Norbert
TSLA will win
The former in any case. These types generally get what they want, but it won't get them very far.
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The former in any case. These types generally get what they want, but it won't get them very far.
Not all bad though. I actually learned some useful stuff in this thread, which is not what I expected when it started. Silver lining and all that...
Dan5, while I agree with you generally, I just can't let two misconceptions pass by.
1. The US power grid never "vents ... excess energy." Generating units are ramped up or down to exactly match supply and demand; even nuclear units can be ramped, but they rarely are because, almost always, there are other units to do so (see point 2 below). Your grid operator, PJM, does have the ability to store a goodly amount of power in a massive pumped storage facility, Dominion's Bath County facility (3,003 MW peak output).
2. Nor does the marginal power in your area (New Jersey) come from nuclear, even overnight. According to two studies (HERE and HERE) by PJM's market monitor, eastern PJM (NJ, Delaware, and eastern PA) have natural gas on the margin 45%, coal 41%, and oil 14%. "Marginal" here tells you what kind of unit will make an extra MWh of power demanded. That info's a little dated; the mix will have shifted oil downward (a lot, especially overnight), coal downward, and natural gas upward.
Bottom line: except in very rare conditions, in the U.S. your utility will be burning more of some fossil fuel to charge your car. All the renewable and nuclear is always used all the time anyway. (footnote: very rarely, in the Pacific Northwest, the Bonneville Power Authority curtails wind, so greater load in the northern Oregon region could be serviced entirely by incremental wind. As more wind comes into service, this situation will spread.)
@Robert.Boston
It would be interesting to see the development of "smart consumption" devices that are able to indicate that they need X amount of power the next Y hours, but leave it up to the grid to decide when it is supplied.
Or maybe a way of having the grid tell the consumption device the current price of the power, and let the device decide when that price is a "fill 'er up" moment. Kind of like scouting for which gas station to fill up at while traveling.
It would be interesting to see the development of "smart consumption" devices that are able to indicate that they need X amount of power the next Y hours, but leave it up to the grid to decide when it is supplied.
Or maybe a way of having the grid tell the consumption device the current price of the power, and let the device decide when that price is a "fill 'er up" moment. Kind of like scouting for which gas station to fill up at while traveling.
All of that gear exists, and the data to inform it is easy to get.
We need some improvements in the technology for EVs to use this information. All of the organized electricity markets in the U.S. (which cover everywhere north of Tennessee/North Carolina westward through about the KS/CO border, plus Texas, plus California) have 'day-ahead' prices determined by the market, which are very accurate predictors of hourly power prices. So, if your car knew you wanted it charged by 7am and determined that it would take 3 hours of charging to top up the battery, it could look forward and select the three lowest-cost hours in which to charge. I'm not aware of any gadgets yet that can plan like that, but it should be easy enough.
ChadS
Last tank of gas: March 2009
It may depend by what you mean by "very rare", but I think your claim is a little strong. My utility does use natural gas and hydro, and may (? I am not sure) use the gas instead of hydro for marginal at night; but other utilities in the area (for example, Seattle City Light and Chelan County) don't use fossil fuels, so night-charge marginal power doesn't come from fossil fuels in those places.
(Looking closer, both do get some peak power from BPA and a small amount of coal etc is mixed in there; but it sure doesn't look like what they use for night-time marginal load: Seattle City Light | Fuel Mix and Fuel Mix Disclosure | Chelan County Public Utility District.)
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
It's actually possible to "vent" excess energy by venting the steam or letting the steam pressure build up (with the turbines running at lower efficiency, which is essentially throwing energy away). But that's usually to address short term demand drops. Over the long term, you will necessarily have to ramp down some baseload plants if there is a point in demand where even turning off all peaking plants doesn't match the load.
I smell business opportunity... (Not for me though. I'm about as technically savvy as a Paris street painter.)
Fair enough -- I'll concede that Pac NW is different, although the amount of water is limited, though large. Brianman's in NJ, and we've got no comparable mega-hydro resource in the east other than Hydro-Quebec's system, which is also energy-limited and not particularly relevant for NJ, either.
Beavis
Model S Signature 991
A start up named Tendril makes the smart grid software. Put some panels on the house, smart appliances, etc...and the software communicates with the utility and tells everything when to run based on projected energy consumption, projected energy produced with the panels, and tiered utility rate for the time of day. It tells the house when to sell power back into the grid, store it (if you have battery backup), or use it. No thinking required. Your utility just has to buy it and install it.
And if you don't mind a little extra wear, your S can be your home's battery pack. Make that a lot of wear.
And if you don't mind a little extra wear, your S can be your home's battery pack. Make that a lot of wear.
Agreed- vent was a pretty strong word to use. I do know the Salem nuclear plant dumps about 2 gigawatts of waste heat- I was thinking that was it was dumped from the steam cycle when demand was low.
Technically- it is true that not much power comes from nuclear in NJ, but I was curious about where my energy was coming from and called up and they said "most likely from the Salem nuclear plant" (It's really a aggregate of everything, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, oil, etc). I wish I could put a windmill on my property, but township ordinances prevent that
Sorry, brianman, meant Dan5.
It's pretty easy to hit the "tiered rate" times, but those are set based on broad averages. There're three levels of "better" that smarter tech could hit:
The challenge with the latter two is getting a retail tariff that makes that worth the consumer's while. The problem with the real-time option is ensuring that the car is actually charged fully. #2 strikes me as the sweet spot, requiring only modest levels of tariff revisions and programming.
It's pretty easy to hit the "tiered rate" times, but those are set based on broad averages. There're three levels of "better" that smarter tech could hit:
- Programmed based on tiered prices: likely to create problems when everyone's car starts charging precisely at 11pm (or whenever the lowest tier hits).
- Programmed based on day-ahead prices: use market conditions based on the day-ahead markets to programmatically chose the recharge slot. This will likely happen in the early morning, when other loads are at their min.
- True real-time responsiveness: Monitor real-time pricing conditions to take advantage of short (5-minute) swings in prices to buy the cheapest possible power.
The challenge with the latter two is getting a retail tariff that makes that worth the consumer's while. The problem with the real-time option is ensuring that the car is actually charged fully. #2 strikes me as the sweet spot, requiring only modest levels of tariff revisions and programming.
No worries.
The "ensuring... charged fully" isn't a hard requirement for me most of the time. For most of the time, I need the beginning-of-day charge within 20% of "normal full" (vs. ranged full). Kind of like setting an upper and lower bound for the house thermostat that you set once and then it's hands off.
Any chemical substance or nuclear to electricity conversion wastes lots of heat. Essentially only hydro, solar and wind have little thermal waste (in that case due to friction). All Coal plants, almost all natural gas and nuclear uses a thermal cycle (Carnot, Brayton, ... cycles). In the case of most nuclear plants they operate at 350C/660F / output which wastes around 2/3s of the heat generated. High temperature reactors can be 50% efficient, so they dump 50% of the heat.
So this doesn't mean the plan is wasting energy because it doesn't have use for that energy, it's because of the technology used.
Old coal and natural gas plants are also that much inefficient too.
Even the best natural gas and coal plants uses up to 60% of the heat and must dump the remaining 40% of the total energy from burning of the fuel.
The Salem plant probably produces 1GW electric which means 2GW thermal must be dissipated to the environment.
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Regarding the battery, I recall a video where Dave Duff, a senior Tesla engineer responsible for the creation of the fast connect coupling between the battery and the car stated the battery 'has no heavy metals' and can be ground up and re-used....here's a link to the video.
Stanford Seminar - Dave Duff, Telsa Motors - YouTube
Stanford Seminar - Dave Duff, Telsa Motors - YouTube
1. I don't want to drive even a motorized electric two wheelers-unsafe.
2. No electrical (or otherwise) light weight car as they are pushed out of lane by heavy winds or any time a truck goes by.
3. I like the comfort of motorized door handles. Would even pay to have face recognition instead of carrying a key.
4. I don't know where the statistics regarding 100 miles came from. I drive less than 3 miles to and from from work but drive 125 miles each way during weekends. Would hate to stop for an hour to charge in between.
5. I bought Tesla for the technology, 300 miles range, and the comfort and quietness.
6. I do care about the environment-have been driving Hybrids for the past 13 years. I save energy by other means. Don't want to be lectured on the topic.
7. I believe in Nuclear technology-there are risks with everything in life.
8. When a better car comes along, perhaps I would go for it.
9. My wish perhaps-a removable back seat to decrease weight!
2. No electrical (or otherwise) light weight car as they are pushed out of lane by heavy winds or any time a truck goes by.
3. I like the comfort of motorized door handles. Would even pay to have face recognition instead of carrying a key.
4. I don't know where the statistics regarding 100 miles came from. I drive less than 3 miles to and from from work but drive 125 miles each way during weekends. Would hate to stop for an hour to charge in between.
5. I bought Tesla for the technology, 300 miles range, and the comfort and quietness.
6. I do care about the environment-have been driving Hybrids for the past 13 years. I save energy by other means. Don't want to be lectured on the topic.
7. I believe in Nuclear technology-there are risks with everything in life.
8. When a better car comes along, perhaps I would go for it.
9. My wish perhaps-a removable back seat to decrease weight!
pilotSteve
Active Member
WELL SAID, Gynob001. Excellent points. However I have briefly considered it would be fun to drive a motorized electric two wheeler....
Fair enough, with a lightweight car you are the weak one in traffic, true.. but none of those get pushed away each time a truck passes..
Well my main issue with the handles is that there is no mechical way to get them out and open the door. The confort comes mostly from the keyless door unlock and keyless car start. While I don't think the handels wihtou autopresenting would reduce the weight in a significant way, they are a gadget, it's not like you don't have to open the door like in every other car...
Excactly the same here, without the range I wouldn't have bought it, even I don't drive those distances weekly, but defenitely monthly.
Nobody want's to be lectured. But well with a Tesla or a Hybrid we are 'buying' the 'Greenness'. We like to be green as long we don't have to sacrifice much. The sacrifice the green guys want is not driving a car, never fly, not eating meat (those damn cows fart a lot) and so on
Would it be better? defenitely. Will we do it? probably not.
Here I really disagree. as long Nuclear runs without problem it seems fine.. until the questions rise where we go with the waste? How long those places will hold.. or something goes wrong like in Fukushima or Tschernobill. And if something goes wrong it's not just that some people an property get destroyed, it will have a long lasting and maybe global effect (ocean radiation from fukushima)
I really think we should try to get rid of nuclear plants along witht the coal ones.
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