However, most models suggest that electricity consumption will significantly increase over the next couple of decades. Efficiency isn’t going to go close to covering the extra demand from EVs and electrifying heating.
There is no 'extra demand' as electricy is energy.
The overall 'energy' needed will be less because EVs do not waste 70% of energy to heat and a heat pump creates out of 1 energy unit 2-5 energy units.
It is also much easier to efficiently do gas to power/oil to power in big plants and use the excess process energy for other things.
Even if our whole society will consume more energy in the next x years, thanks to EVs and electrifying heating (with heatpump) this line/graph/curve will be less than if we would not have EV and e heating through heatpumps.
GP said electricity consumption, not energy. While it's true that EVs use less energy (in a raw material/CO2 sense), they clearly use more grid-supplied electricity, and grid capacity needs to be built to meet that demand.
I haven’t bothered to dig through the details of this report, but the total energy use in petroleum refining is about 4% of US total energy consumption.
Even making conservative assumptions about how much of that is electricity, net demand for electricity is going to go up.
This is also what the people who model this stuff for a living are predicting - somewhere around doubling to tripling of electricity demand by 2050 IIRC.
Very little of the energy used in petroleum refining is electricity. About half of it comes from the refinery's own byproducts; and a big remainder is from natural gas or coal used to produce heat.
Indeed, I just peeked at your report and it says the same thing: "Nearly one-half the energy consumed by refineries is obtained from
by-product refinery gas and coke, and about one-third is supplied by
natural gas. "
And long-distance transmission, storage, nuclear, geothermal... because we still want temperate buildings and movable vehicles when the weather is uncooperative.
However, it's already possible in some jurisdictions to play in the wholesale market with a home battery, and the same should apply for V2G.
If they were offering, say, $2/kwh for the electricity in my car battery, unless I needed to take a long trip immediately afterwards I'd very happily take it. Wholesale peaks can go even higher than that on occasion!
How many vehicle owners are flexible enough to give up driving for several days, in exchange for a $120 payout?
I think EVs can smooth out the daily bumps, but we need something to stabilize the grid over longer periods without burning fossil fuels. At least for the US, lots of long-distance transmission should help, because weather events generally don't affect the entire country.
If they are charging during low usage times, they are already doing that. In areas where that’s at night, EVs are in a good place grid-wise if they are charging at home.
That's not really storage though; it's a day or two of load shedding. Unfavorable weather patterns can last for more than a week. Electricity prices are currently pretty stable from day to day because we burn gas or coal when all else fails.
It is storage if you have a constant baseline like nuclear or coal that needs to be used in any case, and isn’t used as much at tonight. Yes, you could use pumped storage instead to capture unused baseline, but EV batteries charging at night work as well.
Yes, nuclear is a good complement to ~24 hour storage, and removes the need for several-day storage. The problem with coal is that it's killing a lot of people.
The big problem is balancing generation and demand. Demand is variable and it is very hard to spin generation up and down. Gas peaked plants have been a popular way to solve it. Electric cars are actually a brilliant way of flattening out the demand curve so that utilities have to do less ramping up and down.
There’s a significant amount of good they can do simply by consuming power at night.
The US will need to at least double power generation and transport capacity to support 300 million EVs. Today our capacity is approximately 1200 gigawatts. We need to double that, or more. And then we have to upgrade the entire power transmission infrastructure to support the change.
No, solar alone cannot do it. At best, solar can deliver about 40% reliability. Wind alone isn’t much better. The combination of solar and wind (equal parts) can deliver 70% to 80% reliability. A more optimal mix, in most of the world, is 25% solar with 75% wind, overbuild by a factor of 2 and with 3 to 12 hours of storage. This gets you to over 90% reliability in most of the world. Places like Canada and Rusia need more wind and less solar to achieve this performance.
The problem is equipment service life. The replacement cycle, given today’s technology, is approximately three decades. Recycling options are far from practical or mature. This means that mass conversion to th technologies we have today will result on a massive replacement/reconstruction event every 30 years. Nobody can even begin to imagine the ecological consequences of such a scenario.
