Plug-in Hybrids Might not Need New Power Plants
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 03.13.08
A new study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory looked at the impact that plug-in hybrids (and indirectly, electric cars) might have on the US electricity grid in the next few decades. They found that, as they say, timing is everything: If the cars were recharged after 10 P.M. there might not be a need for new power plants (in their "high-demand" scenario, 8 new plants are required).
This means that we would get the net benefit from the removal of all these gasoline and diesel vehicles without much more pollution coming from the grid. Actually, we hope that by that time any new generation built will be clean (wind, wave, solar, geothermal, etc).
What if the timing was bad? The researchers looked at what would happen if all these vehicles were plugged in at 5 P.M. (at 6 kW of power on average, with a 25 percent market penetration by 2020) and found that up to 160 new power plants would have to be built. That might still make sense if many of those are clean and if it means millions less fossil-fuel powered cars on the road (someone would have to do the math), but it definitely would be sub-optimal.
Of course, we can't assume that people would plug their cars at night without any incentives or ways to balance out the inconvenience, but we don't think that would be a show-stopper.
Smart-metering could make the electricity rates vary almost in real time based on the supply-demand situation, and programmable chargers could be set to only charge cars between certain hours, or when rates are below a certain level. You wouldn't need to get up late at night and manually go plug the car; just plug it whenever, and the charger will do the rest.
Fully electric cars would of course need more power than plug-ins, but by using smart-charging and smart-metering we could use the power that we already have more efficiently. For example, have cars start charging whenever we're producing more than we're using (day or night). This might be a very windy or sunny day and wind and solar farms are producing more power than can be used.
Of course at some point new power generation will be needed, but if it is clean and internal combustion cars are replaced, it could still be a big gain.
::ORNL study shows hybrid effect on power distribution, via ::Electric Cars Will Not Need New Electric Power Plants?
See also: ::OEMtek Turns Hybrids into Plug-in Hybrids, ::BYD F6DM: Will the First Plug-In Hybrid be Chinese?, ::GM's Chevy Volt Price Goes Up; Stereo, Wipers to Blame, ::How's The Google Plug-In Hybrid Fleet Doing?
"without much more pollution coming from the grid" except that the existing plants will be running at a higher capacity in the evenings as well.
Also, I don't know much about the power system in the U.S., but I'm guessing that they probably do maintenance and other checks during those off-peak hours when a plant can run on 2 of 3 generators, etc. Altho I hope they took this sort of information into account for their study.
Many plants can't shut down at night (coal, maybe nuclear?) because it simply takes too long to fire them back up. All that power is currently wasted. Demand goes down quite a lot at night, and it's impossible for production to go down by as much as just start back up immediately in the morning.
Given these findings I hope America moves quickly toward electric vehicles. Those of us with children in tow are anxiously awaiting the holy grail of eco-friendly vehicles: the hybrid/electric minivan. Hopefully it will appear before my children are in college and/or the polar ice caps turn to slush.
Two problems with this:
1) As Lou over at his The Cost of Energy blog says, "I’m aware of the studies that talk about how we can electrify a lot a of our transportation purely on the nighttime excess generating capacity. I strongly suspect that a lot of people counting on that presumed pattern to ease our transition to electrified transportation will be shocked (no pun intended) by the number of drivers who don’t plug-in on a schedule that’s optimally convenient for society."
2) Many areas run on 'baseline' power. That is, they use power sources that are hard to ramp up on a daily basis for the generation that needs to happen both day and night, and use quickly-ramping power sources (i.e. natural gas plants) for the extra generation required during the day. But, IANACE (I am not a civil engineer).
The solution to the first is conceptually simple but will probably face huge regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles: simply charge consumers more for power they use during the day, while preferably showing them on a real-time basis how much the power is costing them ('smart meters'). People will adjust their power usage accordingly, and more quickly than you'd expect.
Some power companies already offer off peak incentives.
Having power plants run at full capacity is actually better because they are made to me most efficient at full power. therefore they pollute the least per kwh at full power.
Furthermore, it is actually nuc plants that take the longest to start. hence they are used for base load. thermo plants are next (coal & gas) which are much quicker and used as peaking plants. Hydro plants are the quickest to be able to change load and are also used for peaking power. However, in Ontario because we have a lack of power generation most of our coal plants are being used for base load. I believe we have a total capacity of 30 000 MW? last summer our greatest load demand was 27 000 MW
As for power being wasted at night, no chance. When it costs $30 000/h for one unit to run there is no way they will let anything go to waste. The plant justs ends up in a low load mode which, as i said above, is dirty.
Something to consider here is that hopefully we won't have coal or nuclear for too, too much longer. So what happens to electric cars when they can't rely on coal or nuclear for a charge? That's when we'll have to add more power sources.
Which electric car is featured charging? I know the second one is a concept vehicle from Volvo.
If they build something like the Rav4 in a Electric Vehicle I'd buy it.
ecodog, that top one looks like the plug in hybrid Smart forFour. The forFour is, sadly, no more.
A small wind turbine would suit all my needs. Reform NEV laws now!
Instead of adding power plants, we could use flow batteries to store off peak power. These battery plants can then be a transitional technology for wind and solar.
http://tinyurl.com/25mot5
Also, don't forget that sometimes you want a case where load drops...the utilities use that time to do rotating maintenance on their generators.
Some people would think a perfectly level load all the time is a good thing...but technically it's not ;) !
If we start to 'fill the valleys' in this uneven demand, it'll put more pressure on the nighttime maintenance. I'm sure things can be worked out (at least until everyone's running an electric and all our oil usage is simply transformed into extra grid usage!), but it bears mentioning.
About time people started realising this...!
Petition:
We, the undersigned, call on the Governments of the world to use some common sense when distributing Energy subsidies.
