Wind-Powered Hydrogen Prius

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett @ Nov 7 2006, 12:53 PM) [snapback]344898[/snapback]</div>

Hmmmm. Do you really believe this? Or would you like to believe it, because it sounds nice? In an ideal world, yes. But the world is not ideal.

There was a huge power blackout this weekend, covering some 10% or so of Europe. I can easily imagine that, if this would have been an EV world, after the blackout everyone is in a hurry to recharge their car asap. Result: no way to restart the grid without even much bigger problems.

The only way to keep such situations under control is if the institution overlooking the grid has the possibility to determine when you are allowed to recharge your car, and at what speed. Try to sell that.
If you can't do this, EV recharging adds a huge level of instability in case of anomalies because of the similar behaviour of people.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 7 2006, 12:29 PM) [snapback]345012[/snapback]</div>

Most of the early fleet will be PHEVs, so people won't be too worried about charging up to recharge as they can just run on gasoline or diesel. Rather, in an electrical power shortage situation they would prefer the healthy cash bonus of 50 pence per kWh emergency power delivery. Also, the point is with such a big electrical capacity buffer, blackouts would be much less likely with a fleet of EVs or PHEVs largely plugged in.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Nov 6 2006, 03:30 PM) [snapback]344648[/snapback]</div>

It seems like they are going to get hydrogen by using electricity from what I've read. The electricity infrastructure seems better than the hydrogen infrastructure, though, and if I were King and had to decide where to spend the money, electricity seems to make more sense. Although I would be among the first to point out that "making sense" often has nothing to do with the way things happen in a society...

 

Of course in an EV world all of those power plants that power refineries would be available for other uses to you'd get that capacity back. Assuming that petrol has an energy balance of 0.805 and there are 33.7 kWh of energy in a gallon of petrol that means that there was an input of 41.9 kWh to produce that gallon of petrol. I don't know how much of that is consumed at the refinery but that's a LOT of energy being spent. That same amount of energy could propel a car the size/weight of the Prius a long ways. And that's just 1 gallon of petrol.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett @ Nov 7 2006, 06:00 PM) [snapback]345038[/snapback]</div>

That's why I strongly advocate plugin-hybrids. Or, if you want to look at it differently, EV's with a small ICE. That would indeed solve many of the logistics problems associated with pure EV's.
But still then, we are assuming that people are wise enough not to rush to their car to reload it as soon as the grid comes up again...

What many people don't seem to realise is that, for the moment, the weakest link in the robustness of the electricity infrastructure is not the production, but the distribution. If one power line exceeds capacity, it shuts down, putting even more load on other power lines. In this way, you risk to create a cascading effect that can shut down large areas in a short amount of time. Many power failures are due to this phenomenon.

So, my fear is that a lot of people would plug in their car at 6pm after work in one area, causing a peak power demand. It doesn't help that 5000km away other EV's are sleeping, willing to share their energy, because the transfer of the electricity is the bottleneck (it's a waste to do this anyway). You would need really good incentives to bribe people into a different reloading behaviour. And, in case of an anomaly, no incentive is going to prevent people from massive simultaneous reaction, messing the system further up, and adding another source of instability.

 

This issue will be solved with real-time electricity pricing. The signal for this price is sent digitally coded along the same power lines on top of the AC power supply (well established technology).

Everyone may connect their vehicles to recharge at 6pm, but the vehicles onboard computer won't actually begin recharging until the pence per kilowatt-hour falls to a lower rate (a smooth curve down towards 3 am in the morning). The same process applies in reverse, an owner can specify a minumum price (say 30 p per kWh) before their battery charge is called upon to boost any weakness in the grid.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 8 2006, 05:17 AM) [snapback]345354[/snapback]</div>

That's exactly what caused the huge North East US blackout a couple of years ago. It was all triggered by a single overloaded transmission line in Ohio, which sagged due to heating and shorted against some trees. This forced the load it was carrying to other transmission lines that were already operating over capacity. Failsafes on these lines quickly took them off the grid. This resulted in overloading of some power plants, under-loading of others, and even current reversals in some of the transmission lines. This cascaded across the North East as failsafe mechanisms in power plants disconnected them from the grid to protect their generation facilities.

In 14 seconds, the entire North East lost power. All because of a single transmission line failure and a power grid with insuficient capacity.

There is certainly enough capacity in the grid for early adopters of EV and plugin hybrids. The problems will come when the vehicles reach the mainstream.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Nov 6 2006, 12:30 PM) [snapback]344648[/snapback]</div>

If we gave a damn, having electric infrastructure robust enough for the future of transportation would be childs' play when compared to infrastructure needs for H2.

