90 amps for electric car charge!

Is your garage electric car ready?

Seems these cars can be charged with a regular 15 amp outlet, any 240 volt outlet (50 amps best), or a 90 amp "4 hour charge" connection...

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Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) describes a system in which electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles communicate with the power grid to sell demand response services by either delivering electricity into the grid or by throttling their charging rate...
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Cities Prepare for Life With the Electric Car...
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Reply to
Bill
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Yeah, what you have to plug it into is one of the key facts the green folks promoting electric cars as a big solution fail to mention. Aside from the installation cost of an appropriate circuit, it's not exactly that awful either. True, it takes a 90A circuit to fully charge the car in 4 hours. But if you look at the table there are other very viable options:

90A 4 hours 60A 5 hours 40A 7.5 30A 10

That gets you to fully charged with a range I guess of about 225 miles. If you use the car mainly as a second car for short drives around town, driving to a commuter lot, etc., it sounds viable.

The second big omission is that you always hear the media gushing over this cars as "zero emissions". Which is true only if you conveniently ignore that all this power still has to be generated someplace. In some small amount of cases today, it could be green, eg where the car is charged at night using excess hydroelectric. But for most of the country, the power today still has to come from conventional fuels and all you're doing is moving the pollution from one place to another. And possible introducing more, as I'm not sure what the total energy/emissions balance looks like, ie burning a gallon of gasoline in a car vs burning say coal to generate the electricity, then sending it over a transmission system with losses, etc.

Reply to
trader4

Yeah, I've read in a german magazine

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that even the best car battery has no more energy than 2 pints of gas. To become viable, they have to be 3 times as good and 3 times as cheap. Not to mention, that if you put the pedal to the metal, the bat will drain in very little time. And of course, it's worse efficiency to burn coal, generate electricity and transmit, distribute it etc. over 5-6 transformation stages than using an ICE with gasoline...

Reply to
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios

snipped-for-privacy@y7g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...

Important piece of advice from an experienced engineer.....don't believe everything you read without verifying with other reliable sources.

cheers Bob

Reply to
DD_BobK

What concerns me most is maintainability. The NYT article states that the battery costs $12000. That is a big chunk of change down the road a few miles. I've never owned anything with a rechargeable battery, where the first few months weren't the best of the experience, with a death spiral from there. So what becomes of the electric car with a dead battery? What is your trade in or resale value of a car with the electric equivalent of a blown engine.

Reply to
Eric in North TX

Interesting choice for comparison since the Prius is a hybrid (partly electric) car. It is likely to include an option to charge the (relatively small) battery off the grid in the not-too-distant future.

From what little I have seen, the Tesla is a sports car - high acceleration, probably better high speed behavior.

Reply to
bud--

In article , snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote: [...]

Moving the pollution from one place to another is, in itself, a laudable goal; seen what the air looks like in LA or Chicago recently?

You're overlooking a few points in favor of the electric cars. First off, by concentrating the emissions at the power plant, the air quality in most major cities will be tremendously improved. Second, again by concentrating the emissions in one place, it's easier to scrub them; one power plant producing the electricity to power a million electric cars will likely produce much less pollution than a million cars with internal combustion engines. Third, one large power plant has the potential for economies of scale that a million point sources lack. Fourth, and perhaps most important, the internal combustion engine is terribly inefficient, since it derives all its power from the mechanical energy of the expanding exhaust gases and wastes all of the heat; coal-fired power plants are *far* more efficient.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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Noticing that in the USA and also the UK the discussion about electric vehicles so often mentions the production of electrcity by burning natural gas, oil, or god forbid, coal definitely being the most polluting, as witnessed by the UK getting rid of much of it's coal burning by the 1960s, after several hundred years of industrial production based on coal.

Only recently, heard once again, that old Yorkshire (England) expression which use the slang word "brass" for money! Which says "Where there's muck (industrial dirt, smoke, smog etc.) there's brass (money)"!

But there are many parts of the world that use hydro generated and or more locally generated electrcity from wind power, solar etc. There are for example some individual homes, in one part of Germany (that country being presumably not as sunny as say the southern USA?) that produce more electrcity from solar etc. than they consume. And by law, there, it can be sold back into the public electric system. This does mean, by the way, that there will not be times, when the roast is in oven and the clothes dryer and/or clothes washer are operating they will 'draw electricity from the grid'. But on an overall net basis they put more energy from their built features such as solar cells, back into the system, than they draw!

In this particular part of Canada we use about 95%, soon to be 100%, electrcity generated by hydro. Which then gets into discussion about whether hydro generation IS truly 'green', or not!

But trying to knock down the electric car argument by always 'assuming' that generating electricity involves some sort of 'muck' is incorrect. Electrcity from hydro generation in north eastern Canada, e.g. 'Churchill Falls', the planned 'Lower Churchill River Project' in Newfoundland - Labrador, 'James Bay' in northern Quebec etc. already powers New York via connecting high voltage transmission lines. Certain types of transmission line can also be run under the sea.

However having said that; the OP seems to be a link to some very expensive plugs and cords?

Looking at the third example in the link, $600 for what appears to be a plug, a special socket and a length of possibly 10 AWG flex seems very expensive!!!!!!! The plug in the $600 kit for, example, looks identical to the 30/50 amp plug on the 230 volt 4800 watt garage heater that we bought recently, complete with plug and cord for less than $70, including sales tax! And which we plug into the 230 volt welder outlet in our garage to provide auxiliary heat in cold weather while working on a vehicle. Even to 'make up' that plug/wire/socket combination, even allowing that the special plug into the vehicle might cost say $30, could probably be done for around $60 or less?

