474 comments on The U. S. Electric Grid: Will It Be Our Undoing?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
474 comments on The U. S. Electric Grid: Will It Be Our Undoing?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“I'd put my money on solar energy… I hope we don't have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
—Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
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
Quebec's a great place for this kind of wind/hydro combo, since it has such an enormous amount of existing hydro capacity. I'd heard about the 2GW, but not about the plans for 12GW by 2016, which was welcome news.
Wind has about a 32% capacity factor across Canada, apparently, so presumably Quebec'll get about that. Assuming it's fully buffered by hydro (and so suffers about a 15% loss due to storage and transmission losses), that 12GW'll be the equivalent of 10 500MW coal plants running at 75% capacity factor. Pretty cool, far as I'm concerned.
Hi Pitt,
Just to clarify, the 12 GW figure is for all of Canada and not just Québec; apologies for any confusion.
What's interesting with respect to capacity factor is that Natural Resources Canada pegs BC, Alberta, Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland all at 42 per cent and Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick at 34 per cent, substantially higher than what is reported in this CBC article. This assessment is based on Environment Canada obtained at various monitoring stations located throughout each province.
See Table A-22 of http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/es/etb/ctfca/PDFs/electrical-markets/en/A.html
Cheers,
Paul
"Assuming it's fully buffered by hydro"
I can't imagine that more than 50% would be buffered by pumped storage - heck, 1/3 of the time wind output would be during peak consumption periods, and a significant percentage of wind output comes during low capacity factor periods (IOW, when the wind farm is below 32% capacity factor, you're not likely to put that power into storage).
Actually, we're not talking about pumped storage here, are we? Aren't we talking about variable hydro output to buffer the wind variance? If so, then there's no efficiency loss, because the wind power isn't stored.
Probably less. By "fully buffered" I just mean "there's enough hydro capacity that little or none of the wind capacity goes to waste when it's not immediately needed".
Considering how much of the province's electricity comes from hydro already, it's likely that wind will be accommodated just by ramping down existing hydro, and that little or none of it will be wasted or will need to be stored.
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).
.for the kind of non-KWH grid services V2G could provide - it would be enormously valuable for utilities
I would characterize the "non-kWh" services as "nice to have" at best. Top management at investor owned utilities would pay very little for them.
2nd, peak is just an artifical product of flat pricing, and will be easily dealt with with Time-of-Use metering
BS ! I am *NOT* going to change the time I wake up, cook my meals, watch TV (I can watch infomercials at 3 AM for 1/3rd the price of prime time TV ?), take a bath, etc. to save a few dollars on my bill ! I would change the time I wash clothes (67% of the time anyway).
Basically, I will use my 2,000 kWh/yr as I DAMM well please !
Time-of-Use metering is likely to reduce demand by 10-15% itself (that's what they found in Ontario)
Is that Peak Demand (99% sure) or total MWh demanded ?
Ontario includes a large electrical heat demand and while interesting, is hardly conclusive.
And a 10% shift of Peak Demand to Shoulder periods would hardly "make room" for EVs.
2nd, the car could be charged over a 12 hour period, and likely would take 3-4 hours, so there's enormous leeway.
You are hypothesizing a control system, and consumer acceptance of that control system, that I consider "highly unlikely". Is GM going to offer this on the Volt ? Not according to what I have read. Do NOT underestimate the selfishness of the American consumer !
3rd, we're mostly talking PHEV's here, precisely to prevent "range anxiety"
PHEVs are a flawed concept, even at $300/barrel oil vs. small diesels & NEVs. You have the weight of an ICE PLUS the absolute maximum of batteries that can be fit on-board. All of this drivetrain weight to shove around. A "camel" solution.
Better either a small diesel and/or a pure EV (NEV best) than a PHEV. Charge up the NEV as soon as you get home and a 2nd car, a small diesel, for longer trips, etc. Two cars would use less electricity & oil and likely cost less than a single PHEV.
we're only building 600K new living units per year right now
We were building over 2 million residences, massive shopping centers and gigantic sports stadiums "within living memory". Drop new homes back to the 1950 norm (1,040 sq ft) and do some renovations of existing structures and 3 to 4 million new TOD residences/yr would consume fewer resources than our "recent past".
Heck, the movement of 50M households from suburbia to "urbia" alone would cost much more in $ and E than you'd save from TOD.
Over a few decades, the answer is no. Perhaps two decades.
I worry that a "Save Suburbia" plan would lock us in to a high energy use pattern with substantial residual oil use, and further degradation in oil and energy availability would cause a second crisis, perhaps 20 years later.
New Orleans is not an example of such living - it's density is comparable to most moderately dense suburbs
Pre-Katrina New Orleans was tied with New York City for the lowest VMT by residents (Suburbanites excluded from both). We have a very different, and much more human scale, solution that has the same end result.
rail really can't provide 100% of travel needs - more than 50% would be an enormous pain to try to shoe-horn ourselves into
Last year, more people took transit to work in DC than drove alone to work. Add the 15 Urban Rail lines Ed Tennyson suggests and that % could rise to close to 75%. Up from 4% in 1970.
Height limitations prevent truly high density in DC.
You have a great technical imagination, but you are more limited when it comes to Urban Living.
Best Hopes,
Alan
If you think you can run a grid without e.g. reactive power, you're dreaming.
Seriously, Alan. For somebody who snipes at me for going outside my area of expertise, you're not being very circumspect. You're starting to sound like the economists who think they'd do better at finding oil than the petroleum geologists.
They already have their eye on EV services as a value stream.
If you paid the real-time cost of delivering a watt, you might save money by:
And perhaps most important, assuming and managing your own costs would mean you wouldn't have to pay for other people's costly habits.
Some of this has already drawn responses, and I'm running out of time, but here are a few thoughts:
"" peak is just an artifical product of flat pricing" - Basically, I will use my 2,000 kWh/yr as I DAMM well please !"
Alan, I don't know what to say - you're really being unrealistic. 1st, 2,000KWH/yr isn't much, which makes it easy to say that. 2nd, most people don't think that way, and 3rd, you don't need most people to change most of their behavior: you just need some people to do the easy things (like setting thermostats and timers) - charging PHEV/EVs at night would be ridiculously easy.
"Is that Peak Demand (99% sure) or total MWh demanded ?"
Total MWh demanded.
"Ontario includes a large electrical heat demand and while interesting, is hardly conclusive."
Ah, but we're talking about something even easier to do at night: PHEV/EV charging.
"You are hypothesizing a control system, and consumer acceptance of that control system, that I consider "highly unlikely"."
The control system is pretty certain. Consumers already accept such controls everywhere else, like cell phones - you may ignore it, but very few people do (I'm really baffled - you really know that, don't you?).
"Is GM going to offer this on the Volt ?"
Absolutely. They're working on it now. They may not offer it the first year, because they're focused on getting the Volt out the door, without inessential bells & whistles (It's GM's top priority - they've publicly acknowledged PO, and they're spending $1B on it), but it will be there 2 or 3 years out.
"Do NOT underestimate the selfishness of the American consumer !"
Price signals work extremely well with selfish consumers.
"PHEVs are a flawed concept, even at $300/barrel oil vs. small diesels & NEVs."
Nah. They're extremely cost-effective.
"You have the weight of an ICE"
You have a NEV with 40 mile range, with a small auxiliary generator (with a serial hybrid like the Volt-with a parallel one, like Toyota is planning, you just add a plug and a bigger battery).
"PLUS the absolute maximum of batteries that can be fit on-board."
Nah. Heck, the 2nd gen EV-1 had a 120 mile range. The1st gen EV-1 had a 60 mile range, with lead-acid! This is not the maximum battery payload!
"Charge up the NEV as soon as you get home"
Exactly why people hate NEV's: you have to worry so much about range.
"Two cars would use less electricity & oil"
No - the Volt and Prius PHEVs will get 50MPG - no diesel does better than that. "
"and likely cost less than a single PHEV."
No, but that raises a contradiction: no one would buy a NEV except for economic reasons, so why would they ignore price signals for peak power?
"We were building over 2 million residences, massive shopping centers and gigantic sports stadiums "within living memory". "
IIRC we never got over 2M per year, and that was at the peak of the bubble. It really was a bubble, you know - normal new residential construction levels are below 1M per year. As it is, with this hangover of unsold homes, we'll be lucky to get above 750K/year in 5 years from now.
"Drop new homes back to the 1950 norm (1,040 sq ft) "
Why? For economic reasons?? Why in heaven's name would developers build them in dense urban areas, at twice the cost, if their customers were desperately trying to save money?
""Heck, the movement of 50M households from suburbia to "urbia" alone would cost much more in $ and E than you'd save from TOD." - -Over a few decades, the answer is no. Perhaps two decades.""
uhmmm, could you elaborate on that? 1st, that's 2.5M households per year, about 4x the current rate, and 3x the average "non-bubble" historical rate. 2nd, what about the cost? Even at 1K sq ft, that's 50 billion sq ft. At $150/sq ft, that's 7.5 trillion dollars!!! Infinitely cheaper to install heat pumps and buy PHEV/EVs.
Consider the emotional pain of disrupting communities like that. It was no fun for NO to have a diaspora - why should we wish it on anyone else?
"I worry that a "Save Suburbia" plan would lock us in to a high energy use pattern with substantial residual oil use, and further degradation in oil and energy availability would cause a second crisis, perhaps 20 years later."
I don't get it. Urban HVAC isn't inherently cheaper - shared walls help a bit, but not that much - existing urban forms mostly move the windows to the remaining walls, so you're talking rebuilding existing urban buildings as well. Asphalt can be replaced for construction and maintenance (it's not needed for patching). Delivery and municipal services can use PHEV/EVs.
"Pre-Katrina New Orleans was tied with New York City for the lowest VMT by residents (Suburbanites excluded from both). We have a very different, and much more human scale, solution that has the same end result.
NYC is extremely expensive. NO isn't like any other high-rail city - it's low-density - anywhere else it would be called a suburb.
"Last year, more people took transit to work in DC than drove alone to work. Add the 15 Urban Rail lines Ed Tennyson suggests and that % could rise to close to 75%. "
That's commuting. Whats the % overall?
"You have a great technical imagination, but you are more limited when it comes to Urban Living."
I'm not the one to argue with (and I'm a little disapointed in the personally critical tone of that comment). It's all those people who, for some reason, made a commitment to living in the 'burbs. I just don't see any incentive for them to undertake the enormous financial and emotional cost of a move to the "big city".
"Is that Peak Demand (99% sure) or total MWh demanded ?"
Total MWh demanded.
It is difficult for me to see how time of day pricing would reduce total electrical demand by 10% ! What do people give up ?
you may ignore it, but very few people do (I'm really baffled - you really know that, don't you?)
I and my friends & family entirely ignore "time of day" pricing for cell phone use AFAIK. I do call back on my land line to save on cell phone battery drain and charges occasionally. I am semi-paranoid about battery drain on my cell phone and I transfer that anxiety to V2G.
I just don't see any incentive for them to undertake the enormous financial and emotional cost of a move to the "big city"
Just repeat "white flight" in reverse. 30% of the homes empty, 15% for over 18 months, rising taxes and reduced
citySuburban services. The "wrong people' moving into the neighborhood. Worked like a charm in the 1950s & 1960s to destroy well established neighborhoods with MUCH more community than modern Suburbia.One POV
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime
NO isn't like any other high-rail city - it's low-density - anywhere else it would be called a suburb.
Lack of local knowledge. Both NYC and New Orleans have National Wildlife Refuges within the city limits, but our's is much bigger as a % of land area. And the "down river" part of Algiers (West Bank) is rural with a single gated community (English Turn, where the British Navy turned and ran).
Still, we have lower density than New York City (even outside Manhattan) AND very low car use by residents. I would call it human scale. And very livable and walkable communities without the social isolation endemic in Suburbia. And many 28' wide one way streets with parking on both sides.
Asphalt can be replaced for construction and maintenance
Concrete is also very energy intensive.
Consider the emotional pain of disrupting communities like that. It was no fun for NO to have a diaspora - why should we wish it on anyone else ?
I do not, pre se, wish it upon anyone else. However, VERY unlike New Orleans, there is nothing of cultural value to preserve in Suburbia and from a public health perspective (deaths and life altering injuries from cars and the obesity epidemic) it would be a positive good to get rid of much of Suburbia and transform the remainder.
As for "emotional distress" ? See post-Peak Oil for everyone.
Suburbanites move every 5 or so years anyway, so what is the big deal on moving again ?
At $150/sq ft, that's 7.5 trillion dollars!!! Infinitely cheaper to install heat pumps and buy PHEV/EVs.
Shrink the average to 750 sq ft and price drops a bit. And yes, it is STILL cheaper !
Suburban construction was built to last 30 years before major repairs, now 20 years. Likewise most commercial construction. It will have to be rebuilt anyway.
My parents Phoenix winter "town home" is undergoing major repairs ATM, and by brother just gutted and rebuilt his Phoenix house. Both over 20 but less than 35 years old. I am appalled at the quality of construction in both.
