 10).<\/p>\n That in turn means that along with sufficient additional generating capacity to generate the electricity required to charge those 283,000,000 EV batteries in the first place, to operate in “generate\/store\/use later” mode we’d also need to build the equivalent of <\/strong>1<\/em>22 additional<\/span><\/strong><\/em> Bath County Pumped Storage Stations at a cost (in 2019 dollars) of $3.82 billion each and taking literally years to build<\/span>.\u00a0 We’d also (assuming 25% pumped-storage losses) need to build around 30,500 MWe more<\/em> additional electric generating capability to cover the estimated pumped-storage energy losses.\u00a0 Oh, and I also wish you the best of luck in getting the required EPA approvals for all of those 122 huge new pumped hydro storage plants.<\/p>\n Something tells me all that just ain\u2019t gonna happen, amigo.<\/p>\n Conclusions<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n It appears that rgr769<\/i> was correct. If all vehicles in the US were EVs, from the above it certainly appears that today’s US electric grid simply could not handle the additional load imposed by EV charging.\u00a0 Charging those additional 283,000,000 EVs would require a daily average of roughly 122,000 MWe of generation capacity (if done using baseload power), and around 1 1\/2 times that (or more) if done during peak load hours.\u00a0 That means EV charging would be raising total US electricity generation requirements by a minimum of around 20-25% – and probably considerably more than that if (as is likely) EV charging is done largely during peak load hours.<\/p>\n I’ll go out on a limb here and say that most if not all public utilities don’t have enough unused spare capacity today to handle a 20% increase in their baseload – much less the far larger percentage increase in peak load generation that the IMO far more likely peak hours charging would require – without building a serious<\/em> number of new power plants.\u00a0 Building new generating plants costs serious<\/em> money, and building large plants also takes years.<\/p>\n All US vehicles “going EV” in a relatively short period of time therefore implies that utilities would be forced to impose either draconian price increases (supply and demand) or rationing schemes (e.g., rolling brownouts\/blackouts) in order to ration the available electric power. And since utility rates are typically regulated by state public utility commissions, I\u2019d bet long odds that it would be the latter (brownouts\/blackouts) vice the former.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because then the public service commission officials can point their fingers at the utility companies (for not having enough generating capacity) vice taking responsibility for approving a massive rate increase.<\/p>\n So, what about the future? I can\u2019t say I\u2019m terribly hopeful there, either \u2013 though as the little kid in the movie \u201cAngels In the Outfield\u201d put it:\u00a0 \u201cHey . . . it could<\/i> happen!\u201d Building a new nuclear plant takes 10+ years and costs literally billions to tens of billions of dollars (though a standardized design and pre-approval\/dramatically shortened review of same by the NRC for plants built to that standard design, together with some other regulatory changes not adversely impacting safety, could IMO possibly cut the cost to around $4-5 billion per plant). But thanks to \u00a0 \u00a0 Besides, nuclear plants aren’t used to satisfy daily load variations.\u00a0 If (as appears very likely due to human nature) most EV charging occurs between 9AM and 10PM local, with a large fraction of that occurring between 4PM and 10PM local . . . well, you’re not going to be using nuclear power to do that.<\/p>\n As for getting gas-fired plants approved, that might be doable \u2013 if<\/em> you can figure out somewhere to build them that won\u2019t get the environmentalists\u2019 and affected localities\u2019 skivvies all knotted up.\u00a0 From a technical standpoint, the best places for those new plants would be in or near major cities.\u00a0 That\u2019s where most EV owners will be living, at least initially; putting them in those locations would minimize transmission losses and thus ease the crunch a bit.<\/p>\n Yeah, right \u2013 good luck with that<\/em>, too. Ever hear the acronym “NIMBY”? Everyone wants their electricity, but no one wants the power plant close to their house.<\/p>\n But what about renewable sources – wind, hydro, and solar? Get serious. Solar is at best available half the time, and even then is subject to being degraded by time of year and the weather – the latter unpredictably. Wind is, well, at the mercy of the wind; no wind, no wind power. And hydro is – thanks to the environmentalists – pretty much a non-starter. Good luck with getting any new large hydro plants approved once the environmental movement starts filing court challenges. And as discussed above, storage on the scale required just isn’t feasible – and is a losing proposition from an energy-used-in-storage-vice-energy-recovered perspective anyway.