The Issue with going all Electric

The Governor asked people not to charge their vehicles during peak hours.

Newer electric vehicles already have the capacity to return stored power to the grid. Upgraded grids can benefit from the storage electric cars offer. They can balance supply and demand making battery electric vehicles part of the solution instead of the problem. Some car owners are already using this option on a domestic level.

Any solution we are going to use for our future power demands is going to make heavier use of the grid. Upgrading it is going to have to happen anyway and technically not that complicated.

 

Ah ah ah !!! I know you Flotation. I've read all your links before giving my answer. That's why I was talking about extraction holes in the ground in my post. And about underground waters pollution.
It is no surprise for no ones - please see this report from 2020 - that there is some sources of material unexploited till now, and If we continue your reasonning, why, in addition to the ground extraction that will not be sufficient at all to feed our
gargantuan appetite, don't we go also mining in the depth of our oeans,on the justification of diversification - please see document abot polynodules-?

Will substituting massive exploitation by another will makes us "Greener" ? Will exploiting new areas of our planets will reduce the pressure that we put on our environnement ?

 

If we go to put some electrical/electronical component in every single part of every single object we use in our everyday life. Certainly. If we are expecting a growth of the size of TV's, cars, refrigerators, certainly.

In France, https://www.rte-france.com/analyses...s/bilan-previsionnel-2050-futurs-energetiques, our politics have established their road map to 2050 in terms of energy. RTE is our national grid firma. Their money, their grid, their politics. From non renewable to renewable/sustainable power supply, several scenarios are explored, and statistically experienced with the figures they have from the grid monitoring and historicity.

Reading the different scenario, it becomes obvious that, every time "efficiency" is written, one should understand "decrease". For instance, Energy efficiency means Energy decrease. And there is only two options to obtain this result :
1. get a better actual efficiency ie reduce loss in devices by conservation or combinaison of devices
2. do not use as much as energy as time goes by ie reduce opportunities to spend energy

RTE makes their prevision based on new technologies that still need to be discovered to realize (1). Are we, in France, be capable of (2) ? I guess that the actual rise of the price of electricity will finally help us ! And in your country, how your politics are preparing you ?

 

They will probably need wagons pulled by unicorns to get to work.

 

Trying to reconstruct what happened to our conversation, your "extractions holes" comment was in your reply to @seandepagnier and the text you quoted from him. You can't blame me for missing that.

I specifically mentioned the Zero Carbon Lithium Project and the accompanying article because it is one of the most environmentally friendly mining methods available. It can even be energy positive because of the high temperatures of brines deep underground. As mentioned in the article i linked and even quoted for you convenience in a later comment.

The Stanford studies i linked specifically mention reduction of our needs as part of the solution.

Nobody is talking about mining polynodules from ocean floors, why do you keep mentioning these.

With the world turning away from fossil fuels, even if only because we run out of them, industry, domestic heating and transportation all will have to rely more on electricity from the grid instead of fossil fuels. A huge expansion of grid capacity is inevitable in every scenario.

As mentioned before, the Stanford studies put emphasis on energy needs reduction.

I wish every one of the 139 counties examined in the Stanford studies followed the path and policies proposed in them.

 

There is no such thing as "energy positive". The amount of energy in the Universe is limited. There is no proof that energy can be created. Energy transferred from one part to another will always have an effect on the overall system. The magic bullet does not exist. History proves that every magical solution always creates unforeseen issues. Only a realistic view of what the consequences of a technology are, and an adult acceptance of them could prevent future global problems.

 

Thank you for demonstrating you understanding of fundamental physics. Within the scope of this discussion and me mentioning "because of the high temperatures of brines deep underground" in the context of "energy positive" in the same sentence i think most people understood the point.

The issue we are facing at the moment is the one of global warming because of our excessive use of fossil fuels. I presented what are currently seen as solutions to this problem with the smallest impact on our standard of living and our environment.

If you have a better solutions instead of your "unicorns" please feel free to contribute.

 

I think Russia did.

 

Everybody cool talk about metallic polynodules. It's the matter that will arrive, no matter what, in this discussion. Friendly mining....I often come in Germany to do some buisness, and feel very inconfortable with enormous fields of wind turbines... What for ? Deutschland import electric energy from our nuclear power station, in France. Pretending to be green on the outside.
On the inside... it's somewhat different. Well, I guess that there is some politics still maintaining the hope in people's heart that they will have a bigger TV next year !!

