The Oil Drum | Cars or Wind Turbines? Time to Choose ?

187 comments on Cars or Wind Turbines? Time to Choose ?

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thomas deplume on November 21, 2008 - 10:54pm

The retooling of old factories in the rust belt and the construction of new ones in the wind belt and the possible relocation and training of maybe 100,000 workers will require a substantial investment. By not building so many large vehicles the cost of materials for the wind industry would be less. The electricity sold from the wind turbines could repay the investment at little cost to the taxpayers. Could the same be said for the auto industry?

Are there other energy related products which could give us more bang for the buck? I've read the claim that on a megawatt basis nukes use less steel and concrete than wind power. What about negawatts? Could making everybody's roof white reduce the need for coal burning quicker and cheaper than new wind farms? What about using the aluminum that now goes into beverage cans instead be used for the HVDC grid development?

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scientastic on November 22, 2008 - 12:54am

In my opinion there should be (not that there will be) a massive retooling and retraining of most of what manufacturing we have left, from making luxury goods like new cars to building the machines for the new green infrastructure we will need in the much longer term.

We can survive with the cars we already have. Just look at places like Cuba, where they are still driving cars built in the 50s and 60s. This is why I equate "new cars" to "luxury goods." In WWII, factories were switched from producing new cars to building airplanes and tanks, for several years. We still got around.

Moreover, there is a great potential for a cottage industry of electric vehicle conversion shops to turn existing cars into 100% electric cars. Go to http://www.evalbum.com for more than a thousand examples of this. I am also converting my own car at home, for a budget of $7K on top of the cost of a used car. A decent conversion can be done by one of these shops for $10-15K. Starting from a used car that still has a body in good shape at $5-10K, you still pay about half of what you would pay for a $40K new GM Volt. And the cost of a conversion would drop if it became a big enough industry. These electric drivetrains can and do last far longer than the gasoline technology they replace... AND they are much cheaper to run from day-to-day.

The grid currently has enough spare capacity at night to charge up at least a hundred million electric cars like these. It might entail burning more coal and gas in the short run, but it would be during off-peak hours, so no new plants or power grids would have to be built.

Having more electric cars would free up precious oil, steel and other resources, to invest in building the green energy infrastructure we need in the long run. Windmills, solar power plants, ocean energy, geothermal, and even nukes. (I don't expect uranium to last much longer than coal, but nukes may contribute less C02 than coal, and it never hurts to diversify a bit).

Many have also talked about tying electric vehicles' batteries into the grid to act as a giant store of energy for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. This kills two birds with one stone. I can see the potential, but this is more forward-looking and in my opinion, not as firmly grounded in affordable current technology. By this I mean, I can't yet buy off the shelf components that are efficient enough to make this energy round-trip worthwhile, at a reasonable price. Everything else I have mentioned this far, however, is proven and reasonably affordable technology.

I'm not completely optimistic that we will as a society engage in the necessary steps to make a technological fix like this happen. Even if we did, we would have to get used to a lower standard of living and would learn to conserve a lot more than we do. I am fully supportive of other efforts to reduce our dependence on energy, including localization, permaculture, the transition initiatives, and so on. But in my mind, there is a feasible path, using TODAY's existing technology, to an oil-free yet still sufficiently technological world.

It just requires leadership and a society-wide focus and drive, while ignoring the temptation to take advantage of temporarily lower oil prices as the transition continues to destroy demand. It requires overcoming and ignoring entrenched special interests such as the automobile and oil industries, or finding some kind of win-win scenario where they can still benefit during the transition (such as by retooling for green infrastructure). I'm hoping this happens, but not expecting it by any means...

But you can do your own conversion and get the ball rolling locally. Look for your local EAA (Electric Auto Association) chapter at http://www.eaaev.org/eaachapters.html, and attend their meetings. You may be able to buy an EV from one of the members, if you are not mechanically inclined. You can get tips and local help if you choose to convert your own car. This can be one aspect of the Great Reskilling that the Transition Initiatives talk about. At the very least, you can support their cause, along with your favorite other local initiatives in public transportation, food production, community building, and so on.

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Will Stewart on November 22, 2008 - 6:38am

You've spelled out why we should build wind turbines in Detroit and I heartily agree. I'll add coal mining areas (West Virginia, etc) to the list of locations, and I'd also throw in solar thermal and geothermal power equipment manufacturing.

EV conversions are certainly possible, and I've had them under consideration for some time, though my vision is now for something in the 3-wheeler category to obtain a very high mpg equivalent, noting that a 3-wheeler is considered a motorcycle and does not have the same crash protection requirements. There are lots of 3-wheeler projects underway right now, and I'd like to note that the GM Lean Machine achieved 200 mpg in 1981 (and leaned into corners like a motorcycle).

