Electricity carbon footprints

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MikeBoxwell

Well-known member
Joined
May 24, 2010
Messages
118
Location
Coventry, United Kingdom
Here in the UK, I've been able to get hold of a real-time datafeed from the national grid to show the utilisation of power across the country and the source of the power. This has allowed me to put together a web page that shows people whether or not it is now a good time to plug your electric car in to charge it up. It also shows what your likely CO2 figures will be for each kilometer of driving (1km = 0.6 miles), which is then compared to gasoline vehicles.

Here's the web page so people know what I'm talking about:

http://www.owningelectriccar.com/national-grid-electric.html

The carbon footprint figures really do change quite considerably throughout the day. In the middle of the night, the figure can be as low as 290-330g/km whilst in the middle of the day it can be as high as 600g/km.

The next stage is to connect this to an internet-enabled power socket so that the electric cars power supply could be switched on and off automatically based on the grid utilisation, the carbon footprint of the energy supplied and when the car needs to be fully charged by.

I would dearly love to be able to do a US state-by-state version of this page, obviously showing the figures in miles and gallons, pounds and ounces rather than our ikky European measurements :D . Does anyone know if the raw data is available anywhere?
 
Michael,
Very nice page, clean, and well done. Good work!

When to not plug in to charge (or do laundry, etc.) advice is a nice touch.

Suggestion:
Add a prediction of when it will be "best" to charge, based on the same day in previous week(s). Show a "better" time period for 2, 4, 6, and 8-hour charging.

EVs in green, Hybrids (add Prius?) in yellow, and ICE in red?
Perhaps add a Prius.

Add the mpg (l per 100k) figures that the bar graphs use for ICE (and Hybrid, fuel and e-fuel for plug-in hybrids) are based on? And the e-fuel miles per kWh (mpe) that the EV calculations used. Then, other vehicles can be easily compared.

And, even better, also add 3 fields to enter "my car" data (fuel, e-fuel, distance) and display another bar for "My Car".

FYI: My browser does not show the line of text that is right under the bar chart.

Again, good work!
 
MikeBoxwell said:
...
The carbon footprint figures really do change quite considerably throughout the day. In the middle of the night, the figure can be as low as 290-330g/km whilst in the middle of the day it can be as high as 600g/km.
Click to expand...
I'm assuming you meant to write as low as 290-330g/kWh?
Otherwise, that's not so good!

Very useful web page BTW.
 
Oops, yes, you're right. I meant 290-330g/kWh, not per km.

Thanks for the comments. I will be updating the page to incorporate this sort of feedback. But ideally, I'd love to be able to do this for other countries as well.
 
Mike,

Some time back I had read some figures about how much it would take (in terms of emissions) to ship from Japan to US/Europe. Couldn't find it.

Do you have any figures on that ?
 
my power company is "National Grid", they don't have this on any kind of web portal, but they summarize it monthly... not the best situation, but here is an example for "May 2010" for MA (Massachusetts), the New England area (MA, RI, CT, NY, VT, NH) is very similar.

https://www.nationalgridus.com/masselectric/non_html/Mass_Nantucket_Basic_Disclosure_05-2010.pdf
 
Some really good comments here. I intend to use most, if not all of them with version 2. Thanks for the links for National Grid. It turns out that I've got a contact there, so I'll see if I can get a data-feed from them.
 
For those in California, here's the daily supply vs. demand curve

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
 
Nubo said:
For those in California, here's the daily supply vs. demand curve

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Click to expand...


Brilliant. Thank you for that. I must admit I misread the web address though and did wonder why a Japanese pocket calculator company was monitoring California's energy usage. :lol:
 
I doubt that you'll find any real-time data. And I doubt you'll find many sources as good as the National Grid data that mitch672 found for Massachusetts.

