News from California 11

[zdas04]

California passes new auto emission rules

This article is AMAZING. The regulators in California have mandated that 1.4 million electric cars be on the roads of the state by 2025. I tried to count the number of times electric cars were called "zero emissions" in the article and got to 8 before I lost count. One of the comments after the the article hit the nail on the head by saying "Electricity comes from coal and natural gas, why don't they call these cars 'coal fired vehicles'?".

Why do regulators insist on pretending that they can ignore the laws of nature?

David

 

[SnTMan]

I expect somebody's self esteem was negatively affected. Not permitted these days..

 

[rconnor]

I don't want to derail an interesting conversation but I have a couple of points with regards to the title change:

(1) I actually thought, if the double meaning was intended, the title was pretty witty and very tongue in cheek. I don't think it was meant to be mean spirited in any way...
(2) ...but it is understandable why it was changed as I'm sure the moderators have rules on certain terms not being used.
(3) As to who would be offended, maybe the same group that California decided would destroy the "sanctity" of marriage if they allowed them to marry? I'm not offended by it but if you put yourselves in their shoes, it would be understandable.

As to the actual topic, I think there are a lot of good points with regards to a lack of foresight in a lot of these decisions. I work for a utility and we (unofficially of course) dread mass EV's on the road in a short period of time because the grid is not designed to accommodate them.

There will be a huge, spread out, increase in demand which will cause the utility to scramble to find a way to satisfy the demand. The solution is usually by the cheapest (dirtiest) power from a neighbour...for an inflated cost of course.

However, if the policy makers work hand-in-hand with utilities to help aid in the transition to heavy EV use, then it could work out. I just don't know if that is happening in California.

The problem is that these decisions have technological, political, economic, sociologic and environmental elements to them. One person (yes, even us omnipotent engineers...but especially politicians) cannot fully understand all of them; you need cross-discipline input.

 

[jmw]

One small correction. You say:

One person (yes, even us omnipotent engineers...but especially politicians) cannot fully understand all of them; you need cross-discipline input.

which is very generous to politicians.
I am not sure they ever even partially understand anything.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[zdas04]

rconnor,
I've been providing gas to public utilities and power plants my whole career, and I've heard some of the same concerns that you mention, but rarely with numbers. I'd love to hear anything you are willing to share about what your industry thinks the sequence of events will be. I see two possible scenarios

(1) upgrade generating capacity; (2) upgrade the distribution network; (3) increase the number of EV.

Or: (1) increase the number of EV; (2) decrease the reliability of the power grid; (3) blame the utilities; (4) increase the number of EV more; (5) start the permitting process for new plants; (6) increase the number of EV even more; (7) build the new plants; (8) increase the number of EV; (8) decrease the reliability of the grid further; (9) start permitting upgrades to the power grid; and finally (10) increase the number of EV).

My gut feeling is that we'll do the second.

David

 

[rconnor]

jmw,

haha, yes, I stand corrected.

zdas04,

The two major concerns are how fast EV's gain in popularity and how people charge them.

We are expecting to see about 80,000 EV's by 2030, resulting in 195 GWh increase. This is not an issue for generation because that increase is spread out over 20 years. Another study showed that a 10% switch over from light-duty vehicles to EV's could increase the load by 4.7%. So, if you had a sudden, mass injection of EV's (such as that described in the article) then, yes, it could be a problem for generation capacity. However, the bigger issue is probably distribution and localized brown outs.

The more complicated (and maybe more important) problem is how people will charge them, namely uncontrolled versus smart charging.

Uncontrolled charging means people can plug in whenever they want, into any suitable outlet. Here people will most likely come home after work and plug in their car, during peak hours. This will cause an even greater spike to occur during this time, magnifying the possibility for brown outs. It may also force utilities to turn on higher cost forms (or dirty forms) of generation to meet the spikes. An utility wants nice flat demand profiles so that you can have generating stations running and near optimum levels for the majority of the time. The greater the peaks and valleys, the less efficient your generation is.

