The electric car only works as a Climate initiative if all the fossil electricity generation is shut down. That's 87% of generation in Alberta, 81% in Saskatchewan, and 70% in Nova Scotia. How fast can replacement generation be built? Who finances this generation? What happens to stranded debt holders who financed the plants? Will the owners be compensated for lost equity? Who pays?
Generation is only half the problem. The distribution system faces potentially expensive challenges. If everybody uses an overnight slow charge, no problem. If large numbers of people want to fast charge downtown during the day, the existing distribution system will be under massive stress and will require expensive enhancements. Who pays?
The electric car is technically possible and might be good for the environment but the cost of generating the electricity may turn out to be a fraction of the total expense.
Discussion of the electric car tends to be limited to:
1 – Lack of tailpipe emissions
2 – Cost comparison with gasoline
3 – Availability of necessary electric power
1 - The car
The Tesla Model 3 is the latest entry into the plug-in electric car market. If charged at home, overnight, using a 120V outlet, it will require 1.4 kW of generating capacity to provide between 3 - 5[1] miles of range per hour of charge (mrph). A ten-hour charge will provide 30 - 50 miles of range. This is the most common charging scenario cited when making estimates of the required generating capacity.
2 - Cost comparison – energy only
Comparing the energy costs for gasoline and electric powered cars is difficult because oil prices are volatile and electricity prices are political.
A 2018 study from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that electric vehicles cost less than half as much to operate as gas-powered cars. The average cost to operate an EV in the United States is $485 per year, while the average for a gasoline-powered vehicle is $1,117.[2]
3 - Can the electricity system handle the load?
Electric Mobility Canada believes that there is adequate power available
“Can we produce enough electricity for all those electric cars? – Use all the underutilized capacity, especially for night time charging.
“Electric vehicles could help push electricity consumption closer to utilities’ capacity for production. That would bring in revenue for the providers, which would help defray the costs for maintaining that capacity, lowering rates for all customers.”[3]
4 - Electric car Externalities
If the policy objective
of subsidizing the electric car is to reduce climate gas emissions, that goal can
only be achieved if the necessary electricity comes from non-emitting
generation. If the generation is fossil fuelled,
all that has been accomplished, at considerable expense, is to have moved the
emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack.
The impact of the electric+ car on the electricity system depends on how much electrical generation capacity is required to serve the new demand, the fuel used for the generation, the location of that demand, and the time of day the new demand must be met.
4.1 - How much generating capacity is required?
The average electric vehicle requires 30 kilowatt-hours[4] to travel 100 miles — the same amount of electricity an average American home uses each day to run appliances, computers, lights and heating and air conditioning.[5]
In order to have 1/3 of cars being plug in electric by 2030, how much electricity would be required to meet that goal in Ontario? There were almost 12 million cars in Ontario in 2016.[6] If 1/3 of the fleet is electric (4,000,000 cars), what is the impact if 10% of the electric fleet (400,000 cars – 3% of all cars) are plugged in at the same time?
Home charge (120v x 12amp = 1.44 kW) per car. 400,000 slow charging cars require 576 MW of generating capacity. Home charge using 240v x 40amp (an electric range circuit) needs 9.6 kW. 400,000 charges need 3840 MW of capacity.
Public Destination Chargers capacity requirements range from 22 kW per car to 150 kW. 8.8 – 60 mW. of capacity is needed for 400,000 cars. Tesla Supercharger stations are even faster and can need as much as 240 kW per car. Since their mrph charge rate is much higher than home charging, their demand for capacity is higher but they are only plugged in for an hour or two.
4.2 - The price of convenience
Customer choices based on convenience complicates planning for system impacts. Customer behaviour has the potential to have a greater impact on the electricity system than the simple energy demands of the car. Charging the car faster, during the day, downtown has a very different system impact than charging the car overnight.
The faster the car is charged, the more generation capacity is required. Charging during the day puts an additional load on what is already the system peek. The same car that requires 1.44 kW of generating capacity for a slow, overnight home charge needs 240 kW for a supercharge at the 4:00pm peak downtown. Nearly one Megawatt of generating capacity to charge four cars.
Toronto City Hall requires 2.5 MW of generating capacity[7] – the same as ten Superchargers. If 1/3 of City Council charge electric cars in the parking garage at the same time, the buildings capacity requirements double. Is dropping a major office building load into every shopping mall parking lot sound planning?
4.3 - Environmental impact
The environmental impact of an electric car depends on how much of the necessary generation is fossil fuelled. An electric car charged today in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, St. John, Fredericton, or Halifax is using electricity from a coal fired generator. In Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, the electricity might even come from a generator burning Bunker C.
The Canadian energy industry generated 652.3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2017.[8] The generation mix varies from province to province.
Coal makes up 8.6%
of Canada’s electricity generation.
Share of provincial electricity supply from coal:
- Nova Scotia: 47.9%
- Saskatchewan: 46.6%
- Alberta: 44.9%
- New Brunswick: 15.8%
- Manitoba: 0.1%
Natural gas
makes up 8.6% of Canada’s electricity generation.
