The U. S. Electric Grid: Will It Be Our Undoing?
Posted by Gail the Actuary on May 11, 2008 - 12:00pm
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: economic system, electric grid [list all tags]
Quite a few people believe that if there is a decline in oil production, we can make up much of the difference by increasing our use of electricity--more nuclear, wind, solar voltaic, geothermal or even coal. The problem with this model is that it assumes that our electric grid will be working well enough for this to happen. It seems to me that there is substantial doubt that this will be the case.
From what I have learned in researching this topic, I expect that in the years ahead, we in the United States will have more and more problems with our electric grid. This is likely to result in electrical outages of greater and greater durations.
The primary reason for the likely problems is the fact that in the last few decades, the electric power industry has moved from being a regulated monopoly to an industry following more of a free market, competitive model. With this financing model, electricity is transported over long distances, as electricity is bought and sold by different providers. Furthermore, some of the electricity that is bought and sold is variable in supply, like wind and solar voltaic. A substantial upgrade to the electrical grid is needed to support all of these activities, but our existing financing models make it very difficult to fund such an upgrade.
If frequent electrical outages become common, these problems are likely to spill over into the oil and natural gas sectors. One reason this may happen is because electricity is used to move oil and natural gas through the pipelines. In addition, gas stations use electricity when pumping gasoline, and homeowners often have natural gas water heaters and furnaces with electric ignition. These too are likely to be disrupted by electrical power outages.
Introduction
The whole discussion of electric grids may be a foreign topic for some readers. Because of this, let me start off with a couple of analogies:
1. Sometimes the analogy of water in pipelines is used as being similar to electricity and the electric grid. Transmission lines are like pipes. Voltage is like water pressure that forces electricity over long distances. Amperage is the amount of water flowing through the pipe. Our big challenge is that what we want the pipes to do is constantly changing, because of regional load shifting, peak demand, and intermittent generation. Sometimes we are slamming the system with a large slug of water. At other times, we have a trickle, but we still want an even flow out of the faucet. With these stresses, it is easy for the electrical system to get the equivalent of banging pipes and chattering faucets.
2. When I rented my first apartment in graduate school, I soon discovered it had exactly two 15 amp circuits. If I wanted a window air conditioner, it needed to be a small one, and it needed to be on the opposite circuit from the refrigerator. If I wanted to use an electric iron, I needed to think carefully regarding where I could plug it in, without blowing a fuse. I always needed to be aware of what was running on which circuit, if I wanted to keep the lights on.
The US electric grid is clearly not as bad as the wiring on my first apartment, but there are some similarities. The grid dates from a period not too much after the wiring in my apartment.
The US Electrical Grid in the 1960s
The current electric grid has its origins in the 1960s. One article noted that our current grid dates from the time when Frank Sinatra was in his prime, before a man walked on the moon, and before cell phones were invented.
At that time, electric utilities were pretty much local operations. Each utility was vertically integrated--that is, handled the entire supply chain of electricity production and distribution. The transmission system was set up so as to optimally serve its local area. There were some transmission lines to nearby utilities for use in emergencies, but the transmission grid was mostly set up to serve local customers.
Utilities were generally regulated as monopolies, and allowed to pass costs on to customers. One of the utility's costs was the upkeep of transmission lines. Since these were necessary for operation, these were kept in good repair.
This model seemed to work for the electric system of the day. The most important law at that time was the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), passed in 1935. Under PUCHA, electricity was a regulated industry, covering both generation and transmission.
Partial Deregulation of the Electric Industry
Starting in the late 1970s, deregulation became the fashion for many industries, including trucking, airlines, natural gas, telecommunications, banking, and health care. The law that opened the door to partial electricity deregulation was the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1980 (PURPA), passed when Jimmy Carter was president. The law was intended to encourage efficiency in electricity production and to help the "little guy".
Under PURPA, a utility was forced to purchase electricity from any "qualified" producer. To qualify, a system either had to produce electricity using an alternative source such as wind or solar, or had to meet a very modest efficiency standard. Natural gas production could qualify under the efficiency standard.
In the years after 1980, there was a move toward free market economics and capitalism. Under the new model, the purpose of a utility was to make money for its stockholders. Growth was an important objective. In some states utilities were forced to divest of their assets, with the idea that the smaller pieces would encourage competition. Power plants were bought and sold, and the new buyers were not necessarily in the utility business. Some buyers were hedge funds.
Electricity became a commodity like any other commodity, with widespread trading in electricity contracts, futures, and other derivatives. The financing model even included securitization, using bonds backed by future revenues related to planned recovery of stranded costs. At one point, marketing of electrical energy became a huge source of revenue, apart from the actual generation of the revenue.
After a few years of trying to the new system, some of the problems of the new approach became clear. In 2001, Enron's manipulations of market prices became apparent, and in December 2001, it filed for bankruptcy. There were also a number of other new entrants into the electricity business that also failed, including Mirrant Corporation and Allegheny Energy.
Since 2001, there has been some back-pedaling at the state level on deregulation, with a number of states suspending deregulation. At the federal level, the push has been in the direction of competition, but with more federal oversight. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 repealed PUHCA (the 1935 act which enabled local monopolies), but gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) a bigger role in the oversight of power transmission. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 also gives FERC oversight of an industry self-regulatory organization called North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC).
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) makes yet another stab at helping the grid. Title XIII of ESIA establishes a national policy for grid modernization, creates new federal committees, defines their roles and responsibilities, addresses accountability and provides incentives for stakeholders to invest. The act only "authorizes" these activities, but does not actually provide funding. As far as I know, the funding has not yet happened.
With these changes, the industry continues to be much more fragmented than it was prior to deregulation. There is some state regulation, but the model of financial profitability and growth continues to play a big role. There is still widespread trading of electricity across long distances and use of derivatives and other financial instruments. The federal government has taken some steps toward more direct involvement, but it is difficult to do very much very quickly in such a fragmented industry.
What happens to transmission under deregulation?
When a utility's primary role is taking care of its own customers, there is a strong incentive to carefully maintain its transmission and distribution system. Once the system is divided into many competing entities, many of whom do not have financial ownership of the transmission system, the situation changes significantly. Some of the impacts include:
1. Declining investment. There is less incentive to maintain transmission lines, since under a fractured system, no one has real responsibility for the lines. Also, profits are higher if equipment is allowed to run until it fails, rather than replacing parts as they approach the ends of their useful lives.
2. Overuse of lines between systems. Prior to deregulation, transmission lines between utilities were designed for use primarily in emergencies. Once widespread trading of electricity began, lines between utilities are put into much heavier use than they had been designed to handle.
3. More rapid deterioration. After deregulation, there is much more cycling on and off of power plants and the structures involved in transmission, to maximize profits by selling electrical power from the plant that can produce it most cheaply. This results in metal parts being heated and cooled repeatedly, causing the metal parts to deteriorate more quickly than they normally would.
4. Unplanned additions to grid. Wind and solar are added to the grid, with the expectation that the grid will accommodate them. "Merchant" (investor owned) natural gas power plants are also added to the grid, sometimes without adequate consideration as to whether sufficient grid capacity exists to accommodate the additional production.
