We e already having brownouts and rolling blackouts in the summers! If everyone switches to electric cars, won the power grid melt down?
According to the US Department of Energy, the nation’s existing power grid could support as many as 180 million electric cars. The cars would charge at night (via simple timers) when electrical power demand is low. Today we have power plants often “idling” at night, producing unwanted power because it wouldn’t be practical to shut the plants down and restart them every next morning. As for the Roadster. . . The standard charging unit comes with a timer, so you can have it charge at night. Tesla Motors are planning to produce somewhere around 1,500 of Roadsters per year. Even the upcoming Model S is slated for perhaps 10,000 units per year. Clearly they won’t be testing the DoE’s 180-million-vehicle estimate any time soon.
