![\"ev](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ev-charger-norway.jpg\")
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Norway has more electric cars per capita than any other nation.\u00a0 They have over half a million EVs, one for every 11 people.\u00a0 The combined capacity of all those rolling batteries is a whopping 34 gigawatt-hours.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
That’s an average of 6 kilowatt-hours of storage per Norwegian, or 13 kilowatt-hours per household — a Tesla Powerwall<\/a> worth of storage for every home.\u00a0 If they keep adding EV battery capacity at this rate, once road transport is 100% electric each household will average around 88 kilowatt-hours of energy storage on wheels.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Australia is following in Norway’s footsteps — or tyre tracks — and is starting to buy large numbers of electric vehicles<\/a>.\u00a0 To help get us off fossil fuels, the Government should encourage EV purchases as a priority.<\/p>\r\n Ideally, any Australian EV incentives will favour cars that can provide grid-support via Vehicle to Home (V2H) and Vehicle to Grid (V2G) services.\u00a0 But even if EVs only ever act as a load, they will still be useful for grid management by storing surplus renewable energy generation.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n In 2021 64.5%<\/a> of new Norwegian car registrations were full EVs.\u00a0 For the first 3 months of this year, it was 82.9%.\u00a0 When plug-in hybrids are included, it rises to 91.1%.\u00a0 Conventional petrol and diesel vehicles were only 6.2% of registrations.\u00a0 The table below shows vehicles registered in 2022’s first quarter.\u00a0 I added translation notes from Norwegian<\/a> in red:\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Damn Norwegians! I can forgive them for using words such as “Antall” for number and “Andel” for percentage, but using a comma instead of a decimal place is the devil’s work.<\/p><\/div>\r\n There are around 3.4 million road vehicles in Norway with 4 or more wheels.\u00a0 With over 500,000 full EVs, this means 15% are all-electric.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Below I’ve shown how many hydrogen cars were sold in the first quarter compared to battery electric vehicles:<\/p>\r\n Battery electric vehicles outsold hydrogen vehicles by 8,933 to 1.\u00a0 Hydrogen cars are not taking off, and never will.\u00a0 Some people think hydrogen will be useful for heavy road transport, but I’m confident lower running costs will result in heavy trucks being battery electric.<\/p>\r\n Tesla produces the best selling EVs in Norway.\u00a0 The table below shows the top 10 best sellers in March this year:<\/p>\r\n This information is taken from the Norwegian site called OF.\u00a0 This link should take you to a translated page<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\r\n If I take battery pack sizes from the European EV Database<\/a> and put them in the list of top 10 Norwegian EVs for March, I get the following:<\/p>\r\n This makes it clear Norwegians like to buy EVs with large battery packs1<\/a><\/sup>. If I assume for EV models with more than one battery pack size that two-thirds have the smallest while the rest have the largest, I get the following figures:<\/p>\r\n Once the battery packs of the few EVs outside the top 10 are added, it comes to more than 650,000 kilowatt-hours.\u00a0 Acquiring that much battery storage on wheels in a single month is an impressive achievement for a country with only 5.5 million people.\u00a0 It comes to 0.25 kilowatt-hours per Norwegian household.\u00a0 Note these aren’t Australian sized households with an average of 2.6 people.\u00a0 Norwegians, quite understandably<\/a>, can’t stand each other, so their average household size is only 2.1 people.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n If Norwegians continue at this rate, over 12 months they will add another 3 kilowatt-hours of EV battery storage per household.<\/p>\r\n On top of this, Norwegians are also getting a teeny bit of additional battery storage inside plug-in hybrids. \u00a0I expect plug-in hybrid sales have peaked and before long new car sales will be almost 100% EV.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n If we assume the average Norwegian EV battery pack size is 68 kilowatt-hours and ignore the smaller ones in plug-in hybrids, then Norway has around 34,000,000 million kilowatt-hours of battery storage on wheels.\u00a0 That’s 34 gigawatt-hours.\u00a0 Averaged out, it comes to…<\/p>\r\n Assuming battery pack capacity continues to average 68 kilowatt-hours, once Norway goes from their current 15% EV penetration to 100%, their battery storage on wheels will be…<\/p>\r\n To provide some comparison, a Tesla Powerwall 2 home battery system has 13.5 kilowatt-hours of usable battery storage when new.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Norway doesn’t have a problem integrating new renewable generation into its grid because it is almost entirely renewable<\/a> already.\u00a0 It appears to be 88% hydroelectric and 10% wind:<\/p>\r\n I tried to check whether “production capacity” meant production or capacity. My Norwegian is extremely limited, but as far as I can tell, the answer is “yes”.<\/p><\/div>\r\n Their massive number of hydroelectric dams can store enough energy to power their grid for over 8 months:<\/p>\r\n While Norway’s grid is almost as clean and green as it can get without sucking CO2 out of the air, almost every other country has a dirtier grid.\u00a0 Replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with EVs will make it easier for these nations to reduce fossil fuel generation.<\/p>\r\n There are more than 20 million road vehicles in Australia with 4 or more wheels.\u00a0 If Australia had Norway’s 500,000 electric vehicles, that would only be 2.5% of the total.\u00a0 But even that would be useful for grid management.\u00a0 If you’re an EV owner, it’s plainly to your advantage to charge when it’s cheap, generally when all the solar is generating. \u00a0You can use your own solar power system<\/a>, or you can take advantage of everyone else’s solar panels by choosing an electricity plan with dirt-cheap daytime rates.\u00a0 There’s also no reason you can’t take advantage of both.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n ReAmped’s Advance Time of Use Plus tariff in SA offers daytime electricity for just 7.15 cents per kWh<\/p><\/div>\r\n EVs will make wind and solar energy generation more profitable by increasing grid demand when renewable output is high.\u00a0 This will result in more new renewables driving fossil fuels out of the market2<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\r\n If half a million EVs were all plugged into 7kW car chargers<\/a>, it would be technically possible to draw up to 3.5 gigawatts of power from the grid.\u00a0 That’s more than Australia’s largest power station<\/a> can generate.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Obviously, people aren’t going to keep their electric vehicles plugged in all the time.\u00a0 They’ll want to drive them at some point.\u00a0 But they’ll prefer to charge them when it’s cheap.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Instead of just drawing power from the grid, electric vehicles can also push power back in one of 2 modes:<\/p>\r\n Both of these are only being trialled in Australia3<\/a><\/sup>, \u00a0but they have huge potential.\u00a0<\/p>\r\nFull EVs: 86% Of New Vehicles<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Norway](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_q1.png\")
Hydrogen Cars Are No Go<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Hydrogen](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_hydrogen.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\nBest Selling EV Models<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Best](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_march.jpg\")
Average Battery Pack Capacity<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Battery](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_capacity.jpg\")
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Total Battery Storage On ‘Wegian Wheels<\/h2>\r\n
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EVs & Norwegian Grid Management<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Renewable](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_renew.png\")
![\"Hydro](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/norway_storage.png\")
<\/p>\r\nAustralian EVs & Grid Management<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Time](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/solar-sponge-tariff.png\")
V2G<\/h2>\r\n
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