Now this thread has come full circle; why not convert Big 3 manufacturing to renewable energy equipment and very high mpg vehicles? The supply of light trucks we have now will last at least 20 years.

Because if Detroit won't build these cars, others will;

130 mpg Aptera (see Popular Mechanics review)

..
..

157 MPG Loremo

..
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100 MPG VentureOne

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Escéptico on November 22, 2008 - 9:50am

"157mpg Loremo"- Looking carefully at that photo, there's a guy leaning over to fill it up on the right hand edge of frame. Either he's a giant, or that's a scale model of the car, or "You cannot be serious, it's designed for hobbits!"

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freeyourmind on November 22, 2008 - 10:08am

If I had to choose between those cars and wind turbines, I'd choose the turbines every time!

Seriously though, I think that there are some vehicles we have already that can do better than those cars:

Fuel Efficiency of Trains

They're 12 times more efficient than even small cars on the road today and that doesn't even consider the possibility of building electrified rail that can be powered directly by wind turbine infrastructure.

Then it comes down to commuters. Which commute looks better to you?

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Will Stewart on November 22, 2008 - 11:54am

I'm all for trains, though the spread of suburbia means that we have low density populations outside the city, so while some rail infrastructure will work (especially if people bike to stations), there would still be some need for personal vehicles in areas impractical for rail (unless such places are abandoned). Each of the above vehicles could be used in a carpooling arrangement, further increasing their net energy efficiency.

If we had it to do all over again, this approach would be far superior. It's what I've been pushing in my county, with mixed results.

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Joe Average on November 22, 2008 - 10:29pm

Hello TODers,

I still have some concerns about all these wonderful options, primarily of scale and longevity...

Wind Turbines
Turbines have a shelf-life of a human-generation or so / we need a lot of them and a lot of crude to build and replace / even the windiest place on Earth isn't windy 100% of the time (what is the windiest place on Earth, BTW?)

Electric Cars
Batteries are expensive / many of the components may soon join the "endangered list" / battery technology moves incrementally, not exponentially / batteries have a shelf-life of one-fifth of a human generation

Time (Countdown to 2050?)
The clock's ticking... Is there enough time to scale up? / would a wind-turbine, or electric car (or solar-array, or nuclear power-station, or whatever) built today still be up and running four or five decades from now?

People
More and more people added to the system every year, wanting more and more stuff (little of which is produced locally) / we're all watching our dollars at the moment, and will for some time.

I'd like to think that a world with less than a billion people (all friendly, loving and environmentally aware, of course) might be a lovely place to live. But that's for dreamers.

Regards, Matt B
Far more concerned than this time last year

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DaveMart on November 23, 2008 - 7:02am

Hi Joe,
Some of the figures you are using seem to be a little inaccurate.

For wind turbines a commonly used lifetime by the industry to work out when they will need replacing is around 20 years I believe.
It should be borne in mind though that there will be maintenance during that time, which may include heavy expenditure if some of the major equipment goes, but OTOH when it comes time to replace it then you will already have the foundations, access roads, grid interconnect etc built in.
Maintenance for off-shore installations is likely to be more expensive.

Battery technologies have a longevity which is also pretty much as long as a piece of string, depending on the configuration and usage, and also which battery technology you are talking about.
To confine our discussion to car batteries, some of the latest lithium batteries have a life-span of over 10,000 cycles, which if you work that out means that they will probably be going strong for 20 years or so in most uses.
Even lead-acid when oversized and backed with capacitors has given plug-in hybrids a over a 100,000 mile lifetime:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/ultrabattery-combines-supercapacitor.html

If you have a look at Gail's article and the responses to it the real concern is if we have a high enough EROEI energy source and the infrastructure to support it, given those things then it should be possible to replace kit as it wears out.
If we don't we are screwed.

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Joe Average on November 23, 2008 - 5:37pm

Thanks, Dave.

I guess my point was, unless something's made out of stone, we'll have to keep replacing stuff forever. And forever on a finite planet with billions of non-carbon neutral consumers seems like bad math.

Regards, Matt B

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Pitt the Elder on November 23, 2008 - 7:45pm

I guess my point was, unless something's made out of stone, we'll have to keep replacing stuff forever. And forever on a finite planet with billions of non-carbon neutral consumers seems like bad math.

