Auto & Transportation

In recent days, news of power cuts in many places across the country has become the hottest topic on the Internet, including Inner Mongolia, Henan, Sichuan, Zhejiang, and Yunnan. Ningxia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Guangdong and other places have successively implemented power curtailment policies, especially in some cities in the northeast region. According to relevant netizens, in some areas of Shenyang, there are multiple power curtailments due to lack of electricity. The road was congested, except for the sporadic street lights, it was dark on both sides of the road. As more and more media reports on this series of events, we can now continue to see the inconvenience caused by the sudden power rationing of residents in Northeast China, which can be said to have seriously affected their lives.

How big is the impact of curtailment on electric vehicles?

As power shortages across the country become more serious, issues related to the rapid development of electric vehicles in recent years have begun to cause more and more people to discuss how to use electric vehicles normally when there are often sudden power cuts. , Is it still suitable to buy an electric car at this time? Electric vehicles that use electric energy as a single source of energy are indispensable for electricity. However, due to the particularity of the Northeast, the number of electric vehicles is actually not large, especially in the winter in the Northeast where the weather is often minus 20 or 30 degrees. Not suitable for electric vehicles. In other power-restricted areas, especially in Guangzhou, some charging stations have implemented off-peak power consumption on September 24. The execution time is from 8:00-23:00 every Monday to Friday. During the execution period, the outside world will be suspended. Open charging service. Therefore, from this perspective, the power curtailment will indeed have an impact on consumers' use of electric vehicles, but the extent of the impact will also vary depending on the specific conditions of different regions. If you are indeed located in an area with more severe power curtailment and want to buy electric vehicles, you should still Let's wait and see again.

Similar to the impact of power rationing, the reasons for power rationing in various regions are also different. To put it simply, the main reason for power curtailment in the South is due to the "dual control policy" for energy consumption, while the power curtailment in the Northeast, where the power curtailment situation is the most serious, has encountered a "La Niña" phenomenon worldwide this year, resulting in an unusually cold winter this year. In order to withstand the coming cold winter, electricity will be cut to ensure that there is enough energy for heating in winter.

At present, my country's power generation and heating are inseparable from coal, and the proportion of thermal power generation is as high as 70%. This year, due to the international situation and political factors, domestic coal prices have soared. Last year, the country's thermal coal was about five to six hundred yuan a ton, while the price of thermal coal soared to more than 1,500 yuan this year. According to relevant sources, when the price of thermal coal exceeds 1,000 yuan, the power plant will generate one kilowatt of electricity and lose one kilowatt of electricity. The current high thermal coal price can be said to be a loss of brightness of electricity for one kilowatt. Many domestic power plants have overwhelmed. Therefore, under such circumstances, for the Northeast region, power rationing is the most direct solution.

The emergence of power rationing is a good thing to correctly understand the development of electric vehicles

In fact, the development of electric vehicles should not be developed independently as a single means of transportation. The development of electric vehicles is inseparable from the development of infrastructure such as charging piles and power grids. However, through this power restriction, we can clearly see that my country’s current electrical energy Infrastructure cannot support the ever-increasing demand for charging electric vehicles.

Data show that as of the end of last year, my country's new energy vehicle ownership was 4.92 million, accounting for less than 2% of the total car ownership. According to calculations by relevant sources, if the battery capacity of each new energy vehicle is 50 kWh (kWh), and it is recharged 100 times a year, the annual electricity consumption of all electric vehicles in the country is about 24.6 billion kWh (kWh). In 2020, the residents of the country Electricity consumption for daily life is only 10949 billion kWh (kwh). This means that all electric vehicles in the country add up to approximately 2.2% of the annual electricity consumption of residents in the country. And once the number of electric vehicles further increases, for example, the proportion reaches 50%, which means that the electricity consumption of electric vehicles alone will reach about 50% of residents' electricity consumption.

What’s more noteworthy is that the current mainstream new energy vehicle brands in China, for reducing consumers’ mileage anxiety, the most mainstream method is to increase the power battery capacity in exchange for a longer cruising range. Under this development trend, electric vehicles will be driven. The car charging time becomes longer. As a result, with the increase in power battery capacity, super charging piles with higher power and faster charging speeds were born. However, it is worth noting that most electric vehicles use fast-charging charging piles in the daytime, and a large number of electric vehicles gather at the same fast-charging station at the same time, which will inevitably lead to an increase in electricity load in some areas. Increase the burden on the power grid.

From this point of view, in fact, the more suitable charging method for electric vehicles is household slow charging piles. However, due to the fact that there are still a lot of old communities in China, they are limited by the basic power grid and load, and the installation of charging piles is not supported. In addition, when electric vehicles use slow charging, the charging time is generally as long as 8-10 hours, and the grid will be occupied for a long time. The load pressure is also not small, especially in the summer peak period of electricity consumption, which will be accompanied by rapid growth in the future. The number of electric vehicles and how the grid can bear such a large load is indeed a big problem.

Write at the end

The development of electric vehicles and new energy vehicles is intended to be low-carbon, environmentally friendly, energy-saving and emission-reducing. However, in the process of rapid development, we seem to become too idealistic. When events such as “power curtailment” occur, we Only then will I realize that there are still difficulties of this kind in reality that need to be solved urgently. In the process of developing new energy vehicles and electric vehicles, we should not act too hastily. The current infrastructure and grid load still have many problems to solve, and we are far from ready to face the surge in the number of electric vehicles. In the current power structure where 70% thermal power is the mainstay, it is not appropriate to talk about the environmental protection of electric vehicles alone. Just imagine, if all domestic fuel vehicles are turned into electric vehicles, how much coal resources do we need to invest in power generation? Although there are many difficulties, we don't have to worry too much. After all, the name of China's "infrastructure madman" is not for nothing.