Are Electric Cars Really That Polluting?

Austingreen, I'm standing by my statement that CA is making more progress in solar than TX is in wind. I never said CA has more installed solar than TX has installed wind......that is obvious.
But it is a simple fact that solar is growing at a faster growth rate in CA than wind is in TX. If this trend persists for the next 2 decades, CA's installed solar capacity will exceed TX's installed wind capacity by a wide margin.

 

While the ripple effects of electric vehicles concerning (power plant) pollution are debated back and forth, it is actually displacing a central point. The ONLY thing that is going to drive the huge shift to EVs is pure personal economics. (Whether I like or dislike this reality is moot.) The 100 million EVs for 2040 would require an powerful economic penalty for using anything using gasoline or ethanol or any liquid fuel compared to the cost of electricity many, many years earlier. For this to happen by 2040 means the economic pressure has to be really intense by 1925 2025 give or take a few years. The amount of massive industrial retooling necessary to get 100 million EVs on the road would take well over a decade to accomplish. Will the price of gas compared to electricity be that dramatic in just about a decade?

 

I totally disagree. IMO it is more wasteful to build extra capacity that is only used a few days per year. There is a huge amount of waste all the time. I think it is quite reasonable to incentivize people and businesses to cut back and/or time-shift activities a few days a year in order to build less capacity. In no way does this mean that we underbuild based on the normal methods of looking at percentage of time we'd have a 5-year worst case weather or 10-year worst case in a drought year, etc.

This is a totally different subject. First, AFAIK they were not trying to sneak in an upgrade. They needed to replace the steam generators, went through the normal approval process, picked a sub-contractor that screwed it up and they now have a big mess of a wasted capital expense. Yes, I agree that this capacity should be replaced.

Numbers for 2010 (Note: look at raw numbers the graph scales are different)

2337 kwh Clean Energy in My State: California Residential Energy Consumption
5431 kwh Clean Energy in My State: Texas Residential Energy Consumption

Overall, TX electricity usage is ~2.1 x CA, (14179 vs 6721) residental it is 2.3 x (5431 vs 2337).
Part of this difference can probably be explained due to differences in NG consumption...maybe TX has more homes with electric heat (heat pumps) or electric HW heaters? But both TX and CA are below the national average in NG.

Mike

 

Oh, yes, I'll agree to that, that the growth rate is faster. I thought you meant growth as in % of power or energy or gw
added a year.

I think you probably need to rethink that the trend can persist at this rate, after California quadruples, which is about the level of texas wind, there are many factors that will slow it down. Say 2012 is 2GW. Do the doubling each year and you get 4, 8, 16. 32... At which case you run quickly out of easily usable land, the grid isn't built to handle it, etc.

I don't really know what we are arguing about here. If texas had as good of sun, ercot would be encouraging rapid solar growth like california. California does have good wind, and the utilities are finally starting to build it out.

 

What incentives are available not in use now?

 

I guess we shouldn't have fire hydrants either then, they likely won't be used for a long long time.

Building ccgt will be used daily, but will retire earlier those plants that were pulled out of moth balls, or the ones that should be put in them. Looking at normal methods, california is vastly under built in terms of capacity. IIRC it is about 35% of the region, and the other states are providing a tiny extra buffer for california. When California needs the buffer they will likely complain. When a bad drought is predicted, that's when you pull your old plants out of mothballs. You don't do it as a matter of course. The idea behind the CPUC is nothing will ever go wrong. Diablo and San Onofre get repaired perfectly every time. There is never an earthquake or a drought. I mean why invest in infrastructure?

Documents have been found that they knew about the tube problems in 2004.
Southern California Edison's Problems Ensnare Entire Nuclear Energy Sector - Forbes

There is a level of sleaze here, claiming they were a simple replacement because they did not want a hearing that other nuclear utilities don't even want to comment on. I find it likely the rate payers will pay for this, since if SCE was held responsable they likely would go bankrupt, again. Of course here will no penalty for silencing whistle blowers

If the CPUC acted quickly to replace the power of SONGs it would be one thing. They seem to be completely dragging there feet, not caring about grid stability. From 2004 on there should have been contingency plans. Really not much to disagree about left. California has lost half its nuclear, and has a very low safety margin to black outs. It needs to add both renewables and gas power plants for future needs. Those 60s and 70s era power plants that are on line right now are not getting any more efficient.

 

...2025 I am quite sure

 

I want to tie this in with the earlier comments re: solar
They are a bit incompatible in the sense that the increase in solar capacity should make it unnecessary to build new ccgt's to replace CA's existing, inefficient gas turbines.
Think of it this way: It's no different than a driver who has an inefficient ICE car. Sure, he/she could replace it with a more efficient HEV, but that's only a partial solution in an era of ever-increasing gas prices. Instead, he/she is waiting for EV prices to come down, and then they make the switch, skipping the HEV step and ditching gasoline altogether.
So it is in CA. Why not keep the existing gas turbines as long as they have service life left? Investing in new CCGT's locks CA in to 40 years of nat. gas use for each one, and nat. gas prices are sure to rise.
Solar's marginal costs are free for life, and today's fixed costs are low thanks to tax credits and low interest rates.
Further, the CA grid will continue to get better with respect to demand-side management, such as smart appliances and the smart thermostat you mentioned.
Solar makes a great substitution for gas since it peaks in power late in the afternoon, just when people are most likely to be stressing the grid with A/C use.