5. Difficulty in assigning costs back. Since the industry is more fragmented, if any transmission lines are added, the cost must somehow be allocated back to the many participants who will benefit. Ultimately, the cost must be paid by a consumer. These consumer rates may in fact be regulated, so it may be difficult to recover the additional cost.
6. Increased line congestion. There is a need for more long distance transmission lines, because of all of the energy trading. There is a great deal of NIMBYism, so approval for placement of new lines is very difficult to obtain. The result is fewer transmission lines than would be preferred, resulting in more and more line congestion.
7. No overall plan. There is a need for an overall plan for an improved system, but with so many players, and so much difficulty in assigning costs to players, very little happens.
8. Little incentive to add generating capacity. As long as there is a possibility of purchasing power elsewhere, there is little incentive to add productive capacity. Profits will be maximized by keeping the system running at as close to capacity as possible, whether or not this causes occasional blackouts.
What do industry leaders say about the U. S. Electric Grid?
It is hard to find anyone who has anything very complimentary to say about the US grid. When Bill Richardson was energy secretary during the Clinton administration, he called the grid a third-world grid.
The Report Card for America's Infrastructure, prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers, gives the US Electric Grid a rating of D. Its summary says the following:
The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts.
An article from EnergyBiz by Edwin D. Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, says:
The average age of power transformers in service is 40 years, which also happens to be the average lifespan of this equipment. Combine the crying need for maintenance with a shrinking workforce, and we may find that the 2005 blackout that affected parts of Canada and the northeastern United States might have been a dress rehearsal for what's to come. Deregulation and restructuring of the industry created downward pressure on recruitment, training and maintenance, and the bill is now coming due.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Joseph Kelliher is quoted as saying:
The U.S. transmission system has suffered from underinvestment for a sustained period. In 2005, the expansion of the interstate transmission grid in terms of circuit miles was only 0.5 percent. At the same time, congestion has been rising steadily since 1998.
Transmission underinvestment is a national problem. We need a national solution. Pricing reform is an important part of the solution to this problem.
Summary of Where We Are Now
A this point, we have a grid that was designed many years ago. Many of the grid's components are near the end of their normal life spans. There is a process for getting new segments added to the grid, but it doesn't work very well. As a result, growth in transmission infrastructure tends to lag behind new additions to generating power.
One of the problems is getting permits for the siting of a new segment, when it has been approved. This can take years if local residents are opposed to additional lines in the area. One estimate is that actually getting a new transmission line installed can take up to 10 years.
Another issue is dividing up the costs among the various entities that would benefit. In some cases, there will be losers as well as winners--for example, a new line may be detrimental to a power plant that would be the low cost producer in the area, but because of the new line, a different plant from a distance can better compete. There may be several entities that benefit. There may be differences in the abilities of these organizations to charge their costs back to the ultimate customers.
There is of course the issue of obtaining funding for a new project, especially one with a very uncertain time frame. Costs relating to grid construction are increasing quite rapidly, for several reasons: Grid construction uses a lot of metals whose cost has been rising recently; China is rapidly building its grid, competing for available transformers and other components; and many of the materials are imported, and are affected by the declining dollar. In addition to the higher cost, there can also be delays in getting equipment, because of the competition from China and other buyers for available equipment.
The grid is now being used extensively for long distance transportation of electricity and for switching among providers so as to obtain electricity at the lowest cost. The grid was never designed for these uses, so it is stressed by them. One of the results is increasing congestion. One particular area of concern is the "Eastern Interconnection".
The extent to which congestion has been rising in the Eastern Interconnection is shown in Figure 2.
While I have not shown a graph, another area with excessive congestion is Southern California. Changes to the grid structure are needed to relieve stress in this area as well.
One factor that affects line congestion is the relative cost of producing electricity for different types of fuels. The greater the differential in costs (usually natural gas higher than coal and nuclear), the more the financial incentive there is to import lower cost electricity from a distance. Natural gas prices have recently been rising. If this continues, this will put further pressure on utilities to import electricity from a distance created using coal or nuclear, rather than using locally produced electricity from natural gas.
Until now, additional wind capacity has simply piggy-backed on the general capacity of the grid. According to Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, spare capacity is now depleted, and new transmission capacity will need to be added to accommodate more wind energy. Even with the existing amount of wind energy (only about 9,339/405,582 = 2% of Texas's total electricity, based on EIA production data for 2007), there have been reports of near rolling-blackouts in Texas, when the amount of wind energy suddenly dropped.
In Figure 3, I list states that are importers and exporters of electricity in 2006, based on EIA data. California and many of the Eastern states are big importers. Big exporters include coal producing states like Wyoming and West Virginia, and several states with large nuclear facilities. The percentages of imports and exports shown on Figure 3 are for the full year. It is likely that during peak periods, imports and exports will be much higher percentages than the amounts shown.
Federal legislation was passed in 2005 and 2007 which should help the grid situation a little, but it still leaves the many individual operating entities to share responsibilities and costs. The basic model is still one of competition, with governmental and industry organizations trying to get the various entities to work together for the common good.
What Changes Are Needed to the Grid?
We would have a very large task if we simply wanted to fix the grid to do what it was originally planned to do, since many of the grid's elements are close to the ends of their useful lives. Unfortunately, nearly everyone who looks at the situation believes that a major upgrade to the grid is needed, rather than just patching the current system. From my reading, I have identified three basic changes that people believe to be necessary, over and above just getting the old system into better operating order. These are
1. Extra High Voltage Backbone. FERC commissioner Suedeen Kelly has been quoted as saying:
In order to truly capture not only the benefits of competition in generation but also to facilitate increased use of renewable resources, I am convinced that we will need not just to upgrade our electric grid but also to reconfigure it. We need a true nationwide transmission version of our interstate highway system; a grid of extra-high voltage backbone transmission lines reaching out to remote resources and overlaying, reinforcing, and tying together the existing grid in each interconnection to an extent never before seen. To get to that end state, we must have cost allocation provisions in place that can accommodate such wide ranging benefits.
2. Analog to Digital Grid. If we are going to enable energy efficiency, many believe we need to move from an analog to a digital grid. James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, says :
If you’re going to enable energy efficiency, you have to move from an analog to a digital grid with new transformers and new meters capable of two-way communication.
The Smart grid concept is very closely related to the digital grid. At the Green Intelligent Buildings Conference, keynote speaker Paul Ehrlich said:
We need to find ways to make the grid smarter, to make buildings smarter, and to have these smarts communicate with each other.
3. Real-time Transmission Monitoring System. With such a system, it would be possible to react more quickly to sudden shifts in power needs or power availability, and prevent cascading blackouts. Adopting such a system would not be simple. A 2006 study by FERC lists these steps:
• Define What a Real-Time Monitoring System is, What it Should Accomplish, and How
to Accomplish it
• Evaluate Existing Real-Time Monitoring Technologies and their Limitations
• Identify Required Communications and Related Security and Operating Issues
• Define Data Requirements
• Identify Promising Emerging Technologies
• Decide what Data Should be Shared, with Whom, and When
• Decide Who Should Operate, Use, and Maintain the System
• Identify Potential Participants Involved in Establishing a Real-Time Monitoring System
• Consider Cost and Funding Issues
How do we get from where we are now, to where we need to be, in a reasonable amount of time?
