The U. S. Electric Grid: Will It Be Our Undoing?
Posted by Gail the Actuary on May 11, 2008 - 12:00pm
Quite a few people believe that if there is a decline in oil production, we can make up much of the difference by increasing our use of electricity--more nuclear, wind, solar voltaic, geothermal or even coal. The problem with this model is that it assumes that our electric grid will be working well enough for this to happen. It seems to me that there is substantial doubt that this will be the case.
From what I have learned in researching this topic, I expect that in the years ahead, we in the United States will have more and more problems with our electric grid. This is likely to result in electrical outages of greater and greater durations.
The primary reason for the likely problems is the fact that in the last few decades, the electric power industry has moved from being a regulated monopoly to an industry following more of a free market, competitive model. With this financing model, electricity is transported over long distances, as electricity is bought and sold by different providers. Furthermore, some of the electricity that is bought and sold is variable in supply, like wind and solar voltaic. A substantial upgrade to the electrical grid is needed to support all of these activities, but our existing financing models make it very difficult to fund such an upgrade.
If frequent electrical outages become common, these problems are likely to spill over into the oil and natural gas sectors. One reason this may happen is because electricity is used to move oil and natural gas through the pipelines. In addition, gas stations use electricity when pumping gasoline, and homeowners often have natural gas water heaters and furnaces with electric ignition. These too are likely to be disrupted by electrical power outages.
Introduction
The whole discussion of electric grids may be a foreign topic for some readers. Because of this, let me start off with a couple of analogies:
1. Sometimes the analogy of water in pipelines is used as being similar to electricity and the electric grid. Transmission lines are like pipes. Voltage is like water pressure that forces electricity over long distances. Amperage is the amount of water flowing through the pipe. Our big challenge is that what we want the pipes to do is constantly changing, because of regional load shifting, peak demand, and intermittent generation. Sometimes we are slamming the system with a large slug of water. At other times, we have a trickle, but we still want an even flow out of the faucet. With these stresses, it is easy for the electrical system to get the equivalent of banging pipes and chattering faucets.
2. When I rented my first apartment in graduate school, I soon discovered it had exactly two 15 amp circuits. If I wanted a window air conditioner, it needed to be a small one, and it needed to be on the opposite circuit from the refrigerator. If I wanted to use an electric iron, I needed to think carefully regarding where I could plug it in, without blowing a fuse. I always needed to be aware of what was running on which circuit, if I wanted to keep the lights on.
The US electric grid is clearly not as bad as the wiring on my first apartment, but there are some similarities. The grid dates from a period not too much after the wiring in my apartment.
The US Electrical Grid in the 1960s
The current electric grid has its origins in the 1960s. One article noted that our current grid dates from the time when Frank Sinatra was in his prime, before a man walked on the moon, and before cell phones were invented.
At that time, electric utilities were pretty much local operations. Each utility was vertically integrated--that is, handled the entire supply chain of electricity production and distribution. The transmission system was set up so as to optimally serve its local area. There were some transmission lines to nearby utilities for use in emergencies, but the transmission grid was mostly set up to serve local customers.
Utilities were generally regulated as monopolies, and allowed to pass costs on to customers. One of the utility's costs was the upkeep of transmission lines. Since these were necessary for operation, these were kept in good repair.
This model seemed to work for the electric system of the day. The most important law at that time was the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), passed in 1935. Under PUCHA, electricity was a regulated industry, covering both generation and transmission.
Partial Deregulation of the Electric Industry
Starting in the late 1970s, deregulation became the fashion for many industries, including trucking, airlines, natural gas, telecommunications, banking, and health care. The law that opened the door to partial electricity deregulation was the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1980 (PURPA), passed when Jimmy Carter was president. The law was intended to encourage efficiency in electricity production and to help the "little guy".
Under PURPA, a utility was forced to purchase electricity from any "qualified" producer. To qualify, a system either had to produce electricity using an alternative source such as wind or solar, or had to meet a very modest efficiency standard. Natural gas production could qualify under the efficiency standard.
In the years after 1980, there was a move toward free market economics and capitalism. Under the new model, the purpose of a utility was to make money for its stockholders. Growth was an important objective. In some states utilities were forced to divest of their assets, with the idea that the smaller pieces would encourage competition. Power plants were bought and sold, and the new buyers were not necessarily in the utility business. Some buyers were hedge funds.
Electricity became a commodity like any other commodity, with widespread trading in electricity contracts, futures, and other derivatives. The financing model even included securitization, using bonds backed by future revenues related to planned recovery of stranded costs. At one point, marketing of electrical energy became a huge source of revenue, apart from the actual generation of the revenue.
After a few years of trying to the new system, some of the problems of the new approach became clear. In 2001, Enron's manipulations of market prices became apparent, and in December 2001, it filed for bankruptcy. There were also a number of other new entrants into the electricity business that also failed, including Mirrant Corporation and Allegheny Energy.
Since 2001, there has been some back-pedaling at the state level on deregulation, with a number of states suspending deregulation. At the federal level, the push has been in the direction of competition, but with more federal oversight. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 repealed PUHCA (the 1935 act which enabled local monopolies), but gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) a bigger role in the oversight of power transmission. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 also gives FERC oversight of an industry self-regulatory organization called North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC).
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) makes yet another stab at helping the grid. Title XIII of ESIA establishes a national policy for grid modernization, creates new federal committees, defines their roles and responsibilities, addresses accountability and provides incentives for stakeholders to invest. The act only "authorizes" these activities, but does not actually provide funding. As far as I know, the funding has not yet happened.
With these changes, the industry continues to be much more fragmented than it was prior to deregulation. There is some state regulation, but the model of financial profitability and growth continues to play a big role. There is still widespread trading of electricity across long distances and use of derivatives and other financial instruments. The federal government has taken some steps toward more direct involvement, but it is difficult to do very much very quickly in such a fragmented industry.
What happens to transmission under deregulation?
When a utility's primary role is taking care of its own customers, there is a strong incentive to carefully maintain its transmission and distribution system. Once the system is divided into many competing entities, many of whom do not have financial ownership of the transmission system, the situation changes significantly. Some of the impacts include:
1. Declining investment. There is less incentive to maintain transmission lines, since under a fractured system, no one has real responsibility for the lines. Also, profits are higher if equipment is allowed to run until it fails, rather than replacing parts as they approach the ends of their useful lives.
2. Overuse of lines between systems. Prior to deregulation, transmission lines between utilities were designed for use primarily in emergencies. Once widespread trading of electricity began, lines between utilities are put into much heavier use than they had been designed to handle.
3. More rapid deterioration. After deregulation, there is much more cycling on and off of power plants and the structures involved in transmission, to maximize profits by selling electrical power from the plant that can produce it most cheaply. This results in metal parts being heated and cooled repeatedly, causing the metal parts to deteriorate more quickly than they normally would.
4. Unplanned additions to grid. Wind and solar are added to the grid, with the expectation that the grid will accommodate them. "Merchant" (investor owned) natural gas power plants are also added to the grid, sometimes without adequate consideration as to whether sufficient grid capacity exists to accommodate the additional production.
5. Difficulty in assigning costs back. Since the industry is more fragmented, if any transmission lines are added, the cost must somehow be allocated back to the many participants who will benefit. Ultimately, the cost must be paid by a consumer. These consumer rates may in fact be regulated, so it may be difficult to recover the additional cost.
6. Increased line congestion. There is a need for more long distance transmission lines, because of all of the energy trading. There is a great deal of NIMBYism, so approval for placement of new lines is very difficult to obtain. The result is fewer transmission lines than would be preferred, resulting in more and more line congestion.
7. No overall plan. There is a need for an overall plan for an improved system, but with so many players, and so much difficulty in assigning costs to players, very little happens.
8. Little incentive to add generating capacity. As long as there is a possibility of purchasing power elsewhere, there is little incentive to add productive capacity. Profits will be maximized by keeping the system running at as close to capacity as possible, whether or not this causes occasional blackouts.
What do industry leaders say about the U. S. Electric Grid?
It is hard to find anyone who has anything very complimentary to say about the US grid. When Bill Richardson was energy secretary during the Clinton administration, he called the grid a third-world grid.
The Report Card for America's Infrastructure, prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers, gives the US Electric Grid a rating of D. Its summary says the following:
The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts.
An article from EnergyBiz by Edwin D. Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, says:
The average age of power transformers in service is 40 years, which also happens to be the average lifespan of this equipment. Combine the crying need for maintenance with a shrinking workforce, and we may find that the 2005 blackout that affected parts of Canada and the northeastern United States might have been a dress rehearsal for what's to come. Deregulation and restructuring of the industry created downward pressure on recruitment, training and maintenance, and the bill is now coming due.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Joseph Kelliher is quoted as saying:
The U.S. transmission system has suffered from underinvestment for a sustained period. In 2005, the expansion of the interstate transmission grid in terms of circuit miles was only 0.5 percent. At the same time, congestion has been rising steadily since 1998.
Transmission underinvestment is a national problem. We need a national solution. Pricing reform is an important part of the solution to this problem.
Summary of Where We Are Now
A this point, we have a grid that was designed many years ago. Many of the grid's components are near the end of their normal life spans. There is a process for getting new segments added to the grid, but it doesn't work very well. As a result, growth in transmission infrastructure tends to lag behind new additions to generating power.
One of the problems is getting permits for the siting of a new segment, when it has been approved. This can take years if local residents are opposed to additional lines in the area. One estimate is that actually getting a new transmission line installed can take up to 10 years.
Another issue is dividing up the costs among the various entities that would benefit. In some cases, there will be losers as well as winners--for example, a new line may be detrimental to a power plant that would be the low cost producer in the area, but because of the new line, a different plant from a distance can better compete. There may be several entities that benefit. There may be differences in the abilities of these organizations to charge their costs back to the ultimate customers.
There is of course the issue of obtaining funding for a new project, especially one with a very uncertain time frame. Costs relating to grid construction are increasing quite rapidly, for several reasons: Grid construction uses a lot of metals whose cost has been rising recently; China is rapidly building its grid, competing for available transformers and other components; and many of the materials are imported, and are affected by the declining dollar. In addition to the higher cost, there can also be delays in getting equipment, because of the competition from China and other buyers for available equipment.
The grid is now being used extensively for long distance transportation of electricity and for switching among providers so as to obtain electricity at the lowest cost. The grid was never designed for these uses, so it is stressed by them. One of the results is increasing congestion. One particular area of concern is the "Eastern Interconnection".
The extent to which congestion has been rising in the Eastern Interconnection is shown in Figure 2.
While I have not shown a graph, another area with excessive congestion is Southern California. Changes to the grid structure are needed to relieve stress in this area as well.
One factor that affects line congestion is the relative cost of producing electricity for different types of fuels. The greater the differential in costs (usually natural gas higher than coal and nuclear), the more the financial incentive there is to import lower cost electricity from a distance. Natural gas prices have recently been rising. If this continues, this will put further pressure on utilities to import electricity from a distance created using coal or nuclear, rather than using locally produced electricity from natural gas.
Until now, additional wind capacity has simply piggy-backed on the general capacity of the grid. According to Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, spare capacity is now depleted, and new transmission capacity will need to be added to accommodate more wind energy. Even with the existing amount of wind energy (only about 9,339/405,582 = 2% of Texas's total electricity, based on EIA production data for 2007), there have been reports of near rolling-blackouts in Texas, when the amount of wind energy suddenly dropped.
In Figure 3, I list states that are importers and exporters of electricity in 2006, based on EIA data. California and many of the Eastern states are big importers. Big exporters include coal producing states like Wyoming and West Virginia, and several states with large nuclear facilities. The percentages of imports and exports shown on Figure 3 are for the full year. It is likely that during peak periods, imports and exports will be much higher percentages than the amounts shown.
Federal legislation was passed in 2005 and 2007 which should help the grid situation a little, but it still leaves the many individual operating entities to share responsibilities and costs. The basic model is still one of competition, with governmental and industry organizations trying to get the various entities to work together for the common good.
What Changes Are Needed to the Grid?
We would have a very large task if we simply wanted to fix the grid to do what it was originally planned to do, since many of the grid's elements are close to the ends of their useful lives. Unfortunately, nearly everyone who looks at the situation believes that a major upgrade to the grid is needed, rather than just patching the current system. From my reading, I have identified three basic changes that people believe to be necessary, over and above just getting the old system into better operating order. These are
1. Extra High Voltage Backbone. FERC commissioner Suedeen Kelly has been quoted as saying:
In order to truly capture not only the benefits of competition in generation but also to facilitate increased use of renewable resources, I am convinced that we will need not just to upgrade our electric grid but also to reconfigure it. We need a true nationwide transmission version of our interstate highway system; a grid of extra-high voltage backbone transmission lines reaching out to remote resources and overlaying, reinforcing, and tying together the existing grid in each interconnection to an extent never before seen. To get to that end state, we must have cost allocation provisions in place that can accommodate such wide ranging benefits.
2. Analog to Digital Grid. If we are going to enable energy efficiency, many believe we need to move from an analog to a digital grid. James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, says :
If you’re going to enable energy efficiency, you have to move from an analog to a digital grid with new transformers and new meters capable of two-way communication.
The Smart grid concept is very closely related to the digital grid. At the Green Intelligent Buildings Conference, keynote speaker Paul Ehrlich said:
We need to find ways to make the grid smarter, to make buildings smarter, and to have these smarts communicate with each other.
3. Real-time Transmission Monitoring System. With such a system, it would be possible to react more quickly to sudden shifts in power needs or power availability, and prevent cascading blackouts. Adopting such a system would not be simple. A 2006 study by FERC lists these steps:
• Define What a Real-Time Monitoring System is, What it Should Accomplish, and How
to Accomplish it
• Evaluate Existing Real-Time Monitoring Technologies and their Limitations
• Identify Required Communications and Related Security and Operating Issues
• Define Data Requirements
• Identify Promising Emerging Technologies
• Decide what Data Should be Shared, with Whom, and When
• Decide Who Should Operate, Use, and Maintain the System
• Identify Potential Participants Involved in Establishing a Real-Time Monitoring System
• Consider Cost and Funding Issues
How do we get from where we are now, to where we need to be, in a reasonable amount of time?
I am having a very difficult time seeing how this can be done. There are just too many entities and too many funding issues to make a transition from a neglected old system to a much-improved new system in a reasonable length of time. Our current economic model seeks growth and the maximization of profits. This economic model does not facilitate large groups of entities working together for the common good.
The transformation seems unlikely to succeed, if for no other reason than the fact that the cost of the new system is likely to be very high. Electric rates will already be increasing because of higher natural gas prices and the cost of building additional nuclear power. Adding the costs for a substantial upgrade to the transmission system at the same time would be very significant burden for the consumer. If we are dealing with peak oil at the same time, this will add an additional stress. It is difficult to believe that politicians and state regulators will allow such large costs to be passed back to consumers.
If anything would work to produce the desired result, it would seem to be something that approaches nationalization of the electric supply industry. If this were done, the problem of conflicting objectives could be greatly reduced. I have a hard time envisioning current leaders accepting such a radical approach, however.
What will happen if we just continue business as usual?
It seems to me that as more and more of transmission infrastructure exceeds its normal life expectancy, there will be more and more blackouts. Areas where there is high congestion, such as the Eastern Interconnection and Southern California, would seem to be particularly at risk. It seems like some of these blackouts could be very long (two weeks?).
With the current system, it takes longer to get new transmission lines in place than to build new natural gas or wind generating capacity. Because of this, we are gradually increasing the amount of constriction in the grid. We may have to forgo adding new generating capacity, particularly of wind, until sufficient additional transmission lines can be added.
Nuclear plants are big enough that they often can supply power to a fairly large area. If new nuclear plants are added, it may be difficult to add enough transmission lines to use the power they generate optimally. We may find ourselves able to use only part of the power the new plants are capable of generating because of transmission difficulties.
How about the longer-term outcome?
Longer term, if we cannot get the problem fixed, it seems likely that we will revert back to something closer to what we had in the 1960s, with local electric utilities serving an immediate area. There may still be some long-distance sale of electricity, but less than today, if the grid cannot support it. If some areas do not have enough locally-generated power, they may be forced to have planned blackouts, perhaps for several hours a day.
There would almost certainly be indirect impacts, if some areas of the country are subject to periodic electric outages. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there may be impacts on oil and natural gas use, either because of problems with pipelines, or because of problems with people's equipment that uses natural gas, but has electric ignition.
It is hard to know where the impact of intermittent electricity would end. For example, electric power plants currently get their fuel from very long distances. Georgia imports coal from Wyoming to run its power plants. Most uranium is imported from overseas. It is possible that some of these supply lines could be interrupted as an indirect result of the electricity disruptions, further disrupting electric power. The interconnections of electricity with petroleum, natural gas, and other operations could be the topic of another post.
If we cannot get the electrical grid upgraded, it seems like we will need to downgrade our expectations for applications such as electrified rail and plug-in electric hybrid cars. These will work much less well if there are frequent electric outages in much of the country. We may also need to downgrade our expectation for newer renewables because of the intermittent nature of their output, and the inability of local grids to handle this type of input. Efforts at higher efficiency may also be hindered, if we are unable to make the grid "smart".
References
I link to a number of studies and presentations in the post. In addition, I should also mention:
Electricity: 30 Years of Industry Change Presentation by David K. Owens, Executive Vice President, Edison Electric Institute, April 7, 2008.
Light's Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means to You by Jason Makanski, published by John Wiley in 2007.
Lines Lacking to Transmit Wind Energy USA Today, February 26, 2008.
State Almost Saw Rolling Blackouts Dallas Morning News, February 28, 2008.
2007 Long-term Reliability Assessment North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
Previous Electricity Article
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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?
Gail,
You're buying into the anti-renewable buzz first on ethanol now on renewable wind and solar. Your worries about the new technologies are totally distorted and incorrect.
Where you are correct is in understanding that de-regulation, decoupling power generation from power distribution and profit maximization has stripped maintenance budgets down to the bare minimum.
Maybe you've conflated the two by trying to write about both issues in the same post. I think this also happens when people try to combine posts about bio fuels and food shortages.
If you don't keep such issues separated you'll end up
a babbling idiot howling away in doomer-land. It's bad enough that the media turns everything into a unintelligible collage, but TOD could easily turn into the same mess.
Just some friendly advice.
Pointing out potential problems with new techonlogies does not mean that one is opposed to those technologies. I am not 'opposed' to fuel cell cars but I am not expecting to drive before I die. If you have detailed realistic solutions for integratng large amounts of intermmitent renewable generation into the grid at low cost, then please present the details. Otherwise your 'advice' to Gail is just patronizing nonsense.
I agree. If Gail's post is totally distorted and incorrect, it ought to be easy for majorian to provide information (backed up with links) about mistakes in the post.
Since majorian provides nothing but an assertion, I have to conclude that majorian is probably the one who has his head up his 2ss.
Agreed, and here is a link to an analysis of the ERCOT power situation, with a link to the 16-page final report by ERCOT itself, as well as a link to a more wind-centric analysis by the American Wind Energy Association. The key part of the analysis is:
"wind generation did decline during the event by 80 megawatts. But non-wind generation decreased by 350 megawatts, while energy demand increased 1,185 megawatts -- much more than forecast."
Initial media reports were mistaken - wind power did not cause that ERCOT event.
EDIT: two more data sources:
From a quick skim, it doesn't look like the number of power events in 2006 was any higher than in 2000, suggesting the problems are not getting worse. A more in-depth analysis would be interesting, though.
I was thinking of the AWEA report on the 2006 Texas brownout.
http://www.awea.org/utility/pdf/Wind_and_Reliability_Factsheet.pdf
As I have stated a number of times to Gail, we have plenty of electricity generation but it is of the wrong kind. Wind backing up complementary peaking power like natural gas generation or hydro is a natural fit but people are building baseload coal and nukes. Ideally, we should built more peaking power but we're running out of gas. That suggests we should go to IGCC-syngas as our peaking source.
I also think that wind and solar compliment each other.
Overall it is a matter of rebalancing the power mix.
As to increasing electricity generation, this is completely wrong IMO, demand should decline with more efficient devices, etc.
There are some reports that plug-in hybrid cars will not require large electricity construction.
As to smart grid issues, that is already happening on the local level and will easily be increased with government mandates.
You must separate the aging infrastructure issues from
a new need for special infrastructure. We need to powerdown electricity consumption which will unload the grid.
Sorry to be so blunt but the US electric grid is nowhere near the US liquid fuels crisis.
I think that smart grid technology is something that can partly be done locally.
The catch is that standardization would be very helpful, if it is to spread very far. Suppose a US company has offices (or manufacturing plants) around the country. They would like to have similar technology to work with. If they teach their computers to talk to the grid in one part of the country, it would be good not to have to learn a whole new language in a different part of the grid.
Gail's discussion of intermittent power sources in the article was brief and to the point. The subject could be a multi-part TOD article in its own right.
The solutions discussed overall included higher voltage transmission lines (something like HVDC), digital/smart grid, and real-time monitoring, which will help to manage intermittent power supplies, along with full scale demand side management and energy storage capacity (e.g., hydro, CAES, flywheels, etc).
Actually I've got something in the works along those lines, so your wish will come true (might be a few weeks away though)...
Perhaps Gail had been following on from comments I've made and others about the reality of implementing "fuel switching" onto the grid. I am an electrical engineer and I design, build and consult on the maintenance of these transmission and generation systems, and I can tell you Gail is spot on. I will add a bit of more detailed description in another comment, but this is the state of affairs.
Hoping and wishing the renewable sources can connect to the existing electrical infrastructure does not necessarily make it so. Sometimes I am left with the impression alternative energy proponents are working from an idealism not grounded (pun not intended) in current reality. If you would like to see what happens to overloaded and failed equipment, it would be great to take anyone on a tour of what it looks like when it "blows up real good".
The two issues may seem conflated because they are not mutually exclusive. Shut-in generation isn't worth anything. The biggest impact we can have in the renewable area is local systems on residences. No upgrades or capital expenditure required.
Not to take a poke at you Gail, but this is what happens when the bean counters, lawyers, and MBA's take over the management of a facility that is technical and engineering centric. Money may be fungible, transmission is not. The sins of the father are being visited upon his children.
It is good to hear form an electrical engineer that I am spot on.
I have seen the financial world from the other side, but decided to get out. A person cannot tell the truth about the situation (world is not finite, infinite growth won't work, financial models miss a lot) and stay popular with management or clients. I would rather figure out the truth as best I can, and tell it to people who are interested.
FWIW, here's another EE who agrees with you.
Good to hear that!
and thank you Gail for an interesting analysis.
Add another EE to the 'grid's gonna be a problem'.
(and a public thanks to you about your financial posts of the past.)
for those of us who were there when the power went out in Los Angeles on Aug. 10 in 1996 the idea of our power grid being a weak link is not an abstract notion nor is it "howling away in doomer-land".
And to return the favor here is some friendly advice, carry cash and have a readily available stash of same at home.
When the power goes out and you are pulling into the (your favorite oil company's name goes here) gas station minutes after the fact and you are unable to pump any gas (no matter the price) so you decide to cool your heals cause you are running on fumes and go to check out with your purchase of a bottle of cold water and an ice cream bar only find your debt/credit card won't get you past the clerk cause their register is dead and computer link as well and it's cash only and you didn't make it to the ATM before you hit the road and good luck checking into the (the name of your favorite frequent stay on the road comfortable room providing hotelier goes here) and even if you had the cash the only vacancy is on the 4th floor and the A/C stopped cause the power is out and it is 110F outside...now you start howling and welcome to doomer-land.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9608/10/power.outage.update/
Western Grid 1996 was a cascading blackout as was the 2003 Detroit area blackout; they weren't caused by renewables. Solar activity can trip the overcurrent protection as well. The plain fact is that such blackout can always happen with grids and no amount of money will eliminate the possibility.
