Some truth to people who think we can be 100% renewable

[RetiredGypsy]

If the goal is to have a longer range, then yes, it is far better to spend money on a larger battery than on the solar panels that do not give you that much.

However, some people believe in trying getting that little bit of solar power, no matter how much it costs.

Most people would have spend the money for a solar array at home or in parking lots and plug in their cars when not moving, compared to carrying the little but expensive panels with you that add so little to your cruising range. Perhaps the buyers do not read the fine print that they only get 6 mi/day. They are going to be mad.

How does the Jurassic Park quote go? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should.

 

[NW-Bound]

I don't know if you can draw any parallel to the Jurassic Park movie.

Putting ineffectual solar cells on a car is only going to hurt the pocket book of people who buy such a car. It does not hurt anybody else.

 

[NW-Bound]

Central Europe has a lot of sun?

It does not. That company, Sono Motors, is based in Germany, and I assume they intend to sell it in Europe. Hence, they have to tell people how this solar car will perform in Europe.

Out of curiosity, I looked, and found that in Frankfurt, Germany, a solar panel will have 1/2 the annual production of what it delivers in Phoenix, AZ.

Multiply the 6 mi/day solar output by 2, and it is still not good enough.

 

[Bir48die]

This could be the longest three person discussion thread in history.

 

[Another Reader]

All I can say is I hope there is some truth to this, because the City of San Jose is about to hop on the bandwagon to ban new NG connections. There is also a push to put car charging facilities in all new multi-family buildings sufficient to serve 70 percent of the units, if what I saw quoted on Nextdoor (a reliable source...) is accurate.

Although I am on a low information diet to control my stress and blood pressure, I saw something to the effect that the City was declaring a "climate emergency" to implement all kinds of energy related restrictions without consulting the voters. Sound familiar?

The comments on Nextdoor are from a combination of engineers and people with physics backgrounds that raise the same issues as raised here, and the folks who think solar energy is the greatest invention ever and will solve all our problems.

The City has recently taken over providing electricity from PG&E. PG&E charges you for delivery and grid maintenance and the City charges for the electricity their astute energy traders buy on your behalf. If it's anything like the City-provided water, it will ultimately be twice as expensive and half as reliable.

Time to stop thinking about this, as I can feel the blood pressure rocketing skywards...

 

[Rianne]

Amazon is taking serious steps, finally.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...-rivian-total-ev-suvs-pickups-built-to-date-0
Google, chiming in.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-amazon-make-sweeping-renewable-energy-commitments/
Seems to have the biggest impact at corporate level. Hopefully, this will start a wave of involvement without Govt. intervention.

 

[ERD50]

All I can say is I hope there is some truth to this, because the City of San Jose is about to hop on the bandwagon to ban new NG connections. ... Time to stop thinking about this, as I can feel the blood pressure rocketing skywards...

All I can say is I wish that the people who are pushing this beyond reason are also put on the list of having their power shut down first when there is a pending brown out.

But that ain't gonna happen. Take another BP pill.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

Amazon is taking serious steps, finally.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...-rivian-total-ev-suvs-pickups-built-to-date-0
Google, chiming in.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-amazon-make-sweeping-renewable-energy-commitments/
Seems to have the biggest impact at corporate level. Hopefully, this will start a wave of involvement without Govt. intervention.

So how does Amazon buying a bunch of Electric delivery trucks do anything for renewable energy? Those trucks will be sucking up more electricity, and since we aren't even close to having a regular excess supply of renewable energy for present electrical demand, this just means the power grid will be burning more fossil fuel.

Which leads to the question - is a fossil fuel power plant cleaner than burning gasoline in a modern hybrid (hybrid tech makes a lot of sense for start/stop delivery vehicles)? Probably not by much, if at all.

I'd have to review the 'investments' in renewable energy they talk about. Often this is just buying credits, kind of a shell game. And if they are actually installing RE themselves, I wonder if it would not have been installed otherwise? Maybe they just decide to purchase it themselves for PR? I dunno, but it is worth questioning, I think.