Alan
It's not going to happen unless you can also reverse the huge rise in crime, not just in the neighborhoods but in the schools. Parents who care about their children will re-localize around good schools in their safe suburban neighborhoods, not in the war zones which cities like Los Angeles have become. They will move work to satellite offices, perhaps in former strip malls.
The cities could be re-populated willingly if the underclasses adopted middle-class behavior and expectations en masse. I expect this to happen when pigs fly.
Its called gentrification. And is a lot more common than flying pigs
"Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is a term applied to that part of the urban housing cycle in which physically deteriorated neighborhoods attract an influx of investment and undergo physical renovation and an increase in property market values. In many cases, the lower-income residents who occupied the neighborhood prior to its renovation can no longer afford properties there. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regentrification
Gentrification is largely a phenomenon of people without children, especially DINK couples. The very wealthy also figure. Middle-class folks who can't afford private schools aren't going to go to a city where their kid would mix with gang members in the neighborhood school or be bused (fuel prices be damned!) somewhere else for "balance".
You forget the social dysfunctions and social isolation of the Suburbanites. They will not be able to pull it off.
Lower Property Values > Lower Property Taxes > Bad Schools (just what happened in the inner cities 50 years ago).
And Suburbanites w/o young kids will resist higher taxes (another social dysfunction of Suburbanites).
Recession/Depression means no money for gas to cash food stamps for Suburbanites when unemployed, so they will have to abandon their homes. No social network to help them out in Suburbia.
My SWAG is an eight fold increase in suicides among FWOs. Add to this the already preprogrammed epidemic of diabetes (from obesity), so the problem of what to do with Suburbanites may well solve itself.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Contrasted to the backstabbing characteristic of ghetto culture? Suburbanites have far more social capital; that's why they have the good schools, etc.
Food stamps themselves will have gone by the wayside by then, and those dependent on them will be in far worse shape (and be much worse neighbors). The suburbanites have yards which can be gardened and trees which can be coppiced; when fuel is scarce and electricity is flaky, the inhabitants of brownstone blocks have what, exactly?
That might very well happen, but the level is rather low to begin with. Banding together against roving gangs of starving former urbanites is likely to substitute violent death for suicide (or just plain death as victims if the banding-together doesn't happen).
Seems unlikely, given that the direct effects of outright fuel shortages will include substitution of walking for driving and local vegetables for processed foodstuffs.
"the problem of what to do with Suburbanites may well solve itself."
??????
I feared I was being too harsh by remarking elsewhere that you seemed to have a prejudice against "the Suburbanites". Perhaps I wasn't.
Are you really serious???? What made you so angry at this category of people?
It is partially the racism that Engineer Poet espouses, and that Suburbanites are the core of the residual racism in this nation. Not that all are, but racism appears to be focused in Suburbia. I have a hard time not baiting racism.
It is partially the relative social isolation I see in my two Suburbanite brothers.
And it is partially the reality I see, with a bitter gibe at what will be coming.
And it is the ignorance of the consistent gov't policies that uniformly destroyed our cities post-WW II and the assumption of moral superiority by Suburbanites that because we are rich (due to gov't policies) we are better people.
I am reminded of the all white 1950s promo film made to promote moving to Metairie from New Orleans. One truth they told was "You can get a VA loan on a new home in Metairie but not on a home in your old neighborhood".
Alan
I can understand that. And yet, these are human beings, who deserve compassion and respect, just like anyone else. Reacting this way (with anger, and in simplistic categories) puts you on that same level of thinking & emoting, and clouds your judgement.
I'm pretty skeptical of simplistic applications of evolutionary biology, but I do think that humans are very vulnerable to thinking in terms of Us vs Them, probably because of the importance of early family groups, so any time you find yourself thinking in these kinds of terms, you can bet that your thinking is starting to be out of touch with reality. Resist the urge!!
A few specific thoughts:
"racism appears to be focused in Suburbia"
Suburbia is more conservative (and isolated) than average, but so are rural states, and many areas and groups. So are some wealthy areas inside cities. Unfortunately, misinformation and fear aren't the exclusive property of anyone. Partly what you're seeing are class issues - this is complicated.
"it is partially the reality I see"
I really do think that your expectations are too pessimistic. There are certainly risks of bad things, but I don't believe that the likelihood is that bad. At the least, I think your language betrays a certainty of bad things that is unrealistic - I'd be happy to discuss this question of probable scenarios further, if you want (as I do often....).
these are human beings, who deserve compassion and respect
An interesting concept.compassion and respect (?) before the onset of foreseeable negative effects.
Does one feel compassion and respect for a cigarette smoker BEFORE the onset of emphysema or lung cancer ?
Does one feel compassion and respect for an obese person climbing into their SUV to drive from one side of a parking lot to the other, before the onset of diabetes and heart disease ?
Perhaps some background compassion, but not respect.
Resist the urge!!
I am still haunted by the images of my friends and neighbors stranded for days on the elevated Interstates and Convention Center while white Suburban Republicans who got a little rain water in their homes were bused out with ice and Port-a-lets while they waited. Any New Orleanian who attempted to walk out to the White Suburban R pick-up point were chased back by police gunfire.
Only when there was no more white Suburbanites waiting in line to be picked up was relief sent (over roads that had been dry for many days) to the Convention Center and the elevated interstates.
Who drew the "Us vs. Them" line ?
So are some wealthy areas inside cities
Not in New Orleans.
There are certainly risks of bad things, but I don't believe that the likelihood is that bad ... I think your language betrays a certainty of bad things that is unrealistic
Any major transition is traumatic with many losers, and related suffering. I see the disaster of 1950 to 1970 which you probably ignore and reflect on those years as "good times" for the USA.
The USA economy will not grow post-Peak Oil, and will shrink under any but the very best policies. And many sectors within the economy will shrink even in the total GDP manages to stay constant.
Suburbia has leveraged itself in about every possible way; socially, economically, physically and even psychologically. And this leverage and specialization depends upon oil and energy in many direct and indirect ways.
The social pathologies of middle class Suburbia (unlike E-P I see them in places other than just among blacks and Hispanics in inner cities) makes them less able to adapt and change to the changing realities than any other group in the USA.
I see a reprise of 1950 to 1970, but in Suburbia and not the inner cities this time. But like 1950 to 1970 was the "Golden Age" of Suburbia, it is possible (but very far from certain) that 2014 to 2034 could be a new Golden Age for cities IF we take the right steps. Disaster for the FWOs and Suburbia, a new economy, living and social dynamic in the cities. Where community and social interactions are valued more than consumption, etc.
I see it as undesirable to continue Suburbia "as is", with half the population living there and will resist having the viable part of our society subsidize Suburbia. We have subsidized Suburbia for over half a century already.
Alan
"Does one feel compassion and respect for a cigarette smoker BEFORE the onset of emphysema or lung cancer ?"
Yes. You don't know why they smoke - what combination of personal history, physical and emotional addiction leads them to that behavior. Chances are they're deeply unhappy about being a smoker (even if they don't admit it). Probably they've tried multiple times to smoke, and are deeply ashamed of their failure (which they're really, really not going to tell you). They almost certainly know they're killing themselves - they don't need you to tell them. If you knew what they'd been through - you'd have compassion and respect.
"Does one feel compassion and respect for an obese person climbing into their SUV to drive from one side of a parking lot to the other, before the onset of diabetes and heart disease ?"
Yes. There's a chance that they're obese because they have a chronic illness, which prevents them from exercising in any way - you have no way of knowing. Even if not, it's the observer's failure to know and value that person's experience that is the problem. Perhaps they've simply been the victim of misinformation and a culture which considers what they're doing good - if so, the culture has problems, but it's not the individual's fault.
Yes, they deserve compassion and respect.
"I am still haunted by the images of my friends and neighbors "
I understand. Those are bitter memories. It is possible to do apparently contradictory things: to stay conscious of the reality, while healing such hurts, and not letting them control you.
"Who drew the "Us vs. Them" line ?"
Our ancestors. A good portion of this is the racism created by plantation owners, to divide the slaves from the poor farmers. Racism was instilled in the general population to divide and conquer. Racism (in the form of fear and misinformation) is passed down from generation to generation (by example, mostly - kids pick these things up intuitively), and we all carry it (to greater or lesser degrees and forms). Both the rich and poor, white and black pass it on to their kids. All of these groups have misconceptions about both themselves and the other groups, unknowing and unquestioned.
See how well it works? All of us are having trouble with it right now, when we should be working together on joint problems.
"Any major transition is traumatic with many losers"
True. I see much suffering ahead, no question about it. Even now, as a small example, thousands of truckers are losing their livelihoods - a disaster for them, even if we know that it's necessary to deal with PO and AGW.
"The USA economy will not grow post-Peak Oil, and will shrink under any but the very best policies."
Hmm. I agree that policies matter enormously. I do think that they can change better, and more quickly than one might think - PO has been clear for only a very short time, and AGW not all that long a time either. Well, I think this is worth further discussion: for how long do you think things will stagnate or shrink? Do you agree that oil can be replaced in the long run with electrification, including transportation (possibly excluding long-distance air travel) and HVAC?
I think that many on TOD don't really grasp several things: first, that we can shrink energy useage quite a bit without shrinking GDP - for instance (just one example, though a big one) through carpooling. The lack of use of carpooling by commuters is just a BAU mentality, accepted unthinkingly even by those who in principle foresee great change.
I'm struck by the relative cheapness of wind: we could replace all of our coal plants with the investment of 10% of our GDP for just one year!! We could replace natural gas generation and power our entire light vehicle fleet the 2nd year, provide the generation to electrify all I/C and residential HVAC the 3rd, and start synthesizing hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 for sequestration the 4th. Obviously, this is oversimplified, and the timeline is greatly compressed, but it illustrates the size and cost of the problem. If we decide that AGW really is an overriding priority, we don't have to dismantle our economy to stop emitting CO2, we just have to make a moderately serious effort.
"Where community and social interactions are valued more than consumption, etc."
I really don't see how the stress and fear, that a shrinking economy, impoverishment, and mass forced emigration would cause, would promote good social relations. Further, I'm glad to hear that NO has a good culture, but I really don't see any sign that the average mental health or social culture in other cities is higher than in suburbia.
" We have subsidized Suburbia for over half a century already."
Well, I admit that I don't know as much about this as you, but I would tentatively suggest that you may be overestimating the scale of the subsidy - after all, those commuters do pay into the highway fund, and they probably pay the majority of the 50-75% subsidies that federal, state and metropolitan transit authorities provide for mass transit in cities. In any case, I don't understand how a societal commitment to a strategy of electrification would subsidize suburbia - suburbanites would pay for their KWH's, heat pumps and PHEV/EVs.
He does like to throw the slurs around, doesn't he? This is typical of the liberal left.
And just as typically, it is pure projection. Who, save for a die-hard racist, would implicitly ascribe social pathologies to races by rebuking any condemnation of those pathologies as racist? That's as racist as the "oreo" slur, implying that success can only come in certain ways to an "authentic" Black and middle-class values isn't one of them. It's as racist as assuming that one's culture is determined by one's skin color (never mind that many of today's subcultures would have been unrecognizable 50 years ago). It's as racist as excusing bad behavior because "they don't know any better"; the bigotry of low expectations.
I think people have a right to live among others who, if not sharing all the same values and expectations, at least have the good grace to clean up their own messes and leave others in peace. Crime, violence, and disrespect for education up to complete destruction of the essential mission of schools isn't what I expect, but it is what I see just down the road in Detroit. I can't change what other people do; my only option, barring radical changes in the law, is to place myself among people with compatible expectations.
I'd hope that the people most hurt by these pathologies would find the will to discard them (like a nicotine habit), but with well-meaning crypto-racists acting as enablers, this is a lot harder than it needs to be.
To quote Engineer-Poet "the only way you'll be able to fix things is to start awarding medals to those following in the footsteps of Bernard Goetz" and
"Nobody's worried about mixing with Hindus or Chinese. "Wrong color" in this context is code for "being somewhere between hostile and posing a threat of robbery, assault or worse".
"Diversity destroys social capital".
Many more quotes as well, but this is sufficient.
Alan
"To quote Engineer-Poet "the only way you'll be able to fix things is to start awarding medals to those following in the footsteps of Bernard Goetz" and"
In what way is self defence racist? Should we base our decisions on whether we defend ourselves or not on the race of our attacker?
"Nobody's worried about mixing with Hindus or Chinese. "Wrong color" in this context is code for "being somewhere between hostile and posing a threat of robbery, assault or worse".
This one here is the fundamental question in race relations today. It's fine to say that racism is evil, but when things like the famed "12% of the population commits 75% of the murders" (or somesuch) are approximately true, I really can't blame anyone for being a little leery of having their kids walking in a neighborhood populated almost exclusively by that population segment.
I am sure that racism still exists, that it is still practiced and that it still takes a toll on the life of a black person trying to live a decent life in the US, but the perpetuation cannot be laid solely at the feet of the white population. The point that no one much minds when chinese move in mass into their neighborhood is relevant.