 

Yes, our standard of living is no longer sustainable. The population will have to move from suburbia back into cities and allow the farmland that has been paved over back to food production. Random travelling in cars, etc. will be restricted or banned. Resources are limited.

 

Upgrading the grid involves mining, manufacturing and clear cutting swathes of land for the powerlines. All these are opposed by the same "greens" that want more electric power availability.

 

My understanding is that power plant generators cannot be idled or sped up, and have to be designed to produce close enough to Peak power so that small enough generators can be brought up to speed quickly to make up the peak difference when necessary? If so, that means a lot of energy is wasted during non peak hours... So isn't the big elephant in the room- energy storage? Since cars spend 95% of their time parked, wouldn't a tethered EV be a helpful way to absorb a power plants excess, and then used to feed some back during Peak hours, depending upon the owner's choice? During the February 21, 2021 freeze Brown out @ Texas, the price per kilowatt hour went to $9, whereas the average before that was around 12 cents per kilowatt hour. Someone might have made a lot of money feeding back electric power to the grid at the peak price, say half of their EV's battery capacity, haha?

I don't think anybody knows for sure how long the lithium battery era will last, and lithium will probably wind up being greener compared to the consequences from many decades of fossil fuel combustion and dumping in various forms. Most of the energy (70% to 90% depending on process) from the combustion of a gallon of gasoline is produced in the form of heat, yet a gasoline car uses mostly the explosion part to move itself forward, dumping the heat part into the environment. Maybe it's better to burn it in a power plant (with economy of scale and scrubbers) which uses the heat part and not so much the explosion part? Also fuels are rapidly being depleted (or why oil depletion allowance). Don't we need to conserve FF for some of the unique products we can't get any other way, like Pharmaceuticals, JMHO...

The next energy step is probably hydrogen fuel cells, once they are perfected, and of course they will have their own new associated pollution issues. Hydrogen is presently an expensive fuel that can be extracted from seawater by electrolysis, and H2 may be several times more efficient and cleaner than combustion processes... The ultimate goal at this time appears to be controlled nuclear fusion power plants which are similar to solar power / sun's power, though that answer may be more than several decades away. Nuclear Fusion can be done without radioactivity or severe pollution being a consideration from what I understand, and it yields huge amounts of energy compared to the same amount of chemical fuels. Fusion Energy could be used to make hydrogen for fuel cells or electric power, likely very cheaply compared to combustion processes? Also speculation that it might also serve as a nuclear incinerator which reduces everything to its simple atoms because of the very high temperatures involved...

Hope this helps.

 

Didn't Tesla, (the real one) power an electric boat from some gadget he invented, from a box earthed in the ground, containing some mercury and electrical components, and an earth strap into the water on the boat, long before transistors ? It powered around in a lake, free of power costs, apart from his equipment. His inventions worked, but were taken over by greedy so and so's, eg. the anti war machine, now re-named, and the cause of aerial pollution world wide, seeding the atmosphere for weather control by electricity. If every home had a 100 foot vertical aerial on their 1/4 acre self sufficiency block of land, 'static' electricity, and lightening power could be harvested and stored. Steam powered push bikes that run on bacon fat and dripping from home. Mmmm bacon.
When I was a kid, my toys were wind up spring types, push along by hand, or rubber bands, not a remote control, except a tethered one for the B and W TV . An ants nest, a creek, a dead rat on a stick, was entertainment, not game boys, or 3D immersive technology needing a powerful computer, no YouTube or TicTok or interweb to waste hours and kilowatts on.
It really all gets back to culture change, about what is important, staying alive and healthy beyond the forseeable future, or having destructive toys and entertainment as we kill our planet, and all the other animals that live here, while a handful of 'people' enrich themselves in the name of maintaining their control over the masses. Should we start a whale breeding operation, since whale oil was a major supply of lighting energy for centuries. And slavery was quite popular as an energy supply for a few centuries, and ongoing by some reports.
Do we need drag racing, and aeroplane races, and Grans Prix, and so many other polluting and destructive 'sports'. Could we adapt to EV drag races, without the clouds of rubber smoke, ethanol and castor oil fumes, and exploding fireball engines ? Glider races ? Paris to Dakar on solar panels, not ripping up so much of delicate desert ecosystems.
Cradle to grave pollution control should apply to everything, and in modern boating, plastic resins and various fibres used needs an efficient and safe way to recycle or dispose of them when beyond re-use. Coming back to batteries, there are many decades of battery cell production, but I'd bet that less than 1 % of total production world wide has been recycled, and the rest is mostly in landfills, corroding apart and leaching out chemicals into un-sealed basins, into ground water. Did world governments design battery recycling systems before allowing the sale of them ? Did world governments design chemical recycling, and reclamation, and safe handling systems, and safe disposal, before each toxic chemical invented is allowed to be sold and used ? We can't rely on governments, because they are owned by greed, so do what you can yourselves.
Curb your uses and excesses yourself, train your kids not to be sheep following retail trends for useless products. Collector cards, fidget spinners, computer games ?? Bring out all those hidden technologies from urban myths that were apparently bought out by the oil industries and buried, or suppressed some other ways, like how the successful electro medicine industry was.
I think I got carried away, but there is a lot to think about. Rome wasn't built in a day, and our technological mess wasn't either, but it's going to take a lot longer to repair the mess than it took to make it. And the people who profited from making the mess are mostly dead, so their enriched estates should be used to repair their damage.
How many lemons, potatoes, copper rods, and carbon rods would it take to electrically drive a container ship through a Pacific storm ?