As I've pointed out before, utilities don't like any generation sources that connect into their grid because of the possibility of short-circuiting. In their ideal world, one giant generator would be the only source of power; it's the unsophisticated 'keep-it-simple-stupid' principle.
But in reality, their systems don't work that way either.
As far as engineers go, they are'nt very innovative and you have to really push them hard to get them to understand or accept anything new.
If you want protection buy yourself a generator.
If you want protection, everyone needs electricity, or everyone has to learn to do without it. Else you create the haves and used-to-haves. The used-to-haves will either suffer, suffer and fight, or die, none of which are desirable, the last two of which will eventually be specifically bad for the current (no pun intended) haves.
"If you want protection buy yourself a generator."
...that runs on what? Gasoline?
Them's fighin' words! So this engineer didn't design and construct the first broadband MAN in N. America and brought all the bean counters and professional administrators along kicking and shouting? Or maybe I'm an anomoly...
Engineers in utilities tend not to like change and that is why I don't work in one. They like to have a high level degree of certainty because they have been conditioned into a large fear of failure. In the end, its not a supportive or creative atmosphere.
I've been approaching these energy projects with a sense of moral imperative. To get others to understand and move ahead with the velocity required, I've been doing some coercive butt kicking. Some of it is starting to catch on.
the 1996 western grid was not caused by solar activity it was caused by a lack of investment in the infrastructure... power lines weren't protected from tree growth—tree growth!—because somebody was cutting corners instead of tree limbs to make sure they met their budget goals and got their year end bonus.
But then you already knew that and thought it would be better to allude to some euphemism like "cascading blackout" and gloss over the real cause.
You want to talk unsophisticated and K.I.S.S.; great can we get some limbs taken down before the grid goes down. Hardly an S.O.P. to instill confidence in taking on higher order challenges.
buying a generator may keep your frozen food intact (as long as you have sufficient fuel to run it for how long?) but it isn't going to make a tinkers damn bit of difference to people at home on respirators, or emergency vehicles responding to calls through intersections with no traffic lights, or you looking to buy groceries, make a banking transaction...the list is a long one if you stop and think through how dependent we are on immediate electrical power for everything...EVERYTHING
the distributive power grid is every bit as critical as is the availability of power to distribute...
as for protecting yourself and the devil take the hindmost; better than a generator, if your property has proper exposure, would be a solar array, grid free—just hope the neighbors remain neighborly after six months and you are the only one with power...
Your comments show your own ignorance. Sure, electric utilities were never a hotbed of innovation - that was not their mission. Their goal was reliability (resilience if you will), and the only real way to achieve that is with spare capacity. Yes, they were slow to accept new technologies, but that was usually because there was often not enough benefit to using those technologies, and even when new technologies were accepted they were only adopted slowly. The result was that the transformers and lines were operated with a lot of spare capacity, the trees got trimmed, relays were set to trip before the fuses on the local poles went, and the grid was more resilient. If the engineers were not too familiar with technologies they were not using, well that's just human nature. On the plus side, some of those 40year old items were probably well overbuilt, and with maintenance might live well beyond their expected life - at least if they are not being overloaded by ambitious managers. It's the new stuff that I would worry about more.
If the idea of attaching a large number of uncontrolled sources operated by people with no idea what they are doing, and with equipment of unknown reliability doesn't thrill them - there are good reasons for that. The vast majority of substations still use simple electro-mechanical protective relays. Coming up with workable protection schemes for a system with a very large and diffuse base of generation sources would be interesting, especially if they were intermittent, and I expect would require a large investment in new equipment. I don't know what it would do to stability analysis.
I've been designing products for the electric utility T&D market for 20 years, and while it has at times been very frustrating trying to get them to accept something new and/or different, I have also seen a fair number of new technology products that were utterly unsuitable for the environment. The electric utility environment is unique, and presents unique challenges - don't kid yourself that commercial grade or general industrial grade products would meet standards, or would live very long.
The electric T&D grid is just like every other large and complex infrastructure we have. Old, not built for the capacity it is being asked to support, not maintained as it was intended, and most importantly, corrupted to line the pockets of the few instead of serving the many. And just like all of those systems, we will not have the money or other resources to rebuild it in the time needed.
Every single one of these proposed technology solutions that will allow us to continue business as usual runs smack into one of the infrastructure limitations, and the grid will be no exception.
It is good to hear from someone who has been designing products for use in the T & D (transmission and distribution, for readers) business for 20 years. I particularly like the quote:
Yeah, that's why I come up with piles of old retread ideas that might only go so far as replacing petroleum, and snicker at J.H. Kunstler when he says he doesn't write science fiction.
Because I don't understand or accept new things. Uh-huh.
And now I've got to finish reading the backlog so I can think about evaporative temperature management in compressed-air energy storage systems and see if it might boost the efficiency.
As far as engineers go, they are'nt very innovative
Ever see 'em in court on stray voltage cases? When the lawyer asks them about E=IR and they can't answer 'em?
As much fun as watching their lead lawyer plead a small claims case....makes statements that conflict with others made 20 mins eailer.
Thank you for a very well-researched and thought provoking article.
I wonder if what will happen in practise is localisation of much power production, especially for small town America.
America needs peak power in hot weather in many areas, something to which solar electricity is well suited.
Here are Nanosolar's proposals for providing power in 2-10MW blocks, not needing stepping down as it is at 20v, and relatively economical as it would be built on the ground for easy access:
http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/2008/04/16/municipal-solar-power-plants/
Nanosolar Blog » Municipal Solar Power Plants
You would not, of course, need specifically to use Nanosolar.
The US is also blessed with fine wind resources, and substantial potential for the production of biogas.
Germany has put these three resources together to provide 100% power:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/germany_gets_cr.php
Germany Gets Creative with Renewables : TreeHugger
All three resources are far better in most of the US than in Germany, although some power transmission might be involved as in Germany to levelise load - but in US terms they were only transferring power within a single state in terms of distance.
You could not run everything this way, but you might be able to reduce some of the strains on the grid.
In the big cities nuclear power would provide most of the baseload, and would need to use the grid, but the use of air heat pumps would reduce the power needed for house heating and cooling by around 2.5 in older buildings and around 4 in new builds.
CO2 heat pumps are now good enough even in climates with low temperatures.
Residential solar thermal for hot water would work almost everywhere in the States.
According to Engineer-Poet, it would only take around 50-100GW to power an all EV vehicle fleet, a level which will not be reached for many years.
That is around 5-10% of installed capacity, and would fit well with wind or solar generation given the right metering as the EV itself could act as the storage mechanism.
So to sum up, whilst your concerns are well-placed it seems to me that a combination of distributed power generation, heat pump technology and residential solar thermal generation might mitigate the consequences of the poor condition of the grid and allow a breathing space to upgrade.
I agree that localized power is likely the way of the future. I see the areas with oil and natural gas (Alaska, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma) using those resources, and the ones with coal using them. In the areas with timber, I expect it will be used. I have my doubts about switchgrass, because of the issues with drying it out and transporting it.
With respect to solar, I think stand-alone solar voltaic will be beneficial for running some applications needed during daytime, like computers and cell phones. I am not as sure about integration with the grid.
As I understand it, each person with a PV system that is connected to the grid has an inverter, to transform the electricity generated from DC to AC, and each of these must function properly. Somehow, the grid needs to keep track of all the additional power going in - something it is not really set up to do. If nothing else, the generation system suddenly has many more nodes to deal with and more fluctuations in the amount of power available. If we had an upgraded grid, the solar would be great. I have questions about adding it to the grid otherwise.
Thanks for the reply Gail - I like your articles! :-)
Integration with the grid is the advantage of the size of the array suggested - 2-10MW, so you do not have a ridiculous number of inverters or inputs to the grid:
(From the link already given)
Essentially with the addition of wind and solar, these areas would be fairly stand alone, and the approach holds down costs:
And:
Biogas is much more efficient than ethanol production:
http://biopact.com/2007/12/biomethane-presented-as-most-efficient.html
Fuels compared
For other regions the use of residential solar thermal and heat pumps has the potential to massively reduce loads on the grid.
You probably have access to better figures than I of the proportions of electricity in the States that go to residential hot water heating, and for heating and cooling.
The figures will not be trivial.
Thanks for the informative article on the grid! I am convinced that localized electric power will be a major part of the solution to our looming energy problems.
My wife and I are installing a solar PV system using a state of the art inverter from Fronius-IG. The inverter includes data communication capabilities that allows us and our utility to monitor power output and other parameters. EWEB, our publicly owned utility, uses the datacomm capabilities to determine how much electricity we've provided back to the grid, for credit against our utility bill.
The inverter does shut off if the grid power is lost. This is a safety feature to protect lineman working on the grid. We decided against a fully battery backed system, due to cost, maintenance, and environmental impact considerations. We do have a small gas-powered generator to get us through short term (3-4 days) outages, supplying only essential power (refrigerators primarily).
You can get around the automatic inverter shutdown by installing an interlocked disconnection switch. The inverter can resume service if the switch is moved to the off position and the interlocking key is released and then inserted in the inverter. The switch cannot operate without the key, so there is not a possibility of closing the switch while the inverter is running.
These types of keyed interlocking devices are widely used in utilities and industry to protect equipment and personnel. A utility should not have an exception to this type of installation.
I agree with foregoing the battery backup system. It's not worth the money or maintenance headache. You are better off using your appliances judiciously when power is available and conserving when it is not. A refrigerator can keep the temperature at acceptable for 12 hours without power.
One system I worked on allowed a subnet to be connected via a contactor (relay) to either the grid or our inverter. Ordinarily, our inverter would provide power. However, if due to some screwup or other our system stopped working, the subnet would be connected to the grid. The system was set up so the grid could never connect to our inverter; if our inverter was powering the subnet, the grid would be totally disconnected from it (no linesman could get hurt). The major benefit was that it was really easy to get UL approval for it, since there was no possibility of any safety issues from the point of view of any grid operator.
It's good for about 20kW. We haven't had any problems with it.
Thanks for the tip! We haven't installed the AC wiring yet, so I'll raise the point with EWEB and see if they'll allow such a (sensible) device.
BC_EE
I have a 5kv PV system on my house that is connected to the grid. I am in the Phoenix area and my biggest fear is a >2 day grid failure during the summer.
PLEASE oh PLEASE let me know where I can get one of these "keyed interlocking devices"!!!!
Send a reply directly to my e-mail if you are concerned about this information.
davidd@amug.org
I too am curious about this switch. I have never heard of this option. Will it work with any inverter?
Can you give us some more info?
Thanks
A nice AGM battery bank has very little maintenance. And if you are not deep cycling the batteries very often a very long lifespan.
Depending on the utility and the location of the installation, most stuff under a few MW isn't worth worrying about for montoring purposes. Just like how the grid doesn't "care" if you turn on your air conditioner, it doesn't "care" if you have a PV. The output is seen by the revenue meter, and unless you installation is large enough to backfeed at the distributon substation, or potentially cause other islanding problems, that's where it ends. But if the installation is large enough, the utility will certainly monitor it.
I think that example in Eugene is the exception. Most utilities won't interface with the inverter, since that's customer owned equipment.
I have long felt that as traditional fossil fuels continue to go up in price more and more will shift to resistance electric (or heat pumps) for heating. This will load up the grid to the point where there will likely be outages.
All the grid tied solar PV systems I do in this area are battery based that provide backup during grid outages. More and more people want back up for well pumps, communication, refrigeration and lighting.
Distributed generation is the way to go.
Todd
Hardly. A rough knowledge of how the PV is distributed, and how much sun is falling where (weather forecasting, cloud cover measurement) will do the trick. It's even largely predictable. Individual nodes going on or off the grid make no difference; how will 2 kW or even 10 kW be noticed among the megawatt(s) of normal demand jitter?
Ice-storage A/C and V2G have enormous potential to help grid problems. They can eliminate the need for spinning reserve by creating instantly and transparently sheddable load. Units can even react to grid conditions on their own, by monitoring grid frequency shifts and turning up or down as appropriate. We're not in terra incognita.
With local PV installations w/battery most problem are solved with having power when the grid is down and the sun is overhead. We do most installation here in hurricane land with battery BU. I have designed countless telecom, commercial and residential PV systems using battery as a back up, and if designed right the batteries will last in excess of 15 years and up. This being cheaper than a permanently mounted BU generator running on diesel, NG or propane and not having capital invested in generators that do not offset monthly reoccurring costs over the same 15 year time span.
Also one of the issues that we face is the local grid interface with the local utilities on larger PV systems above 10KW customer located systems. They always get spooked with feeder and secondary line loads. If you look at the average 200amp residential service the math works out to 48KW before there is a ‘redesign study’ needed. So as other have said, the local PV distributed systems will not place any undue stress in the secondary feeders of the grid. The way it works most of the time is it relieves load with the PV offset generation. …sorry venting, but the new PSU rules will make the ‘load studies’ go away.
Exactly Sails, the effect of local PV generation is to reduce the loading on the distribution lines and it doesn't create a backflow of power to the grid. Since I was called Mr. Analogy in school, here it goes:
The residential distribution system is similar to major arterial roads and secondary highways. When the loading is up there is a lot of traffic and congestion which can eventually overload the lines. When a person generates with PV they are essentially removing traffic from the roadways. Enough people do it and the roads could have very little traffic. The impact to the utility is a dynamic mode of operation for the larger transmission and generation system. But, local PV generation won't cause any system impact upgrades or require changes to the protection and control system. Furthermore, PV systems won't contribute to fault levels as the inverter will isolate the from the grid in milliseconds with a decaying voltage level.
Working on the interlocked inverter isolation switch guys. Although there was a post regarding an electromagnetic relay isolation system which does the same thing automatically. UL approval shouldn't be a problem because these are used in industry all the time.
http://digg.com/business_finance/The_U_S_Electric_Grid_Will_It_Be_Our_Un... (DIGG)
http://reddit.com/info/6ihvv/comments/ (BUS)
http://reddit.com/info/6ii93/comments/ (ENV)
Good post, here is some additional stuff. The answer is yes, the electric power grid will be our undoing. The nation depends on electric power for: industry; manufacturing; auto, truck, rail, and air transportation (electric motors pump diesel fuel, gasoline, and jet fuel); oil and natural gas heating systems; lighting; elevators; computers; broadcasting stations; radios; TVs; automated building systems; electric doors; telephone and cell phone services; water purification; water distribution; waste water treatment systems; government offices; hospitals; airports; and police and fire services, etc. Phillip Schewe, author of “The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World,” writes that the nation’s power infrastructure is “the most complex machine ever made.” In “Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means To You,” author Jason Makansi emphasizes that “very few people on this planet truly appreciate how difficult it is to control the flow of electricity.” A 2007 report of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) concluded that peak power demand in the U.S. would increase 18% over the next decade and that planned new power supply sources would not meet that demand. NERC also noted concerns with natural gas disruptions and supplies, insufficient capacity for peak power demand during hot summers (due to air conditioning), incapacity in the transmission infrastructure, and a 40% loss of engineers and supervisors in 2009 due to retirements. According to Railton Frith and Paul H. Gilbert (National Research Council testimony before Congress), power failures currently have the potential of paralyzing the nation for "weeks or months." The problem is one of how do you get the power up when there is no power? When power failures occur in winter, millions of people in the U.S. and Canada will die of exposure. There are not enough shelters for entire populations, and shelters will lack heat, adequate food and water, and sanitation. Water purification and water distribution systems will fail, leaving millions of metropolitan residents without water. Waste water treatment systems will fail, resulting in untreated sewage that will contaminate the drinking water for millions of residents who consume river water downstream. Transportation and communications failures will cripple federal, state and local governments -- leaving and residents without emergency services, emergency shelters, police and fire protection, water supplies, and sanitation etc. When oil becomes scarce enough, there won't be enough to maintain the highway systems (state governments do that), and there goes the power. And, when there is no power, how do you refine and deliver oil, and what about coal. The answer to your question posed here is yes. Again, good post. It's all sad, but true.
Hard to find a cheerful way to say all of that!
C.J.,
Thanks for summing up the impacts of losing bulk electrical generation. I went through a similar exercise when I formulated a simple, low cost and practical way to take down the U.S. grid. The idea should send shivers through everyone's spine as it is far simpler than flying planes into buildings and it doesn't involve any computer hacking. The net result would have most of the grid down for weeks and months. Getting the system put back together and running would take all the resources the military and national guard have at their disposal. Then I tried to anticipate what would happen throughout the country. I lost quite a lot of sleep over it and realized I may be the most dangerous man in America.
When I contacted NERC confidentially I wasn't impressed by their action plan to prevent such an event. I don't live in America anymore.
I suggest a mental exercise, or even a practical one. Take your present situation and go through your typical day and replace anything you do requiring electricity with something that doesn't. If you live on the 20th floor, Lord help ya, you're screwed. For those that have been through extended blackouts you know what this is like, switch off your main circuit breaker in the panel for 24 or 48 hours. Plus, you can't use any city water as they would be off-line also. Be diligent and you will come to a real appreciation of the value of our electrical system. Society and civilization as we know it will not be an idle catch phrase anymore.
For those with shelter, heat related deaths will likely outnumber cold related deaths. Power outages are more likely to occur in summer than in winter due to the fact that AC is more reliant on the power grid than heating is; and the fact that in cold weather you can always bundle up more while indoors. Without power in a heat wave, there is no escape except perhaps underground, and many more people live in multi-unit dwellings without access to any basement thermal cooling.
HI Cliff,
I hope you check your email soon.
It's way late to be posting here, but I have a question.
It occurred to me that priorities for tie-in to renewables should be first, the water supply - plus the sewage system, as you say.
If this was done via distributed systems using renewables on a local basis...
Why is this not possible?
I think there's a problem here. There are loads of examples of commodities being delivered to end users by private concerns at low prices and high efficiency. There are also many examples of government delivering commodities to market efficiently and cheaply. What there are NO examples of are mixtures of free market AND government delivering them. The problem is not "regulation" or "deregulation", but is instead "partial deregulation".
It's very very clear that with no organization or combination of organizations having responsibility for the delivery system, that they will simply do the minimums required to keep basic functionality going until it ceases to be profitable to do so. However, if for example, "grid providers" were allowed to bid on getting electricity from "a" to "b" and were paid on KWH moved and fined based on customer downtime, then you would have a free market grid maintenance methodology that could produce the upgrades required with a minimum of fuss and taxpayer costs. This would involve a legislated sharing of ROWs so that you no longer have a "VEPCO" row, you now have an "electric" right-of-way. Individual grid providers would need to be paid for electricity crossing their territory on their lines. They would be made responsible for seeing to it that their grid wasn't overloaded to the point of taking damage. Companies would then spring up to build and maintain long distance transmission lines at lower costs.
Basically, grid electric transmission could then take a costing model similar to internet communications.
It is also very very clear that wind specifically will soon necessitate a very very large grid upgrade. Solar as it happens is generally a good matchup for peak demand in the regions where it makes the best sense to use it to begin with, so it actually lessens long distance transmission requirements. Wind sites by contrast tend to be remote and the wind generation profile is poorly matched with any demand pattern. It will therefore need to at some point account for t he transmission requirements.
The biggest barrier to all of these things happening is clearly NIMBYism, In a system where every single person that can see the proposed improvements has the capability of costing the builder millions of dollars and years of delays, there is simply no point for any economic entity in attempting to perform the upgrades.
Partial Deregulation- thats the major issue - externalize the cost and keep the profits.
If an organization is stuck with the cost of maintenance then it needs the power to bill for it. No magic. And if the grid needs improvement beyond the desire for an organization to pay for it they can apply for tax dollars to do so, only after gaining public support.
Fundamentally you are right that the problem comes down to lack of proper incentatives. But you are wrong to assume that there is a way to introduce the proper incentatives, simply technologically.
In this case the proper incentative would not be to price the grid service by kwh transmitted, but by kwh per kilometer transmitted. And here it gets hairy because this is impossible - the grid is common and you can not count how many electrons you "transported" from generator X to consumer Y. Electricity is not something you load on a truck and send to some store... and this is what deregulators fail to understand, (or IMO - pretended to fail to understand) generation and transmission are technologically indespensable part of the whole service. Artificially separating them created incentative to generators to abuse and overuse the transmission service ineffectively. On the other hand removing caps and regulations from distributors under the conditions of natural (regional) monopoly created incentative to this monopolies to pass the bucket on and abuse the end customer accordingly.
This whole mess was avoided under the previous system of regulated integrated monopolies. That's the whole point of the idea of "public utilities", that people understood well many decades ago. I can't help but think that the people that designed deregulation were not that stupid or incompetent, but did that on purpose.
There is a concept known as "metering" you may have heard of it.
It allows tracking of "electricity was produced *here* and electricity was consumed *here* it therefore had to pass through points C, D, and E. There would also be no particular trick in arranging a contractual relationship between producers consumers and grid providers wherein, you produce X kwhs, to be consumed by B consumer, I have a grid situated between the 2 of you, therefore you may pass your electricity through my grid for Z$.
The concept has worked in private enterprise paradigms in virtually every case where it has been tried. The ONLY failures are cases where government attempts to regulate the division of labor between separate private concerns with competing goals.
Great analysis Gail.
The solution of course is to bring back the old system and stop this madness while there is still time. Which poses the question why this happened at the first place, and why it is still going on, despite the ruinous results all over the world? Didn't "deregulators" foresee that sharing of a common resource (built with de facto public money), from multiple private parties would result is profiteering, free ridership, underinvestment etc. etc.? I've been thinking on these questions while watching with amazement how institutions like the European Commission are pushing for these same failed policies after we already have decades of experience in which they have shown how disastrous they are.
The conclusion I've come to is a very sad one - corruption. Our system is already so deeply corrupted, that public policies are shaped not by what is the common good, but what is in the interest of certain special interest groups. In this case - all parties that will achieve tremendous profits from the break-up and privatization of the electricity business, which everyone knows very well is best managed the way it was - as regulated natural monopolies. How come our governments replaced and equated the idea of the common good with the ideas of the "free market", "invisible hand", "economic growth" etc.etc. I think is the real question we should ask ourselves while discussing such issues.
I think there has been a very simplistic analysis. There are (supposedly) two ways of doing things: communism and capitalism. Communism didn't work, so capitalism must be what works in every application. With capitalism, we have infinite growth and a whole series of thing that supposedly go together. Economists have spent a lot of time reinforcing each others ideas - it must be right.
And don't forget the rise of the MBA. The '80's was the heyday of the boomers with the mantra of bottom-line thinking. Too many "biz skule" grads running things they don't instinctively understand.
I think you are right. That added to it.
It seems to me that where the most wind has been built, transmission will come: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/midamerican-aep-texas-transmission...
Thanks to Warren Buffet. It seems to me that there is a market for transmission where there is a lot of power available that is wanted elsewhere. We need to see the power availability first perhaps to get the transmission built. The Pacific Intertie was built after the dams on the Columbia, for example.
Chris
Why does all this remind me of the Austrians in 1913 debating on who will be their next Habsburg leader?
Here's a link to a technical report on the challenges that renewable energy, especially wind, now present to California's grid and will further present as California brings more renewables on-line. Transmission capacity and energy storage are major factors, along with more accurate day-ahead and hour-ahead scheduling, faster generator ramps.
This is 200 pages of technical stuff, but it gets you right to the nuts and bolts of grid-operations.
http://www.caiso.com/1ca5/1ca5a7a026270.pdf
Thanks for the link. I can see why the new wind might present challenges. According to the executive summary:
interesting - sounds like Tehachapi wind would work very well in tandem with Mojave solar thermal plants to provide summertime energy for Socal (ac on all day & night) - just hope it's not too little too late...
