When you first think about it, electrical energy distribution may not seem like a problem at all. We already have electric power in our homes, offices, and anywhere else that it is needed. Converting to all electric transportation causes several challenges. First we need more power flowing through our distribution system overall.
Much of the system will need its capacity increased. In particular what are currently
gas stations will probably want to convert to selling electric charges. Why is this?
Why won't everyone just do it at home? Several reasons. First not everyone has a
power outlet where they park their car at home. Consider city dwellers who park
on a city street or in a remote garage. Can they run an electric cable out to charge
their vehicle? Maybe, but clearly this is not a practical solution. For people such
as these, along with people traveling across the country, or those who forgot to
charge their vehicle at home, "fueling" stations will be needed. Also, the power
capacity of home is not up to charging a vehicle in 5 minutes. A charge made from
home wiring would have to be much slower to avoid popping circuit breakers in a
house.
So a gas station can become a charging center for electric vehicles, however
current gas stations have less power coming to them than a house, so they are not
capable of charging cars in 5 minutes either. Not only that but gas stations need
to "fuel" many cars at once. Thus in order for a gas station to become a re-charging
station, they will need more power delivered to them, as it turns out a lot more
power.
Lets look at how much more:
1 Gallon of gasoline contains 33.53 KWH of energy
Say we want to "fill" the equivalent of a 12 gallon tank. This is 12*33.53 = 402.36KWH
of energy. Assume we want the fill up to take 5 minutes, lets calculate the power
required to do this. This will be 402.36/(5/60)=4828.32KW of electrical power. However
since an electric motor is 3.75 times as efficient as an internal combustion engine
we can get away with 1/3.75 times the energy in a "fill up" or 1/3.75 times the
power. So if we can deliver (1/3.75)*4828.32 KW = 1288 KW of power for five minutes.
This is quite a bit of power. Consider that an average modern house has 200 amp
service which equates to 200A * 115V = 23000W or 23KW. So our gas station needs
1288KW/23KW = 56 times the power of an average house to fill up one car! Gas
stations have multiple pumps and they would need multiple charging stations, a 10
position charging station would need the power equivilant of 560 houses. This power
is not constant either. One moment the charging station could be empty, a minute
later it may have 10 cars all wanting a charge. This is a huge spike in power, that
may need unconventinal means to deliver.
This is significant increase in power distribution requirements for our nation.
Is it possible. Of course. Can it happen overnight, of course not. But with a concerted
effort we can certainly upgrade our national power distribution grid to handle this
additional power requirement.