Diversity DOES destroy social capital. It is very hard to get a diverse group to collectively pursue a set of goals. It's very hard to set up a we/they thought process in a diverse group, there's always that one pesky nice muslim :).
Realism and racism are sometimes difficult to distinguish. The difference in THIS culture between a realist and a racist is not how they view the "black community", it is in how they treat the person in front of them. If they treat the person in front of them shabbily because of the color of their skin, that is inappropriate racism, but at a societal level, the sad truth is that there IS a problem with black culture. It was probably initiated by whites, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.
"Should we base our decisions on whether we defend ourselves or not on the race of our attacker? "
Well, this is probably a good example of the misinformation about such things that exists in our culture - the fact is, Goetz got on the subway looking for someone to attack. Vigilantism is very often terrorism in disguise.
"when things like the famed "12% of the population commits 75% of the murders" (or somesuch) are approximately true, I really can't blame anyone"
Ah, but is it true, if you look at details? I would note one detail: a very large % of inner-city murders are black-market business (drug) deals gone wrong, and competition for those black-market business markets - rather like the Valentine's day massacre. They're what happens when something is illegalized (primarily to provide a pretext for greater law and order employment) and put outside the sphere of law and order, not random murders, as people fear.
Hmm... So now you are a mind-reader able to discern from 3 removes a persons motivations? Goetz MAY have been a racist lookin' fer someone ta shoot, OR he may simply have been defending himself. In the latter case his actions were well grounded and in the first case... well, whether he was there looking to get mugged or not doesn't change the fact that they DID try to mug him. One begins to suspect that you are biased in this case. Vigilantiism is sometimes a form of terrorism, however it is just as often a misnamed case of self defence. In other cases it is the last and only way that crime rates can be contained. Note here that the lowest rates of stranger crime in the US take place in the states where personal defence is punished the least.
As for the crime rate statistics, the drug killings do represent a percentage of the crime rates, however gang rivalries also take a share, as do muggings and other stranger crime types. It's very misleading to attribute all of it to the drug trade. The racial disparity in drug use is far smaller than the racial disparity in murders, so perhaps you can explain why it is that the "black" drug trade is so much more violent than the "white" drug trade?
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/fdluc94xm.txt
"Blacks comprised nearly three-fourths of the defendants charged
with robbery or a weapons offense. Whites accounted for about
three-fourths of those charged with a driving-related felony."
Amusingly enough, I found that "gem" while looking for what percentage of murders that were related to the drug trade.
Here's what I was actually looking for.
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/crime/index.html
Table 4 shows that only 5% of murders (give or take depending on the year) are "drug related", so attributing the 75% of murders that are committed by black people to the drug trade is doubly inappropriate both because everyone does drugs AND because the drug trade is a small percentage of total murders. I am not in any way disputing your point that a lot of bloodshed would be eliminated were the government to remove the ignorant drug laws, however, it would in reality do little to reduce the murder rates, nor would it do anything in particular to even the scales between black and white murders.
Well, this is a complex topic. Let me address what I can.
"now you are a mind-reader able to discern from 3 removes a persons motivations?"
I believe that he publicly described his actions, and that they fit what I described.
"whether he was there looking to get mugged or not doesn't change the fact that they DID try to mug him."
What's important is what he did in response. I've been mugged - I just handed over my cash, and we both went our separate ways. He, on the other hand, was looking for someone to shoot, and he succeeded.
"Vigilantiism is sometimes a form of terrorism, however it is just as often a misnamed case of self defence. "
Hmmm. Are you familiar with the history of lynching in the US?
"As for the crime rate statistics, the drug killings do represent a percentage of the crime rates, however gang rivalries also take a share, as do muggings and other stranger crime types."
Gang rivalries are precisely what I referred to when I included "competition for those black-market business markets - rather like the Valentine's day massacre. " I would note that muggings are also often indirectly drug related, though I agree that they fit more in the category of "stranger crime".
More, when I can...
I was just reading some of the goetz transcripts. He was carrying a gun for over a year before he "found" someone to shoot. He was brutally beaten in a previous mugging. So he bought a gun and went armed from then on. Sounds more to me like a "this shit is NOT happening to me again" case than a "I wanna kill someone" case. But once again, I am not a mindreader, neither are you. you and I cannot know the motivations behind what was done without being inside his head at the time.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/17/lkl.01.html
As for your mugging... Well, when I got mugged 4 guys (white actually) grabbed be, 1 picked my pocket and then there was a few seconds of kicking and they took off. I didn't need a hospital, but it was not fun. When my roommate got mugged, 1 grabbed and the other cut her purse. No violence involved, just a little manhandling. I know others, 3 of my friends got killed at 7-11 at the intersection of Martin Luther king and Malcolm X in DC after getting lost leaving the club. Sometimes you get a nice civilized mugger that just wants the money, sometimes you get one who wants a little blood with their fries. I can't condemn goetz for not being willing to gamble that his particular 4 were type 1. Nor do I really think it matters. If more people did what he did, there would be FAR fewer muggings. putting up with crime is what allows it to continue happening.
I am familiar with the history of lynchings. They are kinda what happens when a cohesive society has grossly inadequate law enforcement. Something has gotta be done so people go do something. Frequently they do the wrong thing. That's for SOME of the lynchings, most particularly the "cattle rustler" lynchings in the old west.
There have also been a hell of a lot of lynchings for the crime of being black on a saturday night. The KKK did (and still sometimes does I suspect) a lot of that. That has nothing to do with vigilantism.
Gang violence is very frequently totally unconnected to the drug trade. Very frequently it is just plain ignorant macho bullshit or racial wars or fights about what Bobby said about our Bessy. Gang violence is gang violence. Some gang violence is drug violence, but by no means most.
These ARE complex issues, it ill serves anyone either to attribute any of them to one source or to ignore important sources. Sad thing is that basically everything IS a complex issue, even the ones that seem so cut and dried.
Thanks. I was going to give these two the what-for regarding Goetz (who was, FWIW, being accosted by 4 thugs [all had criminal records] who were armed with stabbing weapons), but you did it for me.
There appears to be as much anti-Goetz as pro-Jena 6 propaganda out there. The facts support neither. And need I mention the racism of those who reflexively condemned the Duke lacrosse players?
If we are going to treat people as individuals to be evaluated on their own merits and not as members of some identity group designated as either victims or class criminals based on accidents of birth, Political Correctness is exactly backwards.
You forgot this:
You obviously believe this is either impossible or undesirable. If you're not arguing that it's impossible or undesirable for the underclass to stop committing crimes against persons and property, to have higher expectations for academic achievement, and stop demonizing others (the claim that AIDS was created in American labs to kill Black people—which would be laughable if so many didn't actually believe it—is just one example of demonization), you're doing a very poor job of stating your case.
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.
Not a problem.
I nit-pick about that because people keep confusing this, and it gets in their way of understanding much more important issues. Getting folks to correct the faulty usage helps with education on the other things, like how much their electric blanket costs to use vs. a hair dryer.
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.
Here you go: http://www.oemtek.com/pdf/phev_feasibility_analysis_combined.pdf
"I'd also like to point out that a small amount of PV on the roof of a car could do wonders"
PV is standard on RV's in Australia. GM will probably use it for the 2nd generation Volt (they just want to get the first out the door).
Thanks. I would be interested in seeing the study also.
Does that give me carte blanche to aim slurs back at you?
Aside from enjoying the peace and quiet from a lack of shared walls, I have no huge preference for suburbia. But America does, and spent 50 years building it. Going back to multi-unit housing on transit as the default means approximately the same amount of time for the building stock to turn over.
2.3% of 180 million vehicles is 4.14 million. 4.14 million vehicles times 6.6 kW apiece (220 V @ 30 A) is 27.3 GW. That is more than 5% of average US demand, and roughly 2.7% of US nameplate generation capacity. 2.7% at the margin is quite a bit.
Raise that plugged-in fraction to 10% and you're up to 119 GW. Raise the connection power to 220 V 50 A and it goes higher still.
They wouldn't have to.
Speaking as a driver, on any given day my car's tank isn't full, and I don't care. I just care if I can get through my trips without having to stop for fuel. So long as the utility gave me enough juice every day to get to work, enough by noon to go out to lunch, and enough by quitting time to run errands on the way home, I wouldn't care. I'd want an option for "screw the availability payment, charge me all the way up today", but I wouldn't use it every day; I'd only use it when I had plans to go some ways away.
Just 3 major problems with that phrase.
Your rail transit systems are going to need power available when they're scheduled to leave the station. They're also going to want to dump braking energy back to the grid. Like it or not, a bunch of (PH)EVs doing V2G here and there are going to be one of your best bets for keeping your trams fed without giving the grid indigestion. Synergy is the name of this game.
I don't understand this.
Why in the world would I have an EV with so much extra battery capacity given the high costs of batteries? Its fine to have extra capacity in a gas tank since a larger gas tank is insignifigantly more expensive than a small gas tank. But this isn't so with batteries. Especially the kind of batteries that EVs will require.
Why would consumers spend all this extra money for expensive batteries if all they are going to use them for is V2G? Why would utilites want to utilize my expensive car batteries when much cheaper solutions exist?
Define "extra". If I have a PHEV-40 but I only drive 12 miles on an average day, the 28 miles of range would be "extra" without dynamic charging/V2G but could be fully utilized with them. That entire range would be available to the driver a few hours after requesting a full charge.
I drive 4.5 miles to work. Dynamic charging/V2G would let the utility charge me to 15% overnight if power supplies were low, or 100% if the wind was blowing hard; I wouldn't need to know the difference. If I could plug in at work, the utility could save fossil-fired capacity overnight and charge me with wind from the front coming through in the afternoon. SoCal drivers could charge from PV at work on sunny days, or CCGT overnight on cloudy days. Giving some drivers a full charge could defer a substantial amount of demand for 2 or more days. Having the vehicles on-line allows up to 100% of the generators in operation to run at their optimal efficiency; batteries at less than full charge means there is always someplace useful for power to go, and having demand that needn't be satisfied for hours or days means sheddable load in lieu of spinning reserve.
It seems like we would need an awfully smart grid to figure which autos get charged which amount from which supply, when. I don't see this happening anytime soon.
Gail, why do you think so?
Electrical engineers out there can correct me, of course, but the applications you mention seem trivial, and should be straightforward to take care of.
Many of those functions are done by non-smart grids.
Not really. All you need is the ability to set a charge threshold for your car.
While your battery is below that level of charge, it'll draw power like a normal appliance. While it's above that level, it'll charge as power is available, participating in V2G and earning you money for your load-balancing services.
This'd give people full control over how much they wanted to participate in V2G-type activities - set your threshold to 100% if you don't want to have any part in it, like if you're going out for a long trip soon - and would require only enough intelligence in the grid to be able to tell whether there's a participating appliance in the household.
Since it's likely an inverter'd have to be installed in the household anyway to handle the transmission of power back to the grid, that inverter could just be given enough processing power to communicate with the grid monitors (via power line communication, if you want to be minimalist, or using the internet if you want to be sensible). The result should be a system with basically full ability to coordinate power flows between EVs and the central grid system, with EV owners having full control over when and how they participate.
The coordination doesn't sound all that tricky, really. By far the biggest problem is long-lasting batteries and sufficient numbers of EVs, then installing a bunch of inverters. Coordinating all that stuff is way down the list.
"It seems like we would need an awfully smart grid to figure which autos get charged which amount from which supply,"
Dynamic charging is just a matter of Time of Use pricing, and a little logic at the charging end. All US utilities are now required to offer Time of Use metering. see www.thewattspot.com for an example.
It requires very little in the way of smarts.
Utilities already have systems for turning water heaters and air conditioners on and off to manage demand. PHEVs could use the same system, or a slightly improved one. The utility could detect immediate demand by commanding all PHEVs in a particular area to turn their chargers on and off again, or perhaps from 0% to 10% and back to 0. That would tell the utility how high the chargers could be set.
A slightly more sophisticated system would have all vehicles communicating back to the utility with the minimum energy required, the maximum they can take, their maximum charging power and the time by which they must have the minimum. The utility can sum up the energy minimae and maximae and match this to the expected availability of e.g. wind power and the response curves of their most efficient generators. The utility would then broadcast commands to each category of vehicles, telling them how fast to charge at that particular moment. This would vary on a time scale of seconds, managing the power consumption of the grid to match the generation. As the departure time of each bunch of vehicles came around, they'd be charged to somewhere between their minimum requirement and full; as each one got to full or disconnected, their power would be transferred to other vehicles departing later, or finally to vehicles arriving at their destinations and plugging in again.
You could do all of this using cell phone SMS for the uplink and FM subcarriers or other VHF radio for the downlink. A data rate of a few hundred bits/second would do for the downlink; you could do it over an acoustic telephone modem.
Thanks!
FWIW, peak demand is in the evening in most of Canada (stoves, lights, etc.), and that'll likely be true for a fair chunk of the US. Air conditioning loads shift some of the peaks into the late afternoon for states like California, though.
