Electrification without energy storage in the US is not going to be able to happen, said a battery industry expert.
Terry Murphy, CEO of chemicals company Hammond Group, told Battery Council International’s briefing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday there is surging electricity demand. A 10-fold increase in the last two years came just from electric vehicles (EVs), he said.
“Electric vehicles are hugely destabilising to the grid,” he said. “You plug in an electric vehicle and you’re asking for a lot of power instantaneously. And in some markets in California and other places, EVs are being mandated that we’re not going to sell internal combustion engines anymore.”
As communities expand and require more electric power, more transmission lines will have to be built, possibly with microgrids and large storage facilities at the end of the lines.
By 2050, 2 trillion KWh of energy storage of intermittent renewable energy will be required to support the US energy infrastructure, he said, referring to official government data.
An average American EV household uses about 30kWh per day, he said. “That’s the same amount of energy to recharge an EV for 100 miles. One household is equal to 100 miles. So now I go to plug in my electric vehicle and they used to be 300-mile range.
“A lot of them are coming out to be 500-mile range. So I plug in the electric vehicle and all of a sudden I’m demanding five households of energy.”
He said that is a big disruptor to the grid. But things are actually worse: previously, households were asking for 30kWh over a 24-hour period. Now, plugging in an EV is equivalent to adding 150 houses to the grid instantaneously, he said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not going to be able to happen. You have to have storage. We’re not even going to be able to build out the grid that quickly.”
Pete Stanislawczyk, chief commercial officer at East Penn Manufacturing, spoke about the domestic supply chain. Kimberly Medford, president of ENTEK, outlined plans for a new $1.5 billion separator plant in Indiana, which will double its workforce to 1,000 over the next five years.
Mark Matthews, senior vice president at battery maker EnerSys, told the audience about battery diversification.
Republican Representative Dan Meuser outlined his drive to introduce new legislation to remove a chemical tax, as reported previously.
Photo: Terry Murphy of Hammond Group: “Electric vehicles are hugely destabilising to the grid.”