True, but not the most reasonable assessment, as nothing is infinitely sustainable. "Forever" is unattainable - thermodynamically - meaning that the only reasonable time horizon to look at is "long enough", which is inherently subjective.

One way to look at this is that the resource constraints of the western world are very different from the constraints it had 1,000 years ago. Very little that a government could have done in 1008AD to conserve resources would have had a significant positive effect on our available resource base today; accordingly, one wonders if our own efforts might not be too relevant to 3008AD, assuming the next thousand years pass as well as the last thousand did.

Based on that, I would argue that "sustainable for the next thousand years" is a reasonable upper bound for "long enough", at least for planning purposes, and in many cases "long enough" will be considerably shorter.

Pretty much necessarily, more detailed plans will have shorter horizons; however, one way to combine detail with longer horizons is to artificially limit the total resources budget. If, for example, a plan with a 50-year time horizon would only use up 20% of a certain resource, then it's probably reasonable to assume that that plan is sustainable (with respect to that resource) for 200-300 years, but possibly much more (if better technology or better plans are developed and adopted).

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Joe Average on November 23, 2008 - 11:06pm

Thanks Pitt for the reply,

I'm still stuck on "sustainable growth" - that is, consuming more and more of the raw materials that are finite (I realise you didn't mention growth, but it's relevant I think).

If you told me we could build a wind turbine with x resources only ONCE, then that machine could maintain/repair/replace itself hundreds of times over with zero input from elsewhere, I'd be far more optimistic. But I understand self-sustaining man-made "things" are unachievable, so I must conclude that ultimately a wind turbine (for example) IS NOT a renewable energy source.

So as things stand, I doubt we have a thousand years of sustainability in us. Let alone "growth".

Regards, Matt B
PS. I'm not an arrow-clicker... Still trying to get my head around all this!

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scientastic on November 24, 2008 - 1:23am

Self-sustaining man-made things may be impossible, but as long as our ecosystem has a net influx of energy from the sun, it is possible to maintain a level of complexity above total entropy (chaos).

When the wind turbine reaches its end of life, if there are humans left on the planet with enough know-how, its parts and raw materials can be recycled.

You're right, anything that is a simply linear process (inputs from the environment, outputs to the landfill) is unsustainable. But if we can turn our linear process into a circular one, via recycling, then sustainability in that particular subsystem is possible.

"Sustainable growth" is an oxymoron. We do have to manage somehow to stabilize the population. That's where the scariest challenge really lies, because in all instances in the past that has been accomplished by disease and/or war.

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pragma on November 24, 2008 - 2:24am

Pitt, Joe, Sci:

This may be picky, but perhaps part of the problem is the use of oxymoron. I would include "Sustainable Development", a variant.

Similarly, Global Warming is only sound bite worthy, as it fails dismally at even suggesting the complexity of climate change. At best they are a poor choice of words, at worst, they are bait and switch or platitudes.

A meme that may be worth propagating is "sustainable change".

To me, sustainable change means that we can continue to evolve and develop but within the constraints of our resources. It may make the future more palatable, rather than the bleak prospect of picking over landfills and slopping hogs 'til the end of time. True, population is an ugly issue, but perhaps that is simply a sad part of the transition.

When I combine the remarkable things we have created over many centuries, in a highly resource limited environment, with what we have learned since, perhaps it just might be OK. Not BAU by any means, but not bleak subsistence either.

I know it's just words but think of "Yes we can". That phrase seems to have potential.

I must to stop now or I'll have to turn in my doomer membership.

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Cyril R. on November 24, 2008 - 2:26pm

We do have to manage somehow to stabilize the population. That's where the scariest challenge really lies, because in all instances in the past that has been accomplished by disease and/or war.

Most demographics agree that population will level off (or at least slow down to a very low growth rate) somewhere between 9-12 billion people, and this appears to be a result of a number of demographic and economic developments that are not actively the result of any population policy.

So there's some reason for hope on that front.

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freeyourmind on November 23, 2008 - 8:23am

Turbines have a shelf-life of a human-generation or so / we need a lot of them and a lot of crude to build and replace / even the windiest place on Earth isn't windy 100% of the time (what is the windiest place on Earth, BTW?)

It's debatable, but Mt. Washington in New Hampshire has been called the windiest place on Earth, for good reason. I've been up it, and it is extremely windy. It's also got the highest ever recorded wind speed on Earth, at 231 MPH.

Check out the weather up there right now.

And yes, it is 100% windy up there 100% of the time. Most of the buildings are literally chained to the mountaintop!

The only thing it, it would still be a terrible place for a large scale wind turbine, considering the harsh temperatures and precipitation.

