I thought this was a very interesting question. Reminds me of the heat waves here in the midwest when some of the power companies can't generate enough power to run air conditioners and we have brown outs. What will the effect of a few million Chevy Volt cars do to the system?
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=335142883693118
Will Electric Cars Crash The Grid?
The folks at GM, now affectionately known as Government Motors, have made this astounding claim. Before you drive one off the lot, you should read the fine print. Chevrolet's caveat is that this assumes "a Volt driver (will) plug into the electric grid once each day" to get "40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving."
That depends on where you live, according to Adam Victor, president of TransGas Energy, who has been fighting with the city of New York and its resident Nimbys to build an environmentally friendly natural gas cogeneration facility in Brooklyn to generate electricity these cars might plug into.
Writing in the New York Post, he notes that in much of the nation, particularly in flyover country, many utilities use heavy fuel oil to generate that electricity. So the more electric cars you plug into the grid, we may actually be increasing pollution and carbon emissions by using oil that's not included in miles-per-gallon computations.
As Victor puts it, "If a few thousand well-meaning dupes plug a few thousand new Chevy Volts into electrical outlets (especially in urban centers), you could actually add millions of pounds of dangerous, dirty unregulated pollution and carbon into the air we breathe — possibly more pollution than would be offset by putting the Volts on the road."
Will Electric Cars Crash The Grid?
The folks at GM, now affectionately known as Government Motors, have made this astounding claim. Before you drive one off the lot, you should read the fine print. Chevrolet's caveat is that this assumes "a Volt driver (will) plug into the electric grid once each day" to get "40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving."
That depends on where you live, according to Adam Victor, president of TransGas Energy, who has been fighting with the city of New York and its resident Nimbys to build an environmentally friendly natural gas cogeneration facility in Brooklyn to generate electricity these cars might plug into.
Writing in the New York Post, he notes that in much of the nation, particularly in flyover country, many utilities use heavy fuel oil to generate that electricity. So the more electric cars you plug into the grid, we may actually be increasing pollution and carbon emissions by using oil that's not included in miles-per-gallon computations.
As Victor puts it, "If a few thousand well-meaning dupes plug a few thousand new Chevy Volts into electrical outlets (especially in urban centers), you could actually add millions of pounds of dangerous, dirty unregulated pollution and carbon into the air we breathe — possibly more pollution than would be offset by putting the Volts on the road."