What was that Ms Gillard said about not wanting to “gold plate” our electricity networks? The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) released a warning in December that electric cars will cost a lot more than just the purchase price and the electricity:
Electric vehicles in particular are another new “appliance” which is set to place new demands on Australia’s power system. This review has found that each electric vehicle could impose additional network and generation costs from $7500 up to $10,000 per vehicle over the 5 years from 2015 to 2020 in the absence of appropriate pricing signals and efficient charging decisions.
Who pays for the extra generation capacity? You do.
AEMC Chairman, John Pierce, said today that each electric vehicle could result in additional generation and network costs that, under current market arrangements would be shared by all consumers.
AEMC recommends several ways to split up the pricing, sort our metering so houses can figure out what was “the car” and what was “the house”. Me, I recommend we charge the EV owners the real cost, and let the free market do what it does best.
The AEMC last word — it’s easy to sell natural gas cars:
The final advice concludes that no significant changes need to be made to market arrangements to cater for the uptake of natural gas vehicles.
I just wish I could buy my electricity from a generator which produces not-for-car-electrons…
As it is, it takes so much energy to make those big electric-car batteries, that people who own an electric car need to drive about 130,000 km before they even start saving any CO2. It’s quite possible that electric vehicles might produce more CO2 over their lifetimes than the equivalent petrol powered cars does. Not to mention that electric car factories are more toxic than normal car factories and that electric cars were deemed to be worse for the environment in a study by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
The best thing about electric vehicles is that in Australia, almost no one buys them. We have 15 million cars on the road, and in 2011 only 49 new cars were electric. That’s nearly one new one each week…
h/t Scott the energy trader
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