Why must the taxpayer subsidise the largest cause of man-made Global Warming(Fossil Fuel electricity generation) whilst alternative energy solutions such as Solar Thermal are forced to struggle?
Why must the consumer be asked to pay extra for "Green" Energy when his/her taxes are subsidising the very antithesis?
We, the undersigned, are not impressed with such hypocrisy.
http://www.gopetition.com/online/17583.html
*pass it on!*
The top car is either a Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 or the Peugeot 107. All three have a common base with small variations for each manufacturer. So you can't tell the difference easily.
They are quite popular over here in Europe...
Leave COAL OUT and manage NUCLEAR WASTE!
Here in Québec Canada, we use Hydro-Electricity.
Based on people's ignorance; this is the paragraph that needs to be emphasize:
".... programmable chargers could be set to only charge cars between certain hours, or when rates are below a certain level. You wouldn't need to get up late at night and manually go plug the car; just plug it whenever, and the charger will do the rest."
Because you know: "what?? I have to get up at 12am to plug the car??" will be the typical reaction. And inconvenience is unacceptable in this society.
The solution, as you alluded to, is simple: a charging station that connects to the internet via your wireless network. The charging station then has two big buttons: "fast" and "economy". The fast option is necessary because sometimes you will actually need the thing charged up fully at 5:00pm, no matter the cost. But most of the time, you're home for the evening, and the charger can take its time over the next 12 hours or so, grabbing electricity as the rates fall.
For this to work, the power companies will have to enter the last century and start varying rates in real time according to demand, then making that data available via the web for the charging systems to hook up with.
The thing is that we already have to change over our power plants to zero emissions renewable energy in order to combat global warming and ethanol is not a solution in my opinion so really that leaves hydrogen and electric hydrogen needs electricity as well to be made and then you have to transport it not to mention the construction of the infrastructure alone would have a far larger carbon footprint than creating more power plants the key is that we have to use zero emissions technology but in my opinion electric is the way to go
In terms of timing, that is a trivial issue. Our 2002 RAV4-EV (a 100-mile battery EV with 76,000 miles on it so far) has a timer to start charge at whatever time you program. You arrive home, plug it in, and go in the house. At 10pm or whenever, the car charges, and in the morning she is ready to drive off with a full tank.
A more sophisticated system would base charging on deadlines and utility loads, but for now the trivial system works well for load shifting.
Also, our off-peak electricity rate is one third our peak rate. We run the meter backward at the peak rate from our PV system and run it backward at night at the low rate to charge our EVs (actually we have two).
I don't know why we consider it more energy efficient to run the cars on electricity if most of the electricity we get is from fussil fuel resources.
Isn't more efficient to do the combustion directly in the car than losing much of the energy in transfereing it from the grid to the car??
"Isn't more efficient to do the combustion directly in the car than losing much of the energy in transfereing it from the grid to the car??"
It isn't, sadly. Even our most efficient cars lose almost all of the energy contained in the fuel as heat.
Several thoughts. Firstly, SMUDD, Vacaville, and other places/entities have/are building solar car ports, (huge ones that cover entire parking lots, although there are residential units as well) to provide clean renewable energy. Many of these systems also have EV recharging stations beneath. There are rapid rechargers that give a 75% charge on about 15 minutes. So, in the states/counties that have ZEV mandates, you'll see the rapid recharging, clean energy, non fossil fuel dependent infrastructure.
You can find used RAV EVs on the web but they'll run you $60,000+. May be less expensive to just convert something you currently own. There are high speed highway EVs available, however, only the Telsa's in production. Still, doesn't mean you can't buy the others.
Are people thinking about conservation? The first, fastest, cheapest thing by far is to reduce energy usage by changing your habits. Then you can get the hybrids and still get rid of power plants instead of adding them. Here's how it works:
We reinsulated our roof last winter and started doing many of the well-known things that save energy in the home. It brought our electricty use down by 1/3 in a year. It was no sacrifice, except for the shorter showers, and we don't even notice the difference (well, OK--...a more comfortable house, and much lower oil and electricity bills...). The reduced usage has much more than made up for the cost of a green electricity contract (available in many states, by the way...). All our power use is replaced in the grid by low-impact hydro and wind certs. So....even if we get a plug-in hybrid and charge it every night, our expenses and total power use would be LESS than before, and it would be coming from green sources.
people have mentioned "dynamic demand" stuff but nobody mentioned either that wind is up at night, so that actually means having vehicles plugged in then helps stabilize the business end of wind farming; and also that ultimately maybe nobody has to plug in the cars or scooters or whatever if swappable batteries become practical. then you have much better flexibility of both travel and charging.
Why doesn't this article mention how much electricity is saved NOT spent on refining additional gasoline?
There is a HUGE energy load just bringing crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, refining it, then shipping it again burning more fuel and using more electricity to refine the shipping costs, ect ect
If we could cut Oil usage by half, then more electricity would be saved than used if we charged vehicles from the grid.
Has there been any studies on cars coated in solar cells and/or small night time used wind mills....seems this would help reduce power plant needed electricity
This is the coolest thing iv'e ever SEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AHHHHHHHHHHH
Existing plants won't be run at higher capacity for the most part and the reason is this, 50% of our energy comes from coal, 19% comes from nuclear, neither of these sources can be throttled that fast, so at night they still run full bore, all of the excess energy produced is just wasted, it's dissipated as waste heat.
There is so much waste that it could power all of our daily commute without additional capacity with the exception of the Pacific Northwest which relies heavily on hydro, which is throttleable.
So no new pollution produced at the plants, because the waste capacity is enough to power our commute, and at the same time all of that tailpipe emission eliminated, if we could move the entire commute to electric power.