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(I just posted this in reply to a different comment. But it is more relevant here.) On charging infrastructure, here where I live in London, a lot of the light

(I just posted this in reply to a different comment. But it is more relevant here.) On charging infrastructure, here where I live in London, a lot of the light poles now have EV charging points. They are very subtle: just a blue LED, a small black charger cover and a small Siemens logo. Everything else is inside the preexisting pole (diameter about 4 inches). https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/car-industry-news/2018/08/20/siemens-to-provide-london-street-light-ev-chargers https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/car-industry-news/2018/08/2... I would never have thought of doing this. But once you've seen it, it's an obvious cheap, quick and non-intrusive solution.

leoedin 7y ago
That's a smart solution, but it doesn't solve the whole problem. Since I became aware of lamppost charging I've been counting the lamppost to car ratio. It's generally somewhere around 7-10:1. Even if you convert every lamppost you're still only 15% of the way there. There's also the power distribution problem. To charge a lot of cars takes a lot of power. A typical residential house uses 4760kWh/year in the UK - that's about 500W average. It's maybe 3x as much in the US - call it 2kW. The most basic, 13A electric car charger will draw maybe 3.1kW. A more reasonable electric car charger might draw 7kW. A supercharger is somewhere between 50 and 150kW. at the very least, you're doubling the amount of power you need to distribute to residential streets, at worse you're increasing it by a factor of 75. Total UK electricity production is around 300TWh/year. We consume 46 billion litres of transport fuel a year - that's around 51GW, or 447TWh/year. Even accounting for the improved efficiency of electric cars, you're still looking at doubling the electricity production, and distributing that to 30 million cars, each of which is down a very long wire. I'm all for electric cars, but there's some serious infrastructure issues we have to deal with before they're physically able to be ubiquitous.
- mceachen 7y ago
  If you own the lamppost, perhaps you could own orchestration of power delivery as well? If load exceeds tolerances, the EV plugs apply a "rolling blackout" that oscillates through the network every N minutes, to give every car at least some juice? Also, typical EV eMPG is double an ICE. LEAFs are 124/90 eMPG City/Highway, for example. That makes your math for doubling electrical production a bit less scary. The fact that EV charging is commonly off peak also makes it more convenient for the grid.
mceachen 7y ago
That makes a lot more sense in the UK with 220V, where standard wall juice has some kick. In countries with 110V, the car charger that comes with your EV is a trickle charger. Non-teslas (like a LEAF) only charge at 3-6 miles of range per hour, and Teslas are almost half that, over standard 110V.

leoedin 7y ago

That's a smart solution, but it doesn't solve the whole problem. Since I became aware of lamppost charging I've been counting the lamppost to car ratio. It's generally somewhere around 7-10:1. Even if you convert every lamppost you're still only 15% of the way there. There's also the power distribution problem. To charge a lot of cars takes a lot of power. A typical residential house uses 4760kWh/year in the UK - that's about 500W average. It's maybe 3x as much in the US - call it 2kW. The most basic, 13A electric car charger will draw maybe 3.1kW. A more reasonable electric car charger might draw 7kW. A supercharger is somewhere between 50 and 150kW. at the very least, you're doubling the amount of power you need to distribute to residential streets, at worse you're increasing it by a factor of 75. Total UK electricity production is around 300TWh/year. We consume 46 billion litres of transport fuel a year - that's around 51GW, or 447TWh/year. Even accounting for the improved efficiency of electric cars, you're still looking at doubling the electricity production, and distributing that to 30 million cars, each of which is down a very long wire. I'm all for electric cars, but there's some serious infrastructure issues we have to deal with before they're physically able to be ubiquitous.

mceachen 7y ago
If you own the lamppost, perhaps you could own orchestration of power delivery as well? If load exceeds tolerances, the EV plugs apply a "rolling blackout" that oscillates through the network every N minutes, to give every car at least some juice? Also, typical EV eMPG is double an ICE. LEAFs are 124/90 eMPG City/Highway, for example. That makes your math for doubling electrical production a bit less scary. The fact that EV charging is commonly off peak also makes it more convenient for the grid.

mceachen 7y ago

That makes a lot more sense in the UK with 220V, where standard wall juice has some kick. In countries with 110V, the car charger that comes with your EV is a trickle charger. Non-teslas (like a LEAF) only charge at 3-6 miles of range per hour, and Teslas are almost half that, over standard 110V.