-ERD50

 

[Rianne]

So how does Amazon buying a bunch of Electric delivery trucks do anything for renewable energy? Those trucks will be sucking up more electricity, and since we aren't even close to having a regular excess supply of renewable energy for present electrical demand, this just means the power grid will be burning more fossil fuel.

Which leads to the question - is a fossil fuel power plant cleaner than burning gasoline in a modern hybrid (hybrid tech makes a lot of sense for start/stop delivery vehicles)? Probably not by much, if at all.

I'd have to review the 'investments' in renewable energy they talk about. Often this is just buying credits, kind of a shell game. And if they are actually installing RE themselves, I wonder if it would not have been installed otherwise? Maybe they just decide to purchase it themselves for PR? I dunno, but it is worth questioning, I think.

-ERD50

Where have you been, ERD50? You raise good questions, as usual, being an engineer and all. I can't compete with your knowledge and attention to detail. I just read articles and hope for the best.

 

[JoeWras]

Here's another solar EV prototype car called Sion from Sono Motors, a German startup.
It has 81 sq.ft. of solar PV cells spread out all over its body.

Wonderful. Collisions? Door dings? Keying?

Let's factor in the "carbon cost" of the repairs on these things. Oh, and then there's the cost of repair to the owners and insurance companies.

I'd have to review the 'investments' in renewable energy they talk about. Often this is just buying credits, kind of a shell game.

Credits are just a scheme to allow all these big talkers like rock bands claim they are carbon neutral, when in no way are they. As usual, the top 0.1% bask in their luxury jets feeling all good about their public image as being green, because of the credit shell game.

If you want to talk about it and preach to us, then join us in our 800 sq. ft. house with exclusive solar hot water heat. And pray for sunny days in the winter.

 

[NW-Bound]

I wonder how Amazon will charge up its fleet of 100,000 electric trucks. The trucks will be out doing delivery during the day, and cannot be plugged in to the grid to charge when the sun is shining.

It is not even as good as commuters' cars that in theory can be charged during the day when their owners are at work.

And so, Amazon will be charging at night, using juice from coal burning plants?

To be green, they will have to be charged at night by electricity from wind mills. That will limit the deployment of the trucks quite a bit.

 

[CardsFan]

To be green, they will have to be charged at night by electricity from wind mills. That will limit the deployment of the trucks quite a bit.

"It's not easy being green" Kermit T. Frog

 

[samclem]

I wonder how Amazon will charge up its fleet of 100,000 electric trucks. The trucks will be out doing delivery during the day, and cannot be plugged in to the grid to charge when the sun is shining.
. . . .

No, it is easy! Just like I can choose a residential power provider that uses renewable sources. Amazon just needs to check the box that says they want to buy their electricity from producers who use solar power--done! And that will be what the advertising copy shows. Yes, the juice that actually goes into the trucks might have come from a coal plant, and they will burn more coal to feed those trucks. But Amazon will be buying solar power, and it'll go into the grid somewhere.

 

[Chuckanut]

All I can say is I wish that the people who are pushing this beyond reason are also put on the list of having their power shut down first when there is a pending brown out.

But that ain't gonna happen. Take another BP pill.

-ERD50

No doubt the neighborhoods where the city mothers and fathers who pass this legislation live, will be among those whose power is first reconnected.

 

[CardsFan]

No, it is easy! Just like I can choose a residential power provider that uses renewable sources. Amazon just needs to check the box that says they want to buy their electricity from producers who use solar power--done! And that will be what the advertising copy shows. Yes, the juice that actually goes into the trucks might have come from a coal plant, and they will burn more coal to feed those trucks. But Amazon will be buying solar power, and it'll go into the grid somewhere.

I think(?) your comment is tongue in cheek. Obviously this is nothing but PR.

Refer to my earlier comment from Kermit.

 

[samclem]

I think(?) your comment is tongue in cheek. Obviously this is nothing but PR.

Yes, on both counts.