Great article Gail - always enjoy your work, even though I often find your conclusions depressing (but then, what news is not depressing these days?).
The article is primarily focused on Tehachapi (with references to other sites), but still came out in favor;
Demand side management and more storage can enable significantly higher penetration levels.
California has 40GW of interconnect requests for renewable energy so it has its hands full no matter what I think. It's peak demand is 50 GW.
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/committee/c25/hearings/1_CEC_Session%201_...
"The problem with this model is that it assumes that our electric grid will be working well enough for this to happen. It seems to me that there is substantial doubt that this will be the case."
I'd use the word "risk" instead of "doubt", as in "there is substantial risk that this will not be the case." (or you could simply say that "I" have doubts, instead of the passive voice). This removes the question of "who is doing the doubting?".
"If we cannot get the electrical grid upgraded, it seems like we will need to downgrade our expectations for applications such as electrified rail and plug-in electric hybrid cars. These will work much less well if there are frequent electric outages in much of the country. "
This doesn't really apply to plug-ins (aka PHEVs and ErEVs). First, plug-ins would charge at night, when the grid is at very low utilization, and wouldn't have to charge daily (IOW, their demand is asynchronous, unlike that of rail). The grid would have to be out of service a very, very high % of the time to substantially impair the usefulness of plug-ins. 2nd, plug-ins would increase the resilience of the grid, by serving as a sink for the variance of both intermittent supplies and other consumers' demand - this doesn't even include V2G, which would also increase the resilience of the grid (though it's a bit more complex to implement).
The catch is that the grid has to be on at night. If it is just plain off, you have a problem. If there is a major breakdown, that is what happens.
You also have to deal with the issue (which one would think would be trivial, but I doubt that it is) that people will not really charge their cars at night. At a minimum, one would need a grid that is smart enough to charge much higher rates during the day than at night. In the absence of some strong incentives, I expect that people will just plug in their cars, whenever they get home. This is while electric utilization is still high. Apartment dwellers will plug in their cars whenever they get an opportunity to. That might be while they are at work, if someone is willing to sell them some electric current near their workplace.
Since you are building a whole new vehicle fleet, the expense of putting sophisticated metering on the charger for the car would be minimal.
You could certainly build them to send a text message to the electric company, saying that they were hoping to go on line, and they would get a message back saying, 'Fine, but you are at a peak time so it will cost you'
If you don't want that, you still plug the car in abut instruct it not to start charging until cheap rate comes on.
Surely a trivial problem with a new system of modern electronics.
It can be even simpler than that.
For those places that have differential time metering - cheap electricity late at night - all the EV needs is a clock. Start charging when power is inexpensive. (The Chevy Volt reportedly needs only 3.5 hours to charge.)
People who care about their bank balances will set the clock.
Yeah, our metering works like that in the UK.
I understood that most places in the US can't do that, and presumably that would be another upgrade to the grid, so a mandated instruction to a new industry might be easier if I have my facts about the US meters right.
No problem in the UK as our meters would do that without difficulty.
Actually Dave the situation re dual metering in the UK is not so simple. I recently moved to an apartment with night storage heaters (which I have dumped as don't like convection heat). I found a webpage that explained that the electricity companies abuse the dual-rate systems (Economy 7) such that only a real nocturnal weirdo would save by being on a dual tariff. A suitable case for government intervention, but then as we have a bunch of crooks in London anyway there's little reason to expect any action.
By the way, it is nothing to do with the grid. It just involves dualling the meter wiring in your property, plus a radio-transmitted signal to operate the switch.
Fiddling in the UK no longer surprises me.
I am not allowed gas heating in a flat, and had night storage heaters but ripped them out too, and have oil convection heateers.
I understand that even though as you rightly say the meter does not affect the rest of the grid, altering several millions of them still costs big bucks, as I believe they would have to do in parts of the States.
Indeed, perhaps it could cost a great deal more, as it would involve that many personal visits to consumers. Lets have a guess at costing (in uk-speak). Per call-out £30 plus £60 per installation. For 10 million US addresses that would be about £900 million. How does that compare to grid expansion costs?
"For 10 million US addresses that would be about £900 million. How does that compare to grid expansion costs?"
That would be a lot cheaper. £90 per residence, or roughly $180, would only pay for maybe very roughly 60 watts of new mid-load capacity. Plus, you'd need transmission, and fuel and O&M costs for coal/gas/nuclear.
No, improved metering is a bargain.
Nothing is that simple. For example, setting the cars to begin charging when the cheaper rates kick in will cause a massive spike in demand at that time. Potentially a grid crashing one if it is poorly implemented.
Having communications between the grid operation computer and the individual charging units needs a pretty serious network of communications because the grid comp needs to know which substation each vehicle is plugged in to in order to make the correct decisions. This means that either each substation will need a specified "power signature" or the computer will need GPS data from the vehicles and the specific map of the areas supplied by the substations. This also involves the central computer recieving feedback from many many sources. At a minimum, each substation will need to give specific realtime data This needs a pretty impressive computer with very advanced programming to monitor and track it all.
This will also inevitably result in many many occasions of the batteries failing to be charged because there was simply never a good time to do so, or alternatively, a vast demand spike right before morning rush hour.
Not saying it can't be done, just pointing out some of the complications that are very likely to become major over time.
In addition to all of these, until the protocols are developed, they will not be implemented, and until they are needed, they will not be developed. That means that the first few generations of PHEVs will most probably roll off the line with no logic whatsoever, they will be simple battery chargers that charge the car when they are plugged in.
Actually, I feel that solar power will probably be cheap enough, providing it is kept simple and you don't try to store it or transport it huge distances, that most recharging in many areas will likely be done during the day, although that is peak use time.
The scenario as I gave above is that you have 2-10MW solar power installations in many places in small town America, outputting power at 20volts.
You plug your car in at work, and that provides most of the power, with maybe those with longer commutes charging overnight.
Less sunny areas are indeed likely to go for overnight charging.
LOL! Okay, what century do you forsee this happening in?
Solar is at current INSANELY expensive. While it is dropping, it needs to drop a full order of magnitude in order to be remotely competitive for utility scale power generation. At the current rate of price drop, that puts it somewhere in the 2050 range before I would anticipate solar taking a meaningful place in the overall grid.
I like the idea, but I really don't see any meaningful positive impact from solar in the near to mid-term.
I understand where you are coming from, and I still regard plans to go all solar as insane due to the massive overbuild you would need and the storage and transmission costs, as is it's use (other than residential solar thermal) in northerly areas where the heating load is in the winter not the summer- think Germany.
In fact, I did not count on much input from solar until recently, when a number of reports came out giving new cost points for solar, notably from First Solar.
Believe me, many here thought that I was a nuclear only guy,and had something against solar.
I am actually just cautious, and do not rely on supposed breakthroughs by any one company.
These reports make it clear that on several fronts simultaneously costs are drastically reduced, both for thin film technologies and now for silicon, as massive supplies of silicon production are now in the works.
At the moment premium prices are being obtained, and shortages abound.
We are converging from a number of directions though on a cost of around $1.50/watt for the panels, not far off of grid competitiveness.
The cost of that grid power is itself shooting up though, due to rapidly increasing fossil fuel costs.
The question then becomes:
Given cheap panels, how should they be deployed most economically?
The traditional answer has been on rooftops, but costs can be greatly reduced if you install on the ground in larger units of 2-10MW, the local power is worth an extra 35% approximately, you can output the power at 20volts and you don't need to build long transmission lines.
The configuration is Nanosolar's, and I reference their site elsewhere in the thread.
When you are not trying to do something daft with solar power, like storing it for overnight use, and are generating it right where you need it without having to build cooling equipment and so on as you would for a conventional power source, and you need not transform the power before use then you will likely be talking the cheapest available power by around 2015 in sunny regions.
For less sunny areas like the North-East US, amorphous silicon should do well, as although it does not produce so much power for a given area, it degrades less in overcast conditions.
Well.... I think perhaps I am a little MORE cautious than you. Until I see that it HAS been done (even one pilot plant will do) I am not likely to plan based on it happening (whatever IT is). Wind has met the criteria for a technology that pays its way, nuclear has met those criteria, Solar has not, nor do I see it doing so in my lifetime.
Problem number 1. As the costs of fossil fuels increase, the costs of solar panels and equipment will go with them. I think that it's fairly clear based on the increases in price of virtually all commodities and products as fuel costs have increased that this is the case.
Problem number 2. Generating 2-10 MW of 20 volt intermittent DC means you will need a *use* for 2-10 MW of 20 volt intermittent DC. In the current world, no such use exists. Thus inverters are back in the mix. Since solar is intermittent, we are talking here of grid synchronous inverters which are rather pricey.
Problem 3. It is very likely that when the PV industry is forced to account for the true cost of their silicon, the costs will not go meaningfully down. Up till now, they have been receiving a subsidy by accepting the leavings of a higher profit industry.
Problem 4. At $1.50/peak watt, that STILL leaves the capital cost for the panels alone at $.06/watt. (assuming 6 hours of daily sun, a 6% discount rate and a 30 year payoff). It assumes that O+M are zero and accounts not at all for inverter cost. It's close, but still not viable for utility scale generation.
Problem number 1: the cost of all the alternatives are similarly affected, so it won't move relative costs, save that in the event of high interest rates the fast build would favour solar.
Problem number 2: It sounds like my lack of an engineering background is catching me out, but in any case you would not have to step down from 11,000 volts.
Problem 3: If silicon costs are a problem there are a variety of alternatives, ranging from thin film silicon, to the use of other this film alternatives, to the use of less pure silicon which costs much less and is OK for amorphous silicon.
I have the relevant links if you are not familiar with the various alternatives - some might not pan out, but some of them will.
http://www.greenenergyohio.org/page.cfm?pageID=1399
Problem 4: I am less optimistic than you on the costs of other energy sources, as I see oil at around $400/barrel by around 2015, with other fossil fuels rising greatly too.
I am also not referring to utility-scale generation, but looking at the power being produced much nearer to where it is needed, which gives an estimated 35% cost advantage:
http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/2008/04/16/municipal-solar-power-plants/
Nanosolar Blog » Municipal Solar Power Plants
It isn't cheap, but neither will the alternatives be in my view, as I am counting on nuclear for base-load and the costs of that are running at around $6-9watt according to the latest figures:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilitie...
Nuclear reactors will cost twice estimate, says E.ON chief - Times Online
I am guessing that wind power is now also above recent estimates of $2/watt installed, around $6-8watt average hourly output, as rising oil prices make everything more expensive.
1. yes. the increasing cost of fossil fuels will increase the costs of all alternatives. however, it will do so *in proportion*. That means that the spreads between the generation types become more and more significant. For example, if nuke currently costs .03/kwh and PV at .06, increasing by 30% means that PV is at .08 and nuke at .04. everything getting more pricey favors the cheap.
2. The voltage steps in ac power aren't that big a deal. working in dc is however a nuisance. Also, the size of the conductor goes up as the voltage goes down, so to use 2MW at 20 volts you'd need MFHUGE conductors. So, let's forget about using large scale solar still in DC mode.
3. Well, once again, I will remain in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode until someone actually does make a cheap commercially available PV panel. Till I see that, it's all just smoke to me.
4. I see oil in the same range as you. I haveta say that this is the first time in freakin ages that anyone has called *me* an optimist! Not all fossil fuels can be quite expected to go up in lockstep with oil however, coal in particular may hold for a few decades with only moderate increases.
I kinda consider anything in the MW range that sells on the wholesale marketplace to be "utility scale" as it will need distribution, backup generation, and basically all the other trappings of a large scale system. If one factory decided to go offgrid and install PV to power itself and only worked when the sun was shining, then that would NOT be "utility scale" even though the installation was the same size. Prolly I am applying a double standard, but I can live with that.
As for the costs of nuclear... A huge percentage of the cost of installing new nuclear is based on the political and regulatory landscape, anti-nuke activist activity can easily take a profitable venture far into the red. In addition... well, the first comment on the article you posted was this.
"Maybe we need a different "partner". In China the cost of four 1080 MWe units is at $6.6bn, i.e. that is the cost of all four units.
Compared to "per plant could be as high as £4.8 billion" which is about $9.4bn each. Are we being ripped off?? "
The costs of new nuclear will go up of course, most likely they will go up in lockstep with fossil fuels. Nuclear has as it's highest vulnerability however interest rates. All capital intensive generation methods do. High interest rates favor low capital systems such as nat. gas. The longer the payback, the more vulnerable to high interest rates is the method.
Problem 1: I'd like to see some discussion on why you feel that the costs of alternatives will rise synchronously.
I'd go along with the idea that coal may remain cheap, at least in the US, as it is in the wonderful position of not paying for it's externalities.
Basically, I just don't know - coal prices in Europe look set to rise substantially though.
On the costs of nuclear, in the US you are probably correct, but Powergen's comments were based on actual experience with the Finnish build AFAIK - it was the first of a kind though, but cost rises also seem to be hitting the new French reactor hard.
I think we are in an environment where everything is costing more, although there are good prospects to hold costs down in nuclear by the use of annular fuel and other innovations - that is the option I favour for base-load, and for most generation in cooler more northerly climes like much of Europe.
Your point about high interest rates favouring natural gas would also to some degree favour solar, as at least the build is quick although it is expensive.
Solar power for peaking is much more expensive than coal power for baseload. It's very nearly as expensive as natural gas peaking power. Solar power is not what you want to use for making synfuels, it's what you want to use for running AC in the summer during the afternoon.
Making synfuels from solar?
Whoa!
Where in the world did you get the idea that anyone was advocating that?
The discussion is about powering EV vehicles, in the time frame starting around 2012-15, with the assumption that oil then costs around $3-400/barrel.Both nuclear and solar look like coming in at around $8/watt in that time frame, with allowances for the intermittency of solar.
Where possible it would seem that the better option would be to charge EV's and plug-ins with the solar option, for a number of reasons:
It would minimise the load on the grid
They can be built rapidly.
In many areas you could save on the cost of the transmission lines, so it might be effectively cheaper.
Most of these arguments do not apply to less sunny areas in the north, and are more difficult in major metropolitan areas, or apply less strongly, so charging at night with nuclear power might be a preferred option there, but the plants would take a while to build.
In practise both coal and wind would also contribute.
Actually making gasoline from solar would be an absolutely terrific idea!
One area of the country that has loads of concentrated solar also has loads of hydrocarbons--Colorado oil shale country!
An estimated 600 billion barrels of shale oil-gas.
The in-situ process(ICP) of Shell requires a tremendous amount of electricity over a long time to bake the kerogen. Unfortunately
;)
, the environmentalists are requiring that unconventional oil be produced with no more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. So how do we get the juice to cook the rocks?
Easy--giant solar farms. The amount of insolation in that area is around 7kwh/day /m^2. Five square miles of solar would produce about 180 Gwh per year($2-5 billion dollars for a perpetual source of electricity, half the size of the 1200 MW Glen Canyon dam downstream). Shell claims that it gets 3.5 units of energy out for every bit of electricity input. A barrel of shale oil is equal to 1600 kwh of energy. So that array would produce--180 Gwh x 3.5/1600/365 days=1 million barrels of shale oil per day!
A typical site has 2000 foot electric heaters placed every 25 feet, the heaters are switched on and over 2 years they heat the rock to 700 degrees or so. The clay limestone rock has the thermal properties of fire bricks used for heat storage so they would lose little heat over the nighttime.
The heaters might have to raise temperatures slightly warmer to maintain an average daily temperature above 700 degrees or just leave the heaters in a bit longer.
The project produced the equivalent of 60000 barrels of shale oil plus associated gas per acre of surface over a year of operation.
http://tiny.cc/gfY8n
http://www.shell.com/static/us-en/downloads/shell_for_businesses/explora...
"1. As the costs of fossil fuels increase, the costs of solar panels and equipment will go with them."
this is not true if something else trumps the price increase of commodities. economies of scale could swamp any increase in commodity prices.
case in point, new tv's have been dropping in price because of increased competition.
The thing that is holding up the price of solar right now is demand. The cost is continuing to reduce. Scale has something to do with this. Improve efficiency means less material use. Thin film technology is push down its costs. And, there is a new method of refining silicon which will reduce energy inputs. The companies that are doing commercial power purchase deals are getting really smooth in their installation methods and saving quite a lot on labor. This is getting to be something that residential installers are trying to put into practice (I see safety benefits here). So, I'd think that prices will stay flat or drop if demand is met.
Chris
One of the reasons PV was expensive is the silicon was cast offs from silicon chip manufacturing. Chip production requires much more stringent quality and more energy intensity. Once production was designed for PV, the material and production costs came down substantially.
I don't think chips and PV even compete for the same grade of silicon.
I worked in a wafer fab. Solar power wafers were wafers that weren't good enough for electronics. They sold for 1% as much as good wafers. Because of solar power rooftop panel subsidies the cost of solar power wafers has gone up to being as expensive as electronic grade wafers. Now half the wafers in the world are used for solar power.
If we built Concentrating Solar Photovoltaic instead of rooftop panels we would need 1% or less of todays wafer production to build them.
"Wind has met the criteria for a technology that pays its way, nuclear has met those criteria, Solar has not"
Take a look at First Solar's most recent quarterly report: $1.12/watt, costs dropping by 12% per year, sales of $500M, and gross profits of $275M!! This clearly shows that sales prices of $4/watt are just an artifact of scarcity.
"As the costs of fossil fuels increase, the costs of solar panels and equipment will go with them."
No, solar has a high E-ROI so high oil prices have very little to do with the cost of solar.
" I think that it's fairly clear based on the increases in price of virtually all commodities and products as fuel costs have increased that this is the case."
No, correlation is not causation. Commodities are rising together in a classic case of capex lag, as they've done many times before, and will do again.
"It is very likely that when the PV industry is forced to account for the true cost of their silicon, the costs will not go meaningfully down. Up till now, they have been receiving a subsidy by accepting the leavings of a higher profit industry."
That hasn't been true for years - silicon for PV is substantially higher volume than silicon for chips.
"at $.06/watt. (assuming 6 hours of daily sun, a 6% discount rate and a 30 year payoff). It assumes that O+M are zero and accounts not at all for inverter cost. It's close, but still not viable for utility scale generation."
O&M for PV is pretty darn close to zero. Inverters aren't that expensive, and they're falling fast with volume. Finally, 6 cents is much lower than the retail price of peak power, which IIRC is 15-20 cents in California.
First solar does indeed have a very nice profit margin. Possibly that implies that in the mid-term competition will begin to bring the prices down in a real manner. Until it does however, the fact remains that PV is insanely uselessly expensive.
Solar does not have the eroei that is frequently claimed. The eroei that is frequently cited (1-4 years) is based only on the electrical meter input at the module fab shop, it neglects silicon purification and crystallization, transportation, capital costs, Inverter costs, labor input, and basically everything else. It is quite simply a lie foisted off on suckers by a biased government body.
Commodities are produced by the expenditure of energy. Therefore a causal link has been established between the increase in oil prices and the increase in commodity prices. A correlation plus a causal explanation = a theory. In the absence of a better theory, it holds. ERGO the cost of energy is what is causing commodity inflation.
A grid synchronous inverter will cost you the same money as the PV modules themselves. It needs to be replaced on an average of once every 10 years. so it is by far the largest expense associated with owning and maintaining a PV system. That *may* change with time, but it remains true today.
Please try to avoid mixing PV religion with engineering reality. It may become something useful later, but for now it's mostly useful for stealing subsidies.
"Until it does however, the fact remains that PV is insanely uselessly expensive."
Sure. That's price rationing - in which prices rise to the point where some people say in disgust "this is insanely expensive" and go buy something else. In the meantime, solar is doubling every 2 years or less in volume, as manufacturers like First Solar try to catch up.
"The eroei that is frequently cited (1-4 years) is based only on the electrical meter input at the module fab shop, it neglects silicon purification and crystallization, transportation, capital costs, Inverter costs, labor input, and basically everything else. "
Nah. That's not true. There have been plenty of thorough studies, which included all those obvious things. In fact, the main problem with these studies is that they're out of date: E-ROI has gone up substantially since. BTW, "1-4 years" is a payback, not an E-ROI. E-ROI usually uses numbers like "20:1".
Now, if you disagree, I'd ask for sources, as what you're saying is way out of whack with all of the studies I've seen, from Cleveland and others.
"Commodities are produced by the expenditure of energy."
Not really. Their production requires energy, but not necessarily very much - it varies by commodity. Aluminium requires a lot, recycled steel not so much.
"Therefore a causal link has been established between the increase in oil prices and the increase in commodity prices."
Not really. People say that occasionally on pessimistic energy blogs, but I've never seen proof (because it's not really true...).
"A grid synchronous inverter will cost you the same money as the PV modules themselves."
Whoa, that's way too expensive - I'd be curious to see where you got that info. For instance, a 4KW system might have a total cost of $32K, with the panels around $20K, and the inverter would be rather less than 1/4 of the panel cost (and that's probably high...). You may be judging from a very small residential installation...
"It needs to be replaced on an average of once every 10 years."
Could you give me a source on that?
It seems reasonable that an inverter might need to be maintained or replaced every 10 years or so, based on electrolytic capacitor lifetimes. 15 years seems a little long. Electrolytics dry out. The "pain in the butt" factor for a manufacturer to have a technician spend several hours replacing $50 of electrolytics might easily lead to excessive charges for maintenance.
This is not a source.
Sorry. Self-sourced observation. One inverter I am familiar with uses caps much like the
ECE-P2WA152HA (http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/components/pdf/pic_t-ha_series_dne.pdf). They are only good for 3000 hours at rated temperature and load--we get around this issue through significant de-rating. So, instead of running the capacitor at 105C, the room is kept at 25C (this is good for the batteries too), and the ripple currents in the capacitor is reduced to small fractions of the rated capacity. Tricks like this allow them to last until they dry out.
As a direct source, see below. Electrolytics eventually die. I hate them.
http://www.chemi-con.com/guide/pg2.php
I am an anecdotal source. My off-grid, 2 kW inverter has been operating continuously for 17 years with no problems and no maintenance. It cost $1,000 whereas my PV panels cost 6 times more. You can check some current retail prices at Northern Arizona Wind & Sun. The PVP 2000, 2000 Watt grid tie inverter is currently priced at $1,980 and 2 kW modified sine wave inverters (like mine) still cost about $1,000 after 17 years.
I expect the price of PV panels to decline over the next several years due to the economy of mass production overwhelming any increase due to rising price of crude oil. The expansion of production of silicon should satisfy demand in 2010 causing the price of PV panels to decline.
Hi, anyone any idea of the cost of inverters on the 2-10MW systems I was suggesting?
I suspect that per watt they are a lot cheaper than for the smaller residential systems and would provide yet another reason to focus initially on this size.
If you want a place to start looking, HVDC components look promising.
Doubling of solar installations is hardly anything to brag about at this point. For example, in the US, PV actually LOST total generated KWHs from 06-07.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/tablees1a.html
At that rate, it would need 14 doublings or 28 years to get to 10% of total electric demand in the US. That is assuming that total US generation remained totally flat over that period of time. Or to put it another way, double 0 and you still got 0.
As for the Eroei vs energy payback, you're right that I mixed my terminology. The 2 are inextricably linked concepts though so it's kinda beating a dead horse.
As for the EROEI estimates being basically lies. look here.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
Read that carefully and you will see that they are counting *only* electrical energy as energy input. Not only that but they are "neglecting" the energy that went into producing the high purity silicon originally. That is tantamount to a straight up lie. It means that they are *not* performing an intensive analysis of the energy that went into making that pv module, but only the most readily counted energy, IE the meter turnings at the fab shop.
For the commodities vs energy costs... well, I've made my case, you've made yours. I don't need you to agree with me, you don't need me to agree with you.