I am having a very difficult time seeing how this can be done. There are just too many entities and too many funding issues to make a transition from a neglected old system to a much-improved new system in a reasonable length of time. Our current economic model seeks growth and the maximization of profits. This economic model does not facilitate large groups of entities working together for the common good.
The transformation seems unlikely to succeed, if for no other reason than the fact that the cost of the new system is likely to be very high. Electric rates will already be increasing because of higher natural gas prices and the cost of building additional nuclear power. Adding the costs for a substantial upgrade to the transmission system at the same time would be very significant burden for the consumer. If we are dealing with peak oil at the same time, this will add an additional stress. It is difficult to believe that politicians and state regulators will allow such large costs to be passed back to consumers.
If anything would work to produce the desired result, it would seem to be something that approaches nationalization of the electric supply industry. If this were done, the problem of conflicting objectives could be greatly reduced. I have a hard time envisioning current leaders accepting such a radical approach, however.
What will happen if we just continue business as usual?
It seems to me that as more and more of transmission infrastructure exceeds its normal life expectancy, there will be more and more blackouts. Areas where there is high congestion, such as the Eastern Interconnection and Southern California, would seem to be particularly at risk. It seems like some of these blackouts could be very long (two weeks?).
With the current system, it takes longer to get new transmission lines in place than to build new natural gas or wind generating capacity. Because of this, we are gradually increasing the amount of constriction in the grid. We may have to forgo adding new generating capacity, particularly of wind, until sufficient additional transmission lines can be added.
Nuclear plants are big enough that they often can supply power to a fairly large area. If new nuclear plants are added, it may be difficult to add enough transmission lines to use the power they generate optimally. We may find ourselves able to use only part of the power the new plants are capable of generating because of transmission difficulties.
How about the longer-term outcome?
Longer term, if we cannot get the problem fixed, it seems likely that we will revert back to something closer to what we had in the 1960s, with local electric utilities serving an immediate area. There may still be some long-distance sale of electricity, but less than today, if the grid cannot support it. If some areas do not have enough locally-generated power, they may be forced to have planned blackouts, perhaps for several hours a day.
There would almost certainly be indirect impacts, if some areas of the country are subject to periodic electric outages. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there may be impacts on oil and natural gas use, either because of problems with pipelines, or because of problems with people's equipment that uses natural gas, but has electric ignition.
It is hard to know where the impact of intermittent electricity would end. For example, electric power plants currently get their fuel from very long distances. Georgia imports coal from Wyoming to run its power plants. Most uranium is imported from overseas. It is possible that some of these supply lines could be interrupted as an indirect result of the electricity disruptions, further disrupting electric power. The interconnections of electricity with petroleum, natural gas, and other operations could be the topic of another post.
If we cannot get the electrical grid upgraded, it seems like we will need to downgrade our expectations for applications such as electrified rail and plug-in electric hybrid cars. These will work much less well if there are frequent electric outages in much of the country. We may also need to downgrade our expectation for newer renewables because of the intermittent nature of their output, and the inability of local grids to handle this type of input. Efforts at higher efficiency may also be hindered, if we are unable to make the grid "smart".
References
I link to a number of studies and presentations in the post. In addition, I should also mention:
Electricity: 30 Years of Industry Change Presentation by David K. Owens, Executive Vice President, Edison Electric Institute, April 7, 2008.
Light's Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means to You by Jason Makanski, published by John Wiley in 2007.
Lines Lacking to Transmit Wind Energy USA Today, February 26, 2008.
State Almost Saw Rolling Blackouts Dallas Morning News, February 28, 2008.
2007 Long-term Reliability Assessment North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
Previous Electricity Article
Thank you for a thorough analysis. This certainly clarifies some of the obstacles to "electrification of transport" which a lot of people are talking about.
My vote would be to put forward just such a proposal for "nationalization" of the electric supply industry (or something approaching it). The seriousness and systemic nature of our energy problems have still not dawned on a lot of people, and when they do, probably a lot of "radical" solutions will suddenly seem to be "common sense."
Keith
That would be something to thing about - The Oil Drum issues a press release in favor of nationalizing the grid. I think it would take a lot more than a press release or two, to get the idea thought about.
If we had a paid staff of a few hundred, it would be easier to propose radical solutions, and follow up on them.
I think it's important to look at solutions as well as problems.
This is one area where DSM (especially PHEVs) can help. By levelling the average demand and helping to shave the peaks, the thermal cycling of equipment can be reduced and the average power transferred can be increased.
This does not help much with intermittent and variable sources such as wind, but it's possible that CAES might reduce the issues.
The two kinds of solar installation (central and distributed) are very different in this regard. Central systems (e.g. concentrating solar thermal) require transmission from the plant to the user, but distributed PV at the consumption site requires no transmission at all. If this is used in addition to DSM systems such as V2G systems or ice-storage A/C, the load on transmission can be both reduced and smoothed.
There was a Demand Side Issue pointed out below somewhere that I thought deserved consideration, which was the theoretical 'burst' of demand that would accompany a few hundred-thousand PHEV's getting plugged in in the evening. Of course, we've always been in a situation where a massive pile of industries have powered up at 6am, 7am, 8am etc.. so maybe the much more diffused startup loading of the 'Evening Charge' might be silly from the getgo, but I wondered if the idea of V2G and Smart Chargers/Inverters might also be able to be TOU price driven, with the grid sending a pricing stream of info based on its overall capacity. If it's been maxed out, the prices go up and any number of smart appliances and cost-aware businesses downshift until the prices balance out.
EDIT (AND.. if the selling prices are high enough, the really smart charger/inverters might be able to opt to 'Sell High' for a spell, before they 'Buy Low' again.. further balancing the loads)
Bob
+1
I for one would be reluctant to keep cycling my battery, thus reducing its lifespan and raising my overall cost. The higher price offered by the utility would have to be very high to make that worth it. But it won't be high enough to compensate for the cost of battery energy because it will have been set to obtain energy from other, less expensive renewable sources.
Regardless, I also fall into the camp that the day of the individual owning a car is coming to a close. We are going to enter Energy Descent largely with the infrastructure we have now and the turnover will be very slow. As the economy continues its deterioration and the unemployment numbers mount, this will become increasingly obvious to people. Vehicle to Grid will be one of those wonderful ideas that we never got to see implemented, in my view.
-Andre'
"But it won't be high enough to compensate for the cost of battery energy because it will have been set to obtain energy from other, less expensive renewable sources."
Probably utilities would be willing to pay a very high premium for rarely used peak power - $1/KWH would, on those rare occasions, look very cheap. During the CA power crisis power was going for $20+/KWH.
