Electric Vehicles and Grid impact in Winter
Range Anxiety, charging infrastructure, cost, these are some of the main factors that people consider when they are looking at purchasing an EV. Interestingly these factors are also affected by weather. Range, Charger Wait time, and your average charging cost would be quite different in summer in comparison to in winter time.
Lithium ion batteries efficiency is heavily dependent on temperature, low temperature would reduce its capacity, as lithium ion battery is liquid and the ions becomes less “active” in colder weather. Studies showed that it can lose up to 12% of power overnight, and more if the vehicle uses more energy to warm the battery, with additional energy to power the heater for passengers, it can really add up.
“"EVs often lose 12% of their range in cold weather, but the loss leaps to 41% with the heater on full blast.””- https://blinkcharging.com/is-a-cold-climate-a-deterrent-to-ev-ownership/?locale=en
A normal EV user/ and for the future delivery vehicles or electric trucks can use forecasting to estimate the actual range for the day, especially in winter time, when many advices user not to charge their battery over 85%, or discharge under 15% to reduce the battery degradation, which leaves 70% of total capacity, and if the cold reduces the range by another 15-20%(with heating), that leaves 50% of the actual range.
If a battery has a claimed 300miles range, the actual range in winter condition may only be 150 actual miles, and in the more northern cities where charging stations is more sparse, more detailed planning would be beneficial.
The bigger picture doesn’t just affect EV drives, but on the grid. If EV is the future, and majority of the vehicles we drive today will become dependent on the grid, we can estimate that if 10million EV needs to be charged on average once a day, and on average of 100KW, that is 1000 Giga Watts of charged required each single day, if the temperature drops overnight just a simple 5% difference will be 50 giga watts difference, thus being able to forecast and prepare a few days ahead of time for such changes is critical.
