Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation

[Wanabee]

The book, "Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation," by Tony Seba does an excellent job of explaining why solar and wind will disrupt oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear as sources for energy. It also shows how this will make electric utilities and conventional ICE cars obsolete by 2030, if not sooner. The book does this by showing the economics of each form of energy, and its environmental costs.

The costs of solar and wind are coming down, while the costs of the other forms of energy are going up. Simple economics will do the rest of the job. The only factors keeping the older forms of energy in business are government subsidies and tax credits. That means taxpayers pay the additional costs.

 

[rypalmer]

Here's an interesting article on a Canadian study that came out recently very much along these lines.. Fossil fuel decline could be 'faster than expected,' government think-tank warns

 

[Alketi]

He also has a number of videos on YouTube talking about the subject.

Essentially, by 2022 falling battery prices should make EVs competitive/superior at almost every price point.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

EV transition will be nothing when compared to the impact of low battery cost on residential power sourcing. The ability to store a day's worth of electricity on site cheaply changes the entire equation for homeowners and utilities. Coming soon!

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

I am well persuaded by Mr Selba presentation. But, I believe that there are a few factors which are not included.
How are roadways financed now? How will they be during EV?
Electric rates are based on a certain use pattern that has been developed over years. Will day-time high rates still be followed by night-time low rates, or will the grid fight the battery?
If we get politics involved - the wild card of subsidy/protection/war/environment.....may confound Mr Selbas predictions in wild-card ways.

These are interesting times. I think we are indeed at a historical inflection point. Extrapolation with an inflection point is ..ah..worthy of a risk takers investment.

 

[rays427]

The book, "Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation," by Tony Seba does an excellent job of explaining why solar and wind will disrupt oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear as sources for energy. It also shows how this will make electric utilities and conventional ICE cars obsolete by 2030, if not sooner. The book does this by showing the economics of each form of energy, and its environmental costs.

The costs of solar and wind are coming down, while the costs of the other forms of energy are going up. Simple economics will do the rest of the job. The only factors keeping the older forms of energy in business are government subsidies and tax credits. That means taxpayers pay the additional costs.

I agree with him that solar will continue to increase it's use and that it is a good thing However, there are some real problems with his economics when you try to completely replace fossil fuels. He equates the cost of installed capacity of Solar versus installed capacity of conventional sources of electricity. The problem with solar is that the sun doesn't always shine. He points out that solar produces power when the demand is highest. This is a real plus currently but will change once solar produces enough to meet peak summer demand. At that point you will need to have storage to meet night time demand which increases the cost. There is also the problem of solar output from summer to winter. It's relatively easy to store enough energy to cover day to night use but much more difficult to cover winter versus summer demand. He uses Germany as a leader in use of solar energy. Germany's yearly output from it's solar in 2014 was about 10% of rated capacity. If you take both solar and wind it helps a lot to balance out the variation in output. The total capacity of wind and solar for Germany in 2014 was about 70 GW. Total production for wind and solar for first 11 months was 75 TWh. That ends up as about 13% yearly output. On a weekly basis the maximum was 2.6 TWh (22%) and the minimum was .8 Twh (6%). So to run everything on solar you would need a lot of excess capacity during the winter. If you convert all cars and heating to electricity then the winter demand goes up and you need even more excess capacity.

I have solar panels and they work out great right now because during the summer I can sell my excess generation back to PG&E. My maximum monthly production is about 1000 KWh. My minimum is about 230 KWh. My use ranges from about 1200 KWh to 2300 KWh per month. I actually use more electricity in the winter than the summer even though I have propane for heating. If I converted to electric heating my electric use would more than double with of course most of the need in the winter. Right now during peak summer PG&E pays me 43 cents per Kwh and I buy back to charge the car at 11 cents. Once enough solar generation is installed this will go away. Eventually peak demand from the utilities will be in winter and that's when the rates will be highest. This all tells me it is going to be very difficult to replace fossil fuels by 2030 as he suggests.

Please let me know where I am wrong.

 

[rays427]

The book, "Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation," by Tony Seba does an excellent job of explaining why solar and wind will disrupt oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear as sources for energy. It also shows how this will make electric utilities and conventional ICE cars obsolete by 2030, if not sooner. The book does this by showing the economics of each form of energy, and its environmental costs.

The costs of solar and wind are coming down, while the costs of the other forms of energy are going up. Simple economics will do the rest of the job. The only factors keeping the older forms of energy in business are government subsidies and tax credits. That means taxpayers pay the additional costs.

I have a lot of other issues with what's in the book. As an example he states that solar could replace fossil fuels and use 400 times less land. That's ridiculous. He uses the amount of leased land versus what it would take solar to produce that amount of energy. The solar output from what I could tell is the rated capacity which would require a lot more to cover winter needs and the amount of fossil fuel land is leased land. Most of the leased land is not producing anything and even that which is in production doesn't preclude other uses. In farm land you end up with a few well heads and they plant crops around them. There are oil fields in urban areas as well. the actual area used by the wells and production equipment is minuscule compared with the leased area.

 

[nwdiver]

In farm land you end up with a few well heads and they plant crops around them. There are oil fields in urban areas as well. the actual area used by the wells and production equipment is minuscule compared with the leased area.

He was likely using the 'exclusion zone' surrounding a well head... take a look at the permian basin on google maps. I don't know about 1/400th the area but we could likely generate more than enough energy for everything if we covered all the land currently devoted to oil extraction with solar PV.

Storage is obviously the missing piece... give it 5 more years...

 

[voyager]

Yeah, but in transportation electric drive is just the first step. IMO, this is the bigger picture: 'reduce footprint' is applicable to so many desirable developments...