# Are Electric Cars and Utilities on Collision Course?



## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

> The plug-in car's potential to slash fuel use is dramatic. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that existing U.S. power plants could meet the electricity needs of 73% of the nation's light vehicles if the vehicles were replaced by plug-ins that recharged at night. Such a huge shift could cut oil consumption by 6.2 million barrels a day, eliminating 52% of current imports.





> Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Chevy Volt, the plug-in car that General Motors Corp. is developing, says great changes are needed. Globally, there are 800 million vehicles in use today and the number is expected to grow by 300 million vehicles to 1.1 billion by 2020. "They can't all be petroleum-based," he says. "We believe in electricity. It's everywhere, and you can make it from a variety of fuels."


Amen brother!  I am starting to think that GM is serious about the Volt. 

This is appears to be a well researched article. You guys should all read this one. Actually, most of us probably already know this stuff... but not everyone does.


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## Jmill (Apr 30, 2008)

Don't believe the PNNL numbers. Those MW production numbers are most likey based on generator main rating. First off I don't know of one plant that can produce its main rating. Turbines and boilers get worn out, things always break and cooling water temps get too high or too low. Plants are usually derated in one way or another. Those numbers most likely include peakers too. Peakers are gas turbine plants that spool up quick and MW's are costly, about 6x that of a coal fired plant. Thats why electricity at peak is so pricey. Base load plants are usually coal fired units. Power is made fairly cheaply but the ramp rates are slow.

As long as base load plants can handle the added off peak load and coal is cheap, utilities can afford to discount rates. As night demand increases those deals wont exist. Peakers will be needed to meet the demand. A way around that would be to build more base load plants. Unfortunately, the permitting required to build such plants are insane. It costs the utilities millions before they can even start to build. You don't even want to know the hoops required to build a nuclear plant. Power doesn't come any cheaper or cleaner than that. The truely sad thing is that peaker plants are easy to permit and easy to build. They also cost the consumer an arm and a leg. 

Sorry about the rant. I just hear people complain all the time about their utility bill and the environment. Then they fight tooth and nail against the idea of a nuclear plant. Wind power is great. Unfortunately, it doesnt always blow at peak.

I love the idea of everyone having electric cars. Folks just need to get comfortable with the idea of nuclear power. Otherwise, electricity prices are going to get out of control.


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## tazdotnet (Apr 9, 2008)

i'm glad i don't have to deal with that in my area... i live where 2 rivers that have massive damns meet... there is so much power that the state i live in sells power to california... although when we have poor snow pack california has blackouts...


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## Jmill (Apr 30, 2008)

Hydro is good and a hydro plant on a river is the ultimate. Unfortunately, there are only so many locations to put one. A lot of hydro plants are peakers (reservoir hydro plants). What most people don't realize is that type of hydro generation uses electricity too. The generator is run during peak and it uses water in the system. That water then needs to be replaced. Water is pumped back up into the system off peak when power is cheap. Most of that off peak electricty is produced by base load fossil fuel plants. 

California blackouts are a product of regulated electricity prices. Can you blame the utility for not wanting to sell power for a price cheaper than they can buy it? The blackouts will continue until cheaper base load plants are built.


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## huntadolla (Apr 29, 2008)

Why are people so rigid in their thinking. Why can't we invest $1 trillion in geothermal over the next five years. That's only 20% of our rule the world budget. That's how much we've already spent stealing Iraq's oil and securing a pipeline route in Afghanistan. Why couldn't we have built 3 Geothermal powerplants in each of the US's 3200 counties? That's 10,000 plants at $100 million each, we could deliver 50 gigawatt of base load power, and have change from our trillion. If we exploit Yellowstones' caldera this could be done much much cheaper, without damaging the park at all. 50 Gigawatt of additional base load power would supply all transportation, civilian, military and commercial.
We don't have an energy problem we have a political problem. The technology for geothermal is mature the navy has been running the China Lake california powerplant for the last 36 years with 98% + uptime.
Why can big oil drill in the artcic, build a pipleine across the 
Alaskan mountain ranges, ship oil to a refinery deliver it on a truck to the fuel station, but we can't mine heat around a volcano a few thousand feet deep in the center of the United States. Imagine this: a bunch of geothermal powerplants would cool the earth just a little.