On the other hand, smart charging means that charging is regulated to smooth out the demand. This allows utilities to keep plants running at near optimum efficiency and also means that non-controllable renewables, such as wind/solar, can be used to curtail the increase caused by EV's. The result is lower cost to the utility (on a per kW basis) and lower total emissions. However, implementation is much more difficult/costly here.

A study on a fictional utility, with only small amounts of renewable generation, found that the uncontrolled charging strategy would increase the cost of generation (per kW) by 24% while increasing emissions per miles to 284 g/mile. While smart charging would reduce the cost of generation (per kW) by 19% and decrease the emissions per mile of EV's to 220 g/mile. Note an average light-duty vehicle has emits about 412 g/mile and a prius is about 176 g/mile. If the study was changed to a utility with 100% natural gas CCGT plants, the emissions from the EV would be 144 g/mile, and much lower for nuclear, wind, hydro or solar.

However, these numbers would be much different depending on the base load profile for the utility and the method of generation. The true benefit is different location to location; this is an important concept for people to think about when talking about EV's, that often gets overlooked.

For example, the utility I work for is:
- primarily hydro power
- publically owned (low domestic cost/kWh, higher incentive to be a corporate citizen)
- a big exporter of power, which is a huge contributor to our revenues.
So with that in mind, EV's in our area:
- Greatly reduce overall emissions
- Are attractive to local clients due to very low domestic electricity costs (but cold weather climate is a hindrance to EV's)
- Increases are local demand which reduces are exports = reduced revenues, for the same generation (however, with the US economy in the toilet, the cost of electricity has dropped which effects the severity of this reduction and possibly provides more stable revenues)

 

[jmw]

On the plus side, most people will be using their EVs during the day when loads are greatest and charging them overnight when capacity is greatest....
Until something upsets the mix.
Superbowl night could be one....

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SnTMan]

100+ summer days could be another.

 

[berkshire]

Ok what about the smart charging equasion where Power could be drawn on a short term basis, from the EV's and fed back into the grid to stabilize the load. This was touted a couple of years ago and now has gone strangely quiet.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[zdas04]

rconnor,
Thank you for a clear descriptoin of the waterfront. What is g/mile, I'm not familiar with those units?

I actually expect that smart chargers will be the norm, maybe something like when you plug the EV in the charger asks you when you need the car again and then talks to the grid to minimize its contribution to spikes within that window. That technology is not far fetched at all, and seems to have a larger impact than most of the really Buck Rogers stuff people are talking about. Utiliites have been talking about the benefits of level-loading and off-peak demand for at least all of my life.

David

 

[rconnor]

g/mile is grams of CO2 emissions produced per mile driven. For EV's the CO2 emissions are those produced by the power plant(s) (weighted average if multiple types of generation are used) providing electricity for the EV, for ICE vehicles the CO2 emissions come directly from the vehicles tailpipe.

I know that the negative effect of CO2 is a point of contention but the numbers, relative to eachother, also corrolate to mile/gallon. In otherwords, it paints a good comparative picture of consumption per unit of useful output.

My knowledge of the actually specifics behind the implimentation of smart charging is limited (I work in generation) but I know there is work along the lines of what you said. Maybe implementation is easier than I think.

Either way, if you put the cart (EV's) before the horse (charging system, grid modernization, clean generation) then you could actually have a negative impact on the $/kW (first to generate then later, as a result, to consume), system reliability and environmental impact. With the horse before the cart, the opposite can be true. The extent, as stated before, is very dependent on the local utilities situation.

If you are concerned with the environment and you live in an area powered by renewables, then EV's can make sense. If you live in an area powered by coal, then buy a Prius.

 

[zdas04]

rconnor,
It makes me sad that you have to say

I know that the negative effect of CO2 is a point of contention but the numbers, relative to each other, also correlate to mile/gallon. In other words, it paints a good comparative picture of consumption per unit of useful output.