The DOE's Energy Information Administration is a good source for all kinds of interesting data, mostly on a national basis. Here's an example:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo/7etab.pdf

An important caveat in mitch672's National Grid source that shouldn't be overlooked - electric power generation in the USA is mostly coordinated in several large regional markets. Except in California, Texas, and New York, which have their own ISOs to manage the transmission grid, and the southeastern states, the mountain states, and the northwest states where there is no ISO (yes, that's a lot of exceptions!), the generation of electricity is coordinated on a regional basis. One usually cannot look only at their own state's statistics to determine the source of their electricity.

MikeBoxwell said:
Here in the UK, I've been able to get hold of a real-time datafeed from the national grid to show the utilisation of power across the country and the source of the power. ...

I would dearly love to be able to do a US state-by-state version of this page, obviously showing the figures in miles and gallons, pounds and ounces rather than our ikky European measurements :D . Does anyone know if the raw data is available anywhere?
Click to expand...
 
MikeBoxwell said:
Here in the UK, I've been able to get hold of a real-time datafeed from the national grid to show the utilisation of power across the country and the source of the power. This has allowed me to put together a web page that shows people whether or not it is now a good time to plug your electric car in to charge it up. It also shows what your likely CO2 figures will be for each kilometer of driving (1km = 0.6 miles), which is then compared to gasoline vehicles.

Here's the web page so people know what I'm talking about:

http://www.owningelectriccar.com/national-grid-electric.html

The carbon footprint figures really do change quite considerably throughout the day. In the middle of the night, the figure can be as low as 290-330g/km whilst in the middle of the day it can be as high as 600g/km.

The next stage is to connect this to an internet-enabled power socket so that the electric cars power supply could be switched on and off automatically based on the grid utilisation, the carbon footprint of the energy supplied and when the car needs to be fully charged by.

I would dearly love to be able to do a US state-by-state version of this page, obviously showing the figures in miles and gallons, pounds and ounces rather than our ikky European measurements :D . Does anyone know if the raw data is available anywhere?
Click to expand...

I don't know about the UK, but here, a lot of us will be using pvs to charge our cars, so maybe there should be a disclaimer for pv/other renewables charging during the day/night?
 
Nubo said:
For those in California, here's the daily supply vs. demand curve

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Click to expand...
I haven't found a graph yet, but this site gives real-time energy updates for the Texas grid minus the panhandle - only the part of the grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
http://mospublic.ercot.com/ercot/jsp/frequency_control.jsp

It doesn't give an energy source breakdown, but does give info on the wind inputs from the West Texas and Gulf of Mexico wind farms.

ercot.jpg
 
Nubo said:
For those in California, here's the daily supply vs. demand curve

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Click to expand...
Thanks for the pointer Nubo. So do I have this right? At midnight the Available Resources - Actual Demand was 12,283mW. So if an EV, such as the LEAF, charges at 3kWh that means there is enough available capacity in the CA grid to charge 4,090,239 EVs, correct? That would cover over 10% of passenger car fleet in CA, with the electrical infrastructure that's in place right now.
 
Enough generation capacity. There will likely be enough transmission capacity as well, although maybe not in some places depending on where the night time EV charging loads are v. where the day time business and commercial loads are.

The big question is the local neighborhood distribution infrastructure capacity.

In summation, although there may be enough generation capacity to charge 4 million EVs, is there enough T&D capacity in the right places to get the electricity from wher the generators are to where the EVs are.

Going back to the generation side, discount 1,000 MW or so that needs to be on-line but unloaded so as to be ready to respond to emergencies on the electrical grid. So of the 12,000 MW available only 11,000 can be used without having to turn on additional generators.

indyflick said:
Nubo said:
For those in California, here's the daily supply vs. demand curve

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Click to expand...
Thanks for the pointer Nubo. So do I have this right? At midnight the Available Resources - Actual Demand was 12,283mW. So if an EV, such as the LEAF, charges at 3kWh that means there is enough available capacity in the CA grid to charge 4,090,239 EVs, correct? That would cover over 10% of passenger car fleet in CA, with the electrical infrastructure that's in place right now.
Click to expand...
 

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