As for inverter costs... Well, I looked again. looks like inverters have come down since last I looked. the inverter is now running around 1/4 of the cost of the panels. it comes with a *5* year warranty if that tells you anything. The pieces I was reading mostly said that inverter manufacturers were making 10 year MTBF their "goals" for small installation devices.
looking here.
http://www.affordable-solar.com/kyocera-solar-panels.htm
Small installations, in the sub-kw levels, the inverter costs approach the panel costs.
You want to read the footnote on your table. It says PV but the footnote says PV and thermal. More PV is added each year in the US so generation always goes up. Most of the PV is not old enough to retire but some thermal is. You can see data here: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Solar/2007_data.htm#table5
The EROEI for silicon panels is moving towards 30:1 http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/lce2006.pdf
On inverters, you should expect to replace an inverter once during a 25 year system life. After 25 years, you'll be getting a new roof and will probably opt for an all new system, selling the old one for about a quarter or so of the price of a new one.
Chris
Alsema did not include the energy needed for the extra steps required by the microelectronics industry to crystallize the silicon. PV cells can be made from lower grade silicon which do not consume as much energy. Because it is recycled stock, he would be valid to exclude all of the energy rather than just some of it. He made a valid estimate. His energy calculation seems to be deficient in other ways. For example, I do not think he included the energy used to construct the factory. Alsema has published a study in which he evaluated the energy needed to install the PV panels on a roof, including the wiring and electronics. Your assertion that the EROEI of PV's is less than one is based on criticism and wishful projections of presently available studies, not on any actual study. All that you can legitimately conclude is that Alsema's pay-back times are likely a lower bound.
I understand that PV grade silicon is a lower grade than semiconductor grade. However as to the relatively low energy demands to refine and crystallize it, does PV grade NOT use the seimens process? How much lower is the energy requirement? How sure are you that it's safe to totally neglect all purification energy from an EROEI analysis?
I never asserted that the EROEI of PV was less than 1, I asserted that it is less than the figures most frequently quoted (that being the 1-4 year energy payback). I asserted it because others here asserted that the EROEI was "SO high" as to make it a no-brainer based on that study.
It is an interesting thing to note that if PV has (to pick a number) a 7 year energy payback, then it has never produced a single net watt second. All energy produced has gone back into making more PV. That will continue to be the case until PV production drops to less than 14% of installed solar or a 7 year doubling. not a criticism, just an interesting thing to note.
Presently most silicon used in PV is refined using the Seimens process. This is unlikely to continue though since the Seimens process is not really optimized for energy. This process looks as though it will gain ground: http://pesn.com/2007/05/02/9500469_RSI_Silicon_wins_MIT_contest/
They are going into production this quarter. http://www.rsi-silicon.com/aboutus.php
Chris
I never asserted that the EROEI of PV was less than 1, I asserted that it is less than the figures most frequently quoted (that being the 1-4 year energy payback).
You need to support your assertion with more than simple speculation on your part for us to give it any consideration.
Someone needs to determine the EROEI of Reaction Sciences Inc.'s (RSI) new process including the energy needed to construct the building and equipment.
The EROEI of PV panels is also uncertain because no one knows their lifetime. The mono and poly panels we have today were first manufactured in the late 1970's meaning they have only been in existence for about 28 years. Manufactures only warrant the panels for as long as they have been proven to last. In 1990 the warranty was 10 years, and in 2003 the warranties ranged from 20 to 25 years. Many studies assume a 30 year lifetime while I think it will be longer. If they last 50 years, then they are as durable as an adult lifetime.
If the pay back time is 7 years (to use your example, fordprefect) and the lifetime is 30 years, then the EROEI is 30/7 = 4.3:1. If their lifetime is 50 years, then the EROEI is 50/7 = 7.1:1. If the latter number is assumed to be the actual value and somehow all of the energy needed to manufacture PV panels comes from PV panels, then the installed base of PV panels could support a 710% increase in production over 50 years or a 4.0% annual increase (solve for r in the equation: 7.1 = (1+r)50). After 50 years, the initial batch would be recycled and the ones made from their energy could continue increasing their numbers by 4.0% per year until the finite universe is consumed :)
However, this entire exercise is silly because it is impossible to manufacture the initial base of PV panels from energy provided by PV panels. One must use a different energy source to build the chicken which reproduces by laying eggs. As long at the EROEI is significantly greater than 1:1, the materials are plentiful and the energy needed to manufacture PV panels comes from sustainable sources (all of the energy needed to power human activity will not come from electricity because food is grown from sunlight), then PV panels are sustainable.
That'll be hard; I looked for data in the various announcements, Powerpoint presentations, etc. and did not see as much as a list of feedstocks. These people are being very tight-lipped.
Even harder. I would not be surprised to find that you need to sign an NDA to see this.
This is a pain if one wants to know how the cost of the process will be affected by changes in commodity prices. Fortunately, that's also the sort of thing that's important to investors so it's bound to come out eventually.
I think the EIA document you meant to reference showed production for the full year of 2007, compared to the full year of 2006. That document can be found here. According to that document, net generation for 2007 was 19.4% higher than for 2006 (606 compared to 508 thousand megawatt hours). That amount was was tiny compared to total 2007 production of 4,159,514 thousand megawatt hours. Wind was much larger (32,143 or 0.8% of total 2007 electric production).
I'm not sure the EIA is a good source for this info.
I believe that they only include power plants that consider themselves as primarily producing for others, and only include plants above a certain size (anybody know what this limit is?).
So, they exclude almost all distributed power generation.
Of course, you cite no figures or anything else which might ground your rant in reality.
If we make the simplifying assumption that the $30/kg cost of Siemens-process silicon is entirely due to electric input and electricity costs 10¢/kWh, this is an energy cost of 300 kWh/kg. A kilogram of silicon turned into 100-micron ribbons using the Evergreen Solar casting process and manufactured into cells at 18% efficiency would produce 4.29 m² of cells yielding roughly 770 peak watts. If sited where they received 1000 kWh/m²/yr, these cells would produce ~770 kWh/yr, so the silicon would pay back its invested energy in less than 6 months.
If the silicon was produced using the new process cited above, the payback would be reduced to less than 2 months.
The installed cost of systems includes everything, by definition. It also includes a great deal of costs imposed by low-volume production of items like synchronous inverters; consumer items produced in high volume using similar components (e.g. power FETs) go for a fraction of the price per watt. A synchronous inverter produced at 5 million units/year is going to become cheap, if only because it will justify a full redesign for automated assembly and testing. (Automotive modules are often redesigned to save a half-cent per unit; it's worth a week of an engineer's time to do this when you manufacture a million a year.)
"Solar is at current INSANELY expensive."
Compared to what??? Why must clean, renewable solar power compete economically with subsided, polluting fossil fuel energy?
I spent about $35K on the grid tied RE system I built for our house. It generates (on a yearly average) 15 kWh a day. This gives us all our energy needs (including heating) and a surplus to drive a plug in hybrid ~2400 miles.
This system will be making power long after I am dead and gone. For too long we have not taken the long term perspective on reality and are in deep shit now as a result. Isn't it time to change that... yet??
Todd
Compared to any other electrical generation methodology that has ever been attempted. Including wind and biomass, other "clean" technologies. Simply put solar is totally noncompetitive for wholesale generation. Solar has to compete with coal because it is taking place in the current real world, not your fantasy world.
We routinely assess new plant capital expenditure on a per MW basis and the days of $3/kW, or $3 million/MW are long gone. Biomass plants are pushing $4 as are natural gas. Then you still have to pay for all the fuel, but the kW-h's are not an apple to apple comparison. However, solar tends to be available during peak hours.
Thinking solar PV can be used for bulk generation is wrong, just wrong, Concentrated solar, yes because it can drive a steam plant. The best use of PV is at the individual level combined with net/smart metering. It's not really that hard.
Would 2-10MW of PV at municipal scale generation used for peak power only fall under your stricture?
That is the proposal from Nanosolar, saving on transmission costs and steppers.
The Germans combine that sort of output with wind and biogas to run at 100% - darn expensive with their lousy resources there though, I would have thought.
BC_EE,
Do you know of any reports on line that would have these numbers for modern coal and NG plants?
This is a chart that I cut out of the White House Economic Report of the President, issued in February 2008. It is of course someone's guesstimate of future costs.
Thanks! I will see if I can get the numbers to match an existing plant somewhere.
Todd, I like your returns on the investment. I have a two part proposal. Where applicable, all new housing must include solar PV and passive systems as part of their infrastructure. Or, equivalent energy reducing systems can be used such as geo-thermal.
Where new generation is proposed, the local area must first assess whether the capital cost and the life cycle fuel expenditures would be equal to installing the solar systems. Would the installed kW-h offset the requirement for a new plant?
The installation of residential and commercial solar PV and passive could be amortized over the same period as the proposed plant. Overly simple, but it may make sense.
You are comparing solar costs to power produced from currently operational power plants. Due to increasing concrete, steel and fuel prices any new generation of conventional power plants will not be producing electricity as cheap as the last generation.
Solar is at current INSANELY expensive.
Or perhaps fossil fuel power is INSANELY cheap?
"Nothing is that simple."
It may be. This will evolve over 15 years, so we don't have to worry about such things as a spike in demand at the start of a low price period - there will be plenty of time to develop logic that will smooth such things. Actually, braod flat low price periods, like cell phone pricing, probably won't happen - see the following example of pricing that is much more finely tuned: www.thewattspot.com .
"In addition to all of these, until the protocols are developed, they will not be implemented, and until they are needed, they will not be developed. "
Actually, all of this is currently being addressed by committees of utilities, communications companies (like Comverge) and the car companies. Don't forget, PHEVs are more like rolling super-computers than they are like ICE vehicles (which are themselves massively computerized and connected).
"The catch is that the grid has to be on at night. If it is just plain off, you have a problem. If there is a major breakdown, that is what happens."
With plug-in's you have a backup, so occasional outages wouldn't be a problem. If the grid was available 80% of the time, you could probably get 90% of your desired charging (as the battery would get you through short outages, and part of longer outages). Blackouts would be primarily a problem during the day, when plug-in charging would be very low (see below). If the grid is available less than 80% of the time, especially at night...well, that's a whole different discussion.
"You also have to deal with the issue...that people will not really charge their cars at night. "
As you note, you just need smart-metering. This isn't hard: California's PG&E is rolling it out to all of their customers. All utilities are required by the 2005 act to now have the technology in place and to offer pilot programs - see www.thewattspot.com for an example. This really isn't a problem.
WRONG! the plug-ins will NOT provide a "backup". unless you care to install a grid synchronous inverter on each vehicle, then the PHEV is a load only. AC to DC conversion involves a simple bridge rectifier and a transformer, it is not reversible without expensive hardware.
"WRONG! the plug-ins will NOT provide a "backup". "
That's not what I meant. I meant that plug-in's, by definition, have a built-in backup: they can run on gasoline/diesel when the battery runs low.
"you care to install a grid synchronous inverter on each vehicle"
As I said, V2G (Vehicle to Grid) is more complex. It's certainly practical and will be useful (PG&E, EPRI, Comverge, etc are working hard on it), but I see no need to debate about it - the benefits of dynamic charging are more than enough to show that plug-ins will benefit the grid.
V2G capabilities are inherent in the reductive charging system pioneered by AC Propulsion. If you have an induction motor being used as a ballast and a controlled-phase inverter, the rest of V2G is just some code in the controller. Even the communications links would be there; you'd need them to handle dynamic charging properly, so there is no reason not to support the full feature set from day 1.
NIck may not have meant that the cars would provide battery back-up for the grid, but I think a lot of other people are assuming that. People don't realize how complicated everything is.
Once you get the grid synchronous inverter on each vehicle, where do the vehicles get the extra electricity that they are going to store? In order for that to happen, it would seem like it would be necessary for the cars to burn gasoline and then have the grid take the stored electricity away. I am having a hard time seeing how that helps our shortage of gasoline.
" where do the vehicles get the extra electricity that they are going to store?"
Mostly they'd charge at night, and discharge during the day.
This is a long discussion. A few thoughts: you're talking about V2G, which is less important than dynamic charging (charging when supply is high) in the nearterm. 2nd, V2G would be used at first for very high value services for grid stability, which are much more valuable than KWH's.
Finally, if you were to have to draw down batteries that would require charging from gasoline later, it would be during very high value peak periods, and would be done very rarely - it would be the backup capacity that would be important, not the KWH's, and it wouldn't use a significant volume of fuel - consider that 220M vehicles with 10KW output would give you 2.2TW of backup capacity! If you reduced output to 2KW, that's still 440GW, equal to average US consumption, but if you only needed it for 1 hour (more than enough to avert a blackout) it would only use about 1 liter of gasoline per vehicle. OTOH, please note that 2KWH would only be about 12% of the capacity of a plug-in like the GM Volt, so most vehicles wouldn't use fuel to recharge at all (as most people drive less than the 40 mile range on average each day).
Again, I would note that this a bit of a distraction from the main value of plug-ins for the grid, which is dynamic charging, especially at night when power is in surplus and wind and nuclear tend to be under-utilized. V2G is more complex, and won't be needed in large volume any time soon.
You have a bit of a contradiction there. I think V2G is going to be in high demand from the beginning, because of these factors:
As fuel (esp. gas and oil fuel for peaking plants) gets more expensive, being able to tailor demand to the supply curves of cheaper sources will pay off. All of these features are going to be on the grid manager's list of wants, and vehicle manufacturers will play along to help sell the consumer. After all, if the first hundred thousand customers can get their juice for FREE just for plugging in reliably, the vehicles will sell themselves.
Gail,
Charging vehicles can be timed to take up extra supply but it does not make sense (to me) to use batteries is vehicles for storage of energy to feed back to the grid. That it the backup concept, not running the engine. It is called V2G for vehicle to grid.
The reason I don't think it is a very good idea is because transportation grade batteries are very special batteries and it just does not make sense to wear them out providing storage for the grid. Demand side management yes, but not flowback.
But, a used transportation grade battery is still a very good battery. It might not be good enough to provide transporation range, but it is still a high efficiency battery. This will be used for storage for the grid. PG&E in California is already signing contracts to get them. By my calculation, conversion of transportation to electric vehicles provides 0.5 days of storage of our total energy use from the used batteries. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/roof-pitch.html
So, a large part of the storage issues for either renewables, or (sadly) inflexible nuclear power are taken care of as a consequence of getting off oil for transportation.
Chris
"transportation grade batteries are very special batteries and it just does not make sense to wear them out providing storage for the grid"
It's simply too soon to know. There is a very good chance that the batteries that will be used in the GM Volt will have such a long lifetime (much longer than the vehicle) that it will indeed make sense to use them in this way.
Grid electricity storage is a reasonable market for second hand wehicle batteries that are staring to be worn down. It has a larger economical value in places where you also need large scale UPS service. Its a revenue opportunity inbetween wehicle use and recycling.
Absolutely. It's just not quite clear yet where that "wear" point is, yet.
If the batteries last much longer than the vehicles, then they will be used for stationary storage once the vehicle dies. I think that would get us to maybe 1.5 days of total energy use storage counting both used and in service batteries. As you know, I'm fond of innovations in transmission, but with that much storage you only need a trickle to balance regions. Stuart's super grid may turn out to be recycled oil tankers running flow battery fluid back and forth between Europe and South Africa to handle seasonal variations.
Chris
I see a great synergy between plug in hybrids and combined heat and power / distributed generation systems.
Its possible to make small rotary engines which would run on a mix of natural gas and bio-gas.(You could possibly add a small amount of hydrogen from electrolysis dump loads connected to the grid)
The main car unit would just run off the batteries/supercaps with the engine remaining at home connected to the grid. During peak times, the engine would sell the power to the grid whilst generating plenty of local heat. Then when you get home you can charge the battery from the off-peak overnight electricity. When a longer trip is required, the engine and a CNG tank could be easily installed as a trailer to act as a range extender.
Frequency responsive heating and cooling is obviously an area with lots of potential for demand control.
However tinkering around with the technical side of things is interesting but the cheapest, most effective changes come from lifestyle changes, economise and localise. Unfortunately as has been pointed out on many occasions, its much easier to assume 'something' or 'someone' will save us from this path where not only can we not see whats around the corner but we are actually trying to go faster.
May you live in interesting times
Back it up.
Have power outages been increasing?
The appropriate measurement is SAIDI. It is an index of sustained power outage.
According to IEEE figures upper estimate SAIDI has varied around 120 minutes per year since 1995 with no discernable trend. This in the face of increasing power use and population.
"SAIDI...an index of sustained power outage. According to IEEE figures upper estimate SAIDI has varied around 120 minutes per year since 1995 with no discernable trend."
hmmm. So US reliability is about 99.98%? Wow. Could you give a source?
hmmm. Try this one, page 11. The stats are from EPRI:
http://www.l2eng.com/Reliability_Indices_for_Utilities.pdf
or Google "SAIDI power outage chart" and rumage.
Data does not support deteriorating service.
"Data does not support deteriorating service."
All existing data was obtained during a period of access to cheap fuel. This was an era where debt obligations were in general going to be met on the expectation that the economy and business would expand. That era is at an end.
The more enlightened might ask - is it safe to assume that the historical data can still be used to make extrapolations and guesses about the future, given that very recent trends show fuel costs increasing at unprecedented rates, food prices doing the same, credit becoming much harder to obtain and also being more costly.
There are posts in this thread from industry insiders that support the primary argument and no posts from industry insiders that present counter arguments.
On balance I would say the probability of systemic failure is going to be much higher in the future than it has been in the past. Bridges are typically over engineered and yet they still collapse, we are surrounded by evidence of deteriorating infrastructure - just looking at the "deferred maintenance" requirements of say the Federal Bureau of Land Management, is enough to cause a sane person to worry, hundreds of dams and bridges and tens of thousands of culverts, with a considerable number either needing attention of at least assessment.
The collapse of the USA (as we know it) will be fascinating, we have front row seats to the spectacle. My only hope is that the thieves holding everything in offshore tax havens (JP Morgan et al.) are caught and lose more than their shirts.
"All existing data was obtained during a period of access to cheap fuel."
Fuel is not quite as cheap lately, and we have no indications that system reliability has changed significantly.
"This was an era where debt obligations were in general going to be met on the expectation that the economy and business would expand. That era is at an end."
That's not at all proved. Have you looked at Ayres' research?
"There are posts in this thread from industry insiders that support the primary argument and no posts from industry insiders that present counter arguments."
Gail, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the primary argument is that the grid needs quite a lot of maintenance and expansion, and that there is a likelihood that it won't effectively support alternatives to oil/FF's (especially including centralized ones, like CSP and wind, but probably not including distributed PV), and a risk of greatly reduced reliability, if serious investments aren't made. That's not the same as a flat prediction of certain collapse.
The grid needs both maintenance and upgrades, to get all of the benefits we would like from it.
If we continue to just maintain things as we have, there are probably parts of the country where there will be no problems, but the likelihood of prolonged blackouts goes up, particularly in the highly congested areas of the grid.
RE:"The more enlightened might ask - is it safe to assume that the historical data can still be used to make extrapolations and guesses about the future"
All data is historical, including the data you reference like fuel cost, debt cost and availability, and road repairs.
One of Gail's data selections was high energy trafic into energy consuming urban areas (NE USA) from distant energy producing areas (NE Canada). When the "cheap" fuel disappears (I don't like to grant that point, but for argument's sake...) what happens to energy use per capita, and what would a per capita reduction in energy use do to electric "congestion"?
Off topic:
The power from Ontario comes in on DC lines, which is relatively unusual. What goes to our houses is AC. Did you know that electrons from the power plant likely never enter your house? Certainly ones from the dirt underneath your foundation do. Statistically its the same gang of tireless little particles going back and forth in our incandescents again and again.
Hi Gail,
I'm a little concerned about our local distribution system and the stress it will face as more of us move off oil (currently, some four out of five homes in this province are heated with oil). My home is on a distribution line that is probably 60 or more years old and operates at just 2,200-volts. When it was installed, there were basically a few cottages and homes dotting the shoreline. Over the years, there's been ongoing in-fill but in the past ten years in particular, there's been a huge boom in new construction, with most new homes being all electric and averaging 3,000 to 4,000 sq. ft in size. In addition, as I walk through the neighbourhood I'm noticing that the older homes like mine that are being bought and renovated (or, sadly, torn down and replaced) are likewise going all-electric; electrical services that were once 60 or 100-amps are now 200 and 400 amps. Heat pumps seem to be the popular choice, no doubt due to the demand for central air (not that we require it in our climate). There's no doubt in my mind that heating oil is on its way out, so the question is whether our electrical system is up to the task. Judging by how my lights dim and flicker and the exploding transformer outside my door, I have my doubts.
Over the short-term, I expect a huge run on portable electric heaters as our oil tanks get topped-up with $4.50 and $5.00 per gallon oil later this fall. My sense is that the public has been slow to pick-up on this, but electric heat is now substantially cheaper than oil; once they do awaken to this fact, we best hold our collective breath. And I'm not sure what, if anything, we can read into this, but last week I ordered an electric water heater through Sears that was due to arrive Monday (this water heater will eliminate over half my remaining fuel oil demand). I received a call from them on Saturday telling me it was on back order and won't be in until June 2nd. When I asked the operator about the delay, she told me they're having a hard time keeping them in stock. Perhaps I'm not the only one who wants to switch his water heater from oil to electric.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul, the very man!
You are just the fella to tell us how much you would save by the widespread adoption of residential solar thermal and heat pumps.
Of course, people will be swapping to electric so that would reduce the effect.
Could the North American grid be saved that way?
Answers on the back of an envelope, please!
Hi Dave,
I'm rather pessimistic about this. After many years of [benign neglect?], we simply lack the financial, material and human resources to complete this work in a timely fashion. As a consumer, I can purchase a couple 1,500-watt electric rads at Canadian Tire for as little as $15.00 each. Unfortunately, as you well appreciate, the cost to service these new loads, in terms of new generation, transmission and distribution could be several tens of thousands of dollars. Then multiple that by a couple hundred thousand customers province-wide. Then there's the element of time. I can pop-out to the store and provided they're in stock, snap on the switch a half hour later; at the other end of the cord, we might be looking at ten to twenty years. A gradual shift over time in terms of new home construction and renovations shouldn't be a problem. A snap, panic-like response? Probably not. And let's not kid ourselves; virtually all of this new demand in the short-term will be electric resistance and not air-source or geo-thermal heat pumps.
Cheers,
Paul
HiH, that's the scenario I've been trying to get through the thick skulls at BC Hydro. They don't account for fuel switching and will get caught with blindsided by the Canadian Tire Electric Heater Bonanza. The electrical rates in BC are ridiculously low and soon residents will find electrical heat is significantly cheaper than natural gas. I can see the 500 kV lines outside my window groaning in anticipation.
Hi BC,
I can sympathize. BC Hydro’s residential rate at $0.0655 is the equivalent of heating oil at $0.57 a litre (82% AFUE). As of May 6th, #2 fuel oil is running in the range of $1.20 to $1.22 (source: http://www.mjervin.com/WPPS_Public.htm), so electric resistance heat is less than half the cost of oil. Clearly, in this case, electric heat is the hands down winner.
It appears natural gas and electricity are similar in cost with electricity holding the upper hand when the AFUE of the heating system is 80 per cent or less. Given that electricity rates, historically speaking, have been relatively stable whereas natural gas prices, by comparison, are more volatile, and given that natural gas prices are likely to be subject to considerable upward pressure going forward, electric heat seems to be the better choice, particularly in light of its low initial cost.
Source: http://www.terasengas.com/_AboutNaturalGas/FactsandInformation/GasPricin...