Still, let's assume 2.3% of vehicles, and that only 20% of the battery can be used (to maximize life and user convenience). With ~220M cars and light trucks in the US, that's about 4.5M vehicles. At 50-60kWh for an EV's battery, that's ~50M kWh available.
Peak load for the US is about 800 GW non-coincident (meaning it's somewhat lower in reality). 50M kWh / 800GW = 50GWh / 800GW = ~4 minutes of country-wide peak supply from EV batteries.
What does that give us?
Well, suppose peak demand is maintained for an hour. That means instead of the system needing to be able to supply 800GW for an hour, it could get by with supplying 750GW and using V2G, effectively removing the need for 100 power plants that would normally only be needed a few times a year, which is pretty significant.
V2G doesn't make sense until there're batteries with very long lives in terms of charge/discharge cycles, but from the sounds of it some of the batteries being considered for the first serious generation of EV/PHEVs fare pretty well in that regard.
It's really not that massive. 16% of current electrical generation is not a big deal - building the (PH)EVs to use that power is literally an order of magnitude more effort than building the extra capacity to support them.
I like your ideas for electrified rail - I, personally, really appreciate cities with good public transit systems - but that doesn't change the fact that the energy needs of personal EVs are a non-issue in technical terms. One may dislike them, or believe that there won't be enough time or resources to build them, but finding energy for them is the least of their concerns.
the energy needs of personal EVs are a non-issue in technical terms
HARDLY !
Within the next one, two or three decades, fuel supply issues should develop with both natural gas and coal.
For over a decade, almost every new generation plant in the USA was fired by natural gas. And most of the generation in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana was natural gas before then.
The USA can, and should, build 8 new nukes in the next decade, but that is about it. That rate can pick up somewhat the half dozen years after that, but this power should be used to displace coal fired plants.
Wind can grow rapidly, but it needs to be devoted to reducing natural gas use (directly in electric plants and indirectly for home heating with a shift from NG & oil > heat pumps) and coal use and not powering EVs.
New coal plants are an economic non-starter ATM due to the risk of carbon taxes (as they should be).
Fueling EVs while doing ANYTHING about GW is nearly impossible in the real world. The development of new generation is very unlikely to follow some ideal. And adding an extra 16% generation (of what fuel type) without problems seems QUITE unlikely !
Another way to look at it is that the "grid" in it's totality, including fuel, will be stressed post-Peak Oil. Any slack that we might have for "less than Ideal" public & private policy/economic choices will be consumed, and then some, by a massive build-out of EVs.
Best Hopes for TOD,
Alan
Alan
Alan, it seems to me that your arguments are rather running together several different time-scales, and also what is desirable with what is probable.
In America at least, where the issue of personal transport is more vital than in Europe, there is little prospect of shortages of coal for a couple of decades at least.
As for GW, just switching to EV motor from ICC even if you were generating the power with fossil fuels should mean that emissions were no worse than at present, as you would save huge amounts of oil burn.
In practise though, the switch will not be instantaneous, but will take some time - time during which the build of wind power, solar and nuclear can escalate.
The ones who first buy EV or plug-in vehicles would be those who really need it - ie those who are further out in the suburbs, and who will be hardest hit by rising prices.
This should to some degree mitigate the collapse of suburbia, although the relative attractions of urban living would increase.
So really what I am trying to get across is that we are not in an either/or situation, and we won't suddenly and magically change to an all EV situation, but some additional load on the grid can be expected, which should though decrease or at least not worsen GW emissions compared to running the same number of vehicles on petrol, and as the years go by increasing proportions of generating capacity will in any case be low emission.
There will also be all sorts of variations on the EV theme, with little run abouts like those recently shown by Nissan perhaps some of the first, which is any case should use maybe half the power of a full size car, and also electric bikes and motorbikes.
There don't seem to be any generating or grid reasons why at least to some degree EV technology can not mitigate the reduction in personal mobility.
The issue is just how much that is likely to happen, as it certainly will to some extent.
Respectfully,
DaveMart
My "modeling" of the future is a very complex series of error bars and probabilistic ranges.
One does not have to go very far into the future before the "error" bars overlap and nothing can be said with certainty. Thus my criticism of the techno-solutions and their certainty of the unknowable virtues of V2G from an as yet undefined technology and the "no problem" expanding the grid by ~16%.
The probabilistic part of my analysis holds up better and longer than the error bar part. I can see disaster at several margins, in several ways, but I also see a path out.
An evolution towards maximum PRACTICAL efficiency at every stage as fast as possible is the path that stays furtherest from disaster. EVs and PHEVs add 16% directly and even more indirectly by supporting an energy intensive lifestyle that leads towards disaster. Urban Rail and TOD lead to reduced energy use and greater efficiency and the greatest probability of a decent way of life
The issues get worse when GW is considered (as it must be !).
There are no certainties, but the odds are *MUCH BETTER* with a strategy focused on maximum efficiency rather than a strategy maximizing BAU.
Best Hopes for Avoiding Disaster,
Alan
There would also seem to be significant risks, in fact certain massive downsides, with the approach you are suggesting.
Although I go along with you wholeheartedly in your advocacy of more rail, and in particular in urban areas, building them is a very time consuming process, and would take some ramping up in the States and in fact would happen on the same time-scales as would be required to improve the grid.
With massive hikes in petrol prices then some variation on the theme of the death of the suburbs would already have happened, resulting in massive loss of equity and enormous financial disruption, perhaps to the degree that Gail or Leannan's fears of a catabolic collapse of society would occur, not leaving much money to finance rail schemes or anything else.
Should EV's take off, and it seems certain that given the choices available many will go for them, then the collapse of suburbia would to some extent be mitigated, and so the chances of total collapse would surely be reduced, and so rail projects would be more financeable over the time scales needed.
building them is a very time consuming process
See the USA from 1897 to 1916. Subways in all of the largest cities and streetcars in 500 cities and towns in an emerging industrial society with 3% to 4% of today's GDP and a fourth of the adult population.
The French, from a running start, are planning to build 1,500 km of tram lines in a decade. Adjust for population and workweek (but not for bureaucratic capability) and that is 5,000 miles in the USA.
Current tech EVs will not work in Outer Suburbia & Exurbia , it will have to be PHEVs (see Chevy Volt). In that role small diesels are a better solution.
Yes, financial collapse is an issue, but new $ can build Urban Rail as well as today's $.
NOTHING is certain, but I maintain that a reprise of 1897-1916 is our best solution.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Alan, you have a good point about AGW, but I think that a massive buildout of wind will leave underutilized capacity at night - capacity that would be well used by PHEV/EV's. Further, I think you underestimate the potential for residential solar to power PHEV/EVs - there's very little question that PV will become cheaper than retail grid power (it's costs are already almost there and still dropping very fast, though prices are dropping more slowly, due to demand), and then it's growth will truly explode.
"Current tech EVs will not work in Outer Suburbia & Exurbia , it will have to be PHEVs (see Chevy Volt). In that role small diesels are a better solution."
That's really not the case. PHEVs are more efficient than diesel. They're much more efficient in electric mode (which would be 80% of VMT), and substantially more efficient in engine backup mode.
A small PHEV (with large volume production) wouldn't be much more expensive than a small diesel, and the fuel savings would be much more than the additional cost.
If one works 8 to 5, then how does one recharge an EV with residential solar ?
I think that you are dead wrong about PHEVs on cost and efficiency. But all we have a heavily modified Priuses (sticker +$10,000). Hardly economic or close to the price of a small diesel.
Alan
You would transfer some power locally, so you would put some limited load on the grid, but in a very small way.
Otherwise about all you need is to install a plug at work - presumably most employers if things get tight enough so that people have difficulty getting into work, which after all is the basis of all this discussion, would prefer to install some extra plugs rather than go out of business.
Since in many alternative scenarios we are hypothesising massive depopulation of the suburbs and loss of real estate value, this alternative seems pretty acceptable!
Good point!
Residential PV output can be transferred to workplaces using this thing called the US electric grid. I suspect that most people here have heard of it.
"building them is a very time consuming process - "See the USA from 1897 to 1916. ""
Yes, but that didn't include relocating people in massive quantities, and in many cases we were building in relative greenfields, not in densely built areas.
"The French, from a running start, are planning to build 1,500 km of tram lines in a decade. "
They also aren't planning to relocate people in massive quantities. In fact, to a great extent the French are enabling longer commutes and travel distances.
"Massive relocations of people" were required to build the Interstates and other highways, but NOT transit. I cannot think of a single mass transit project in recent years in the USA that has had to relocate more than 100 homes (and most take zero).
The problem with routing transit lines in the USA is that rubber tires are sacrosanct. Yes, one can tear down a few homes but "horror" do NOT take a traffic lane !
The French stereotypically take a busy bus route, take two traffic lanes on the route, and put in a tram line, often grass running. A building might be taken on a corner, or in a special circumstances, but rarely. Sometimes they will run trams in mixed traffic, but they put cobblestones or rough concrete in the tram lane to discourage rubber tires from using that lane.
To date, I cannot say that the new tram lines are encouraging longer commutes in France, TOD has had the opposite effect. But some plans (see Mulhouse) may have exactly that effect as they extend more into commuter rail territory.Live in a village of 590 souls, walk to the tram stop and take it to work or to shop. Zero oil, energy efficient but a longer commute.
Alan
"I cannot think of a single mass transit project in recent years in the USA that has had to relocate more than 100 homes (and most take zero)."
I meant that the rail-building of 100 years ago took rail to where people lived, as opposed to building rail as part of a massive relocation project. I believe that's what the French are doing, and it makes sense.
The USA has a MASSIVE backlog of viable (at $30 oil) and worthwhile Urban Rail projects "on the shelf". Build these and plan for more of same as these are under construction. Build Urban Rail in current cities, I really do not know where your concepts are coming from.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
Let the Suburbanites fit into in-fill development, etc.
Alan
"Build these and plan for more of same as these are under construction. Build Urban Rail in current cities, "
As we discussed before, I think we really do agree on most policy proposals - promote rail; eliminate hidden subsidies for all transportation, especially trucking and such things as free parking; tax CO2 heavily with rebates to lower income groups.
I simply object to what appears to me to be a blindspot about the realities of suburbs vs city living, an unnecessary (and unrealistic) set of arguments against electric personal transportation, and a peculiar prejudice against suburbanites (you referred to them as "the Suburbanites", and talk about them having "distinguishing characteristics" like they were some smelly tribe of Gypsies which need to be shooed away, or assimilated ASAP).
While I see advantages to living in a big city, and have chosen to do so, I recognize that I pay a very substantial premium for the privilege, a premium which is only going to be somewhat reduced by PO (a premium which exists at whatever size residence one prefers). I also recognize that there isn't really in-fill development possible on the scale you suggest. Massive "localization" and emigration to cities would require massive construction, and very dense living (nothing like NO - in fact, NO would become unrecognizable under such a regime). While I can understand the attraction of such an idea (and its assistance to wild habitat), it wouldn't be cheap or fast.
Further, to suggest that there aren't effective, practical and relatively inexpensive ways to deal with PO, wherever one lives, (e.g., PHEV/EVs, heat pumps, combined with wind & solar, etc) is to spread unnecessary gloom. I understand why you might feel the need for advocacy for rail, and why you feel that PHEV/EVs will do just fine without your promotion, but I think you would do the public debate a kindness by refraining from criticising them without basis.
I think most people here agree that'd be very nice to see. Regardless of whether there's any kind of energy crisis, in fact.
Not true. Over 3/4 of US commuters have a round-trip distance within the 40-mile all-electric range of the Volt.
For commuting, at least, if you take a weighted average of trip lengths (and assuming the ">35" averages 45), the Volt will run on electricity for a full 80% of the vehicle miles travelled, effectively quintupling its gas mileage, and putting it well over 100mpg. No diesel can touch that.
Not true. Over 3/4 of US commuters have a round-trip distance within the 40-mile all-electric range of the Volt.
I said "Outer Suburbia & Exurbia" which is that other 1/4th.
And as batteries age and side trips are made (particularly coming home), the number of all electric commutes declines.
The price tag of the Volt seems to be increasing. A diesel Honda Fit or Yaris would likely get 55+ mpg as a commuter and cost half (or less) as much as a Volt with a longer lifetime before major repairs (such as battery replacement). If a friend had a 38 mile round trip commute, I would likely suggest the diesel Fit over the Volt. Spend the difference in costs on a solar hot water heater, more insulation, better windows, etc.
From an individual buyer POV, the small diesel is the better deal.
Alan
Or you could use an all-electric solution and avoid carrying lots of excess weight in an ICC.
http://www.gizmag.com/ukp14000-thnk-city-electric-car-ready-for-showroom...
UKP14,000 TH!NK city electric car ready for showrooms
At around $28,000 it would seem a good solution to the commute needs, and is a right-now product from an established company with good experience of building several generations of EV's - the production engineering is courtesy of Porsch.
For long trips you just hire an ICC.
A five seater version is to follow:
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/03/five-passenge-1.html
The Energy Blog: Five Passenger TH!NK Ox Introduced at Geneva Auto Show
Highly unlikely, as both have ~32mpg gasoline efficiency. Diesel offers about 1/3 more mileage, so a diesel Fit/Yaris would get about 44mpg in combined city/highway driving.
