2 month anniversary energy stats for 2012 plug-in basic

I'm not "worried" about anything.

But I do have to re-iterate what I was saying and what Jonas was saying. All the power (technically) is just dumped into one pool (in a given region). Who dumps it in the pool is certainly carefully accounted for (these are the generators). And obviously who takes it out is all accounted for (our bills). Those who have paid for special renewable programs, certainly are paying for that generation. But what electricity you use is anybody's guess...because it does all go into one pool (from an engineering point of view not an accounting point of view). That was simply the point Jonas was making and I was agreeing with. Lest someone think some people on the grid have different wires. (there have been stranger assumptions).
If someone wants to feel like "that" particular windmill is the one powering their car fine...but it isn't really true anymore than if I where to own stock in a wind company and claim "that" windmill is mine.

Mike

 

I would say that there is no way to tag the electrons, this is quite different than just dumped into a pool. If that was the case we would not need to worry about the transmission lines. This specific case has a municipal utility - Austin Energy - contracting to build turbines for their customers and building transmission lines connected to their customers. ERCOT decides how the power flows. It is much more complicated than a pool. As wind is added ERCOT needs to decide what does not run. For example here are a couple of heavily polluting coal plants that will not be run this winter because wind takes priority. By dumbing it down to dumped in a pool, it makes it sound like this power does not offset other power. It is not tagged to go to specific homes if that is what you meant. That is definitely true. But if you paid to substitute wind for coal or natural gas, and the turbines got built, and the fossil fuel goes off line, you should get the credit.

We did have to build some different wires to get the wind power to the regional grid, but no, there are not special wires run for individual wind customers homes or businesses. I expect in about 10 years the grid will be smart enough to tell you what power you are using to charge your car. In austin it will be a combination of wind, solar, and natural gas. Much of the power added for the cities charging network is solar. I mainly go to two grocery stores - whole foods that operates as part of green choice, and heb that has a solar roof. My local coffee shop also has a solar roof also. Renewable power does not cost much more here.

Yep, but my green choice subscription paid to build part of a wind farm. Its a physical thing connected to the grid. That is why the EPA says that in such programs you can claim the benefit of said power. Its more than just an accounting thing. It is helping to get things built.

 

When you buy/pay extra/subscribe to these green power electricity, you are paying to increase renewable electricity share in the grid. Yes, you are displacing "dirtier electricity" with cleaner ones by utilizing the entire grid system. Hence, the average emission of the grid applies to you. That's the way I see it.

Unless you have a solar panel on your roof, wired them to your outlet and recharge your plugin when the sun is shinning (or stored it in the battery and charge at night), you cannot claim your plugin is powered by the sun.

 

This really went off the rails. I think the original quote that started it all was this one:

In my mind, if you are buying renewable energy that actually offsets other, dirtier power generation, then this is good enough to count as "buying wind power". Yes, it's true that your particular usage does not actually get its electricity from that particular windmill, but honestly, who cares? As austingreen described above, it IS actually accounted for and they do make sure that over the course of the year, the wind generation completely covers your actual usage. Thus, if there is insufficient capacity, they will build more turbines. This is wonderful.
There are some utilities that offer carbon/energy offsets. Those things are basically unregulated bullshit credits whose impact no one actually knows for sure. PG&E had a program like this – where they supposedly planted trees (or some other crap) to "offset" the emissions produced by the electricity that you consumed. This program saw its share of criticism and has actually been shut down. PG&E is now proposing a green program through which you will be able to buy RECs (renewable energy credits). These things appear to be something like a middle ground between the two – they fund the generation of renewable energy, but it doesn't necessarily end up offsetting your actual usage. The EPA has an informative page on the topic – Environmental Value of Purchasing RECs | Green Power Partnership | US EPA

 

I'm glad you agree that there is no way to tag electrons...it is as non-sensical as Maxwell's demon (and probably equally violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.) And, I still hold that the way it really works is dumping electrons into a pool. There is no special handling of actual power generated anywhere on the grid to know where it came from once a breaker is closed and a connection made. Sure, the operators can make choices as to what power to bring online, etc. But a kilowatt is a kilowatt once on the grid.

