Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

I can certainly see you point that there will be costs attached to any change and for that reason everything should stay the same.

In the world outside it does seem that 'renewables' are becoming cheaper than conventional power generators. Obviously solar and wind generators only work some of the time - so the grid needs to store energy. In the real world 'the need to store energy' manifests itself as wild fluctuations in the price of electricity and allows horribly ineficient generators to make money by generating when the price is high.

If you look at a Tesla car it has a 75kWhr battery in it. The average American household uses 10kWhr per day. It would require a change in infrastructure and the way the average American behaves but by plugging your car in at the right time you could help to balance demand and not only have a fully charged battery but also (say) $5 in your bank account. The (suggested) $5 is really irrelevant - the point is - does it reek too much of socialism for you?

Balance the demand? I think you mean radically increase the demand, and with states like California already having rolling blackouts due to existing power demands. Running cars off the power grid requires much more power generating capacity, that wind and solar cannot account for.

And how you think using more power will save you money is anyone's guess.

Syne Wrote:And how you think using more power will save you money is anyone's guess.

Let us look at one suggested way to avoid CA's rolling blackouts:

Quote:Borenstein suggests allowing utilities to charge higher rates from 4 to 9 p.m. in exchange for lower prices at other hours as part of voluntary programs.

(from: https://rael.berkeley.edu/2020/08/qa-cal...challenge/ )

What this is telling us is that there is adequate generating capacity except for the 5 hours between  4 and 9 p.m.. 

Another solution would be to add coal or gas fired plant which run for the 5 hours when extra power is needed. In reality the extra capacity might only be needed for a few days a year - perhaps some years it would never be used. It may surprise you but someone would have to pay for the construction and operation of a power station that hardly ever generates any electricity - can you suggest would pay for the construction and operation of the power station?

Another option based on the idea of increasing the cost of electricity during the hours of peak demand would be to store electricity during times of low demand and feed it back during times of high demand. Buy when the price is low and sell when the price is high - hopefully you can see how that can be profitable without actually generating any electricity at all.

The idea of buying when the price (of electricity) is low and selling back when the price is high kind'a brings us on to looking at Tesla cars which contain a battery big enough to power a house (at 10kWhrs per day) for a week, or seven houses for a day or 35 houses for 5 hours of peak demand. Obviously you want to be able to use your car whenever suits you so you might choose to charge your car at peak rate and you might find your car is (effectively) being charged by the Tesla car parked in your neighbours driveway.

I can see that building power stations that only run for a few hours (or perhaps never)  is an attractive option for some people  but there are other options which might be worth looking at.

---

As an afterthought - nuclear power stations don't like being turned on and off so more nuclear power stations wouldn't actually help when demand exceeds the baseload.

In the case of California, don't they have a Geothermal plant in Lassen yet?
I mean theres papers suggesting they were looking at it since the late 1970's:
Lassen National Forest (N.F.), Leasing Geothermal Resources: Environmental Impact Statement - Jan 1986

In any sense it's a power source that's there and constant (unless the Earth freezes to it's core which entropy doesn't permit).

A volcano can well be a source of CO_X, I'd be more concerned with CH₄ (which is worse than CO₂) and H₂S.

Furthermore it's not just about the emissions adding to a "greenhouse" effect, the emissions increase the atmospheric pressure of the area in which they are produced (through a mixture of more materials being present as well as the thermal effects) this in turn can push weather systems out of place.

I'd pose for instance having a single production centre like the highly populated and polluted areas of China can push the Jet streams out of position in both altitude and position. The added pressure and thermal value also likely increases the Jet stream speeds which in turn lead to higher winds/storms/hurricanes etc.

In essence while it's great to reduce all the pollutants to try and make the world a greener place, the harsh reality is that we are always going to be polluters, but we need to make sure that we don't all just dump it in one spot as that in turn causes even more problems, it needs to be spreadout.

(Dec 4, 2020 06:29 PM)stryder Wrote: [ -> ]In the case of California, don't they have a Geothermal plant in Lassen yet?
I mean theres papers suggesting they were looking at it since the late 1970's:
Lassen National Forest (N.F.), Leasing Geothermal Resources: Environmental Impact Statement - Jan 1986

In any sense it's a power source that's there and constant (unless the Earth freezes to it's core which entropy doesn't permit).