"We are going to enter Energy Descent largely with the infrastructure we have now and the turnover will be very slow."
Well, let's discuss this again: That's only if you agree with Hirsch that GDP is 1:1 causally related to oil. OTOH, Ayres seems to contradict this entirely: he shows that GDP is related to applied energy (exergy), and only very loosely linked to energy BTU's (BTU's only explain 14% of GDP). Energy efficiency and energy intensity can change.
Further, oil is only one source of BTU's.
Hi, Nick.
Yes, I believe that Hirsch's conclusion is a good starting point. To be very clear, he does not say that it will exactly be 1:1. Here is exactly what he says:
This is quite a bit different than your comments might lead one to believe he said, no? He is distinguishing the correct order of magnitude, not a precise relationship. He then (correctly, I believe) goes on to demonstrate that for his purposes the correct order of magnitude is all one needs to continue the analysis.
And, yes, I am familiar with what Ayres says. For those reading along, here is a brief overview:
Estimating the Economic Impacts of Peak Oil
www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/blog/aangel/estimating-economic-impacts...
-André
"this is quite a bit different than your comments might lead one to believe he said, no? "
Well, we agree Hirsch's estimate is imprecise, but that wasn't central to my point. Rathre, I'm suggesting that the medium-term relationship between GDP and oil is closer to Ayres' number of .14, which is indeed an order of magnitude smaller.
I believe that I'm disagreeing with your interpretation of Ayres. This: "Ayers and Warr calculate a perfectly intuitive 0.7 for elasticity of demand (see Figure 10) using curve fitting when they introduce energy converted to useful work, and the correlation is excellent" applies to the relationship between GDP and "work", not GDP and BTU's. Therefore, "This is in line with Hirsch's ratios" would be incorrect. This: "Apparently there has been no significant push back from economists even though their paper essentially jettisons the prevailing economic theory." I would suggest is incorrect - Ayres' work does not jettison prevailing theory, it expands it by introducing the importance of energy efficiency, or intensity, as a variable link between BTU's and GDP.
Hi, Nick.
I think it better to look at the relationship between GDP and work, not GDP and BTU's because when we look for some result, the result is a function of work first and BTUs second. If I ask someone to build a house, they base their calculations on how much work is involved, then they split it between their men/women and the machines. The contractor will move jobs between men and machines (assuming the job can be done by either) based on cost, time and quality of the end product.
I view oil as "stored work" in much the same way some people view money as stored work. Converting to BTUs is an interesting exercise but since the various energy forms are not easily converted, or aren't easily converted without significant losses, I think it makes things unnecessarily complex to reduce that far. Work is a better measure for the purpose at hand. This might be why Hirsch chose to go that route.
Regardless, I'd have to go back and look at the context of the 0.14 you cite because it is very suspicious to me. If it turns out that you're using it in the context Ayers intended (which paper and which page?), one way I could see it being valid is with the proviso that much manufacturing continue to be done by other countries. This state of affairs is coming to an end as globalization begins to unwind.
When all is said and done, I'm happy for the moment to say that a 1/10th ratio for oil to work is too small and 10:1 is too great, which leaves 1:1 as the proper order of magnitude.
-André
"I view oil as "stored work" in much the same way some people view money as stored work. "
I don't believe that's how Ayres' uses it. Ayres view oil as a convenient form of BTU's, which must be translated through a complex process into applied work. That "process" can vary enormously in effectiveness and efficiency. For instance, a Prius performs the same work as a similar vehicle with half the MPG, but uses half the BTU's (and half the oil). Strictly speaking, a Prius can perform the same work as a Hummer (transporting people), and use 20% of the BTU's (and 20% of the oil). An EV also does the same work as a Hummer, and uses about 1/3 of the BTU's as the Prius, and 1/15 of the Hummer's, but uses perhaps 1/100th as much oil.
"I think it makes things unnecessarily complex to reduce that far"
I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean what I think you mean, then that's simplifying things way too far.
"This might be why Hirsch chose to go that route."
I think Hirsch is simply trying to emphasize the importance of preparation for peak oil. In doing so, he's reaching for quantitative support, to give his arguments authority. He'd be far better off simply pointing to the historical record, and saying: "It's clear that oil shocks are very bad for the economy.". Everyone would agree with him, and no one would be extrapolating beyond the short-term data.
"I'd have to go back and look at the context of the 0.14 you cite because it is very suspicious to me. If it turns out that you're using it in the context Ayers intended (which paper and which page?"
Edit: I looked through the Ayres article you cite, and couldn't find the number - it must have been in another article. Instead, Ayres shows it qualitatively in the chart on page 11 (definitions are on the bottom of page 9). You can see that the correlation between E (simple energy BTU's) and GDP is not very good, as explained in the 2nd paragraph on page 12, and Ayres rejects simple BTU's as a "production function" (an equation which explains GDP growth).
"one way I could see it being valid is with the proviso that much manufacturing continue to be done by other countries"
That's not the explanation. In fact, there's an easy way to show it: world oil consumption has been flat for the last several years, but GDP growth has been quite strong, stronger than for the US (which itself has grown 8% in the last 3 years, with flat oil consumption).
The 1:1 relationship has been backed by other studies. Here is a paper by C. Cleveland et al. that shows they can account for almost 100% of economic growth by using Fuel Quality as a factor plus energy (and a few other minor factors also). Essentially, once you account for electricity BTUs being more productive than coal BTUs (easier to use precisely) then the "unknowns" drop out of the relationship. This works in the US and across nations.
http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/.%5Cpdfs%5Cenergy_US_economy.pdf
Ayres uses exergy, which is very close to BTU parity. So he misses the largest secondary factor (after total fuel use itself).
"once you account for electricity BTUs being more productive than coal BTUs (easier to use precisely) then the "unknowns" drop out of the relationship"
First, I'd note that Hirsch is talking about oil: his hypothesis is that GDP will drop in a 1:1 relationship with oil, as oil declines. The summary of the paper quoted above suggests that Cleveland is talking about the relationship of GDP to all fuels, which is very different. That approach suggests that wind, solar and nuclear (or, god forbid, coal) electricity will substitute for oil quite nicely.
2nd, The paper says: "If we are to sustain current levels of economic growth and productivity as minimum long-run goals, alternative fuel technologies with EROI ratios comparable to petroleum today must be developed, or there must be unprecedented improvements in the efficiency with which we use fuel to produce economic output".
Well, we've done that. Wind, solar and nuclear combined with PHEV/EVs fits the first requirement (alternative fuel technologies with EROI ratios comparable to petroleum today), and the improvements in efficiency are being found.
3rd, this paper is from 1984 (so the data is 25-35 years old), well before it was clear that since that time US (and world) GDP would grow much more quickly than it's energy consumption (even including electricity). The best example of this is California, which has kept per capita electricity consumption flat over the last 25 years, while growing it's GDP relatively quickly.