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hugho on November 23, 2008 - 4:39pm

Joe: I ocean sail and I'd heard that Cape Denison(sp?) in the Antarctic south of Tasmania was the windiest and I remember hearing of an average wind speed of 50 mph, making anchoring a bit of a challenge, going ashore in the skiff potentially suicidal. I guess sustained 60 to 90 mph is not unusual.

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Bellistner on November 25, 2008 - 10:15pm

even the windiest place on Earth isn't windy 100% of the time

Which is why we need a diversified electricity generation base. Wind + pumped storage + Solar PV + Solar Thermal + Nuclear + whatever else we can get our hands on.

Batteries are expensive

There are way around this (leasing, for example).

battery technology moves incrementally, not exponentially

Like most other technologies.

batteries have a shelf-life of one-fifth of a human generation

But are almost fully recyclable. Lithium batteries, for example: when the battery is EOL (80% of original capacity), it's still usable, or, if you choose to recycle it then, all the Lithium is still in the battery, waiting for reuse.

would a wind-turbine, or electric car (or solar-array, or nuclear power-station, or whatever) built today still be up and running four or five decades from now?

Electric cars (as we know the car) won't be, for the simple reason that we won't have roads (as we know them). For personal transport, I expect we'll have lightweight vehicles like Velomobiles or regular bicycles. Backed up by 1 or 2 kW of batteries, these can take you pretty much anywhere.

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DaveMart on November 24, 2008 - 3:08pm

Actually, the illustration you chose to convey your point demonstrates why trains are not always particularly efficient.
When they run pretty empty, as is usually the case outside of rush hour, the efficiency plummets, both in energy terms and in terms of capital tied up.

What is needed is a balanced transport system rather than a 'train good, car bad' mentality.

That is not to say that the present system, with it's gross over-emphasis on the car, is not absurd, of course, especially in places like the states.

I would rather my ambulance came on four wheels, even if it is in future powered by electricity, for instance, rather than wait to be transported by horse-drawn carriage to the train.

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GRLCowan on November 24, 2008 - 3:54pm

trains are not always particularly efficient. When they run pretty empty, as is usually the case outside of rush hour, the efficiency plummets, both in energy terms and in terms of capital tied up.

But elsewhere in this thread it was demonstrated that at such times, 60 percent of the passengers are fabulous babes.

Capital tied up? Um ... OK ...

--- G.R.L. Cowan ('How fire can be tamed')
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan

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Will Stewart on November 22, 2008 - 11:49am

"You cannot be serious, it's designed for hobbits!"

Not at all. The seating is much lower, in order to reduce the cross sectional area (to lower drag). It's also a 2+2, as there are two rear-facing seats for children in the back.

It's not a big car, though it really shouldn't be, as big cars got us into the problem we have now. Slow incremental changes in fuel economy won't help whatsoever. So either we're driving vehicles like this (when not biking, walking, or taking mass transit), or our driving will be sharply curtailed when the decline deepens. I'm 6'2", and the Loremo is one vehicle I am considering for my next purchase (after the Honda Insight expires).

The entry into the vehicle is via a flip up front end for the front passengers, and hatchback for rear passengers.

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Dezakin on November 23, 2008 - 11:47am

Not something anyone with any claustrophobia issues would be remotely willing to endure. Yuck.

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Will Stewart on November 24, 2008 - 10:05pm

Then get a convertible or ride a motorcycle... or stick with BAU.

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Cyril R. on November 25, 2008 - 4:41am

Most people don't have claustrophobia, and it's a psychological thing which can be overcome with training.

Peak Oil is less psychological however, and with an attitude like yours, it'll be quite impossible to overcome.

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Rhisiart Gwilym on November 23, 2008 - 10:52pm

Lots of us six-foot European hobbits ride vehicles a good deal smaller. Here's a sample:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=BmmWUzsnbhk

Quite a lot of forward-looking USAmericans are using them now too. Here's young (six-foot-something) Sam Whittingham driving his to an 82+MPH world speed record at Battle Mountain:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=jQwpGLCAMm4

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Lucifer on November 22, 2008 - 10:45pm

These cars make you want to rush out and buy one of each, that might be a problem - think ugly cars and sexy wind turbines.

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CascadianPDX on November 22, 2008 - 12:50pm

I too think that conversions solve a lot of problems...

1) they get CO2 out of older, dirty cars, that we are fond of for a variety of reasons
2) the conversion industry can become a large scale, ground-up, diversified employment opportunity for anyone with the chops to start up a biz,
3) converting large numbers of old cars & trucks would generate demand for energy storage devices such as batteries & ultracaps that require large scale deployment to drive down costs...
4) basically, conversions can be a driver for some positive feedbacking as far as the environment, economy, and social sphere is concerned.

