The idea that you can say "oh, electric is based on fuel power plants" is just disingenuous. Electricity is fungible. Having electric cars lets you replace the fuel with renewables and the car doesn't have to care.
As it stands now we are experiencing an all out bankruptcy declaration of the idea that free, unregulated markets (which allow monopolies and cartels to thrive) are gonna be beneficial for humankind in the long term.
What is a monopoly in this context ? does having 99% market share in the US constitutes a monopoly if a chineese competitor has twice the number of users ? Are you going to dismantle google and amazon, only to see baidu and alibaba reap the market ?
(From a programming perspective - since this is Hacker News, after all - we could view electric power as an "interface" which hides the implementation of how it's generated from the car, as opposed to petrol which is "tightly coupled" to the car)
They're really both interfaces, for petrol you get energy and CO2 emissions for a given quantity. However you don't know that the CO2 emissions are net - the fuel might have been produced via some synthetic process driven by renewables. Unlikely, but as an interface you can't really know the details of the implementation behind the scenes.
That freedom means that greening of the power supply can be solved at a societal, rather than personal level.
Most diesel cars can be used with HVO100 - 100% renewable
Electric cars have lots of options in addition to electricity from fossil fuels
Nuclear, solar, wind, geo-thermal, hydro.
We’ll probably need diesel for quite some time but electric cars do have more options.
Fossil fuels (total) 2,651 63.5%
Nuclear 807 19.3%
Renewables (total) 713 17.1%
electric car usage in the US is less than 1 million cars.
My point was that that the electricity can come from a variety of sources, including fossil fuels. Coal is dying. Natural gas is cheaper and much cleaner.
Solar is easy to produce locally, even on your own roof. Also electric cars typically turn around 85% of the energy into forward motion. Because it's local there's minimal distribution costs. Additionally grid size installations are competing with coal, natural gas, and similar sources quite well on price.
Gas cars are around 15% efficient, and diesels are only slightly higher. Anything like gas has substantial costs in distribution, and of course you have to drive to/from gas stations (instead of just charging at home/work.
So even if HVO100 is 100% renewable, it's not going to be cost efficient, or energy efficient.... so why bother?
Diesel - 16,54 SEK/L. HVO100 - 17,36 SEK/L.
RIght now on one of the biggest petrol chan here in Sweden.
https://m.circlek.se/cs/Satellite/m/SE1/sv_SE/pg133234738132...
Even at those numbers, electric is better. There's no need to use old data.
I suspect you'd be well below the 30% efficiency again. At least in the USA the Prius isn't particularly popular (except to trade in for a model 3). The demand is for the small crossover and SUV segments.
Airplanes, on the other hand, that might be a good thing.
Let's say electric cars are 50% more efficient in terms of energy consumption; that's still a 65% increase in the amount of electricity production required. As we move to EVs and renewables, this extra energy is going to come from keeping fossil fuel plants online that would have otherwise been shut down.
Counting the energy use of EVs as potentially from renewable sources is just feel good and ignores reality. The marginal electrical consumption caused by Teslas coming off the line today will not come from renewable sources over the lifetime of the vehicle, even if you assume a very healthy exponential ramp from today.
You're refuting one bad argument with another, which unfortunately is pretty much par for the course for discussions on energy policy.
Even with this, the shift is still well worth doing, not least of which because the distributed storage it offers is likely the only way we'll be able to hit 100% renewables down the track.
That would be a 20% increase in electricity production required, but from that one can deduct quite a bit for fuel refining and distribution, better buffering of peak electricity production etc.
If you take the energy content of fuel, an electric car is roughly 4x as efficient as a combustion engine. While combustion engines may reach peak efficiencies of 40%, the average over the whole driving cycle is less than 20%, as the peak efficiency is only reached in a narrow band of power productions - usually at highway speeds. That is the reason hybrid cars save fuel, the electric component reduces the inefficiencies of certain parts of the driving cycle.