I know why you have to say it, but why can't we engineers just accept an objective measurement as objective without all the damn baggage. Mass of CO2 per mile driven is absolutely a number that can be usefully correlated to relative energy effeciency and there is nothing inherently evil about it--complete combustion results in water, CO2 and heat, why do we keep forgetting that?. That shouldn't be controversial, but the discussion has gotten so strident that we're backing off from talking about CO2 in any context but AGW. That is sad.

David

 

[cranky108]

?"g/mile is grams of CO2 emissions produced per mile driven"? This depends on the fuel, if it is carbon rich, or carbon poor. Coal will emmit more CO2 than natural gas, because of the amount of carbon in the fuel, not because of the efficency. You can change the fuel mix in a car and improve the CO2 emmitted, but that dosen't make it more efficent. It probally means more water/steam is in the exaust.

If we were concerned at all about CO2, then we must also consiter the CO2 emitted in the manufacture of the steel. In which case driving an old car is more efficent than a new car.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And let's not forget Hydrogen 'fuel-cell' technologies where the 'product of combustion' is ONLY water. Or even hydrogen powered ICE vehicles.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[zdas04]

cranky108,
I think that is the point, to get to a common denominator. The g/mile number is dependent on fuel chosen, but it is also dependent on vehicle design and driving style. Seems like a more effective measure than $/mile (since the cost of fuel is so variable across the globe) or mpg (since converting that number to apply to an EV is so contaminated with political BS). So if you look at the CO2 exhausted by the power plants (per kW-hr), get the weighted average g/kW from the mix of power plants serving an area then you get a direct (disregarding line losses) comparison of kW used per mile times g/kW to get g/mile.

Going into the CO2 used in steel manufacture seems like it would be about a wash between ICE and EV. CO2 generated in transporting fuel to the end user may or may not be a wash (in some markets virtually all the gasoline and diesel is pipelined to distribution stations that are reasonably close to end-user fueling stations; coal comes in on trains generally--including a transportation component might be useful in differentiating, but I'm not certain of that).

Seems reasonable to me.

David

 

[cranky108]

May I suggest kJ as a measure. A kJ/mile is a good measure of efficency. FYI. one kWH=3.6 MJ

And why is $/mile a bad way to compare, other than it changes? If you use the price of fuel on the futures market, at the time frame you are interested in, the values should be good.

 

[zdas04]

I suppose you can suggest anything you want, I don't know if anyone here is in a position to influence the change.

$/mile doesn't work very well because the cost of fuel and power is so heavily manipulated from place to place. In most of Europe fuel taxes make motor fuel at least twice the average U.S. price while in places like Indonesia government policy puts motor fuel prices at a fraction of U.S. prices. Even within a country local prices can vary substantially both from place to place and with time.

David

 

[JohnRBaker]

You mean like when I was in Utah last week and paid only $3.11 on Friday for regular while here in SoCal this morning it was $3.96.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[rconnor]

zdas04,
I completely agree with you; I actually added the comment to avoid it turning into a discussion on the effects of CO2. But in hindsight, all it may have done is bring attention to it.

I intended on saying that no matter whether your primary concern is emissions, the economics or basic efficiency, the unit will, comparatively, tell the same story.

cranky,
emissions/mile, $/mile or kJ/mile are relatively porportionate and shouldn't change the overall conclusion. It's interesting that those three units match up nicely with the three "primary concerns" I said above.

 

[cranky108]

$/mile or kJ/mile should line up as long as the taxes are level with the fuels. Note if you were to use wood as a fuel your $/mile should be cheeper for wood because of the lack of taxes.

emissions/mile depend on what you consiter emissions. If you neglect water/steam as emmissions, then carbon fuels have a disadvantage. Not because of the carbon, but because of the method.

One, or two, valid emmissions/mile comparison that would be interesting is SO2 or NOx per mile. Not because of anything other than these may not be related to the fuel, but the fuel source.

I really don't think carbon is a global problem, but inefficency is.

Question: what are the efficencies of different cars at say 5 MPH?

 

[zdas04]

I happen to be looking at part-load fuel consumption for gensets right now, and I think that the answer to the 5 mph question is "Horrible".