Widespread alarmist myth concerning electric motorcycles and electric mobility in general, that's what predicts a dark future, of continuous blackouts.
This concern – understandable, but up to a point – is based on fear that the electricity grid will not be able to support the excessive load of connected vehicles and that the consequence is blackouts that leave us all without electricity.
Recently I was surprised to hear it even from an engineer friend. Orphan! At that, having esteem of his opinions, I asked him if he could please give me data on the matter. So I found out that… he had none. His was a hypothesis and not a thesis, it wasn't even thorough with some research! Just enough to panic. The things, fortunately for us, they should stay a little bit’ diverso, let's see it.
Surely a sudden boom in electric vehicles connected to the grid could lead to failures, but… In the first place we will not witness a sudden boom as for a progressive diffusion and secondly not all vehicles will all be recharged at the same time.
But let's take some practical examples: in Norway electric cars are already the 21% of the park in circulation and nothing has happened yet. Nulla! In 2030 it is expected that in the country of the fjords will circulate 1,5 millions of electric cars. According to the same study electricity demand will only grow by 3%.
Two aspects need to be considered. The first concerns network development: the energy mix is getting better with a increase in renewable sources and hand in hand the energy efficiency of household appliances and homes has grown. Ovvero, there is less waste. It is also improving there’energy storage, the reserve of energy to use at peak times.
The second aspect, instead, concerns the so-called bidirectional charging technology. That is, the vehicle battery not only receives current from the network but is also able to return it to the network or to another vehicle. So cars won't simply be parked while charging, but they will be “vehicle to grid” and they will take advantage of the fact that they remain still for a long time, which they undeniably already do. This is not yet the case with the electric motorcycle, but in the car it is already possible. This topic would open up to others, first on the use of the car itself, about sharing, on traffic congestion: We really all need to own a car? But let's not go out of our way and think about our electric motorbike, whose absorption connected to 220v is approximately 1 kWh. More or less like any household appliance.
Discover all the others too (false) myths about the electric motorcycle.