For those who now heat with natural gas and especially those with older, less-efficient heating systems, the potential for fuel substitution seems quite high -- even more so if natural gas rates continue to outpace those of electricity. Natural gas rates have been known to spike sharply and with little warning, so the switch to electric heat could be sudden and potentially overwhelming.
Cheers,
Paul
Hi Paul,
I had a lengthy post submitted just when something crashed this afternoon. Dang I forgot to copy the text first!
You're right, folks will switch to resistive heating as long as power is cheap, driving up demand and price for electricity on a curve lagging oil prices by a few months to a year or two. Why does nobody understand this?
If the lag is long enough people will take advantage of it. I've been using a woodstove the last 13 years but much more seriously the last two winters. A neighbor asked me a month or two how much wood cost, considering he just filled his 275 gallon oil tank for the 3rd time this winter - at US $1000 per filling. Our house is a bit smaller but also much less well insulated, but 3 cords of hardwood plus about 6000 KWH electric (cost - $1100/year plus the time to stack and season the wood, load the stove etc.) runs to about a third of his annual cost.
But resistance heat is pretty efficient from the house main breaker to the heated space. Efficiency on the power plant side is the real problem until we build new plants with CHP capability. Of course then you'd want to pipe the district heat into your home, rather than using resistive heating. Will that happen? When? Some doubt in my mind.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I finally got the data from my friend's new home with a GSHP. This is inland Eastern Mass, with around 6000 HDD for a typical winter. He has a 1950 sf home with 6" walls (I'd assume R30 walls, R49 ceilings) and lots of windows facing South. His GSHP has 600 ft of tubing placed 8' deep in a 32x70 field and a 5 HP compressor heat pump. He put a watt meter on the whole unit and digital thermometers on the loop inlet and outlet. I was surprised to find only a 5F temp difference between loop in and out, except during the swing seasons which last about a month each. The wintertime loop outlet is around 32F and in summer it never gets above about 55F. I expected less change that deep, and more delta-T between input and output. But compared to the air I guess it's pretty good.
Anyway the annual usage was about 15000 KWH. (Our electric is about $0.10/KWH, cheap due to our municipal utilities.)He maintains the house at an average of 68F, warmer in the summer. So for $400 more than we pay, he gets both heating and cooling and doesn't have to stack or move wood. Not bad, but the real savings is relative to oil heat and A/C. I forgot to ask what the system cost, but I'd guess $20K or so. Compared to our woodstove+electric it is more expensive as long as wood is available. Compared to using oil or gas, he's doing very well.
Best Regards,
Chris
Hi Chris,
There has to be a certain tipping point when every consumer decides he or she has had enough and surely a single $1,000.00 fill-up would convince most of us there has to be a better way. And even when electricity is more expensive than either oil or natural gas, BTU for BTU, many of us will still use it for spot or zone heating; in effect, turning down the main thermostat and heating the one or two areas where we spend the bulk of our time. Given the other operational advantages of electricity, its relative price to oil or natural gas may not be the sole factor.
It's rather shocking to think that your neighbour's space heating and DHW costs are three times your own, but there you have it. I'm guessing my neighbours spend four to five times what I do – i.e., $1,200.00 versus $5 to $6K – obviously their pain threshold is a whole lot higher than my own!
Thanks for the additional info on your friend's GSHP. I'm no expert on these things by any means, but 600 ft. of tubing for a 5 HP compressor strikes me as rather skimpy. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will offer their opinion. That 5F delta just doesn't sound right either, but if I'm correct in thinking that the tube length is too short, it might very well account for the modest spread between inlet and outlet temperatures.
BTW, you weren't alone in losing your text... I lost my original reply to BC above and opted for a much shorter version the second time around.
Cheers,
Paul
Edit: I did some further checking and one site recommends 800 to 1,000 feet of horizontal pipe per ton at a depth of 5 to 8 feet. (See: http://www.hybridenergysolutions.com/geothermalwhy.html)
Thanks Paul. I'll check into it. I did feel 600 feet was far too short a loop.
Thanks,
Chris
I think you have a good point. With oil prices higher, more and more people are switching to electric because it is cheaper. As the price of natural gas goes up, there will be additional switching from natural gas to electric.
I talk about the US grid, but I perhaps should have talked about the North American grid. The industry group is the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. This group covers the US, Canada, and Mexico. I didn't try to research Canada, but I am sure some of their problems are similar. Where there is growth, it is difficult for the infrastructure to keep up.
Hi Gail,
Without oversimplifying things too much, residential space heating and DHW demand in Ontario and points westward is largely met by natural gas (BC with its significant hydro-electric resources being somewhat the exception). Québec is predominately electric and oil is the fuel of choice here in Atlantic Canada, although Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick have significant electric share. Looking at Canada as a whole, it's fair to say Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are the two provinces at greatest risk of system breakdown should oil prices continue to escalate upward. Moreover, they're the two provinces most constrained both in terms of their ability to bring new capacity online and to import power from neighbouring utilities (i.e., Nova Scotia can import a maximum of 300 MW under optimum conditions).
Cheers,
Paul
Good article. I'm much less than an amateur in this area, but I have a question or two.
Is there not a great deal of room for conservation in electricity use? The fluorescent bulbs (CF?) most people know about. Fans instead of air conditioners in all but the most extreme cases. Lights out except for the one you're reading by. I don't know if the LEDs work well yet -- I'm reading that green is still missing, needed to get a good white. All this, while perhaps inconvenient, is better than prolonged blackouts.
How much overhead (loss) in the grid? Isn't it overall more efficient to supply at least some of juice with a local generator, even using gasoline or NG or whatever? At least to reduce peak load?
Localization was addressed. If one projects the escalating costs of revamping the grid, in light of energy and materials cost rises, can one question whether the kind of grid we have now should be restored or maintained at all?
If there is not a plan for retrenchment in this area as well as all others, what will happen is that certain ever shrinking areas will continue to get theirs, while the majority of us will more and more live in the dark.
Yeah, a lot of this helps, but only if people make use of it. When the grid gets overloaded, people need an incentive to turn down the AC. Net metering helps to a degree, but if there is an emergency, will people really turn off the AC? Perhaps some will..
It depends how high you can jack up the charges.
At $2 or so per kwh, many would turn off power.
The Juneau newspaper has a special section covering their power emergency:
http://www.juneauempire.com/powerline/
The "Score Card" there shows about a 30% drop in electric use. People respond when prices jump from 11 cents to 52 cents per kWh.
As I read it, the new rates started May 1st. The dramatic drop in consumption was about April 17th. Perhaps that was pure conservation and blackouts?
I don't have terribly good answers to your questions.
There is probably room for conservation, but at the same time we have quite a few people going to electric from oil or natural gas. It is hard to get an overall downward trend, when electricity is the cheapest alternative for energy.
I thought an article Leanan posts a couple of days ago was interesting. Its title is "No electric power shortage is seen this summer for the Northeast
The area being discussed tends to have somewhat less electric power than is ideal, but it is not in the worst of the line congestion areas. The article talks about additional power plants, additional transmission lines, and paying companies to reduce their demand during peak hours.
I don't know to what extreme one can take this. Theoretically, one can get all of the heavy industry to stop work during the peak hours of the day, when it is hot out. If this approach can be planned properly, it is probably better than rolling blackouts. It seems like it could get to be a major expense for companies that have paid workers to come to work, but need to send them home in the middle of the day, or have them sit idle for a few hours. They would rather know in advance, so they could plan production schedules. It still might be cheaper than building new transmission lines.
Gail,
That is one approach. Others include;
- Realtime Pricing: When supplies are low (i.e., wind isn't blowing, nuke plant went offline, etc), then the prices go up, and those with smart appliances can have them set at thresholds. If prices are expected to be high for 2 hours then drop back down, the dishwasher you loaded before you went to bed will kick on when the price drops. Or the HVAC will adjust the AC from 74F to 76F until the price goes down again.
- Peak Management: Similar, except very simple, i.e., the utility sends a signal to the electric hot water heater to turn off 10 minutes out of 30, or the HVAC off 15 minutes every hour. This helps to mitigate blackouts, either for peak or low supply situation.
There are others, but this should provide a start.
The nordic countries have state owned backbone grids that are cooperating with increasing capacity as electricity trading increases and new production is added. Here is a link to the latest nordic grid master plan:
http://195.18.187.215/Common/GetFile.asp?PortalSource=1787&DocID=5647&mf...
The prioritized improvements in previous plans has been built or they are being built and I think it is likely that this will continue.
This sound like a much more sensible approach than the US approach. If we had started down this road many years ago, things would be much better.
Hey Friends, Looks like the same problem in Europe: http://www.aspo-ireland.org/index.cfm?page=viewNewsletterArticle&id=39
They definitely have supply issues, especially long term, in Europe. The decline in North Sea natural gas is especially an issue. It is not as clear to me that their problems are necessarily with the electric grid.
The article does point out the they, too, are shifting to faith in market economics to solve their problems. It would be nice if market economics could fix geology.
"The article does point out the they, too, are shifting to faith in market economics to solve their problems.
I am amazed at the contempt of economics at TOD. of course it's selective contempt. when it suits various doomer arguments economics is sound. when not it's "magic."
When the market can anticipate and preclude an ENRON situation, maybe I'll show some more deference.
Bob
The market can never anticipate and preclude that which was done by regulation. Enron used the rules of the system to rape the system. That will happen whenever the rules are written by lawyers politicians and accountants without input form engineers and technicians.
It was not "deregulation" that allowed enron to game the system, a deregulated grid is un-game-able. It is only in a mixed environment that that sort of gaming can occur. A commodity market controlled by the invisible hand alone is un-game-able, as is one controlled entirely by the state. The mixtures are fertile territory.
basically, miyagi said it best, walk left side safe, walk right side, safe, walk middle, SQUISH, just like grape.
"When the market can anticipate and preclude an ENRON situation, maybe I'll show some more deference."
for all the market provides you're going to dismiss it because of Enron? I suppose you have a better system?
When you can show how electrical distribution exists in non-regulated state, come back and talk.
So, you dismiss something as a failure that you admit has never been tried? Nice! The market does a magnificent job of delivering virtually everything desired product to us, but you don't trust it with 1 more thing? Why is that?
So, you dismiss something as a failure that you admit has never been tried?
I asked for evidence of electrical grids in non-regulated states. No where did I claim it has not been tried or exists.
As I understand there are few operating regulations in Bagdad, How's the grid over there?
The market does a magnificent job of delivering virtually everything desired product to us,
Does it? "The Market" used to be the way meat was delivered. Then Upton Sinclare wrote on what he saw in the slaughterhouses, and "The Market" got changed by government regulation.
So, one again, the readers can see that you use a different meaning of "magnificent job" or perhaps "delivering". Or rotting/maggoty meat was really the customer's
"desire"? Or perhaps what the hell you mean by "The Market"
, but you don't trust it with 1 more thing? Why is that?
When you can show that consumers have the freedom of choice and knowledge of the products lifecycles when it comes to electricity that "The Market" needs to function - then your question becomes answered.
But hey - I've got a $10 spot in front of me. Given you've said that money is energy - how do I fold that $10 so I can plug in the toaster directly into the $10 and get my toast + change?
I'd go along with your comments, Eric.
A lot put faith in 'the Market' without addressing the conditions under which it operates, which includes the regulatory environment.
Adam Smith himself in 'The Wealth of Nations' was never so naive, maintaining that two businessmen could hardly meet together without colluding to the detriment of the public good.
In specific terms relating to the way the grid is regulated and power supplied, that has tended to mean that losses are socialised and profits privatised.
Better regulation is possible, and simplistic declarations that privatisation on it's own is going to solve anything are wide of the mark.
I understand the case you are making. I would however like to see a fully private unregulated (or at least lightly regulated) grid attempted at least once on this planet before writing off the concept. How do you know it wouldn't work out great? The phone companies are far more lightly regulated than the power companies and the phone system is by far the more reliable. Ditto cable TV. Both of those systems even share the same poles and rights of way.
You are very very clearly correct that in a mixed environment there is a strong tendency for the costs to be passed to the public and the profits to be passed to the private. Personally I am more inclined to attribute this to a problem of poor oversight of government by the citizenry than to evil on the part of the private concerns. It is not my job to not pick up money laying on the street, it is your job not to drop your cash :)
There is sort of a self-serving circularity to arguments based on 'pure' ideologies. If a more-or-less unregulated grid were to arise and didn't work out well at all, the proponents of deregulation would of course argue that it was not unregulated enough or that the deregulation was poorly done (see Enron/California example).
You could doubtless find old-school communists claiming that communism has never been attempted under the right conditions, and they would be right, of course, since it has never worked very well and the right conditions are the conditions under which it would work well.
This is one reason I seldom engage in debate or discussion with someone who is evidently into some ideology as a 'solution' to our problems. I'd rather have discussions with practical minded people who don't have knee-jerk reactions to words like 'socialism' etc.
Best hopes for pragmatism and open minds.
In fact, communism HAS been attempted and worked quite well. Just never on a national scale :) Many "hippie communes" function rather successfully under a communist system... maybe it helps to be stoned...
to lay the enron thing at the feet of deregulation is really quite an injustice though. Deregulating only one side of a transaction is an abomination and will never work out well.
Dunno why the use of the word socialism to describe socialized medicine got such a bad reaction. There's no gettin' 'round that's what it is.
I'd certainly go along with efforts to change the regulatory environment to favour dome more innovative approaches. Micro generation from small hydro in particular seems something which might contribute substantially in the States if incentives to encourage it could be got right - licensing is very difficult at the moment, I believe.
The system which I find most exciting, although my knowledge is very limited, is that in California, where they have managed to set things up so that utilities are incentivised to encourage conservation in their customers, not just sell more power.
Energy is so important to the overall economy that I can't see Government intervention being minimalistic, but if you are not to have huge overuns with cost plus contracts you need some element of private initiative and competition.
Somehow the regulatory environment has to be got right, but doing it is another thing!
Micro generation
20kwH interconnects are standard across the US I believe.
utilities are incentivised to encourage conservation
Naw, happens elsewhere. Some give away CFLs and others sell 'em at a discount like $1 a bulb. So when I pass through WE Energy's grid, I stop at ACE Hardware and buy $1 bulbs.
magnificent != perfect. Perfect = perfect. I didn't say perfect, I said magnificent. Webster exists.
But then, I can clearly see that you are far more interested in being a condescending worm than in engaging in conversation or analysis, so kindly bugger off. I am not interested in bantering and sparring with anyone who would prefer to nitpick semantics rather than discussing issues.
As for how to "fold" your tenspot so that you can plug your toaster into it, it's very simple, you mail it to your power provider. You want to run your car on it, you give it to exxon.
magnificent != perfect.
Ohhh. So maggoty meat is 'not perfect'?
Once one rinses off the blow flies, that hunk of meat is back to 'exhibiting splendor' eh?
Davemart is a condescending worm for being agreeable to my position? What's next in your replies to avoid responding?
discussing issues.
Discussion of issues can only happen when one is using common meanings to terms and words. "The Market" or "money is energy" or my latest favorite "Economics IS a Science". (yea, come on. Show that is true. Via the scientific method) I prefer discussion with people who have open minds. You've demonstrated that not only is your mind closed Mr. Fordperfect, but it is full of weird word usage and definitions that change as you feel the need to change them to back up your position.
Your support for maggoty meat is now noted in the public record however. And hopefully others will ask you to define terms before any discourse with you.
Just to have this one thing cleared up, I was not responding to davemart, I was responding to you. Davemart I do not know. He makes a valid point about the conditions under which the market functions and posted rationally and on topic.
You on the other hand... well, I have made my opinion of your intellectual prowess clear.
Nice job with the "rotting meat" strawman by the way.
how can you ignore the fact that prices of electricity peaked around 1980 at the same time that gas prices peaked? I just skimmed the article so correct me if I"m wrong by all means. the situation is not dire but one of the causes of a lack of investment is the lack of a return. electricity prices fell for years so why would you invest and not get a return? prices will start to go back up, in part because they'll need money to upgrade the grid, and so the grid will get stronger. this is just the point in the cycle we're at.
warren buffet has shown great interest in investing in utilities.
of course, nothing could move wind, solar and other alternatives energies for residential home quicker than blackouts.
bottom line is when there is money to be made people will invest money in utilies.
case in point:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=ar5M07GUbKaU&refer=l...
The grid is the electric corollary to oil refineries: absolutely essential but since there's little profit to be made from them, they get the minimum investment necessary.
Federalizing the grid is not a radical proposal. There is already a model to follow: our national highway system. Highways have been remarkably resistant to fitting into a private enterprise model, since they work very well when owned by all of us and paid for by all of us as a group, since all of us, whether we use the highways ourselves or not, benefit from their existence.
I would bet that electric power producers and electric power distributors would be happy to have responsibility for the grid taken off their shoulders. Interstate highways are federal; barge-carrying waterways are federal; the air traffic control system is federal; rails should be federal; the grid should be federal. Users pay a user fee to lease time on the grid, and everybody pays a tax to subsidize the grid to make it more efficient and reliable, because we all gain from that.
Electricity is the easiest power form that we will be able to create in a post fossil fuel future. Electricity lends itself most easily to sustainability. Electricity can replace most (but not all) present fossil fuel uses: residential heating and cooking, personal and mass transportation, industrial heating, smelting, etc.
The main factor holding back windpower is the lack of collector line capacity to feed into the grid. Here in Minnesota, there is a theoretical 600 year waiting list for windpower approval because of the power line problem. As the Stanford Study (www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf) on linking wide area wind farms has shown, wind power on the Great Plains can be a reliable, predictable base-load electric power provider. I believe that Great Plains windpower, interconnected north and south and tied to the national grid, could easily supply 75% of North America's electric demand.
However, windpower needs super-regional authorities to survey, plan, site, license, regulate and disburse revenue. Board members of such regional authorities would be democratically elected by the residents of those regions. Windpower, more than any other form, needs systematic development to be an efficient, large-scale electric power provider. Right now we are at the Neolithic village stage of windpower development. The secret to windpower is not to try to store its electricity, but to overbuild the system and feather unneeded turbines, which can then be turned on as needed.
P.S.: a note to Gail, re: drying of switchgrass and its bulk. Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Miscanthus giganteus, the two most likely biomass crop grasses, would be harvested at full senescence (that is, the above ground biomass is dead and all surplus nutrients have already been translocated into the underground root system), and so the plant matter would be at equilibrium moisture content, meaning it's dry enough to burn. The drying is done on the stalk and not artificially. REAP-Canada's studies on switchgrass as boiler fuel show an EROI of 14.6 for pelletized switchgrass grown in Quebec. The pelleting can be done on farm and results in a more readily transportable product. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign studies on miscanthus and switchgrass were done with the idea of using them as boiler fuel to replace coal in power plants.
But perennial biomass crops are much more important as feedstock for portable fuels and as food than as a way to make electricity. Cellulosic biomass has the potential for becoming a new carbohydrate food source for humans and animals. Cellulose is a long chain glucose polymer. Snip that chain apart into its glucose components and not only do you make feedstock for fuel, but you also have 100% digestible food. Based on UIUC studies, such feedstock could be produced with an order of magnitude less input than present annual cereal grain farming, while at the same time producing much higher yields.
You make some good points. Federalizing the grid would seem to make sense, if it were treated as analogous to the federal highway system. I just wish the federal government had something closer to a balanced budget and a tax structure that could take on the additional costs. At this point, no one wants to raise taxes for anything, even necessary expenses - just borrow more.
I hadn't heard about the theoretical 600 year waiting list for wind power in Minnesota. I can see that overbuilding wind power, and turning some off, might work if storing electricity is a problem. (I have ties to Minnesota--I graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield, and my mother lives in Northfield.)
With respect to using dried switchgrass, it would seem like this approach would limit harvesting to the fall. If we are trying to run year-around facilities, somewhere there then needs to be huge storage facilities for pellets, and there needs to be enough processing capability to do it all at harvest time.
I hadn't heard about the biomass for food. We use only a tiny fraction as much food as fuel, so that would seem more doable.
Gail, I figure you could feed one of those Choren BTL plants that Robert Rapier wrote about a couple of posts, ago, with a 3 mi. Square area of Switchgrass in the Southeast. This means no field would need to be more than 1 1/2 miles from the plant.
It could, easily, be pelletized on the farm. The plant could then pay the farmer to store the pellets (this would be "on the ground" under a tarp, I suppose; or the plant could dedicate a few acres (a hundred, maybe) to storing the switchgrass, itself.
A very easy deal, really.
Gail,
In temperate climates, grass cannot be harvested year-round. Even when harvesting for hay, one normally waits until first anthesis (when about 10% of the plants are in flowering stage). Perennials and annuals have very different philosophies of life. Annuals put their surplus carbohydrate reserves into the seed head (which is why we use them to produce food for us), and perennials put them into their root system. Perennials are like ants; annuals are like teenagers -- all they have on their minds is sex.
This means that in order not to damage perenniality, perennial biomass crops need to be harvested after full senescence, when translocation of nutrients is finished and above-ground biomass has reached equilibrium moisture content (roughly 12%) through natural air-drying on the stalk. Storing biomass at this moisture content for long periods of time is no problem. That's what all those round hay bales you see out in a hay field are doing. You don't have to harvest year-round to supply a biofuel plant year-round.
As regards the federal government having sufficient funds to transition this country into a post-fossil fuel future, we already spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined and we spend over $200 billion per year on a war in Iraq that has no military solution. The money is there. It's just being misspent. Our biggest threat is not military in nature but societal collapse from fuel shortage and climate change. There has not been a serious attempt by an alien nation to invade this country since the War of 1812 (a tiny part of the European Napoleanic Wars) but we still act as if that threat is imminent.
I was just in Northfield two weeks ago, watching my sons ride in the Ironman bike ride. Both St. Olaf and Carlton Colleges each have a large wind turbine in operation. St. Olaf's is very prominent as you come into town from the west. The 600 year waiting list reference comes from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which ran an article this winter on the authorization backlog for wind farms wanting to access existing powerlines.
Two years ago I attended a wind power conference in Crookston, MN. I mentioned to a Minnkota Power Cooperative transmission line manager that we have one mile of our land in North Dakota crossed by their 240 KV DC line from Center, ND to Duluth, MN. He said that no wind farm would ever be allowed to tap into that line. Then I mentioned a 64 KV AC line that also crosses a mile of our land. He said that's the one to tap into. It was then that I realized that collector lines were the key to the development of wind power, and that those collector lines would need to be pre-planned and pre-sited long before the towers go up. We need a corollary to the platting (surveying) of the Great Plains that was done before the settlers came. This seems to me to be such a blatantly obvious concept I am surprised I've never heard it brought up, except by me.
That's going to depend a great deal on the capital cost of turbines vs. storage, and the market price of power when the wind is low. Being able to crank out power in a calm may justify more $/kW than the turbines themselves.
If there's a lack of transmission capacity, increasing the capacity factor is crucial. You can overbuild your turbine capacity by 200% and be able to fill the transmission lines down to ~70% of rated wind speed, but the only way you can max out line capacity at 50% of rated speed is with storage, and you could have all of your generation running whenever the wind is blowing.
We already have a model for overbuilding: our highway system. Highways are designed not for baseload but for peak load.
The materials involved in building wind towers and turbines are readily available, are robust, and, except for the composite blades, are recyclable. The same can't be said of batteries. Compressed air energy storage is cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and nearly as efficient as batteries. The towers, themselves, could be converted into compressed air tanks. Heavy, moderate speed flywheels at the base of the towers could also be used for energy storage. Using electricity to make hydrogen from water to use as a fuel for fuel cells is not efficient or inexpensive.
