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4A – Daily News – Tuesday, November 23, 2010 Utilities thrilled and worried about electric cars NEW YORK (AP) — The first mass-market elec- tric cars go on sale next month, and the nation’s electric utilities couldn’t be more thrilled — or worried. Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighbor- hood. That has utilities in parts of California, Texas and North Carolina scram- bling to upgrade transform- ers and other equipment in neighborhoods where the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt are expected to be in high demand. Not since air condition- ing spread across the coun- try in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity. Last year, Americans spent $325 billion on gasoline, and utilities would love even a small piece of that market. The main obstacles to wide-scale use of electric cars are high cost and limit- ed range, at least until a net- work of charging stations is built. But utility executives fret that difficulties keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers—and their neigh- bors—could slow the growth of this new niche. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” says Mike Rowand, who is in charge of electric vehicle planning at Duke Energy. Auto executives say it’s inevitable that utilities will experience 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. Electric cars run on big batteries that are charged by plugging into a standard wall socket or a more pow- erful charging station. A combined 30,000 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts are expected to be sold over the next year. Over the next two years, Ford, Toyota and every other major automak- er also plan to offer electric cars. Governments are pro- moting the expensive tech- nology as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, cut greenhouse gas emis- sions and improve air quali- ty. Congress is offering elec- tric car buyers a $7,500 tax credit and some states and cities provide additional subsidies that can total $8,000. The Leaf sells for $33,000 and the Volt sells for $41,000. Electric cars produce no emissions, but the electricity they are charged with is made mostly from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas that do. Still, electric cars produce two-thirds fewer greenhouse gas emis- sions, on average, than a similarly sized car that runs on gasoline, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Driving 10,000 miles on electricity will use about 2,500 kilowatt-hours, or 20 percent more than the average annual consump- tion of U.S. homes. At an average utility rate of 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, that’s $275 for a year of fuel, equivalent to about 70 cents per gallon of gasoline. “Electric vehicles have the potential to completely transform our business,” says David Owens, execu- tive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group. Nationwide, utilities have enough power plants and equipment to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars. Problems could crop up long before that many are sold, though, because of a phenomenon carmakers and utilities call “clustering.” Electric vehicle clusters are expected in neighbor- hoods where: generous sub- sidies are offered by states and localities, weather is mild, because batteries tend to perform better in warmer climates, high-income and environmentally conscious commuters live So while states like North Dakota and Montana may see very few electric cars, California cities like Santa Monica, Santa Bar- bara and Monrovia could see several vehicles on a block. SoCal Edison expects to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015. California has set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020. Progress Energy is expecting electric car clus- ters to form in Raleigh, Cary and Asheville, N.C. and around Orlando and Tampa, Fla. Duke Energy is expect- ing the same in Charlotte and Indianapolis. The entire territory of Texas’ Austin Energy will likely be an electric vehicle hot spot. Adding an electric vehi- cle or two to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses. “We’re talking about doubling the load of a conventional home,” says Karl Rabago, who leads Austin Energy’s electric vehicle-readiness program. “It’s big.” How big depends on the size of the battery in the car, and how fast the car is charged. When plugged into a standard 120-volt socket, the electric car will draw 1,500 watts. By com- parison, a medium-sized air conditioner or a countertop microwave oven will draw about 1,000 watts. But the car can be charged faster, and therefore draw more power, when plugged into a home charging station. The first Leafs and Volts can draw 3,300 watts, and both carmakers may boost that to 6,600 watts soon. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 watts. That’s the equivalent of 280 60- watt light bulbs. A modest home in the San Francisco Bay area that doesn’t need air condition- ing might draw 3,000 watts at most. Transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle fewer than a dozen. Extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block. The “night- mare” scenario, according to Austin Energy’s Rabago: People come home from work on a hot afternoon, turn on the air conditioner and the plasma television, blend some frozen cocktail, start cooking dinner on an electric stove —and plug their car into a home charg- ing station. An electric vehi- cle plugged into a standard wall socket poses a different problem. It will put less stress on a transformer, but it could trip a circuit breaker if the circuit serves other appliances. Power would go off in part of the house. To head off problems, teams of workers at utilities are gathering information from Nissan and Chevrolet, doing customer surveys and looking at buying patterns of hybrid gas-electric cars like the Toyota Prius to try to predict where they might see clusters of electric car buyers. They are comparing that data with maps of their systems to determine what equipment might need upgrading first in hopes of avoiding blown circuits. Utilities also hope to con- vince drivers to program their cars to charge late at night, when rates are low and most appliances are switched off. Ted Craver, the chief executive of the parent company of SoCal Edison and a chairman of an industry electric vehicle planning association, says early buyers will likely be tolerant of a few hiccups. At the same time, he says, those are the people utilities should try hard to please. “They turn into promoters,” he says. Replacing a neighbor- hood transformer costs a utility between $7,000 and $9,000, according to SoCal Edison. This is work a utili- ty will often want to do. 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