Agreed.
(Although not necessarily about the diesel, partly because the rest of the world has switched so much to diesel that it's likely to permanently cost more than gasoline. That, and no diesel Fit or Yaris exists.)
The Volt is pegged at $48,000 vs. $14,000 for either of the smaller cars. Assuming a US-standard 12,000 miles/year of driving at 31mpg for the Fit/Yaris and 50mpg (call it 45mpg) for the Volt (on the 20% non-electric miles), we get 387 gallons for the Fit/Yaris and 53 gallons for the Volt, or about 333 gal/yr difference, plus 9,600mi x 0.3kWh/mi x 9c/kWh = $260 in electricity for the Volt.
Amortizing the difference in purchase price over 10 years @ 8% interest gives about $4700/yr as the effective difference, meaning the Volt is cheaper only if gas is ($4700+$260)/333 = $15/gal, which in the US means ~$600/bbl oil.
So, yes, until PHEVs are in mass production and their price drops significantly, they're not going to be the most economical option. At $8/gal gas (~$300/bbl), the Volt would be cheaper than a comparable gasoline car at an $18,000 premium, or about $36,000 (since the Volt is a compact, vs. subcompact for the Fit/Yaris).
Which is surprisingly good, actually. If the price of the Volt can be dropped by 25% once it hits full production, if its batteries last 8-10 years, and if gas is expected to average $8/gal between 2015 and 2025, it'd make economic sense to buy. Raise the expected price of gas, and it becomes economic more easily.
"The Volt is pegged at $48,000"
Actually, that was a misquote of Bob Lutz - he didn't say it. He originally said under $30K, and later said it was rising in the 30's because of issues unique to a 1st generation model, but didn't say how much. There's never been any indication of more than $40k.
The Volt is indeed larger than a Yaris - we shouldn't be surprised that a Yaris saves money over a larger vehicle. Don't forget, diesels have a price premium over gas vehicles like a Yaris.
There's no reason to expect a serial hybrid to cost much more than a paralell hybrid, like a Prius. A conventional small-format li-ion battery in mass production currently only costs $400/KWH, so 16KWH would cost $6.4K. Li-ion costs continue to drop 8-10% per year, and large format 2nd-gen li-ion is inherently cheaper, so $300/KWH and about $5K for the battery is likely. A Prius costs about $24k, and a serial hybrid is less complex, so well below $30K in large scale production is to be expected.
You're absolutely right, and I'm totally wrong. The most recent price estimate I can find is from mid-April, and it's for $35,000.
In that case, the Volt would be price-competitive with the Fit or Yaris at $8/gal right off the bat (assuming good battery life). Considering the potential PHEVs have to lower gas consumption, I consider that pretty good news.
That's the kind of being wrong I like!
There's additional complexity in making a battery pack for vehicles, since they're subject to a little more abuse than laptop batteries - I've read this roughly doubles their cost. Estimates put the Volt's battery at about $10,000.
Later versions of the Volt would likely be cheaper, both because GM'd have time to redesign the auxiliary systems that are causing some of the cost overrun, and because battery tech is likely to improve in that time. $30,000 should make it competitive with other compacts at ~$5/gal, which I think most people here expect we'll see by 2012.
There's a nice quote at the end of the Volt article:
A candid Lutz, at 76 one of the world's older Internet blog diarists, recently laced into pre-Wagoner management for its chronic passivity. "GM had the technology to do hybrids back when Toyota was launching the first Prius [in 1997], but we opted not to ask the board to approve a product program that'd be destined to lose hundreds of millions of dollars," reads a recent Lutz blog entry.
"In the end, it cost us much more than that; it cost us our reputation for technology leadership and innovation.
"We made that mistake once. We won't make it again."
"The Volt's 300-pound battery pack will be among its most-expensive components. Menahem Anderman, a battery analyst based in Oregon House, Calif., has estimated each such lithium-ion pack may cost about $10,000."
Menahem Anderman is not a reliable source. He's been making things up, and exaggerating other things, for years. For some reason he's one of those people who has established himself as a go-to person for the media (rather like Yergin, except Yergin is a genuine authority on oil even if his analysis is chronically wrong), even though he's very, very unreliable - always saying negative things about batteries and PHEV/EVs that have no basis.
The biggest part of the cost of a battery pack is the battery cells - the power electronics require some investment to design, but arent that expensive on a per-unit basis - certainly not enough to double the cost of a pack.
" battery pack for vehicles...subject to a little more abuse than laptop batteries "
Just a note - because of the control electronics, for heat and state of charge, PHEV/EV batteries are subject to much less abuse than laptops.
I just bought some NiMH AA cells for $0.62/WH at the grocery store with a couple of coupons. They claim 100s of recharge cycles. Seems to me that if I can get that price retail, then it is going to be hard to justify really high prices for EV batteries. This price already rules out some bicycle battery packs I've been considering.
Chris
Urban Rail and TOD
Thus the people in rural areas are going to be helped out exactly how?
(So the rural who have money won't care - they will just pay more for transport fuel. The farmers will just charge more for food - to cover the increased transport costs. Now, where does that leave the urban poor - 50% (or so) effective tax rate and ever rising food costs.)
Farmers and ranchers ought to be about the only rural people. Everyone else should be in small towns or larger. When farmers retire they ought to (single word) move-to-town.
Much of the rural population is Exurbia (extreme Suburbia). Live on what my grandfather called "toy farms" and commute to town/city jobs. Not a viable choice long term.
Likewise the 1970s model of a "factory in a corn field" with all labor and materials arriving by truck is already failing. The cheap land that attracted those factories is being offset by the not-so-cheap oil and remoteness.
Farmers used to go to town twice a month (if the weather was good). Unless they are a few miles outside the county seat, that pattern will likely return. RFD (rural free delivery of mail) may disappear or go to once a week.
Small towns should get inter-urban service a couple of times a day with EMUs (self propelled electric railcars) that can operate singly, in pairs or in trains, connecting them with the nearest pair of cities of 100,000+. Leave on the morning train and return on the PM train or stay overnight (or go on to the city of 750,000+)
Best Hopes for Efficiency,
Alan
Telling people where they can and cannot live is trading a modest technological problem (powering EVs) for a massive social problem (convincing people to live where they're told).
In fact, I'm willing to bet it would require less rebuilding of infrastructure simply to build the EVs and wind/solar/hydro power supplies to keep people where they are than to force everyone into compact cities. The amount of building that would have to be done - for relocated housing, for relocated businesses, for upgraded infrastructure - would be immense.
It sounds like you want to radically rebuild the entire country's infrastructure and social system. Are you sure that's the easiest solution?
I am NOT for "directing" people other than by our friend the Invisible Hand.
I am for providing a carrot, or a refuge, post-Peak Oil. And no subsidies for preserving energy intensive living patterns, that only saps the strength from the viable sections.
One example would be to cut RFD to once or twice a week, and only provide six day/week mail service where the carrier can walk or bicycle the route.
Post-Peak Oil will not be a stick, but an iron rod. There is no real need to "force" people. They will either be beaten into a figurative bloody pulp by direct and indirect energy costs or move to an escape (if such an refuge exists, which it basically does not today in the USA).
I want to build/create such escapes/refuges in TOD by providing the essential catalyst, Urban Rail.
Best Hopes for Energy Efficient Living,
Alan
One of the issues we have now is that usually both spouses work. If both work outside the home, it is often difficult to find a place to live that gives a reasonable commute for both. In order for the pattern to change, we will have to have more one-worker families, or one partner doing gardening/ small farming at home.
"In order for the pattern to change, we will have to have more one-worker families, or one partner doing gardening/ small farming at home."
Somebody has to stay at home and garden??? That's an awfully steep price to pay to avoid a commute!
How about telecommuting? I understand roughly half of IBM's employees don't come into the office.
"One does not have to go very far into the future before the "error" bars overlap and nothing can be said with certainty. "
Nah. If the economy is anything like it is today, we can build PHEV/EVs that are roughly the same cost as today's vehicles to build, and much cheaper to run. This is straightforward engineering. It's silly to say otherwise - this is 100 year old tech, with a little present-day optimization. The newest li-ion is more convenient, but lead-acid or NIMH would work just fine. There's really nothing new here, just something that wasn't economic during the era of really, really cheap fuel, but is now perfectly affordable (less than $.10 per mile for battery costs, and negligible operating costs).
"Thus my criticism of the techno-solutions and their certainty of the unknowable virtues of V2G"
Again with the V2G! How many times do I have to say that V2G will be very nice, but inessential to getting 95% of the value of PHEV/EVs?? Most of the Demand Side Management value will come from dynamic charging. DSM is very old, well proven tech, in use in almost every utility, for I/C and residential applications. If we need it, we'll use it. Now, it's worth saying that V2G really isn't that hard, but if you wish to stipulate that it's unproven, it doesn't change the argument much.
"Urban Rail and TOD lead to reduced energy use "
You save for HVAC only if you assume that we shoe-horn everyone into half the space. What will keep people from adding heat-pumps and insulation, or building zero-energy homes in their old neighborhood, and buying PHEV/EVs?
You save for HVAC only if
HVAC is saved with a close to cube shape (sphere is ideal but not usable), shared walls (i.e multifamily or row homes), fewer sq ft/household (1950 avg was 1,040 sq ft/SFR). Not "half the space" but "40% of the space" :-)
Fewer windows make better windows more affordable, and fewer and smaller exposed walls also make higher insulation levels cheaper.
Stereotypical Suburbia was designed to maximize HVAC costs, it would be hard to do worse. High ratio width to height, maximize surface area with complex surfaces and picture windows, etc.
If the economy is anything like it is today, we can build PHEV/EVs that are roughly the same cost as today's vehicles to build
Two unwarranted assumptions, the economy and cost to build PHEVs.
The Prius sells at a significant premium to the Camry for a good reason. Add a an extra $10,000 for a kit to turn the Prius into a PHEV.
Alan
"Not "half the space" but "40% of the space" :-)"
That's certainly the biggest saver here...
"Fewer windows make better windows more affordable, and fewer and smaller exposed walls also make higher insulation levels cheaper."
Which would require a lot of new construction (not to mention 10's of thousands of dollars just to move), or very expensive renovation. It would be a lot less expensive to install a heat pump, and build a few windmills and some transmission.
"Two unwarranted assumptions, the economy and cost to build PHEVs. "
Alan, you're assuming that the grid is sufficiently reliable that it won't strand rail commuters in long tunnels - rail is a lot more complex and "delicate" than personal vehicles, and depends on a reliable grid, which in turn depends on an economy that looks a lot like the existing one.
"The Prius sells at a significant premium to the Camry for a good reason."
I don't believe the Prius sells at a premium to the Camry. The Camry base list price starts at $19,620 (for automatic trans), and the highest Camry model base list is $28,120 - with normal add-ons I would estimate that the average Camry sells for at least $25K, or about $1k more than the Prius. The average light vehicle sold in 2007 for $28K, rather more than the Prius.
"Add a an extra $10,000 for a kit to turn the Prius into a PHEV."
That's a one-off retrofit, aimed at early adopters - it tells us little about OEM mass production cost.
to mention 10's of thousands of dollars just to move), or very expensive renovation. It would be a lot less expensive to install a heat pump, and build a few windmills and some transmission
And support and maintain the infrastructure, run HVAC for quite inefficient homes as well as rebuilding the stapled together homes of modern Suburbia.
No, it will be cheaper to build better, smaller and more efficiently than to put good money after bad into Suburbia.
And what is the big deal about moving ? Suburbanites move about every 5 years anyway, that is one of their distinguishing characteristics.
I was surprised at the small delta between Prius and Camry. I will have to rethink that ! They have (just personal impression) comparable interior room.
Best Hopes for a rebirth of the Honda Insight,
Alan
"rebuilding the stapled together homes of modern Suburbia."
What makes you think urban new construction (or renovation)is higher quality??
"And what is the big deal about moving ? Suburbanites move about every 5 years anyway, that is one of their distinguishing characteristics."
No, they don't. This is really unrealistic, and suggests some kind of odd stereotype, like "Gypsies are always stealing our cattle". There is significant movement, but a large % is short distances, and of course is enabled by relative affluence.
"Best Hopes for a rebirth of the Honda Insight"
I'm puzzled by your assumption that PO will require an enormous reduction in consumption (like downsizing most cars to 2-seaters like the Insight). Eliminating oil will in itself provide a great deal of employment, and at the end of it we'll be better off. Even now, paying for oil imports only costs about 4% of our GDP: if oil costs doubled, and the US chose to eliminate our trade deficit (and stop selling t-bills and mortgages to oil exporters), that would be an 8% reduction in consumption - somewhat painful, but not the end of the world - only about 3 years worth of GDP growth.
You forget two things:
If the USA is to freeze the relative cost of oil imports and exports, we're going to have to cut consumption roughly as fast as the Export Land Model requires... and do it entirely through efficiency (maintaining production), because we'll need the production to purchase the remaining imports.
