SAN JOSE, California (AP):

Which draws more juice from the electric grid, a big-screen plasma television or recharging a plug-in hybrid car?

The answer is the car. But the electricity drawn by plasma televisions is easing the minds of utility company executives across the nation as they plan for what is likely to be a conversion of much of the United States' vehicle fleet from gasolene to electricity in the coming years.

Rechargeable cars, industry officials say, consume about four times the electricity as plasma TVs. But the industry already has dealt with increased electric demand from the millions of plasma TVs sold in recent years. Officials say that experience will help them deal with the vehicle fleet changeover.

engine changeover

So, as long as the changeover from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles is somewhat gradual, they should be able to handle it in the same way, Mark Duvall, programme manager for electric transportation, power delivery and distribution for the Electric Power Research Institute, said Tuesday.

"We've already added to the grid the equivalent of several years' production of plug-in hybrids," Duvall said at a conference on electric vehicles in San José. "The utilities, they stuck with it. They said, 'All right, that's what's happening. This is where the loads are going, and we're going to do this."'

Automakers, such as General Motors Corp and Toyota Motor Corp, are planning to bring rechargeable vehicles to the market as early as 2010. But speakers at the Plug-In 2008 conference say it will take much longer for them to arrive in mass numbers, due in part to a current lack of large-battery manufacturing capacity. Auto and battery companies still are working on the lithium-ion battery technology needed for the cars, and on how to link the battery packs to the vehicles.

manageable rate

"We see the vehicle-penetration levels coming at a rate that's manageable," said Efrain Ornelas, environmental technical supervisor with Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) in San Francisco. "It's not like tomorrow the floodgates are going to open and 100,000 vehicles are going to come into San Francisco or something like that."

Instead, the vehicles will show up by the thousands throughout Northern California, he predicted. PG&E will be able to track its charging patterns and plan accordingly for the future, he said.

Utility officials say they already are coping with increased demand, especially during peak-use periods in the afternoon and early evening. But the rest of the day, most utility companies have excess generating capacity that could be used to recharge cars.

But the preparation does not mean electric vehicles will be accommodated without problems and good planning, the officials say.

Since most electric cars will likely be charged during off-peak electric use times, utility companies should have no problem generating enough electricity. But since people with the means to buy electric cars likely will live in the same areas, utility companies worry about stress on their distribution systems, Ornelas said.

That means consumers will face many choices about when and where they charge up their cars and how much they want to pay for the electricity.