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Unintended Consequences
Plug-in hybrid vehicles hold great promise for reducing both petroleum dependence and our carbon footprint, but only time will tell if the technology carries a hidden cost
by Lee H Goldberg
The principle of unintended consequences came to mind this week as I reviewed the world’s first commercially-available plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) conversion system in greentechZONE and pondered what unexpected side-effects it might unleash when it became widely adopted. My concerns were in part triggered by the food shortages that are currently rocking the planet. While they cannot be blamed on any single factor, there is some fairly good consensus amongst moderate scientific types that our recent love affair with grain-hungry biofuel technologies played some role in this sudden and nearly unexpected calamity.
In retrospect, the uncanny alignment of widespread droughts, high fuel prices, and several nations in turmoil should have alerted an astute economist to the fact that diversion of even a relatively small fraction of our diminished grain reserves could trigger panic buying, and large-scale speculation that disrupted a usually-efficient distribution system and drove prices beyond affordability for many of the world’s citizens. Unfortunately, relationships like this often remain invisible, even to experts, until it’s too late and we suffer the unintended consequences of otherwise well-intended actions.
Likewise, I wonder if anyone has looked carefully at what will happen when we start hanging a few hundred thousand, and eventually millions of high-capacity batteries onto our power grid at random.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big advocate of plug-ins, straight electric cars, and anything else that gets us on the road to a sustainable future. PHEVs are a natural technology bridge that will help prove the feasibility and underwrite the development of electric drive trains well before batteries are mature enough to deliver enough range to compete with a fossil-fueled car (at an affordable price, anyway). The batteries in PHEVs can also act as a distributed load-leveling system, soaking up inexpensive off-peak power from under-used fossil plants or renewable sources and using it to replace gasoline for most short-haul errands. They can even help displace expensive, relatively inefficient peaking units once we adopt smart grid and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies that allow PHEVs to put give back some portion of their stored energy.
Nevertheless, has anybody thought about the fact that the 2 - 3 kW it takes to recharge a PHEV could represent another load that draws as much or more than a large whole-house air conditioner for several hours at a stretch? While a few hundred or even a few thousand PHEVs would represent an insignificant load on a metropolitan grid, things might be a bit different if even 5% of a town had PHEVs and decided to plug them all in at once. Would this lead to power shortages or disruptive swings in demand? Would it force utilities to keep equipment on-line at times the system normally uses for doing minor maintenance? I’m no expert, and cannot offer any answers, but I sure hope someone is working on them.
About the only answer I do have is that the heavy loads that PHEVs place on the power grid should be another inducement to utilities to accelerate the deployment of peak-load management systems and more advanced smart grid technologies. Besides helping manage any issues caused by PHEV charging, adopting smart grid and V2G technologies will also help pave the way for integrating distributed generation systems (solar, fuel cells, co-generation, etc…) into our power mix. Without them, we stand a real chance of suffering some unpleasant and unintended consequences.
Comments? Questions? Interesting V2G technologies you want to share with your fellow readers? Write me at lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog.
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