The Stanford study shows that large area windpower interconnectivity results in smooth, predictable power production. Connecting the Northern Plains with the Southern Plains electrically would result in two major windpower production areas experiencing different air flows, acting to smooth out power production even more. Placing our major windpower investment in the plains states puts the towers into an area with high average wind speeds, low population density, low land costs, and a high desire by the local population for a new source of revenue. Your best bang for the buck is on the plains, and allows windpower to avoid the NIMBY problem present in high population density, high aesthetic values landscapes, high infrastructure cost areas.
Capacity factor of modern turbines in the plains states averages 40%. This means that over the full year, night and day, a turbine will put out 40% of its rated power. This is much higher than all but offshore turbines in Europe. In the plains states, windpower is extremely cost competitive and is now probably the cheapest form of new, baseload power, since both coal and natural gas have risen in price. And as oilman T. Boone Pickens, who has heavily invested in windpower, says -- there's no depletion with windpower.
There is another use possibility for off-line turbines. Electricity could be used to synthesize methane from atmospheric carbon through the Sabatier process. NASA has studied this for the Mars mission. The advantage of this over hydrogen is that it doesn't require a new fuel infrastructure. Methane (natural gas) could be used directly or be converted to methanol by the Fisher-Tropsch method. The efficiency wouldn't be that great, but the energy for it would be nearly free.
I think you're using that analogy backwards.
Highways : vehicles :: power lines : electricity
You're talking about OVERbuilding the sources of electricity compared to the power lines instead of the reverse. On top of this, we need power even when the source of congestion isn't there; we don't need to handle peak traffic so much as we need to produce traffic at least partly on demand.
Cheaper, but far less efficient; the overall efficiency of the Panhandle study CAES system is a tad under 50%. The cost for 50 hours of storage would be only $605/kW, though, for a capital cost of about $12/kWh of storage.
The towers are much too small. Compressors delivering 800 lb of air per second would fill a tower volume while you held your breath.
Enormous rotating machines would be far more expensive than air.
The biggest valid point you make is that distributing and interconnecting wind generation over a wide area smooths the generation curve. Unfortunately, this interconnection requires assets in short supply: efficient long-distance transmission lines. If this means we need a new HVDC grid, I guess we need a new HVDC grid.
Actually we're overbuilt on both highways and vehicles. When I was farming, I licensed 7 vehicles, but I didn't use them all at the same time. Yes, we would need to overbuild both power lines and wind turbines. Just like any critical, national infrastructure, the power line portion should be paid for through federal funds collected through taxes and fees. The fact that we don't do this now does not mean our present model is a good one.
I'm not in favor of electricity storage. Electricity is ephemeral and is best produced as it is used. Storing electricity really cranks up the cost and complexity factor. The two examples I gave, compressed air and flywheels, are primarily with the idea of buffering output, not long term large quantity storage. This buffering, however, is unnecessary if large area wind farms are interconnected.
Overbuilt wind power can act as both baseload and peakload power, just like hydro. Response to increased demand is near instantaneous. Actually, we should start thinking about operating hydro as primarily peakload power in the future.
Wind has the advantage of being a year-round, day-round power source, especially in the plains states. Solar is more intermittant and would require some kind of storage system. I'm in favor of thermal solar, where energy can be stored as heat, especially if the energy transfer medium is a high specific heat metal, oil or salt. Although wind does not capture as many watts/square meter as solar, it has the advantage of interfering minimally with other land uses. Utility scale solar would preclude other activities.
To make a large area, overbuilt wind system work, super-regional managing authorities would be required. These would cross political boundaries. Wind pays no attention to our human cultural artifacts. I realized from the work Minnesota has done on developing model county zoning ordinances for wind development that private property lines and political subdivision lines are too small in area to allow for efficient wind development.
I have in mind three super-regional authorities for North America: 1)NOM -- Nunavut, Ontario, and Manitoba for the circum-Hudson Bay tundra; 2) SASKIMONDAKWY -- Saskatchewan, Montana, Manitoba, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming for the Northern Plains; 3) TEXOCAN -- Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico for the Southern Plains. I realize international boundaries are crossed, but we already manage cross-border watersheds through the International Joint Commission, so there are precedents.
These super-regional authorities would have powers similar to a Port Authority. They would regulate, study, authorize, pre-site locations of powerlines and turbines (before they're built, so that an efficient system can be built in phases), manage revenue flow and disburse it to investors, landowners, mitigation needs, political subdivisions, and residents of the region. Membership of the board of directors would be through election by the voters of the super-region. With super-regional authority, revenue would be equitably distributed and would be independent of a turbine being in an on or off state.
I'm all for that where possible (e.g. ice-storage air conditioning systems as source-following demand), but in the case of sources like wind you either use it or lose it. Capturing it means it's got to go somewhere, whether you've got an ultimate load handy or not. If I have wind today and want e.g. CPU cycles tomorrow, I need storage.
Okay, fine. Suppose you've got a high-pressure system creating an extended calm area across several states lasting for a week. Your generation is overbuilt to 3x but winds are down to 30% of nominal and wind capacity stands at about 10% of demand. What do you use to meet your needs?
Schemes like CAES are attractive because they make better use of invested capital. If you've got your $1200/kW turbine idled because of insufficient transmission capacity, it's a wasted asset; OTOH, if you can soak up its output in a $500/kW CAES system and send that power back out the transmission line even when the winds are way down, you've made better use of both your $1200/kW turbine and costly transmission capacity. You have probably also sold your generated power at a higher price.
So can overbuilt nuclear to a much greater extent (just dump steam if you have too much power), but this doesn't appear to be a smart way of doing things.
How familiar are you with the plains states? I farmed for 25 years in North Dakota. On average, I would say there would be about four calm days per year, at ground level at my location. Wind is very consistent on the plains, especially if northern and southern areas are interconnected, since they would experience different wind regimes at the same point in time. Lack of predictable wind resource is not the problem.
Just because something is not operating all the time does not make it a wasted resource. I have an old Neon, which averages 38 mpg, and is used 80% of the time. I also have a minivan, which averages 26 mpg, and is used 20% of the time. Is the minivan a wasted resource? No, since the times I use it I need its capability, which the Neon doesn't have. My combines would sit unused 48 weeks per year. They were not a wasted resource.
Simplifying a system by not having storage is not waste. Storage could very well cost more than the entire wind energy capture system, if it is even doable. Hydro used in conjunction with wind would be a powerful, flexible combination.
Nuclear is just another finite resource, with a major unsolved spent fuel legacy problem. Xcel Energy (ex-Northern States Power) got into wind power as the result of a mandate agreement with the Minnesota Legislature to allow NSP to store spent fuel temporarily onsite at its Prairie Island plant.
In the future, we will become more dependent on electricity to replace fossil fuel energy. Retail cost for energy will continue to rise. Cheap energy is a thing of the past. Windpower is already the lowest cost form of new electricity generation. (Natural gas is about the same, but the future of natural gas prices is up, while wind doesn't have a fuel cost.) Higher electricity rates will allow for overbuilding the system, while at the same time ensuring investors make a profit.
The efficiency of the Sabatier process is not all that important if you have a use for the process heat. Applications might include running refridgeration at warehouses or supermarkets, space heating, or even heating winter greenhouses. Using the process heat for space heating reduces the use of gas for the same purpose so that scales converge. Converting methane to methanol is a catalytic process, but it is not Fischer-Tropsch.
Chris
The Sabatier process requires hydrogen and CO2 as imputs. Alkaline electrolysis is a well established but relatively expensive process for producing hydrogen. If the high capital cost electroyzers are used only for the excess wind energy then their capacity factors will be very low.
Also you need to have a low cost (both in energy and other terms) process of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, which as far as I know does not exist.
By the way, if methanol is the desired end product there is no need to snythesize methane first. CO2 and H2 can be combined directly to produce methanol by well known catalytic methods.
How weedy is switchgrass? If we planted it in a field in nebraska would it overwhelm surrounding native species of grasses or interfere with other planted crops? Sort of off-topic, I know, but interesting.
Thanks,
CMDC
Good post on a timely issue.
The infrastructure capacity and aging is indeed an issue worth a critical look and then some. And not only in the US.
I've been wading through "Keeping the Lights On - Towards Sustainable Electricity" by Walt Patterson.
Much of what he writes in the book, can also be accessed via his working papers via Chatham House.
According to Mr Patterson:
He also keeps repeating the mantra:
Energy is about infrastructure - not commodities, infrastructure.
Therefore climate is about infrastructure. QED.
Grab the helm and let's change course. Now.
So, all in all I find there is much agreement with what you write and that the issue is not limited to US, and not even to UK, but is something much of the OECD countries face as a legacy issue.
Thanks.
I am not quite as much on the climate bandwagon as he is. I keep having questions:
1. What if the climate scientist are wrong?
2. Perhaps it is too late, regardless of what we do.
3. Maybe we can delay using resources, but it is hard to see us not using resources at all. Delay isn't likely to help.
4. A new ice age would normally be occurring about now. Where is this in all that is happening?
"1. What if the climate scientist are wrong?"
At worst, we'll have used a lot of people's time unproductively, time that could go to improving other things. For instance, much venture capital has been diverted lately from health to energy. OTOH, we'll have saved on fuel, prevented a lot of other pollution, and helped deal with PO.
"2. Perhaps it is too late, regardless of what we do."
Could be. Seems imprudent to ignore it, though.
"3. Maybe we can delay using resources, but it is hard to see us not using resources at all. Delay isn't likely to help."
Here I disagree strongly. Rutledge's analysis of coal depends on historical trends away from coal consumption - in fact there is an enormous amount of coal available to burn - 100's of years worth in the US. We have a real choice ahead of us as to whether we burn it, or use wind, solar, nuclear, etc.
"4. A new ice age would normally be occurring about now. Where is this in all that is happening?"
On this I have no idea. It seems silly to me to second guess the IPCC, especially considering the fact that it had to get consensus from places like Saudi Arabia!
1. What if the climate scientist are wrong?
I've understood from his analysis and that of many others that we need to get off oil (PO), get off natgas (peak gas 10-20 years later) and get partly off coal (air pollution, strip mining destruction, groundwater spoilage and peak production perhaps in 30 years, even if one doesn't factor in AGW).
This pretty much leaves renewables and nuclear. I've understood Patterson is not big on nuclear power.
2. Perhaps it is too late, regardless of what we do.
Isn't this in conflict with number 1? :)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Then there's the time span. I don't think anybody knows for sure. Just as with PO, no certainties. Just risks with associated estimated probabilities.
I'm not personally sure we have enough time either. The task just seem big, changes needed so systemic and progress so slow.
But for me, it's worth a shot. Like Wayne Gretzky used to say:
"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."
3. Maybe we can delay using resources, but it is hard to see us not using resources at all. Delay isn't likely to help.
I agree that if we continue on the normal BAU trend, no delay is going to help us, IF the prognoses are somewhat correct.
However, I believe also we've come too blind to the BAU trend and tend to think it as a force of nature. It's not, it's just us acting under specific supporting circumstances.
Enough of a discontinuity (major war, global economic depression, oil crisis, pandemic, etc) and BAU growth is cut short for who knows how long.
Now, I would be foolish to wish for those (in many ways), but I would also be foolish to deny that those discontinuity probabilities do exist and may change the situation quite dramatically in a relatively short span of time.
But it does put as in a bit of a tight spot: if time is truly of the essence, I see the likelihood of a big disaster cutting BAU short as much bigger than any type of global enlightenment about human behavior and the environment :)
4. A new ice age would normally be occurring about now. Where is this in all that is happening?
I'm no expert in climate studies, just passing on what I've read.
That said, I believe ice age was NOT forecast by scientist in the 70s as our next century problem. That is, the global cooling myth of the 70s is just that, a myth.
Nothing much has changed since. I cannot find any references to scientific forecasts that suggest a new ice age in the next few millenia. There are some Russian scientists who claim this, but no published work that I can find.
Then there was also the argument that we are now 'recovering' from the little ice age and that all current warming is due to this. That argument has been examined and countered quite many times, that it doesn't seem very credible to me currently. Of course, I cannot know with certainty.
Climate scientists now also do NOT believe that AGW with associated probable thermohaline circulation changes is going to result in an ice age.
Again, this is not a certainty for me, just my reading. Who knows for sure, is probably a paid lobbyist :)
What if the climate scientist are wrong?
We make all sorts of decision with uncertainty. IPPC made a conservative consensus conclusion that there is a 90+% chance [IMO 99+%] that the observed Global Warming is due to human activity.
Rationally, only a 30% probability, given the consequences, is needed to make it worthwhile to make major changes in our economic activities.
Perhaps it is too late, regardless of what we do
It is too late for zero effects from GW. it is a matter of degree and rate of change.
And ultimate increase in world GW temperature of +2.3C will have serious, even disastrous results. +4C will have catastrophic results. Reducing the ultimate increase by even +0.1C is worth trillions of dollars.
And the speed or rate of change is also important to adaptation. Spreading a +1C increase over 100 years instead of just 40 years is of incalculable value. Societies and economies can adapt with dramatically greater ease with enough time.
A new ice age would normally be occurring about now
VERY unlikely (they take a few centuries to get rolling in any case). However, if, in 2352, they observe an alarming increase in glaciers worldwide and think that may get back to levels last seen in 2008 in a few more decades, they know the solution.
Best Hopes for Seeing GW as the Greater Threat,
Alan
"Furthermore, some of the electricity that is bought and sold is variable in supply, like wind and solar voltaic."
Less than 3% of electric production. Irrelevant for now.
I have been studying, modelling and working with grid stability for over 20 years and I believe that large syncronous AC grids are the wrong solution for future electrical systems. Why? Because we need to accommodate an ever increasing proportion of small distributed AC and DC power sources. Conventional large AC grids need a minimum amount of syncronous rotating mass to maintain stability in a nearly infinite number of possible fault or overload scenarios. That's about as simple as I can describe the problem without going into complex analyses using, well, diakoptics.
Rather, I propose we investigate and develop smaller AC networks interconnected with asyncronous DC links. We could then accommodate any proportion and number of small AC and DC generation sources using wind, solar, etc.
I would find it a lot more interesting if it would be possible to build an 800 kV DC overlay grid. But if I have understood it right the physical properties of AC transmission can make AC grids self stabilizing and they can funtion with circuit breakers etc with no other information flow between nodes then the flow of electricity with its current, voltage and phase while a DC grid would need very fast digital control with communication links all over the network. Thus are AC grids better for distributed and redundant systems then DC grids.
If the problem is loads and sources that do not provide reactive power and aid the grid stability it might be easier to add rotating machinery, perhaps by renovating the generators of worn down coal powerplants and use them as syncronous converters.
Not entirely. An AC grid needs to have links monitored, especially for phase differences; as the phase difference between 2 ends of a line approaches 90°, the increase of real power with increasing phase starts going down and the system goes unstable. This is not possible with a DC system.
DC systems just require current limiters.
The coal powerplants use alternators, and you can't run a commutated DC motor at HVDC voltages anyway; the commutators would arc over.
If you need small energy buffers in a DC system, capacitors work nicely. The capacitance of a large HVDC transmission system is going to be far from negligible.
Thanks for your insights. I think all this is part of upgrading the grid. Most of us don't have the background to know what needs to be done. It is easy to make the assumption that the old grid has worked for this long, so it will take whatever new things we throw at it. It would be much better to have a grid that is adapted to our new mix of generation types.
This is the analogy I use to help non technical people to understand "the grid".
Take a heavy blanket or canvas sheet of approximately 6'x6' and eight people. Have the people with two per side hold up the blanket at waist height (the same level height), and pull it taught enough to appear flat. The blanket is the transmission and distribution system and the people are the generators.
People will feel a bit of tension in horizontal direction to keep the blanket taught which is analogous to reactive power. This keeps the system voltages stable, and hence the grid. Then add load onto the blanket. Try to use something that won't slip around, and put one in the middle and maintain the taughtness. Now the people will feel the strains in the horizontal and vertical direction. An increase in the horizontal direction to maintain taughtness is an increase in reactive power to maintain voltages with an increase in load. The increase in the vertical direction is analogous to an increase in power to support the load. If you were a steam turbine, there would be a corresponding increase of fuel input to the boiler system.
Then try putting weighted objects of various sizes throughout the blanket and maintain the blanket stability. This is what utility operators do every day. Finally take a nice heavy object and drop it in the center - this is a very large motor starting. Now you know why the lights dim ;-)
Once people get a tactile feel for how the grid operates, its not difficult to comprehend the complexities involved. AC-DC systems are used for either power flow control or to reduce losses (High Voltage DC has less losses over long distances and requires less conductor). DC-DC is used for power flow and synchronous matching (voltage, frequency, phase angle).
However, making the required upgrades has been estimated at $4 Trillion. Power transformers are expensive and complex to install, as are large generators (those suckers are heavy!). And of course, no one wants a transmission line running through their neighborhood. In the end, we'll object our way into the dark ages.
How much would local generation of power help?
And how much would the use of residential solar thermal power and heat pumps?
Thanks!
DM,
Use of local power helps immensely. In discussions with the utilities I've tried to get this benefit on the table as bargaining point for offset costs. The closer the generation is to the load the better. Multiple generation is like having more people holding the blanket.
With our current technologies there is no reason why we can't deploy a distributed power system and connect via communications. All it takes leadership and will power - both distressingly lacking in this day and age.
Absolutely marvelous analogy BC_EE. Thanks. Your posting should be rewritten as a key post IMO.
Chris
Go ahead Gail, you're a site author use it as you like. I like giving up little gifts to the TODers!
Thanks. Perhaps I'll make a post out of it. You will have to be around to respond. i don't have the expertise you do in this area.
I should develop it further in both physical example and presentation material. "The Grid for Dummies"? Na, condescending "Civilization as We Know It". Too dramatic. "Mysteries of The Grid.", maybe... kind of Tesla-ish.
I'll help you out. I'm on TOD almost every day - except this Saturday, golf tournament.
Which brings me to an unrelated concern. What is going to happen to golf courses with the increase in fertilizer and energy costs?? I'm truly worried. I think I should look into non-petroleum means of maintaining a course and spread the good word. The PGA could become the poster child for bad behavior with their manicured championship courses, players flying all over in private jets, and the monied privileged idly chasing around little white balls while the world starves. Just not good PR.
You can send me an e-mail at GailTverberg at comcast dot net.
Rotating Mass
FF generators are stereotypically 2 poles, nukes 4 poles and hydro 10 to 24 poles (a few outside that range).
Per MW, hydro turbines are more than an order of magnitude heavier than steam turbines
Often, hydro turbines are spun in air just to improve grid stability (modern teflon bearings help). Also a good source of spinning reserve (a major and under estimated issue with grids).
Pumped storage, large (1+ GW) and small (10-200 MW), has the potential to positively impact grid stability in several dimensions. "Hydro on demand".
Best Hopes,
Alan
Sir Alan of Big Easy,
To expand a little further, the spinning reserve is used to supply reactive power for voltage stability, and to have the unit immediately available for short term load increases. Hydro isn't the best use for spinning reserve because it can come up rapidly anyway. They don't like to put water through the turbines if they don't have to as it's like pissing away money. Coal and gas require a significant amount of time to get up and running, so they are kept in a spinning reserve where applicable. Nuclear really doesn't like to change quickly, so they are used as base load plants.
The size of the generator rotors is dependent on the motive force's turbine velocity. If a turbine can turn at 3600 rpm like condensing steam, then only two poles are required. (I'll save you the very simple math). Hydro naturally moves at less speed and requires more poles and larger rotors. Here's the basic equation that tends to be equally useful as Ohm's Law:
P = wT, P=Power, w=omega in radians/sec (rotational velocity), T = Torque
If the speed is lower, then to get the same amount of power requires more torque. More torque requires a longer lever (radius), Easy, eh?
I've been looking at more pumped storage in BC because we seem to have many ideal locations and it seems the best way to manage intermittent power. It would have the effect of smoothing out the various renewable generation sources with an approximate 80% efficiency. That's a WAG, but I don't think I'm far off and is much better than the present alternatives.
Bath County Pumped Storage gets 81% cycle efficiency (real world). Raccoon Mountain used to get 81%-82% but expansion has increased flow rates and tunnel frictional losses.
ERCOT used to allow hydro spinning in air to count as spinning reserve, I assume others did as well. It is another income stream (providing spinning reserve) for pumped storage. Landsvirkjun spun a single turbine in air to provide minimal power conditioning for start-up at Alcoa plant before Karahnjukar was completed.
It is my understanding that, generally speaking, despite slower rpms (a function of Hz and poles) hydroelectric turbines have much more rotating mass, especially when they are coupled to the water in the head race.
Best Hopes,
Alan
FYI, you can use the full Greek character set here (both upper and lower case) with ampersand escapes.
"Hey, man, what's ν?"
"c/λ."
Could you expand on your explanation, or provide link references?
Well, once the grid has come crashing down and all the financial shell games have gone bankrupt, maybe we can construct out of the ruins the relative sanity of local cooperative (consumer owned) electrical systems. These will necessarilly have to be small scale and powered mainly by localized renewables.
I am realy happy to live in a country that has a grid that can handle heavy industry and increases in demand such as plug-in hybrids, nitrogen fertilizer production or industry moving from areas withouth reliable electricity. But we are more of an electricity importer then exporter, fortunately that is changing for the better.
I hope you get state to state competition withing USA about having the best infrastructure.
I have little doubt that the deterioration and inadequacy of the grid are huge problems, and as Richard Duncan has warned the failure of the electric grid will likely be the proximate cause of the end of the industrial age.
From reading your description of the significant and continuing involvement of government in the system, I hardly think that "free market" is an appropriate description of what we have. Title to the property might be in hands of private interests, but control is shared by government, which is economic fascism. Deregulation was never abandonment of government control, but just a breakup of vertical integration.
Allowing the market to allocate resources was not really part of the picture, so let us at least recognize the cause behind the current misallocation of resources. For example, just look at all the nuclear power plants that were blocked by government in response to small but vocal objections.
Calls for more government intervention I think do not address the problem. This is just a case of government creating a problem and then stepping in to solve the problem which in turn creates additional problems.
I would expect that nationalization of the electric grid in the US would result in the same non-maintenance and poor service that we see at VA hospitals or as are now seen in South Africa where the government operated grid is is dire straights from lack of investment and maintenance.
this richard duncan?
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/08/31-whatever-happened-to-rich...
what happened to those permanent blackouts?
Yes, this Richard Duncan.
Predicting exact dates is always a hazardous occupation. Failures in doing so do not invalidate his concept. The idea that we will fall off a cliff, I think is spot on.
Albert Bartlett has made clear the mathematics of growth, both positive and negative. The left side of the gaussian curve of oil production had a positive growth rate which produced a doubling period. The last doubling period produced the greatest absolute addition to production, equaling all prior production up to the beginning of that final doubling period. The growth rate in production is or will shortly be zero, resulting in no doubling period. The plateau in conventional production since 2005 looks suspiciously like this zero growth rate one would expect across the top of the gaussian curve. The next step is to begin the decline down the right side of the gaussian curve complete with halving periods instead of doubling periods; a 3.5% negative rate would produce a 20 year halving period which over the first 20 years of decline production would be cut in half. This will be the biggest absolute decline in production, eclipsing all halving periods to follow, simply because the first period halves the greatest production numbers reached at peak.
The first halving periods will be a cliff event, likely taking down the already fragile electric grid, financial system, industrial production, governments, and excess population.
Richard Duncan also discussed the similarity between this bubble in oil production and electric spikes and used the knowledge of how electric spikes build and dissipate to estimate his dates, but just applying the gaussian curve to oil production would have yielded a similar time table. Similar patterns of cliff events can be seen in other bubbles like those in financial markets. These may all seem to be unrelated systems, but they have the similarity that they are unsustainable growth curves. Hell, even we humans follow a similar life pattern because we are unsustainable, as aging teaches us all.