It should be "dumbed down" like this because this is how the electrical circuits work. Yes, paying to get your preferred method of generation causes more (or enough) of that type to get built. But this has nothing to do with what happens on any given day when you flip a light switch. On that day, it is entirely possible that "your" preferred generator is offline for maintenance and you are getting power from the dirtiest plant in the system. (actually, in the pool model you are getting it from the average of all generators in the local grid)

Thank you.

Great. And if no one is plugged in and charging where does the solar power go? It makes sense that it goes back onto the grid and powers the store, a nearby house, etc. And if it is cloudy and you plug in your car you are getting grid power, right? Or are the solar panels only directly tied to the car chargers...and if it is cloudy there is no charging?

And this is great. I'm all for it. It is about paying to build generation...but not about sorting electrons house by house.

Mike

 

I don't think that is a helpful attitude if you actually want to build renewable power, instead of just talk about it. Those involved with green choice have been responsible for adding that power + a buffer to the grid. Their marginal impact on the grid has been renewable. To try and dilute this with all the free riders in ERCOT is not helpful in building more. The austin energy program has spilled out, and gotten other utilities to build more wind. It has had a multiplier effect.

Now lets follow your argument to your car. Just because you bought a prius, you have not reduced the gasoline demand of your neighbors. You should average that into their gasoline, and pollution for your entire grid. Many people think this way. Hybrids are less than 4% of sales, so they have not reduced pollution or gasoline use. It is not a helpful argument if you do actually want to reduce gasoline consumption though.

Why would that be more helpful, than pooling with my neighbors and the municipal utility to build wind farms. The net effect on the grid whether I do it alone and disconnected, versus with the utility and grid operator is actually different. Non grid tied solar does less good than grid tied solar, yet costs more. Why would you give more credit to the guy spending more and not helping the grid? It makes no sense. When you tie solar to the grid, it helps manage the grid. At least at my utility your bill has charges that help other people and efficiency programs.

 

One of the significant qualities of the AE GreenChoice program is that it is not an "additional cost" for the subscriber like many green energy programs, particularly those that just buy RECs. Several of the batches have resulted in lower costs for the subscribers than purchasing fossil fuel generation.

I hope Jason has hung around to learn a bit about programs other than his local.

 

Think of it this way, if all the electrons just sat in a pool for people to use, we would have even less solar and no ocgt as wind and ccgt would be much cheaper. Unfortunately most power must be used when it is generated. That means if you add the wind turbines with natural gas back up to the grid, and the grid operator favors wind, that wind will be used ahead of other fuels - higher utilization. It changes the economy of the grid depending on rules. Green choice has had major impact with the regulators to adopt rules and build out the grid to support renewable.

Absolutely, but who really cares about a few kwh flipping a switch. In the longer run we can build wind turbines that power our air conditioners during the day and charge cars at night.

It all depends if you are looking at marginal or average effects. If you are looking at a single day we will see all sorts of things going on. If we average out for the years, the marginal impact of green choice actually reduces that fuel use more than the wind the customer paid for. When I bought my batch of wind very little of ercot was wind, now we are approaching 10%. Here is an untypical day with over 25% wind generation.
http://www.ercot.com/content/gridinfo/generation/windintegration/2012/11/ERCOT%20Wind%20Integration%20Report%2011-10-12.pdf

The wind was enough to use much less natural gas on the grid, on other days opposites occur. What you need to look at is how much less natural gas and coal we burn in a 5 year or 10 year period because of the wind batch.

All of it is grid tied in my examples. Again the idea is to look at the energy changes for long periods of time. Austin energy produces more wind and solar power in a year than is drawn from the public chargers. If more gets used, they will build more power. This is averaged into the grid though. Instantaneously we have no idea. That is why there is an Austin energy program partially funded by the federal government to monitor when and where the local plug-ins are charged. By 2020, when we expect most of the traffic at these chargers to come on-line, the municipal grid is expected to be over 30% renewable. There just are not that many free riders to make a case of dirty power. The city government, the school district, many businesses are part of green choice.

