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But they put more demand on the electrical grid. Domestic connections in the UK are built with an average peak consumption of about 1.5 to 2kW, you can draw te
by iso1631 1mo ago
But they put more demand on the electrical grid.
Domestic connections in the UK are built with an average peak consumption of about 1.5 to 2kW, you can draw ten times that, but its unlikely every house will do that at the same time, so it's just like a contention ratio on a network.
Now imagine everyone charges their car, even if it's only for an hour, but when they get home at 7pm, same time as putting on the kettle and the oven, that's way higher than the substation can provide.
One study put a fully electric car/heatpump/cooking about 4 times the peak demand of an ice/gas heating house, even if total usage is only twice as much, and total energy use is far less than with ICE/gas. Throw in solar and it reduces the total power drawn from the grid, but not the peak amount. Drawing 20kW for one hour is far more expensive to service than drawing 1kW for 24 hours, but uses less energy.
- kalleboo 1mo agoEasily solved with various time-of-use pricing schemes. Have people put their cars on a timer to charge in the middle of the night, or during the day in countries with solar. I already have this for my hot water heating - the water heater only runs during solar hours when there is a cheaper rate. > Drawing 20kW for one hour Why would you fast charge if your car is going to be parked at home overnight anyway
- iso1631 1mo agoCharging one car at 7kW, put the oven on, jump in the electric shower, and you're there before the heat pump even kicks in. 20kW is the about the maximum input to a typical UK home (80A or 100A breaker single phase 216-253V). You can draw that fairly easily. But a street of 100 houses is not drawing 20kW to each house at the same time, or 2MW to the street. Standard models put it around 200kW. The substation can be overspecced to 300kW and there's no problem. Convert everyone to electric and that substation needs to be upped far higher. I live on a new build site still under construction. Until a month ago the site was fed from a long cable from a separate substation. The houses have solar and electric car points. The voltage varied dramatically and electric chargers would frequently trip (they do that when voltage goes over I think 247V for safety purposes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f6TD2OSup4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f6TD2OSup4 helped me understand what I was seeing. Last month we were moved onto a new substation and haven't have issues since.