4th, Ayres used "exergy services", which are not "very close to BTU parity". Exergy services are work performed. So, for instance, a Prius performs the same work as a similar vehicle with half the MPG, but uses half the BTU's. Strictly speaking, a Prius can perform the same work as a Hummer (transporting people), and use 20% of the BTU's. An EV also does the same work as a Hummer, and uses about 1/3 of the BTU's as the Prius, and 1/15 of the Hummer's...and so on.
Please note, this has been revised several times.
Per AC Propulsion, if your batteries have a limited calendar life (such as many types of lead-acid), you will waste their capacity if you just allow them to expire without using the available cycles.
You're confusing price with cost. The price of the RE production can be far higher than cost if immediate demand exceeds supply. Selling energy bought at times of low demand into the market at a time of high demand can be a good move if the price difference is greater than the cost of storage.
Hi, Engineer-Poet. For lead-acid, you may be correct, but I don't think I will want to accelerate the reduction of my lifespan any faster given the points I raise below. Hence, I don't think I am confusing anything, but I am open to discussing it if you can see something I can't.
Here are all the factors that I would consider before participating in a vehicle-to-grid program:
Given all the above, I doubt that it will be worth making a few extra dollars and using up my battery chemistry faster. I will be using, and presumably needing, that battery pack. We are already entering the period of waiting lists and shortages for highly desired things (c.f. rice; certain equipment will be next) and in my view people aren't factoring the economy into their plans nearly enough.
Once I get hold of a battery pack, the only person using up that chemistry will be me, my wife and anyone I loan my electric car to. I suspect this will be a very common sentiment.
-André
Others have looked deeply into those issues. Why not consider their conclusions?
That paper is some years old, and even if technology changes some of the assumptions (e.g. both calendar and cycle life are greatly increased) many of the conclusions are still likely to hold. Knocking a chunk off a car payment can help finance a long-lived but expensive battery.
You forgot "the ravages of time". In a world in which people give up quite a bit of information and other things to get freebies, I suspect that many people will take a discount on their batteries and charging in return for letting the utility use them to manage the grid better.
Hi, Engineer-Poet.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you point out that the conclusions were drawn several years ago. That means they were formed in a pre-peak world using the typical economic and monetary discount functions we've all come to understand.
What I am saying, however, is that not many people I come across have done the work of reassessing their projects in the light of a post-peak economy. For instance, I think the project will have trouble even getting financing, never mind convincing people (who won't own the cars because we're heading into a depression) that it's in their interest to lend out their batteries.
I think this is fun to think about but has exactly 0% probability of becoming a large-scale reality. If the world economy, suffering from shortages that mess up our just-in-time systems, and sky-high oil prices, is declining at something like 2% to 5% per year, vehicle to grid is, in my view, going to remain one of those good ideas that we just didn't get done in time.
-Andre'
I think you're contradicting yourself there. Further, it's trivial to convince people to plug in; all you have to do is lease them the batteries at a reduced rate if they plug in, and assume the risk yourself. You manage the risk by treating the batteries well, and sell the vehicles by guaranteeing that they'll always have good batteries.
That's exactly the situation where electric propulsion is going to see extremely high demand (even if people pay for their own batteries and don't lease them), and all renewable energy supplies are going to be expanding like crazy (they may be the only part of the economy that grows much). V2G will be just the thing to help displace petroleum and glue the grid together.
Let's hope you're right :-)
-André
It occurred to me recently that we may be looking at the whole V2G problem the wrong way. Using cars' batteries to store and release large amounts of energy is problematic both in terms of battery life, and in terms of leaving the car owner with an unexpectedly "empty tank". But if there are large numbers of vehicles widely connected to a smart grid, the batteries can become a very substantial source of power (i.e. kW) without moving much in the way of net energy (i.e. kWh). There must be all kinds of short-term transients in the grid which are currently handled at the transmission end. If those transients were all smoothed out at a local level by a large number of grid connected batteries, I strongly suspect that the upstream generating assets would be greatly relieved and able to operate more efficiently.
Note that we're not talk about a sustained power emergency, or even a 15 minute spike in demand. I'm thinking more along the lines of peaks and drops measured in seconds or a few minutes. Though I'm sure there's a critical timescale there somewhere, at which point this sort of thing becomes really useful, and I don't have the background to know that that would likely be. So I may be offbase here.
Any utility types care to comment?
EPRI already funded the study and it's on-line for you (see especially section 2.1.2). It says your suspicions are correct.
One heaping buttload of other relevant reports in AC Propulsion's archive.
Or pumped hydro, which is a much more mature technology and doesn't use natural gas like existing CAES systems do.
Pumped storage can be built for about $100/kWh, based on this recent project and also based on these rough comparisons. As Alan mentioned in this thread, there are real-world pumped storage stations with operating efficiencies in excess of 80%.
It also turns out that hourly wind power and solar irradiation data for the entire year of 2007 is available online, letting one fully model what kind of wind/solar/hydro setup would be required to provide fully-reliable baseline generating capacity.
Parameters:
The first thing one notices is that solar and wind complement each other almost perfectly - wind is very poor in summer, when solar is strongest, and vice versa in the winter. Even with the much higher cost of solar power, the lowest-cost solution still uses it.
That lowest-cost solution gives baseload power for 15.8c/kWh.
It uses (nameplate) 4.2GW of wind, 2.0GW of solar PV, 27GWh of pumped storage, and produces a steady 1GW for 355 days of the year. Total cost is $6.3B (wind) + $7B (solar) + $2.7B (storage) = $16B, vs. $6B for 1GW nuclear, the other high-capital, low-O&M option. The wind system has a higher capacity factor, though (97% vs. 90%), and produces 3100GWh above and beyond its 1GW output; crediting that surplus power at 5c/kWh would drive the baseload price down to 14c/kWh.
Transmission and related costs would make the final retail price 15-20c/kWh, which is almost twice the 9.1c/kWh average US price. It's only about 20% above the average New England price, though, and is pretty comparable to European prices, suggesting that a 100%-renewable grid would be a fairly minor hardship to American electricity users.
Thanks for a very informative post.
Any idea of how much costs could be reduced by simply going for the lowest cost options?
So for instance in many areas of the mid-west, building more transmission lines might be expensive, so using solar in particular for peak power and wind where it is cheap would make sense, perhaps even for baseload combined with either biogas or hydro or maybe advanced CAES.
For other areas where the resources of wind and solar are not so good, nuclear would surely be the lowest cost option for baseload, and solar or wind could top it up.
May point is, that instead of stretching technologies to cover areas where they are not really suited, if we just went with the flow then I would guess power could be provided at costs not exorbitantly above current prices, and with minimum extra capacity on the grid.
In terms of nuclear vs. CAES vs. hydro-backed wind? Not really, although I suspect for the next few years the answer would be "100% nuclear, with some hydro for peaking". The main appeal of wind/solar/hydro is that they don't require fuel to operate and hence (a) don't generate pollution/waste as the function, and (b) reduce the potential for supply-chain disruptions. They're rarely the lowest-price options, although that may change in the next few years.
