Power Grid Limits Potential of Renewable Energy

Roccland · Peak Oil Prophet Joined: Jun 16, 2007 Posts: 1696

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

I have permitted close to 3,000 miles of transmission lines in over 15 years.

For years the industry has struggled with the patch work of land ownership and environmental regs to get power lines permitted and built.

This is a wake up call for those who think switching to solar/wind/nuc etc is gonna side step Dr. Duncan's theory.

Time is up.

Money is gone.

Options have been exhausted.

Any questions?
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Shannymara

This is a good topic.

The various alternatives for generating electricity all work better on a small, decentralized, local scale, except perhaps for nuclear. And wind and solar are both subject to variability. The infrastructure problem is significant.
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kokoda · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2006 Posts: 449

... and there is your problem.

The energy density of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources may be too low to make the large scale replacement of fossil fueled power stations feasible.

Even several hundred wind turbines couldn't replace the electricity production of a single coal powered station.

wakeupman · Coal Joined: Aug 27, 2008 Posts: 10

I am sorry, I just couldn't keep quiet any longer and had to join up to give my boiling expression an outlet, I read your Heinburg NEWSWORTHY article on electric cars and I have to warn Heinburg to mend his ways or he is going to do major damage to America should ignoranter people listen to him.

Richard Heinburg, you must go to school so you can learn to use a calculator. And please stop trying to destroy America with your electric cars!

And STOP TRYING TO GET MY ELECTRICTY CUT OFF! OK?!?

That is what will happen if you build electric cars! Stop and think for one second, ok, try it once!

The average american uses 1.5 KWH of electricity in a 24 hour period.

A family of four uses 6 KWH of electricity in a 24 hour period.

An electric car uses 60 KWH in 24 hours to charge it.

Suddenly, you want to magically multiply all the families in america by TEN? and think you will have elctricity to do this? DO YOU KNOW WHAT MY ELECTRIC BILL IS GOING TO BE WHEN FAMILIES START TO BUY ELECTRIC CARS?!?!?!?

People will die, sir.

It is retarded to use good electricity to push 2000 pounds of steel to the grocery store to buy milk especially if you have to burn COAL to do it!

So you use the elite retarded idea of WINDMILLS to push 2000 pounds of steel to the grocery store and back when you could have taken the bus or walked?

WINDMILLS AND TECHNOLOGY WILL KEEP US IN THE LIFE OF HAPPY MOTORING!

One question, sir, who is paying you? Do you own a coal burning power plant or something?
Are you a coal miners daughter or something? What are you trying to DO HERE?

Why buy million dollar windmills they will push 15 cars an hour!
How stupid is that?

You are worse the the Bush's at least they burn cleaner gasoline!

You would spend 60, 000 dollars to put up a 1000 panel soar aray at 60 watts each for EACH FAMILY WHO OWNS A BEVY OF ELECTRIC CARS? @?!?!?#?$?%?^?!??

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, Hello in there! McFly? ANYONE HOME?!?

Electricity WILL NOT WORK, all it will do is to increase may dammed electric bill by 10 times, so the poor cant use power and I can use their share to run a stupid car to the store to get a gallon of milk or a sixpack.

I think you need to wake up, This continuous lifestyle is STUPID to continue, and building windmills to do it is esp[ecially idiotic.
and we CANNOT switch to electricity so stop talking about that and go get a job and do something usefulll!!!

Can you imagine a martian coming down and seeing us build windmills to push tons of metal around to pick up our mail while our legs get skinny and everyone gets fat and diabetic and spends billions on pills and surgery when ALL THEY HAD TO DO IS WALK MORE? I think the Martians would condemn this planet and build a nature theme park instead, it would be way more useful than rows of apartment couch potatoes.

OK?!? knock off tryong to destory America, kill thousands of poor people and make my electric bill unmanageable, ok?

Sorry about the tone of voice, I tend to get angry at msass murderers who implement policy that will kill people just cause they aren't smart enough to think of consequences.

kokoda · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2006 Posts: 449

Quite right ... using electricity to replace gasoline doesn't solve any problems. It just creates a bevy of new ones.

Hydrogen is even worse since it would only return about 1/3 of the energy that was required to produce it.

If we were to go all electric tommorrow we would need to double, treble or even quadrople the size of our electrical power grids.

Windmills and solar panels aren't going to do that for you.

JustaGirl

wakeupman - Although I agree with your overall sentiment, some of your figures are way off. Can I ask where you are getting them? The average household in the US uses 10,656 kilowatt-hours per year(according to the DOE) or about 29 per day. What electric car uses 60 KWH to charge? The volt uses 16kwh for a full charge, some of the others that i've looked at use 6kwh.

Again, I don't think electric cars are going to be the panacea for peak oil, because they definitely are not, but your post is very misleading. We'll have electricity that will cost 10x as much, probably in the near future, but it won't be because of electric cars.

vtsnowedin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 602

My own household uses 7 kwh per day per adult. based on two years of electric bills. We also use from 2 to 4 gallons of gas per day per adult driving cars depending on commute distance. Whats the enegy content of gas in kwhs? And what is the efficency of these electric cars if you figure in the cost of replacing and recycleing the battery components?
Our electric grid is old and needs to be upgraded and refurbished anyway. We need to get started and to size it right for the future not the past. A new DC line from a good wind farm site to the nearest market is as good a place to start as any.