It's a mighty tall order. Taxing fuel up to $8/gallon might be enough to get the process rolling (at least get consumers to demand the sort of vehicles we'd be able to feed under such circumstances), but I don't see the will for this yet.
"The tightening of oil markets isn't an event, but an on-going process. "
And an extraordinarily complex one. Don't forget that for the purposes of transition to a better energy production world, wealth transfers don't matter, only income. Income is likely to be preserved through petro-dollar recycling, either directly or indirectly.
"Prices appear likely to rise exponentially"
Jeffrey predicts rounds of competitive bidding, and I think he's right. Many countries won't be able to afford that. Countries like India will have to drop their fuel subsidies. Iran will likely expand gas rationing. Prices will be extremely volatile, but where they will go beyond the very short term is very hard to predict.
"we're going to have to cut consumption roughly as fast as the Export Land Model requires... "
I don't see the will yet, either, but PO hasn't been clear to anyone until very recently. If it becomes clear, I wouldn't underestimate people's ability to respond. Technically, such cuts in consumption would be not that hard, through such things as telecommuting and carpooling. Heck, we could reduce oil consumption by 25% in 6 months, and still get everyone to work and get all the groceries delivered, should we choose to.
As I just said elsewhere: I would estimate that 25% of all employees could telecommute, but they and their bosses don't like it, because it reduces social contact and supervisory control.
New car sales will fall, but households will preferentially drive their high MPG cars (Dad takes back the Corolla from the teenager, stops driving the SUV); stop trading in the Corolla (which often now goes to South America); carpoolers will preferentially drive the Prius; and car-sharing services will allow cars to be used for 18 hours per day, instead of 1 (which is the average utilization, currently) - take a look at Igo and zipcar - they offer hybrids.
US light vehicles are about 1% utilized, currently: on average they are driven 4% of the day, and only carry 1.15 passengers. There's extraordinary potential for better utilization of high MPG vehicles (both new and older).
You should remember that EV is not the only pressure on the grid. We have all the folks who want to change from oil heated homes to electric heated homes. If the price of natural gas goes up by much, we will also have all the folks who want to go from natural gas heated homes to electric heated home.
Electricity is the substitute of choice not just for EV, but for every other use of oil or natural gas. It is the combined impact we should be concerned about, not just the impact of EV alone.
I thought I would try to run a couple of numbers taking into account Alan's strictures about the undesirability of putting any additional strain on the grid, or generating any additional CO2.
Please check my figures, as I have been known to misplace a decimal point!
The boundaries I am going to set is that it becomes a requirement that to purchase an EV you would have to certify that you were going to provide equivalent power generated in a fossil-fuel free way to the grid.
I will assume that we are a couple of years down the road, and that the family in question has 4 members, two of whom drive, and that they are some way out in the suburbs or in a small town, and that this is in an area with good solar insolation, not very variable over the seasons relative to the north.
I will also assume that financing can be obtained, and that their choice is between selling up, further depopulating the area, at a large loss and moving into town in much inferior accommodation or trying to hang on where they are.
A car which is available today, although not yet in the States, is the Th!nk, which is a two seater and will sell for around £14,000, say $28,000 dollars.
Buying two of those should cost the family in question no more than they would have paid for there present cars, what they would loose is convenience, and the need to hire an ICC when they wanted to travel a distance.
They would also need to take both cars to go out as a family - in practise one is likely to be a four seater, like the projected Ox, but I am confining myself to cars we know the cost and performance of, and our family could certainly manage with teo 2 seaters, however inconvenient.
Resale values should in fact be higher than on ICC cars, as there is little to go wrong, and many poorer people would be desperate to get hold of one - the battery cost would remain though, but it appears that they will last a very long time indeed.
The cars would need an average energy flow of around 1.5 kw, assuming 20% capacity.
If we are generous and allow a 5kw system, partly to enable a contribution to household needs, and partly to allow for seasonal variation, then costs might be at $4kw - cheaper than now but very likely within a relatively short time horizon, then it costs around $20k.
Amortised over 7 years you would come out to around $3k pa, and after that have free power.
I am not allowing for back up, merely requiring the grid is fed with equivalent power, so there would also be the cost of beefing up the grid to allow the transfer of the power, usually to the place of work where charging would usually take place, so that you can charge during the day.
You would also of course have the cost of the power points.
If you allow for the cost of that, you might be talking about $4k pa.
You would save on the cost of petrol.
It seems even on the fairly strict assumptions I have made to be a wash - what is lost is mainly convenience, but nothing remotely comparable to having to do a forced sale of your house and move to the city.
Things will actually be a lot messier than this, but at least for the relatively well-off costs seem very reasonable.
Since we know the cost of the EV, the rest of the conclusions would seem robust - ie you could increase the price of the solar array or grid connection by up, to, say twice without greatly affecting the conclusions.
$8k pa would be a lot out of the family budget, but would be off-set to some degree by whatever the current payment for petrol is - if they had two cars and averaged 12k in each at 25/gal at $4gal they would have paid around $4k anyway, in the time in question $8/gal gas would seem probable.
That's 36 kWh/day, or 180 miles/day at 200 Wh/mi. One heck of a lot of time behind the wheel!
I haven't made myself clear, I find.
I was hypothesising 1.5kw of installed solar PV capacity, which might generate power at 20% of the installed capacity, so at 8760hrs/yr you get:
2620kwh/yr - around the 2500kwh/yr you gave for an EV running for 10,000miles/yr.
Then that would be 1.5 kWpeak, not average watts.
Clarity through accurate terminology, etc. etc. ;)
Yes, Dear! :-)
In a declining economy, it seems like the couple in question will be pretty unusual. Buying two new $28,000 cars, when the existing cars have virtually no trade in value, will be a strain for most families. I am not sure we can assume that financing will exist for the new cars, either. It may be only the families with an extra $56,000 in the bank that can afford the new cars.
"In a declining economy, it seems like the couple in question will be pretty unusual. "
A steeply declining economy hasn't been proven. I think slow growth, or stagnation, is pretty likely if oil production starts declining by several % per year or more, but steep decline? Really not proven. It's certainly a risk, especially if oil exporters are stupid enough to try to not recycle petrodollars, but not proven.
"Buying two new $28,000 cars, when the existing cars have virtually no trade in value"
Most people stagger their purchases, so they'll have a vehicle that is well along in depreciation.
OTOH, people are likely to keep their cars a bit longer - they may have to carpool in the meantime.
Carpooling puts fewer miles on cars on average so that they last longer. You can get more frequent suspension repairs on a per car per mile traveled basis though.
Chris
A lot of people would still have substantial equity in their homes, even after a large fall in property.
I don't know the figures for the US, but in the UK over 30% of homes have no mortgage on them at all, and many more have very large amounts of equity.
A lot of them are older couples, but many would finance their children's car purchases if the alternative was their loosing their jobs, or at any rate help out.
The time scales are also getting compressed here, and the demographic.
It must be relatively unusual for both couples to need to commute long distances, and relatively unusual if they do for the financial penalties of either loosing their jobs to be equal.
In practise a thousand compromises would happen, with one partner accepting a lower paying job closer to home and using the old ICC whilst the partner with the longer commute bought a car, or one using a electric bike or car-sharing.
All this time, and all of these compromises would also mean that extra load on the grid would take some time, so concerns for that should be reduced.
I also simply used a current vehicle to generate the figures, as those are solid.
There are many alternatives to reduce the cost of EV's, for instance the Firefly advanced lead acid battery, perhaps working in conjunction with ultra-capacitors.
Not everyone will be able to adapt, and certainly some will have to sell up or be repossessed and go to rented accomodation in the city, but there is no reason for this experience to be universal. Those who can't in any way afford a new car will be hard hit, but the cut off point is likely those who can't finance around $28,000 at first.
In addition to the use of EV's, in sprawling cities the incentive for localisation will increase, with firms looking to re-locate into areas where the people are, or to provide more local services if they can't travel so far.
None of this will be easy, of course.
"In practise a thousand compromises would happen, with one partner accepting a lower paying job closer to home and using the old ICC whilst the partner with the longer commute bought a car, or one using a electric bike or car-sharing."
Why would anyone relocate, or take a large cut in pay, rather than try carpooling??
I just don't see a serious level of pain yet, not when there hasn't been a serious resurgence in interest in carpooling.
$28,000 is just about the average price for a new car:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/autos/aut11.shtm
If a couple own two cars and change them every 4-5 years then supposing that they are fed up with paying a fortune now, so trade in one of their cars for a small, efficient one, which does 35mpg instead of the previous car's 20mpg, so they have one gas guzzler and one which is fuel efficient.
Obviously the one with the longer commute would use the more efficient car.
In 4 or 5 years time they then buy an EV, so trade in convenience for economy, but still only pay around what they would have done anyway.
At this stage they are then using only around 30% or less of their previous consumption of petrol, all without exceeding their previous budget and then they can take their time about changing the remaining car!
This means that any marginal extra load on the grid would also be phased in.
Five years after they bought their first EV when they replace their remaining EV a full five seater with reasonable range at a lower premium over ICC should be available.
By around this stage EV's should start to become more available in on the second hand market, as the extra convenience and utility of the newer models would mean that the more wealthy would be keen to trade up.
In that 10 year or so transition poorer people would have taken quite a hit in their living standards, as would the economy, but the fact remains that the technology is available to deal with the issues, and implementing the changeover in itself is likely to provide a considerable stimulus to the economy.
I have found some more information on the Th!nk car, and it looks as though I have overstated the readiness of the battery system, they use the batteries from the Tesla in a 23kw configuration, as this is the cheapest option.
The cost of the pack is around $16,000, and you would normally hire the battery pack so that you would be paying an additional £140 pm, or $280.
This adds around the cost of the batteries to your purchase every 57months, so the costs are considerably above those I have shown, an extra $3360/year.
This would mean that rather than being affordable for everyone over the median of those who buy new cars, it would be more restricted, perhaps to the top 25% of new car buyers, at any rate without their paying more than currently, as they would presently buy more expensive motors, so without increasing costs you are looking at those who buy $44k cars.
Of course, battery technology is going to improve - many of the needed improvements are at an advanced stage of development, but we are not there yet and it seems likely that there will be an hiatus before adequate vehicles are available in quantity at reasonable cost.
This has severe implications for the suburbs and the overall economy.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/think-begins-pr.html
Green Car Congress: Think Begins Production of New TH!NK City EV
Dave, I can't find any hard data on this. I've seen reports of $15K purchase price and <$200/mo battery lease cost, but I'm not sure they were reliable.
Keep in mind that Euro prices don't translate as simply as the conversion rate, and that European cars, especially in Sweden, are taxed much more heavily than in the US, so comparisons are very difficult. Also, the battery doesn't seem to be fixed - it could be A123systems.
If you can find better data I'd be pleased to see it.
If you read down the link I gave, in the comments you should find that the guess of $15k for the US is because they usually have to price cars lower in the US to compete - some of the difference is tax, sure, but I doubt that there is much more price flexibility there, so I doubt the $15k.
The reason why they are using the same batteries as the Tesla is also commented on - they cost around a quarter as much as the batteries from 123 and others.
Personally I would like to see the use of Firefly batteries combined with supercapacitors, which should be dramatically cheaper, but the car industry seems fixated on lithium, which is pricey.
Our discussion on the advisability of solar PV also seems to have got lost in the wash, now it is on the back page.
Perhaps I can remind you of it, as I value your insights, but there is no way at all that I could figure out how PV power generated that far north and connected to the grid would do anything but cause a nuisance and raise costs for the rest of the grid.
A 5KW system only generates around 150kw of average flow during the winter months, and peak use is probably during the early evening in winter, so even on a daily basis it is at the wrong time.
For the UK, peak is around 75GW, minimum 20GW and average something like 45GW.
So if you built 20GW of PV solar, you would have taken out all of your base-load, but short of very expensive storage would not have contributed at all to power at night and so on.
During the winter your input would drop to around 0.6GW average hourly flow, so you would effectively have to generate all of your peak load with resources that you would not use all of the time, effectively making the economics of nuclear ruinous and coal difficult.
Of course, you would not actually generate that much with solar PV, but however much you do add you cause problems for the grid, and more problems the more you generate.
Maybe I have missed something, but I can't see any way that it is at all useful, unless you have different figures which demonstrate something different.
I'll leave out the other alternative, of importing solar power form further south, as that is a different argument.
" in the comments you should find that the guess of $15k "
That's not where I saw the $15K - I wish I could find that now.
"some of the difference is tax, sure, but I doubt that there is much more price flexibility there, so I doubt the $15k."
If you don't include the batteries, an EV should be less expensive to build than an ICE vehicle. The systems are much simpler - no oil, no gas pump, no engine cooling, etc, etc. Subcompact cars in the US for less than $15K are common, so that price point for an subcompact EV should be easy.
"Tesla is also commented on - they cost around a quarter as much as the batteries from 123 and others."