None of this operates in a vacuum. It all must be compared to the other options. Electricity is the single best way to distribute energy that we've yet found. Maybe it is ready to handle everything right now. Was it ready 20 years ago to handle what we have today? Was it ready 100 years ago to handle what we had 20 years ago? Growing the grid is nothing when you compare it to adding gasoline stations, hydrogen stations, what have you.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett @ Nov 8 2006, 01:45 PM) [snapback]345377[/snapback]</div>

Welcome to Utopia!
But even this system is not going to prevent the added instability in case of an anomaly. Unless you make the price prohibitively high. The other point is that you may need to provide two electricity connections to each house, with a different pricing scheme: one low-wattage for household, and one high-wattage for the cars. In this way, you can at least offer the proper incentive to people to load their car at night. If not, you risk to punish people for their normal household consumption durin the evening. In case of problems, you can also make the high-wattage extremely expensive, pushing people away from reloading their car, without ridiculously punishing normal consumption. It all can be done, but it just isn't there today.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Nov 9 2006, 03:22 AM) [snapback]345981[/snapback]</div>

This claim ignores one basic fact in which electricity differs from many other sources of energy like gasoline: you can't build stocks of it. You can't buffer it. It has to be distributed real-time, the very instant you consume it. That's the big problem of electricity. That's also why so many people keep dreaming of H2 (although I personally don't believe in this)

I agree with you that electricty is most likely the best future energy source for powering mobility, but it doesn't make sense to be blind for its disadvantages. Before we can replace every car with an EV, there are some major challenges down the road that need to be addressed. Most likely, we will solve them, but they arn't solved as of today. I stand by my point that the best way to deal with this is an extended overlap period with plugin hybrids, where the focus gradually shifts to EV's. It would help to overcome the chicken or egg problem.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 9 2006, 12:58 AM) [snapback]346134[/snapback]</div>

My claim doesn't ignore that basic fact in the least. The issues of storage has nothing to do with my comment. My claim was regarding distribution only.

And to say that electricity cannot be stored is wrong. I store it in my car every day. And if we had hundreds of millions of folks doing the same (V2G), we could solve many of the problems that our grid faces today. No, it obviously isn't simple. But then neither is any other form of energy distribution.

Additionaly, the nice part about electricity is that you CAN store the fuel with which you'll make the power, if you'd like. And then use it when it is needed... just like we do today! There are of course storage issues with renewables in that we have to take them when they're offered. At those times, we reduce the use of our other fuels, and happily go about our business. There are many ways to store electricity, and some of them can and should be built into our transportation for use later.

We don't need to go with the utopia label. I'm only pointing out what you already know regarding what could be... if we really wanted it, or saw a need.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 9 2006, 12:58 AM) [snapback]346134[/snapback]</div>

You're making this way too complicated. At one point I had two meters on my house. One for the home, one for the car. Same feed. Not a big deal here! Plus, "punishing" people for "normal household use" is a bit confusing. We should be paying the price for the time we use power. Just like we pay more to vacation during peak season, we should be paying more for power during peak times when it is more expensive and more damaging to make that power. Doesn't matter what you use it for. If you use it for "normal" household activities like watching TV during peak time, you pay the price. If instead you time-shift as much usage as possible, you pay less, and everybody wins with more stable, cheaper and cleaner power for all.

I'll see your utopia, and raise you my reality. I have a three-tiered rate here. I'm charged more money for peak and partial peak power no matter what I use it for. I NEVER charge my car during peak times unless I really have to, and am willing to swallow the bill of paying almost as much as the rest of you pay for gasoline. (of course this ignores the part where I'm usually generating enough solar power during peak times to run the charger directly... so it doesn't actually cost me *money*)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Nov 10 2006, 01:41 AM) [snapback]346639[/snapback]</div>

With all respect, but that's a bit lame. Storage and distribution are completely interwoven, as anybody with some experience in logistics will tell you. It's meaningless to point to the advantage of one side if you chose to ignore the disadvantage on the other side.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Nov 10 2006, 01:41 AM) [snapback]346639[/snapback]</div>

Of course you can store electricity in a battery. The only problem is that the energy-to-weight ratio is orders of magnitude lower than with conventional fuel...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Nov 10 2006, 01:41 AM) [snapback]346639[/snapback]</div>

No, you are not thinking far enough here. From the moment a lot of people start to charge EV's at home, you are looking at two entirely different ways of energy consumption. One is the normal household (light, TV, etc..) for which the normal and acceptable pattern is to use it when necessary or desired. The other is charging of cars, for which the ideal pattern would be that people use it when the infrastructure wants them to do it. If you can't discriminate between both in your pricing scheme, either you will not have the power to force people in the right direction for EV reloads, or you will have to charge ridiculous prices for normal consumption at peak times.
We are not talking about a few early-adopters with EV's here, we are talking about >100 million cars that need to be reloaded every night!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Nov 10 2006, 01:41 AM) [snapback]346639[/snapback]</div>

I have a day/night rate as well. I think the difference is 60% or so. In normal cases, this would be sufficient for me to recharge at night indeed. But, in abnormal cases, I would be willing to pay the difference. Can't you see what happens if a lot of people start to break the rules of "nice" reload? For example, after an extended power failure? Can you imagine what happens if 50 million cars are plugged in for fast reload simultaneously? What you need to have any chance to break this mass cooperative reaction is the flexibility to increase the price for high-wattage recharging with a factor of 10 or more. Or temporarily disable it altogether. You can't do this if you can't discriminate between normal electricity consumption and EV recharging.

There is another, fundamental but related thought: with EV's, you run the risk of further propagating transport-related problems to virtually every other part of society. In case of an overload of demand of EV recharging, you risk to shut down the entire grid, which means that not only our cars come to halt, but also most other functions stop. That's not something to think light of. This may indicate that we need something as draconic as having the power to temporarily disable recharging EV's altogether, without shutting down the conventional usages of electricity.

I definitely share your enthousiasm for EV's and I share your belief that they are the future. But I don't share your apparent total blindness for all the complications if you scale this to 100% market penetration.