The Move From Pump to Plug

Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are already working to ensure that, once electric cars arrive, electric outlets will be available in household garages, business parking lots, shopping centers and airports for a quick charge-up.

Edison has created a new division with the sole mission of ensuring that its customers are ready for electric vehicles. One job now being tackled is to develop plans for a network of separately metered outlets. Southern Californians eventually will be able to plug coins or a credit card into a meter when they are away from home and juice up their car.

Los Angeles has vowed to be the nation’s first “EV ready” city, and the City Council will soon consider an ordinance requiring electric outlets to be installed in garages and parking lots of all new construction. “Most household circuits already have the capacity, but very seldom is there an outlet in the garage,” says Jerry Enzenauer, DWP’s electric-transportation program manager. At the same time, Edison is planning at least several hundred, probably thousands, of “recharge stations” in the Los Angeles Basin--the electric-vehicle equivalent of gas stations.

Electric power for an individual car would cost about $600 to $720 a year (based on 15,000 miles)--about the same as fueling a small gasoline-powered car for an equivalent amount of miles. However, utilities expect to offer half-price discounts for nighttime charge-ups.

At 30 m.p.h., each car would use about the same amount of electricity per hour as 60 100-watt light bulbs. Air-quality officials predict that as many as 1.2 million electric cars will be running in the Los Angeles area by the year 2010, consuming more than 6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. Although that sounds like a lot of light bulbs, it’s actually less than 10% of the total power used in the Los Angeles Basin.

Edison, which has an oversupply of electricity, estimates that it can provide enough for 1 million cars--2 million if they are recharged at night--without the need for new power plants or transmission systems. DWP says it can handle 300,000 cars without extra power generation.

The electric car is not truly pollution free. The battery packs must be discarded after use (although the lead is recyclable). And producing electricity to charge the batteries releases smog-causing fumes. But even accounting for increased emissions from power plants, electric cars are still 97% less polluting than gasoline-powered cars, according to a California Air Resources Board study.

Additional power, if required, won’t necessarily come from dirty sources. Edison already gets about 15% of its electricity from renewable energy, including solar, hydroelectric and wind, and could buy more if needed. Also, most electricity generated by fossil fuels within Southern California comes from natural gas, which burns much more cleanly than coal, the predominant fuel in much of the country.