ABG: EV push in Norway could add $1.3 billion to power bills by 2040

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GRA

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EV push in Norway could add $1.3 billion to power bills by 2040
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/08/norway-ev-power-grid-charging/

Norway's power grid is likely to need an 11 billion crown ($1.3 billion) upgrade over the next 20 years to meet demand from the country's growing fleet of electric cars, with consumers likely to have to foot the bill, a study has shown.

Electric vehicle (EV) sales in Norway reached a record high in March, with almost 60% of new cars sold fully electric, a result of state policy to exclude such vehicles from certain taxes and offer free or cheaper road tolls, parking and charging points.

Aiming to end fossil-fueled car sales by 2025, Norway electric vehicles now account for 220,000 of its total 2.7 million cars. It aims to have a mostly carbon-neutral fleet on its roads by 2040.

In a study conducted for Norway's power regulator with DNV GL, state-appointed consultancy Poyry said a power grid investment of up to 11 billion crowns would be needed by 2040 if most passenger cars were by then powered by electricity and drivers maintained their current charging habits.

"If nothing is done, charging every afternoon to evening seems most likely. In that case, the 11 billion ... grid cost is paid by all customers," Poyry's Norway director Kjetil Ingeberg told Reuters.

He said that all electricity consumers would face rising costs as a separate EV charging tariff was unlikely.

Poyry's data showed that 60% of the investment would be for low-voltage grids, 10% for substations, 28% for high-voltage grids and 2% for high-voltage transformers.

However, Norway's drivers could keep costs down by changing their charging habits.

Charging car batteries at night would drop new grid costs to almost zero, while charging in the afternoon and only when batteries are relatively empty would require just above 4 billion crowns of investment.

If drivers continue to plug vehicles in every afternoon, the average peak demand time will shift to 1700-2000 CET from 0800-0900 CET, the study also showed. . . .
ToU pricing should solve the problem.
 
Click-bait title

The facts are that a $1.3 Billion USD investment in the grid is required to supply 100% EV penetration and lumped charging between 17:00 and 22:00.That is a ~ $565 bill per household, spread over some 20 years.

Figure they finance the project, so somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.25 a month per household. In Norwegian terms, that is about equivalent to the cost of 0.5 litre of car fossil fuel per month. Does anybody in their right mind think this 'news' troubles the people of Norway ?
 
The grid in Norway must be in great shape to be able to support all of the additional charging during evening peak time with moderate upgrades to the distribution system, minimal upgrades to the transmission system, and no additional generation. The bottom line--no upgrades needed if people are encouraged to charge during off-peak hours! The article was written to be sensationalist, but the quoted facts speak for themselves when read carefully.
 
GerryAZ said:
The grid in Norway must be in great shape to be able to support all of the additional charging during evening peak time with moderate upgrades to the distribution system, minimal upgrades to the transmission system, and no additional generation. The bottom line--no upgrades needed if people are encouraged to charge during off-peak hours! The article was written to be sensationalist, but the quoted facts speak for themselves when read carefully.
I agree, and wonder why Norwegians are apparently charging during the afternoon/evening peak now.
 
Electricity is relatively cheap in Norway and nobody seems to care to much of this now. We don't use different prices during peak hours now, it is the same price throughout the day. Peak hours pricing will however come in the future. Power consumption have gone up a lot in recent years (not only due to electric cars) and power grid maintenance has appearantly been sort of neglected for many years. It will cost to bring it up to a level where it is able to cope with future demands.
 
kaiat said:
Electricity is relatively cheap in Norway and nobody seems to care to much of this now. We don't use different prices during peak hours now, it is the same price throughout the day. Peak hours pricing will however come in the future. Power consumption have gone up a lot in recent years (not only due to electric cars) and power grid maintenance has appearantly been sort of neglected for many years. It will cost to bring it up to a level where it is able to cope with future demands.
Thanks for the info. I knew you had hydro in excess, so time-of-use pricing probably just didn't make sense, but as you say it will in future (and certainly be cheaper than upgrading the grid).
 
Way to go Norway! Nearly 60% of new sales are EV is quite an accomplishment. I think the grid challenge is a good problem to have and can be readily addressed, especially since they know it now and have plenty of time to plan and implement.
 
DarthPuppy said:
Way to go Norway! Nearly 60% of new sales are EV is quite an accomplishment.
That was an unusual month related to pent up demand for the Tesla Model 3. In May 2019 EVs were 35% of the non-commercial vehicle market while EV+PHEV+HEV was 75%.
 
Good to know the detail on that. Still far better penetration than we have here and a notable accomplishment.
 
