Fresh And Easy scores a near miss...

[JRP3]

One point about the military costs for oil, they are indeed significant on many levels and another good reason to move towards EV's, but at the same time we would still have many of those costs even without foreign oil. I doubt we would dismantle our armies and mothball all the equipment even if we didn't need oil.

 

[coolfilmaker]

One point about the military costs for oil, they are indeed significant on many levels and another good reason to move towards EV's, but at the same time we would still have many of those costs even without foreign oil. I doubt we would dismantle our armies and mothball all the equipment even if we didn't need oil.

I think the idea is based on the fact that that area of the world has gotten it's power, money and conflict from oil and that if 100 years we had continued using electric cars we might not have wars there now. It is completely possible that those problems might never have arisen but considering how many other war machines are dependent on oil (tanks, planes) it is pointless to speculate what would have happened.

 

[AndyH]

One point about the military costs for oil, they are indeed significant on many levels and another good reason to move towards EV's, but at the same time we would still have many of those costs even without foreign oil. I doubt we would dismantle our armies and mothball all the equipment even if we didn't need oil.

You've never been in uniform, have you?

Care to try again? :lol:

 

[TomT]

So, I went by the grand opening of the store this morning... One of the two spots had a Tahoe in it and the other had a Sequoia...

 

[JRP3]

One point about the military costs for oil, they are indeed significant on many levels and another good reason to move towards EV's, but at the same time we would still have many of those costs even without foreign oil. I doubt we would dismantle our armies and mothball all the equipment even if we didn't need oil.

You've never been in uniform, have you?

Care to try again? :lol:

I guess I was wrong and we would have no military if it weren't for our dependence on foreign oil. :roll:

 

[Ingineer]

One point about the military costs for oil, they are indeed significant on many levels and another good reason to move towards EV's, but at the same time we would still have many of those costs even without foreign oil. I doubt we would dismantle our armies and mothball all the equipment even if we didn't need oil.

You've never been in uniform, have you?

Care to try again? :lol:

I guess I was wrong and we would have no military if it weren't for our dependence on foreign oil. :roll:

There's a huge difference between having a defense reserve and sending thousands and thousands of troops and insane $ amounts of equipment to the middle east.

Yes, they will mothball and dispose of excess equipment when we are not "at war".

-Phil

 

[JRP3]

I agree but that is not the same as saying there will be no military if there is no oil use. We may well go to war with N Korea at some point and it won't be over oil.

 

[fooljoe]

I agree but that is not the same as saying there will be no military if there is no oil use.

No one in here ever said or implied that except you.

We may well go to war with N Korea at some point and it won't be over oil.

Regarding NK, instead of saying "we might fight a war that won't be over oil," I'd say "we haven't fought a war yet because there's no oil."

Back to the original topic, a new Fresh and Easy just opened yesterday near my house. I was curious to see what kind of SUVs might be parked in "fuel efficient" spots, but I found no reserved parking spots of any kind except for disabled.

 

[AndyH]

I agree but that is not the same as saying there will be no military if there is no oil use. We may well go to war with N Korea at some point and it won't be over oil.

Again - had you been in uniform at some point or had some similar background - you'd understand the error of your statement. Serving in Korea (six minutes away by SCUD ) specifically to be aware of happenings north of the DMZ gives one the ability to separate the saber rattling the press reports from the real awareness that North Korea is little more than a shell. If we were to go to war with the DPRK, it would be to save their people from cannibalism. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatche...ice-bowl/cannibalism-north-korea-world-hunger

I did not say that there would be 'no military' - you did. But it's very clear that our nation has been paying dearly since at least the 1940s for a steady supply of oil - and that includes military bases, equipment, ships, and personnel that are in place to maintain stability in regions to keep the oil flowing. And the blame for that addiction and the associated fall-out falls squarely on us.

 

[simpleleaf]

First time post so please bear with me. Earlier in this topic the discussion centered on which was cleaner a BEV or hybrid. The answer will vary widely depending on the state but in Texas the grid is controlled by ERCOT. The 2008 peak was 62,000 MW and the wind generation in Texas is around 10,000 MW. Base load units are coal and nuclear with coal at about 44 percent of the generation. Gas fired plants generate about 42 percent of the power. The combined cycle gas plants normally cycle. The interesting statistic was in a report by NREL called "Analysis of Wind Power Ramping Behavior in ERCOT". Wind generation actually peaks late at night in ERCOT and drops off during the day. Only the coastal wind plants generate peaks during the early afternoon. Therefore in Texas at night when BEV's are charging the power is actually cleaner than during the day.

