Electrify Everything

[SageBrush]

But overall there's a relatively easy response for ICEVs to fuel hassle: increase the fuel tank size.

Fair point, but it does reduce cabin size and it has R&D costs related to the extra weight. I know some the German diesel passenger cars were equipped with large fuel tanks. It was a marketing point that those car owners were quite proud of.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Fair point, but it does reduce cabin size and it has R&D costs related to the extra weight. I know some the German diesel passenger cars were equipped with large fuel tanks. It was a marketing point that those car owners were quite proud of.

10 gallons weigh 60lbs. If it becomes important, larger fuel tanks will happen.

Diesel owners all drive 600 miles without stopping at the weekend, which is why EVs don't work.

 

[mspohr]

The first-ever drive from North to South pole is complete - and it was all-electric

Chris and Julie Ramsey left the North Pole in March in an all-electric Nissan Ariya, and just finished the first pole-to-pole drive ever.

electrek.co

The original plan had been to use a trailer with a small windmill to charge the car while parked while in polar regions, but the trailer didn’t work out on Arctic roads. But for the Antarctic portion, the Ramseys have been using solar panels to help charge the car at “night” (which can be any time of day – the polar region is in constant sunlight at this time of year), in addition to using generators when the weather isn’t in their favor, highlighting the ability of EVs to be fueled by several different energy sources instead of just one.

But these range losses are part of the message that the Ramseys want to send, anyway. If they can make it all the way from one end of the globe to the other with a 150-200 mile range (down from the 272-mile rating of the Ariya), this shows that most people don’t “need” the huge range they claim they need.

Getting closer to the 90º mark, the altitude in Antarctica gets higher and higher. The South Pole itself is at 9,300ft, or 2,835m, which means that in addition to the cold, the expedition has to deal with thinner air and less oxygen. Not only is this hard on the bodies of the humans on the expedition, but fossil-powered vehicles have a hard time starting up in these conditions – a problem that the all-electric Ariya has not had any difficulty with.

 

[mspohr]

10 gallons weigh 60lbs. If it becomes important, larger fuel tanks will happen.

Diesel owners all drive 600 miles without stopping at the weekend, which is why EVs don't work.

They all pee into a bottle

 

[mspohr]

Bavaria Enters Act 3 of Tragicomic Odyssey Of The Hydrogen Fleet - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! The hydrogen chorus is ... [continued]

cleantechnica.com

As a reminder, the tragicomedy first features lobbyists convincing governments that hydrogen for transportation is an amazing idea. Then the governmental do gooders, hearts in the right places but spreadsheets noticeably absent, unlock millions in funding. A cash-starved transit or fleet organization sees the piles of money and stops paying attention to anything else. One or many hydrogen vehicles start rolling along roads, tracks or even seaways. Then someone else in the government realizes how much all of this is costing and closes the purse strings. The fleet operator tries vainly to keep the absurdly expensive vehicles operating, then gives up, After years of delay, they go electric, either with batteries, grid-ties or a combination.


This is a process which is playing out all over the world. Pau in France has now abandoned its expensive, hard to keep running hydrogen buses, costing well over a million euros per bus with most subsidized by France. Lower Saxony, another German state, announced after only a year of operation of their 14 €7 million trains that they wouldn’t buy more even if the government gave them scads more money and pivoted to batteries and grid ties. In nearby Austria, Ikea, instead of buying battery electric delivery trucks with adequate range for their needs at €85,000 per bus from BrightDrop, has just spent almost €5 million of Austria’s money on five hydrogen delivery trucks, something that they’ll abandon within two years at most I predict. On another continent, India is proceeding to fully electrify all heavy rail, targeting 2025 for completion, but has bought a handful of tiny tourist hydrogen trains for some narrow-gauge scenic heritage routes.

 

[mspohr]

‘It feels very fun and freeing’: US sees ebike boom after years of false starts

Sales surge as cities and states look to cut pollution from cars and improve options for Americans to get around

www.theguardian.com

After several years of false starts, electric bikes are finally entering the American mainstream, amid booming sales of a multiplying number of models on offer and as more states offer incentives for people to ditch their cars and shift to two, motor-assisted, wheels.

While ebikes took off in other parts of the world the US was slow to catch on, until the Covid pandemic, when streets were closed off, public transit numbers dropped and people were looking for alternative ways to get around. This, combined with city and state efforts to cut pollution from transportation to meet climate goals, has helped fuel an ebike surge that has no sign of abating.