A volcano can well be a source of CO_X, I'd be more concerned with CH₄ (which is worse than CO₂) and H₂S.

Furthermore it's not just about the emissions adding to a "greenhouse" effect, the emissions increase the atmospheric pressure of the area in which they are produced (through a mixture of more materials being present as well as the thermal effects) this in turn can push weather systems out of place.

I'd pose for instance having a single production centre like the highly populated and polluted areas of China can push the Jet streams out of position in both altitude and position.  The added pressure and thermal value also likely increases the Jet stream speeds which in turn lead to higher winds/storms/hurricanes etc.

In essence while it's great to reduce all the pollutants to try and make the world a greener place, the harsh reality is that we are always going to be polluters, but we need to make sure that we don't all just dump it in one spot as that in turn causes even more problems, it needs to be spreadout.

IMHO...Don't know if California can ever be green. Greener yes, but green....No. Coal Oil Point(click on below) perhaps most interesting

From wiki:

(Dec 4, 2020 12:43 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]

Syne Wrote:And how you think using more power will save you money is anyone's guess.

Let us look at one suggested way to avoid CA's rolling blackouts:

Quote:Borenstein suggests allowing utilities to charge higher rates from 4 to 9 p.m. in exchange for lower prices at other hours as part of voluntary programs.

(from: https://rael.berkeley.edu/2020/08/qa-cal...challenge/ )

What this is telling us is that there is adequate generating capacity except for the 5 hours between  4 and 9 p.m.. 

Another solution would be to add coal or gas fired plant which run for the 5 hours when extra power is needed. In reality the extra capacity might only be needed for a few days a year - perhaps some years it would never be used. It may surprise you but someone would have to pay for the construction and operation of a power station that hardly ever generates any electricity - can you suggest would pay for the construction and operation of the power station?

Another option based on the idea of increasing the cost of electricity during the hours of peak demand would be to store electricity during times of low demand and feed it back during times of high demand. Buy when the price is low and sell when the price is high - hopefully you can see how that can be profitable without actually generating any electricity at all.

The idea of buying when the price (of electricity) is low and selling back when the price is high kind'a brings us on to looking at Tesla cars which contain a battery big enough to power a house (at 10kWhrs per day) for a week, or seven houses for a day or 35 houses for 5 hours of peak demand. Obviously you want to be able to use your car whenever suits you so you might choose to charge your car at peak rate and you might find your car is (effectively) being charged by the Tesla car parked in your neighbours driveway.

I can see that building power stations that only run for a few hours (or perhaps never)  is an attractive option for some people  but there are other options which might be worth looking at.

But if you're suggesting things like more electric cars, you are increasing demand from 4pm to past 9pm, as everyone charges their cars overnight. You said yourself that electric cars could add over 7 times the demand. So what pollution you might avoid during non-peak hours, using renewable energy, will likely be made up for during peak hours and bad weather for renewable power generation. Since California already has demand problems only using 32.35% renewable energy, increasing the percent of low yield renewables would not help. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nucle...even-close Construction and maintenance costs for the capacity to rival coal and nuclear is not sustainable. Not to mention the already ill-maintained infrastructure (causing wild fires), even without more demand from electric cars. No scheme can overcome that added demand, and definitely not in a way that saves money.

Having a battery big enough to power a house still requires that battery be charged. And those batteries require a lot of rare minerals, which means you're trading some future "peak oil" for a likely much sooner shortage of those minerals.

Tesla warns of upcoming global shortages in battery minerals

Not to mention the climate impact of mining and processing those minerals.

Quote:As an afterthought - nuclear power stations don't like being turned on and off so more nuclear power stations wouldn't actually help when demand exceeds the baseload.

Nuclear power far exceeds the yield capacity of any other source. So saying it wouldn't help with demand is just ignorant.
Again: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nucle...even-close

If American car owners routinely drive for four or five hours a day (covering say 250 miles) then electric cars have little or no potential for adding storage to an American power grid. I'll take your word for it if you say that is what the average American does. In the UK (1 sample) the daily use of the battery is a tiny fraction of the total capacity.