Some of the preliminary calculations seem to indicate that even in this cold climate, where batteries do not function as well as in warmer climes, an electric vehicle, for the mileage and distances that this retiree drives could be highly practical! And here where gasoline, for example, now costs, more than a dollar litre (Roughly 3.8 litres to a US gallon) so we are talking at least $4 per gallon, for regular; and where a 20 mile per gallon vehicle costs say 20 cents per mile, for gasoline alone, the electric equivalent, seeing that our domestic electricity cost is around 10 cents per kilowatt hour it could cost us 80 cents to one dollar to completely recharge an electric car battery? That battery then giving a range of say 60 miles for a cost of a couple of cents per mile. But that seems, together with other savings too good to be true; and probably is, whether one installs a suitable outlet in the garage or not?

Contrary opinions welcomed.

Reply to
terry

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Good commentary, Terry. I see a nice marketing opportunity for SquareD, et al, to bring out lines of 300A service panels to replace the ubiquitous 200A now in every chalet or hut.

Joe

Reply to
Joe

No, no, no!

Dad's car, mom's car, son's car, daughter's car = 360 amps additional to the current 200 amp service or 560 amps give or take...

(Forget about the eight is enough family!)

And how about a 400 car parking garage downtown, each space with a 90 amp circuit?

Reply to
Bill

Pacific Gas and Electric is thinking about managing all these additional electrical loads (like at 6:00 pm when everyone gets home and plugs in their car)...

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Reply to
Bill

Power plants convert a much higher percentage of fuel into energy than any car that runs on gas can, a gas car actualy uses about 1/3rd of the energy from gas to move it, It would be cleaner, and cleaner where you need it in cities and roads. But batteries cost to much and dont last.

Reply to
ransley

Build more nuke plants and have CLEAN power plants, clean electric cars, clean electric homes and clean air. When radiation free fission comes out we an replace fusion in time. It's no reason not to kill coal and oil now.

Reply to
Van Chocstraw
[snip]

How nice for you. Down here in the States, hydro power is Evil. A fish might be harmed. Never mind that we built hatcheries to replace the habitat upstream of a dam rendered inaccessible. The fish people have the courts convinced that each little creek's resident salmon population is a distinct species and as such, protected by our endangered species act.

But its heartwarming to see the Canadian financiers buying up our local electric utilities as we knock down dams and you build them. I guess we know where we'll be buying all that power for our electric cars. Why not? That's whee we get most of our oil now.

Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Supply and demand. As more electricity is needed to power cars the cost per KW hour will increase proportionately. If you don't own an electric car you'll be paying for your neighbors every time you turn on a switch. If they can't get it out of one pocket they'll get it out of another.

LdB

Reply to
LdB

It's a 90A Circuit Breaker. However, the maximum current for the vehicle is

70A, as set by the duty cycle of the Pilot waveform. At 240v that is 16.8 kw*4 to do a full charge, or 67.2 kw total. At the national average of $.12 per kw that is about $8 ($.04/mile) for a full charge to drive those 200 or so miles. This is about 1/3 the cost to drive an average gas vehicle at 20 MPG and $2.60 per gallon.
Reply to
Rich.

When I go camping, I bring my zero emissions electric heater for my tent. I plug it into the generator that burns oil, and pumps out carbon monoxide. But, the heater is zero emissions.

Same deal with the car. Except that manufacturing of the car pollutes, and that the batteries eventually have to be thrown out, and, and, and.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

You have that incorrect and backwards. We're using fission power *now*; fusion is still in the future. And it won't be radiation-free by any means.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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Your math is incorrect. Charging at 90amps, 240V for 4 hours is

86Kwh of electricity. At 10c a KWH that would be $8.60. Here in NJ, at about 17c, it would be $15.

Also, the compare can't be made to a internal combustion engine car getting 20MPG. The electric cars are very small cars. So, it should be compared to cars getting 35-40 MPG. You can get a bluetec Mercedes diesel in that range that is a real car. There are plenty of other small cars capable of that mpg too, So assuming 35mpg, I could drive at least 175 miles in a simlar car for the same $15 in energy cost. And those electric energy costs are largely derived from cheap coal from existing plants which are not particularly clean. If we're to build anything remotely clean, ( think carbon sequestration) you can expect the future energy prices to be way higher. Unless we come up for a solution on how to make the electricity, you can't begin to compare costs moving forward.

Reply to
trader4

And how politically feasible do you think it's going to be to do that? What area wants to receive the pollution to help clean the air for someplace else? Especially in todays political climate, that is a non-starter.

I never overlooked ANY of that. All I said was that I have yet to see an unbiased analysis of the TOTAL cost of driving electric cars. What the future energy sources to make the electric are going to be, the cost of the fuels, new clean plants, where you can build them, distribution system upgrades, etc. If you have an objective study, I'd be happy to look at it.

As a small example of what you are dealing with, it's already clear that with the NIMBY mentality, it's unlikely you're going to find areas that are willing to be the recepients of pollution to lessen the pollution for people in nyc, la, etc. And it's even a regional issue. Much of the pollution here in NJ is due to coal fired plants in Ohio and the prevailing winds. Above you mention that coal- fired plants are far more efficient. If you believe we are going to have to reduce CO2 emissions going forward, which clearly is the intent right now, then any new coal plants are going to be extremely expensive compared to what we have today. Think carbon sequestration.

Reply to
trader4

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