So I would be cautious to point a derisive finger at Richard Duncan.
There are no easy answers to the problem you pose. I work in the power industry but not in the US so don't really know about the specifics of the system there. However I think you should stay positive - I think talk of electricity grids going down and not coming back up is premature. One reason is hydro electricity - this is usually available to some extent year round. Places like Norway can produce almost all their power from Hydro (lucky them!). So with Hydro alone, the system will stay energised, albeit with widespread shedding of non-essential loads (me and you). Energy efficiency could also provide dramatic power savings - how many neon lights etc does a city really need? The problem of standby power consumption is well-known - again there are power savings that could be made there. The US is lucky to have a large amount of installed wind power. And yes it is very intermittent but is better than nothing. Perhaps in the future we will have to work according to weather patterns rather than monday to friday.
On the transmission side, I do think that eventually the US grid will need to be broken up into smaller islands, as someone suggested above. On the bright side, high energy prices should reduce consumption leading to less overloaded lines. It would be great if we could build all the lines we wanted, but we can't. So the next best option is to have lots of spare parts, and uprate existing lines by re-stringing them with thicker conductors. Someone mentioned having a DC backbone above - traditionally DC lines are used to when transmitting power via cable over long distances, because it's very difficult to send AC power down a long cable. DC lines are also used to connect systems of different frequencies (50/60Hz). Introducing DC means building massive AC/DC converter stations and filter banks, so you now have a whole lot of electronic equipment that needs to be maintained. AC has the virtue of being relatively simple.
Re: On the bright side, high energy prices should reduce consumption leading to less overloaded lines.
In the U.S. it doesn't work that way, at least locally. I'm in the process of switching from propane backup for my corn stove to electricity because propane has gone up so much that electricity is about equal of even cheaper.
IMO high oil and gas prices will give incentive to people like me to switch to electricity since electricity prices are less volatile and regulated in some cases. More overloaded lines will result from higher fossil fuel prices as people try to use the cheapest available which now is electricity.
I rest my case.
Thanks X.
Excellent article Gale!
Excellent responses from BC_EE and cjworth!
Now treat yourselves to this North American Power Outage scenario.
http://yooperstrails.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
I work in high voltage protection, where we’ve been installing microprocessor based relays to identify and clear faulted equipment. Where I work we have nearly completed the transition from older electromechanical relay technologies for our bulk power (500kV/230kV) transmission system. This is happening all throughout the industry.
I wouldn’t discount the grid quite yet. I don’t yet see it as neglected. To be sure, a lot of the infrastructure was built and installed between 1960 and 1980. Our bulk power transformers have an average age of 32 years...but we have much improved maintenance methods, protection devices, etc., that are extending their original service lives. This isn’t to say we won’t need a major investment over the next two decades regarding their replacement, but this is a known. We see this coming. Individual failure rates will increase until such time as we get down to the historical average age down to 20-25 years, but I don’t see this as a major cause for concern. Transmission lines -- they have very long terms and maintenance is quite proactive -- hot spot detection, imminent failure detection of insulators, and the like.
One problem I see is the widespread increase in remedial action schemes, shut capacitor installations, overload protection schemes, etc., that allow us to operate the system closer to the ragged edge, so to speak. I see this as the Achilles’ heel. They cannot fully supplant the need for additional transmission and generation.
I also asked the same question two years ago: How would we respond to a wholesale change in transportation energy from oil to electric? As I begin to understand it better, I think we are in acceptable shape to absorb a significant shift in transportation energy requirements...from a grid perspective. Increased energy production, and where do we get the prime mover, that’s the real problem I think. I don’t see it as a capacity problem. I think we can migrate towards TOU, DSM, and off-peak increases to support the transition quite readily.
Thanks for your informative post, but could you translate this bit for those of us not in the know? :-)
Time of Use, and Demand Side Management?
See www.thewattspot.com for an example.
Yes, I'm sorry about that.
I think that time of use metering is the future. I read earlier that oil is priced on the margins, and so is electricity -- at least, that how it's traded between utilites and marketing entities. But the ultimate consumer of that power, the residental or commercial load, isn't priced this way. The marginal cost of energy at 3:00PM is much greater than at 2:00AM, but the customer isn't exposed to this, their rate is aggregated.
In all the pilot TOU programs I've come across -- customers who can see that they are paying more at peak will modify their behavior. TOU can go a long way toward peak shaving, better power regulation, flatter load curves, fewer thermal generator startups/shutdowns...this really is a big issue, not just the need to ramp up generation during the peak hours, but also to better manage overgeneration during the small hours.
I am on a TOU pilot program with my utility because I hope my PV system during excess generation is paid at a better rate than if I stayed on a tiered rate. Admittedly, I'm not sure about this yet, still trying to run the numbers.
Demand Side Management programs, for example, are air conditioner cycling programs, or aluminum plants willing to take interruption for discounted rates or other incentives...but TOU can really be considered another form of DSM.
Just a WAG, but with the transmission voltages you could be in either BC or Manitoba?
I'm also a P&C engineer, and I do telecommunications. The telecom side is where some utilities invested heavily and others maintained the status quo. Telecom is where the grid can make the most gains for the least money - work smarter, not harder.
The state of Canadian infrastructure tends to be in better condition than U.S. because it has stayed in the control of the government owned monopolies. Although some provinces have split the generation from "wires", they are in effect still under the monopoly control with free market access as laid out in the tariffs.
IMHO, the best bang for the buck will be in DSM and TOU. Give the people real-time information and decent incentives with two tiered rates and the savings will more than offset the capital required for large generating facilities.
And in BC we still have huge potential for low environment impact run of river hydro generation. They could build a big-ass HVDC link to BC from the West and Southwest, spend the billions one nuclear plant would cost you and build clean, renewable hydro generation. Rough guess, 60 GW with a net utilization of 35 GW and no dams required.
O.k., that would be a few big-ass HVDC circuits.
You might also add Ontario to that list.
Cheers,
Paul
Right, 500kV backbone systems are all throughout the west, and a ton in Canada. I work in Sacramento, and within our control area, WAPA operates a portion of the 500kV system with PG&E the rest.
Looking at the three recommendations in the original post, I don't dispute what a 500kV interconnection could bring to Sacramento Municipal Utility District where I work...in terms of import capability and overall system stability. It's needed if we continue to import larger volumes of energy from elsewhere. But also consider that if we were to drop a 500/230kV transformer near our 230/115kV system, a lot of local system improvements would need to be made to accommodate it. Backbone infrastructure is critical for large power transfers from region to region, state to state. Not as necessary if we develop local energy sources. A Big If.
Secondly, the smart, digital improvements are really refering to distribution level power transformers and customer meters -- not the bulk power system. SMUD as well as many other utilities have very strong fiber optic networks installed to allow for communication between substations/protection relays, and energy management systems (EMS balances generation to load). It is outside my ability to discuss 'smart' distribution improvements; however, I am aware that there can be significant loss reductions, reliability improvements in transformer failure detection, and other items, but I really am not an expert here.
The third recommendation refers to how we communicate and build better bulk energy infrastructure. One example that many utilities are moving to is State Estimation. In short, we read in power flows, voltages, phase angle measurements, generation levels, etc., from the field via communications and take a real-time snapshot of the system. We can then run contingency analysis to see how the 'real' system would respond to a generator that trips off, or if we lose a transmission line. These ideas have been around for a very long time, but only recently have we really been able to make these advanced applications work for us in ways that can really optimize the grid. Lastly, NERC reliability requirements are also a fairly recent addition to our work with the hope that we don't allow conditions to exist (for fear of sanctions) that compromise reliability.
I suppose to make a short story long, I am just a bit more optimistic about the current state of the grid...at least in my region.
Thanks for your comments. I am sure there is a lot of variability from area to area. The fact that the grid stays up as much as it does is testimony that things aren't all that bad at this point.
BC_EE, btw, if you happen to go to my site and click onto the pic of the abandoned "ghost town", taken in 1959, there is what I believe is a vintage (1920's?) electrical component (cylinder shaped) laying in the sand just right of the child. Perhaps a man of your experience could identify what this is, it's use and anymore information that you'd care to share about this electrical system?
Thanks, The Raven
Need the link Raven. Oops, got it thanks.
We still have a lot of old electrical equipment lying around here as well since mining was one of the first to take advantage of the technology.
The cylindrical device could be a transformer as they built the tanks circular back then to shape around the core (steel and copper windings on the inside).
Being an old EE type who loves following the Peak Oil discussion I've enjoyed lurking for over a year and joined today.
Have a house in the San Juan islands of Washington State that has received all of it's electrons from the sun the last 18 years. It's fun living off the grid!
Here is some info on the cheapest electrical rates in the country, these two utilities are in Eastern Washington.
Chelan County PUD
http://www.chelanpud.org/rates.html
Grant County PUD also has very low rates.
http://www.gcpud.org
Both utilities own their own dams on the Columbia and as a result have the lowest power rates in the United States.
Eric
And Glider what do I come across in my inbox right after reading your post:
Juan de Fuca HVDC submarine cable news:
http://www.seabreezepower.com/?p2=/modules/blog/viewcomments.jsp&bid=49
Which ties south Vancouver Island to the Olympic Peninsula. I think the throughput is 500 MW. Of course, this doesn't impact the islands. Interesting times on the west coast.
And FYI, there is another old EE type living to the NW of you in Sooke that is consulting with us for transmission line budgets and construction. Which segues into a part of the "Grid At Risk" and I should have brought this up earlier...
Gail et al, do you know how hard it was for me to find an engineer that can effectively design transmission lines? I had to pull out every contact I had and reach across the continent. There are only a handful of these qualified engineers and they are soon to retire or are retired. I won't do the detailed design because it is really a civil engineering specialty and I am not qualified as an EE.
In this regard, we have definitely shot ourselves in the foot. Even if we were to do the engineering and construction work to refurbish and expand the grid, we would find ourselves significantly short of experienced personnel.
It seems like engineers get too little respect (and pay) in the US, and MBA's too much. As a result, we have too few of the one, and too many of the other. Any guesses as to why, anyone?
Not sure I'm understanding you right. A handful of civil engineers qualifed to design transmission lines? If you're talking about structural design of towers, substructure design and construction planning the candidate pool is huge.
Please shoot me an eMail. Click my name and my eMail is there.
Alan
We certainly keep hearing about the problem of too many employees being near retirement age in industry after industry - oil and gas, coal, nuclear, electric. At the same time, our kids are having trouble finding decent paying jobs.
In the book Lights Out (referenced at the end of my article) Jason Makansi predicts that we will utilize overseas engineering talent remotely. On page 105, he says:
I will not deny that the industry has an aging workforce and aged equipment, but I am not so quick to assume that this is portending the coming of some sort of blackout tsunami.
I don't comment much on TOD, and while I may very well want the Defcon 1 case that Kunstler envisions (who I very much admire), I really don't believe the electrical infrastructure is verging on collapse. Having worked for the California ISO for many years before my current 'real' engineering position I almost completely agree that the economic environment for electricity is the cause of most of the current problems, not necessarily the grid itself.
Transmission line design is so specialized, and collectively we build new lines so infrequently, it is almost always a farmed out industry for the majority of utilites. But it is avaiable. Engineering isn't the real bottleneck in new infrastructure, it's nimbyism.
I will remain concerned with long term future supply. This is really the big issue, not the transmission/distribution system. Gas fired plants? King Coal? Intermitten resources like solar or wind? This is why I'm so keen to what TOD'ers are saying -- the sources are increasingly uncertain.
My earlier articleU. S. Electricity Supply Vulnerabilities talks about some of the other issues.
With all of the concern about global warming and uncertainty about future cap and trade programs, no one wants to finance coal fired plants. Nuclear is being talked about a lot, but it remains to be seen whether it will actually happen, when costs and financing are actually considered. Natural gas is not looking like a good solution, and there seems to be too little of the renewables. Meanwhile, some of the old coal-fired plants get taken off line, as they become uneconomical to upgrade to meet pollution standards. It is hard to see how we will increase capacity very much.
"Nuclear is being talked about a lot, but it remains to be seen whether it will actually happen, when costs and financing are actually considered."
I think it's pretty clear that at least 6 will be built, as the first 6 will be subsidized (they'll get a production credit roughly equal to the cost of operations). It seems pretty likely that will kickstart the US industry, as intended. That won't happen as quickly as other forms of generation (2 waves of construction might take almost 20 years), but it will probably happen.
"Natural gas is not looking like a good solution"
Well, we just don't know. A lot of gas generation is being built, and so far the "cliff" in gas production keeps being put off (it's been predicted for a long time: heck, Hubbert predicted in the 70's that it would happen in the 80's). I read an article about Marcellus gas lately which suggested that there was roughly 170 TCF in new unconventional gas there - I don't know if that's realistic or not.
"there seems to be too little of the renewables. "
There's certainly enough of it, if we choose to build it. Wind would need transmission, but that's doable - TX and CA are doing it. The US built 5GW last year, and we could be building 25GW in 5 years if we chose to, which would allow for 2% annual growth in KWH generation. Solar is doable - CSP in the desert, PV elsewhere. CSP is reliable, which helps. PV is distributed, so transmission isn't a problem. You might object that wind & solar aren't baseload - the answer is, we have plenty of baseload already.
Our only real capacity problem is peak production, and that's easy to solve should we choose to. First, wind may not be great for peak production (though it does provide some peak capacity credit), but solar really is. 2nd, our current peak demand is artificial - it's an artifact of flat residential pricing. Start charging peak prices for peak consumption, and the peak will flatten. Why don't we do so? Well, utilities are paid to build, and generate. I know that sounds too easy, but it's true: just change the regulatory incentives (as California did), and everything changes. As it is, the 2005 Energy Act required all US utilities to offer Time of Use pricing - see www.thewattspot.com for an example.
Thanks for the link.
Sounds like BC Hydro will be shipping power south another way to Washington state.
My house is on Stuart Island. No ferry and no power to the island, we have to generate all of our own. The bigger islands are served by submarine cables via BPA from the mainland to Orcas Power and Light. They have reliablilty problems, especially in the winter. My own system has been up 24/7 for almost 18 years and has only been down a matter of minutes to upgrade components. This off-grid stuff is very, very reliable now and cleaner than the grid (couldn't say that about 10 years ago!)
V2G is getting close and am expecting neighborhood segmented grid systems to really shine in the next 15 to 20 years. Grid stability should rise and wind and solar will have a place to "dump". Virtually all the pieces are here now. Watching to see if EESTOR pans out.
About 15 years ago BPA almost had a disaster, some nut with wrenches took out bolts from ______'s and almost took out the BPA grid here in Washington state.
regards,
Eric
Heh. I was a kayak tourist on your island a few years ago.
Surprised me to see cacti growing in the PNW, but there they were!
BC_EE, thanks. I've always thought it was some kind of "grounding unit". If I remember right it was some kind of metal (copper?) that was wound around what appeared as concete. It was very heavy, I do remember that. This place would have been at the end user maybe in the early 1900's.
Now for the big question, do you believe our present grid system can reverse? That is staying intact should other holders of the blanket loose their grip? Or if they're grip looses strenght?
thanks again!
I don't usually post on the latest breakthroughs in technology, particularly when it is based on the work of one company or institution, preferring to look at broader industry trends and audited cost figures.
I am impressed enough about this work to make an exception, as it follows the principle of KISS:
http://www.physorg.com/news129389932.html
Harnessing sunlight on the cheap
It not only generates 3.5kw of electricity, but also would turn out 10kw of peak heat.
The efficiency I reckon is a very good 25% or so
Of course, it would suffer form the usual disadvantages of concentrated solar power - it is either on or goes off in cloudy conditions, so it would not work in all areas.
As against that, hot water could be provided and it is very space effective - in relatively clear environments it might be a cost-effective solution.
Just one more indication that there seems no good reason why solar power should not be in a position in many areas of the States and Australia to provide a pretty cost effective major contribution to energy needs, and close to where it is needed.
Another one of those unintended/unexpected consequences:
If the grid does start becoming unreliable, with blackouts of increasing frequency & duration, then what are millions of households going to do?
Yet, they are going to fire up the old portable generator (or rush out and buy one if they don't already have one). Guess what that will do for gasoline consumption? And guess what the relative efficiencies are of grid electricity vs. portable generator electricity?
What's worse, we can count on a fairly large number of morons failing to disconnect their houses from the grid prior to firing up their generators, resulting in all manner of havoc being caused, making it that much more difficult (and dangerous) to restore power.
Without having really kept up with the whole thread, here is a small list of comments by a 'Cousin In-law' who is an EE (ret'd) and as we speak, is heading off to an 'IEEE Power System Relay Committee meeting' .. He is based in Eastern Massachusetts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
He has a fuller presentation that he will be sending along to me at some point. Hope this provides some food for thought..
Bob
Thanks for the comments.
In some previous articles, i have expressed my concern about our ability to buy imports of any kind, if we have financial difficulties relating to our balance of payment problems (ultimately relating to buying too much oil, and not being able to pay for it). The declining dollar is part of this, and it could get worse.
If we have a breakdown in a few of these big transformers or generators, it is going to take a very long time to get them back on line again. Meanwhile, we will be attempting to shuttle the remaining electricity further, to make up for the shortage. This doesn't sound good.
My e-mail address is listed if you click on my name.
About 15 years ago I was responsible for the financial and physical plant management of a small college. They had a football field and played night games. I was shocked to discover that the replacement turnaround time for one of those big (to me, they were probably actually small in the overall scheme of things) transformers was in the order of 6-12 weeks - and that was back then. Needless to say, I made it a priority to arrange for a spare of each type to be procured and kept on hand if needed.
I wonder how many people in positions of similar responsibility are so far-sighted today?
We lost two 230/69kV transformers on the same day in the same substation in September, 2006. Had this occured just a few months earlier in the summer, we would have been hard pressed to serve all the load.
We do maintain spares, but you are right about turnaround times...aside from what it takes to even wire-in a spare transformer, the best lead time if you need a new one is 6-8 months. It is really closer to one full year.
Bulk power transformers can still be made in the U.S., but today we are buying mostly South Korean Hyundai XFMRs or ABB. There is additional lead time needed to ship them from overseas as well. I have a feeling this is the trend everywhere.
RE: Age of transformers in service and lack of domestic production
These devices are thousands of times less complicated than a deskop computer. They are made overseas by trained labor because they can be. The cutting edge parts of power distribution is not in the power delivery, but in monitoring power flow and correcting power factor.
The American power industry spent a lot of R&D capital in aborted attempts to use their cables as internet pipes, and have mostly redirected that effort into IT tools for wireless meter reading. Mesh networks and OFDM are the buzz words now.
Transformers are not high tech.
But for the nail, the shoe was lost;
But for the shoe, the horse was lost;
But for the horse, the battle was lost..
There are 'simple things' in the mix that might easily be the catch points.
- The number of times I've been on a shoot where numbers of skilled and well-paid people with Hundreds of Thousands of dollars in equipment are all sitting around waiting for some adapter to be picked up from radio shack..
Could anyone here give any idea of how the situation of the UK and Europe compare with this dire description? I do know that in the UK there has been likewise a replacement of the local boards by privatisation into (about five main plus other) "providers". And that there's similarly a right of little green initiatives to supply to the grid. One difference however, may be that the UK has long had a major integrated thing called the National Grid, which even connects to France.
I would take it that the grid is in relatively good nick, if you mean in the EU rather than in some of the more Eastern countries, which I have no idea about.
There are however a number of complaints coming from those who have to provide power about the difficulties of ensuring supply when they have to integrate a lot of intermittent power for wind:
http://www.windaction.org/documents/461
This however is likely to pall compared to the future problems of providing power at all to the grid.
Nuclear is a fine resource in France, providing 80% of electricity, but will take years to ramp up even in the places which are coming around to the idea of using it.
Countries like Germany which have ruled out that option are effectively largely continuing their coal burn, and indeed need to expand it.
Insecure NG supplies from Russia are the other option, at who knows what cost.
Plans for LNG imports assume that the EU will be able to get almost all the projected world wide increase in natural gas supplies - they seem to have forgotten that Japan, Korea, China, India and the US exist.
The situation in the UK, which I am most familiar with, approaches the catastrophic.
Many Gigawatts of nuclear and coal fired capacity are due to go off line in the next few years, the Government is in no hurry over it's nuclear build, has no coherent policy for conservation and relies on LNG imports.
Unlike most of the continent, gas is bought on the spot market, not on log term contract, and so UK users only get what is left over.
Recent price increases in electricity were heavily weighted against low-users,w ith some bills going up by 70%, penalising the old, alone, and of course anyone who tries to conserve energy.
Renewables in Europe are a lot more expensive than in most of the States.
Wind power resources are not nearly as good, with capacity factors far lower - off-shore wind is staggeringly expensive, twice as much as on-shore, and that is before difficult maintenance.
In more northerly locations than the South of France, apart from residential thermal, solar generates very little power when demand is highest, in the winter, and so would just make financing more difficult for more practical sources.
About the only thing which makes sense is air source heat pumps.
Needless to say, the UK government is inert, whilst 50,000 a year are installed in France.
Having something to put in the grid is the problem, rather than the grid itself.
"There are however a number of complaints coming from those who have to provide power "
E.on Netz....sigh. That annual report was remarkably misleading - they greatly exaggerated their problems. For instance, they said that wind requires 100% backup, when they know it's not true: even a single wind farm doesn't go above 85% production as a practical matter; just a little geographic dispersion reduces that further; and modest weather forecasting reduces the uncertainty factor much further.
That report will provide fodder for anti-wind activists for a long time...
"solar ...would just make financing more difficult for more practical sources"
Certainly we want to husband our resources, and there are direct tradeoffs between some government programs and subsidies, but it's a bit of stretch to draw a straight connection between solar financing and that of other sources, especially when much PV is financed on the consumer side, rather than the utility side.
I think if you look beyond Denmark and Germany, you'll find more wind resources in Europe than you expect. Spain, for instance, has pretty good wind (and solar).
I am aware that other people feel that it is easier to integrate wind power than Eon, but still think it worthwhile to mention that some of those who actually have to do it do not think it that easy - they are far from the only ones to comment, although I would agree that notions of 100% backup are far-fetched.
As for my statement that PV power in the specific conditions of northern latitudes make financing other sources more difficult, my words were chosen carefully.
Who buys the PV does not affect this.
You then have a source, which peaks at precisely the wrong time, and provides almost nothing to peak load.
To finance it at all, it has guaranteed feed-in tarrifs, so that the electric companies have to buy the power when base-load which would also be useful in winter could cope just fine, and provide electricity to top it up when they are running flat out and have to turn on expensive gas to meet demand.
This is not only a direct cost to all other generation, but also if it were ever to reach any substantial level would make it more difficult to finance base-load power, as the solar input would be taking some of that market.
As is clear elsewhere in this thread, I am very much for both solar and wind power, where they can be anything like economic.
The northern areas of Europe are not somewhere where solar power other than residential thermal is in anyway practical or economic, and nor will it be for the foreseeable future, unlike in much of the US.
Yep, Spain gets relatively good wind resources, and solar too, as does Portugal, where tidal resources are also considerable.
Unfortunately, both basically run on oil and NG, and for the details of their budget deficits see the thread on the conference in Italy.
They are so bad that I doubt that subsidised further development will be able to go on, which might be OK for wind, but likely means the death of solar for some time.
"to integrate wind power...some of those who actually have to do it do not think it that easy"
Running a utility, and matching generation to load, is never flat-out easy. I entirely understand why utilities and system operators would instinctively push back against anything that made it harder. OTOH, here's what an electrical engineer who's actively working on these issues, BC_EE, says in another comment here: "Engineers in utilities tend not to like change and that is why I don't work in one. " While one can never entirely discount the judgement of people working inside an industry, one has to exercise independent judgement about their opinions. Further, there are plenty of utilities and ISO's who are much more open to wind & solar - utilities vary in opinions, partly by resource and geography, and partly just by personality. I think I can safely say that the negative opinion of one utility (several years ago) is not authoritative.
