EV charging and hydro generation/distribution challenges

[danbrotherston]

I think you are drastically overestimating the amount of charging that is needed. Load balancing is necessary yes, but ultimately most vehicles are driven only a short distance each day. Average commute distance is around 12 km by some sources I found. So 24 km total round trip. With an average of 6 km / kWh, we need 4 kWh per vehicle per night.

If you assume 18,000 km/year (a convenient number but probably not far off the annual average), that's 50 km/day. That would be about 8 kWh/vehicle/night. Anyway, I did post earlier that I was hoping that someone had done some real work on this, rather than me making gross assumptions. I haven't found anything yet, though.

I don't know how to achieve load-balancing (or, really, power management) at the municipal hydro level, especially since EVs are mixed in with standard residential and commercial consumption: there is no simple way to reduce charging power (only) when the capacity is limited. There is software for doing it at the building level -- it's what our building does, as out transformer and panel have limited capacity for adding chargers, maybe 600 kW at best, which is only good for 20 level 2 chargers.

18,000 km per year is way high. Closer to 15,000. But that is also way skewed. People take a few long trips which push up those numbers, but those long trips will either be in a gas car or charged during the day. (or even better, shifted to a train). 

As for load balancing, there is actually a fair bit of research on smart grid stuff. But it really isn't a technical issue, building software for it isn't hard it's kind of an understood task. The big problem is that it is contrary to the self interest society we have built. It requires cooperation of a majority of the population.  So we either need regulations or economic incentives, and I suspect there needs to be considerable policy research into this.