EV and emissions and bad reporting

Not fake news. Bad reporting. Was reading TTAC about Germany adopting stricter emissions laws and they had a link to an article about how the UK would need more power for supporting EVs:

http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170814/ANE/170819907/ev-push-could-boost-polluting-gas-plants-in-uk

This is a terrible article. Be careful what you read, folks:

1: A simple cycle (I've never head it called open-cycle) natural gas plant is many multiples cleaner than a diesel

2: Every grid needs simple cycle and combined cycle power along with others to really make any sense

3: The carte blanche assumption that nuclear is cleaner than natural gas is obviously problematic

4: New simple cycle plants are well over 40% efficient, way more than quoted (strangely enough they got combined cycle efficiencies much closer to reality)

5: We go from "more EV's" to "The grid is going to collapse" pretty quickly, we already need more electricity every year. I should know, we're building equipment a few hundred feet from where I sit. EVs might mean we need more energy faster, but it's still dramatically cleaner to add a simple cycle plant than those diesel automobiles, at least in terms of local air emissions.

You guys all know I'm no greenie, but this article, and many like it, are total garbage.

Read carefully!

We have a lot of people with no scientific curiosity and we don't teach much science anymore. As a result most people seem to get their science and tech knowledge from a crazy uncle who is "up on these sorts of things". Sadly the crazy uncle stopped learning about the time build your own HiFi kits went away and everything he knows about electric cars, power plants etc has been learned from memes his tin foil hat buddy passed along. At least that's how it seems anyway.

I'm an EE by trade, and I was just having this discussion with a coworker.

EVs are cool. I'd be rocking a Tesla right now if I could afford it. But the electric grid is woefully unprepared for the widespread adoption of EVs.

Wall-e wrote: We have a lot of people with no scientific curiosity and we don't teach much science anymore. As a result most people seem to get their science and tech knowledge from a crazy uncle who is "up on these sorts of things". Sadly the crazy uncle stopped learning about the time build your own HiFi kits went away and everything he knows about electric cars, power plants etc has been learned from memes his tin foil hat buddy passed along. At least that's how it seems anyway.

I'm not sure if I should be scared of the sloppy reporting that glosses over facts and uses biases as axioms, or if I should be scared that people read it, buy it, and move on to play on their phones.

My problem with all of these gov't run programs for alternative energy transportation is that their focus is typically so narrow. Here in the US, there isn't a single solution. Electric cars lack the range. current hybrids are built wrong. Diesel has been regulated out of contention. Mass transit doesn't work in 80% of the country because of lack of population density etc.

We need a TOTAL outlook that combines all of these new technologies. Yet, due to gov't subsidies and a narrow focus (it works in NYC, why won't it work in Des Moines?) we get saddles with half measures.

For instance: My house is in a very windy area that could support itself on a small wind generator and solar panel setup. If it was something that was affordable ($79k investment as of 2 years ago), if all the houses in our area had the same setup we could feed power back to the grid for the areas that can't support itself, take load off the production plants etc. But because our gov't knows that won't work in Baltimore, then that means it can't work anywhere.

Ugh..... I'm so over society at this point. I'm ready for an island.

In reply to Sky_Render:

coworker just bought an S. Since he is in an apartment, he can't hook up a home charger to get the full charge overnight. He drives 70 miles each way every day. Guess what... he's out of juice and will have to drive to the nearest charging station 24 miles away to sit for 90 minutes to get enough charge to get home and back to work. The technology is just not there yet to handle it.

tuna55 wrote: 3: The carte blanche assumption that nuclear is cleaner than natural gas is obviously problematic

This depends a lot on how you weight a low chance of radioactive emissions vs a guaranteed amount of CO2 production.

In reply to codrus:

That's kind of how I feel about it. Nuclear disasters on the scale of Fukushima or Chernobyl, while very bad, are vanishingly rare. The Gen IV reactors are orders of magnitude better than the Gen II at Fukushima. The problem is that they simply don't get built because A) Bureaucracy B) Scope creep (driven by bureaucracy) drives the developers out of business (Westinghouse.)

It's like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and wondering where the hell your foot is disappearing to and why it hurts so much.

codrus wrote:

tuna55 wrote: 3: The carte blanche assumption that nuclear is cleaner than natural gas is obviously problematic

This depends a lot on how you weight a low chance of radioactive emissions vs a guaranteed amount of CO2 production.

No it doesn't. My point is that it's a complicated subject and the carte blanche statement that nuclear is clean is incorrect and inappropriate.

I wouldn't say EVs don't have the range for everyone, I'd say that they would make sense for a lot of people as long as they realign their "fill up" procedure to something other than "put gas in it the Saturday after payday". These are the people who only look at range, not economy, and don't mind if it's a 22 gallon tank as long as they only have to bother every other week.

I also wouldn't say Diesel is regulated out of contention, if that were the case then how come everybody's coming out with their own model? Even Chevy is going to have a oilburner midsize car. The technology finally came together where the engines can be clean enough to be considered viable automotive engines, while also having acceptable performance and drivability.

Knurled wrote: I wouldn't say EVs don't have the range for everyone, I'd say that they would make sense for a lot of people as long as they realign their "fill up" procedure to something other than "put gas in it the Saturday after payday". These are the people who only look at range, not economy, and don't mind if it's a 22 gallon tank as long as they only have to bother every other week.

If they just plug it in at night, like their cell phone, then they don't have to worry about range at all unless they're doing more than a full charge's worth of driving in one day.

Knurled wrote: I also wouldn't say Diesel is regulated out of contention, if that were the case then how come everybody's coming out with their own model? Even Chevy is going to have a oilburner midsize car. The technology finally came together where the engines can be clean enough to be considered viable automotive engines, while also having acceptable performance and drivability.