Neither do I have good information on the relative tradeoffs between using solar in cloudy areas vs. long-distance transmission. However, based on SS's links, HVDC transmission lines are ~$1M/GW/km. The US is about 4000km across, though, suggesting that transmitting solar from the SW is likely to be cheaper than using solar in less-favourable places like New England.
Wind power would also likely have to be shuttled around a fair amount, as which places had good wind shifted over the span of hours and days. There'd be a benefit to that, though, as highly-distributed wind would make the supply a lot more reliable, and would reduce the level of overbuilding needed. The data I have (wind power generated by the province of Ontario) is actually pretty small and represents only a little geographic distribution, so a large-scale US install would be expected to have the wind perform better - and hence be lower-cost and relatively more dependent on wind - than the optimal result here.
I think upgrading the grid is most likely a better option, both in terms of reliability and price.
Price-wise, some areas are simply much better for certain types of renewable generation than others. If solar is twice as efficient in AZ as NJ (roughly true), it may make more sense to send it over at a cost of 4c than to build twice as much generation capacity.
Reliability-wise, of course, a strong grid is obviously desirable. The demand-side variability for any one region is enormous, but like all variability it tends to smooth out when multiple regions are considered together. Being able to balance load across the entire country would make the system much more flexible. (Of course, you'd obviously want to design the system with firewalls to prevent a repeat of the cascading blackout of a few years ago.)
If building new transmission capability is indeed substantially cheaper than new capacity, that puts a very different light on North America's generating needs.
For the US average use is around 460GW, and it spreads over around 5 time zones, so good transmission capabilities would smear the peak load of around 1TW down to fairly close average needs, with an allowance for very cold or hot weather of course.
Under those conditions the need for peaking power would seem to be very limited, and might even possibly be met with stored biogas.
Was this simulation your work?
If so, you might want to publish it somewhere. What the heck, maybe on TOD. I'd be curious to see the the data and model.
You have noted that this is a fairly narrow, worst case scenario, but that would be worth a lot of emphasis: it doesn't include the effects of expanded DSM (especially using PHEV/EVs); nuclear; limited biomass or natural gas for peak generation and load following (beyond the 10 days specified);, etc, etc.
The price assumptions look pretty reasonable. Wind prices are a bit higher than that at the moment, due to scarcity pricing for wind turbines primarily and construction commodities secondarily. I would note that now that First Solar has demonstrated a PV panel manufacturing cost of $1.12/Wp (and Nanosolar has claimed well below that, with some level of credibility), it seems pretty likely that we'll get well below $3.50/Wp in the reasonably near future.
The data's from Ontario Hydro - you can download their hourly wind generation stats - and from a US solar research lab which lets you download hourly irradiance information (can't remember the name of the place offhand). I've taken both and scaled them to an average of 1.0 so I can apply different assumptions about capacity factors.
The "model" - if you can even call it that - is really just what I've said already. You fix the parameters (cost, capacity factor, efficiency, power output constraint, reliability constraints) and then run an optimization process to find the cheapest mix of wind/solar/hydro that satisfies the constraints.
Pretty much. The question I was interested in was "would the cost to generate baseload power from wind, solar, and hydro be affordable?" Alternatively, you could think of that as "is there a reasonable upper bound for electricity price generated without fuel?"
20c/kWh is, in my opinion, both reasonable and affordable.
My setup is obviously very simplistic, though, so there're almost certain to be much more efficient alternatives. For example, there're some projects starting up in Germany that aim to use biogas in addition to wind, solar, and hydro to provide baseload power, and I have no doubt that a more sophisticated system like that will be more effective than the simple one I modelled.
One thing I noticed is that a fair chunk of the capacity required in my setup is needed only for a few hours per year, meaning that coupling the system with something innately dispatchable - like biogas - has the potential to substantially lower costs. So I'm curious to see how these projects work out.
I've mostly played with this at $1.8M/MW and 28% capacity factor, since that's what I remembered. When posting, though, I figured I should back the figures up with links, and $1.5M/MW @ 34% is what the links I could find gave me as the most recent data. Perhaps the costs Pickens is projecting include a certain amount of economy-of-scale, but that would be appropriate to include here, too.
Yeah, I just mentioned the "current situation" parameter settings, but I've played around with "future tech" settings as well, which typically include lower capacity factors (the assumption being that building very large amounts will lower the average quality of the locations used) and much cheaper solar.
Reducing all the capacity factors by 20% and using $1.25M/MW for wind and $1/Wp for solar gives a cost of about 10.0c/kWh, with 2.1GW of wind, 4.7GW of solar, and 27GWh of pumped storage.
Including transmission costs and other overhead, that's about 50% more than the current US average, or about what people in New England pay. So I don't really see solar making power cheaper than it already is in the US, but neither do I see switching away from coal making power ruinously more expensive, either.
Hi Pitt,
As I noted in the May 10th Drumbeat, Hydro-Québec has signed contracts for 2,004 MW of new wind capacity at an average cost of $0.105 per kWh -- $0.087 per kWh for the wind installations themselves and a further $0.018 per kWh in related transmission and O&M expenses. The total price tag is $5.5 billion ($4.4 billion for the wind facilities and $1.1 billion in transmission infrastructure), but bear in mind provincial sourcing requirements would have presumably skewed the results (i.e., at least 60% of the cost of each wind farm must be incurred within the province of Québec and at least 30% within the Matane and Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine regions); one assumes in the absence of such restrictions the final price tag would have been somewhat lower.
Source: http://www.hydroquebec.com/communiques/index.html (Appel d'offres pour l'achat de 2 000 MW d'énergie éolienne : Hydro-Québec retient 15 soumissions)
Cheers,
Paul
The $1.5M/MW for windpower sounds a bit on the low side.
Costs are rising rapidly, and many of the parts are from Europe so the currency movements don't help
I think the $1.5M/MW may refer just to the actual turbines themselves, rather than with all the gubbins.
Here are a few links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/windpower.energy
Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10bn clean energy project | Environment | The Guardian
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-pickens_18bus...
T. Boone Pickens to import water, wind power to North Texas | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Business News
http://earth2tech.com/2008/02/25/texas-and-wind-wildcatting/
Texas and Wind Wildcatting « Earth2Tech
$1.5M/MW is mentioned in one of them, but appears to be just for the turbines - the other articles centre on £2M/MW
$2M/MW all up sounds more like it, and is about the same as UK DOE costings, which are themselves possibly a bit too low as they are slightly old.
Yes, but I think that's likely to be temporary, as I noted in my revised comment just above. Of course, both wind and solar scarcity pricing could persist for a while, as long as demand continues to skyrocket. I was pleased to see some evidence of an end to solar's scarcity pricing in the price discussion that Pitt referenced.
The economic case for pumped hydro has been just as good since Ludington was built, but it hasn't taken off. The two problems it can't avoid are shortage of suitable sites and fish kills. If the climate shifts in the direction of drought, the list of suitable sites will become even shorter.
