Electric cars?? yeh, sure....

[mrvette]

An Engineers Take On Electric Cars


Interested in what the engineers or others with knowledge and/or experience in this field have to say about this man's comments. I did not write this, it was sent by a friend.

As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I
have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical
energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the
distribution infrastructure Whether generated from coal, gas, oil,
wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited.

IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car:
Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of
those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it . This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things
yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro
Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.

If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you
had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), The electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our
residential infrastructure cannot bear the load So as our genius
elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS..!' and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are
eco-friendly, just read the following Note: If you ARE a green
person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. "Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging Time) would be 20 mph. According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.

I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs
$46,000 plus. Simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.

[Mike Mercury]

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by mrvette

An Engineers Take On Electric Cars


Interested in what the engineers or others with knowledge and/or experience in this field have to say about this man's comments. I did not write this, it was sent by a friend.

As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I
have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical
energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid.

* long time

As an engineer, I know about things like solar panels which can charge an electric car without any additional load on the grid.

I also know about history. The first electrical generating plants were built to power electric traction (streetcars and interurbans) starting in the 1890s. They immediately ran into the problem of what to do with these plants during the times when the trains weren't running. That's when smart people like Samuel Insull started running wires to everyone's homes, giving the power plants something to power at night.

Fast forward to today, and we still have the same problem: the peak power demand occurs during the afternoon, and falls to a minimum overnight. Oddly enough, overnight is when most people will be charging their electric vehicles. Turns out you can charge a shitload of electric vehicles during off-peak hours without adding any additional grid infrastructure.

But the haters won't let any of these facts get in the way of a good rant.

As for the gas tax, that system is already borked beyond repair. Heavy truck cause the vast majority of wear and tear on our roads, yet they have never paid their fair share of taxes to pay for road maintenance. The only fair way to charge for road use is going to be based on actual miles driven as well as a weight factor. A simple odometer check once a year at license renewal time will reveal how many miles you drove, and your annual registration fees would be calculated accordingly.

This is how an engineer would approach the problem. The politicians, of course, will come up with something completely different and full of loopholes to favor their cronies.

[thecornerman]

The possibilities are there, its good to have all the facts ahead of time

[snide]

Originally Posted by thecornerman

The possibilities are there, if good to have all the facts ahead of time

Liberals don't need facts.

[Rodnok1]

Some states are taxing yearly all electric vehicles the equivalent of a years gas tax they would lose. Of course the electric vehicle people are pissed, to which I say tough shit you use the roads also. Plus NC gas tax one of highest in the country already.
Perhaps one answer could be additional costs per kw for vehicle charging to offset the strain the put on the systems.

[Jobaka]

Originally Posted by mrvette

I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh.

Nobody pays that much.

Rates

[Bill]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

* long time

As an engineer, I know about things like solar panels which can charge an electric car without any additional load on the grid.

I also know about history. The first electrical generating plants were built to power electric traction (streetcars and interurbans) starting in the 1890s. They immediately ran into the problem of what to do with these plants during the times when the trains weren't running. That's when smart people like Samuel Insull started running wires to everyone's homes, giving the power plants something to power at night.

Fast forward to today, and we still have the same problem: the peak power demand occurs during the afternoon, and falls to a minimum overnight. Oddly enough, overnight is when most people will be charging their electric vehicles. Turns out you can charge a shitload of electric vehicles during off-peak hours without adding any additional grid infrastructure.

But the haters won't let any of these facts get in the way of a good rant.

As for the gas tax, that system is already borked beyond repair. Heavy truck cause the vast majority of wear and tear on our roads, yet they have never paid their fair share of taxes to pay for road maintenance. The only fair way to charge for road use is going to be based on actual miles driven as well as a weight factor. A simple odometer check once a year at license renewal time will reveal how many miles you drove, and your annual registration fees would be calculated accordingly.

This is how an engineer would approach the problem. The politicians, of course, will come up with something completely different and full of loopholes to favor their cronies.

In Texas, anyway, the cost to register a heavy trailer is WAAAAY more than the cost to register a car or little light trailer. Then there's the matter of the actual diesel tax. A big rig gets what? Maybe 6-7 miles per gallon at best? They're paying a lot of federal and state tax every time they fill up, in comparison to my Cruze, which holds about 12 gallons, and gets mid 30's to slightly over 40mpg, computed by hand, not the car's computer.

Are you arguing that the direct taxes paid by the owners of big trucks aren't ENOUGH to offset the damage big trucks do to the roads? OK, fair argument, but we should acknowledge that they are paying a lot more than the average motorist, per mile.

Edit: After doing some simple math, I concede that the much higher direct taxes paid can't possibly cover the exponentially higher amount of road damage and degradation caused by big trucks.

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by snide

Liberals don't need facts.

[04 commemorative]

Originally Posted by snide

Liberals don't need facts.

Why doesn't your avatar have one of Lauries masks ?

[Dan Dlabay]

One problem I have wit electric cars is that to be they are ugly looking.

[mrvette]

Originally Posted by Jobaka

Nobody pays that much.

Rates

that was a copy/paste from another thread.....and of course I was off by a gigit....11.x cents/kwh seems closer....1700' house 3 people and 150/month last summer, white roof to keep a/c costs down....

[Egnalf]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

* long time

As an engineer, I know about things like solar panels which can charge an electric car without any additional load on the grid.

I also know about history. The first electrical generating plants were built to power electric traction (streetcars and interurbans) starting in the 1890s. They immediately ran into the problem of what to do with these plants during the times when the trains weren't running. That's when smart people like Samuel Insull started running wires to everyone's homes, giving the power plants something to power at night.