Get big oil and bid auto out of Washington DC, and change the energy policy of this country.

Vote for Ron Paul and let market forces supply what we need, not what some lobbyist wants for big oil or big auto.

Get mad people or nothing will change.


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## huntadolla (Apr 29, 2008)

Geothermal power is nuclear power without the toxic waste. Nuclear reactions continue to take place inside the earth supplying us with vast amounts of heat. All that needs be done is to exploit the places where this inexhaustible supply of heat is near the surface. A few places we might begin to look in the US are: Yellowstone National Park, the caldera is over 360 miles in circumference, plants could be spaced a mile apart on the outside of the caldera leaving the park totally untouched, Mt Saint Helens is an active volcano, Nevada has billions of high temp water only a few hundred feet deep. The process is simple : boil water, spin a turbine, make electricity, plug into the grid.
The solution seems quite obvious to me, take electric busses in an urban environment, why not have an all electric bus, that can drive 4 hours 100 miles on a charge, then have a high speed recharge station in the middle of the drivers daily route that permits him a one hour recharge during his lunch then he can go another hundred miles and so forth.
The battery technology exists but is not widely available today. 
Of course the reason we do not have these things is because they are not in the best interest of big oil and big auto, they are in the average persons best interest, so they are worth fighting for.


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## Jmill (Apr 30, 2008)

There's a lot of complex quirks involved in harnessing geothermal power. But the basic production of electricity is simple none the less. The problem comes in trying to transport that power long distances. Geothermal plants are a very valid option in some areas. In the plain states it's not an option. The power made in the geothermal plants can't get there with current conductors. The line losses are tremendous. We need a valid option for the areas without geothermal activity. Huge advances have been made in emission control of coal fired plants. They burn almost as clean as a NG plant but, like oil and gas, it's a limited resource. Wind farms are a good clean option but power when you need it is not guaranteed. Solar power and battery technology isn't there yet. We need a cheap clean acceptable fuel source in the next 10 years to avoid electricity prices going down the same road as gas. 
The utilities don't have the money to invest in large projects. Their profits are strictly regulated by the PSC. They can submit a plee to the PSC for a rate increase to fund a major project. The PSC then decides if such an increase is valid. 
The decision to build a geothermal plant on National Forest Land is strictly Federal. I'm afraid that decision wont be made until rates go through the roof and folks scream loud enough. After the decision is made it takes years until power is produced. Plants take time to build along with substations and their transportation network.


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## Jmill (Apr 30, 2008)

I'm going to have to face the fact that we live in a reactive society. Things don't change until it hits someones wallet. Heck, I didn't start researching EV's until gas prices started hitting mine. At least this time I can say I saw it coming.


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## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Jmill said:


> Hydro is good and a hydro plant on a river is the ultimate. Unfortunately, there are only so many locations to put one. A lot of hydro plants are peakers (reservoir hydro plants). What most people don't realize is that type of hydro generation uses electricity too. The generator is run during peak and it uses water in the system. That water then needs to be replaced. Water is pumped back up into the system off peak when power is cheap. Most of that off peak electricty is produced by base load fossil fuel plants.


One of the solutions to this is to have wind or solar produce the power that 
pumps the water back up into the reservoir. This solves multiple problems simultaneously. It keeps the coal plants from being used to pump water and makes wind and solar better and more flexible options. I don't think that all dams work this way. Many dams have no reservoir beneath them... only cold green rushing water. 

I have actually wondered about the viability of using dams on Phoenix's canal system in conjunction with solar arrays. In the summer, we would gets lots of peak power directly from solar... until the sun starts to get low in the sky in the evening. However, in the winter, we would be making energy in the middle of the day while peak power demand is actually from 5am to 9am and from 5pm to 9pm when the sun is mostly down. If we were able to build several series of small dams around the valley, we could conceivably pump water up hill during the day and then run small hydro turbines during peak.

I don't know that the California blackouts or brownouts were caused entirely by honest means. The guys that were running ENRON have all been either imprisoned, mysteriously suffered heart attacks immediately before sentencing, fled the country, or committed suicide. I'm pretty sure there was some foul play involved. 

I have heard that coal plants can be made "clean", but I haven't heard of a significant number of them being made clean. And yes, coal is a limited resource, but according to one of ASU's sustainable energy professors, we have 200 years of coal left at our current rate of use.

