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Comment by JohnStudio | Hacker News Reader

My question is the demand collapse, and transition to a demand spike. The current models of increased load, like demand reduction and management companies that do nothing more than broker kW for incentives for shut-down during high peak times - et al. https://energy.gov/eere/wipo/demand-reduction-0 // --> so, as we shift away from fossil fuels/oil .. who are the great tycoons of electrical grid creeping?

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Its a good question. I think Tesla is on to something with home Solar re chargers though. If we transition to a model where every (or sufficiently many) homes rely on solar power to generate electricity, the increase in EV's wouldn't much change the demand of electricity from the grid. That seems like a great solution to prevent the grid from being the bottleneck for the growth of EV.

(With self-driving cars I see an even better future: drive your car to the office, then indicate its not required for the next 8 hours. It searches for a nearby solar recharge station and drives itself, charges itself and returns by the time you need to leave. Seems like Sci-Fi right now but oh well... I can still dream )

Using electric car batteries to smooth out load on the grid is a good idea, but there’s no need for the car to be physically proximate to electricity sources. We already have a much more efficient way of transporting power through space - the grid.

> Using electric car batteries to smooth out load on the grid is a good idea, but there’s no need for the car to be physically proximate to electricity sources

transmission losses are non-zero. so there is at least _some_ value in having the power for the air conditioner 20 feet away.

What about some sort of electrical power hawala transaction?

I provide power in some far place with my car, and in exchange the power supplier gives an equivalent amount of power to my air conditioner for free for as long as I’m providing power.

Wow that is actually a really interesting idea! The problem with that approach would be trust: to trust that both parties hold their part of the bargain. There's likely to be a cryptographic solution to ensure that though, right?

Why do we need any of this? Physics takes care of it if we just hook everyone up to a grid. Electricity pretty much finds the sources and sinks by itself if you provide capacity (it’s more complicated that that, but simpler than what you are proposing). It’s kind of like saying why don’t we pump and sell well water to one another instead of using a common water supply where the runoff from all our land goes to the same pipes.

> Why do we need any of this? Physics takes care of it if we just hook everyone up to a grid.

That's exactly what is the bottleneck: the grid. Operating a grid, eating transmission losses etc. cost a lot of capital and labor. Not to mention: its also a single point of failure. Whereas communication (through cellphone towers) is cheap(er).

> It’s kind of like saying why don’t we pump and sell well water to one another instead of using a common water supply where the runoff from all our land goes to the same pipes.

Its not the same, and I don't think its a good comparison. Solar energy is much more plentiful than groundwater, and does not require any "processing".

Grid storage is the bottleneck today. You make the problem worse by splitting things up.

Maybe this is one example of a use case for blockchain technology.

With hawala the trust depends purely on a money brokers reputation.

Agreed that transmission losses are real, but I would be amazed if mechanically transporting batteries down a road were more efficient than a wire. Consider the capital cost of adding miles to roads and tires vs. running electricity through wires. You’d also decrease speed of transmission and availability - both important when we are trying to distribute load across time and space.

> but I would be amazed if mechanically transporting batteries down a road were more efficient than a wire.

It is, because it doesn't require building a fucking electric pole (or run it underground: more expensive) and making sure its not cut by external factors.

Suppose that a vehicle carrying a 1Ah battery passes a given point on the freeway every second.

That's like 3600A of current!

(Well, except that both positive and negative charges are present, so it's like two 3600A currents in opposite directions which cancel.)

The poles have already been built. This would only be relevant if we were considering building new construction that isn’t connected to the grid, or letting existing grid infrastructure fall apart completely. In this analogy, the wires and poles map to the road the car is driving on.

While home solar is great, it is nowhere as reliable as the grid. You can have days when the sun doesn't shine. You expect the grid to bear your super heavy load (once every home goes ev and solar) on cloudy days and don't use it any other day. The grid is going to get much more costlier than you know, or there will be a hefty grid connection fee

Let me be clear that I'm not advocating for getting rid of the grid. Like you said, on days when local generation doesn't meet demand, the grid will be very useful. What I'm saying is that local generation would supplement the grid; perhaps make it so that it can handle the additional loads put on it by millions of Electric Vehicles.

You're already seeing utility scale battery storage displace the most expensive oil and natural gas peakers who operate less than hundreds of hours per year (Tesla has an additional order in Australia, and a new order in New Zealand after the press from the Hornsdale Power Reserve [1]).

The winners will be renewables, battery storage owners who can arbitrage, and technology companies who can arbitrage using distributed resources in partnership with owners of those resources (ie Tesla and company).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_...

Minus Elon Musk ... like who are the big players though?

Can you be more specific? There are "big players" in utility solar/wind generator installation, utilities themselves, battery storage manufacturers, etc. I'd like to be as helpful as I can be in explaining, but I need the question constrained.

There is no cartel that "owns" a distributed generation and transmission future. Transmission systems operators are typically non-profits, utilities are heavily regulated, which leaves opportunities for generators (solar, wind, natural gas, batteries), residential consumers (rooftop solar), and industrial consumers (load shedding, batteries for reductions in demand charges, on-site colo generation).

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/22/briti...

How about this guy he is building a battery factory in australia and is trying to buy part of GM's car manufacturing plant that was shutdown.

This is awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Siemens.

https://electrek.co/2018/01/11/aes-siemens-launch-fluence-en...

Very little oil is used to power the grid. It's almost all used in transportation.

but the grid does use natural gas for peaker plants to respond to demand changes.

Natural gas comes from oil wells. If demand for oil reduces, and wells close, natural gas production will decline too.

While Natural Gas was considered a byproduct in earlier times when it couldn't be harvested efficiently (and had to be "flared"), current technology does allow us to do so, and wells targeting gas specifically are not uncommon.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, you are correct in that very little fossil fuel is used in electrical energy production [1]. However, quite a lot of natural gas is used, which is what the GP was describing, so I think his question is still quite relevant.

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/consumptio...

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