How will the Chevrolet Volt be better than a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid?

I wasn't addressing politics whatsoever. However you are incorrect. Read up a bit on deregulation in the economics literature and you will see it required massive
regulation to actually work. It most certainly isn't clear and simple. PUCs were way simpler.

 

It is not simple and is difficult to track.

Power in NYC is expensive because taxes are very high, you can't site new power plants readily, labor rates are high and transmission of power into NYC is very constrained. This requires higher cost plants within NYC to be run as loads rise in very localized points within NYC. It all adds to the costs. NY is also near the end of the line for natural gas delivery and those paths are constrained as well and this adds to the costs because natural gas generation can be setting the price.

 

I have actually studied the California energy crisis, and since you referred to Enron, that is what I assumed you were talking about. The california "deregulation" was not real deregulation at all, but bad changes to regulation and assuming the FERC would regulate the stuff it decided not to cover. I do not think you need "more" regulation to give Utility customers choice, but different regulation. If you start off adding a bunch of really bad regulations, and decide to call it deregulation, then ofcourse you will need more laws to fix the ones you screwed up. Pete Wilson is quoted in knowing it was a plan with serious problems, and said he expected the next administration to fix it, which it obviously did not.

capitolism is messy. As I said, my municipal utility is regulated in a deregulated state, and I know our rules are not simple, but its a very political city. The old rules were probably simpler for the state of texas, but the deregulation has given people lower rates and greener power. There have been mistakes, but this is probably a better deregulation model than california or ny.

 

I was only saying that deregulation without a lot of very complicated regulations makes abuse of the system guaranteed. There is not really much evidence that rates have improved over all b/c of deregulation either.

The problem of regulation from the economist point of view was the incentive to over build. The gold plating issue where we had more plants, and more lines than necessary. It was an inefficient allocation of resources. (According to many economists).

The problem is that deregulation basically coasted on that over building for quite some time. It seems cheaper when everything is already built ahead of time. How do you get new plants built before you need them in a deregulated market? Why would a company build a new plant when they know it won't be needed most of the time for a few years? Who is building the plants? How is it decided how much generators get paid? What does that do to the incentives for new plant construction? The amount of unanticipated problems in deregulation led to a slew of regulations that absolutely dwarfs the prior regulated model. I don't think it is clear that it is either good or bad. It is just different. It is clear that it is not giving lower rates though. Regulated markets have seen similar changes.

I have not looked into the greenness of it however. You may be correct, but I am leery about believing it without some more evidence. I will say that you are right that it has made it possible for consumers to giver resources directly to incentivize green power if they so choose. That could be argued as a good thing since then theoretically the generation could match the desires of the consumers of electricity. However that doesn't necessarily mean it ends up greener.

 

...if NY would implement trash-to-steam instead of the infamous Trash Train to Virginia, there would a glut of cheap electricity up there.

 

First lets look at what really was the goal of the first california deregulation, from the companies that advocated it -
California's Disaster With Electrical Deregulation

It was not set up to cut costs from the bloated utilities, it was written by them, and so badly that they bankrupted themselves. Texas deregulation was not set up to do this, and was written after the California energy crisis. The goals were simple. To allow new green energy to be added to the grid, as well as lower priced plants, and to give customers choice. All of the power generators still need to follow regulation and there are caps on charges unlike the first California deregulation. By setting these caps and looking at demand the market maker ERCOT can stimulate the right amount of generation growth. To support deregulation grid upgrades are taking place.

If you look at California you will notice the rules were actually set up to make producers more money if there was a shortage. If the market maker has to make the price support more construction if there is demand. ERCOT may have failed in its central planning. It did not estimate that epa would give a fast deadline for tougher pollution regulations which will close two coal plants just before a predicted hot summer.

In california it gave higher rates because it was done badly, and written by the industry fat cats. Texas we have lower rates, but they have not fallen as fast as advocates had estimated. Wind power is growing faster than advocates anticipated, and this is stalled for grid upgrades.

In california I can not say it is greener, the main driver is CARB, which also seems to be a major obstacle in building enough power plants. In texas it has made the state greener. The two fairly green municipalities, Austin and San Antonio are still regulated, with green choice options. The rest of the state is greener. Part of this is green interests. TXU wanted to build lots of coal plants. Because it was public it was taken over and plans changed to build less coal, and reduce SO2 and NOx of their portfolio of coal plants. With the new EPA regulations and drop in natural gas prices, this change actually helps its stock price. In NY, I don't know enough to know what is going wrong with price. NYC is a special place and probably needs to be regulated. NYS probably has as much green energy as they are going to get, so deregulation won't make it greener, but if done right it should lower prices outside NYC.

Yes in many places it will not. But texas has added almost 9% of its power to renewable wind since deregulation Its also added coal, but one of the new plants is IGCC CCS.

 

Saw this posted today. This turned out to be a very good video. He points out he drives over 16K and his cost savings including gas. Confessions of a Volt owner - Video - Business News

 

Here is a good example of why electric car proponents point out that the electrical source can and does get cleaner. This just popped up on the news today about Chicagoland.

Historic Victory: Coal Free Chicago Will Electrify Clean Energy Movement
Posted: 02/29/2012 11:05 am
Jeff Biggers: Historic Victory: Coal Free Chicago Will Electrify Clean Energy Movement

 

I'm sorry, but this strikes me much more as an example of lobbying groups tooting their horns to keep contributions rolling.