That's speculation. The Tesla batteries have the advantage of well-established designs and large production levels, but they're inherently more expensive (small format, cobalt), so A123systems should be less expensive with time and large production volumes. A 20KWH battery pack shouldn't cost more than $12K in the short term, and $6k 3 years from now. $12K over 10 years would only be $100 per month,perhaps $150 with interest and markups.
"Personally I would like to see the use of Firefly batteries combined with supercapacitors, which should be dramatically cheaper, but the car industry seems fixated on lithium, which is pricey."
I agree. Unfortunately, Firefly is 2-3 years behind A123systems in commercialization (can you find any evidence of products in consumer hands? I keep looking, and can't, so far), and li-ion is sexier. BTW, Firefly appears to have pretty good power rates, so I'm not sure supercapacitors would be needed in the battery pack sizes we're talking about.
"A 5KW system only generates around 150kw of average flow during the winter months, and peak use is probably during the early evening in winter, so even on a daily basis it is at the wrong time."
Yes, but German noon-time consumption (peak solar) is still well above the level at which fossil fuels must be used, so solar won't be competing with nuclear any time soon.
"For the UK, peak is around 75GW, minimum 20GW and average something like 45GW. So if you built 20GW of PV solar, you would have taken out all of your base-load, "
That minimum occurs early morning, not at noon. Noon may not be the peak in winter, but the peak in summer will be closer to noon, probably around 3:00, so in summer solar will greatly contribute to peak shaving. Again, noon consumption consumption even in winter in the UK is still well above the level at which fossil fuels must be used, so solar won't be competing with nuclear any time soon.
I'd be curious to see actual diurnal and seasonal demand data for the UK, to verify these estimates - I suspect the winter peak isn't much higher than the summer peak.
Nick, it seems that we basically haven't been told enough by Th!nk to make closer estimates - It appears that the contract with EnerDel should be worth $70m, but it is not clear how many vehicles that is for - if it is for around 5,000, then the battery cost would be about $15,000, roughly.
Here are the average hourly loads for the UK. summer and winter:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7268832.stm
As you can see, summer time demand is fairly flat from 7.30 in the morning until 10.30 at night.
Winter demand peaks in the early evening at around 17.30, and peaks at around 15GW higher than in summer.
These are average figures though, and in the depth of winter on a cold day they would hit close to their maximum capacity of 73GW or so.
I've got my head around your reply that base-load would not be affected, now I have looked at those graphs - the penny hadn't dropped that the base-load is at night, which if course I should have realised, but not having seeing it visually laid out like this overlooked it.
I still think the utility of a source which has an inverse relationship to seasonal use is limited, although since wind is around twice as powerful in the winter as in the summer presumably you could balance the relative percentages to some degree.
I enjoy discussion with you, Nick, as something always comes out of it.
" enjoy discussion with you, Nick, as something always comes out of it."
Thanks, I do too.
That's a fun BBC article - I like the bit about unexpected demand from putting on teakettles!
A peculiarly British problem! ;-)
Seriously, a major football match in the winter leads to all hands standing by the pumps in the power stations- at half time millions of kettles go on at the same time, during the evening peak - several million kettles at 2 or 3 kilowatts each is no joke to any utility!
One would have a hard time coming up with a problem better suited to V2G as a solution.
The thing that you are missing here is that the gas guzzlers didn't simply cease to exist when the original owners traded them in. The median age for a car in the US is 9 years and rising. That means that the life-span of a car is closer to 20 years. The gas guzzlers sold by the wealthy couple that buys a new car every 5 years will be driven by a middle class family for 5 years, a lower middle class family for 5 years and a working class family for yet another 5 years.
Only 50% of oil consumption is personal transportation so that means that replacing *every* new car with an EV you're still only cutting oil consumption by 2.5% based on that.
This is also ignoring the fact that as affluence declines due to high oil prices it's very likely that people will be replacing their cars less often and making existing cars run longer. We are not at all likely to efficiency our way outa this.
" The median age for a car in the US is 9 years and rising. "
Yes, but cars less than 6 years old account for 50% of VMT. That gas guzzler is just as likely to go to a teenager who will use it relatively little, and many used cars leave the country.
"replacing *every* new car with an EV you're still only cutting oil consumption by 2.5% based on that"
You'd be cutting about 6% - new cars acount for about 12% of VMT.
"as affluence declines due to high oil prices it's very likely that people will be replacing their cars less often "
Yes, but VMT would shift to newer cars, through intra-household shifts, inter-household shifts, carpooling, and carsharing ( see www.zipcar.com ).
Actually, the easiest form of efficiency would be telecommuting and carpooling. Heck, we could reduce oil consumption by 25% in 6 months, and still get everyone to work and get all the groceries delivered, should we choose to.
Okay, 50% of VMT being applied by cars less than 6 years old means that you'd be cutting 16% (6 years) OF 50% (total personal transport oil demand) OF 50% (50% of vmt being old cars) That gives 4% not 6%. Now, that is assuming that 100% of ALL new cars consume zero oil. which is a horrific exaggeration. It is also assuming that the new loading on the electric grid does not result in any oil consumption. Again a bad assum
I hear an awful lot about telecommuting. Do you know what percentage of the overall population have jobs that are amenable to telecommuting? It really doesn't work for anything in the manufacturing, transportation or service sectors, that leaves basically office jobs with minimal client contact and zero co-worker interaction. That's a very very limited set of the overall workforce. In other words, great where you can get it, but I really don't see it having a huge impact on overall oil demand.
What makes you think that VMT would switch to newer cars? Seems to me that as emergy bites deeper into people's checkbooks, they will delay changing out their cars and the VMT will lose the front-loading.
"Okay, 50% of VMT being applied by cars less than 6 years old means that you'd be cutting 16% (6 years) OF 50% (total personal transport oil demand) OF 50% (50% of vmt being old cars) That gives 4% not 6%."
Ok, let's try again. New cars (less than 1 year old) account for 12% of vmt. That's 6% of oil consumption.
"Do you know what percentage of the overall population have jobs that are amenable to telecommuting? "
Good question. Anyone have data?
" It really doesn't work for anything in the manufacturing"
Only 14% of manufacturing employees work with their hands. 50% of IBM employees telecommute. I would estimate that 25% of all employees could telecommute, but they and their bosses don't like it, because it reduces social contact and supervisory control.
"What makes you think that VMT would switch to newer cars?"
New car sales will fall, but households will preferentially drive their high MPG cars (Dad takes back the Corolla from the teenager, stops driving the SUV); stop trading in the Corolla (which often now goes to South America); carpoolers will preferentially drive the Prius; and car-sharing services will allow cars to be used for 18 hours per day, instead of 1 (which is the average utilization, currently) - take a look at Igo and zipcar - they offer hybrids.
US light vehicles are about 1% utilized, currently: on average they are driven 4% of the day, and only carry 1.15 passengers. There's extraordinary potential for better utilization of high MPG vehicles (both new and older).
If it is as tough and difficult to reduce consumption as you argue, then prices will rise higher, and other solutions will do the job.
It is really nice to drive to work, but an electric scooter would get most there, however inconveniently.
This would also save on cost, which you feel will be important.
Of course, some would live too far away from work and so on, but in previous short term oil crises in the seventies amny took week-day lodgings close to work, and in an extended crisis then people would gradually move.
In the nature of things, a very high price will lead to drastic action.
Yes. Eventually the consumption WILL drop. There is a price. There is however no real way that we're going to "efficiency" our way out of this.
Just to amplify on the scale of the problem, the US only consumes 20% of total world oil. so even IF the US were to begin replacing EVERY new car with an EV, that would (If the 6% number from the other gentleman is right) produce an immediate drop in world oil consumption of 1.5%.
Now, bearing in mind that there does not currently exist an EV on the market, Nor is there any reason to expect one in the next 5 years, with a strong probability that they will represent a negligible sales percentage until at least 2015, we cannot realistically expect much savings out of efficiency.
Most places in the world are not nearly as dependent on the car as the US - here in the UK most could get to work quite well without.
Here is a current EV - it is early days admittedly:
http://www.gizmag.com/ukp14000-thnk-city-electric-car-ready-for-showroom...
UKP14,000 TH!NK city electric car ready for showrooms
I understand that Europe consumes at current less oil percapita than the US. However, that kind of underlines the issue. How much LESS oil can/will the average European consume as a result of a doubling in price?
How many will say "I only drive my car 50 miles a week, $15/gallon gas isn't a problem for me"?
In addition to all of this, there is the fact that EVs are not at all suitable for a very large number of applications, they are totally unsuitable for any form of high usage vehicle. You will not be seeing EV taxis, delivery vehicles or rental cars anytime soon.
That's a pretty neat little car! I note "ready for showrooms" instead of "IN" showrooms. I never believe corporate or government projections. They tend to lie a lot.
A huge percentage of driving in Europe is voluntary - we could catch the bus, or shop more locally, but why bother?
As always, demand would be destroyed at the margin, with the poorest going first.
We wouldn't have to get rid of our cars, but would drive them less - my essential mileage is around 1 mile a week, although I could stretch it to once every two weeks, and could always put batteries in my car for that!
Here are the taxis:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/22/london-black-cab-goes-electric-g...
London Black Cab goes electric green - AutoblogGreen
They are likely to be made compulsory in many places.
Here are the delivery vehicles:
http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/cr/index.asp?pageid=63&caseid=vans
Sainsbury's is one of the biggest supermarket chains in the UK
Here are the rental cars:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/01/02/paris-about-to-launch-a-cheap-re...
Th!nk is not a new start-up. They have many earlier electric cars on the roads.
They are a spin-off from Ford and the production engineering is by Porsch
Early days, but exciting ones!
"There is however no real way that we're going to "efficiency" our way out of this. "
If you define "efficiency" as strictly vehicle efficiency, that may be so, though it depends on the pace of depletion. If we have a plateau for 5 years, and a 1% rate of fall after that, that's not such a big deal. That scenario is entirely possible, though I would agree that it would be foolish to rely on it.
OTOH, conservation through telecommuting and carpooling could reduce consumption by 25% in 6 months. That would be very inconvenient (which is why we don't do it now), but doable. Smaller percentages, of course, would be easier.
" the US only consumes 20% of total world oil."
The US consumes 21M bbls per day, and the world 85M, so it's just about 25%.
" there does not currently exist an EV on the market, Nor is there any reason to expect one in the next 5 years"
There are going to be a serious surge of PHEV/EVs by 2010, including GM's Volt, Toyota, Nissan, and other large car manufacturers. They're available now, in small but growing numbers from several small manufacturers, like Think and Tesla.
Alan,
Oil is presently the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Electrification of personal transportation is a very important step towards reducing emission. Else, tar sands will be exploited. Solar will grow on the fleet replacement timescale so you needn't worry about the extra strain on generation. We'll be replacing coal.
Chris
Se my comments on probabilistic analysis.
Suburbia will consume more energy (coal most likely) is large single family residences for heating and cooling. Not to mention that police patrols will use oil in Suburbia but can get by with bicycles and walking in TOD, etc.
A Urban Rail + TOD strategy will likely reduce total electrical demand, with almost zero oil used in new infrastructure.
PHEVs will still use substantial amounts of oil.
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
As you point out, you model runs out of precision quickly. It is thus inadequate to seeing solutions that are not local minima. It is not that adaptive annealing would help but rather you can't tell what works in the future at all. You would do better, I think, to work out a few scenarios fifty years out, say with 50% efficient solar panels at $0.30/Watt and 100,000 cycle batteries etc. and then figure out what path gets there. I suspect that electrified personal transportation will continue and if there is some uptick is mass transit and reurbanization, you'll see it slow or disolve as EROEI goes back up. Adding nuclear into the mix could slow things down a bit I suppose, and could lead to disaster, but your model can't be sensistive to this I think.
Chris
"Suburbia will consume more energy (coal most likely) is large single family residences for heating and cooling. "
I haven't seen any data that urban residential space uses less energy per Sq foot. PV and heat pumps will be easier to install in less dense areas. To the extent to which there is demand for replacement housing, developers can build smaller & energy efficient homes, townhomes and condos in suburbia more easily and cheaply than in dense urban areas - why wouldn't they?
"Not to mention that police patrols will use oil in Suburbia but can get by with bicycles and walking in TOD, etc."
Have you talked to any police about this? Do you see any reason why police (urban & suburban) won't buy PHEV/EVs (along with everyone else)?
any reason why police (urban & suburban) won't buy PHEV/EVs
Yes, the duty cycle. Several hundred miles/shift and many cars are used 2 to 3 shifts/day. Simply no time to plug in.
It comes down to non-plug in hybrids vs. small diesels when Police Dept.s start worrying about fuel costs.
And suburban patrols do put on more miles/shift (typically).
I haven't seen any data that urban residential space uses less energy per Sq foot
Shared walls save energy and remove that caveat of "per Sq ft" and substitute "per person" or "per household".
Why not more building in Suburbia ?
Because of the higher energy costs to get to work and shopping and the costs of supporting infrastructure in Suburbia (more street lights, streets, water & sewer lines, etc. per capita).