 

So if you build enough solar, you will be happier with 40% gas steam plants that don't cycle well with demand? I can't understand that. Yes someone invested in these beasts in the 60s and 70s, but why do you want to keep them running. If you look out at any decent time horizon they are more expensive to run, use more fuel, and pollute more.

How many years do you think he should keep his ice vehicle. Many of these plants are more than 30 years old. The one dual nuc left is set to be too old in 2025, and is on a fault line. Do you want to wait until 2030 to start replacing these old things? They do cost a lot of money when they break down.

At today's prices old ccgts cost about 2 cents a kwh. Say the cost of natural gas tripples and you still need those old steam genreators around that are less fuel efficient, and can't cycle. Now if renewables fill the grid, you don't need to run the new ccgts, you can shut them off, they can turn back on in about a minute. I think its about 8 hours for the steam plants. How much extra do you want to pay in fuel if they only need to run a few hours a day?

What a number of california businesses are doing is opting out of the CPUC PG&E/SCE and putting in fuel cells. These cost more per kwh than ccgt, don't follow demand well, and are slightly less efficient with natural gas/biogas, but.... They can separate if the CPUC blacks them out, and they don't need to pay for mistakes from these big utilities. I can see in 10 years, if california keeps going this way, the big companies and hospitals will do there own generation, so that they don't need to be a part of the price increases.

I am a fan of solar, but they have low marginal cost, not no marginal cost. They need to be plugged into the grid, they need to be balanced. Get enough on the grid and the ccgts can complement them and wind and hydro. What do you do in your future on a cloudy day when you need power. Surely building these plants is cheaper than building the huge batteries to buffer solar.

Solar at low levels, less than 5% is a great addition to a nuc. Solar, nuclear, wind, coal do a bad job at managing minute to minute changes on the grid. You need a 35% efficient ocgt or a 60% efficient ccgt to do that well. Since that ccgt can replace those steam natural gas units as well, its a much better fit for california. That way when contracts end, more efficient and cheaper power can be produced in state. The we want to drive a 35 year old junker to save for a tesla, doesn't make sense for a state. It can buy some efficient ccgts that lower risk of black outs and save money while building renewables.

 

(1) Peak Oil - despite fawning, brain-dead energy journalism, conventional oil production peaked about 2006, and unconventional oil is simply too expensive to be anything other than a stop-gap

(2) China, India and other developing nations are set to add 500 million cars by 2040. For reference, entire U.S. fleet is currently less than half that

(3) Carbon tax. Sooner or later, people will begin demanding that economic costs associated with climate change/energy (superstorm Sandy, NYC's flood walls, Oil Wars, BP oil spill, etc.) be paid for out of things -gasoline- that are actually causing the damage

(4) Battery prices continue to drop in $/kwh terms.

So, yes, I think the odds that electricity will be very cheap compared to gasoline in 2025 are quite good.

 

Certainly an interesting post except for that point. Natural gas prices going up puts the pressure on getting more efficient use of the natural gas, not on sustaining inefficient plants instead. (It's why I got a Prius instead of stretching the Camry for more years.)

 

Just an aside on the old steam units in california that should be replaced with ccgt or shut down, here is a list of the big ones in 2003, years built, etc.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/2003-07-17_700-03-006.PDF

 

IMO, very few people are signed up for these programs. And we could have a lot of people on TOU metering.

Mike

 

A bit of a silly comment.
Should we have a hydrant in front of every house?
Having market incentives to cut maximum peak power on a few days in the summer, when there is plenty of wasted and discretionary power being used all the time is a lot different than being prepared for random house fires. Especially since the peak days and time of the day is well known in advance usually.
Sure some disaster could cause an outage...but how much different is this from outages caused by storms, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes etc?

Mike

 

The california grid was at risk of black outs in 2006, 2012, and 2013. During 2012 and 2013, they had everything pulled out of moth balls they could, in other words severe shortage of fire hydrants, so they were pearcing together old hoses that might leak. CPUC claimed plenty of power, but eia says transmission lines are severely congested as the power can not flow to where it is needed. This lack of power plants raised prices in 2012 and 2013, and people insist they want to continue the shortage. What happens to these 60s and 70s era power plants? They require more maintenance, they use more energy. I don't really get why you want to continue to under invest to try and help short term profits of the owners of these plants. You can see the congestion by the differencial in wholesale prices between different places in california.