 

[mspohr]

Suddenly, US electricity demand is spiking. Can the grid keep up?

Data centers, factories, heat pumps and EVs are putting increasing stress on a grid that isn’t growing fast enough, new data shows.

www.canarymedia.com

That’s the key takeaway from a new report by consultancy Grid Strategies called The Era of Flat Power Demand Is Over. Already, massive amounts of clean energy projects are stuck waiting for grid expansions to happen so they can connect. Soon enough, data centers, factories, electric-vehicle charging depots and other major electricity users could start facing the same barriers, the report warns. In the past year, estimates from U.S. utilities and grid operators of how much electricity demand will grow over the next five years have nearly doubled, jumping from 2.6 percent to 4.7 percent, according to Grid Strategies’ analysis. That’s far higher than the more incremental 0.5 percent annual demand growth estimates of the past decade.

 

[David_Cary]

I would think it would be best to start working on TOU and residential demand charges. I don't these things are really a problem in the SE US at least because no one cares if I come home and plug in my car at 5pm on a hot summer day.

We have large population increases and increasing EV usage in my area and there don't seem to be any concerns.

Duke offers to pay us a paltry $25 a year to install demand curtailing system. $25 a year is a joke - I bet they have very few takers. The interesting thing is that I had a TOU-D rate 10 years ago but now I can't have it. They shut down the program (it was for solar only). The meters are there, the program is there and they don't even bother.

I had that rate for 5 years until I moved. The key for me was to charge the cars only at night (had a Leaf at the time so challenging), don't run the dryer on cloudy weekdays and keep the heat pump out of aux heat. I rarely had net on peak charges even with a modest solar array. And my max demand was 3-4 kw. Now - I charge the cars at 7am which is a peak period for 1/2 the year. No concerns about plugging car in when I get home and charging right away.

 

[mspohr]

I would think it would be best to start working on TOU and residential demand charges. I don't these things are really a problem in the SE US at least because no one cares if I come home and plug in my car at 5pm on a hot summer day.

We have large population increases and increasing EV usage in my area and there don't seem to be any concerns.

Duke offers to pay us a paltry $25 a year to install demand curtailing system. $25 a year is a joke - I bet they have very few takers. The interesting thing is that I had a TOU-D rate 10 years ago but now I can't have it. They shut down the program (it was for solar only). The meters are there, the program is there and they don't even bother.

I had that rate for 5 years until I moved. The key for me was to charge the cars only at night (had a Leaf at the time so challenging), don't run the dryer on cloudy weekdays and keep the heat pump out of aux heat. I rarely had net on peak charges even with a modest solar array. And my max demand was 3-4 kw. Now - I charge the cars at 7am which is a peak period for 1/2 the year. No concerns about plugging car in when I get home and charging right away.

The utilities don't seem very interested in moderating demand. No money in that.
They would rather build infrastructure where they can get a fat return.

 

[SageBrush]

The utilities don't seem very interested in moderating demand. No money in that.
They would rather build infrastructure where they can get a fat return.

Unless you are talking about complementary clean energies or cross-state HVDC lines, infrastructure is at best a partial solution for their demand problems. Just look at wholesale energy prices in the CAISO markets from ~ 4pm - 10pm

 

[mspohr]

Unless you are talking about complementary clean energies or cross-state HVDC lines, infrastructure is at best a partial solution for their demand problems. Just look at wholesale energy prices in the CAISO markets from ~ 4pm - 10pm

They just don't have an incentive to pay people to use less energy. (lose-lose)
I'm not saying that infrastructure would solve their problems but they certainly know it would improve the bottom line. New power plants, etc. give them a guaranteed return on capital.

 

[mspohr]

Electric Cars Are Already Upending America

After years of promise, a massive shift is under way.

www.theatlantic.com

Meanwhile, electric cars are already upending America. In 2023, our battery-powered future became so much more real—a boom in sales and new models is finally starting to push us into the post-gas age. Americans are on track to buy a record 1.44 million of them in 2023, according to a forecast by BloombergNEF, about the same number sold from 2016 to 2021 total. “This was the year that EVs went from experiments, or technological demonstrations, and became mature vehicles,” Gil Tal, the director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis, told me. They are beginning to transform not just the automotive industry, but also the very meaning of a car itself.