"PV power in the specific conditions of northern latitudes make financing other sources more difficult"
I'm not assuming that northern latitudes are the first place to put solar. After all, that's part of the idea of the EU, and international trade in general: some countries have natural advantages, and should take advantage of them. I would hope that Spain, Italy, Greece, Southern France, etc, would use it disproportionately. I would hope that exports from African deserts would be considered.
"You then have a source, which peaks at precisely the wrong time, and provides almost nothing to peak load."
Hmm. In the US, in almost all locations, summer afternoons are the electrical peak, for A/C. I'm aware that in the UK, that there is a peak for heating, in winter in the evening. Is this true for all of the EU northern latitudes? How about the more temperate southern? I would have thought there would be a summer daytime peak, at least in the southern areas.
"To finance it at all, it has guaranteed feed-in tarrifs...This is...a direct cost to all other generation"
hmmm. In the US federal solar subsidies aren't charged to other forms of generation - it's a general item in the budget.
Well, I think you have to ask: what's the purpose of the tariff? Is it intended to be a temporary device to get solar over the problem of economy of scale? If this is the case, then it's temporary. Is it intended to internalize the value of very low-emissions (and replace high-emissions sources, even if they're baseload?)? If that's the case, then the value is what it is, and the tariff makes sense. How were the tariffs calculated?
I'll have to read about Spain & Portugal, and come back.
I've seen comments, some much more recent, from other utilities which have reservations about integrating wind power, but I don't really want to over-emphasise the point, for as I said in other posts in this thread in areas with good resources then wind in combination with other renewables might well be able to run most power, particularly where it is expensive or inconvenient to transmit it large distances.
The trouble with renewables is that their application tends to be generalised too much, so that what is reasonable in a Texan setting with 34% resource availability is confounded with a European location where the availability may be only 25%, which has a far greater effect on viability than the raw difference would indicate, so in those less favoured locations the extra expense of load balancing and more transmission or storage capabilities is far more critical than in areas blessed with ample wind power.
Peak in the UK and northern latitudes in Europe is indeed in the winter, I believe in early evening.
The reason why hot weather peaks are less pronounced in even southern Europe is because there is far less air conditioning - in a heat wave in France over 40,000 died.
In any case, my critique of solar does not apply to southerly regions in Europe - their problem will be simply affording it, or anything else.
Greece, and lately I believe, Spain now mandates residential solar thermal in new builds.
The purpose of the tarrifs in Germany, which is the biggest market by far in Europe for solar power, is indeed to create economies of scale and lower prices.
Short of moving Germany 5-10 degrees further south though, for the foreseeable future there is no chance at all of it being economic.
At that latitude it's a scam.
The subsidies in Germany are, I believe, in several forms, from the State government to the regional government, and from forcing utilities to take power from PV owners to putting up the general price of electricity, which in both Germany and Denmark, the other biggest wind and renewables proponent, are at a staggering by American standards 30cents/kwh.
Of course, this also represents a fine example of regressive taxation, as those who install PV will have a median income considerably above those who don't.
The reductions in emissions from renewables so far are trivial in comparison to those available from generating electricity with nuclear power:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_...
The man behind the nuclear power shift - Times Online
On a brighter note, Portugal in particular has a very vigorous renewables program:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/7252571.stm
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Working Lunch | Green energy wins over Portugal
This should not obscure the fact that it runs on oil and NG, and the renewables remain, for the moment at least, expensive window dressing.
"the availability may be only 25%, which has a far greater effect on viability than the raw difference would indicate"
That doesn't quite click for me. I agree that lower capacity factor increases variance around the mean somewhat, but a change from 34% to 25% would not have, AFAIK, an enormous effect. Do you have some info on that?
"Short of moving Germany 5-10 degrees further south though, for the foreseeable future there is no chance at all of it being economic."
Well, German insolation varies from 950-1,100 KWH per Sq M. At $2.5/Wp, that would give you $.18/KWH (at a good interest rate) in Germany (which I believe is pretty close to residential, retail rates), and $.12/KWH in Spain. That's not bad: this article http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html says that would give grid parity for 50% of OECD consumers, with no subsidies. When you consider the externalities involved, that's really not bad.
Now, let me ask you a nuclear question: I have friend who belongs to the US Sierra Club, who says the following: "During the full life-cycle of a nuclear power plant it is highly fossil fuel intensive; about as much so as coal; and produces new gases that are much more effective at trapping solar energy, and last 300 years in the atmosphere, as CO2." and "The Sierra Club has issued a national energy policy with further explanations".
Now, I'm familiar with the debate about CO2 emissions from mining, enrichment and construction, but do you have any thoughts on the Sierra Club, and "new gases that are much more effective at trapping solar energy"?
If you have a lower wind capacity factor you still have all your fixed costs.
In the case of a turbine with a capacity factor of 25% vs a 34% one that gives you around 74% of the output of the more favoured one. In fact, may turbines in Europe are built where the capacity factor is 20% or even lower.
You have taken the difference right out of your bottom line, and that way lies ruin, government subsidies excepted.
The case is worse than that though.
You have a greater need for backup and storage as your wind source is far more intermittent, so your costs are greater, not equal.
As for solar in Germany, it is the low power output in winter that kills it - not daily fluctuations which might be bridgeable by storage.
For months at a time a system in Germany with a nominal rating of 5kw will turn out on average around 150watts of power.
Unless it is not a grid connected system the utility then has to make up the usage difference using largely expensive, fossil fuel rich peaking power.
Meanwhile at the height of the summer the utility has been forced to buy at times a full 5kwh of power, at stonking rates.
This has displaced inexpensive and potentially in the case of nuclear, relatively CO2 free supply of base-load, and hence forces the use of greater quantities of fossil fuel generation, which can be adapted to the load required.
So you are locking in the use of FF and increasing it's use - unless of course you wnat to use huge quantities of biomass, with the consequences for food supplies that entails.
Even if solar costs dropped to $1/watt installed, not just the modules, this would not make any sense - when you need it a $5k system is then turning out 150watts of power.
My thoughts on the Sierra club's statements on CO2 emissions from nuclear, is that I have seen umpteen fanciful claims on the evils of nuclear power on all sorts of grounds, however specious, and that they are invariably ill-founded.
This sounds as though it is based on the often completely debunked but still quoted claims of Storm and Smith, who turned out figures for uranium mining which indicated that you would need enormous energy to mine relatively low-grade uranium ores - in fact using their figures the mine at Rossing would need more energy input than was in fact used by the whole State:
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeEnergyLifecycleOfNuclear_Power
Nuclear Power Education - Energy Lifecycle of Nuclear Power
Because some of those who are theologically opposed to nuclear power make some wild claim does not give it any credence.
If you think about it, the idea is unreasonable without even looking at the detailed figures.
The construction of a nuclear power station is similar in it's energy use to any other large industrial facility, and in fact less costly in materials used than building things like wind turbines, which also need mining with energy costs.
So any such crazy allegations can only refer to uranium mining.
The amount spent on fuel in a nuclear cycle even after it is refined is only around 1% of total costs.
So how do they manage to do that if it is so vastly expensive in energy terms?
There are also claims about the huge costs of processing the fuel into suitable materials to burn.
These are based on old methods which are around 50 times more energy expensive than the new ones.
None of this makes sense, and neither does the idea of using solar power so far north as Germany.
"In the case of a turbine with a capacity factor of 25% vs a 34% one that gives you around 74% of the output "
Sure.
"the utility then has to make up the usage difference using largely expensive, fossil fuel rich peaking power."
Which would have been needed in any case, right?
"at the height of the summer the utility has been forced to buy at times a full 5kwh of power, at stonking rates."
Which are temporary rates, to grow the industry, right?
"This has displaced inexpensive and potentially in the case of nuclear, relatively CO2 free supply of base-load"
I don't think Germany has that much nuclear - they can use both their current nuclear, and a great deal more solar than they have now.
"So you are locking in the use of FF and increasing it's use"
Not at all. German day time power consumption is higher than night time consumption, even if winter is higher than summer, so solar will always displace FF.
Now, would it make more sense for Germany to keep it's nuclear, and import renewable power from countries to it's south? It would to me. You'll have to ask them why they don't want to. OTOH, I think we owe them some thanks for spending so much money on growing PV and wind, the benefit of which will largely go to others.
Re: the Sierra Club - I thought you might have an insight into these particular claims about high GW gases, or the Club's thinking. Thanks, anyway, for the thoughts. I guess I'll have to look at their materials.
Nick, growing the industry may make sense for selling solar cells to hotter regions, or for their benefit.
The fact remains that for generating electricity in Germany it will make no sense at all unless costs can be reduced far beyond anything in contemplation, to perhaps $0.20cents/watt installed.
I am at a loss to know how to further demonstrate that supplying power in this way will worsen the economics of all base load power supplies, and make it difficult to introduce nuclear power which would actually reduce CO2 as it would worsen the costs as it is taking up base-load generation.
Where do you get your figures that day-time use is higher than might-time consumption?
Early evening in the winter is one of the peak periods of use.
Some Germans have indeed got plans to import power from countries to the South.
http://www.desertec.org/
Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) Homepage
This would represent a very different case to importing power from hotter areas in the States, as from being dependent on unstable and fairly unfriendly regimes in the Arab world for oil, the dependency on unstable states would now be for solar power.
In addition, these solar thermal schemes should more accurately be characterised as natural Gas schemes, with a little help from Solar:
http://djamelmoktefi.blogspot.com/2007/08/algeria-taps-sunbelt-as-energy...
Contemporary Algeria: Algeria taps sunbelt as energy export
Almost all the factors which indicate the fine future for solar power in the States is reversed:
You would not be able to do it effectively locally, optimise sizes for handy but economic sizes, or reduce transmission costs, and you would either have to provide large amounts of water in water-stressed areas or further increase costs by dry cooling.
Solar power is a detriment to effective energy supply in Germany and northern countries and distracts attention from effective resources which would effectively substitute - nuclear power.
Far from being a minor source of power, nuclear contributes 30% of present German electricity supply:
http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289853.html
Attempts to curtail it will be disastrous, and using solar energy instead relies on huge and unproven technological breakthroughs with vast costs.
Solar power is a good resource where it is sunny, not where you have a long dark winter - common sense gives a pretty good idea of this.
Dave is correct. The planners in Europe have pretty much concluded that anyting about 20% in wind (solar not really in the running there) starts becoming economicaly unfeasable because not for required peaking power but because of spinning reserve...as in REAL spinning reserve...steam turbines with governors on them set for frequency control. All that wind has to be back up with this on demand power...which means running mostly coal plants spewing out filth. And, nuclear, which spews nothing.
So we have a situation where the French nuclear grid sits under the northern Euro-grid providing the needed spinning reserve, German coal plants and nuclear plants (about 20% of their load) and then on top, in Scandanavia, Norwegian hyrdo and Swedish hydro/nuclear (50-50).
The planners see anything MORE than 20 or 25% as meaning building more "something" for on demand power, meaning a lower and lower rate of return economically.
So...the French are building more nuclear. Sweden is considering overturnign their 'phase out'. And Germany, the key state in all this, depending on the upcoming elections, also considering overturning their ban.
The overturn of these bans will result in actually more wind since the nuclear won't increase their CO2 limits, something they are bumping up against, especially in Germany.
David
"The planners see anything MORE than 20 or 25% "
I would agree that something around 25% wind would be a reasonable limit - above that you'd probably need some kind of balancing factor (not necessarily spinning reserves) in excess of the marginal returns. IOW, above 25% is doable, but probably not optimal. That limit may rise with more PHEV/EVs, more sophisticated demand management systems, and more sophisticated planning for wind farm placement to reduce overall variance (choosing sites whose variance is negatively correlated with existing sites).
We have quite a ways to go before we start bumping up against these limits.
The planners are doubtless ignoring the possibility of controllable demand like (PH)EVs, ice-storage A/C, and heat-storage systems for water and space heat. All of this demand can be dropped instantly without any immediate impact on delivery of services, obviating the need for spinning reserve equal to the amount of immediate demand from those devices. If (PH)EV demand should ever equal 40% of the conventional demand, vehicles alone should be able to serve as most or all of the spinning reserve requirements through dynamic charging; V2G would bring this outcome much sooner.
" for generating electricity in Germany it will make no sense at all unless costs can be reduced far beyond anything in contemplation, to perhaps $0.20cents/watt installed."
Germany gets roughly 2.5 to 3 hours of equivalent full sunshine per day. That's not great, but it's not that bad! That's only a 40% reduction from very good regions. So, German electricity would have to be more expensive than average (which it is), and PV would have to get a little farther below average retail grid parity than otherwise. German power is, AFAIK, above 15 cents per KWH, or 50% more expensive than in the US. That goes a long way towards cost-justifying German PV. I would think $2.50/Wp, and $.18/KWH, would be competitive with German retail pricing.
"Where do you get your figures that day-time use is higher than might-time consumption?"
Overall day-time consumption is higher - for instance, France exports power during the day, and imports at night.
"Early evening in the winter is one of the peak periods of use."
Sure, but overall daytime consumption will be higher, and I suspect that the summer peak is rather earlier in the day.
"nuclear contributes 30% of present German electricity supply"
I didn't say it was minor, I said it was a long way from supplying so much low-CO2 power that there would be no room for wind or solar.
"solar energy instead relies on huge and unproven technological breakthroughs with vast costs"
?????? I thought we agreed that PV was proven, and falling in cost quickly?
"Solar power is a good resource where it is sunny, not where you have a long dark winter - common sense gives a pretty good idea of this."
Oh, I have no argument that solar is better where there's more light. I think the question here is, how does German solar compare to coal?
Nick, in this case the relevant limiting factor is not the average number of hours of sunshine, but the minimum.
This debate, unusually when I am discussing matters with you, is proving troublesome, since the difficulty I indicated with solar power in northern latitudes is clearly to do with minimal incidence coinciding with maximum use, rather than average figures.
Exactly the reverse will occur in hot areas, for instance Arizona, where solar power is more valuable than is indicated by the number of hours of power per year, as it matches maximum use very well.
Run the figures again, then try to properly account for how you are going to make up for the vast shortfall in winter, or alternatively how you are going to pay for the vast overproduction in summer, unless you are a fan of hydrogen storage with it's massive inefficiencies, then tell me how it can possibly be economic.
The timing of the diurnal peak in summertime, is irrelevant, since by far the biggest peak is in wintertime.
If we should prove to have a meeting of minds on the total unreality of an engineering solution for solar to provide power at the latitude of, say, Berlin, then we can come back and argue the case for and against transporting solar power from, say, the Sahara.
The simplest run through of the figures should show you that solar power generated in Germany is entirely unrealistic.
At around 150wats/h for a 5kw installation in the months of Dec/Jan/Feb then the economics are insane.
The relevant comparison is not to coal, but to nuclear power.
But if you really want to know how German solar power compares to coal, the answer is that you can run the economy on coal, and you can't on solar.
"This debate, unusually when I am discussing matters with you, is proving troublesome"
Yes. I'll have to think about how to resolve it - I think part of the question is the limits on nuclear in Germany, both from normal capex lag, and political. More tomorrow.
Wind.
Typically, wind produces very strongly in the winter, but very weakly in the summer, just the opposite of solar. If you've got the energy storage in place to effectively use solar, you've probably got enough to effectively use wind, too.
The simulations I've run with hourly wind/solar data backed up by pumped storage almost invariably choose wind and solar installations with (real, not nameplate) average outputs within ~50% of each other for precisely that reason - they complement each other's seasonality so well (assuming the per-MWh costs are roughly similar).
FWIW, average solar output in Germany is about half what it is in highly favourable places, meaning we're talking at most a factor of 2 in our power solutions, and probably much less (since solar is only going to be one component of a realistic system). Doubling the cost of solar (effectively halving its efficiency) and optimizing over the hourly data again gives a much heavier weighting to wind and storage but only a 10% increase to cost (17c/kWh vs. 16c for California sun).
Hmm - actually, it gives a pure wind-and-storage system, which I suppose shows current-tech solar PV is pretty marginal in northern areas.
Going to the near-future scenario ($1/Wp) puts solar back in the mix (although about half as much as before) and results in a cost of 13.7c/kWh vs. 10c/kWh previously.
(Of course, poor Germany has only 70% the capacity factor for wind as the US, meaning their power cost for this setup is about 15.6c/kWh, vs. the 10c/kWh California could manage. Taking into account transmission and other overhead, that'd make Germany's power about 1/3 more expensive than California's, which isn't so far away from the current situation.)
If I remember right, the California ISO required a 100% reserve to back up wind power. This was the requirement when I left in 2006.
Generally, utilities must maintain 6% of their load in reserves at all times. Rather than detail it exhaustively here, suffice to say it's to provide for the largest contingency, say, the loss of a generator. Reserves are either synchronized to the grid and can increase production (spinning reserve), or they are off-line, but can be brought on-line within, say, 10 minutes (gas-fired peakers). A utility might keep a 50/50 ratio of their total reserves in spin and non-spin.
The issue with any intermittent resource is that utilites today don't recognize them as 'firm' resources because they can suddenly decline in output. The same holds true if I purchase a non-firm import from Oregon...the provider can cut it off immediately and doesn't have to back it up. In both cases, we have to maintain 100% reserves to cover the potential loss.
What was needed, back when I left in '06, was a reliable short-term forecast for wind. If this is successful, we can then back off from the 100% reserve requirement. The short term is, say, within 1-2 hours. If there's an unexpected short term forecast for wind that never develops, we would have sufficient time to arrange for reserves.
Just as we are fairly accurate with total load forecasts (the bigger the system, the more reliable the forecast), as more and more wind turbines are built, I see an increase in the accuracy of both day-ahead and short term wind energy production forecasting. Then we won't have to maintain thermal or hydro plants in reserve as much.
What you are saying sounds like it makes sense.
If you followed the energy crisis of 2000-1 here in California, perhaps you recall the 'stage 1, 2, and 3 emergencies' that were called almost on a daily basis that summer. These first stages are, in essence, a lack of reserves. If there were a true lack of energy, then the stage 3 is called and firm load is shed.
The reason why the entire western United States, western Canada, and northern Mexico are all interconnected (that is, we are synchronized and operating as a single entity) is that so if SMUD loses a generator, the generators in the entire west immediately pick up the lost power, each generator contributing a little bit more to maintain 60 Hz frequency. And because SMUD keeps enough in reserves to cover the loss, we bring on our own generation reserves and everyone else goes back to schedule. The interconnection provides more reliability to everyone in this sense.
Of course, because we are all connected, a disturbance in one area, if uncontrolled, can cascade to a total interconnection problem. This is exactly what happened during the 2003 Northeastern blackout.
We trade the risk of many small events that could take out small utilities operating independently for more day to day security, against the potential loss of the entire interconnection if uncontrolled. It's a fair trade. Reliability standards are then designed so that any contingency in my area should not cause undue burden on my neighbors, such as loss of their load or transmission system. We try...but past disturbances show that we aren't always successful.
Nick,
I came across a graph some months back of wind electric output in Denmark over time. They've had periods where they've lost (if memory serves) well over 95% of their wind capacity because the wind was just not blowing.
The US is bigger than Denmark. But still. What about the worst cases?
Yes, I believe I remember that graph. If you look closely, you'll see that the fall happened over 12 hours, causing a rate of change in production rather slower than you see in the daily diurnal demand curve.
"What about the worst cases?"
I think you'd keep a fair amount of very, very cheap gas turbine peaker capacity. Expensive to run, but it wouldn't matter because it wouldn't be used very often.
Also, demand management works very well - if the curtailments don't happen often, industry is just fine with it, and PHEVs can take a couple days off from charging with no problem.
Here is a peek inside a 1960s style generating plant - northwest Iowa has no large scale peak generation facility, but instead the municipalities maintain their old equipment and it gets called into action half a dozen times a year.
http://strandedwind.org/node/57
The grid decay will be slowed by economic collapse - when houses and businesses go empty they use much less power :-)
The utility wanted $20k to light this one, but the owner opted for two 80 watt solar panels and personal discipline. This will be the pottery studio eventually; I shot this standing near the foundation of a straw bale passive solar home that is going up on the property.
I'm up there either the coming weekend or the next, chainsaw in hand, to clear and acre of land to provide both the sunlight for the house and a place for an orchard - evergreens are giving way to apples and such. This is not so far south of the Canadian border in northern Vermont ...
You know i read about a lot of folks cutting down trees to gain sunlight for PV. Just wondering how effective commercial PV is to the PV cells, (leaves and needles) nature has been perfecting over the last several hundred million years? Grew up on a farm and we used wood for a lot of purposes. Don't suppose you could plug your computer into a tree, but most everything that's essential can be powered by wood if you got a supply. How about it, how effective is commercial PV as compared to natures PV? Anyone out there know?
The sun radiates
300 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 W
the earth receives
81 000 000 000 000 000 W
we need
13 000 000 000 000 W
forest captures energy at 0.25% efficiency
corn stalks capture energy at 2% efficiency
photovoltaic cells capture energy at 20% efficiency
Don't have the source handy, sorry.
-André
Thanks for the pictures of the old generating plant!
One question I have with the solar panels, especially those on the ground, is how secure will they be? If there is a real problem, will someone just walk off with them in the middle of the night some time. We already are hearing about things a lot less valuable than solar panels being stolen.
Gail, can I ask my question again?
I think it is an issue of timing. Even if we start now adding funds both for an improved transmission system and additional generation, it will take twenty years to get the grid part done. (It frequently takes ten years now for a single line to get sited and installed.) With peak oil happening about now, it will be all that much more difficult to do the grid upgrades. The higher return may derive more investment, but it takes so long for the steps to take place that we are likely to have serious trouble before the upgrades are in place.
It would make be much cheaper and faster to eliminate inefficiency and move consumption off-peak, than build more generation.
New low-emission generation should replace FF generation, not be used for consumption growth.
Whether or not more generation is added, it still seems likely to take 20 years to upgrade grid. Low emission generation replacing FF will still require some changes to the grid.
Hawaii may be an interesting case: currently each island generates its own power. Might be interesting for you (Gail) to check out when next there.
I seem to recall Thomas Edison and King Kalakaua discussed electrifying the main islands from a geothermal power station on the big isle. I don't see that happening now even if there is enough hot steam, since there probably isn't time and investment money, but it's interesting. It IS the world's largest active volcano. I think between 20-30% of the big isle's electricity is geothermal now. With investment, that island could have a functioning grid for a long time - and without fossil fuels.
Hawaii County has a 230 page Energy Sustainability Plan (large PDF). In it, they say that 17% of electric power is geothermal. The largest part (76%) is oil; most of the remainder is hydroelectric and wind.
In "Energy Sustainability Scenario", they are talking about additional geothermal and wind. According to the report:
From this, it sound like they are taking about increasing geothermal output without "drilling new wells". It would be interesting to see their geothermal facility.
I posted this in today's Drumbeat, but since it is relevant to th grid in both the US and the UK reproduce it here:
National grid gearing up for nuclear and renewables on the grid in the UK and US
And:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilitie...
National Grid powers up for new energy - Times Online
Thanks! At least the UK has a "National Grid" that can do this kind of thing. With all of the players here, it sort of gets lost.
This seems to have been rather prophetically described by E.M. Forester in 1909;
http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html
Return on Investment is *WAY* too low (better lighting, tanklass gas or solar hot water heater would give higher, but how many businesses use those ?)
Higher property taxes.
Alan
Is there any TLR data for 2008? Or at least the rest of 2007?