This same Dr believes that we have only a few decades of reactor grade uranium available.

Jmill, I'm afraid you're right. We are pretty bad at acting before the problem gets out of control. When will we learn? *sigh*


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## grose (Apr 30, 2008)

I agree that if new plants of some sort don't go up, it is just a matter of time until we are constantly "at peak." 

I also agree to wind and solar. These are no-brainers. However they are of low energy density and have drawbacks that need to be solved.

I also agree with geothermal. Not just the hot springs kind of the geothermal, but geothermal heat pumps. Again, this should be a no-brainer. Research it. The "fuel" to heat/cool your house is NOTHING. You simply are moving heat around with some electricity. Slap up some solar panels and you are good to go.

I disagree about nuclear. Not that I'm totally freaked out about the radioactive waste, but rather that it takes forever to get one built. There are no engineers in this field anymore hardly. Add to that you are looking at a limited supply of usable ore. 

The answer is not to build more plants, but to use LESS.


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## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Using less would definitely be the smartest solution. The head of the local chapter of the EAA has a solar house. He actually paid off his investment in 7 years by making his house more efficient. He uses led lights, a solar hot water heater, energy star rated appliances, and solar window screens that can be flipped over to reflect the sun's energy in the summer and convert it into heat energy in the winter.

Europe uses about 80 quadrillion BTUs of energy every year. The US uses about 130 quadrillion BTUs every year (lazy man's source  ). The US is home to 300 million people and Europe is home to 700 million. This means that every American uses 4.33x10^8 BTUs/year and that every European uses 1.14x10^8 BTUs/year. Looks to me like we have a HUGE surplus of energy. Honestly, as far as the grid is concerned, we have no energy crisis... assuming we still have diesel to run coal mining equipment.


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## tazdotnet (Apr 9, 2008)

i live in washington, we have alot of dams on the columbia, snake, and yakima rivers... we also have salmon... the dams along the state line provide power to oregon as well as washington, and the electric company sells alot of power to california... if you are curious about the damns then i suggest looking it up, i doubt there are that many peakers down this far but the rivers start over in canada and idaho... i live right where the snake runs into the columbia... it then runs south and then heads west along the state line... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_dams_on_the_Columbia_River
and
http://www.cbr.washington.edu/crisp/hydro/

the first link has power production for each dam and the map on the second tells power districts of each dam (i'm in the walla walla district) i live where 2 rivers converge close to ice harbor dam (follow the rivers course after the dam and my city is right there)... when we had little snow pack california had blackouts and our power costs went up alot, the water level of the columbia also went down far enough so i could walk accross without getting anything more than my shoes wet... the normal water level in the middle of the river is around 30 feet deep (some big holes caused by the construction of man made islands)


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## rbgrn (Jul 24, 2007)

The enron documentary has video tape of the guys on the phone with the plants shutting them down, then watching the prices go up and talking about how many millions they are making off the blackouts...

That's what happens when you let your traders control your power plants!

It's TOTALLY incriminating. No other explanation for it.


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## tazdotnet (Apr 9, 2008)

the enron thing happened years after what i am talking about... when the river was low enough to walk across i was barely in highschool, enron didn't manipulate the grid until i was already out of school... 
at the bottom of this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
it says

In October 2000, Daniel Scotto, the top ranked utility analyst on Wall Street, suspended his ratings on all energy companies conducting business in California due to the unlikely probability that the companies would receive full and adequate compensation for the deferred energy accounts used as the cornerstone for the California Deregulation Plan enacted in the late 1990s. Five months later, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was forced into bankruptcy. Congressman Phil Gramm, the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, succeeded in legislating California's energy commodity trading deregulation. Despite warnings from prominent consumer groups which stated that this law would give energy traders too much influence over energy commodity prices, the legislation was passed in December 2000.
As Public Citizen reported, "Because of Enron’s new, unregulated power auction, the company’s 'Wholesale Services' revenues quadrupled—from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2000 to $48.4 billion in the first quarter of 2001."[6]
Before passage of the deregulation law, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout declared. Following passage, California had a total of 38 blackouts defined as Stage 3 rolling blackouts, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred mainly as a result of a poorly designed system that was manipulated by traders and marketers. Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time.[7] These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail consumers.



can you see what i mean now?...


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