How Green is EV ownership

[Uncle Paul]

In addition to the CO2 savings, EVs perform a important function of moving the exhaust polution from cities were most of the cars are, and also where most of the people are.
With millions of vehicles in the major population areas, the citizens are forced to breath the exhaust from all of them. Notice how every ICE vehicle plumbs its exhaust out the back, even though it would be far cheaper and easier to plumb it out the front. Reason is that nobody would drive an ICE vehicle if they had to breath their own exhaust.

Soon governments will restrict gas/diesel vehicles from entering their cities. This will reduce the healthcare costs dramatically, while making the cities much better places to live. The noise and pollution from cars make cities miserable. Fighting and paying for parking are two actions that people find greatly irritating. With only silent and clean vehicles allowed the places will be much more peaceful and enjoyable.

 

[Vostok]

You actually tried to win a logical argument with lefty greenies? Wow. The lefty’s are all brain-dead. You don’t stand a chance! You want green power? We need to go nuclear, now.

I’m a lefty so I suppose I’m brain-dead. Having said that, your proposition is not evidence-based.

First, nuclear is now one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity. It is economically irrational and would serve only to push up power prices. And there is not a single nuclear power plant being built anywhere in the world that is not fully or partially subsidised and underwritten by government. Reason? Private investors refuse to fully take on the risk (for obvious reasons) and no reinsurer will either. So people who are economic rationalists or who abhor socialism or subsidies in all its forms should utterly reject nuclear power as an option.

Second, nuclear power takes forever to build. Even if we ignore the risks, and assuming you could actually get the democratic permission required to actually choose locations to build them, we don’t have the 15+ years per plant to build the number of plants required to power this country and avoid catastrophic climate change. The average nuclear power plant is 800 MW. You could build a wind farm or solar farm that big in 2-3 years, not 15, and at a lower cost. Although of course we don’t need to build solar or wind farms that big because solar and wind are great for decentralising generation whereas nuclear is not. Looking at the World Nuclear Database, there are four reactors listed as being “under construction” that commenced construction prior to 1988. Yep, there are four reactors in the world that have been under construction for 30 years and still not operating. Last year, China added more MW of solar and wind power to its grid than it did in 30 years of building nuclear power plants. The technological and economic winner is obvious.

Finally nuclear is not renewable. Uranium is a finite resource.

And yes... Fukushima. Fukushima will cost over $100 Bn to remediate (some estimate even over $500 Bn - no-one really knows) and it will take 40-50 years to complete, assuming scientists and nuclear engineers can actually work out how to do it. The problem is fiendishly difficult and there’s no gurantee it won’t have a full meltdown at some point and create a radioactive geyser, putting the lives of millions of people at risk. Chernobyl is only now having its final concrete cap put on it, more than 30 years after the accident, that cap alone costs $1.5 Bn. The amounts of money are insane, and if this had to come out of the pockets of electricity consumers, nuclear would never ever again see the light of day.

 

[Vostok]

we will never stop mining coal, whether it’s burned here or elsewhere. There’s too much money to be made

Except when other countries stop buying our thermal coal because they no longer need it.

 

[meloccom]

Moderators note,
I’m enjoying the discussion regarding sources of energy but please stop the Left V Right name calling please.

 

[Dborn]

Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
(Updated September 2018)

• Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with about 50 reactors under construction.
• Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia.
• Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
• Plant lifetime extension programmes are maintaining capacity, particularly in the USA.

Today there are about 450 nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of about 400 GWe. In 2017 these provided 2506 billion kWh, about 11% of the world's electricity.

About 50 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries (see table below), notably China, India, UAE and Russia.

Each year, the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) sets out the present situation as well as reference and other – particularly carbon reduction – scenarios. In the 2017 edition of its World Energy Outlook report, the IEA's 'New Policies Scenario' sees installed nuclear capacity growth of over 25% from 2015 (about 404 GWe) to 2040 (about 516 GWe). The scenario envisages a total generating capacity of 11,960 GWe by 2040, with the increase concentrated heavily in Asia, and in particular China (33% of the total). In this scenario nuclear's contribution to global power generation increases to about 14% of the total.

