Featured Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to electric vehicles

Is that the Cal ISO number? BTW Cal ISO only manages ~80% of CA electricity.
Right now they show 37GW being used with a peak of 41GW with 13GW renewable or 36%.
And as Lee Jay pointed out ICEs convert 70 to 80% of those equivalent kwh into heat. Almost all of it not wanted in summer and only a portion is wanted in winter.

So those 1584 GWh is really more like 400 GWh to move the wheels. ~15 hrs at 51GW is not achievable, but it would be 765 GWh.

And, of course we have 20-30 years to grow into this since the current 98% of cars that are not BEV will still be on the road for 15-20 years.

Mike

 

Yeah...if you want a simple-to-remember answer to this, I did the math some time ago. To convert every single "light vehicle" (which does include things like UPS delivery trucks) to BEVs would require approximately the same electricity as the grid consumes now. So, a doubling. And if you want to know how much energy is available renewably, well, just the area of the US from North Dakota to Texas could supply all our electricity 4-6 times over from wind only, with full exclusions. And solar is more than that. So a lot.

 

I won't contest that, but do you know for a fact that the 33kWH figure used by the EPA uses is output from the refinery? That would be equivalent to using electricity as it leaves the power plant. But it's not. It's the gasoline pumped into the tank.

RE: providing energy to charge BRVs... To make up for the work produced by ICE vehicles you have to create and transport the electricity for charging the BEVs. That means you start at the generation facility if you are talking about resources needed to get equal work. You have to start further back if you are looking at "well to wheel" green house gasses for both ICE and BEVs.

 

That's easy to remember. How many windmills is that? And where do you store all the energy that's not used when it's generated? After all, looking at the Cal ISO energy supply page, there are many periods of half a day or so where there is zero wind supplied power.

 

Huh? That would just make the efficiency even worse.

It's the lower heating value of gasoline- 33.7kWh.

I started at renewables.

A windmill is a device for using wind to mill grain or pump water. A device for using wind to create electricity is a wind turbine.

In EVs.

The electrical grid is more geographically diverse than the CAISO control area (there are only three grids in the CONUS - West, East and Texas [ERCOT]) and there are and should continue to be more sources than wind, such as solar and hydropower.

 

It should also be noted that there’s a strong correlation between those low wind production periods in California during the day with periods of high solar photovoltaic production. A very complimentary renewable pattern…

 

DTE Energy in Michigan just offered the option of supplying up to 100% of my billed electric usage with renewable sources (wind alone or a wind and solar combination both generated in Michigan). 100% wind would add 2.2 cents/kWh to my current bill while 50% wind & 50% solar would add 3.1 cents/kWh to my current bill. I chose the wind/solar combination. I figure I should put my money where my mouth is regarding CO2 emissions when and where I can.

 

While there is a trend to do that, there are days and weeks where there is virtually no wind where I live in Central Calif. That can be a problem if we are counting on wind power to make up the deficits. All it will take is a week or so of "no charging allowed" to really alienate people.

 

Not a problem as pointed out with existing CAISO-wide system and imports from NW and SW. Further, even more reliable and intense offshore wind will be here in a few years.

Add to all that how quickly battery grid deployment is ramping up, just this year alone.

 

If you don't know, just say so. According to us oldtimers, a windmill could be used to generate electricity as well as rotary motion to pump or mill things. Wiki agrees with that. Up until recently, the term was still in common use.

I see. The energy that's generated but not used because demand has been satisfied will be stored in the EVs that are already charged. That's a neat trick if you an do it. I wonder how they will convince people who agreed to feed the grid to stay in one place during the peak demand from 4 PM to 8 PM.

 

I don't agree. If California is needing twice it's current supply, so will all the other states that make up the NW and SW that we would import from.

As for batteries... You might say they are charging from Solar, but the truth is that we are burning enough NG to create 10 to 20 GW of power throughout the peak solar period. That's when the batteries are charging too, so there is an extra 1 GW of NG that would not be needed if we were not charging batteries for later peak supply.

 

Our local power company has been offering that for 20 years. Unfortunately, the only result is that some wind/solar provider somewhere MIGHT be told that they have another customer. They power company will still buy the same power from the same sources and send it to the same grid, just like the coal and gas power plants. The one positive aspect is that your power company will promise to buy at least as much power from the green sources to cover the customers demand each month. Here in California, they were doing that anyway.

