Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
Former IEA Econmist: Peak Oil within the decade | 48 comments (48 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
There are a few interesting consequences of a shift to electric motoring - I think it is a safe assumption that the standard electric car will have a battery pack that allows you to drive 450 or more km on a single charge - This is what the kolobri prototype managed, and it is sufficent overkill to remove range anxiety as a concern completely, which I think is nessesary to sell the cars. This means, among other things, that public charge stations will only exist, if at all, as amenities along long-haul highways, because outside doing things like driving on vacation, you will never, ever charge the car away from home. So corner "gas" stations dont exist in this paradigm.

Demand management as a strategy for electricity production becomes both much easier, and completely politically impossible - It will be trivial to shift electricity consumption around within the day-night cycle, because of the enormous battery capacity of the veichle fleet, but if you strand people with dead cars because monday->wensday were quiet, cloudy days, you get lynched, politically. Possibly literally too.

I think this favors nukes, but any powersource which is reliable on a day to day basis wins (desert solar, yes. Rooftop solar, no.) Peak producers loose.

by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 06:07:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Interesting: Converted Audi A2 claims new electric vehicle distance record: 372 miles
Berlin energy supplier Lekker Energie and battery company DBM Energy have teamed up to electrify an Audi A2 and take it on an attention-getting 605 km (379.9 mile) journey from Munich to Berlin, Germany. The run, conducted at night, was such a success that the team is claiming an electric vehicle world record of sorts. While the Japan EV Club managed to squeeze 1,003 km (623 miles) from their Mira on a track driving a steady 40km/h (25 miles per hour), this latest feat was performed on public roads at an average speed of 55 miles per hour. The Germans even had 18 percent of the pack's 115 kWh left at the end.
That's 7 hours of driving. With the claimed spare charge you can drive for 8 hours on a charge, which is as much as a single driver can reasonably expect to do in holiday driving (add time for rest stops every two hours and a meal halfway and you're talking a 10+ hour day).

Then again, Controversy, skepticism surround DBM 375-mile battery

Say a company claims it has a battery pack that has set an amazing range record but then the vehicle that the battery powered ends up destroyed in a warehouse fire. What would you think? Well, this is the exact scenario that DBM Energy GmbH is facing.


tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:15:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
A reasonably smart pricing infrastructure should mostly sort that out: I'd set my car only to charge if either it's below (say) 20% or the price is below some threshold because I almost only ever drive short distances. You'd set it to charge to full every night regardless because you drive 80km to work.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:29:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
Oh, and I need access to fast public chargers because I'm an idiot and forgot that I was going to drive to the other end of the country today and my car is only at 20%.

Leaving aside for the moment the insanity of having so many individual cars in urban environments.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:31:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
Yeah, I don't think regular gas stations in an urban environment will disappear. I still expect them to be converted. And you don't have to have a fast charger at your home parking spot, but a service station would sell the service of fast chargin for which you need a high tension line which would not be suitable for residential use.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:34:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
Thing is, I really dont think they would get enough custom to survive, unless their actual income base is as an convenience store/place to get your car washed. Phones, laptops, ect, have all trained us to plug our gizmos into the outlet before we go to bed. That would carry over to just consistently plugging the car in when we get home. - a tiny bit internet connected  electronics in that charger means it is going to wait to actually charge until the city has gone to bed or 3 am or whenever during the night power is cheapest (and power market forcasting on that timescale is pretty good) - but as a question of human behavior I really do not think any significant fraction of the car owning public is going to start any given day with less than a full charge on their car.
So any charging infrastructure is going to be a part of the amenities for travelers (hotel parking lots absolutely need them. And so on) or go nearly completely unused. - The return on investment for building a public charge station on a random city corner is going to be as near zero as makes no diffrence.
by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 08:21:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
as a question of human behavior I really do not think any significant fraction of the car owning public is going to start any given day with less than a full charge on their car.

They will if it saves them substantial money in a way they can understand - note the effort the likes of mobile phone companies go to obscure the details of their plans so that people can't easily optimise. You only need nukes to solve this problem if you decide to structure the problem so that nukes are the opitimal solution.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 08:42:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
In addition, running out of battery on one's mobile is not exactly an unusual occurrence.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 10:19:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
you are wastly overestimating how much money could be saved in this manner - The primary reason I expect the changeover to electric to follow very hot on the heels of the first reasonable electric car to hit the market is that electricity is much, much cheaper than gas.