Share of provincial electricity supply from natural gas:
- Alberta: 42.2%
- Saskatchewan: 35.7%
- Nova Scotia: 14.3%
- New Brunswick: 9.9%
- Ontario: 5.2%
- Northwest Territories: 4.0%
- Yukon: 2.0%
- British Columbia: 1.1%
- Newfoundland and Labrador: 0.7%
- Quebec: 0.1%
Petroleum makes
up 1.2% of Canada’s electricity generation.
Share of provincial electricity supply from petroleum sources:
- Nunavut: 100%
- Northwest Territories: 55.3%
- Nova Scotia: 12.2%
- New Brunswick: 7.6%
- Yukon: 5.5%
- Newfoundland and Labrador: 4.8%
- Alberta: 2.6%
- Prince Edward Island: 1.1%
- British Columbia: 0.7%
- Quebec: 0.2%
- Manitoba: 0.2%
- Ontario: 0.1%
Hydro makes up 60.2%
of Canada’s electricity generation.
Provincial electricity supply from hydroelectricity:
- Manitoba: 96.8%
- Quebec: 95.0%
- Newfoundland and Labrador: 93.7%
- Yukon: 92.2%
- British Columbia: 90.5%
- Northwest Territories: 38.5%
- Ontario: 25.9%
- New Brunswick: 19.6%
- Saskatchewan: 13.7%
- Nova Scotia: 8.8%
- Alberta: 2.5%
Nuclear makes up
14.6% of Canada’s electricity generation.
Share of provincial electricity supply from nuclear power:
- Ontario: 58.6%
- New Brunswick: 36.1%
4.4 – Local Distribution Company (LDC) impact
Supercharging downtown (or other areas such as shopping mall parking lots with high concentrations of commuter vehicles) during the day will have a greater impact on the LDC than slow charging in the suburbs at night.
The US Drive report suggested LDC enhancements will be needed[9]
· “Distribution capacity expansion could present additional costs. Areas that should be assessed are: (a) high power charging of light-duty EVs (at 150kW and above), (b) high-power charging of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (potentially at over 1 MW), (c) legacy infrastructure constraints in dense urban areas, and (d) low-power charging of light-duty EVs on residential circuits.
· “Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles account for 29% [25] of U.S. on-road transportation fuel use. Analysis of medium- and heavy- duty EV market growth scenarios are needed to assess the impact on energy generation and generation capacity.”
Any parking lot including 40 Tesla Superchargers would demand 10 MW of capacity if all the charging stalls are in use. How many office building parking garages are clustered downtown? How many shopping mall parking lots? What upgrades will be needed for the distribution system and how much will they cost? Who pays?
The impact of such demand might be mitigated by time of use rates (TOU). TOU rates will have to be punitive to prevent high power charging during system peaks. Is coercive pricing to alter customer behaviour away from their natural preference politically acceptable?
“One of those solutions is smart charging, a system in which vehicles are plugged in but don’t charge until they receive a signal from the grid that demand has tapered off a sufficient amount. This is often paired with a lower rate for drivers who use it. Several smart charging pilot programs are being conducted by utilities, though it has not yet been phased in widely.”[10]
4.5 - Generator impact
Large scale deployment of the electric car will create a giant new market for electricity. Some suggest that the electric car can be made viable as an environmental initiative if the electricity system is converted to 100% renewable generation sources. It is technically possible to match the development of renewable electricity with the growth of the electric car market. Whether this is economically and politically possible is another matter.
PEW found, “A November report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy found that there has been almost no increase in electricity demand nationwide over the past 10 years, while capacity has grown an average of 12 gigawatts per year (1 GW can power more than half a million homes). That means energy production could climb at a similar rate and still meet even the most aggressive increase in electric vehicles, with proper planning.”[11]
Which is the faster, lower cost way of bringing the necessary capacity online – building new “green” generation or ramping up the existing inventory of underutilized fossil generation? This choice pits the environmental objectives of the government against the financial interests of the existing generators and their lenders.
Will investors finance new green capacity when financially stressed utilities already have portfolios of underutilized capacity that are not fully amortized? If fossil generation is shuttered, who is liable for any stranded debt? Will fossil generation owners be compensated for lost equity? Will regulators and politicians permit these costs be passed to ratepayers? Will institutional lenders raise interest rates for new green power or other utility enhancements in light of these problems?
[1] https://teslatap.com/articles/tesla-model-3-home-charging-guide/
[2] https://www.energysage.com/electric-vehicles/costs-and-benefits-evs/evs-vs-fossil-fuel-vehicles/
[3] Electric Mobility Canada - Electric Vehicles and the Grid - https://emc-mec.ca/wp-content/uploads/Electric-Vehicles-and-the-Grid-2009-07.pdf
[4] U.S. Department of Energy - https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2017&year2=2019&vtype=Electric&pageno=3&sortBy=Comb&tabView=0&rowLimit=10
[5] PEW
[6] Statscan - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170629/dq170629d-eng.htm
[7] City of Toronto – Environment and Energy – Community Energy Planning
[8] Electricity facts - Natural Resources Canada - https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/science-data/data-analysis/energy-data-analysis/energy-facts/electricity-facts/20068
[9] US Drive Report - Summary Report on EVs at Scale and the U.S. Electric Power System - November 2019 – p. 11 https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/12/f69/GITT%20ISATT%20EVs%20at%20Scale%20Grid%20Summary%20Report%20FINAL%20Nov2019.pdf
[10] PEW
[11] PEW
