I am wary of our more smarter Smart Grid; I wear my reservations on both sleeves. We've got this vision that your and your neighbor's hundred million plug-in hybrid vehicles are going to give a boost to the grid when it needs it and will draw power to fuel your daily 42-mile round trip commute from Wentzville to St. Louis when it's sunny and windy. All of this is forms the base our our smart grid pyramid while we currently have 9,500 electric vehicles in a nation filled with 250,851,833 vehicles -- 0.0038%.
Yep. We've learned that Tesla Motors will turn a profit next month, validating the future of electric vehicles. They're coming. Silent electric 18-wheel tractor-trailers with battery powered refrigerator units to keep the iceberg lettuce cool from Salinas to Springfield. Hybrid utility bucket trucks. All electric flatbeds, car carriers, and federal express vans. Hybrid container ships. Electric helicopters. Battery powered wreckers. Battery powered yachts. Electrified snowcats. Battery powered hard rock mining equipment. Electric bulldozers. Batterized Jet Skis, Wave Runners, and SkiDoos. Battery powered standby generators. Hybrid freight trains. Battery powered launch rockets to outer space. Electric tanks. Electric motorcycles. If these sound ridiculous, they should; never in history has the use of energy efficiency resulted in less energy usage...only more. If we drop the price of a battery car from $50,000 today to $5,000 tomorrow, we'll only see a billion more cars on the road.
I carried away one important point regarding renewables when I worked at the California ISO: for every megawatt of scheduled wind energy we kept a megawatt of natural gas fired generation available. That is, wind carries a 100% reserve requirement. You have to...because of the fundamental that's never considered by our green populace -- wind's unpredictability means it truly has no generating capacity value and its construction will never displace the construction of new coal or natural gas capacity.
Wind is simply an additional capital cost, an additional capital investment on top of fossil fuel fired plants. Sure, you may not have to run them as much but you still gotta build 'em.
This is the exact same thing regarding a hybrid car -- you need the capital investment of both a battery bank and a gasoline engine to ensure a reliable ride.
What the ISO needed was a more accurate forecast for wind -- if you had better confidence that the wind was gonna blow you could reduce your reserve requirement. Thus, if you had a 100 MW wind forecast you might only have to have 70 MW of gas fired peakers ready in the event the wind fails to blow because your better forecast means that it's highly unlikely to not fall below 30MW. We're probably close to the limits of our forecasting capabilities; we may only get a few percent better. We're not Gods -- although some of us like to think that they are. And when the wind stops, you'll get to fire up that gas peaker that is more inefficient and emits more pollutants than other base loaded technologies.
Rooftop solar is likewise constrained. A thunderhead passes overhead and local insolation changes by 60%. An unexpected change in the frontal system means that regional insolation might change by 30%. Because we demand electricity at every moment of every day without question, we have to manage these unpredictable events -- and one way to do that is to count on additional fossil fuel generation. What, we're gonna have grid sized battery backup? Wouldn't want to count on the quadrillion plug in hybrids we're gonna have, either -- suppose it's a little hazier than yesterday and suppose the wind fails to blow and suppose to meet our electricity demand we steal energy from all those parked cars -- and then people get stranded half way home on their commute to their horse property 37 miles from the city because they've run out of juice.
I listen with some bewilderment to these arguments that if we'd just put a few dozen square miles of solar panels up in the desert we'd meet all our energy requirements. Sure...but keep in mind these intermittent sources don't exactly mesh with our mittent desire for energy at every moment, and require base loaded technologies in addition to meet our on-demand needs.
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This is nice that that Tesla Motors will turn a profit next month, validating the future of electric vehicles. The machinery field always has its ups and downs and is always changing but progress will never stop. Even in a questionable economy there is always room for growth and expansion of bucket trucks for sale. The will and strength of the people is what makes us all able to move forward and accomplish great feats together and construction has always been the backbone of this country no matter the economic status is.
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