DarthPuppy said:
Good to know the detail on that. Still far better penetration than we have here and a notable accomplishment.
No doubt, and as EV choices expand it seems a fair guess that EV marketshare will also. I agree with Elon that the Model Y will have double the demand of the Model 3, in line with consumer preference for CUV over sedan. In Norway for now though, increase in EV marketshare has been mostly a reciprocal of PHEV and HEV drops. That last 25% ICE/diesel share is proving to be stubborn. I'm hopeful ICE drops to below 10% with more choice.
 
There is still a demand of sort for ICE-cars. Towing seems to be the main reason. Many have a trailer or caravan which they haul around. I am myself no exception here, and drive a diesel-SUV for this reason (my SO uses the Leaf). You got alternatives as Tesla Model X, Audi e-tron and the upcoming Mercedes EQC - but they are all pretty expensive and out of reach for many.

Also, in the more rural areas, there might not be fastchargers everywhere. In Northern Norway this is still a problem, even Teslas can struggle there. Norway has a goal that there should not be more than 50 km between fastchargers, but this proved difficult to do in the most Northern parts of Norway. But it is (slowly) getting better there too.

Oddly enough, there has also been cases where people living in the cities has sold their EV and bought an ICE instead. If you live in an appartment and/or may only have streetparking, it can be very difficult to charge your EV at home. So there are those who has given up on EVs for now because of that.
 
kaiat said:
There is still a demand of sort for ICE-cars. Towing seems to be the main reason. Many have a trailer or caravan which they haul around. I am myself no exception here, and drive a diesel-SUV for this reason (my SO uses the Leaf). You got alternatives as Tesla Model X, Audi e-tron and the upcoming Mercedes EQC - but they are all pretty expensive and out of reach for many.

Also, in the more rural areas, there might not be fastchargers everywhere. In Northern Norway this is still a problem, even Teslas can struggle there. Norway has a goal that there should not be more than 50 km between fastchargers, but this proved difficult to do in the most Northern parts of Norway. But it is (slowly) getting better there too.

Oddly enough, there has also been cases where people living in the cities has sold their EV and bought an ICE instead. If you live in an appartment and/or may only have streetparking, it can be very difficult to charge your EV at home. So there are those who has given up on EVs for now because of that.
Thanks for the inside view :)

Bjorn Nyland recently posted a series of videos on youtube driving across Finnmark with a Fortum rep. They apparently plan to install 17 150 kW chargers in the near future. It knocks my socks off to think that a corner of the Artic will be *much* better served by DC fast charging than my 1M population city in the USA.

Go Norway !
 
Good points about the charging infrastructure being a major hurdle for apartment dwellers or those who have to rely on street parking. Without the supportive charging infrastructure, true widespread adoption and elimination of ICEV will be real tough.
 
Let's not forget that the reason Norway has the world's largest % uptake of BEVs is that they're a country with a small population which is subsidizing the purchase of PEVs via their sovereign wealth fund, the major source of income of which is royalties and associated taxes from offshore oil and gas and the businesses related to that. What a small, wealthy country can do to subsidize PEVs has little relevance for larger and/or poorer countries. Still, they had to decide to use the money that way, so kudos to them for doing so.
 
Technically, EVs aren't subsidized in Norway. ;) They are just extempt from our very high import taxes on cars. Other countries have some sort of system where you get a refund or rebate on the price, but you don't get that in Norway.

To illustrate the matter, take a VW e-Golf for instance. This is an expensive Golf in most places, but in Norway, because the ICE-Golf is taxed hard - the e-Golf is actually priced the same as the base model ICE-Golf. This means that the e-Golf is a bargain in Norway, as you get more standard equipment, it has more power and is even cheaper to run. Even if you are not really that into EVs and are just looking to get a car, that is a no-brainer.

If Norway didn't have those high taxes on ICE-cars, you wouldn't have seen that level of adaptation towards EVs as we have seen here in recent years.

I saw Bjørn Nyland's Youtube-videos too, and it is nice that they are building more chargers there. The problem has been that there can be far between towns, and to put a fastcharger in the middle of nowhere to enable charging inbetween proved hard to do. The roads and power grid can be miles apart, so you may have to build a small power grid to connect the fastcharger to the main power grid. That is a bit too expensive, and the fastcharger-operators decided to hold back a bit until cars with more range appered.

We are actually planning a trip to Northern Norway next year, but it will be using the diesel-SUV due to towing a caravan. Towing apart, I wouldn't have any problem taking the Leaf on a trip in Southern Norway though.
 
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