Alan
Batteries such as A123Systems' can be fast-charged in 10 minutes or so. Police cruisers appear to spend a fair fraction of their time parked, watching and waiting for something to happen. Wire the usual stopping spots for 440 V 100 A and a substantial battery pack could be fully charged in about 20 minutes, or fractionally charged in as little as 5. On top of this, the car would be able to shut down the engine while still having full A/C.
Police cars spend more of their time idling or cruising slowly than almost any other class of vehicle. They are ideal candidates for hybridization. Adding Killacycle-class acceleration power ought to make it popular.
"Yes, the duty cycle. Several hundred miles/shift and many cars are used 2 to 3 shifts/day. Simply no time to plug in."
As E-P noted, this appears very, very unrealistic. Most city police cruise at slow speeds, spend substantial time waiting, and spend a lot of the time in the office on paperwork. The duty cycle you suggest would imply 1,000 miles per day, or 300K+ miles per year - it's more like 25K per year.
"Shared walls save energy "
If all else is equal. It's not. How many urban high rise condo's have floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows?
"Because of the higher energy costs to get to work"
But, this can be electrified, and at a much, much lower cost than relocation.
"shopping and the costs of supporting infrastructure in Suburbia (more street lights, streets, water & sewer lines, etc. per capita)."
I've seen no evidence that the difference in energy cost between urban and suburban infrastructure is that large. Vehicles can be electrified. Asphalt isn't essential. Sewer lines??
Within the next one, two or three decades, fuel supply issues should develop with natural gas.
a decade? Hasn't TOD run a main page feature showing Nat Gas being 'in trouble' in under 5 years from now? Cantrell is crashing in a NOW timeframe.
Yep.
The only new electrical generation that can come on-line in 5 years in quantity is wind and natural gas and perhaps solar (geothermal = coal for time lags). Add solar hot water heaters as a substitute for NG and electrical demand.
One market solution is people shivering in their homes due to high prices for a number of years. Residual NG production will be enough for a shrinking home heating market (shrinking due to increased insulation, reduced market share as more homes convert to heat pumps and smaller homes with shared walls) if other uses are severely reduced.
Thus a Rush to Wind will relieve demand on NG for electrical generation, and power (with longer time lags for HV DC & pumped storage) heat pumps.
Now add an increased electrical load for EVs and PHEVs.
Alan
Alan, We just don't know the situation with NG. It would be prudent to plan for a fast decline, but people have been predicting a "cliff" in NG production for 30 years - Hubbert in the 70's was predicting a peak in the early 80's and a crash in the late 80's, and instead NG fell a bit and then grew again.
Anybody seen any good detailed info on Marcellus unconventional gas? I've seen predictions of 160TCF, but I don't know if they're realistic.
We just don't know what NG is going to do - prudence dictates contingency planning, but firm predictions are impossible, as far as I can tell.
As far as coal goes, I hope we ramp it down ASAP, but it's good to keep in mind that we have plenty of it - analyses like Rutledge's are based on BAU pricing of alternatives, not disastrous energy scarcity.
The number of EVs and PHEVs that will be on the road in 5 years is so small as to be largely irrelevant.
Hybrids, after 10 years, represent 2.2% of the US market, or about 4.5M cars. Assuming PHEVs can achieve that level of market penetration in half the time, and that they're typically like the Volt (40mi range x 0.25kWh/mi = 10kWh/car) and unreasonably assuming they all drain 100% of their batteries every day, that's 45M kWh of additional demand.
Average daily electricity generation in the US is 11.2M MWh. 45M kWh / 11.2M MWh = 0.0040, meaning the PHEVs would need less than half a percent of US generation capacity.
That's the output of five 500MW plants (@ 75% capfac); compared to the ability of that number of PHEVs to reduce the number of similarly-sized peaking plants by about 20, there's a strong argument to be made that that number of PHEVs used in a V2G manner would reduce the amount of generation capacity needed in the US.
You may not like (PH)EVs, Alan, but the numbers really don't support your argument here. I like your rail proposals, but you're really outside your area of expertise here.
Hybrids passed 3% of US sales last month. A lot of this is due to tanking truck and SUV sales, but the fleet composition is changing at a pace not seen since the 1970's oil-price shocks.
I see the real world potential of V2G as being reliant on mass consumer behavior and vastly over stated.
The early adapters may have decent compliance (unknown) but experience has shown that, for example, the ability to program a VCR has declined as market share increased. The willingness to plan and program (and simply plug in with a long cord) one's car is vastly overstated for the bottom 50% of the population.
I am quite resistant to changing my routine and way of life just to save a few $, and I suspect that I am not alone.
Would I participate in V2G ? NO WAY !
Alan
True, but a reasonable amount of V2G could be achieved simply with buttons labelled "charge fast" and "charge cheap".
Which is fine, although I think you overstate the degree of the changes required.
As the analysis above showed, though, if just 20% of (PH)EV owners participate only modestly in V2G, their contributions to load levelling will save construction requirements roughly equal to the amount of construction needed to power the driving of all (PH)EVs. If some (PH)EV drivers recharge during demand lows - which would save them hundreds a year, even at current electricity prices - then (PH)EVs end up lowering the need for power plant construction and strengthening the grid.
Assuming the pricing is fair, some people would participate in V2G, either because they think it's cool (likely for many early adopters) or because they're tempted by the low-effort money, and it doesn't take all that much of the vehicle fleet participating in V2G to accomplish quite substantial peak shaving.
With very modest assumptions, (PH)EVs are a net benefit to the health of the grid.
Apple has shown a consistent (and to me amazing) ability to create consumer friendly user interfaces. If Apple teamed with XX car company to create the MacVolt, I would withdraw many of my objections.
GM, OTOH, has had a long history of poor interfaces.
Alan
"I see the real world potential of V2G as being reliant on mass consumer behavior "
For the 12th time, V2G isn't necessary (though it would be nice). Just dynamic charging (or even just charging at night). Maybe you mean dynamic charging, but if so, let's say so.
"the ability to program a VCR has declined as market share increased."
The majority of VCR users never, ever used it to tape - VCR's have always been ways of playing tapes from the friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. As Pitt says, dynamic charging could be very simple. Actually, the sensible thing would be to program in a default pattern, have the car salesman check with a new buyer that the default was ok, and have the buyer never again think about it.
I like your comment about Mac-Volt. GM appears to be getting much better on their design, lately. Have you heard anything about the On-Star service? That would be a good test.
The numbers don't bear you out, Alan.
http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/archives/001247.html
METERING AND PRICING ACTIVATE ELECTRICITY DEMAND IN CALIFORNIA - Knowledge Problem
http://www.energy.ca.gov/demandresponse/documents/group3_final_reports/2...
2005-03-24_SPP_FINAL_REP.PDF
Note that this is not with fancy V2G, but plain old vanilla TOU management, together with customer feed back so that they could see what they were paying when.
This would indicate that with appropriate tariffs EV's would increase stability of the grid, not decrease it.
It should be noted that EV's would likely do a better job than PHEVs at increasing stability, as most would only need to charge them once a day, and with a timer switch could do so at night when consumption was low.
Alan:
Given the information reported here, I am guessing that what we can hope for BEST CASE in the intermediate term (15-30 yrs from now) here is the USA is the following breakdown of transport mode for personal trips:
Walking: 33%
Bicycle: 28%
Mass Transit (EOT): 20%
EVs (almost ALL NEVs): 19%
There are no countries in the table cited with walking, bike or mass transit percentages higher than the above, so I am wondering how realistic it really would be to expect higher than those best cases? As for EVs, is it realistic that maybe 20% of the time people would be taking trips in NEVs, understanding that a substantial number of those would be taxis or hourly rentals? I'm inclined to think that falls within the realm of reality, especially when some of those NEVs might include conventional compacts and subcompacts that have been converted to electric. 90+% of trips being done on PHEVs? Probably not. I also think that a ramp up of mass transit (which might include shuttle buses) from 2% to 20% might just be possible, but it becomes more difficult to think that something much greater than that would be possible. Equipping enough of the population with bicycles to cover 28% of the trips also seems within the realm of possibility.
I could be wrong, of course. Who knows what the future actually holds? However, I do think that the above represents an interesting scenario worth thinking about in more depth.
I agree.
TOD is an evolving iterative development of ideas (amongst other things), and that mix looks extremely interesting.
H'mmmm
Best Hopes for Better Ideas,
Alan
And EVs are a wonderful solution for buffering intermittent sources like wind and solar. A grid with substantial numbers of EVs connected could reliably handle more wind and solar than one without, possibly allowing a grid with EVs to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels faster than one without.
You're being a little silly here, Alan. Even after 220M EVs have been built, they'll only need 16% of current electrical generation. The task of building those EVs is literally an order of magnitude larger[1] than building the power generation capacity for them, meaning that if we're in a situation where we're able to build large numbers of EVs, we're by necessity in a situation where we're able to build the electrical capacity for them.
You're tilting at windmills here. You may prefer electrified rail to EVs, and you may be right to do so, but "EVs take too much power" is not a winning argument for you.
[1] 220M EVs x $30,000/EV = $6.6T to build the cars vs 0.25kWh/mi x 12,000mi/yr x 220M EVs = 660,000 GWh/yr * $10B/GW for wind/solar/hydro baseload / 8800hr/yr = 660,000 GWh/yr * $1.14M/GWh/yr = $0.75T to build the carbon-free power capacity.
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.
Why wouldn't employers and retailers want to convert a cost center (parking lots) into a profit center (with metered recharging stations)?
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 unwieldy size of the problem and the fact that the system must remain online while it is being upgraded. Let the local utilities manage their own systems for the most part, but use the national backbone as a way to distribute renewable power and load-share between regions. At the same time, develop standards for interconnection, node communication, and system maintenance, and use the requirements of interconnection and access as a political tool to enforce those standards on the local utilities.
This sort of program also has political appeal: I could see President Obama announcing a national initiative alone these lines and getting everyone whooped up over it. (Hey, indulge me in a little fantasy here :). It would be expensive, but not as expensive as doing nothing.
We already have that. They are called "National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors." People in Virginia and eslewhere are very P.O.ed. http://www.nvdaily.com/news/291583825750393.bsp
Chris
What they are arguing about is different. It is just siting of one transmission corridor --not the whole backbone. I agree that it is going nowhere - illustrates the NIMBY problem.
The payment for this transmission corridor still must be decided in the usual way.
Not really. There are several of these corridors in the legislation.
Chris
It seems like what you are saying might make sense. Try to break off a piece or two of the problem and solve it.
"Electrification of transport" may be a very good incentive to sell grid modernization at least and possible nationalization as well.
Another reason is renewables. Best places for solar, wind, and geothermal energy generation are mostly west of the Mississippi, while the nations biggest demand is in the eastern half.
So we're all ready to nationalize the industry because "congestion is high"? The two most important indicators of trouble are not addressed. Get me charts of:
1) Household outages by month for two decades or more, with notation for spikes (like hurricanes and earthquakes).
2) Brownouts by month for two decades or more, reported as national and by major region (NorthEast, West, South, etc).
A look at those charts would be convincing. I think they would disapoint the author.
I don't think Gail is pointing at major problems happening now. But he is pointing out severe weaknesses and inadaptability in our current infrastructure due to free market/laissez faire policies. Without reregulation and accountability among electricity providers, these weaknesses are likely to expand to become crises as the power inputs to the grid diversifies, as population pressure increases infrastructure stress, and as free market economics disincentivizes investment in more resilient infrastructure.
As seen in California, a deregulated grid is a recipe for disaster, misuse, and encourages profiteering that harms both economies and individuals while concentrating the benefits of profit among a very few individuals and stake holders. The grid is a public infrastructure so rules and measured, managed development is an element needed to sustain civilization. A free market grid, with only profit incentive to drive development, is a system which encourages the wealthy owners to cannibalize public infrastructure for personal benefit. It amounts to little more than looting and is not only irrational -- it's immoral as well.
Kudos to Gail for writing a fantastic, well thought out, and informative article. We will certainly need an upgraded grid if we are to have any hope of rationally dealing with the issue of peak oil. Continued deregulation and non-investment will result in poverty, social break down, and, eventually, anarchy in the face of a peak oil crisis. We will certainly need the new energy sources -- wind, solar, nuclear. But we will also need the new infrastructure to maintain it. Simmons is wrong. We don't need shiny new oil pipes to transport a trickle of oil. We need shiny new copper wires to transport of flood of electricity.
A re-regulated grid doesn't mean we have to sacrifice flexibility either. We can add conditions and exchange rules for power sharing to encourage states to export electricity to those who are unable to generate it themselves.
This article is just like those in the mainstream press--writing about things they know nothing about. Having worked in the utility industry for 15 years I can say that this article--although well written--displays the writers ignorance of the subject matter.
Hi corn,
Thanks for your comment.
re: "This article..." Which article are you referring to? Gail's? Or the one referred to in the post you answer?
re: "...writer's ignorance of the subject matter."
Could you please be a little more specific?
The best of TOD (here) is to bring informed commentary and insight to the (brave) author's expression. As I see it. So, could you talk about what is not said that should be? And what is said that is incorrect and why?
What are your ideas?