DOE lab develops 'smart charging' for electric cars
It's a common question when projecting the impact of electric vehicles: can today's creaky power grid handle millions of juice-hungry car batteries?
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on Thursday said it has developed a smart charger controller designed specifically for charging cars at off-peak times to get the lowest price and ease strain on the grid.
(Credit:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.)
A raft of plug-in electric cars are scheduled to come out in 2011, which should deliver a jump in fuel efficiency. But if millions of drivers charged their electric cars during peak times, say, at 6 at night, utilities could strain to meet the demand.
The PNNL's Smart Charger Controller, like other smart-charging equipment, allows a car owner to schedule charging at say, 2 a.m., and to restart charging in case of a glitch. In places where there is time-of-day electricity pricing, the charger uses Zigbee wireless networking to get price information and decide on the lowest price for charging.
Using smart charging, a car owner could save $150 a year, said PNNL engineer Michael Kintner-Meyer, in a statement.
Researchers have projected that without smart-charging technology, utilities would need to build more power plants to meet the spike in demand from electric vehicles. GM is preparing smart-charging technology to be part of the Chevy Volt electric car due in showrooms in late 2010.
The PNNL is seeking to license the smart charger with commercial companies, a representative said.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Hydrogen provides this. It's as safe as gasoline, couldn't be more clean and it's the most abundant element in the universe. That's the direction we should be moving.
As for hydrogen... where to begin... does not exist naturally on earth, so either need to get it from reformed hydrocarbon fuels (not much cleaner than burning hydrocarbon fuels in engines, and much more expensive). Or need to get it from electrolyzation... which uses electricity and comes with a cost/efficiency penalty.... So you can either create electricity to charge a battery and drive the wheels, or you can create electricity to split water (for hydrogen), Store the hydrogen (no easy task either), recombine the hydrogen (in the fuel cell) to create electricity which still goes into a battery and then finally drive the wheels...
- by Heebee Jeebies May 1, 2009 10:00 AM PDT
- On the other hand if you have 30 million electric cars charging during the "off-peak" times, then it isn't very off-peak any more is it.
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- by willdryden May 1, 2009 5:49 PM PDT
- Forty miles is the range of the hybrids because that is the daily commute for 80% of the U. S. people. After the 40 miles, a gas engine turns on to provide power for the rest of the trip. A true EV should have a range of 100+ miles (Tesla Roadster is 244 EPA) and would be considered the second car for a 2 car family. If you need to go farther, take the hybrid.
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(12 Comments)Also, why in the hell should it take hours and hours to charge a car that only goes 40 miles on a charge. For me that would mean a trip in to San Francisco (about 70 miles south of me) would take three days, assuming 40 miles there, 6 to 8 hours to charge, then the rest of the way there and then another charging and so on.
Companies are crazy if they think an electric car that goes 40 miles on a charge and takes hours and hours to recharge is ever going to anything more than an "oh, look is that interesting."
When you can recharge in less than 5 minutes and go 200 miles on a charge then we are talking about something that is actually viable. Until then it is all 100% pure joke.
Robert