 

[Ingineer]

Here's another tidbit, that of course none of these studies included because it was just figured out:

Black Carbon Belchers?
Pollution Monitoring: Cars may produce more climate-warming particles than previously thought

Tiny particles known as black carbon can pack a heavy punch when it comes to climate change, by trapping heat in the atmosphere and by alighting atop, and melting, Arctic ice. With an eye toward controlling these emissions, researchers have tracked black carbon production from fossil fuel combustion in gasoline-burning cars and diesel-burning trucks. Once thought to be minor players, gasoline-burning engines could put out twice as much black carbon as was previously measured, according to new field methods (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es2033845).

Black carbon particles, which come from many combustion processes, have become a focus this month of an international agreement to control climate impacts from short-lived but powerful actors such as methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and black carbon (C&EN, Feb. 20, page 8). The new findings could lead to controls on gas-burning vehicles, long considered to produce less black carbon than diesel-burning trucks and cars.

Full Article HERE.

-Phil

 

[JRP3]

First time post so please bear with me. Earlier in this topic the discussion centered on which was cleaner a BEV or hybrid. The answer will vary widely depending on the state but in Texas the grid is controlled by ERCOT. The 2008 peak was 62,000 MW and the wind generation in Texas is around 10,000 MW. Base load units are coal and nuclear with coal at about 44 percent of the generation. Gas fired plants generate about 42 percent of the power. The combined cycle gas plants normally cycle. The interesting statistic was in a report by NREL called "Analysis of Wind Power Ramping Behavior in ERCOT". Wind generation actually peaks late at night in ERCOT and drops off during the day. Only the coastal wind plants generate peaks during the early afternoon. Therefore in Texas at night when BEV's are charging the power is actually cleaner than during the day.

Do you have any references to support that? I have a hard time believing that out of 62,000 MW of generating capacity 10,000 MW of it is wind. The "Sources of Power" tab here shows about 1% of the area being wind power: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

 

[JRP3]

Answering my own question I found this: http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/windintegration/ It shows wind generation for each 24 hour period, and it does indeed look as if wind can run between 10-20% of nighttime grid production, though I only looked at a handful of days. Would be nice to see a yearly average chart.

 

[JRP3]

Here's another tidbit, that of course none of these studies included because it was just figured out:


Full Article HERE.

-Phil

Interesting, that would skew things further in the favor of EV's, as long as similar discoveries are not found to be true for fossil fuel plants.

 

[TomT]

In a futile attempt to bring this thread back to its original intent, I noticed yesterday that Fresh and Easy, has painted out "Hybrid Parking Only" and left just the signage. I'm not sure if this an improvement or a step back, however, as I suspect that a plethora of inappropriate vehicles will now attempt to park there...

[Soapbox mode on]
I am really getting tired of so many threads being hijacked by the pro and/or anti environmental/AGW/Green House Gasses/my-fuel-is-better-than-yours/etc. folks. There are plenty of places to discuss such thing on this forum and it is inconsiderate and anti-productive to simply grab a thread for such purposes. If anything ultimately makes me leave MNL, this will be it! If I was a moderator, I would start deleting such messages from threads where they are not appropriate.
[soapbox mode off]

 

[Herm]

[ If anything ultimately makes me leave MNL, this will be it! If I was a moderator, I would start deleting such messages from threads where they are not appropriate.

I guess we could have a neutered section of the forum for safe messages like you mention.. it would be a bit boring with all the preaching-to-the-choir stuff but we all need boring sometimes. The IMDB forums have a feature that can hide spoilers within a message, works very well.

 

[Yodrak]

The sentence in question is mixing two different things at two different points in time (I believe that people on this board call that "FUD"?) ,which does create confusion. The 62,000 MW is the peak load that was experienced in 2008, not the amount of installed generating capacity. The installed generating capacity in 2008 was ~80,000 MW (net dependable capacity ~73,000 MW).

The 10,000 MW of wind (9,600 MW, actually) is the current wind installed generating capacity, not the amount of wind generation at the time of the 2008 peak load. In 2008 the wind installed generating capacity was 8,000 MW, 10% of the total capacity.

There is generally little wind blowing at the time of a peak load - lack of wind is one of the weather conditions that contributes to high load demand. So at the time of that 62,000 MW peak load wind generation might have been serving something like 2-3,000 MW of it, perhaps 5% or less.