The IEA's New Policies Scenario is based on a review of policy announcements and plans, reflecting the way governments see their energy sectors evolving over the coming decades. The IEA estimates that the cumulative impact of the new policies would result in steady growth in global CO2 emissions from the power sector through to 2040. The IEA has produced a low-carbon ‘Sustainable Development Scenario’ that is consistent with limiting the average global temperature increase in 2100 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In the Sustainable Development Scenario, nuclear capacity increases to 720 GWe by 2040, providing about 15% of electricity generation.

The report states: "In the Sustainable Development Scenario, low-carbon sources double their share in the energy mix to 40% in 2040, all avenues to improve efficiency are pursued, coal demand goes into an immediate decline and oil consumption peaks soon thereafter. Power generation is all but decarbonised, relying by 2040 on generation from renewables (over 60%), nuclear power (15%) as well as a contribution from carbon capture and storage (6%) – a technology that plays an equally significant role in cutting emissions from the industry sector."

It is noteworthy that in the 1980s, 218 power reactors started up, an average of one every 17 days. These included 47 in the USA, 42 in France and 18 in Japan. These were fairly large – the average rated power was 923.5 MWe. With China and India's nuclear sectors growing, it is not hard to imagine a similar rate of reactor construction in the years ahead.

 

[Dborn]

RE: How long does it approximately take to build a nuclear power plant?

These days it takes a long time.

The REAL question is WHY does it take such a long time?

Lawsuits. Harassment. Protestors blocking the site entrance. government over-regulation. etc. And, of course, the delays and lawyers fees drive up the costs too. In short, the anti-nuclear people slow down the process and drive up the costs, and then say that we should not build reactors because they take too long to build and are too costly. They are hypocrites.

If you get away from that sort of nonsense then installing a reactor to generate electricity would take a lot less time and cost a lot less money.

As a small example of how easy and quick it can be to build a fission reactor there is the story of Camp Century, a US military and scientific installation built on and in the Greenland ice sheet. It was powered and heated by a fission reactor. Here is the official US Army information / propaganda film on the Camp Century project: (film not included here)

That was a case where there were no protesters, no lawyers, and the US government wanted the reactor. The whole camp was built in one summer, including the installation and start-up of the reactor. Therefore we know that a reactor CAN BE installed from scratch in just a few months.

“No!” the anti-nukes will shout. “That was a pre-built reactor shipped in small pieces and installed without containment!” Yes it was. The point is that we COULD do the same today.

1. Mass produce and test molten salt reactors (without fuel) at the factory, then disassemble them and ship them.
2. Build a suitable, reinforced concrete hole in the ground, then assemble the reactor parts in it. Cover it over, finish the generator hall and cooling.
3. Add fuel. Start. Make lots of cheap, safe electricity, and breathe more easily.
4. Wait A Minute! What About The Containment Building!! Simple. Molten salt reactors operate at low pressure. There is no need for containment because molten salt reactors do not use water so there is no need to contain a steam leak (TMI), a steam explosion (Chernobyl), or a hydrogen explosion (Fukushima). Yes, the common thread in all of those accidents was the use of water to cool the reactor. Salt does not have any such problems.

We are not there yet politically. The fossil fuel, “renewable energy”, related industries and their dupes continue to intentionally push up costs and delays. The best that can be said today is that there are now pre-approved, water cooled reactor designs so that utilities no longer have to do a reactor design review in order to build a reactor. That will save some time and money, but it is nowhere near the low cost and fast build that would be achieved if we got the $$greed out of the way and let the scientists and engineers do their jobs.

 

[Blue heaven]

I'm not anti-Nuclear power generated electricity I'm against generating electricity at a cost higher than it should be, in Australia nuclear generated electricity WITHOUT red tape and protests would still cost more than power generated from renewables, in Australia building nuclear powered electricity generators would be a financially reckless exercise that will NEVER happen.

