General Electric to buy 25 thousand electric cars

postie · Post by **postie** » 12 Nov 2010, 19:00

Not too much to say on this, but thought it might interest some here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11735143

GE to buy 25000 electric cars to kickstart the electric car business.

madibe · Post by **madibe** » 12 Nov 2010, 23:37

whoopie

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 13 Nov 2010, 15:17

Interesting; is this a British story, that is, are these cars being bought for use in the UK?

What are the implications for the grid?

madibe · Post by **madibe** » 13 Nov 2010, 19:19

I srt off said 'whoopee' in a sarcastic way.

Post by **adam2** » 14 Nov 2010, 11:44

emordnilap wrote:Interesting; is this a British story, that is, are these cars being bought for use in the UK?

What are the implications for the grid?

Negligable.
Presume that all 25,000 cars are to be used in the UK, and that each has a battery of 25KWH.
Not every car will be used every day, and most of those that are used wont be fully discharged having been used only for short trips.
A reasonable estimate of the average daily charging demand for the fleet might there be 5KWH each.
That is a daily consumption of 125,000 KWH.
Spread over 10 hours, that is an extra load of 12,500 KW. Negligable, about the same as one large department store.
I would expect most vehicles to be charged overnight on an off peak tarriff, therefore the increase in peak load would be minute.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 14 Nov 2010, 14:56

maudibe wrote:I srt off said 'whoopee' in a sarcastic way.

Wot, as in "cushion"?

And yes, presuming they charge slowly overnight, it won't be an extra problem for grid capacity. In fact it might help smooth out variable inputs if you did something as straightforward as make the charging frequency-sensitive.