Plug-In Forum

It’s not just the U.S. and multinational automobile CEOs, the advertising executives and car dealerships, the auto magazines and the eager consumers that are anticipating the shift from gas-powered engines to battery-powered electric vehicles, but nationwide, power companies see the upcoming change as a great opportunity, as well as a need for adjustments.

The major boon that a surge of plug-ins bring to utilities is as follows:  Their “surplus” power, which is all those electrons that their power sources produce and send through their wires, will now be sucked out of the grid, rather than being wasted.  This is especially beneficial at night, when most owners will be recharging their vehicles and utilities typically have excess power-generating capacity.  Some forward thinking individuals are also considering the storage capabilities of plug-in batteries as a way to power individual businesses and homes, temporarily disconnecting the need for the power grid.

On the flip-side of the coin, utilities are also planning for the infrastructure improvements and potential hurdles in the future.  Southern California Edison, a utility based in Los Angeles, is spending more than $5 million a year purchasing a fleet of plug-ins, which they are testing and researching the underlying battery technologies.   As of now, they have partnered with Ford to test its upcoming hybrid, Mitsubishi for a subcompact, Daimler for an experimental hybrid plug-in van, and GM on its Chevy Volt.  It’s also one of many utilities looking to upgrade the more than 1,000 public charging stations in California at the moment.

If clusters of car owners living in the same geographic location charge their vehicles at the same time, this will put a load on the local power grids, and might require them to upgrade their transformers.  If plug-in cars really catch on, power companies are going to be forced to adjust their rates, in effect encouraging consumers to charge their vehicles at off-peak hours.

Fortunately for the utility companies, the shift to electric vehicles is going to be gradual.   Even if we do have 1 million plug-ins on the road by 2015, that is a small fraction of the total stock of automobiles, and the drive to improve the power network has already begun.

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