Scientastic, or any other number crunchers... are there any off the shelf components that would allow one to have a micro V2G home setup? I.e., an EV vehicle in the garage with a large enough battery pack to drive the household needs yet be mostly self sustaining with PV & microturbine energy sources at the home site? I've been seeing articles about lamp post style helical turbines that are well suited for urban use, so it seems that the technology is here, we just need some bundling and financing.

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Will Stewart on November 22, 2008 - 4:26pm

are there any off the shelf components that would allow one to have a micro V2G home setup? I.e., an EV vehicle in the garage with a large enough battery pack to drive the household needs yet be mostly self sustaining with PV & microturbine energy sources at the home site?

That's a tall order.

First: EV in garage with large enough battery pack to drive the household needs?
Ans: That depends on what the household "needs" are. And what the concept is when the car drives off? Better to have separate battery packs for the house and car.

Second: Self sustaining with PV and microturbine energy sources?
Ans: Depends on how much energy is 'needed' and how much is generated, along with sizing of the battery pack. There is no one answer here.

It has been done at several Solar Decathlons with Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV).

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scientastic on November 23, 2008 - 12:14am

I don't think there are currently off-the-shelf components that would make V2G worth the effort. I could be wrong; the folks that may know the best are probably in the home solar industry. Ask about grid-tied systems with battery backup.

With any V2G scheme, you still end up with a net loss of energy making the round-trip, so the only way it would be worth the effort is if the utility agreed to sell you the off-peak electricity at a low price, and buy it back at a sufficiently higher price during times of peak demand.

Remember, too, that in my EV conversion I am relying totally on proven, off-the-shelf components and technologies. Many groups are researching V2G, so appropriate new technology may be in the works. I'm just not solidly convinced it would be worth the effort... yet. It sounds feasible, but at the moment it's vaporware.

The final point I'd add on this is that with converted EVs using lead-acid batteries, the capacity may not be big enough to be able to feed much back into the grid. A much more practical idea to start with would be allowing the utility to tell your car when to charge... and perhaps, when needed, feeding the electricity back into your own home only, not back into the grid itself.

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Cyril R. on November 23, 2008 - 5:13am

You don't really need to charge/discharge the vehicles battery for V2G just yet. Think about the potential for G2V. The other way around, you know, a very large demand that is to a large extent schedulable (so can be throttled up or shedded), is very useful for any grid. Doesn't degrade the battery, doesn't lose energy, because there is no round trip. When there's more power in the grid, charge the vehicles faster. If there's less power, charge them slower. Vehicles can be charged very fast with lithium batteries but most of them will be parked most of the time so can be plugged in to serve as schedulable demand. Just 'say' to your vehicle when you want it to be charged xx percent, and the smart grid plays around with the charge rate, as long as it's charged to the consumer set conditions.

The potential for a large schedulable demand is reason enough to get started with a smart grid.

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Cyril R. on November 24, 2008 - 2:35pm

For example, take a look at a typical wind production pattern over a day. Spikes and valleys! Provided there's adequate transmission capacity (an area that needs major work, most will agree) those spikes can be absorbed by the pluged-in vehicle fleet. Saves natural gas and diesel peaking. Most vehicles are parked 20+ hours/day, and plugging the vehicle in as long as possible gets the owner/user the lowest per kWh tariff since there would be some kind of lowest cost algorithm to regulate the flow of energy. So a lot of people will plug in as often as they can. Requires a smart grid, but the cost of a smart grid to the nation would be a tiny and have extremely good return on investment.

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scientastic on November 24, 2008 - 3:03pm

You are correct. Before we get to V2G, there's TONS of room to play with just the timing of charging. And anyways, the technology we would need to do this (basically, either letting the utility tell your charger when to charge, or otherwise indicating when a valley occurs) will still be needed later if we do go to V2G.

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Cyril R. on November 25, 2008 - 4:50am

Exactly, so we should get started in earnest rather than fooling around with a million here, pilot project there... smart grid can be done with off the shelf components.

There's lot of other nice things a smart grid can accomodate, such as ice storage for air conditioning, hot water storage for space heating and domestic hot water, which can be used as fully functional 'charge discharge' cheap grid storage. Call it AC2G or SH2G or something. All off the shelf components, no rare materials, only takes a cubic meter or two in your garage or garden shed. Pays for itself in just a few years, sometimes even less, through software controlled lowest cost buying of electricity.

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