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The average American drives about 55 miles per day. A typical EV uses about 300Wh per mile. That gives us a typical demand of about 17kWh of charging per day. A
by jdietrich 9y ago
The average American drives about 55 miles per day. A typical EV uses about 300Wh per mile. That gives us a typical demand of about 17kWh of charging per day. A standard single-phase fast charger puts out 7kW and a three-phase fast charger puts out 22kW. There's plenty of opportunity to spread out that demand throughout the overnight off-peak period, because most EV users only need to charge for a couple of hours per day.
With smart metering, EVs can also feed energy back to the grid during transient demand peaks. Users won't notice if 5% of their battery is ringfenced for grid storage, but it'll provide a vast proportion of the storage capacity we need to manage an all-renewable grid.
Between the rebalancing of peak and off-peak demand and the potential to use EVs for grid storage, the widespread adoption of EVs is likely to be of net benefit to the electricity grid.