 

GHG/CO2 ..... short hand term for man-made global warming - climate change (now included because many places get colder/wetter/dryer for several years) but scientists disagree on whether it's the great concern of our time - or whether it's another political/hysterical boogeyman. No need to fight & die on that hill.
There are plenty of good reasons to make cars clean, such as lack of need to control worldwide strategic supplies, pulmonary issues, ground water purity, ETC.
Modern society would be in deep doo-doo if it hadn't harvested centuries worth of petrochemicals. Burning natural gas & its extraction - because many don't wana be transported on horses or live in thatched huts.
.

 

Depends on the size and location.

If by "recently" you mean 1941.

Smith–Putnam wind turbine - Wikipedia

If you have excess capacity and can't store more, you do what we have always done - curtail.

 

Why was this hard to understand?

"The electrical grid is more geographically diverse than the CAISO control area (there are only three grids in the CONUS - West, East and Texas [ERCOT]) and there are and should continue to be more sources than wind, such as solar and hydropower."

 

This is a different topic, but not a problem:

based on historical growth rates, sufficient energy generation and generation capacity is expected to be available to support a growing EV fleet as it evolves over time, even with high EV market growth.​

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/12/f69/GITT%20ISATT%20EVs%20at%20Scale%20Grid%20Summary%20Report%20FINAL%20Nov2019.pdf

Beyond this, when California is anticipated to begin building offshore wind in a few years, their net imports will decrease and they could potentially become an energy exporter if wind and solar resources are developed aggressively enough.

NG facilities in CA have contractural guarantees which allow them to produce a minimum several GW at any time which forces solar PV to curtail in the middle of the day when their power is still in demand and cheaper.

Even so, they are mostly charging from solar PV which is what CAISO trends show. Most but not all grid battery charging happens in the morning to mid-day. So grid batteries are mostly displacing fossil fuels for renewables during peak demand. The ratio of renewable:fossil charging of these batteries will further increase over time as solar PV curtailment has been increasing each year with more added solar PV.

 

On a national level it should be no problem to increase grid electricity to supply a large increase in plug-in cars.

On a regional level California has its work cut out for it.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/09/f33/CA_Energy%20Sector%20Risk%20Profile.pdf
This summer we have seen poor transmission infrastructure cause more fires. PG&E just said it will work on the problem but I have low confidence that it will do enough to really provide for all that renewable power, and other utilities are responsable for other parts of the state.
PG&E Will Bury 10,000 Miles of Power Lines So They Don't Spark Wildfires : NPR

I would not worry about co2 in the transition to electric cars, in 50 years the problems will take care of itself. In the next decade though there are problems. It took texas about a decade to upgrade its grid.

2020 Total System Electric Generation

Last year imported energy in California ramped up because hydro power was reduced because of weather, but with climate change this is more of a risk. Weather is a risk to wind and solar too now at 24.4% of electricity consumed. Further 9.3% of power came nuclear but these 2 reactors are at diablo canyon and licensing expires in 2024 and 2025. This is one of the highest risk nuclear sites in the US and PG&E is going to shut it down instead of adding the improvements and liability to renew licensing.

That means only 3 years to correct the threat to California power reliability and affordability without respect to adding more demand. Its fairly easy to add cycling power - typically natural gas ccgt and ocgt generators and some battery back up in the timeframe. I don't think California's PUC or public utilities really want to do that, so we shall see. The number of plug-in cars in california in the next 5 years are unlikely to make the situation any worse than it already is. There are only 800,000 plug-ins (phevs and bevs) out of almost 15 million light vehicles in California.

 

Maybe a multi-faceted approach: besides encouraging the adoption of hybrid, plug-in and full-electric vehicles, fed and state (aka province) gov's could provide more incentives to:

1. take mass transit
2. tele-commute
3. carpool

Cities gov's, similarly, could encourage infrastructure employees to:

1. Shut their damn trucks off when parked.

Individuals can do some dead-simple things:

1. Never leave a car idling*
2. Consolidate trips
3. Avoid frivilous short distance trips, or walk/bike
4. Choose a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle

* Parked, engine running, AC keeping you cool, while you tap away on your cell phone? You are part of the problem.

 

Cali CAN create more power - but some of the new source will be needed just to offset low water levels at hydro plants.
Lower water levels at Lake Mead mean less electricity from Hoover Dam
At some point of low water level on the big reservoirs - the generators have to get shut down.


.