Fair enough; I should have used 25% instead of 50%. In my head I was multiplying by the energy efficiency of electrical production but that of course is not relevant to this calculation. The irony of correcting a bad argument with a bad argument while complaining about the same is not lost on me. I believe my point stands.
Whether the grid reaches 100% reneweable during the lifetime of an electric car bought today or not might not be clear, but the point being was, it is guaranteed to contain way more reneweables as of today and with that the base of the calculations was wrong.
I'm not arguing that EVs aren't a good idea. I'm just in favor of being clear about the choice that's being made; a switch to 100% EVs would result in significantly increased electricity consumption powered by fossil fuels until renewables catch up, but lower overall carbon emissions since you're burning the fossil fuels more efficiently.
EVs are still superior when powering them entirely with fossil fuels. I'm not trying to argue against them. But it's important to be truthful about where the energy is coming from.
Yes, if there is a difference between the demand and the amount of reneweable energy produced, that has to come from carbon sources. So increasing the demand might increase that. On the other side, in Germany we are already at the point where we have excess energy production. Mostly because coal and nuclear plants cannot be throttled quickly. So quite often we have to take reneweable energy off the grid to keep it stable. Equally, we have negative electricity prices on the spot market. Here you would even have to calculate a negative CO2 content in the energy mix for electric cars which could absorbe that wasted reneweable energy.
In the end, electric cars are rather accellerating than slowing down the switch to more renweables in the mix and as said, the addition of reneweable sources far exceeds the addition of electric cars - at the moment even by orders of magnitude.
It is fair to count renewable energy that could not be produced without the assistance of BEVs, via demand dispatch or battery to grid transfers. And the full amount of this energy should be counted, not just its share of contribution to the grid.
Electric cars consume quite a bit of power, but the longer range cars like the Audi, Jaguar, Tesla, top of the line leaf, and bolt all have a 200 mile or so range. So under normal use (somewhere around 12,000 miles a year) they don't need charged every day.
So generally cars can charge off peak, but in times of dire need I can see only allowing cars to charge when there's a surplus of power... strangely enough these surpluses are becoming common because of solar. Sometimes utilities even have to pay to get rid of the power.
Let's look up the numbers, instead of guessing.
The average fuel economy of an american car is apparently 24.7 mpg, whereas a Tesla Model S gets 3.0 miles per kWhr.
So if you replace one with the other, you will need about 3.5 MWhr of extra electricity. 27% extra.
The good thing is that we should be able to charge the EVs at the time of our choosing, and maybe even discharge them into the grid when the power demand outweighs the generation. The utilisation of wind, solar and off-peak baseload power should increase.
Even if EVs do double electricity demand, its mainly going to be off peak, and you've got 8+ hours you can spread the charging over. Maybe not a great match to solar, but a good match for wind.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-...
My point is that the grid is not getting continuously cleaner if you're dumping a bunch more load on it. The marginal increase in load will be powered by fossil fuels for a significant amount of time, which is longer than the lifetime of a Tesla built today.
You take your dirtiest power offline first (with a sane energy policy). Any extra load you add is by definition delaying that event.
EVs are an important next step, and an absolute necessity for stabilizing the grid when transitioning to intermittent renewables. I was replying to a very specific claim made by the parent comment.
If you take the existing grid, and add a bunch of load to it, and also add a bunch of renewables, the grid is still cleaner. For the set pollution outputs, the amount of power generated is higher. Pollution per unit power is less.
And the point I was making is that it doesn't matter, even if coal was where the additional power came from (and it absolutely will not be), it's still cleaner than current ICE cars (that's the link I cited in the previous post)
But you aren't thinking clearly about where the power for EVs is coming from. I'm going to attempt to illustrate with some made up numbers for simplicity.
This year, we have:
* 100 TWh electricity consumption
* 100 TWh gasoline consumption
The electricity is generated via:
* 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year
* 80 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year
This system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 8 years, having consumed 80 + 70 + 60 ... = 360 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels, and gasoline containing 800 TWh.
