Cars are ingrained into our culture and, more importantly, into our infrastructure. Petrol stations are plentiful and fuel consumption is easily understood. It’s actually pretty difficult to run out of petrol. But as more electric cars come onto our roads, the picture could change in many ways. Is a full charge equivalent to a full tank of petrol? Where and how will you charge your car? What kind of infrastructure will we need to make sure that people will be able to charge their cars when they need to? And how will you pay for the electricity?
It’s a complicated subject that will affect a range of industries and sectors, many of which have not been involved with each other before. Electricity suppliers, for example, haven’t had to be overly concerned with the business of automotive manufacturers. Power generation hasn’t had to be linked to the way people drive. But all of that is going to have to change. And soon.
Many automotive manufacturers see electric cars as a major market opportunity and they want to grab it:
Prof Roger Kemp, Lancaster University:
"This all comes down to the Climate Change Act 2008," said Prof Roger Kemp of Lancaster University, one of the authors of a recent report from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) on the issues connected with electric cars. "When the discussion of the act first started, it talked about a 60 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2050; but roughly a month before it became law, that was changed to an 80 per cent cut. At the time, I don’t think anyone in the engineering profession realised what a dramatic change that was going to be."
The numbers are important here because fully a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions come from road vehicles. "If you have to make an 80 per cent reduction, then you absolutely have to do something about road vehicles," Kemp added. "Either you have to make a draconian cut in the amount of energy used in road vehicles, or you end up with electric vehicles."
If you think about electric vehicles as a way to meet those obligations, then you have to think big. "We aren’t talking about tens of thousands of electric cars, or even hundreds of thousands," Kemp said. "There are something like 30 million cars on the roads of Britain at the moment. So, if 10, 15 or 20 million of those become electric cars, what are the implications of that?"
The automotive sector isn’t dragging its feet. "We have been really struck by the readiness of motor manufacturers to meet the challenge of electric vehicles," Kemp said. "Many companies see this as a major market opportunity and they want to grab it; Nissan’s Leaf electric family car, which will be built in the UK, is a great example."
The development of electric vehicle technology itself is an issue, according to Kemp, particularly when it comes to batteries. Lithium-ion seems to be the most likely system, but these batteries, which Kemp described as scaled-up laptop batteries, are not cheap. A car would probably need a battery weighing 50-100kg; at current prices, that would cost more than a medium-sized car. "We have to bring down the price to something that makes the overall offering attractive to consumers," he added.
But it’s the wider issue of infrastructure that could be the bigger challenge. The targets of the Climate Change Act are the mid-term driver, but the new government has piled on the pressure. The Tory-Liberal coalition policy document issued following the election contained a commitment to construct a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles within the life of this parliament – the next five years. Once started, an infrastructure will have its own momentum; it will evolve over time, but the way it is first established will dictate its shape and the way it develops. So how do we make sure we get it right?
Neil Butcher, ARUP:
One good way is to see how people use electric cars and use that information to inform the establishment of an infrastructure. Last year, the Technology Strategy Board set up eight consortia to conduct ’demonstrator trials’ of electric vehicles, the largest of which, based in the West Midlands, recently issued its first report. The CABLED (Coventry and Birmingham Low Emission Vehicle Demonstrators) consortium, led by ARUP and involving E.On along with Aston, Birmingham and Coventry universities, will study a fleet of 110 vehicles, of which the first 25 – Mitsubishi iMiEVs – are already in the field. The rest of the fleet, consisting of 40 Smart FourTwo EVs, 25 Tata Indica Vistas, five Land Rover range extenders, five LTI black taxis, and 10 micro:cab urban hydrogen fuel-cell cars, will roll onto the streets in the coming months.
"Part of the idea is just to make electric vehicles a more common sight on the roads," said Neil Butcher, project co-ordinator at ARUP. "We want people to see that they’re just cars, like any other car, and they mix with ordinary traffic and aren’t any sort of hazard. Public acceptance of them as something normal is actually a very important part of their take-up." Butcher is doing his bit in this: he’s one of the iMiEV drivers, as are television presenters Robert Llewellyn and Quentin Wilson.
But the main role of the project is to see how drivers use their cars. Each driver has a charging point set up at their home, capable of charging the car to 85 per cent capacity in 20 minutes; some also have one at their workplace, or will use public charging points. The cars will charge to full capacity from a standard power socket in eight hours. "We want to log how far a typical journey is; how often people recharge and where they do it; how fast they go; what sort of traffic they travel in; all that sort of thing," Butcher said. "That will give us the information we need to decide how to set up charging infrastructure."
Among the issues is how much power would need to be routed to particular locations at particular times. For example, one obvious place to site charging points is a car park. But depending on how people charge their cars, this could create problems. "Let’s imagine the car park at Old Trafford football ground," said Kemp. "You could have 5,000 people driving there for an evening game; they get to the ground around 6pm and plug their cars in. Then they expect them to be fully charged about three hours later when they leave." That, he said, is a huge amount of power at a time where there currently isn’t much demand and, at the moment, the distribution system isn’t set up to cope. "It’s a massive challenge to the distribution network and it would be difficult to fund economically, because it’s only going to be used once or twice a week for certain parts of the year."
Butcher believes that the answer might be in different types of charging point. He said: "We’re involved in developing fast-charging points, such as the ones installed at our drivers’ homes. The idea is that they would be installed at motorway services and suchlike, and they would charge the car in half an hour or so."
The infrastructure would still have to be set up to cope with demand, however. This, Butcher suggested, would be an ideal application of smart grid technology. "More than 90 per cent of all cars are parked at any one time," he said. "The smart grid idea is that your car is always plugged in when it’s parked and the battery acts as a reservoir to supply power during the day. At night, when the electricity is cheap, the battery charges up."
The road to electric cars is clearly a long one, and as beset with possible obstructions as the M25 at rush hour. The journey needs a series of good navigators and a decent map. Kemp, however, made a crucial point. "Any electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity that charges it. There is little likelihood of making big savings in CO2 if we continue to burn coal or gas. If we’re serious about this, greening the electricity supply has to be the biggest prerequisite."
Reference: The Engineer: 28 June 2010: Stuart Nathan
Solar-powered charging stations:
Solar-powered PV stations can offer a recharging bay for electric cars in open-air car parks - photovoltaic modules standing over and above a car parking bay.
The PV panels generate electricity to charge electric vehicles parking underneath, or to feed into the national grid or a building's power supply when it is not being used to charge up an electric vehicle.
Organisations installing such systems could receive Government feed-in tariffs making the systems financially beneficial. A typical system would be capable of generating capacity of 1.7kW for each parking bay.
The new ‘PowerPark’ at Gateshead Civic Centre is a car parking canopy made with PowerGlaz PV panels. Funded by regional development agency, One North East, the solar-powered canopy is manufactured through a partnership between solar PV producer, Romag and steel-sheet manufacturer, Tegrel and has been delivered and installed by British Gas. This collaboration intends to deliver solar-powered charging stations across the region.
Such ‘PowerPark’ canopies are suitable for use in car parks at airports, stations, supermarkets, shopping centres, offices and public buildings including sports and leisure facilities. The canopy generates electricity which can be sold into the national grid as well as charging electric vehicles. Gateshead is part of the North East’s LCEAs (Low Carbon Economic Area).
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