Math: Let us assume that you are a foster parent in France, take care of nine kids, and thus you drive a monster of a people mover with a onehundred kwh battery, and you go through one charge per week. Top it off to full each night during generic offpeak hours, and you are out 8.75 euros /week. Most of which is, in fact, taxes. Which you cannot avoid by messing about trying to time the electricity market. So, at most, if you watch the weather reports like a hawk, and plan your driving very carefully around them, you save.. 2 euros per week. 104 euros per year. And this assumes that you are driving the electric equivalent of a SUV. For a smaller car, it is going to be half that.
Nobody is going to actually do this - it is far too much work for far too little return - Certainly it will not be common enough to affect overall demand at all. The day/night demandshifting works because it is automated and transparent to the consumer - Plug in at night, charged by dawn.

by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 10:23:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
I was rather expecting the charging structure to be revisited. And for the system to be automated: specify your criteria and off you go.

And if we move demand onto electricity, we'll push the price up anyway.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 10:30:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Spain already started tweaking the night price discount on electricity in 2007. There were complaints from people who had replaced their gas heating systems with electric heaters and were going to lose much of the economic benefit of being able to charge accummulators at night.

When people start charging their cars massively at home, demand will equalize and so will price.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 10:42:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Depends. Pile a bunch of extra nighttime electricity demand into the french grid, and the cost per KWH will go down a bit, not up.
by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 10:44:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
The cost, yes, but not the price, as it is set by marginal pricing, remember?


Wind power
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 07:56:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Yes, but the point is that the price advantage of picking low price days over low price hours is a small fraction of an already low cost, and the convenience cost is high. Or put simply : having a fully charged car each morning will cost you mere cents extra compared to picking the setting that tries to get you the very best deals possible on electricity. Just about everyone will elect to pay. Utilities will expect them to elect to pay, and invest accordingly.
by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 11:22:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Top it off to full each night during generic offpeak hours, and you are out 8.75 euros /week. Most of which is, in fact, taxes. Which you cannot avoid by messing about trying to time the electricity market.

You're assuming that the tax is flat-rate pr. kWh, rather than, say, proportional to the bill. In a smart grid, this is a stupid way to tax electricity, for precisely the reason you stress.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 12:04:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
Thomas:
Thing is, I really dont think they would get enough custom to survive, unless their actual income base is as an convenience store/place to get your car washed.

In Sweden at least, they are already mainly convenience stores geared towards drivers. This causes some problems today in the countryside where filling up gas on long routes can be useful.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 10:32:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
But if you have an autonomy of 500 km you only need to charge the battery once a week if you have an 80km round trip.

For instance, Madrid's M40 ring road is an 80km roundtrip, and I have done that on occasion when I have driven to work, then in the evening picked up my girlfriend from work because we wanted to do some errand or other elsewhere.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:32:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
I'll only charge it full when electricity is cheap though. When there isn't enough wind and sun (say) and prices rise I won't bother charging it to full.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:41:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
You still need one full charge's worth per week, say.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:43:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
Well yes, I guess, but it won't happen when the "unreliable" sources are compromised. This is an argument against the "we need nukes" element of Thomas's discussion.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 07:46:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
Not specifically nukes. Any power source without huge seasonal or day-to-day variability will do. But we are going to need a lot of it.
My personal guess is that this means nukes win the day in the end, and that this will mostly be accomplished by siting them in politically friendly jurisdictions and putting up HVDC lines to places that break out in hives at the sight of a cooling tower. But that is a guess. Paving over a chunk of the sahara and running HVDC lines north would also work. Rooftop solar in europe will, however, not, as people dont stop driving in winter.
by Thomas on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 08:34:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 2)
But your starting position is, consistently, that nukes are the answer.

I'm open to nukes as part of the solution - I strongly suspect that if they're necessary their lack will kill more people than the safety issues ever will - but it's not clear that they are necessary.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 08:43:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Let's go into numbers again (none / 1)
If I got your assumption right, you are counting 100 kWh for 400 km.
In a country like France, with something like 30M cars doing 12,000km per year (ball park figures, but not too far off), you need 100 billion kWh, i.e. 100 TWh for the whole fleet.

French electric demand right now is around 500 TWh. So we're talking an increase by 20% only, a lot of it which can take place at night, as you mentioned. But a smoothing out of demand will actually make the integration of renewables easier, as the capacity to deal with intra-day changes will still be there and will be just as easily able to deal with intermittent renewable generation - it's just that gas-fired plants may work at night, to replace solar, than during the day, as a top up to nukes...