 

[Chuckanut]

As usual, the top 0.1% bask in their luxury jets feeling all good about their public image as being green, because of the credit shell game.

Surely you don't mean the glitterati who flew into Palermo Italy earlier this year in their private jets, or who sailed in on their Yachts, so they could tell the rest of us that flying cattle class on vacation was ruining the environment.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/celebs-private-jets-climate-summit/

But according to Italian press reports, the attendees were expected to show up in 114 private jets, and 40 had arrived by Sunday.

Stars there also include Harry Styles, Orlando Bloom, Diane von Furstenberg, and Barry Diller, who arrived on their enormous $200 million yacht Eos, which has both sails and two 2,300-horsepower diesel engines.
Billionaire Dreamworks founder David Geffen, meanwhile, gave Perry and Bloom a ride on his $400 million yacht, Rising Sun.

Many of the attendees were seen in photos tooling around the island in high-speed sports vehicles, including Perry, who has made videos for UNICEF about climate change and was seen in a Maserati SUV that gets about 15 mpg city.

 

[explanade]

Even if electricity isn't completely from renewables, EVs are still cleaner.

Not just CO2 but other types of emissions, the kind that just contribute to smog.

Right now, there aren't enough EVs to require greater power generation. So if power plants generate more emissions for the additional electricity to charge EVs, it's negligible.

 

[ERD50]

Even if electricity isn't completely from renewables, EVs are still cleaner.

Not just CO2 but other types of emissions, the kind that just contribute to smog.
....

That's very questionable.

Yes, you'll find all sorts of pro-EV sites making the claims, and they'll point to studies that appear to back them up, but peel the onion another layer, and it becomes very questionable.

A couple things, the comparison will often be against the "average" car on the road. OK, but if the goal is to reduce emissions, one can choose a modern hybrid, which is much better than the 'average' car, and doesn't have the range issues of an EV.

And then they base the EV on 'average energy production' off the grid, rather than the marginal production (which is what matters). To that point:

... Right now, there aren't enough EVs to require greater power generation. So if power plants generate more emissions for the additional electricity to charge EVs, it's negligible.

That's simply not true. Everything you plug in requires power, it has to come from somewhere. You are talking free energy. No such thing.

If you want to say the emissions from a plugging in an EV is 'negligible', then anyone who drives an ICE can say their emissions are 'negligible'. That's not going to get us anywhere.

So say you are on a grid with 40% RE. It's all being used, there is no more (if there were more, they'd be at 41% RE!). So when you use more electrical power (for anything), somewhere on the grid, a fossil fuel plant has ramped up and produced a bit more energy. I know it seems hard to accept that a power plant is responding to you flipping a switch, but it happens. Every action has an opposite but equal reaction. If you want to argue that, you are arguing with the laws of physics, not me.

And if you think having a source of hydro power saves you, think again. Hydro might supply that need at the time, but there is only so much hydro available, so sometime later, some other source will have to supply the hydro power that you used, to allow the dam to come back up to level. Again, no free lunch.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

I just wanted to add a positive note to that last post. This whole "marginal generation" cuts both ways, so is a positive for conservation of electricity.

IOW, if I save some energy (say I replace some old high use filament bulbs with LED), the electricity I save is the marginal production on the grid, so is likely almost all fossil fuel that is being saved.

I don't save the 'average production' on the grid, because the grid will keep producing wind and solar as much as it is available. Feel better now?

But as you see, it works both ways. Extra load from an EV (or anything), is going to be provided almost 100% by fossil fuel.

-ERD50

 

[NW-Bound]

So say you are on a grid with 40% RE. It's all being used, there is no more (if there were more, they'd be at 41% RE!). So when you use more electrical power (for anything), somewhere on the grid, a fossil fuel plant has ramped up and produced a bit more energy. I know it seems hard to accept that a power plant is responding to you flipping a switch, but it happens. Every action has an opposite but equal reaction. If you want to argue that, you are arguing with the laws of physics, not me.

