Scientific American article about EV's and Plug-Ins

Hey Vickdog,
I could only read the begining of the article on-line as it was a for pay site.

The Dirty Truth about Plug-In Hybrids: Scientific American

Can you share the source of some of the data that seems to contradict other models? Does gasoline really mean any gound based fuel like methane in many of the statistical areas? If that is the case, they really are poisoning the data. Is the only pollutant they considered CO2? How did they model the changing grid in the future? How do they find plug-ins dirtier than baseline but evs cleaner?

 

You should be shocked. According to Energy Information Administration (EIA) | State/Territory Energy Profiles | Energy Data, Information, and Maps , petroleum products account for less than 1/2 of 1% of electrical generation in the state of New York. My understanding is Florida is one of the bigger oil users for electrical generation (don't ask me why).

I also really don't buy that a PHEV saves more gasoline than an EV.

Now, I am not saying there was an agenda. But, it is very poorly edited, written and researched, or very very poorly explained.

 

I forgot to mention, I do agree that the amount of saving (both $ and CO2) does depend on the source and cost of your electricity.

 

That must be why the numbers seem so wrong. They are. No one is going to build new petroleum power plants, and those grid charging will hopefully use off peak power.

 

Burning oil to generate electricity is madness. All of those plants should be replaced with non-fossil plants, or at the very least converted to natural gas.

My EV will save 100% in CO2 emissions 'cos my house uses 100% non-fossil electricity.

 

I have listened to/ or read numerous utilities being interviewed in print or online(one was interviewed at Green Drive by Tony F) and in general terms few of them seem overly concerned about EVs in the near or med term. I have not heard one mention they will be building new plants and they assume off peak power will be mostly used or that pricing will push off peak use and that clearly will cause no new power plants.

Poor article with some bad assumptions.

 

What about the energy used to refine, transport, and store gasoline? Was that factored in?

 

I linked the best article I have read on this topic last week to the forum. At least in CA, the additional demand is mostly anticipated to be met with NG, but with the proviso that as the demand is folded into baseload the emissions are dirtier (think coal.)

My personal enviro standpoint is (EV+home PV) is a great goal to look forward to. For me, home PV this summer, and an EV in a couple of years when low(er) priced, micro cars with ~ 50 mile range are available. I'm hopeful the Toyota iQ EV fits the bill.

 

This has nothing to do with more power plants, but rather *how* the electricity is made. Your mistake is a common one.

 

Ah, that makes some sense then.
However, this leads to the same logical inconsistency as Sages thread last week.
It is assuming a high percentage of vehicles on the road being replaced with EV/PHEV (do the mention what marketshare this is for?).
In Sages references, they basically were modeling 100% EV use in 2050 and current day's power grid.

So reading either Sage's references, or the SA article about some day decades in the future really has no relevance to an EV 'going live' on the grid today.

I definitely agree it shows how desperately we need to upgrade our grid before EVs reach a significant market share (30-50%).

 

A little--but only a little--off-topic here - did the article address the potential strain on the grid? "Grid anxiety?" All it takes in the northeastern US is a hot summer day for some areas to undergo rolling brownouts. Add to that a substantial number of plug-in EVs, and, well, let's just say I hope they seriously incentivize charging during off-peak hours.

Also, here in MD, about 80% of our electricity comes from coal (the bulk of the rest from one nuclear plant). Although it varies a lot from place to place, on the whole coal is still by far the biggest single primary energy source for electrical generation in the US, and likely to remain so for some time. Coal is very ungood from many standpoints besides CO^2 emissions--i.e., particulates, mercury, heavy metals in the fly ash, mountain-top removal mining, acid precip, acid mine drainage, people getting blown to kingdom come in the mines or dying slowly from black lung, etc., so on and so forth.

I don't have access to the whole article, but I do agree that where you get your electricity from should make a big difference. Seems like the best areas for wide-scale adoption of PEVs (at least until we get a good wind/solar infrastructure in place--don't hold your breath) would be the Pac NW and other areas with lots of hydropower. As far as natural gas and oil go, I think it's nonsensical to burn them to generate heat to boil water to spin a turbine to generate electricity to charge a battery to power a private auto--yeah, yeah, I know about the 'economy of scale' in a big power plant, but you're still fighting the second law of thermodynamics at every step of the way. And the people (and lakes, fish, streams and mountains) near the sources of mining or the power plants get screwed.

I'd think it better to go the 'conventional' hybrid route if using oil, or mod the engine to burn natural gas (which is not a difficult thing to do; the problem is, again, in the infrastructure).

Damn that second law of thermodynamics. Can't Congress repeal it or something?

 

My understanding is that hydropower is used as baseload and is maximized already, so even though it makes up a large fraction of some NW US areas, it may not play any part in meeting EV.

Zythryn, I'll have to go back to that article, I thought different levels of EV penetration were modeled, and the gross conclusion was that more penetration led to increasing transition from marginal to baseload supply.

addendum: http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1145

 

My apologies, you are correct, I missed the chart in which they ramped up market penetration.
In the first two thirds of the paper they use a 50% replacement of 'vehicle miles' and in other places a 100% market share.
Interesting thing is, in figure 12, it shows how load-leveling (off peak charging) BEVs actually decrease plant CO2 emissions until about about 25% and doesn't increase above the baseline until about 50% market penetration.

I would still like to see them take into account the inefficiencies of off peak power generation which are alleviated by off peak charging. Or perhaps they did, wrapped into figure 12?

 

^^ If I understand the article correctly, at low penetration demands NG is the source fuel; and as penetration increases coal appears because of the utilities' ability to anticipate demand and fold it into baseload.

What inefficiency are you talking about ?

 

I am aware of some oil based power plants in Florida. These are old plants that by virtue of being close to oil offloading terminals and far from cheap rail line access to coal, they selected oil (a long time ago). Since then, the high price of oil and the low price of natural gas has been driving the utilities to convert.

What is the assumptions about the vehicle "replaced" by the EV or PHEV? A vehicle with the same mpg?.....or a vehicle with an expected big improvement in efficiency?

 

^^ Prius, I think.

I am with Zythryn here. This is not a nail in the coffin of EV at all; it is an exhortation to clean up the grid or use clean home based energy like PV. However -- and this to me is the key point I was arguing last week -- it makes little sense to spend limited funds on EV now (whether personal or societal) before the grid is clean.

This argument of course is an enviro one only.

 

My understanding is that some types of plants are very inefficient when run in 'standby' mode. I believe this is mainly with regard to coal plants. As coal plants take hours to shut down, and hours again to gear up to full power, most utilities will simply run them at a low level of efficiency. Basically this 'wastes' the power.
I believe this is also why many studies have shown the current (no pun intended) grid would be sufficient for up to about 20% market share of PHEVs (as long as they are all charged at night).
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much about this, which is why I am hoping the will address it in their next paper.