Hriday wrote: ↑25 Jun 2024 15:07
Hriday wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024 21:21
A Twitter war between BJP and Congress units of Kerala about the viability of Nitin Gadkari's plan of removing petrol, and diesel vehicles by 2034. Gadkari's statement was on May 25th, 2024. I wonder why it wasn't discussed in the EV thread in this forum.
https://x.com/BJP4Keralam/status/180482 ... cQ-dQ&s=19
During the last peak summer season in Kerala,
there was a record electricity demand due to large-scale use of airconditioner and electric vehicle charging. It was reported in the newspaper that
electricity can be procured from outside Kerala but transformers can't carry that much load. The remedy is to replace them with
higher-capacity transformers but they are very costly. Thus there was a request by the Kerala Electricity Board to the
public to avoid even using airconditioners during the peak demand time between 8 and 11 PM.
Given that most State electricity boards are burdened with heavy subsidies, how this problem will be solved?
I remember reading similar requests by some states in the USA to the public to avoid electric vehicle charging.
Hriday'ji, thanks for putting together the above two posts. Lot of clarifications need to be made though, particularly lot of mis-assumptions are made. I will restrict to the bolded part. The mis-assumptions almost make the post very nonsensical.
As a background, I have two EVs since last 7 years, and total miles driven is >150k (miles) and that is almost 250k KM. I also have over years installed 24 KW of Solar. At this point, if I install batteries, then I am totally and completely energy independent and grid free. I use the electrical grid as battery.
And as part of the entire setup, I was thinking of installing a step-down transformer. Once available here are the 480v-240v 90A-180A and a further step down from 240v-120v 180A-208A. Total cost would be around USD 20k including installation and permission and line trenching etc. It would have taken approx. 30 cu. ft. of space (put both together). I did not go for it, since that would be too much capital cost for an individual resident to completely go off-the-grid and still have a major line coming in as nothing but insurance in case my solar panels get blown away in Category 5 hurricane. They would take the roof along with it anyway. And myself will also be tagging along. So what's the point?
Anyway, my point is, when I talk about BEV, Solar Panels, transformers etc, I talk with very good authority. I am living it. And hence the statement that your mis-assumptions make the post almost non-sensical. Let's peel them one after another:
1.
there was a record electricity demand due to large-scale use of airconditioner and electric vehicle
How many AC's are there in whole of Kerala and how many EVs? Let's say 10% of Kerala households have 1-ton ACs and 30% of shopping and small business enterprises have 1.5 ton AC's, then we are talking about ~1 million or ~ 10 lakhs household ACs and ~7.5 lakh SMEs have ACs. I am estimating on the lower side and the primary calculations for the above can be googled. Converting the 1.5 ton ACs in SMEs to 1 ton will give us approx. 10 lakhs 1-ton AC equivalent in SMEs. Note that some households may have multiple 1.5 ton ACs so we are balancing it out.
That is, we are talking about ~20 lakh 1-ton AC units in the entire state of Kerala.
Do we have 20 lakh BEVs in Kerala? I have this news report to go by
https://www.newindianexpress.com/kerala ... he%20away.
2023-24, Kerala had 75k EVs. Assuming a jump of 300% in sales from 2022 (when most of the EVs came on market in India), we can safely say Kerala has 100k EVs now.
So the number of EVs is a mere fraction (0.5%) of the total ACs operating in Kerala. Both EV and AC consume electricity. Let's call their numbers as "charging units", that is you have 20 lakh AC charging units (not to confuse with 1 KWh a.ka as unit) and 0.1 lakh EV charging units.
To state that there was a record electricity demand from 0.5% of charging units is patently false.
1a.
avoid even using airconditioners during the peak demand time between 8 and 11 PM.
Now let's look at consumption. 1 ton AC typically consumes 3.5 KW of energy. So AC's running 3 hours in a day will consume 10.5 KWh of energy. Assuming all AC's run 6 hours a day (1/4th), we are talking about
21 KWh of energy consumption.
Ola EV scooter has 2.5 KWh battery, that is, it consumes 25% less energy for full charge compared to a 1-ton AC running for 1 hour.
In effect, the charging of EV scooter (Ola EV) is approx. 1/10th of AC power consumption in a day. Keep that in mind, since we will do a thumb-rule consolidated average.
Nexon EV LR is ~41 KWh battery pack. So taking up the above calculation, charging of a Nexon EV car is equivalent to running AC for two days, 6 hours every day. Tata tiago is 19.2 (~20) KWh and MG 100 is 50.3 (~50 KWh). If both are sold at 1:1 ratio (unlikely), the average is still 35 KWh. So an avg. EV car has a battery pack of 35 KWh.
^Keep the above calculation in mind. Now, let's do another simple calculation. That is, breakdown 100k EVs into cars and scooters. There is no real portal that gives the breakdown. So we might have to do some thumb rules. So I am taking the 2016 number of 4 wheeler cars to 2 wheelers ration from 2016 (
https://mvd.kerala.gov.in/en/node/703). That is 1:3, for every 4-wheeler passenger car, there are 3 2-wheelers. And Kerala offering good EV incentive, I think the two wheeler EVs have a higher ratio. But let's stick to 1:3.
Taking that into account, for 100k evs, 25k are cars and 75k are two-wheelers. 25k cars at 40 KWh battery pack is 10,00,000 (10 Lacs) KWh (1000 MWh) and 75k two-wheelers at 20 KWh, is 15L KWh (1500 MWh) **. Since the cars are charged generally over 3 days, the daily consumption is ~300 MWh equivalent and for 2 wheelers, the daily consumption can be estimated to 1500 MWh. Combined is 1800 MWh.
**This number is slightly misleading since it assumes all EVs will be charged max within an hour. That is not the case, since a car of 40 KWh battery will easily give 250 Km range, that is distributed over 3 days. While a 2Wheeler with 2.5 KWh battery will give 80 Km range. Which may require daily re-charge.
And the AC's are 20 lakh units each with 3.5 KWh avg. consumption and that comes out to 8750 MWh. When operating over 6 hrs, that is 52500 MWh.
Given the above, power consumption by EV is 3% of AC power consumption. So your statement that EVs + ACs caused heavy load is nonsensical. Again the 3% utilization is heavily skewed against EVs by giving large margins to ACs. Indian ACs are notoriously inefficient. People run it for more than 6 hours a day. There are more ACs than EVs, then calculated above. So the real breakdown will be like EVs using 1% of the total power consumption of ACs.
NOTES:
1. EV policy of Kerala is actually very very good and all other states, particularly Rajasthan, MP, Gujarat, UP, Bihar, Mah, K'tka, TN, Orissa, TG and Andhra must copy it with some local modifications.
2. Kerala also has good solar penetration. The EVs are actually self sufficient. Currently Kerala imports 75% of electricity. Kerala can cut down on ACs or shut off ACs for some days and conserve energy.
IMPORTANTLY, 2500 MWh of battery capacity on a two wheeler at 1 KWh for 25 km scooter, means 62500000 Km range. Or petrol equivalent of 900 Kl (Kilo litres). Or 240k gallons of petrol a day. That is like saving 750k USD per day.
EV is the way to go. Particularly for India, with 5-7 hours of peak solar output (that produces some 30 KWh in a day on a 1 square meter solar panel) will help get India off petrol and diesel completely.
Request: You can do the calculation of petrol saved in cars with 1 KWh - 6 Km car equivalent.
) were always for nuclear energy unlike the bi-coastal "woke" set and the European elite le lis.