Now if we could switch the system over to 100% EVs this year (to make the math easier), let's assume we can replace gasoline containing 100 TWh with 20 TWh of electricity. The capacity for this generation comes from our existing fossil fuel plants, which were in the process of shutting down.
Our consumption is now:
* 120 TWh electricity
Generated via:
* 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year
* 100 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year
This alternate system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 10 years, having consumed 100 + 90 + 80 ... = 550 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels.
Even on an aggressive renewable ramp (which should be more favorable than reality), the addition of load from EVs has caused 52% more consumption of electricity from fossil fuels over the course of the ramp. This is still a significant reduction in carbon emissions, as the power plants burning fossil fuels are more efficient, and it's worth doing. But it is not correct to say that the EVs are powered in part by renewables until near the end of the ramp. Any amount of renewable energy you feed the EVs is simply being taken from elsewhere in the grid.
Now, you could ramp up renewables more quickly to make up the shortfall, but you could have done that anyway. The only real connection they have is that EVs can dispatch demand and even send power back in to the grid from their batteries, in order to allow the grid to remain stable as more intermittent sources of power are added to the grid. In places where wind and solar have caused an excess of energy, like Germany on occasion as discussed by a sibling commenter, or at times in my own Australia, you can start to attribute that otherwise wasted energy to fueling EVs.
Also given solar's growth and the time it will take for most cars to be electric there's plenty of room for more solar production. California now requires solar on all new homes, and it's getting ever more price effective to use renewables. Seems like I see a few stories a week about a coal, NG, or similar peaker plant being cancelled, or decomissioned in favor of battery storage, solar, or both... for purely economic reasons.
A 75kw battery in a tesla gives you a range of 310 miles or so. So that's 4 miles or so per kw. So if I install the smallest Tesla solar system (4kw for $8,000) and being in central California I get a fair bit of sun. Should easily make 15-20kwh in the winter, and a fair bit more in the summer. That's 80 ish miles a day in the winter, and more in the summer. I drive about 30 miles a day on average.
So with a 8kw solar system I'd likely handle my driving needs and put a big dent in my other power needs. Tesla's new solar pricing puts it around $2.00 a watt installed. $16,000 isn't cheap, but our power bill isn't cheap either, especially in the summer.
As a nice bonus solar panels noticeably decrease the heat load in the attic, saving airconditioning costs. Amusingly solar panels over parking lots (so they provide shade) actually save a fair amount of gas. The huge win is when everyone runs their AC flat out for 15 minutes when they get into their 130F cars, if their car is closer to ambient they spend much less gas on the AC.
While solar does contribute to the "duck" shaped power production curve, cars typically spend the vast majority of their time parked, and can be programmed to use power whenever there is a surplus/whenever the price is lowest. So while electric cars can consume large amounts of power, they generally aren't picky on when they get it. At least for home users they typically schedule charging for whatever time the cheapest rates start.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
35% renewable.
12% nuclear.
Those percentages talk about how much capacity they have to produce electricity in Germany NOT how much they consume from that capacity (capacity factor is the important word and that's only between 20-40% of that capacity.
Plus those percentages is before you include how much energy is important.
In other words that number is highly highly misleading.
So it's highly misleading. On top of that, we haven't even talked about the fact that it's increased the prices dramatically for the german consumer and it's not going to reduce CO2 emissions even looking into the future maybe even slightly increase it because of the need to support it with coal now that they are closing the nuclear power plants.
It's a huge failure.
Lets start with the idea that wind is somehow making strides:
https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR349_IjpQUn2HChgQCGGaYlR6...
Today it's less than 1% of the world's energy (which is the important factor here not just electricity) Projected to be 3% in 2040.
With regards to Germanys ELECTRICITY usage (again it's not energy but electricity):
https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/reality-check-germany-doe...
And again pile up all the other things I talked on top of that and you get to why your "facts" are not actually useful but misleading.