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 08:03:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Let's go into numbers again (none / 0)
It is another 20 percent power consumption, mostly coming from residential areas at night. - the average nighttime draw from any given residence will go up by 20kwh/8h/220v: 11/22 amps. (one or two cars) The maximum draw (full recharge in 8 hours) from the same residence goes up by 110 amps. This assumes people dont buy speedcharging gear for their homes, which I think is a safe assumption. I certainly do not wish to have electrical equipment able to recharge a 100kwh battery in 30 minutes in my garage. I think the existing grid infrastructure will suffice for this with only minor upgrades, but a lot of residencies are going to need their fuseboxes and bits of their wireing beefed up. Lot of work for electricians.
by Thomas on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 12:51:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Let's go into numbers again (4.00 / 2)
"the existing grid infrastructure will suffice for this with only minor upgrades"

Nope, it won't (at least in the system used in the U.S.). The thermal time constants of the transformers supplying residential power is quite long, a day or so. During the day, when demand is high, they heat up. Part of designing the distribution system is to balance the heat generated during the day with the cooling available at night. If the night-time load goes up, then there's not enough cooling time, and the transformers catch on fire.

by asdf on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 03:29:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Let's go into numbers again (none / 0)
Another data point:


It takes a lot of coal to make gasoline

Quick draw critics of the electric car often (miss their target) criticize EV's because in their words "Electric cars simply replace a tail pipe with a smokestack" The gist of their argument is that the emissions still occur, not at the tail pipe but at the electric power plant. That great observation is usually followed by the statement that 45% of our grid electricity is coal and coal is dirty thus the EV provides no net gain.

(...)

It is a simple fact that just the refining of gasoline requires approximately 6 kwh of electricity per gallon of gasoline. In fact electricity and natural gas cost are estimated to be 43% of the US oil refineries total expenses. If you tack on the energy required to extract and transport the oil to the refinery and then to the gas stations as well as the energy cost of the gas station, I'm sure that number jumps a few more kwh per gallon.

So let's be conservative and cut the oil guys a break and say it takes 8kwh to extract, ship, refine and transport each gallon of gas.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Drum roll.......

It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles, than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles. A gas car at the US fleet average of 21mpg will consume approximately five gallons of gasoline which took 40kwh (5 times 8)of electricity to make, to drive 100 miles. An electric car will use approximately 30 kwh of electricity (3.3 miles per kwh) to drive the same 100 miles.

This is California and power uses may be different elsewhere, but this is still an impressive comparison...

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:12:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Sorry (none / 1)
I'm told by a more reliable source that this is false.

Wind power
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:47:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
Thomas:
Not specifically nukes. Any power source without huge seasonal or day-to-day variability will do. But we are going to need a lot of it.

But nukes has a somewhat unpredictable security variation which forces them to quickly go off line from time to time.

However, what matters is not the variability of the individual plant, but of the system as a whole. So lots of wind over a large area - say Europe - should do the trick, and so should lots of nukes over Europe, or lots of wind and nuke over Europe.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 11:09:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
That is what you want to do, but that is not the smart grid way. The system depends on not only you charging your car at night, but you also having your car's battery available in the evening to support the extra demand caused by me watching my TV. So you will be plugging in your car when you get home and leaving it plugged in until morning, because your rate will depend on the times that you have it plugged in and the amount of charge or discharge during that time. If you try to sneak out at 2:00 am and plug it in for charging, you will pay a higher rate than if you leave it plugged in from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm to provide support for my evening TV viewing.
by asdf on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 03:23:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 1)
what i don't get about this system is how it will affect length of battery life. surely the more charge cyles a battery endures, the less viable it becomes, n'est-ce pas?

so if you leave your battery disconnected after charging, it lasts longer, but you're leaching without seeding.

unless you're paid for the seeding part, or the batteries are owned by the utility...

how to work around that inconvenient truth?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 05:14:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (4.00 / 3)
The way it works in hybrid cars is that they avoid full charge and full discharge. Apparently the "wear" or damage to the cells occurs at the full and empty points, so they only use about the middle 1/3 of the charge-discharge range. Experience suggests that batteries last a long time using that model.
by asdf on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 06:47:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Peak, smeak. (none / 0)
http://www.quanta-technology.com/sites/default/files/doc-files/Survey-PEV-Impacts.pdf
talks a bit about V2G (vehicle to grid) charge-discharge scenarios....
by asdf on Wed Jan 4th, 2012 at 07:40:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Former IEA Econmist: Peak Oil within the decade | 48 comments (48 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: