It's not just *your* house, you are thinking too locally. See my post here: What happens if everyone drove EV?.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
What happens if everyone drove EV?
- Thread starter JetFalcon
- Start date
It's not just *your* house, you are thinking too locally. See my post here: What happens if everyone drove EV?.
California does require solar on new homes. It isn't necessarily a good idea. And I have solar on my home.
Utility grade solar is actually much cheaper than home solar - economies of scale and all. Yes there is land costs and environmental impacts and transmission losses. But still, utility grade is cheaper.
The right answer is probably a mix of both.
Charging your car battery during the day on solar is not a new idea but we probably need to have a bit better battery tech to comfortably do it - so that longevity isn't an issue.
The real challenge for a solar only world (which is not really anyone's plan) is that winter generation is way down. Transporting from the Southern Hemisphere is going to get a bit costly - although probably not anymore than a big pipeline.
My house panels cover our cars and house to about 80% for 9 months out of the year. But December this year was only 35%. That is the real challenge.
We will have a smarter grid - even just TOU for all - before everyone gets an EV. We do need to work on workplace charging so that the cars can be charged with solar most of the time.
But you also have to realize that wind is a bigger player in the US than solar. In parts of Texas, they have rate plans with 0 cents per KWH at night because of excess wind. So you really just need to distribute things better with some storage.
Imagine if we had a federal government that was allowed to plan for the renewable future. And imagine how hard this whole thing is on a state level and how hard it is for the market to do it without federal government guidance/mandate/incentives.
Utility grade solar is actually much cheaper than home solar - economies of scale and all. Yes there is land costs and environmental impacts and transmission losses. But still, utility grade is cheaper.
The right answer is probably a mix of both.
Charging your car battery during the day on solar is not a new idea but we probably need to have a bit better battery tech to comfortably do it - so that longevity isn't an issue.
The real challenge for a solar only world (which is not really anyone's plan) is that winter generation is way down. Transporting from the Southern Hemisphere is going to get a bit costly - although probably not anymore than a big pipeline.
My house panels cover our cars and house to about 80% for 9 months out of the year. But December this year was only 35%. That is the real challenge.
We will have a smarter grid - even just TOU for all - before everyone gets an EV. We do need to work on workplace charging so that the cars can be charged with solar most of the time.
But you also have to realize that wind is a bigger player in the US than solar. In parts of Texas, they have rate plans with 0 cents per KWH at night because of excess wind. So you really just need to distribute things better with some storage.
Imagine if we had a federal government that was allowed to plan for the renewable future. And imagine how hard this whole thing is on a state level and how hard it is for the market to do it without federal government guidance/mandate/incentives.
Right now solar is not a cost-effective option for those of us that live in a northern climate with low periods of sunshine, but per my point, there will be further improvements to solar that make it cost-effective for this region and the adoption of EVs will help drive the research investments. There are also great strides with H2 development which would make a fuel cell a great choice since it produces the combination of electricity and heat and I am not sure what you mean by "They do not generate power". I am patiently waiting for reasonable priced residential fuel cell. There are few options right now using NG as a source and they would set me back 30k+ to install in my house.
GLM
I guess not everyone watched Transformers when they were younger.
I have never seen Transformers. I think there was a TV show and I know there are movies. I've never seen any of them. I think the franchise is about machines that change from one kind of machine to another. The smiley face tells me you are making a joke, but I have no idea what the joke is.
Bio-fuels other than used fry oil take land away from food production, and we're already using all the good land just to produce enough food now, and a lot of marginal land as well. Brazil is using a lot of ethanol, but here we just don't have enough land for it. And used fry oil is a very small supply. Note also that diesels are filthy, producing gobs of particulate pollution. "Clean diesel" is a lie, just like "Red Delicious" apple.
Yes. It would be wonderful if the federal (and many state!) governments were not run by science-denying imbeciles, young-Earth creationists, and toadies of the oil industry.
H2 is not a source of energy since it does not exist in nature. It must be produced (with attendant efficiency losses) from an energy source. It can be produced by electrolysis from electricity but that is not terribly efficient, and today it is nearly always produced by reforming natural gas, a fossil fuel, with all the attendant environmental destruction of any fossil fuel, though admittedly less carbon than oil or coal. Further, H2 is very difficult to store and transport. Also, fuel cells are expensive and have a relatively short lifetime.
Fuel cells have been around for a long time, and have been the preferred solution of the bigger car companies and the fossil fuel industry, and yet they've gone nowhere in the time that electric cars have come onto the scene and demonstrated their superiority. You're actually better off burning natural gas or LP gas in an ICE than using it to produce H2 to use with a fuel cell.
P.S. Ethanol works in Brazil because they make it from sugar cane, which grows well there. Here in the U.S., ethanol is produced from corn, an energy-intensive crop that requires good farm land (which could be producing food instead of fuel) and which is economical only because of government subsidies to corn farmers.
That's not the point.
LiOn batteries do loose capacity with charge-discharge cycles.
I don't think we need to argue about that fact. If you didn't know that, please google.
I just looked up my electricity usage history, and it's ~35kWh/day during the winter, and ~53kWh/day during the summer.
Sunset to sunrise is ~13 hours during the winter, and ~10 hours during the summer.
Sunrise and sunset times in Sunrise, December 2020
So one would require an average between 35/24*13 and 53/24*10 electricity consumption to come from the EV battery, or avg (18.958, 22.083) = 20.5205 kWh/day.
That's 143.6435 kWh/week.
Our 2x the Model 3's 75kWh battery capacity.
The above would require two (2) full additional charging cycles per week.
Those are some undefined "commercial battery" facilities.
Based on the my calculations above, loaning my Model 3's battery for V2Grid role would subject it to at least 3x battery cycling and degradation (assuming one drives ~300 miles per week, and thus requires 1 full battery charging cycle).
That would kill my car's battery way before it's time.
3x faster, to be exact.
So that would be a HARD PASS.
Wind doesn't conveniently blow at maximum strength just when you need it, or when sun goes down.
That's not how wind works.
CertLive
Member
Every energy source gets turned into energeon cubes. I guess at that time, they were thinking hydrogen fuel cells. But my point is that everything eventually need to be electricity... you see it with Nissan's implementation of fossil fuel powered EV.
I know that, and using generic Li-ion battery data, my battery would retain 90% capacity after 20 years.
Yeah, you need to do an energy analysis to see why you're using so much energy. Las Vegas has very low per capta water usage. California has very low per capita energy usage. Learn from others.
Those are some undefined "commercial battery" facilities.
Based on the my calculations above, loaning my Model 3's battery for V2Grid role would subject it to at least 3x battery cycling and degradation (assuming one drives ~300 miles per week, and thus requires 1 full battery charging cycle).
That would kill my car's battery way before it's time.
3x faster, to be exact.
So that would be a HARD PASS.
Wind doesn't conveniently blow at maximum strength just when you need it, or when sun goes down.
That's not how wind works.
... because you are once again trying to assume that your car will need to provide full power to your home at all times. NY can leverage off-shore wind turbine and how often is the wind still over open ocean?
I'll admit beforehand that there are people who know a lot more about batteries than I do, but my understanding is that li-Ion batteries degrade much faster under deep-discharge than shallow discharge. I.e., draining the battery to near empty and then charging it to full does a lot more damage than draining it from 75% to 50% and then charging it back up four times. If your house uses 10 kWh overnight that's only 1/6 of a discharge-recharge cycle on a 60 kWh pack, or less than 1/7 of a discharge-recharge cycle on a 75kWh pack.
Of course, it matters how much of your electric usage is at night. I use almost no electricity at night because an hour after sunset I can shut off my A/C. But my previous renter used almost all her electricity at night (except for daytime A/C for the dog) because she was away at work from sunrise to sunset.
My car cannot serve as my home electric supply (it doesn't have the tech for it) but if it did, the cost in degradation of the battery would probably be far less than what I actually paid for two Powerwalls for the house. We either pay for night-time electricity in our utility bill and the pollution of power plants, or we pay for it by having our own batteries, in the car or separate from the car. In the car is probably more economical. And stored nighttime power has value, so if we have full-on V2G storage, the utility should have to pay the car owner.
There are other bio-fuels than waste oil that don't require crops. A few interesting uses for the fuels as well. The Navy is looking into ways to make jet fuel on board aircraft carriers. Granted they have a massive power source on board being nuclear powered and cost isn't much of a concern. There is a facility that takes the waste from a Butterball Turkey plant and turns it into crude oil that can then be refined into fuel. This process can accept a lot of different input feeds. There is also methane capture from garbage dumps. None of these will be enough to transition the entire fleet however they may provide the fuel needed for the niche industries in the future that BEV can't handle. It will be a long time before BEV airplanes are competitive with a 747 or A380.
I would rather breath diesel exhaust than gas exhaust. Both gas and diesel produce particulates, diesel just produces larger size which settles out of the air faster and is easier to filter. Diesel tends to produces less CO and HC however it will produce more NOx.
> But December this year was only 35%. [David_Cary]
I'm curious how much that figure could be improved by tilting solar panels to optimum angle, either for December permanently, or by making monthly angle adjustments. Probably more of a consideration for off-grid systems where any shortfall would require generator usage. So how off-optimum are your panels for December?
--
I'm curious how much that figure could be improved by tilting solar panels to optimum angle, either for December permanently, or by making monthly angle adjustments. Probably more of a consideration for off-grid systems where any shortfall would require generator usage. So how off-optimum are your panels for December?
--
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but where I live the CC&R's require that solar panels be flat with respect to the roof. They may not be tilted at a different angle than the roof itself. This is not a problem for me because my system was designed to provide sufficient power under all conditions and times of year other than extended extreme overcast. Even when we had three days of stormy, cloudy weather, I had plenty of power.
But yes, allowing the panels to move continually to present a face perpendicular to the incoming sunlight would allow a system to have fewer panels; i.e. each panel would produce more power per day, week, or year. Whether this would be economical or not would depend on the relative cost of the mechanism vs. the cost of adding more panels.
I have panels on three different parts of the roof, each pointing in a different direction, and each section produces maximum power at a different time of day. And in spite of this the estimated pay-back time is around five years. But I live in one of the most perfect places for solar. Sunlight is abundant and the grid has some of the most expensive power in the country. I could drive a lot more than I do and still power my car and home from my solar.
FWIW, I have two 13-kWh Powerwalls for the house and my car has 75 kWh. If the car could power the house there would be battery degradation on the car, but as it is, there's battery degradation on the Powerwalls. The only reason for not using the car instead of the Powerwalls is that I'd have no power for the house while driving the car. But if it was a V2G system, that would not be an issue. One way or another we have to store power for nighttime use if we want to stop burning fossil fuel, and it's wasteful of resources to neglect the storage capacity of cars. We just have to properly reimburse car owners for the shortened life of their car batteries.
Note also that a battery that is no longer adequate for the car is not without value. It can still be used for other applications where weight and bulk are not problems. So you buy a new battery for the car and pay for it with the money you've gotten from the utility for V2G usage and with residual value of the old battery.
I'm not proposing Fuel Cells as a mechanism to power EVs, but as a mechanism for home electric generation and heating. As someone living in a cloudy northern climate where solar is not an option without significant improvements in efficiency, the idea of a fuel cell generating electricity to power my house and charge my EV with the heat byproduct heating my home is particularly attractive. You are correct, there is minimum pure hydrogen available without some type of chemical conversation, but generating electricity from the sun requires some man-made technology. There is continuing electrolysis R&D with positive results which makes the idea of a residential fuel cell likely without the need for hydrocarbons as a source. I believe that will have a huge impact on home electricity and power generation where I live but is a poor option in sun-filled climates such as the southern US and HI.
GLM
There are two common sources for H2: Reformatting methane, or electrolysis of water. Fuel cells are useless for powering your home: If the H2 comes from electricity, you'd be better off powering your home with the electricity directly, rather than adding the wasteful and pointless step of turning it into H2 to be then used in an expensive fuel cell; and if the H2 comes from methane, then you're better off burning the methane directly rather than adding the wasteful and useless step of converting it to H2.
H2 is nothing but a carrier of energy, and it's one of the worst energy carriers you could come up with because it's very difficult and expensive to store and to transport. H2 does not solve any existing energy problems. The big car companies touted fuel-cell cars because they knew they would flop and they'd be able to continue building gas cars.
Assuming you are on the electric grid, using that electricity is far more efficient and less expensive than installing a stack of fuel cells and transporting H2 to your home.
I'd like to focus on this part of your post.
H2 does NOT exist in nature. H2O, water, has ZERO chemical energy. Hydrogen exists in nature in various chemical compounds. Hydrocarbons can provide energy, but in doing so release their carbon, and that's why the Earth is rapidly warming and destabilizing the climate.
The ONLY ways to obtain H2 are from hydrocarbons (thus releasing carbon into the atmosphere) or by splitting H2O into H2 and O, and this reaction requires MORE energy than you will get out because no process is 100% efficient. So using electricity to create H2 from water, and then passing that H2 through a fuel cell, will result in LESS electricity than you started with, and on top of that, you have to store and transport the H2. It makes no sense whatsoever!
The error in your sentence quoted above is that there is ZERO "pure hydrogen" available in nature. Your use of the word "minimum" (I presume you meant minimal) implies that there is some. There is not.
There is effectively no use of fuel cells today because they are an expensive boondoggle.
Daniel,
It seems you want to battle for some reason. I am actually in agreement with your assessment of the current state of fuel cell technology and not arguing that the current hydrogen generation and fuel cell technology is even close to a viable solution. With wholesale adoption of EVs, I am predicting the future will bring new discoveries, such as residential microgeneration technologies, that may make it economically feasible for homes that can fully utilize the fuel cell generated electricity and heat byproduct and it is no longer a boondoggle. Are you disagreeing with that prediction? If that's the case, then just say so.
Yes, I meant minimal because there are trace amounts of hydrogen in the atmosphere (< 1 ppm). If I said zero, then someone would point out there are trace amounts in the atmosphere.
Yes, I am disagreeing with your prediction, because every conversion has inefficiencies, so that by the laws of physics, electricity-to-H2-to-electricity will always be a net loss. I am also asserting that for practical reasons (not basic laws of physics) it will always be more costly to store and transport H2 than electricity. And finally, I am asserting that because of their complexity, fuel cells will never be economically competitive in fixed-location applications such as homes.
In a make-believe future where electricity is free or nearly free and H2 can be produced for free, the weight advantage of H2 vs. batteries could make fuel cells competitive in vehicles. But that assumes an enormous drop in their cost and an enormous rise in their service lifetime, as well as an imaginary free source of H2.
So, yes, I am disagreeing with your prediction that fuel cells could ever be the solution of choice for home use.
My disagreement is not directed against you personally, but against the idea that fuel cells have any place in a realistic discussion of energy policy. They are a curious and very expensive technology with applications in fringe cases where the weight of the fuel is critical and electricity is needed and cost is no object and a shorter operational life than an internal combustion engine is acceptable. I apologize if it seems like I'm attacking you. I am of the opinion that fuel cells entered the public discussion as a way for car companies to resist building practical alternatives to gas cars.
It is true that for a cost in the high six figures, you can install a home system that will slowly convert natural gas to H2 for use in a fuel cell car (which also cost in the high six figures) and which you can fill nowhere but at home. And you're still using fossil fuel (natural gas). So if you want to be sustainable, this is no solution at all. Of course, if you are off the grid, but you have natural gas, and for some reason you cannot run a natural-gas-burning generator, and you live where there is little or no sunlight for extended periods, and you have unlimited funds, then the above could be a way to provide electricity for your home.
Similar threads