CAES is an innovation in response to the inability of pumped hydro to scale or travel to drier, windier parts. True, the latest rev needs natural gas, but anything combustible would substitute; compressing the F-T off-gas from something like a Choren plant would store both compression energy and renewable fuel gas. An effective yield of 80% of the biofuel input is in direct-carbon fuel cell territory, and not to be sneezed at. The efficiency might be improved in other ways, but I'm going to have to find the time to run numbers before I propose this seriously.
"The economic case for pumped hydro has been just as good since Ludington was built, but it hasn't taken off. The two problems it can't avoid are shortage of suitable sites and fish kills. "
Well, I'm not sure about fish kills (my impression is that ludington uses nets), but I would think that Ludington could be replicated many times on the Great Lakes, especially in the Northern UP of Michigan, which desperately needs economic development.
The Yoop is a long way from the major transmission lines required to get power in and out, and I doubt that many folks there would want all the clearcut swaths required to host new ones.
The LP of Michigan is on top of several varieties of strata suitable for CAES. If we can get the efficiency up (or if we can produce enough biogas or other renewable fuel to drive current-generation CAES), it might be suitable.
"I doubt that many folks there would want all the clearcut swaths required to host new ones."
It would be an intesting thing to research. I suspect that some areas of the UP would be appropriate, and people up there really are dying for economic development.
In any case, I suspect PHEV/EVs will be more important. Even now there's probably 1 GWH of batteries in US hybrids, and we could have 1 TWH in 15 years, fairly easily.
And what % will be available during times of peak demand ?
Zero today.
I doubt much more than 10%. And how much can you draw down their batteries ? Unknown ATM.
And small diesels may win out over PHEVs (it would be my choice).
Alan
"And what % will be available during times of peak demand ? Zero today."
Some of the prototype PHEVs on the road today are participating in V2G trials, with PG&E, EPRI, Comverge, etc.
On average, light vehicles are only in use 4% of the time. They'd charge at night, useage would peak during mid-load periods (before & after work), and they'd be available during peak periods in garages (residential & commercial). Sure, you'd need a little shared infrastructure at commercial parking garages (for some vehicles, not all - many are at home during the day), but look at the public outlets available in Minnesota and Canada for engine pre-heating.
If we needed to, we'd do it. Really not hard.
Of course, the first, primary value is in the very easy dynamic charging (G2V), not V2G. Everyone fixates on V2G because it's sexy, but dynamic charging would raise night time demand and soak up variance, which is just what wind needs.
Diesels are just fine, but a technological dead-end, because they'll always need fuel. PHEV's can eliminate fuel entirely, if you use them as NEV's. If not, they only eliminate 80%(!) of fuel consumption.
Wiring every workplace parking lot is a non-starter. And just WHY would McDonalds', the local CPA, doctor's office, dry cleaners, the shopping mall with 3,500 spaces, etc. go to the multi-thousands dollar cost of wiring their parking lots (million for the shopping center).
I remember reading that there are 5 parking spots for every car. LOTS of expensive wiring that is just not going to happen !
And what if people forget to plug in ?
Predicting mass consumer behavior for a novel behavior is impossible.
And the cost and time (where are THAT many electricians ?) to wire close to a billion parking spots ????
V2G is a "nice concept" that will have, at most, a small niche market of limited value.
Alan
"Wiring every workplace parking lot is a non-starter. "
Of course. Home garages will be more than enough. A few commercial spots will likely be wired, and reserved for such things. It will evolve.
"V2G is a "nice concept" that will have, at most, a small niche market of limited value."
Suppose 25% of vehicles (mostly in home garages) take advantage of it. That's huge. The grid services (as opposed to KWH's) that are most important don't need millions of vehicles.
Once again (for the 8th or 9th time) in the short term V2G is much less important than dynamic charging. The most important synergy between PHEV/EVs is that they'll soak up wind power when it isn't otherwise needed (night, or other peak production not at demand peak). OTOH, eventually V2G will certainly be extremely valuable.
Suppose 2.3% of all cars are plugged in when Peak Hits (most are at work w/o plugins, some/most are unwilling to drain their batteries, etc.)
That is not so huge.
As for soaking up wind when not needed, that is a non-starter. Whether local wind was calm or not last night, they will want a fully charged car in the morning.
Due to the massive energy demands of PHEVs (and EVs) directly (in energy to carry around payload - pax & cargo, and as many kg of batteries as they can manage) and indirectly (in supporting the energy intensive Suburbia that Engineer-Poet loves), they are not a good long term solution.
Measured in % of current US electrical production, an EV solution will directly take 15% to 17% of total generation.
An Urban Rail solution, when the indirect TOD effects are included, can generate electricity. TOD can save more than it Urban Rail uses. Worst reasonable case might be an additional +1% demand. *France uses 2.3% of electrical demand for transportation, but TGVs are the main users)
Best Hopes for LOTS of Urban Rail, Limited EVs, small diesels, and diverse TOD communities,
Alan
"Suppose 2.3% of all cars are plugged in when Peak Hits (most are at work w/o plugins, some/most are unwilling to drain their batteries, etc.) That is not so huge."
Actually, that would be enormous, for the kind of non-KWH grid services V2G could provide - it would be enormously valuable for utilities. 2nd, peak is just an artifical product of flat pricing, and will be easily dealt with with Time-of-Use metering to the extent desired - V2G will be a nice bonus.
"As for soaking up wind when not needed, that is a non-starter. Whether local wind was calm or not last night, they will want a fully charged car in the morning."
Not at all. First, the most important service PHEV/EV charging would provide is the increase in night time demand - inadequate night time demand is the single largest problem wind faces, and it's a problem for nuclear as well. 2nd, the car could be charged over a 12 hour period, and likely would take 3-4 hours, so there's enormous leeway. 3rd, we're mostly talking PHEV's here, precisely to prevent "range anxiety".
"Due to the massive energy demands of PHEVs (and EVs) directly...and indirectly... they are not a good long term solution."
We have plenty of electricity. Heck, Time-of-Use metering is likely to reduce demand by 10-15% itself (that's what they found in Ontario) just from the consumption feedback. 15% more electrity is a very small problem - we could build it over 20+ years, and PHEV/EVs would allow much more wind buildup than otherwise.
Heck, the movement of 50M households from suburbia to "urbia" alone would cost much more in $ and E than you'd save from TOD.
I sympathise with your advocacy of rail. I think it's a much better way to live, and I think it's badly neglected. More rail for commuting and travel between urban centers would be good in every way. More rail for freight would be wonderful. But, moving everyone into dense urban living would be very slow (we're only building 600K new living units per year right now), and enormously expensive,. New Orleans is not an example of such living - it's density is comparable to most moderately dense suburbs. Further, rail really can't provide 100% of travel needs - more than 50% would be an enormous pain to try to shoe-horn ourselves into (without shoe-horning ourselves into dense "urbia", which would bring other, enormous problems).
I have never seen an estimate of how much electricity an EV solution might take. Where do you get the 15% to 17%? it sounds like a reasonable number.