Frank

A gallon of gasoline contains approx. 33 kwh of energy (I've seen numbers from 32-36 quoted.) The average ICE vehicle converts about 15% of this to mechanical energy. The average EV is closer to 80% or at least 5 times as efficient. This is why EV's are so important for local transportation needs.

60 kwh (A.C.) will propel my Toyota pickup conversion about 180 miles and it's a "lead sled."

The average commute in the USA is 32 miles; this would consume 8-10 A.C. kwh maximum with a lightweight EV. This may be a significant portion of the average households consumption but nationwide it would add approx. 25% to overall demand. The advent of PHEV's with a bit of intelligence could optimize grid loading. And how many of us have totally realized the efficiency/conservation that's possible in our own households? Personally I believe that 25% could be managed by reducing personal consumption.

I agree that the grid is outdated and needs substantial investment. Obama's discussed the need for this and will support it. We all need more exercise but the reality is that we depend on personal transportation in our day-to-day lives. The bottom line is that the grid needs to be improved as part of an overall national strategy to move towards renewable energy sources.

vtsnowedin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 602

Sounds reasonable. Looking around I found that that the proposed new line in Texas will cost rate payers $4.00/ month. I can't imagine switching from fossil fuel to renewables any cheaper.

JRP3 · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 23, 2006 Posts: 396

wakeupman needs to wake up himself and do some research before posting. His numbers are completely off. EV's are more efficient than gas. Better battery technology is coming down in price and allowing greater range and longer life. Right now some people are recharging their EV's with home wind and solar. How many are refueling their gas cars with home drilled and refined gasoline?
Not to mention plenty of grid capacity at night, and the huge amount of electricity the average house wastes every day, leaves plenty of potential energy for EV use.
Oh yeah, people might just have to drive a little less Shocked

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lper100km

Wakeupman’s rant does raise points that need to be addressed more calmly at the risk of allowing his rant to hijack the thread.

For instance, it can’t be assumed that electrical power is inherently highly efficient. There are problems at the point of any energy conversion and electrical power is not immune. Transmission line losses, every transformer en route to your house, even junction points cause losses, mostly expressed as heat. Battery charging has significant losses, between the charger and the battery itself as much as 40% although Lithium Ion is probably more like 25% overall.

I posted elsewhere some rounded out numbers comparing the equivalent of one gallon of gasoline and equivalent electrical use to drive a vehicle and repeat them here.

For gasoline:

Energy per gallon US: 36kWh
Efficiency in delivering energy to the road wheels: 25%
Overall energy overhead producing and delivering gas to the auto: 20%
Energy delivered to the wheels: 6.5kWh
Energy required to create that useful energy: 45kWh

Ratio: Useful energy delivered/energy required to produce: 0.14 ie only 14% of the energy represented by a gall of gas at the auto is actually used in propelling the vehicle.

For Electrical:

Battery energy: 36kWh
Efficiency delivering energy to the road wheels: 95%
Battery charging efficiency: 60% overall
Transmission line and other losses: 5%
Generation plant efficiency: 85%

Energy delivered to the wheels: 34.2kWh
Energy required to create that useful energy: 74kWh

Ratio: Useful energy delivered/energy required to produce: 0.46 ie roughly half of the energy represented by a charged battery in the auto is used in propelling the vehicle.

Ratio Electrical/Gasoline: 3.29 This is saying that one battery pack of 36kWh is roughly equivalent to three gallons of gasoline in a vehicle.

Feel free to pick away at the numbers. It may change some detail but I think the overall trend is sound.

This is all well and good, but Wakeup is right in pointing out that the domestic energy consumption and hence cost could and will escalate significantly. However, my thought is that even if EVs do not or cannot be used in significant quantity, the costs of electricity are bound to increase anyway as the cost of other energy sources escalates. It’s simple economics.

Electrical power is significantly more effective than gasoline, but not as efficient for this use as many expect or wish for. There really is no free lunch.

yesplease · Fission Joined: Oct 03, 2006 Posts: 2552

The assumption for efficiency of delivering power to the wheels is a bit more than twice the average lper100km, at least in the US. Something like a hybrid may see ~25%+ BTE, but the average vehicle is somewhere around 15%.
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vilemerchant · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 122

We don't need EVs because it's the cheapest or most efficient means of powering personal transportation, we need EVs because they would mean massive demand destruction basically solving peak oil! We need to keep enough oil supply for farming, freight, plastics etc, not wasted driving around.

In the short to medium term who cares how much extra coal gets burnt? Not that it would be all that much, since any grid is massively under-utilized at night, which is exactly when EVs would be charged.

lper100km

yesplease · Fission Joined: Oct 03, 2006 Posts: 2552

You probably did IIRC, but in the above comparison it seems you used 25% instead, unless of course I'm reading it incorrectly.