Wind is getting a lot more reliable as we build taller turbines. There are some states that are deploying units that are almost a kilometer tall. At those heights, currents are much more stable.
The tech will get there and I don’t think we have that much longer to wait.
> In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.
Yeah, well, take the time to write a realistic simulation of 300 million EVs, from motorcycles to big rigs, driven and charged differently, across 1000 cities armed with population and other demographic data…and you quickly conclude some of these articles are delusional.
It is also true that some nations will do a better job than others. And some have better circumstances and starting points.
In the US? We have become so dysfunctional we would probably crumble if we added a few million EVs in most states.
I was just in Zürich at a conference and had interesting conversations with experts and leaders in the energy sector; from hydro to geothermal and more. It is clear that some are taking the transition seriously, while others are not. The key differentiator is pushing ideology rather than reality.
Only one of those stances gets us to the clean renewable energy future we all want.
I’m not sure that picking an opinion piece from a conservative publication in probably the worst state for managing energy is “reality”. Notice they are calling for more coal? Funny that.
I’m not even sure that picking Texas is reasonable given the isolation of its grid which is where some of these problems stem from.
> an opinion piece from a conservative publication
With apologies and respect, that is a bigoted perspective. Humanity does advance if this is how we view each other. It is possible to have a conservative perspective and be right or wrong. It is also possible to have the opposite perspective and also be right or wrong.
If you had bothered to read the article, you'd see they provide data and references. You can go and verify the claims, which boil down to wind and solar pretty much collapsing when needed due to conditions. Yet, you stopped at "Texas" and "Conservative" and that's all you needed to know about what they had to say.
The source does not matter. Only the veracity or falsehood of what is being proposed does. If you stop at the source --however you choose to classify it-- you fail to use your intelligence to gain understanding.
Are we to disbelieve academic publications because most academics lean to the left?
How about this: Let's not believe anything a gay person says...just because they are gay. Or a black person...just because they are black. Or a white person...just because they are white. Or a child yelling "fire"...just because they are a child.
How does progress happen if we behave this way? How does a gay person convince anyone of the merits of their claims if they are discounted just because they are gay?
Read the article. Study the matter to a sufficient depth of understanding. Then, and only then, form an opinion or pass judgement based on understanding, not bigotry. Most people speaking on these matters do so out of abject ignorance. Few bother to take deep-enough dives into any of it. Just emotion and ideological alignment.
Everyone wants to live in a clean world, with clean energy and a bright future for their kids and generations to come. That's a universal truth. I have yet to find anyone who, when asked, says they prefer filth and unbreathable air.
There's another reality that escapes most, likely because few like to think beyond the headline or deeper than the superficial: Where we are today was an inevitable result of humanities reality. Up until not too many decades ago, the ONLY way for us to survive was to burn stuff for energy; to cook, move, build, heal, survive.
The clean energy future we all want had to wait for such things as the invention of the transistor and its evolution into sophisticated electronics, computers, etc. Now, armed with better technology, better science, greater understanding and the ability to manufacture things we could not have even imagined just a few decades ago can we begin an energy transition that will benefit us all. The technologies we need are still in flux and in much need of improvement.
The key take-away from this understanding is that vilifying half the universe as we transition to a better paradigm only serves to slow down that transition. We still have no choice but to burn stuff to make energy. That is a fact. If we hurry to transition given today's technologies all we are going to accomplish is to create a horrific ecological disaster in just a few decades.
Lessons should be learned about what has happened in Germany with the demented "green" activists causing the shutdown of nuclear power plants, which led to actually having to burn massive amounts of fuel for energy...exactly the opposite of green. These people are crazy. The good news is that they are now seeing much-needed push-back in countries like Holland and Germany.
The transition will likely take well into next century. And that's just fine. The world isn't going to end any time soon.
> The replacement cycle, given today’s technology, is approximately three decades.
Every ICE vehical sold today can be expected to be in use for decades to come. And there's something like 1.2 billion passenger cars worldwide.
I forget the details of the analysis, but the gist is with our current policies, worldwide personal transportation is unlikely to hit our 2050 net-zero targets.