 

[EcoCloudIT]

I guess more to the point, why build something that has a finite source compared to something 100% renewable? This is assuming one ignores the potential downsides of nuclear....put the same $'s in to renewables as the polluting camp get then lets see what the landscape is like is 5/10 years.....it's a no brainer; renewables both local (roof solar etc. with storage) and grid (large wind farms etc.)

 

[Shock-On-T]

I guess more to the point, why build something that has a finite source compared to something 100% renewable? This is assuming one ignores the potential downsides of nuclear....put the same $'s in to renewables as the polluting camp get then lets see what the landscape is like is 5/10 years.....it's a no brainer; renewables both local (roof solar etc. with storage) and grid (large wind farms etc.)

Agreed, except nuclear has the advantage of being non-intermittent.
My feeling is that time is of the essence. In 100 years we will probably have nuclear fusion, supercapacitors, near zero-cost solar films on everything, plus anything else we primitive 21st-century people can imagine.
The hurdle is not blasting megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the meantime.
At the very least we should be deploying solar and wind as fast as possible. At the same time we should start building nuclear to cover the base load, and rush EV deployment to provide grid-connected storage for the intermittent sources.

 

[smithy]

If you have enough solar on your roof you can make it work. I live in Sydney, have 10kW of panels on my roof and a PW2. I only drive to work 2 days per week, so try to pick the best days to leave the car at home. PW2 charges by about 10am this time of year, so I set the charge rate to my S 100D at 5kW, start charging at 10, stop at 2...gives me about 20%. Two days per week of this provides more than enough for my weekly commute and weekend driving. Different story if I head out of Sydney on the weekend, but I'd say 75% of the year I can 100% power my car from my own solar, so is certainly doable. Like others have said, the 100% Greenpower surcharge is a joke... especially when you consider the surcharge alone is only a couple of cents less than what you get in feed-in tariff for all of your feed-in.

 

[Dborn]

What is the design life of a large wind turbine? There is a heap of clockwork up in that housing. Everything from feathering mechanisms to brakes to multiple gearing and then the electrical side with generator etc. further, there is stress loading of the blades.
Even when the wind is constant you need to store the power, and that takes batteries which also have a design life, maybe a 10000 or so cycles.
Essentially, short of going back to the Stone Age, we are going to have emissions and non green waste..
Solar panels too degrade over time.

The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 millionper MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.

In answer to my first sentence this from the UK.

The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years.

The wind energy industry and the Government base all their calculations on turbines enjoying a lifespan of 20 to 25 years.

The study estimates that routine wear and tear will more than double the cost of electricity being produced by wind farms in the next decade.

Older turbines will need to be replaced more quickly than the industry estimates while many more will need to be built onshore if the Government is to meet renewable energy targets by 2020.

The extra cost is likely to be passed on to households, which already pay about £1 billion a year in a consumer subsidy that is added to electricity bills

The report concludes that a wind turbine will typically generate more than twice as much electricity in its first year than when it is 15 years old.

The report’s author, Prof Gordon Hughes, an economist at Edinburgh University and a former energy adviser to the World Bank, discovered that the “load factor” — the efficiency rating of a turbine based on the percentage of electricity it actually produces compared with its theoretical maximum — is reduced from 24 per cent in the first 12 months of operation to just 11 per cent after 15 years.

The decline in the output of offshore wind farms, based on a study of Danish wind farms, appears even more dramatic. The load factor for turbines built on platforms in the sea is reduced from 39 per cent to 15 per cent after 10 years.

Prof Hughes said in his conclusion: “Adjusted for age and wind availability, the overall performance of wind farms in the UK has deteriorated markedly since the beginning of the century.

“In addition, larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms.”

The study also looked at onshore turbines in Denmark and discovered that their decline was much less dramatic even though its wind farms tended to be older.

Prof Hughes said that may be due to Danish turbines being smaller than British ones and possibly better maintained.