If one assumed that 75% of that 15% to 17% would occur at night, and 25% would occur during the day, how much of that could be met by currently "spare" electrical capacity, and how much of it would need to be produced by some variable type of generation, such as natural gas? I suspect the answer would depend on how good our transmission system is. If we could simply import spare capacity from one part of the country to another, we could fully use our spare capacity, before needing to add peaking (or intermediate) generation. Without really good transmission, areas like California (with limited base power) may find themselves needing to generate most of the extra electricity for EV, in one way or another.
Engineer-Poet estimated the energy use for an EV at 250watts/mile.
So if you want to do 10,000miles that needs 2500kw.
If you are powering it with solar that would mean that you would need a 1.5kw set-up to run your car for roughly the 10,000 miles at 20% capacity, in the winter northern areas might need to supplement the power or build more, if you are using nuclear you need around 0.3kw average flow for it.
At 90% nuclear availability you might need around 33GW of nuclear capacity for 100million cars at this mileage, or around 22 of the new Areva 1.6GW reactors.
That would seem to be enough to keep things ticking over until you could get back to 200million cars doing 20,000 miles, or whatever the current figure is.
So if you could cover the whole lot with EV's then 15% or so sounds reasonable - around 70GW out of current average generation of 460GW.
You reduce the costs of powering up if you use nuclear or coal by using night tariffs - if you improved the metering system then the savings from that alone would do most of the job of powering the cars, as has been noted.
I don't think it really necessary to worry about that level of supply initially, as it would take a while to ramp up EV production and battery production, but you could certainly have substantial personal mobility without placing undue strains on the grid or generating capacity.
Ahem.
Apologies that I miss-stated the terms - I was clear on what you were referring to, and you will see if you check my maths that they were used as such - but we do need you engineering types to keep up on the straight and narrow!
Thanks, and apologies again.
Gail, .25KWH/mile x 12K miles/car x 210M cars = 630TWHs.
630/8760 hours per year = 72GW
72GW/440GW = 16.3% additional load.
According to a recent study, 84% of this could be handled with current generation and transmission capacity. Now, this would require additional fuel - we should really supply this power from wind.
"areas like California"
Both Texas and CA are building transmission to carry wind power where it's needed in CA.
I wonder if you have a link to that study, Nick? - sounds interesting.
I'd also just like to draw out to make it more obvious that these figures mean that around 175million cars could be driven for around 12k each within present generating and transmission limits, give or take, and getting up to that number of EV or PHEV vehicles would take some time, so there is no immediate issue.
If we went down that sort of path and did not manage to build much additional wind capacity but made do with present coal, gas and nuclear capacity it's apparent that even then in CO2 emission terms we would likely be better off, as vast quantities of oil burn would be saved although coal and gas would be up - EV motors are simply much more efficient.
I'd also like to point out that a small amount of PV on the roof of a car could do wonders for assisting the air conditioning in hot climates and provide a wee bit of comfort without sacrificing fuel economy.
You don't have to wire all of them, just enough to serve the demand from people who want to plug in.
Several malls I've been to would be easy to wire; parking structures have lots of good anchor points for conduit and junction boxes. I've worked at two places where the employee parking was all structures, and stayed at hotels where most of it was structures.
Businesses with lots of in-out traffic would have a relatively small proportion of people wanting to plug in. But the CPAs, doctors, and employees of the mall probably would. You wire their spaces, and provide hookups for a few customers too (let them feed the electric meter).
People who go to the mall and pay for a charge at one of the wired spaces aren't going to forget.
You have strayed past your area of expertise.
The economic case for pumped hydro has been just as good since Ludington was built, but it hasn't taken off
Cheap natural gas ($2 to $3 Mcf for years) made pumped storage unattractive for peaking power. Today NG is about $11.50/ Mcf.
In addition, a surplus of nuclear power (or wind or coal) is needed to fill the pumped storage. After a decade of building little except NG fired generation, a number of areas of the USA do not have surplus non-NG generation.
The two problems it can't avoid are shortage of suitable sites and fish kills.
It is easy to filter out any fish much larger than fingerlings if fish kill is an issue (it usually is not).
And you can site pumped storage on a desert if you have enough water to 1) fill it initially and 2) make up evaporation losses. Economics make using an existing lower reservoir preferred (natural or man-made) but it is hardly required.
CAES is a total loser compared to pumped storage due to thermodynamic losses from adiabatic heating and cooling. Better to build HV DC lines to a good pumped storage site in the toughest cases than build CAES with on-going losses.
Best Hopes for Better Understanding,
Alan
Quoth Alan:
Not requiring fuel doesn't fix the problems with geography.
In theory, you could build a pumped-storage system using Lake Mead as the lower reservoir. In practice, a whole lot of people have prior claim on the water that would evaporate. We still haven't figured out how to make more water.
There are at least three things there:
That last one can use some explanation. A quick look at the PR material for Ludington finds a reservoir capacity of 27 billion gallons, and a set of 6 turbines capable of taking 33 million gallons/minute. It thus can operate at full power for approximately 13.6 hours. This would do for a daily solar cycle, but not for extended cloudy periods or for several days of calm winds. To get even this much requires an artificial lake of some 2.5 square miles, plus the surrounding dike; that's a lot of real estate. The large depth swings and currents make this lake unsuitable for recreation.
CAES systems have a very small footprint on the surface. Anticipated storage for the first systems is on the order of 50 hours (p. 18), and more could be added without additional physical plant (just larger underground reservoirs). Fuel is an issue, but co-location with an RE plant producing combustible gas as a byproduct (e.g. a Choren biomass-to-liquids plant) would allow renewable fuel gas to be stored and retrieved just like compressed air. Such a plant could be located in the interior of Michigan, on the prairie of Minnesota, or the Flint Hills of Kansas where large bodies of water and elevation differences are hard to come by. CAES can quite literally do things that pumped hydro cannot.
I suspect that there are further possibilities. For instance, we could steal a trick from the proponents of concentrating solar thermal with underground hot-water storage. A system using evaporative cooling in the air compression stages and storing a mixture of compressed air and steam would eliminate the need for intercooling between compression stages and the consequent energy losses; the water would be recovered as condensate during the expansion phase. I'm trying to find a set of on-line steam tables which is complete enough to let me check this out easily; I'm not about to type in several pages of data from my CRC manual, and I don't have a scanner.
We're going to want the HVDC lines anyway, as the geographical averaging they provide will decrease the need for storage of any sort. However, if you want to get the maximum benefit from a front moving across the plains states without ridiculously overbuilding the transmission network, some kind of storage close to the generators is A Really Good Idea.
You say, I think correctly, that this is a problem that will require national leadership, but that nationalization is politically impossible. Personally I think that trying to nationalize the country's transmission assets would also likely be a practical disaster: can you imagine the same kinds of folks that, say, work for the TSA trying to figure out how to make all those disparate grids work?
But it occurs to me that a less extreme, more politically expedient approach is possible: Create a national transmission grid authority, who's mandate is to build and maintain a very high voltage national backbone system, and to negotiate interconnection with the multitude of local existing grids. Such an entity would have to have the power to essentially overrule local entities that were being obstructive, but would still largely avoid the biggest practical challenge to nationalization, which is the sheer un