And if you think having a source of hydro power saves you, think again. Hydro might supply that need at the time, but there is only so much hydro available, so sometime later, some other source will have to supply the hydro power that you used, to allow the dam to come back up to level. Again, no free lunch.

-ERD50

The time when a Californian EV owner is truly using green energy is when he recharges his car when the state produces so much power in early spring, they have to pay Arizona to take some power. Yes, the solar power is not only free. Arizona gets paid to use some. Thank you.

Solar panels lose efficiency when they are hot. I see this very clearly with my own panels. And in spring and early summer, and in the morning, the panels produce peak power, yet it is still cool and the ACs are not running. Lots of power, and no use for it. You cannot give it away, and have to pay for people to take it.


---> But if you charge your EV at night, or during the late afternoon, it's not solar power that you are drawing. <---



See the following article from the LA Times from 2017: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/.

I shared it earlier, but it is worth repeating.

On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.

It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well. All told, those transactions helped save Arizona electricity customers millions of dollars this year, though grid operators declined to say exactly how much. And California also has paid other states to take power.

 

[ERD50]

The time when a Californian EV owner is truly using green energy is when he recharges his car when the state produces so much power in early spring, they have to pay Arizona to take some power. ....

Yes, if we have an excess of RE, and can charge EVs in sync with the excess, then the EV would be clean to drive.

But realistically, to what degree will this happen? Even though they say 14 days in March, how many hours (minutes?) and how much power? I recall you posting a graph, I think it from Texas, where prices shot up tremendously when there was a lack of wind and high demand. But this must not have been for long either, or average prices that month would have been higher.

If we had enough RE excess to routinely charge a large fleet of EVs, even during lulls in wind and sun, then it stands to reason we'd have a huge amount of over-capacity on the many good days. But that isn't likely to happen, because it would be very expensive to install RE if you couldn't sell a lot of it because you produced so much. Some of this would be helped with smart charging algorithms that would look ahead at your usage and weather predictions, but that will only go so far.

And you still need all that fossil fuel infrastructure in place, so people could drive during a week of low RE output. So that adds to the cost of energy. Matching supply/demand on a grid is tricky business, made very difficult with a large % of intermittent wind/solar.

-ERD50

 

[NW-Bound]

... If we had enough RE excess to routinely charge a large fleet of EVs, even during lulls in wind and sun, then it stands to reason we'd have a huge amount of over-capacity on the many good days. But that isn't likely to happen, because it would be very expensive to install RE if you couldn't sell a lot of it because you produced so much. Some of this would be helped with smart charging algorithms that would look ahead at your usage and weather predictions, but that will only go so far.

And you still need all that fossil fuel infrastructure in place, so people could drive during a week of low RE output. So that adds to the cost of energy. Matching supply/demand on a grid is tricky business, made very difficult with a large % of intermittent wind/solar.

-ERD50

That's the reason it is not easy to be 100% RE, or should I say cheap.

You must have excess capacity, so that when it is cloudy on a calm day, you still have some power. And even then, you will have to be ready to ration the power on low production days.

Germany is now planning to shut down its coal-burning power plants by 2038. They are burning natural gas instead. It's a lot cleaner than coal, but still not RE.

 

[explanade]

Rather have too much than too little.

All the more reason to plan for battery storage systems.

 

[ERD50]

Rather have too much than too little. ....

Easy for you to say. But consider the one paying for those solar panels and/or wind turbines. If they put in enough to have enough in poor conditions, they can't sell the "too much" that they will often have. That makes it a further and further more questionable investment. The more you try to cover the lulls, the more overage you have that you can't sell. Throwing away 1/2 or 3/4 of your production to avoid having too little is a tough economic place to be.

Grid operators now have peaker plants that may only run a few hours a year. That costs money too. The difference is, they can run them when they want. Big difference.

.... All the more reason to plan for battery storage systems.

We've gone over the extreme challenge of covering the overnight demand during a week of low sun, and maybe low wind at the same time.

So you show us how to do it. Numbers, dollars.

-ERD50