I hope I never gave anyone this impression. What we can do is charge people for the power they use, and add the power they want to the grid. This requires local, state, and federal regulations. Many officeholders do not want choice, but I hope the good example of texas wind helps change some minds.

 

I also pay for renewable in my utility bill. Lowering grid emission is a helpful attitude.

What we are debating on is who gets the credit. I think the person(s) who actually use the renewable electricity should get the credit too. For example with a solar panel, person A who owns it connected to the grid but during the day person B actually uses electricity from solar (and paid extra to the utility company). Person A come home and charge a plugin at night from other sources in the grid.

In that scenario, both A and B should get the credit. However, grid electricity is not tagged so we'll never know who gets the solar electricity or how many percent.

I don't trade my gasoline with my neighbors so it is a flawed analogy. I understand the point you are trying to make. In term of oil independence, the progress depends on the entire nation's effort. Hybrids are doing their parts but unfortunately, it is only 4% of all new vehicles sold. That shouldn't discourage hybrid buyers because we are making a difference.

The credit goes to everyone on the grid but more to you since you pay 5.7 cents more per kWh.

I am sure these wind farms are subsidized by federal government (and perhaps the state as well) with tax payer money. So, the credit should go to the tax payer as well.

In summary, you should get more green credit but should not be the only one.

 

Has that charge actually brought more renewable power on line? Was it voluntary? If so you deserve the credit.

The EPA and I say the person paying for green choice gets the credit. That encourages businesses and individuals to actually support the build out. Why can't you understand marginal use over a year? If person A got built into a collective with a wind farm (batch 3 was mine), and this power was built, and fossil fuel was not burned for this persons use, who should get the credit. Some guy next store that runs his air conditioner more? That is really unhelpful to give extra credit to a wasteful free rider in this system.

Why does it matter? Isn't what matters that the marginal impact was A did not cause extra fossil fuel to be burned. You are saying if I build a house, and rent it out, that the renter should get credit for buiding the house. Its absurd.

You driving your hybrid simply means that your neighbor uses your gasoline. In green choice fossil fuel is actually not burned at all. The analogy is fine, its your misunderstanding of the program that makes you not understand.

I actually pay less than my non-green choice neighbor. My wind farm was built when materials were less expensive. The wind farm is built and now costs for fuel has gone up.

Wind is subsidized 2.2 cents/kwh. IMHO coal is subsidized about 6 cents/kwh. I was charged a share put scrubbers on the coal plant, so that it would not pollute as much I figured that takes care of part of my 2.2 cents.

Everyone that makes the program work should get credit. But your marginal impact with this program is no fossil fuel and much less ghg than not participating in such a program.

 

Another bad analogy but I'll go with it. The renter should get the credit for living there. You get the credit for building it. The bank gets the credit for lending you a mortgage. You can't claim all the credits to yourself. That's my point.

You are not building the wind farm. I doubt you get the title to one of those wind turbine. The closest analogy would be you leasing the wind turbines and the lease is up in 2021.

The company that owns the wind farm is building it. You are just one of many "investors", including tax payers subsidizing and those paying extra for renewable electricity. Not really "investor" because at the end you own nothing from the wind farm, just like leasing a car.

 

usbseawolf2000,

you seem to be VERY concerned about ghg accounting, picking the best case scenario available for evaluating the Prius Plug In in just about every thread where the topic comes up.

What, in your opinion, is the method that should be used?

You routinely refer to the EPA methods when it supports your argument, but then dismiss them when it does not support your argument.

If someone wants to make an additional impact on their personal contribution to ghg reduction, what would you propose? park their PiP in the garage, unplugged, and walk? drop off their PiP at the local goodwill donation center and carpool in their neighbor's Hummer ?