<\/p>\n Finally:\u00a0 the numbers above are estimates; as such, they’re not carved in stone.\u00a0 Don\u2019t like the additional capacity numbers I came up with above? Think they\u2019re too high – maybe because the average EV will only need the equivalent of a full charge every 2 weeks, or that the number of conventional or hybrid vehicles replaced by EVs will be less than 1-for-1?\u00a0 Fine. Cut my numbers above in half if you like.<\/p>\n Doing that’s the equivalent of replacing only 1\/2 of the current US vehicle fleet with electric vehicles instead of all of them. That that would still cause massive problems for today\u2019s electric grid.<\/u> The current US electric grid almost certainly couldn’t handle even that 50% reduced scenario today. Major upgrades costing hundreds of billions and taking a decade or more would be required. That that doesn’t include any upgrades to the power distribution grid itself (new transmission lines, power substations, transformers, etc . . .). Those would almost certainly be required too.<\/p>\n Even in that revised scenario, the US electric grid’s baseload would still increase by close to 17%<\/i> (around 61,000 MWe) if EV charging were distributed uniformly throughout the day \u2013 and that\u2019s the best possible case<\/i>. If the majority of EV charging is done when human nature indicates it very likely will be (e.g., while people are at work, or starting not long after people return home for the day), well, then you\u2019re still talking increasing the US electric grid’s peak load generation requirements by somewhere approaching 75% – and possibly substantially more<\/u>.<\/p>\n The only case that “works” – marginally – under this reduced scenario would be to mandate that each EV owner only charge once per week per EV during a utility- or government- assigned mandatory “time slot” between 10PM and 6AM one day per week; miss your time slot or need more and you’re SOL.\u00a0 (Since this scenario would require running peak load generation most of the day, that charging would also no longer occur during “off-peak hours” – so tell those “off-peak rates” goodbye, too.)\u00a0 And good luck with getting people to live with that.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Further, even this last reduced scenario – assigned mandatory charging times between 10PM and 6AM local, which is already marginal – becomes questionable if vehicles with larger batteries than the Bolt’s battery pack are in the mix or if chargers operate non-linearly with respect to charging batteries (e.g., charge more rapidly at first, then tail off as the battery approaches full charge). I’m guessing we’d see both.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Final Thoughts<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bottom line: EVs are a good choice for some situations and some people.\u00a0 If you want one, feel free to buy one with your own funds. But add enough of them to the US vehicle inventory, and at some point absent a truly massive upgrade the nationwide electric grid simply won\u2019t be able to supply the electricity needed to charge them all. Make all US vehicles electric \u2013 assuming that\u2019s even technically possible, which it isn\u2019t today due to battery limitations – and things get really<\/u><\/em> ugly.\u00a0 And even best case, it would almost certainly take a decade plus and hundreds of billions of dollars (more likely $1 trillion plus) to install the additional generating capacity required if we started literally today.\u00a0 Two decades and closer to $2 trillion would be my guess.<\/p>\n Higher electricity rates? Almost certainly.\u00a0 The capital investment required for building all that new generation capacity isn\u2019t going to appear by magic, and the cost utility companies would pay in obtaining that necessary capital would in turn be passed along to the consumer.\u00a0 There would also likely be a general rise in interest rates due to competition in the borrowing market from utility companies borrowing money to finance the new generating plants needed. And if the majority of the new plants built are gas-fired, you\u2019re probably talking substantial natural gas price increases as well due to that pesky thing called “supply and demand”.<\/p>\n Less than 0.5% of US vehicles today are EVs.