 

[Blue heaven]

Oh deary deary me, Hinkley point C
How much to make a cup of Tea in 2033

Hinkley point C is set to be the most expensive power station on the planet unless someone can be convinced to build a more expensive one in Australia. Every year the cost of nuclear generated electricity increases whilst every year the cost of renewable generated electricity decreases.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

A major benefit of EV travel is that it moves the pollution away from densely packed urban areas to power plants far away from people. It allows the emissions to be diluted so it does not make people ill.

As an example, put an idling ICE vehicle in one closed garage and an idling EV in another. See which garage will be the healthiest.

There is also a movement away from coal fired generators to cleaner natural gas, solar, wind and water. As this evolves further the world will begin to clean itself up.

I remember reading about a study that looked at the way pollution is distributed from power plants. If the power plants are dirty you'd still end up with poor people living in the path of pollution according to prevailing winds.

I think that the important influence of BEVs on electricity long term is to push down battery prices. Cheaper batteries are already attacking the margins of electricity generation. Cheap batteries would have a radical impact, increasing efficiency, increasing renewable generation and making electricity cheaper, by decreasing the need for dispatchable generation and moving the focus towards levelized cost of generation, which favors solar, wind and CCGT. In particular, by enabling more renewable generation and using it for PEV, energy supply would see increased domestication, especially for islands .

 

[meloccom]

Unfortunately the people who make the financial decisions are increasingly deciding that Nuclear is too expensive.
Case in point. The last nuclear reactors under construction in the US are facing opposition Basically the opposition is to the cost of Nuclear more than anything else.
With the construction costs of Wind and Solar dropping so fast and the fuel being free they are becoming unstoppable despite their limitations.

 

[Vostok]

Dborn - the nuclear industry has a vested interest in hyping up what little activity there is in an attempt to make it look like nuclear is undergoing some kind of renaissance ("it is not hard to imagine a similar rate of reactor construction in the years ahead") when it manifestly is not. Let's look at the stats.

From 2016 to 2017, global nuclear power generation increased by 0.9%, from 2613 TWh to 2636 TWh, representing 10.3% of global electricity production. In the same time, renewable (non-hydro) generation increased by 16.6%, from 1845 TWh to 2152 TWh, or 8.4% of global energy production (hydro is 15.9%, if you're interested). At that rate of growth, non-hydro renewables will overtake nuclear next year.

Taking a closer look at nucelar, the "golden age", if there ever was one, appears to be well and truly over. The last decade has seen 70 reactors brought on line and 44 decommissioned - a net growth of only 2.6 reactors per year. So if it is "noteworthy" that in the 1980s "218 power reactors started up, an average of one every 17 days" (talk about cherry picking a stat!) then it is extremely noteworthy that over the last 10 years there has only been net addition of one reactor worldwide every 140 days.

You then claim the time taken to build nuclear plants is due to "Lawsuits. Harassment. Protestors blocking the site entrance. government over-regulation. etc. And, of course, the delays and lawyers fees drive up the costs too. In short, the anti-nuclear people slow down the process and drive up the costs, and then say that we should not build reactors because they take too long to build and are too costly. They are hypocrites”.

So let's look at China, the poster child for the world's nuclear industry, where annoying things like protests, legal action, government over-regulation and community consultation are conveniently missing.

China has 44 operational nuclear power plants, and they took an average of 5.9 years each to build, from construction commencement to grid connection. So, on the face of it, you are right, having a central government with dictatorial powers can certainly result in the ability to build nuclear power plants much more quickly. I'm curious as to which freedoms and rights you think we should sacrifice in Australia to ease the path for nuclear power.

But things seem to be changing. China reportedly has 13 nuclear power plants under construction. Two of them have been under construction for more than 8 years. The most recent start was Fangchenggang #4 in December 2016 - getting on towards 2 years ago.

Then look at what China is doing with renewables - in 2017 alone China added 53.1 GW of solar to its grid, bringing the national total to 130 GW. And what is the total generating capacity of China's 44 nuclear power plants? 40.2 GW! So China added 30% more solar grid power in one year than it did in 33 years of building nuclear power plants. Nuclear simply can no longer compete even in China, yet despite this overwhelming evidence as to the economic superiority, speed to deploy and scale of investment in renewables, some still stubbornly believe that nuclear has a future!