I get the impression that power generation is fairly local in the USA - if a nuclear power station is down for maintenance then local (fossil fuelled) power stations of similar capacity have to be kept in service to avoid the inevitable blackouts while the power station is being maintained or refuelled. Again local knowledge is key here - if the US has a well coupled grid then losing 1GW would be a small fraction of the grid total - if local then the economics of the power stations required to cover down time has to be included.

As mentioned before - nuclear power stations are suitable for base load only - if (for example) renewable energy sources take the generated power above current demand then that excess has to be dumped unless it can be stored 'somehow'.

The supply of rare earth elements raises political, technical, ethical and commercial questions - none of which will be addressed while rare earth elements are as cheap as they are at present.

"Not to mention the climate impact of mining and processing those minerals."

I find it hard to credit that the climate impact is likely to be on quite the same scale as mining and burning 8 billion tons of coal annually.

( https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ )
[coal consumption] 8,561,852,178 tons (short tons, st) of coal per year as of the year 2016.

(Dec 5, 2020 12:07 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]If American car owners routinely drive for four or five hours a day (covering say 250 miles) then electric cars have little or no potential for adding storage to an American power grid. I'll take your word for it if you say that is what the average American does. In the UK (1 sample) the daily use of the battery is a tiny fraction of the total capacity.

It says, your model 3 will loose 1% of charge per day unplugged. They HIGHLY recommend you always leave your car plugged in no matter what state of charge.
https://forums.tesla.com/discussion/1524...ile-parked

So not only are you still paying for the same kWh for your house, you're also adding a car, and losing 1% of that power per day. Yes, power storage can help peak hours, especially if an authoritarian government decides to gouge you for it. But as I mentioned, car charging time generally corresponds to peak hours. And the cost of owning/operating an EV is, at best, a wash with gasoline.

So, by our calculations that makes the gas-powered Mini a mere $358 cheaper to own and operate over the first three years than its electric counterpart—essentially a wash. The Kona Electric, on the other hand, is more costly than the gas version by $7994. Then you get to factor in state and local incentives if those are available. Plus, as the years progress the lower cost of operating an electric vehicle (fuel and maintenance) continue to accrue. In the case of the Mini, it might just tip the advantage to the electric model.

The current hitch is that not all new EVs are eligible for the $7500 incentive. Both Tesla and GM have hit their 200,000 vehicle cap. It’s also unlikely that the current administration will increase that cap any time soon. Eventually, other automakers will also lose the ability to dangle that federal incentive in front of buyers.
https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-ad...er-to-own/

And that's not even accounting for the added taxes necessary to provide the infrastructure for nationwide EV adoption.

Quote:I get the impression that power generation is fairly local in the USA - if a nuclear power station is down for maintenance then local (fossil fuelled) power stations of similar capacity have to be kept in service to avoid the inevitable blackouts while the power station is being maintained or refuelled. Again local knowledge is key here - if the US has a well coupled grid then losing 1GW would be a small fraction of the grid total - if local then the economics of the power stations required to cover down time has to be included.

Yes, states generally provide their own power, except when they have deals with neighboring states to buy/sell surplus. The US only has 58 nuclear power plants in 29 states. Leftists in the US do not like nuclear power, even though it's far cleaner and has greater capacity than coal and natural gas.

Quote:As mentioned before - nuclear power stations are suitable for base load only - if (for example) renewable energy sources take the generated power above current demand then that excess has to be dumped unless it can be stored 'somehow'.

Electricity generated by any means can be equally stored, so that is not an argument in favor of one power source over another. And since we do yet have grid-scale storage, base load power plants are a necessity.

Quote:The supply of rare earth elements raises political, technical, ethical and commercial questions - none of which will be addressed while rare earth elements are as cheap as they are at present.

"Not to mention the climate impact of mining and processing those minerals."

I find it hard to credit that the climate impact is likely to be on quite the same scale as mining and burning 8 billion tons of coal annually.

( https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ )
[coal consumption] 8,561,852,178 tons (short tons, st) of coal per year as of the year 2016.

All of this is moot until someone can demonstrate that renewables can match the nuclear/coal/natural gas capacity (with possible grid-scale storage) without bankrupting an entire country.