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Juneau utility eyes electric car future AEL&P says minimal extension to existing infrastructure could support widespread use of battery-powered cars; wants 20-car test first Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Juneau, Alaska’s state capital, may soon see emission-free electric automobiles whirring along the eight miles of highway that connect the capital’s downtown area to the Mendenhall Valley where many Juneau residents live.
At least, that’s the vision of Juneau electric utility Alaska Electric Light & Power.
Well suited With a small, isolated road infrastructure and all electricity coming from hydropower, Juneau is particularly well suited for electric vehicle use, Tim McLeod, president and CEO of AEL&P, told the Business of Clean Energy in Alaska Conference on June 18. In fact, a 20- to 30-mile range would probably be adequate for most battery-powered cars used in and around the capital, McLeod said.
“Most of the travel is from valley to town and from town to valley,” McLeod said. And, with a relatively mild climate, low temperatures should not unduly impact battery duration, he said.
McLeod expressed his enthusiasm for the electric vehicle as a means of reducing national dependence on imported oil while at the same time taking advantage of stable electricity pricing. He envisages a future in which U.S. electric lighting loads could drop by about 70 percent, presumably because of improved electric light technologies, while perhaps 75 percent of road vehicles would run on electricity.
“From my perspective it’s not just an environmental issue. It’s also to preserve the wellbeing of my community,” McLeod said.
In the U.S. a well-developed electric infrastructure already exists for charging car batteries, he said.
“The power sector has substantial spare capacity,” McLeod said. “If we charge vehicles off peak then we can take advantage of the surplus capacity of the infrastructure.”
In Juneau, McLeod thinks that the power infrastructure could easily be adapted to support widespread electric vehicle use. With a population of Manageable load about 32,000 and an assumption that 80 percent of the population drives an average of 10,000 miles per year, Juneau residents in total probably drive about 250 million miles per year. At a typical electric car power consumption of 4 miles per kilowatt hour, that translates to a power demand of about 64 million kilowatt hours, a demand that could easily be met from some modest additional hydropower capacity, McLeod said.
This demand figure assumes the use of electricity to power light-duty vehicles, with heavier vehicles such as delivery trucks continuing to run on traditional fuels.
But, with the cost per mile of power for electric cars in Juneau likely coming in at about one-quarter the cost per mile of oil-based fuels, that 10,000 miles per year of driving would clock up an annual fuel savings of about $830 for a typical Juneau resident, McLeod said.
That cost saving would, however, have to be offset against the relatively high cost of buying an electric car. Small-scale trial AEL&P is developing an electrical power rate for a small trial of the Juneau electric car concept, to research the cost of the power supply service and determine whether that cost is acceptable to utility customers, McLeod said.
“We want an experimental electric vehicle rate to try to promote the use of a certain number of vehicles,” he said. “We’re thinking that the experimental rate will only be for 20 vehicles to start with.”
The utility will apply an off-peak rate for vehicle charging, with each customer having a special vehicle-charging meter circuit.
“We think that the off-peak rate would be around 6 cents per kilowatt hour and we would make about a $500 contribution to the separate meter circuit,” McLeod said, adding that the $500 contribution would avoid discouraging people from signing up because of the meter cost.
But the trial system would be limited to the use of street-legal, four-wheeled vehicles, and would not apply to off-road vehicles, for example. Each customer would fill in an annual survey to provide the utility with information about the number of miles driven, and customers would sign up for five-year service terms.
The public availability of battery charging stations would also encourage electric vehicle use — the City and Borough of Juneau anticipates putting charging stations in some public parking garages, he said.
“I think that as soon as we get the charging stations out and visible there may be some incentive to get people on that (system),” he said. Not for heating However, one potential hindrance to the introduction of electric cars would be a widespread switch from the use of oil to the use of electricity for the heating of buildings in Juneau.
Essentially, the use of electric space heating could crowd out the power supply capacity for cars while also pushing up the cost of electricity, McLeod said.
Widespread electric heating could add 387 million kilowatts hours to the Juneau power load, swamping the existing total hydro capacity of about 429 million kilowatt hours, requiring the need for a major expansion to the hydropower infrastructure and perhaps requiring the use of expensive power from diesel generators.
One problem with this scenario is the fact that there are only one or two remaining natural lakes suitable for new hydropower systems in the Juneau region: Major additions to the hydropower capacity would require artificial lakes, with the construction of very expensive dams, McLeod explained. Wind is a possible power source, but solar power does not work in Juneau and there are no known geothermal energy sources in the area, he said.
And so, AEL&P wants to discourage its customers from using electricity for direct space heating. The company needs to educate people about the potential cost implications of the use of electricity in this way and a special demand rate for electric heat is a future possibility, McLeod said.
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