 

Use EPA method since it is thorough and it prevents such bogus claim that austingreen is making. Below is straight from EPA:

Ensure your purchase does not count towards a mandate. Buyers of unbundled renewable energy certificates (RECs) or bundled green power products should ensure that their supplier is not also applying the underlying attributes and environmental benefits to a mandate (e.g., a state renewable energy portfolio standard [RPS]). Such a situation would constitute a double claim between you and your supplier.​

AustinEnergy (utility company) has to meet 35% Renewables Portfolio Standard mandated by the city of Austin. It makes sense because the cost of windfarm construction, real estate, kWh output, etc.. were probably subsidized by state and/or federal government. AustinEnergy (utility company) would have the REC so they can make the claim. Austingreen (subscriber) cannot make a double claim and EPA method prevents that.

Get a car that emits the least amount of GHG emission for you -- considering the emission from fuel source(s) and your commute pattern.

For me, that car is PiP. It covers most of my trips (short) in EV. Those are the trips that a regular Prius would be bad at. The source of my electricity is clean. EPA estimates that if I put 29% of my miles on electricity, in my zip code I would emit 190 g/mi. Well, I have 40% on electricity so, my actual is 178 g/mi. That's from my utility company level perspective.

If I use the national average electricity, EPA estimates 210 g/mi. My actual (40% EV and 60% HV) is 205 g/mi.

Remember, the whole point of being green is to reduce emission without compromising your life style. That's moving forward.

 

I don't think you understand that Austin Energy is a municipally owned utility by the City of Austin. The "mandate" is self imposed by folks like AustinGreen.

Your "clean" energy doesn't seem so clean. How do you propose you could further improve? Not saying you need to, but just wondering how you would approach the challenge.

btw, are you still wanting to dispute that my voluntary purchase of a 100% renewables sourced EV charging subscription does not qualify?

 

Funny how the EPA, via the DOE, references the GreenChoice program for purchasing green power, much to your objection.

 

Austin Energy Wins DOE Wind Power Award | Department of Energy

 

You seem quite intent to distort what the program does and does not do.

When I bought my batch of power, there was no forced plan. The city had a goal to get more wind built through individual choice. We greatly exceeded that goal. There was no double counting at all. It was not towards a mandate, indeed the later state mandate for 2020 has also indeed been blown through. The goals of Austin Energy regulated through the city council for wind are about green choice. If people don't purchase green choice the goal goes away. Perhaps the city council will approve higher rates to build more wind outside of chioce, but that decision has not been made. There is a 3% solar goal, and here if people do not build it the utility will, and pass costs to rate payers. This does not apply to wind.

The city doing renewable for public chargers is also quite apart from the renewable goals. Solar built does apply to the 3%. It does not really matter if you, USB do not approve of our program, or wish to mock it. It has been one of the most successful programs in the country. Your assertion of only solar on the roof adds power to the grid, is quite wrong in our form of regulation. Solar on your roof only means the utility does not need to build it. It is economically cheaper though than the utility building it themselves. Getting green choice wind or biogas actually builds these things.

Some things are more important than ghg today. One of these is building out the infrastructure to fuel our cars using less gasoline in the future. Green choice + plug-in not only reduces gasoline, but all fossil fuels. Using your own strange logic, if Austin will be 35% renewable + 22% nuclear by 2020, why would you apply the whole texas grid to a green choice customer. Wouldn't the real austin energy grid be the worst case you should apply. I mean we are not building old coal plants to charge our cars here, we are trying to shut one down. Most likely the coal plant will be closed by then also. I would not apply that renewable to non-choice customers, and would not apply the nuclear to choice customers, but that is me.

That is quite good. You should be happy with it. But you should not try to apply higher emissions to cars driven here.

I have yet to see anyone plug in regularly in west virginia when they live in austin or ny. Maybe you can find this person that uses that national grid.

Sometimes it seems being green means being smug and discounting the efforts of others. I find the idea that someone with a plug-in in austin, where we are greatly cleaning up the grid, just so that it looks worse, one of those smug efforts.