You then go on in your next post about how wind farms lose generating capacity over time and don't last forever - information from a report that's 6 years old (wind turbine technology has improved immensely since 2012) and based on data that is even older. You also failed to disclose that this report was commissioned by "The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF)", a think tank that has campaigned against wind farms! Not exactly an unbiased source without an agenda.

But let's ignore that for the moment. This report states that "The wind energy industry and the Government base all their calculations on turbines enjoying a lifespan of 20 to 25 years." So let's look at the same for nuclear power plants. 166 plants worldwide have been permanently decommissioned from 1963 to now, and their average operating lifespan was... 25.6 years! Gosh, about the same as the REF claims for wind turbines built more than 6 years ago.

And guess which one costs more to decommission? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

If you still believe nuclear is the answer, then by all means invest your own money in it and prove us all wrong. I’ve invested my own money in solar and wind power generation, so I’ve put my money where my mouth is. What about you?

 

[Dborn]

The simple answer is - let’s all go back to the Stone Age. No worries about pollution or how to keep the lights on. There are no lights. Once nuclear fusion is solved, we can come back to the present. All the renewables are very dirty at some point in their life cycle. Mining, manufacture, delivery, erection, and disposal. Raw materials.
Renewables and batteries? Battery materials are highly polluting and also finite resources to exploit.
So, charging our cars from our rooftops makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Great! Don’t be fooled though.
All we are doing is shifting the pollution elsewhere.
Oh, and nuclear is but one option in a mix of many. Please don’t come all sanctimonious on me by quoting reports from interest groups. Your side of things has been doing that for the longest period. We are just taking a leaf out of your book.. who was it who said “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics “?

 

[paulp]

If you have enough solar on your roof you can make it work. I live in Sydney, have 10kW of panels on my roof and a PW2. I only drive to work 2 days per week, so try to pick the best days to leave the car at home. PW2 charges by about 10am this time of year, so I set the charge rate to my S 100D at 5kW, start charging at 10, stop at 2...gives me about 20%. Two days per week of this provides more than enough for my weekly commute and weekend driving. Different story if I head out of Sydney on the weekend, but I'd say 75% of the year I can 100% power my car from my own solar, so is certainly doable. Like others have said, the 100% Greenpower surcharge is a joke... especially when you consider the surcharge alone is only a couple of cents less than what you get in feed-in tariff for all of your feed-in.

I have 30kw on the roof and can charge at full 40amp speed, and because the voltage is more stable and higher than the grid, it charges at 50kmh instead of 40 at night. I now only charge my two tesla’s with solar during the day. Now I just need a solution for free tyres....because that is my only motoring consumable cost.

 

[Blue heaven]

The simple answer is - let’s all go back to the Stone Age. No worries about pollution or how to keep the lights on. There are no lights. Once nuclear fusion is solved, we can come back to the present. All the renewables are very dirty at some point in their life cycle. Mining, manufacture, delivery, erection, and disposal. Raw materials.
Renewables and batteries? Battery materials are highly polluting and also finite resources to exploit.
So, charging our cars from our rooftops makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Great! Don’t be fooled though.
All we are doing is shifting the pollution elsewhere.
Oh, and nuclear is but one option in a mix of many. Please don’t come all sanctimonious on me by quoting reports from interest groups. Your side of things has been doing that for the longest period. We are just taking a leaf out of your book.. who was it who said “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics “?

"Your side of things has being doing that for the longest period"

Sides? We need to take sides now to keep the planet sustainable? How about we just cut out the idealogy and political crap and just use common sense.

 

[smithy]

I have 30kw on the roof

Oh man, if only my roof was big enough for 30kW

 

[paulp]

Oh man, if only my roof was big enough for 30kW

I’d have more other than our local power company SAPN won’t permit more than 30kw