Fast forward to today, and we still have the same problem: the peak power demand occurs during the afternoon, and falls to a minimum overnight. Oddly enough, overnight is when most people will be charging their electric vehicles. Turns out you can charge a shitload of electric vehicles during off-peak hours without adding any additional grid infrastructure.

But the haters won't let any of these facts get in the way of a good rant.

As for the gas tax, that system is already borked beyond repair. Heavy truck cause the vast majority of wear and tear on our roads, yet they have never paid their fair share of taxes to pay for road maintenance. The only fair way to charge for road use is going to be based on actual miles driven as well as a weight factor. A simple odometer check once a year at license renewal time will reveal how many miles you drove, and your annual registration fees would be calculated accordingly.

This is how an engineer would approach the problem. The politicians, of course, will come up with something completely different and full of loopholes to favor their cronies.

your assertion about power is, or at least was true about commercial demand, which is why things like thermal storage-ice build systems were integrated into commercial hvac systems, to shed peak load. these days, much of the commercial load is used by data centers which are constant, not dependent upon the 9-5 workday. further, home usage actually tends to go up as commercial load drops off, right up until a bout midnight or so when folks are in bed. i have extensive experience in this from doing performance contracting for the last 30 years.

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by Egnalf

your assertion about power is, or at least was true about commercial demand, which is why things like thermal storage-ice build systems were integrated into commercial hvac systems, to shed peak load. these days, much of the commercial load is used by data centers which are constant, not dependent upon the 9-5 workday. further, home usage actually tends to go up as commercial load drops off, right up until a bout midnight or so when folks are in bed. i have extensive experience in this from doing performance contracting for the last 30 years.

And yet power utilities still offer incentives (in the form of lower rates) for off-peak usage. Southern California Edison off-peak rates are less than half of their peak rates. The obvious conclusion is that there is still "excess" capacity available overnight that could be tapped to charge EVs without requiring any new infrastructure.

[snide]

Originally Posted by 04 commemorative

Why doesn't your avatar have one of Lauries masks ?

I stole it from over there ---------------------->.

[Egnalf]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

And yet power utilities still offer incentives (in the form of lower rates) for off-peak usage. Southern California Edison off-peak rates are less than half of their peak rates. The obvious conclusion is that there is still "excess" capacity available overnight that could be tapped to charge EVs without requiring any new infrastructure.

not all offer incentives for off peak. southern california has some of the highest rates, which have been impetus for commercial energy savings via installations of highly efficient chiller systems, vrf systems for cooling, and transferring data to other areas.
here, our ratchet used to be from seven am to six pm, with offpeak the whole night. it is no longer, due to shifted loads, data centers, thermal storage and other energy conservation measures. here it was done using economics, not rebate programs except in NJ which heavily subsidizes programs. lighting upgrades drove the market, and by bundling hvac upgrades with lighting, huge conservation measures were economically feasible. our loads are now much more constant, with off peak savings only possible between midnight and six am, but even those hours they are trying to build programs to smooth out capacity and keep rates in check.

[Bill]

I'm following this. OK, let's say there is excess electricity production capacity during the middle of the night, say 11p-6a. OK, so if we say we're going to use that up excess charging up electric vehicles......how MANY can we charge up before we exhaust that excess capacity? And what kind of vehicles can we only charge on a nightly basis and be OK? Route vehicles that end up at a home base.....city vehicles, maybe delivery vans?

At some point, if we're going to have a significant portion of our vehicles running on electric, we're going to have to dramatically increase the supply and distribution grid. Dramatically increase. I can see electric cars, like Tesla, as a novelty, say they eventually become 5% of our vehicle fleet, but I don't see them taking over in my lifetime. I don't see electric trains hauling 100 cars, or electric jets flying hundreds of people across oceans, or electric freighters, carrying cargo long distances.

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Jobaka

Nobody pays that much.

Rates

My reaction. Agree with many points in the post but when you quit being intellectually honest you lose me.

[markids77]

If governor Gav gets his way and mandates electrics in Cali on his schedule it will probably take the entire grid down after a few unimproved years on the grid. They already roll brownouts sometimes and in the current economic climate drastic spending on infrastructure improvements is highly unlikely. The damned fool thinks he can simply say "let this be" and it will be without any other requirement.

[ratflinger]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

* long time

As an engineer, I know about things like solar panels which can charge an electric car without any additional load on the grid.

I also know about history. The first electrical generating plants were built to power electric traction (streetcars and interurbans) starting in the 1890s. They immediately ran into the problem of what to do with these plants during the times when the trains weren't running. That's when smart people like Samuel Insull started running wires to everyone's homes, giving the power plants something to power at night.

Fast forward to today, and we still have the same problem: the peak power demand occurs during the afternoon, and falls to a minimum overnight. Oddly enough, overnight is when most people will be charging their electric vehicles. Turns out you can charge a shitload of electric vehicles during off-peak hours without adding any additional grid infrastructure.

But the haters won't let any of these facts get in the way of a good rant.

As for the gas tax, that system is already borked beyond repair. Heavy truck cause the vast majority of wear and tear on our roads, yet they have never paid their fair share of taxes to pay for road maintenance. The only fair way to charge for road use is going to be based on actual miles driven as well as a weight factor. A simple odometer check once a year at license renewal time will reveal how many miles you drove, and your annual registration fees would be calculated accordingly.

This is how an engineer would approach the problem. The politicians, of course, will come up with something completely different and full of loopholes to favor their cronies.

Gas tax is more than fair, electric vehicle can adopt your approach. Texas is happy to sell Cali all the wind generated power they can buy, at a premium of course.