Many here buy wind not to reduce ghg, but to have stable prices and reduce fuel use. You don't need to even care about climate change to use renewable You might not even care about emissions and buy a plug in to not buy oil from countries that support terrorism. If you do that in Austin, or California, or even NYC you still are doing less damage to the environment.

It should not ever be a ghg purity test. Otherwise we get to the silly. Do you take hot showers, do you fly, do you eat food. Everyone would fail. Can't we all just get along without this anti-choice garbage on renewables.

 

Just to clarify and expand my original statement, which was that one cannot segregate electrons. It's actually worse than that when people believe that all "green" generation is to the good...

There is an erroneous perception among the public (and at segments in this thread) that when a windmill on a mountain is turning, a coal plant in a valley gets switched off, so anytime a windmill is turning we all benefit. First, the coal plant rarely gets switched off, but for maintenance. It is a base load supplier that is designed to run full throttle, 24/7. Even if the grid operator favors wind and taps into the wind generator during a windy period, the coal plant will continue burning coal despite not delivering electricity. Same for nukes, but for the emissions. Wind and solar, as clean as they might be, cannot displace or replace those base load generators on the grid. Moreover, the conventional generators in most grid systems will get "capacity payments" for being ready and able to deliver. Many of these generators are the dirtiest, such as peak load oil fired generators, many of which take more revenue from capacity payments than energy payments!

Second, marginal or regulating generating plants such as hydro and natural gas are more easily ramped up and down because they are dispatchable, but also more nimble than the base load plants. Switching from hydro to wind during windy periods brings little/no net change in "greenness." However, in most grid applications the load regulating natural gas plant will constantly burn fuel to maintain steam in reserve, just in case the system operator "makes the call" as it were. Moreover, that same gas plant loses efficiency and increases emissions when it ramps up and down, not unlike stop and go driving. Gas is cutting in on coal everywhere these days, even as a base load source, and the environmental benefits are huge. But it is giving us a more nimble grid too.

So the presumed benefits of grid scale wind power are in fact almost always far less than one might hope, and in many cases negligible to nonexistent. Off-grid wind (and solar) generation combined with methodologies like EVs gives the intermittent generator more value by virtue of the achieved storage and dispatchability. In other words, put a small wind turbine on your back 40 and charge your PiP overnight (night is the best time for wind resource quality). Unfortunately, such a system's capital cost - before any O/M -will be in the many thousands of dollars ...to save a half a buck a day. Homeowners who live in regions that allow net-metering (the grid is required to pay me for my excess generation) can offset that capital cost, but the grid ultimately pays the price for such a scheme wherein suppliers are paid for delivering their product regardless of demand. This is a sort of microcosm of the first scenario described above, wherein the coal plant and wind plant both operate and get paid regardless of demand.

Ultimately, our "buying" grid scale wind power is largely a feel-good effort that helps subsidize an already incredibly profitable -- thanks to various mandates and subsidies -- wind industry whose actual benefits and impacts are seldom accurately accounted. While this conversation could easily be on an economic or political chat site, my intent was merely to minimize the expectation or presumption that "buying" wind power can have any material benefit.

 

Jonas, I will still disagree. Here is a photo of a coal fired plant being disassembled, replaced by wind generation. I think that qualifies as being "turned off".

 

If we check the EIA stats, it's easy to see how different regions have vastly different generation mixes. And then there are the smaller systems and co-ops like Austin has. Some states get 3/4 of their generation from coal. EV ownership in dirty generating states like Alabama or Iowa doesn't have the net environmental benefit that it might in my state of Maine, which is among the nation's cleanest electricity states.

Maine's generation mix is about 50% renewable, and our renewable portfolio mandate requires a minimum 36% of delivered electricity to be renewable. We have no coal or nuke plants for base load, but we are part of the ISO-New England, which does. The other 50% of Maine's generation is from modern natural gas plants. (Bonus: our land mass is 90% carbon eating forest.) So the federal tax credit for EV ownership is better-placed in a state like Maine than a dirty electricity state like Kentucky. In dirty electricity states the tax credit would be more appropriate if it went to owners of vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas.