Plasma TVs Draw More Juice from Grid than Plug-In Vehicles
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07.24.08
Plasma TVs vs. Plug-In Cars
We already wrote about a study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory that shows that plug-in cars might not need new power plants (or few of them), and now we learn that a big screen plasma TV actually drains more power from the grid than a plug-in.
"Plasma TVs, industry officials say, consume about four times the electricity as recharging a plug-in hybrid. Yet utilities have managed to cope with the increased loads as thousands of new televisions came on line."
Transition Rate is What Matters
Mark Duvall from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) says that as long as the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles is gradual, the electric grid will be able to handle it.
"We've already added to the grid the equivalent of several years' production of plug-in hybrids," Duvall said at a conference on electric vehicles in San Jose. "The utilities, they stuck with it. They said, 'All right, that's what's happening. This is where the loads are going, and we're going to do this."'
Differences Between TVs and Cars
Some other factors that help cars are that, unlike TV, they aren't usually plugged in during peak hours. In fact, a big part of what defines peak hours is that everybody is watching TV.
You could also make vehicle chargers 'smart' in a way that you can't with TVs. If you want to watch a show now, you want it now. But a 'smart' charger could look at grid load and decide to start charging the car a hour later (when rates are lower, for example). As long as you program the charger to let it know when you need to have you car charged, there won't be any problems.
No Problem on the Horizon
"We see the vehicle penetration levels coming at a rate that's manageable," said Efrain Ornelas, environmental technical supervisor with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in San Francisco. "It's not like tomorrow the flood gates are going to open and 100,000 vehicles are going to come into San Francisco or something like that."
We wish there would be 100,000 electric vehicles in San Francisco tomorrow, but realistically, it's not going to happen all at once.
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Can't wait to be able to plug in. It's so much more elegant than exploding some fuel to create mostly heat and a little mechanical motion.
Don't forget that it seems like the most successful model so far seems to be top-to-bottom marketing of EVs and hybrids. Admittedly, the Prius isn't an especially high end car, but it's expensive for it's bracket and has a lot of features that might not be necessary. However, those features do attract the sort of people who wouldn't mind spending a few extra thousand to help the environment and have something new. The same is true for the Tesla, which seems to be right on track.
What is great about this in terms of the grid is that this means the car companies get a lot of capital to expand the technology, and the electric companies get to observe the effects of a few cars on the grid and figure out how best to accommodate them and work on the best way to communicate with car chargers to get a fast, effective, and inexpensive charge to consumers.
Also, if the threats to the grid were as terrible as the EV naysayers said, the power companies would not want to get on this. In actuality, PG&E is pushing for plug-in cars and technologies that would allow people to sell back excess charge in the cars to the grid to make it more stable. The power companies want to sell more electricity, and even if they do have to build more plants, this is a net win for them and the environment.
You also have to figure that more solar panels are going to be getting installed to supplement the grid. Combine that with some solar panels on cars and the grid should be just fine.
I've read about this as well. It sounds like a win for the utilities, but not so much for the guy who needs his car fully charged for work in the morning. I don't know. I suppose it depends on the battery tech and how long it's going to take to charge these bad boys to full capacity.
Really? Seriously?
I just had a look at the specs for a Pioneer PDP-428XD, a quite good 42" Plasma TV and it only draws 299W. Even the 60" PDP-LX6080D only draws 513W.
Are electric cars really going to charge so slowly that they are drawing that little? Sure, if you know you've got all night you can spread the load, but even then it seems like it would draw more than 500W.
In reality I'd be expecting them to draw as fast as they can so they are ready when you need them. In the UK, from a normal wall socket, that means something like 3000W - which is what my kitchen kettle draws.
If your a gas station owner and read treehugger, this is like your death sentence. So much good news about EVs and the grid. I fully hope (expect! lol) that most of the buyers of the Tesla, and the other high end EVs are plugging them into solar arrays. There already was an article about the founder series car of Tesla being plugged into one, so the other owners need to get on board with that as well to show it can be done to the public on a wide scale.
"I just had a look at the specs for a Pioneer PDP-428XD, a quite good 42" Plasma TV and it only draws 299W. Even the 60" PDP-LX6080D only draws 513W."
Watts = power
Watt/hours = energy
It's not a power problem unless your main breaker can't handle it.
What is the phantom load of the TV in sleep mode? When it's off?
The TV is probably plugged in 24/7, the car only at night or at work if you're lucky.
I seriously hope they get the electricity infrastructure for automobiles correct from the start. Although the whole business of charging at home sounds wonderful, it is going to be extremely impractical to reschedule our lives around the charging times of our cars. When I need to go somewhere, the last thing I want to worry about is whether I have remembered to plug into the recharger, or whether I have recharged long enough.
My hope is that the batteries used for ALL cars will be standardized and portable. At the "gas station," depleted batteries can be exchanged for charged batteries for a price. Batteries can be charged in huge warehouses/depots covered with solar panels that draw power from the grid only during the overnight hours. If a tank of gas today for a typical car is $50 today, I would definitely pay that much for a battery charge that would last 350 miles or so. There is PLENTY of profit to be made at that price level, which would provide strong incentives for private companies to work on this infrastructure. Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, the cost of the batteries would be passed onto the Energy Company, since drivers would be essentially renting the batteries. This means the cost of electric vehicles goes way down, which means that more people would make the switch to electric cars, which means more demand for batteries, which means more profit, which means more battery charging infrastructure, etc. Sure, consumers have the right to charge up at home if they buy their own batteries, but given the prohibitive cost of batteries, they would probably opt to rent them.