Featured Washington Post: Coal and Electric Cars

This is just the calm before the storm.

 

Does this factor in the pollution created when mining the materials needed to produce the batteries for electric (and hybrid) cars?

And more importantly, does this factor in the pollution created by the US military's helicopters, tanks, airplanes, bombs, and other machinery needed to sustain our foreign policy that brings us such "low" oil prices by hiding much of the cost in our military budget?

I've got a friend in the army, and I've not asked him about how much they drive around their vehicles, and how much gas is wasted in that. But I do know that he is required to jump out of a plane once per month to maintain his air readiness certification (some name like that, but I do know for a fact that he has to jump out of a plane once per month). He also tells me that they burn through a shit ton of ammo in their training, that they probably spend more money on ammo for the soldiers than they spend on paying the actual soldiers.

If you look at our foreign policy and our dependence on oil, it's clear that coal powered electric cars are better. We don't have to go around bombing Iraq or Afghanistan just to get cheap coal for our power plants.

 

Lithium yes it's counted as well as nickel metal hydride - then it's offset, as is lead battery "recycling" . But no - military costs - as well as health/medical costs are considered too esoteric to calculate - into the equation. No one wants to go there - as it enters FHOP territory.
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Also many people I know with EV's in Colorado, have solar. For example everyone (yes 100%) of the people I personally know with EV's in Colorado have home solar. If you are energy and environmentally conscious in Colorado you more than likely are doing more than just 1 thing.

My solar array powers my Leaf

 

2K1 do you have a off-grid system so you have a battery to store solar and then charge the car? That's what I am thinking maybe for PiP2.

 

Off-grid - No
Battery to store solar - Yes, it is the grid

The grid is a perfect battery as long as solar remains a low proportion of total energy. An updated grid is required to go past this, and problems can exist when outdated infrastructure meets high PV usage (see Hawaii...)

My system is rated at 10KW. During the day my meter "spins" backwards, really it just counts down because it is digital with an LCD, because I am producing more power than I am consuming. At night it spins forwards, counts up, because I am consuming more power than I am producing (nothing at night). Every monthly billing cycle I get charged for the net difference on the absolute totals. I produce X KWh and consume Y KWh and then get charged for Y-X KWh. If I produce more than I use for a month (X >>> Y) I get a credit so that next month I pay for Y(n+1) - X(n+1) - X( n ). At the end of the year on Dec 31st if I still have credit, then I get a cheque at a super low wholesale rate of like 4cents/KWh and on January 1st the utility company and I are at net-zero again.

Using batteries is extremely inefficient. When I produce excess, my neighbours are all using my solar power to power their houses instead of the local coal plant. Then when I use more at night I am powered by coal but the total coal energy used is less because of the solar offset during the day. And to make it even better, when I charge my EV at night I am using the surplus power. This is something not generally spoken for in these articles. You can't just turn the base load power plants on and off. Some take days to come online and offline. So at night there is a lot of power generated that is essentially wasted. This is why we pump hydroelectric dam water back up the mountain at night. Highly inefficient in terms of energy use, but in terms of where that energy would otherwise go (nowhere and fully wasted) it is better to get something out of it than nothing. This means in effect my EV is charged for free as the utility company sees it because that power is in excess.

 

We have a lot of pumped water power in Virginia too. Guess we built a huge one years ago I was not aware of but it is consistent with our nuclear plants needing night time outlet. Then we have Smith Mountain Lake, which I have seen the plant. We may be No 1 in pumped water not sure.

 

The electricity for SoCal's hydroelectric - out of state, is pumped back up because there is so little water left in the lakes/ reservoirs. It's getting creepy low - & the water has to be pumped up thousands of feet to get out to So Cal. That takes a ton of electricity. The electricity won't be there to pump it those thousands of feet at some point soon, once the reservoirs get just a little bit lower. Just a little bit lower - and we lose a good portion of both items, water and electricity. It'd sure be nice to hear if or when someone starts thinking about making a plan.
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Biggest project is in michigan, second biggest virginia. It stores a lot of coal power as well as nuclear :-(

California has been playing a dangerous game here for decades. They haven't learned the lessons of the 2000 black outs. With San Onofre closed (a good thing IMHO) the cheapest insurance against drought is building more efficient ccgt power plants in state. This would reduce imported power, and make the power more efficient (new plants are 60% efficient and can cycle quickly with wind). With new ccgt there is less need for pumped storage because they turn off at night. you would need to mothball the steam natural gas plants, turning them on only during drought, but there is no political will. Enviromental lobby wants to think solar will grow faster if electricity is more expensive and building these plants would lower electricity costs. Utilities want to charge for scarcity and keep their old less efficient plants running.

This is a much diferent case than virginia though. California electricity is much more expensive and much lower in ghg.

 

Maybe this El Nino year is good thing for re-filling Ca. water reserves.

Virginia not too different from CA as we have lots of nuclear and lots of imports, so our per capita CO2 is among the lowest of the states. The only difference is our imports are coal-based, but CPP allows us to draw the boundary around the state.

 

Crossing fingers.
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