IIRC, I gleened this observation from Horace Dediu's Asymco podcast. (Or Micromobility?) Dediu has been promoting micromobility (scooters, e-bikes, cargo bikes, etc) for quite a while now (decade?), to address this challenge.
Of course, Dediu and others also advocate public transportation, densification, etc. to further reduce miles traveled.
Or we just need to remove the roadblocks to nuclear, stop deploying brain dead reactor designs and move on. The problem is the current "green" push is more about religious belief or the current "in crowd" making money that solving real problems, so don't expect arguments based on logic or reason to be welcomed.
While I do believe nuclear has to be part of the solution, it simply isn’t the entire solution. Full electrification in the US would require the construction of 1200 new nuclear power plants. This isn’t possible.
A combination of technologies will have to be the answer. Nuclear offers over 92% capacity factor, which is invaluable. Wind is about 35% and solar 25%.
Wind and solar, without storage, are unreliable. If that’s all you had to power a city it would be dark —without power— 50% of the time (even more during certain times of the year).
This is where other technologies, like nuclear, can come in. The optimal mix depends on regional realities. For example, if you have hydro, other technologies might be less desirable or necessary.
34 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 79.2 ms ] threadHowever, most models suggest that electricity consumption will significantly increase over the next couple of decades. Efficiency isn’t going to go close to covering the extra demand from EVs and electrifying heating.
The overall 'energy' needed will be less because EVs do not waste 70% of energy to heat and a heat pump creates out of 1 energy unit 2-5 energy units.
It is also much easier to efficiently do gas to power/oil to power in big plants and use the excess process energy for other things.
Even if our whole society will consume more energy in the next x years, thanks to EVs and electrifying heating (with heatpump) this line/graph/curve will be less than if we would not have EV and e heating through heatpumps.
I'd wager something like 8% or less relative to the total calorie content of said gasoline, but I have no idea
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7261027
Even making conservative assumptions about how much of that is electricity, net demand for electricity is going to go up.
This is also what the people who model this stuff for a living are predicting - somewhere around doubling to tripling of electricity demand by 2050 IIRC.
Indeed, I just peeked at your report and it says the same thing: "Nearly one-half the energy consumed by refineries is obtained from by-product refinery gas and coke, and about one-third is supplied by natural gas. "
Every competent ISO/RTO in the US has already factored additional electricity growth required by EVs and other needs in their mid/long-term plans.
Its missleading how he wrote it.
Great, that gives us time to build out wind and solar
However, it's already possible in some jurisdictions to play in the wholesale market with a home battery, and the same should apply for V2G.
If they were offering, say, $2/kwh for the electricity in my car battery, unless I needed to take a long trip immediately afterwards I'd very happily take it. Wholesale peaks can go even higher than that on occasion!
I think EVs can smooth out the daily bumps, but we need something to stabilize the grid over longer periods without burning fossil fuels. At least for the US, lots of long-distance transmission should help, because weather events generally don't affect the entire country.
No, solar alone cannot do it. At best, solar can deliver about 40% reliability. Wind alone isn’t much better. The combination of solar and wind (equal parts) can deliver 70% to 80% reliability. A more optimal mix, in most of the world, is 25% solar with 75% wind, overbuild by a factor of 2 and with 3 to 12 hours of storage. This gets you to over 90% reliability in most of the world. Places like Canada and Rusia need more wind and less solar to achieve this performance.
The problem is equipment service life. The replacement cycle, given today’s technology, is approximately three decades. Recycling options are far from practical or mature. This means that mass conversion to th technologies we have today will result on a massive replacement/reconstruction event every 30 years. Nobody can even begin to imagine the ecological consequences of such a scenario.
In short: We need better technology.
The tech will get there and I don’t think we have that much longer to wait.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...
> In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.
It is also true that some nations will do a better job than others. And some have better circumstances and starting points.
In the US? We have become so dysfunctional we would probably crumble if we added a few million EVs in most states.
I was just in Zürich at a conference and had interesting conversations with experts and leaders in the energy sector; from hydro to geothermal and more. It is clear that some are taking the transition seriously, while others are not. The key differentiator is pushing ideology rather than reality.
Only one of those stances gets us to the clean renewable energy future we all want.
https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/othe...
We can be ideological, and ignore this, or realistic and face the challenges head-on.
The only way we achieve a clean energy future is by being brutally honest, because that’s the only way we solve real problems.
I’m not even sure that picking Texas is reasonable given the isolation of its grid which is where some of these problems stem from.
With apologies and respect, that is a bigoted perspective. Humanity does advance if this is how we view each other. It is possible to have a conservative perspective and be right or wrong. It is also possible to have the opposite perspective and also be right or wrong.
If you had bothered to read the article, you'd see they provide data and references. You can go and verify the claims, which boil down to wind and solar pretty much collapsing when needed due to conditions. Yet, you stopped at "Texas" and "Conservative" and that's all you needed to know about what they had to say.
The source does not matter. Only the veracity or falsehood of what is being proposed does. If you stop at the source --however you choose to classify it-- you fail to use your intelligence to gain understanding.
Are we to disbelieve academic publications because most academics lean to the left?
How about this: Let's not believe anything a gay person says...just because they are gay. Or a black person...just because they are black. Or a white person...just because they are white. Or a child yelling "fire"...just because they are a child.
How does progress happen if we behave this way? How does a gay person convince anyone of the merits of their claims if they are discounted just because they are gay?
Read the article. Study the matter to a sufficient depth of understanding. Then, and only then, form an opinion or pass judgement based on understanding, not bigotry. Most people speaking on these matters do so out of abject ignorance. Few bother to take deep-enough dives into any of it. Just emotion and ideological alignment.
Everyone wants to live in a clean world, with clean energy and a bright future for their kids and generations to come. That's a universal truth. I have yet to find anyone who, when asked, says they prefer filth and unbreathable air.
There's another reality that escapes most, likely because few like to think beyond the headline or deeper than the superficial: Where we are today was an inevitable result of humanities reality. Up until not too many decades ago, the ONLY way for us to survive was to burn stuff for energy; to cook, move, build, heal, survive.
The clean energy future we all want had to wait for such things as the invention of the transistor and its evolution into sophisticated electronics, computers, etc. Now, armed with better technology, better science, greater understanding and the ability to manufacture things we could not have even imagined just a few decades ago can we begin an energy transition that will benefit us all. The technologies we need are still in flux and in much need of improvement.
The key take-away from this understanding is that vilifying half the universe as we transition to a better paradigm only serves to slow down that transition. We still have no choice but to burn stuff to make energy. That is a fact. If we hurry to transition given today's technologies all we are going to accomplish is to create a horrific ecological disaster in just a few decades.
Lessons should be learned about what has happened in Germany with the demented "green" activists causing the shutdown of nuclear power plants, which led to actually having to burn massive amounts of fuel for energy...exactly the opposite of green. These people are crazy. The good news is that they are now seeing much-needed push-back in countries like Holland and Germany.
The transition will likely take well into next century. And that's just fine. The world isn't going to end any time soon.
> The replacement cycle, given today’s technology, is approximately three decades.
Every ICE vehical sold today can be expected to be in use for decades to come. And there's something like 1.2 billion passenger cars worldwide.
I forget the details of the analysis, but the gist is with our current policies, worldwide personal transportation is unlikely to hit our 2050 net-zero targets.
IIRC, I gleened this observation from Horace Dediu's Asymco podcast. (Or Micromobility?) Dediu has been promoting micromobility (scooters, e-bikes, cargo bikes, etc) for quite a while now (decade?), to address this challenge.
Of course, Dediu and others also advocate public transportation, densification, etc. to further reduce miles traveled.
A combination of technologies will have to be the answer. Nuclear offers over 92% capacity factor, which is invaluable. Wind is about 35% and solar 25%.
Wind and solar, without storage, are unreliable. If that’s all you had to power a city it would be dark —without power— 50% of the time (even more during certain times of the year).
This is where other technologies, like nuclear, can come in. The optimal mix depends on regional realities. For example, if you have hydro, other technologies might be less desirable or necessary.
It doesn't consider things that didn't happen, because its not fiction.
And there is no link between the two. I wonder what is the reason for EV push ? Nobody who has any idea about electricity would buy an EV.