\u00a0 Personally, I place the chances of seeing 50% EVs in this nation during my lifetime in the \u201csnowball\u2019s chance in hell\u201d category \u2013 unless, of course, some future \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 But hey . . . it could<\/i> happen! (smile)<\/p>\n . . . <\/b><\/p>\n Postscript<\/span>:\u00a0 And before anyone accuses me again, falsely, of being a \u201cshill\u201d for the fossil fuel industry:\u00a0 how about you just go get bent instead.\u00a0 If I had my \u2019druthers, we wouldn’t be using anywhere near as much in the way of fossil fuels today.\u00a0 Fossil fuels come with some serious environmental “baggage”, and IMO we should minimize their use where we can.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, doing all of that would have required building a large number of additional nuclear plants, reprocessing nuclear fuel, and as well as making significant investments in other technologies.\u00a0 It would have also required starting 40+ years ago. But we did neither – so we’re where we are today.<\/p>\n Why didn\u2019t\u2019 we do that?\u00a0 Two reasons IMO.<\/p>\n First, you can thank those \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Then again, Jimmuh the Peanut was pretty good at screwing up damn near everything he touched while POTUS.\u00a0 So my second reason above should really be no surprise.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Sources<\/u>:<\/p>\n 1 \u2013 Chevy Bolt Range Test: https:\/\/insideevs.com\/reviews\/423144\/chevy-bolt-ev-70-mph-range-test\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 2 \u2013 EV Battery Charger Efficiency: https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/document\/7046253<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 3 \u2013 Average Power Transmission Loss Data: https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/tools\/faqs\/faq.php?id=105&t=3<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 4 \u2013 Number of US Electric Vehicles, late 2018: https:\/\/www.eei.org\/resourcesandmedia\/newsroom\/Pages\/Press%20Releases\/EEI%20Celebrates%201%20Million%20Electric%20Vehicles%20on%20U-S-%20Roads.aspx <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 5 \u2013 Number of Registered Vehicles in the US, 2019: https:\/\/hedgescompany.com\/automotive-market-research-statistics\/auto-mailing-lists-and-marketing\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 6 \u2013 Graph of US Daily Load, March, 2017-2020: https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/todayinenergy\/detail.php?id=43295<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 7 \u2013 Baseload Explained: https:\/\/energyeducation.ca\/encyclopedia\/Baseload_power<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 8 \u2013 Peaking Power Explained: https:\/\/energyeducation.ca\/encyclopedia\/Peaking_power<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 9 \u2013 Wikipedia article, Bath County Pumped Storage Station: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n 10 \u2013 Wikipedia article, Pumped-Storage Hydroelectrity:\u00a0 https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
religious fanatics<\/del> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 proponents (and of most environmentalists and “green energy” proponents as well). So what the hell – let\u2019s make that assumption.<\/p>\nenviro-whackos<\/del> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 those \u201cfine individuals\u201d in the environmental movement who think all things nuclear are tools of Satan and who have convinced much if not most of the public that \u201cNuke . . . baaaad!\u201d, good luck with getting ANY new nuclear plants built anytime soon.\u00a0 Add in court time for the inevitable lawsuits and I’d guess it will be 15 years or more before any new nuclear electricity comes on-line in the US. And that\u2019s if we literally started today.<\/p>\nLeftist dictatorship<\/del> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cProgressive\u201d US government imposes such a mandate while I\u2019m still on this side of the dirt, then enforces same through draconian means rivaling those of the worst autocratic police states in history. And even then, I\u2019d give 50-50 odds that such a mandate would be impossible to fulfill anyway. Hell, I\u2019d be surprised if 50% EVs is the case any time during my kids\u2019<\/em> lifetime, much less mine.<\/p>\ndamned enviro-whackos<\/del> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “wonderful” anti-nuclear activists back in the 1970s (and their technically ignorant enablers in the media and Hollywood) who decided, \u201cNukes . . . . baaaad; reprocessing . . . . worse!\u201d – and who eventually managed to sell that load of BS to the public.\u00a0 Second, you can thank Jimmuh the Peanut and his clown crew cronies for caving to political pressure rather than providing any actual leadership concerning US nuclear power and long-term energy policy during his abomination of an Administration.<\/p>\n