 

When people speak of expensive alternatives, and costly emergency measures, it's helpful to remember what every engineer knows intuitively: the energy cost, or environmental cost of doing something is very closely related to the dollar cost of doing it. Provided you're aware of externalized costs. At the moment, almost everything we do makes the problem worse.

And getting back a bit in the thread, the cost of nuclear generation is artificially high. Every iteration of regulation lards on more grotesquely demanding bales of red tape, with no relationship to reality whatsoever. It's as if the goal of the nuclear regulators was to bring about the total green house death of life on earth.

 

Should have started the process 50 years ago. This is the opposite of what is happening. Electric car "future" ensures the pavement is maintained and continues to prevent plant growth and water from draining properly while absorbing direct sunlight and radiating heat. This will lead to eventual complete collapse of society (but not in the lifetime of most current policy makers)

Right now, the power grid is obsolete using 100 year old technology. This is all using AC power even though we now finally have the technology to make DC power more efficient at all voltages. You could argue at medium voltages (120-20,000) it is a toss-up, and AC is more reliable since it doesn't require transistors and can continue with existing hardware, but for how long? I personally dont use AC power for anything on my boat, and it makes no sense to. Switching dc-dc converter out-perform transformers for transmission as AC has higher transmission losses, so long range grid links are more often high voltage DC. It is better to produce and consume power locally at reasonable DC voltages and consider that it is not always possible to run any appliance if power is not available. I dont think most houses should be connected to a grid, but instead, locate various industries near wind fields and design them from the start with intermittent power being a hard requirement.

Right now 12% of power generated in the USA is from renewables and this is already more than enough electricity for everyone. Americans consume at least 10 times more energy than they need to without any loss of quality of life, just a different lifestyle is needed. Consider A/C which is a large energy use but also encourages the use of crappy building materials that cannot withstand humidity. So the A/C unit must run even if the dwelling is unoccupied. The building should use passive heat/cool for ground source for heat and cooling. Most other energy use has similar solutions, for example, refrigeration actually is not very important and can easily be done without in most cases.

There is more than 3kwh of electricity from wind turbines generated per day per person in the USA. I am not using any of it directly, instead I get 0.5kwh from solar in a good day, and average is much less and it is plenty of power. This to me indicates that we do not need additional wind power. It is now time to remove the fossil fuel power plants and let the market adjust the price of electricity. I dont think $5 per kwh is very expensive, and you can use it to charge your electric car if you want. If you want to use "gasoline" (ethanol) or "diesel" (vegetable oil) for $35 a gallon that seems reasonable too. We can provide either type of energy at those prices without co2 emissions.

Nuclear power is always in question because the unique material cannot be replaced, (not renewable) and is most suitable for space travel and exploration. It is kind of a waste to use it to boil water. If it is used at all, it should be optimized to reduce co2 emissions. Right now, wind is barely beating nuclear in total lifecycle grams of co2/kwh, because the cement in construction of the reactor. It seems like nuclear is using 50 year old plants, and they were never optimized for emissions in construction as well as minimizing emissions of obtaining the nuclear fuel needs to be carefully scrutinized.

this more or less may seal our fate.