Do you have any references to support that? I have a hard time believing that out of 62,000 MW of generating capacity 10,000 MW of it is wind. The "Sources of Power" tab here shows about 1% of the area being wind power: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

First time post so please bear with me. Earlier in this topic the discussion centered on which was cleaner a BEV or hybrid. The answer will vary widely depending on the state but in Texas the grid is controlled by ERCOT. The 2008 peak was 62,000 MW and the wind generation in Texas is around 10,000 MW. Base load units are coal and nuclear with coal at about 44 percent of the generation. Gas fired plants generate about 42 percent of the power. The combined cycle gas plants normally cycle. The interesting statistic was in a report by NREL called "Analysis of Wind Power Ramping Behavior in ERCOT". Wind generation actually peaks late at night in ERCOT and drops off during the day. Only the coastal wind plants generate peaks during the early afternoon. Therefore in Texas at night when BEV's are charging the power is actually cleaner than during the day.

 

[Yodrak]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here, but there is never "excess energy" on the electrical grid. The amount of energy generated must match the amount of energy consumed by customer load and system losses at all times. So charging EVs from the grid is going to increase the amount of CO2 produced by fossil-fuel power plants no matter what time of the day or night the EVs are being charged.

There is excess generating capacity available at night that can be put to good use, but using that excess capacity requires that additional fuel be consumed. Exception: times when wind generation has had to be curtailed, because the fossil units have been turned down as low as they can go and the only remaining way to keep generation and load in balance is to tell the wind generators to 'turn 'em off'. I think this is still extremely rare, it was rare even during the highly publicized period when wind and hydro were competing in the northwest last year.

And my point down below on the page still stands: those "long tailpipes" are still smokin' away at night anyway, whether not EV owners are charging their vehicles. Consequently, they're not "adding" to the amount of CO2 produced: they're merely putting the excess energy to good use rather than wasting it. In that regard, EVs should get to subtract the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to them if they charge while we're asleep.

 

[Yodrak]

Need to distinguish between combined cycle plants and steam cycle plants that burn natural gas. In some parts of the county, the northeast in particular, a large percentage of steam plants were converted from coal to natural gas over the past 30 years. Combined cycle plants can follow load relatively quickly and easily, the converted steam plants are only marginally better at following load than they were when they burned coal.

My understanding of the grid does not support that assumption. NG plants do not keep "smokin' away at night", they throttle way back or shut down.

Yes.

Coal plants also throttle down some.

Yes.

Nuclear is baseload and keeps putting out close to rated power I think.

It's more tricky than that because a lot of big hydro also needs to take into consideration the availability of water over the coming year or longer. Dams don't only house hydro-electric generators, they are also used to hold back water to prevent flooding during periods when water is plentiful and to release water during periods of drought.

Hydroelectric is tricky, as it's both baseload and peak load. Hydro can be throttled back at night to bank up capacity for peak use during the day, that way peak hydro, which is cheap, can be used instead of peak NG, which is more expensive. So while hydro might be able to throttle back up in some areas at night to fill in the extra load of a fleet of EV's plugging in, it's more likely that coal will be kept up higher at night to allow the hydro to be banked for daytime peak loads.

Agreed

Bottom line is it appears that most additional night time marginal load will be provided by coal in many areas,

Maybe. Maybe not. I have no opinion on this.

pushing the over all CO2 mix for night charged EV's higher than the overall grid mix.

 

[Yanquetino]

Yodrak and JRP3:

To clarify, I did not mean to imply that power plants are smokin' away at the same rate as in the day. I knew that power plants throttle down at night, but... I will admit that I was unaware that they actually shut down. Wow. Interesting.

For argument's sake, then, let's say that charging EVs at night really will produce more greenhouse gases because those power plants will keep running rather than shutting down. I'm not sure that I see the point when it comes to the topic at hand of comparing emissions between ICEs and EVs. Whether power plants are running or shut down, whether they're charging EVs or running oil refineries, on average in the U.S. a Leaf produces less greenhouse gas emissions than a comparable gasoline vehicle per mile --at least according to the EPA's numbers and formulas.

You might want to read the latest version of the analysis, and even try using the utility software at the bottom for your particular area of the country to see how the results compare with that national average:

The Ludicrous “Long Tailpipe” Accusation by Petrolpuppets