If cars are gadgets now, then carmakers are also now tech companies. An industry that has spent a century perfecting the internal combustion engine must now manufacture lithium-ion batteries and write the code to govern them. Imagine if a dentist had to pivot from filling cavities to performing open-heart surgery, and that’s roughly what’s going on here. “The transition to EVs is completely changing everything,” Loren McDonald, an EV consultant, told me. “It’s changing the people that automotive companies have to hire and their skills. It’s changing their suppliers, their factories, how they assemble and build them. And lots of automakers are struggling with that.”

 

[mspohr]

Solar & Wind = 71% of New Power Capacity in USA in October - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Looking at official figures ... [continued]

cleantechnica.com

Month-to-month variations in new power additions can warp one’s perspective on the market, though. Looking at a longer period of time, the first 10 months of the year combined, solar and wind accounted for 64% of new power capacity. That’s down a bit from 72% in the first 10 months of 2022, but it’s still a strong majority of new power capacity additions across the US. Notably, one significant addition this year was a nuclear power plant, which is indeed a zero-emissions energy source and contributed another 3.6% of new power capacity. Hydropower also contributed 0.7% of new power capacity. Altogether, adding renewable energy sources to nuclear, zero-emissions sources contributed 67.9% of new power capacity in the first 10 months of this year.

 

[ucmndd]

Meanwhile, electric cars are already upending America. In 2023, our battery-powered future became so much more real—a boom in sales and new models is finally starting to push us into the post-gas age.

Here in California PG&E just raised rates by another 20%. My cheapest possible rate is $0.35/kwh now.

At that rate and current gas prices (~$4/gal), it’s about 33% cheaper per mile to drive a Toyota Prius than my Model 3.

Can’t help but think this is going to have a major negative effect on EV adoption and electrification in general. People are driven by economics, and the electric utilities are making electricity in the golden state prohibitively expensive.

 

[SageBrush]

Can’t help but think this is going to have a major negative effect on EV adoption and electrification in general. People are driven by economics, and the electric utilities are making electricity in the golden state prohibitively expensive.

Not the state, your IOU
And only cheaper for Prius drivers compared to EV drivers without rooftop or community solar

 

[ucmndd]

Not the state, your IOU

Difference without a distinction - the public utilities commission approves the rates and it’s not like I have a choice of where to buy electricity from…

And only cheaper for Prius drivers compared to EV drivers without rooftop or community solar

Surely you saw what NEM3 did to solar ROI. Again, people are driven by economics and the economics of EVs and electrification for most people in California have been severely damaged in the last year, with more to come.

If I was looking at the math today, the writing on the wall for continued rate increases, and didn’t already have grandfathered solar, there’s very little chance I’d seriously consider an EV or further electrification efforts in my home. I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment.

 

[mspohr]

Difference without a distinction - the public utilities commission approves the rates and it’s not like I have a choice of where to buy electricity from…


Surely you saw what NEM3 did to solar ROI. Again, people are driven by economics and the economics of EVs and electrification for most people in California have been severely damaged in the last year, with more to come.

If I was looking at the math today, the writing on the wall for continued rate increases, and didn’t already have grandfathered solar, there’s very little chance I’d seriously consider an EV or further electrification efforts in my home. I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment.

You can thank Newsom and the corrupt CPUC.

 

[kpanda17]

Btw
Carbon capture is a scam by the carbon offenders
Imagine vacuuming the air and attempting to fool us with it
An attempt by the gas, oil and coal industries

They forget we are an unstoppable force and are not fooled

 

[SageBrush]

Difference without a distinction - the public utilities commission approves the rates and it’s not like I have a choice of where to buy electricity from…

Some CA utilities (IOUs for the most part, I think) are expensive, some utilities in CA are much cheaper.

Surely you saw what NEM3 did to solar ROI.

I saw what it did to consumers who refuse or cannot change their TOU behaviour.

 

[kpanda17]

Guys, do we have rhe electrify everything, conversion list or table?

Electric supply inside the home, solar
Backup generator, Powerwall
Home Heat, geo thermal or heat pump into baseboard or hot air
Clothed Dryer, heat pump dryer
Clothes washer, heat pump washer?
Gas range/cooktop/oven, induction range
Domestic water heater, tankless gas, what replaces this? Heat pump hot water heater?
Propane bbq, electric bbq
ICE/Hybrid/PHEV, pure BEV

What did I miss?
Please correct all errors and add your experiences

Love the journey to netzero carbon