I think diesel is going to be regulated out of contention in Europe. Elsewhere I think they're safe for a few decades.

With nuclear, a big whoops or a meltdown is not your only concern. There is no really good solution for the problem of disposal of spent radioactive fuel. How much of that stuff is currently simmering in rusty barrels in a cave in the desert? We may never know.

In reply to 1988RedT2:

Thanks for keeping on topic!

1988RedT2 wrote: With nuclear, a big whoops or a meltdown is not your only concern. There is no really good solution for the problem of disposal of spent radioactive fuel. How much of that stuff is currently simmering in rusty barrels in a cave in the desert? We may never know.

It's not a matter of not knowing where it is, it's a matter of having to make sure people always know where it is and having to keep it contained FOREVER. Or until someone builds a fast breeder reactor, whichever comes first

Most of it is actually in containment pools rather than desert caves.

tuna55 wrote: In reply to 1988RedT2: Thanks for keeping on topic!

Clearly the solution is to develop a mini nuclear reactor that will fit in a Smart car! You could buy cheap fuel rods from the former Soviet Union on ebay!

1988RedT2 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: In reply to 1988RedT2: Thanks for keeping on topic!

Clearly the solution is to develop a mini nuclear reactor that will fit in a Smart car! You could buy cheap fuel rods from the former Soviet Union on ebay!

Yes! This! Fallout 4 here we come. You can even buy uranium on Amazon for fuel.

I'm sorry, I don't really have anything to add, I just really want a nuclear powered Belair convertible.

1988RedT2 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: In reply to 1988RedT2: Thanks for keeping on topic!

Clearly the solution is to develop a mini nuclear reactor that will fit in a Smart car! You could buy cheap fuel rods from the former Soviet Union on ebay!

A reactor can't fit in a Smart car, but it can fit in a gigantic military truck/APC thing:

http://englishrussia.com/2009/03/17/russian-mobile-nuclear-power-plants/

It's not that much bigger than a modern American pickup, right?

I wish I could lock threads which I started.

In reply to tuna55:

On topic I thought that renewables with localized off peak storage (read: batteries) was where the grid was currently going. Especially since the cost is coming down at a pretty rapid rate even without subsidies. The article appears to be making the assumption that renewables are going to remain static or that other sources such as hydro aren't an option.

The0retical wrote: In reply to tuna55: On topic I thought that renewables with localized off peak storage (read: batteries) was where the grid was currently going. Especially since the cost is coming down at a pretty rapid rate even without subsidies. The article appears to be making the assumption that renewables are going to remain static or that other sources such as hydro aren't an option.

Yes, there are lots of power plants going up, even in the Middle East, where they have gas turbines, steam turbines, solar and batteries all together.

It's going to be a really great grid, with or without nuclear.

I can give you a pretty sweet natural gas power plant which has super low emissions and matches a nuclear plant for output with none of the fuel issues or fallout dangers.

1988RedT2 wrote: With nuclear, a big whoops or a meltdown is not your only concern. There is no really good solution for the problem of disposal of spent radioactive fuel.

There IS a good solution for it, but the reprocessing looks a lot like the kind of refinement needed for making weapons, so politically there isn't a good solution.

There needs to be a way to reprocess so that it didn't look like the country involved had a clandestine arms program.

In reply to Knurled:

That's part of the promise of Gen IV FAST reactors. They're supposed to act as breeders so you can reprocess the waste from Gen I and II reactors. In theory anyway.

Sky_Render wrote: But the electric grid is woefully unprepared for the widespread adoption of EVs.

People always say this but they forget one thing: even if all manufacturers switched to all EV production overnight, it would take 30 YEARS to PRODUCE enough EVS to even replace HALF the US fleet of cars and trucks. I think the grid could handle that sort of slow increase in EVs.

And as it is, companies like Southern California Edison have determined that they COULD replace half the fleet overnight if people mostly charged at NIGHT so the plants didn't have to ramp down and ramp back up again like they do now. It's actually more efficient for the plants to have the EVs plugged in at night when everyone is sleeping.

The other side of natural gas is the extraction thereof. There have been numerous reported earthquakes in various parts of the globe recently that have been linked to natural gas extraction. And the frequency of these has been increasing. Not to mention groundwater contamination.

Mind you, I'm not one of these wacko anti-fracking types. But I am concerned that in the drive to source cleaner energy there are unintended consequences.

I am seeing more and more homes with solar roofs. Assuming the production of this tech can keep up, this seems like a good way to go. Used in conjunction with a grid-tie system, with some other source of non-sun-dependent power connected, this, I think, could be a good long-term solution for power stability and fewer emissions.

Everything has it's price, whether it's on the front end, the operating end, or the back end. To be flip about it, it pretty much comes down to how do you prefer to die?

Chris_V wrote:

Sky_Render wrote: But the electric grid is woefully unprepared for the widespread adoption of EVs.

People always say this but they forget one thing: even if all manufacturers switched to all EV production overnight, it would take 30 YEARS to PRODUCE enough EVS to even replace HALF the US fleet of cars and trucks. I think the grid could handle that sort of slow increase in EVs. And as it is, companies like Southern California Edison have determined that they COULD replace half the fleet overnight if people mostly charged at NIGHT so the plants didn't have to ramp down and ramp back up again like they do now. It's actually more efficient for the plants to have the EVs plugged in at night when everyone is sleeping.

Lots of studies around this, but you're right. We produce (surprise!) as much energy as we need, roughly. If we need more in a realistic-growth scenario, we'll build more plants.

Nightly loads are far lower, hence why the grid has so many peaker plants. If the daily load levels out due to a situation like this, those plants can be converted to baseloading plants without huge issues.