Regarding energy prices in Germany
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-households-and-i...
Regarding capacity factor: http://www.nmppenergy.org/feature/capacity_factor
Regarding CO2 emissions: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-germany-emissions/
>Lets start with the idea that wind is somehow making strides:
>https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR349_IjpQUn2HChgQCGGaYlR6....
>Today it's less than 1% of the world's energy (which is the important factor here not just electricity) Projected to be 3% >in 2040.
I wasn't talking about the world number, but the German number.
>With regards to Germanys ELECTRICITY usage (again it's not energy but electricity):
>https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/reality-check-germany-doe....
>And again pile up all the other things I talked on top of that and you get to why your "facts" are not actually useful but >misleading.
Besides that link being from 2014, we have added a lot of reneweables since, it isn't contradicting what I said.
>Regarding energy prices in Germany
>https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-households-and-i....
Yes, energy prices in Germany are high for private households, as the costs for the transition are put only on private consumers and small businesses while large industries pay none of it. This is rightfully critisized by many. What is the relevance for the discussion here?
> Regarding capacity factor: http://www.nmppenergy.org/feature/capacity_factor
Yes, and?
> Regarding CO2 emissions: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-germany-emissions/
This article actually confirms the numbers I named, with almost 40% reneweables in 2017. So you show that your claim about my numbers is wrong. Thanks.
You are talking about electricity it's not energy. You are talking about what % of electricity is produced IN Germany now what it consumes (i.e. imports) Your number needs to factor in capacity factor (it doesn't)
The point of this discussion is whether Solar can be used for large scale energy consumption. It can't and it isn't and you haven't showed that to be the case for the very reasons I just explained to you.
Sun could be 100% based on the way you present it and it still wouldn't mean that Germany didn't use other types.
Thats the point you seem to be missing here.
No, you claimed that my number of 45% reneweable electricity production in Germany for 2019 so far is false. But you provided a link which showed that it was 40% in 2017 already. So how have you shown my number wrong? Please let us just talk about the number, don't start other topics as in your previous post.
You are talking about electricity it's not energy.
Yes, I am talking about electricity, my claim was clearly referring to that. How was my claim wrong?
You are talking about what % of electricity is produced IN Germany now what it consumes (i.e. imports)
Germany is a net electricity exporter.
Your number needs to factor in capacity factor (it doesn't)
What capacity factor needs to be factored in and how when just doing the sum of the production in Watt hours?
The point of this discussion is whether Solar can be used for large scale energy consumption. It can't and it isn't and you haven't showed that to be the case for the very reasons I just explained to you.
My claim didn't talk about solar specifically, but about all reneweables together. How was the number I named wrong?
Sun could be 100% based on the way you present it and it still wouldn't mean that Germany didn't use other types.
No, I have not made any claim about solar. I have just named the total percentage of reneweable electricity of the total electric production.
Capacity factor (which means that you have to reduce the number to that factor which is betewen 20-40% of what is stated as capacity is different than actual usage)
It's only electricity produced in germany (which means you have to include electricity coming from other places than Germany)
That electricity is a subset of energy.
It's pretty simple. Your number ignores those facts to get to that numbers. If you factor those things in the number will dramatically smaller.
I know what capacity factor is. But I was not talking about the installed peak power of reneweables, I was talking about the actual amount of energy which has been produced. It is irrelevant what the capacity is, it is only counting the energy being produced, which is measured by the meter. That is the number I have been talking about.
It's only electricity produced in germany (which means you have to include electricity coming from other places than Germany)
What are you talking about? Germany isn't importing electricity on a large scale.
That electricity is a subset of energy.
That is true, that doesn't make my statement, that reneweables are over 40% of all electricity production in Germany wrong. But you claimed my statement were wrong.
It's pretty simple. Your number ignores those facts to get to that numbers. If you factor those things in the number will dramatically smaller.
No I was just talking about the metered electricity production.