Here we go again with the electric cars - where are they going to get the power?

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| First Electric Cars Have Power Industry Worried
| from the they'll-find-a-way-to-charge-double-for-it dept.
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 28, @08:15 (Power)
|https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/11/28/0248212/First-Electric-Cars-Have-Power-Industry-Worried?from=newsletter
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[0]Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Fahey writes for AP that as the first
mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, the power industry faces
a huge growth opportunity, with SoCal Edison expecting to be charging
100,000 cars by 2015 and California setting a goal of 1 million electric
vehicles by 2020. But [1]utility executives are worried that the
difficulty of keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers â€" and
their neighbors â€" could slow the growth of this industry because it's
inevitable that electric utilities will suffer some difficulties early
on. 'We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now,' says Mark
Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America. When
plugged into a [2]home charging station the first Leafs and Volts will
draw 3,300 Watts and take about 8 hours to deliver a full charge, but
both carmakers may soon boost that to 6,600 Watts. The Tesla Roadster, an
electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 Watts. That
means that adding an electric vehicle or two to a neighborhood can be
like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services
those houses. The problem is that transformers that distribute power from
the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about
12,000 watts so the extra stress on a transformer from one or two
electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power
to the block."

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10/11/28/0248212&from=newsletter

Links:
0.http://hughpickens.com/slashdot/
1.http://www.pressherald.com/business/opportunity-has-power-industry-scrambling-_2010-11-22.html
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station

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