IS less coal being burned when these two plants close ? Or will other coal plants take up the slack ? My impression is that the plants closed because of federal violation of lead and Sox emissions and no Republican EPA to give them a waiver. I found no hint of decrease in carbon intensity for the ChicagoLand grid.

If anything, this story just reinforces my view that social pressure to introduce EVs today is misplaced. Wake me up when the grid *is* cleaner. The swan song that the grid might/could get cleaner in the future is vaporware. Question: how many EVs sold in the next couple of years will still be running around when national grid carbon intensity is less than a pure NG sourced grid ?

I guess zero.

 

Related to your NG remark.

Here is a related article Jan 22, 2012
Climate change: Coal plants dominate list of big emitters of greenhouse gases - Page 2 - Chicago Tribune

 

This victory should speed the transition. Here are the details of the deal.
Chicago's 2 coal-fired plants to shut down sooner than expected - chicagotribune.com

 

Not sure what is replacing the Chiagoland power as the resources were not specified. Iowa just added a lot of renewable, with plans to add a transmission like to Chicago.. ut I don't think it will be operational for at least a year. (See Wind transmission plans blow into Iowa)


If you want to see the greening of the grid, look at what was added in the first half of 2011.


(frmo http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=2690)

Here is a plot of changes in NG for generation

from http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4350

I agree it may be a decades until the grid average is < a NG gas grid, but EV's will be will be way cleaner than gasoline long before then.

 

From Scott's post (my bold)

Thanks for the new capacity graph in H1 2011. All I can say is we better hope NG stays cheap, because the 'greening' is just a happy coincidence of current competing fossil fuel wholesale costs.

 

The stanford economists and many others that advocated it did not have that goal. They were just too ivory tower to realize how easy it was to manipulate.

Those are the PR goals. How much they actually make it into practice is another matter. Texas and others benefited from seeing the catastrophe in CA and knowing all kinds of rules and regulations they would have to enforce to make deregulation work.

And how is this different than a market clearing price in other locations?

Once again the evidence isn't there. CA relied heavily on natural gas plants because they don't like dirty coal. Natural gas prices were sky rocketing then. Now they have fallen a huge amount and everyone is all amazed electricity price are going down. You can thank fracking for the decline in natural gas prices and electricity prices.

What I heard was that they proposed more coal plants than they needed knowing they could then cancel some to compromise and still build what they wanted.

Fact is Texas has a lot of wind to develop and they would have done it to some extent regardless of deregulation. What deregulation has done though is make it much more difficult to make long term planning decisions. Nuclear and Coal plants are both hurt by this. Some may be happy about that. Some may not.

 

The guys with good goals were horified at the proposed legislation. The California legislature really passed something awful.

There were actually fewer rules in tx than ca, they were much better rules, knowing the catastrf&ck that happened.

In TX to encourage new plant construction, older fossil providers were given a floor price and a ceiling price. By setting these prices new baseline could be built and sold bellow the floor, and new peaking plants could be built with a higher ceiling. Renewablres have different floors and ceilings, and for instance wind has a 2 cent/kwh subsidy. In california there was no ceiling on producer prices, and instead of a floor, utilities sold off their production to open the market, often to themselves as different companies. California had movable ceilings on prices to customers. Energy companies also built browner pp in other states and pretended the cleaner power shipped to ca was newly produced, something impossible in texas. All of these tx deregulation rules can be used by other states.

Not at all, they wanted to build 11 coal plants, and were the largest coal utility. The new regulations hurt TXU the most as coal was no longer heavily favored in the new scheme. After the take over the 3 plants that had already spent a great deal on construction were continued the other ones cancelled. If they continued building all 11 they would be headed for bankruptcy now. With the new epa rules set last summer, and the new coal coming on line, they have decided to shut 2 of their older less efficient coal plants instead of spend the money. Under the old regulation the utility would have added the pollution control, kept the plants running and passed the added costs to the customer. Texas branded deregulation does discourage keeping old inefficient coal and gas plants. It was the two regulated municipal utilities that decided against expanding nuclear. It does also move power from municipalities to the state and individuals.

 

There was 8 seconds between 55% and 32%. The speed increased from 50 mph to 58 mph during that time. How can you conclude he was trying to slow down and regen kicked in?

One thing we can conclude is that, MGb is spinning the opposite direction as the gas engine. I was right all along. Does that mean the YouTube video showing the computer model of Volt transaxle is incorrect?

 

Maybe because he had 55% accelerator at the beginning and 32% at the end. Having driven a car, I know if you back of 20% of the accelerator pedal you are trying to slow your acceleration and maybe speed. In a Volt, depending on how back off it will generate regen though there is no way to tell from the data how fast the driver backed off.

The video model would be correct. There is nothing in a table of number that will let you conclude the actual direction of rotation.

 

Are you saying schematics #5 to #8 are incorrect?

Schematic 5:

 

5 looks like a mathematically possible combination, but unlikely an optimum one from a power point source point of view, unless you are trying to charge the batteries from the ICE. Are you saying someone measured those numbers in a volt? Was the software attempting to charge the battery?

 

Negative RPM on MGb means the car is doing Regen.

It does not say if the rotational direction is with or against the ice.