Yes these warnings really helped in 2000 and 2001. Infrastructure is not that bad, but it is neglected. It takes time to build power plants. You yourself admitted that the san onofre power should be replaced. Why not actually look at the needs of the grid and build the right amount. I under stand some want rates to go up, and having inefficient plants on line pushes up prices, that encourages conservation and makes renwables look relatively less expensive, but.... why risk black outs. It just doesn't make any sense to me. California under invested in power plants in the '90s, then were forced to pay extra in the early 2000s. Currently they are under investing. It hurts the entire region, not just the state. Nothing wrong with incentives to reduce use of these once moth balled plants, but huge problem not trying to actually retire them again. Problems were identified in 2003. Doing the right thing in 2009 and 2010, would have raised rates a trickle back then, but they would be lower now. I understand that the california politicians thrive on extremely short term thinking, but the people of california should demand a better plan.

As I said, because of mismanagement, individual companies may build there own fuel cells to opt out of the system. This will of course protect them from black outs and grid mismanagement. This is better than leaving it up to CPUC and PG&E/SCE, but it hurts other power users, versus managing the grid properely. These also are less efficient and more expensive /unit energy than consolidating demand into ccgt.

 

I think you misunderstood my post. I'm not saying CA shouldn't use CCGT, what I'm saying is that we shouldn't invest in new CCGT without fully analyzing the opportunity cost that is involved. In the 40-year timeframe power plants typically last, it could very well be that solar will have lower lifetime costs than new CCGT, depending on where your assumptions of future natural gas prices are. In the meantime, CA should continue to use the clean, efficient CCGT's that were built in the 2000's as a way to balance the grid, while retiring older, less efficient nat gas plants.
The analogous situation for you is a 2-car household: 1 Prius, 1 Camry.
It makes more sense to replace the Camry in a few years with an $30k/200-mile EV than it would to replace it with another Prius now. In the meantime, they keep driving the existing Prius.

 

After further reflection, consideration and deliberation, I think it would be a good idea for CA to make sure we have adequate CCGT capacity several decades into the future. Clearly, the ability to load follow is important w./ respect to integration of renewable and severe weather / unexpected outages. (Although load following can also be done very efficiently with Pumped Hydro and Compressed Air Energy Storage w./ NO GHG's.)

However, after looking at this pdf, it is clear that CA built many CCGT's in the 2000's. These are clearly clean, efficient and able to load-follow. And there is more than enough GW there to provide the load-balancing role.
Thus, all of the new solar capacity coming online will replace the older 60's and 70's-era inefficient turbines. The 2000's CCGT's will remain for decades to provide load-balancing.
The only reason the older nat gas plants are remaining is because there is currently not enough capacity elsewhere in the grid to meet CA's demand. It's the same reason TX uses older coal plants in the summer.
And, just as increased wind (w./help from existing CCGTS's) will replace TX's coal plants by 2018, as you say, so too will increased solar replace CA's old nat gas plants (again, w./ help from existing CCGT's).

 

Absolutely, fully analyse them versus not buying them. If you don't buy them you are relying on older, less efficient units, that break down. You should keep in mind the cost of construction versus the cost of keeping the old ones going, and should look at possible bad weather and gas price increases in that scenario.

But should they keep going on old steam and imported power? These don't play well with wind turbines and solar.

Say solar does grow a great deal in the next 10 years, and you built ccgts that work well with it, then you moth ball more of the old plants, you cut off coal, you get ready to shut down diablo canyon nuclear. Say in 30 years you don't need them. Just mothball them as well. The capital cost of ccgt/kwh a year for construction is about 10% the cost of solar today.If 20 years from now you need to mothball them, because solar is so cheap, great. Just don't burn the fuel. Now capital cost of ccgt is about $1300/KW that is much higher than $0 for existing plants, but if you include fuel costs and maintenance it doesn't take that many years to payback, certainly not at california's current wholesale electricity price. If you consider 20 years at 70% utilization capital costs work out to around $0.01/kwh, and difference in just fuel costs between ccgt and steam should be higher than this.

California has a bunch of old pintos in the steam natural gas side, not a 10 year old camry. Its going to break down, and cost money every few years, and burn more gas. You need extra pintos around in the back yard for when the one you were driving breaks down. Really it is not a good situation. There is a lot of duct tape on those old pintos right now. Here comes old grandad CPUC saying they'll last anouther 30 years just fine.

 

+1

At least we are on the same page now. I wrote the other response at the same time you wrote this.

Glad you want to eliminate the old steam natural gas plants. Immediate needs for california are to replace the 2.2GW of power from San Onofre and the 477 MW of coal that ends contract in 2015. Disagreement on how many new power plants come down to how fast you want to retire the old ones, perceptions of possible weather effects, and idea on how fast renewables will get built.

Texas has a growing population. The coal starts to shut down in 2018, and some of the old coal is already shut for the winter and comes on only in the summer. In order to close down significant coal there needs to be growth in both ccgt and wind. Wind helps make coal and steam thermal natural gas less economic (lowers prices at night where ccgt and ocgt can shut down). Natural gas prices will likely determine the mix. TCEQ seems to be fighting environmental groups on this, which means economics are needed. In the next decade ERCOT has said the economics get better for wind and solar and worse for coal. ERCOT sets the rules on what gets dispatched, and it has been pro renewable in rule making. The legislature has put rules in place to help allow choice of power source. TCEQ board members are set by the governor, hopefully when Perry's term ends we will get someone that puts out a more balanced board.