Out west we have a big push happening to convert most of us into electric car drivers. In my office of 15 we have 4 individuals who drive electric cars.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...es-zero-emission-cars-defends-oil-policy.html
My primary concern since I work in the energy demand sector of the economy, is power availability and reliability. I really do think that a high margin of people who buy these cars and brag about "It only takes me $3 a night to charge my car" have no idea where electricity comes from, how it's made, distributed, consumed. I am constantly irked by the "zero emissions" charge they claim since a very small percentage of the electricity we produce in California actually comes from "zero emissions" sources (wind,hydro,solar) Out here most of our power comes from natural gas, with some portion nuclear (well, less now that San Onofre is gone)
The math is pretty straightforward-
1,500,000 vehicles (CA mandate by 2025) x 24 kWH each for a full charge (assuming nissan leaf published data) = 36,000,000 kWH every night to charge all those vehicles. Assuming they all charge in roughly 8 hours, that means the instantaneous load on the grid will be (36,000,000 / 8) = 4,500,000 kW or 4,500 MW.
Yes, that's right, 4,500 MW, or roughly 4 nuclear power plants.
Where is all that "clean" energy going to come from? Not nuclear (thats a bad, bad word out here) but instead natural gas. That's the only thing left. There's no way wind/solar/hydro can be brought up to that level (actually, hydro is bad out here too, too many fish kills.)
