No power issue for electric cars

By Michael Hamlyn

Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena told a questioner in Parliament that there is more than enough electricity generated in the country to allow the batteries of electrically powered cars to be charged overnight.

The minister, giving a written reply to Sakie Blanch of the Democratic Alliance, said that the peak demand for power is traditionally between 7am to 10am and 6pm to 9pm, with lowest demand for power between 10pm and 6am.

"During off-peak times the demand drops to approximately 24 000MW," Mangena said, "which leaves an excess capacity of 12 600MW.

"This excess capacity is enough to charge approximately 12,9 million vehicles every night. This is based on an annual travel distance of 20 000 kilometres and an upper quartile estimation of 150 watt-hours of electricity usage per kilometre travelled.

"This is significantly more than the 9,2 million registered vehicles that are currently on South African roads.

"It is evident that Eskom has sufficient excess capacity to supply electricity for the purpose of charging electric vehicles during off-peak periods."

The research was done, Mangena said, by Optimal Energy as this is one of the building blocks of the business case to sell its electrically powered vehicles in this country.

Given that the average number of vehicles on South African roads increased by 3,2 percent annually between 2000 and 2005, and using the 9,2 million registered vehicles in 2008 as a base figure to predict the vehicle growth figures, there will be an estimated 13,4 million vehicles on our roads in 2020.

"If 20 percent of these are electrical, which is an optimistic scenario," the minister said, "it means that there will be only 2,6 million electrical vehicles on our roads in 2020.

"This is approximately a factor of five less than Eskom's current excess capacity can handle. These calculations do not take Eskom's plans to double its capacity to 80 000MW by 2025 into account."

Mangena added that there are worries about wide variations in power consumption levels in appliances with the same functionality and capabilities. The large variations indicate that there is scope for effective minimum energy performance standards to eliminate poor-performing appliances.

He said that a preliminary study commissioned by the South African National Energy Research Institute has indicated that there is a need to regulate the quality of energy efficiency of electric appliances.

While it was limited in scope, this study is being used to inform the labelling of appliances. There is also an energy efficiency working committee that has been established within the South African Bureau of Standards to coordinate standardising the quality of energy efficiency of electric appliances, equipment and machines that are marketed locally and internationally.