So much for a discussion about how and when we might transition to evs in a practical sense.
Anyway, to address the emissions from charging evs. That is an issue for sure. The extra electricity has to come from somewhere.
Conveniently, Australian electricity generation is transitioning from an emission model to a low/no emission model. 50% no emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2050 I think are the targets depending who is in Canberra. Personally I think we will get there easily,given the advances in technology.
So, given that Australia's electricity production is getting ' greener ', so will the ev fleet.
But, what about the extra electricity that is needed you ask ?
Also as a happy coincidence, Australia's electricity generation fleet is old and is due for replacement anyway. So , it's not like we are shutting down equipment with a long working life left. Rather than just build new coal burners, we have the opportunity to replace them with a better, more flexible technology. At the same time, renewable technologies are falling in price and will continue to fall resulting in them being much cheaper than fossil. It is quite likely that the extra generation capacity that will be required will cost no more than the replacement fossil cost because of economies of scale. Particularly over the next couple of decades.
While having an ev fleet will increase the electrical load in total, it won't be a 100% increase because all those vehicles won't be charging at the same moment. Because those evs will be ' smart ' loads , their charging will be managed therefore preventing peaking issues. On the other side of the coin, having a fleet of evs which are parked 90% of the time will give us a massive virtual power station which will be of huge value to the grid.
E.g. 35000 Tesla S models have the theoretical equivalent of the Loy Yang complex power station for 1 hour. That's Australia's largest coal fired power stations available as an instantaneous peaker for grid management. Faster than pumped hydro, distributed widely and available in milliseconds. Now, obviously we wouldn't use the the whole battery capacity but it demonstrates the flexibility and extra benefits for the grid that evs will provide. We buy about 1 million cars in Australia per year. If they averaged a 50kw battery and we made available 20% ( 10kw ) to the grid of each one, that's nearly 3 Loy Yang power stations of available storage sold per year in Australia. And let's not forget the ability to reuse these batteries as stationary storage at the end of the car's life.
So, the transition to low emission electricity is conveniently lining up with the ev revolution which will make both easier, cheaper and quicker.
