To answer that question, Ricardo UK, Jaguar Land Rover, E.ON and Amberjac Projects set out to do a study, as part of the Range Extended Hybrid Electric Vehicle (REHEV) project. The results are now in: should the UK experience a substantial rise in EV and hybrids on the roads, the impact on the national power grid will be lower than initially estimated, just-auto.com reported.
We find the study itself useless, at least for the time being. The United Kingdom has an auto park of around 26 million vehicles. To replace it, or at least to replace a big part of this park would require a good number of years (we reckon some decades), so setting up a study today is a bit of a stretch. Consider that even with the scrappage incentive, only 26,000 hybrid or EV vehicles will be put on the road; that's about 0.1 percent of the current auto park.
Still, the study was conducted and it followed four charging scenarios: uncontrolled domestic charging, uncontrolled off-peak domestic charging, smart domestic charging and uncontrolled public charging throughout the day. As a charging solution, a single AC phase was chosen, as it is deemed the most likely to be used.
Those behind the study assumed a 10 percent of EVs and hybrids (3 million passenger and light goods vehicles in mid term). This translated into a 2 percent increase in electricity demand (about 1 GW), a figure which showed the UK power grid can cope with a future EV park. Local improvements to the grid may be required, but rest assured, even if it takes decades to reach the 10 percent penetration, today's grid can cope.
Of course, by that time, a new grid may be required altogether, but that's another study...
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