Although I think Jordan's point about off-peak electricity is not exactly right (if off-peak hours were really being used economically for maintenance, etc., they wouldn't charge less for off-peak power), his point about the difficulty of fossil fues consumption is.
Among left-leaning people, it has become an accepted truth that alternative energy could supply our needs if we simply had the will. This is just not true. Although windmills should certainly be part of every landscape, when you divide the megawatts required by the potential of wind, it doesn't work out. Other than nuclear energy, there's no real way to substitute for fossil fuels in any systematic way.
I think that, in cities anyway, electric cars will become as common as electric buses are now. But that's sort of the point. Electrified bus lines are a simple, old technology and yet cities burn huge amounts of diesel moving people around by bus. Trains are enormously expensive to build and inflexible, so we are stuck with an asphalt-based solution and that is probably not going to be predominantly electric unless....
...we make (primarily asphalt-based) mass transit cheaper, more convenient and a better alternative through *information* technology. I think it should be part of a new ethic on the left of putting consumer needs first.
peace,
boddi
On 11/15/05, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
>
> > California is not in fact short of electric capacity but
> > of peak capacity (which in all fairness is what is usually
> > meant by being short).
>
> I think you're making too much of this distinction. It's really all
> that matters when you have a rolling blackout. To say: 'hey, your air
> conditioners and office equipment would work great at midnight' is
> really missing the point. The infrastructure _must_ meet peak demand,
> or else it's insufficient: it's as simple as that. And adding a
> significant number of electric cars would significantly tax the
> existing infrastructure: there's no way you'd get people to "only"
> charge at night, for one.
>
> > Electric cars with decent battery capacitiy could be
> > charged at night, during off peak hours. Thus your existing
> > electric infrastrucure, that is electricl plants would
> > handle it.
>
> Again, I think you're making too much of this distinction. In fact, a
> substantial shift to "off peak" would remove much of the current
> benefit of "off peak" -- there wouldn't be as big of a difference
> between "off" and "on" peak. Further, currently as demand declines in
> the late afternoon, _so does capacity_ -- off-peak time is used for
> maintenance of the generation capacity, which means you'd put a lot
> more strain on the existing infrastructure. Also, you'd increase the
> downside of having capacity shortfalls _at all hours_ inducing
> signifcantly more systemic risk than we have today.
>
> > Time of day pricing is not a difficult switch - lots of
> > electric companies have used it.
>
> It is _offered_ by many utility companies, but very few customers take
> advantage of it -- most of them large, where it can make a real
> difference. Switching PG&E's largest customers (in the 1000s range) to
> this has been relatively painless (and of course individual consumers
> are paying for it!); it would be a HUGE deal to move some signifcant
> percentage of individual consumers to this kind of tarrif. In the
> current situation, off-peak pricing is sort of an arbitrage; if
> everyone did it, it would no longer be an arbitrage.
>
> I'm not saying all this shouldn't get done. I'm not saying it can't be
> done. I'm saying you're vastly underestimating the impact of such a
> change.
>
> >> And of course there's that nasty little problem of utility
> >> companies who have refused to provide power on uneconomic
> >> terms: what will PG&E do when a significant number of
> >> consumers change their energy consumption patterns? No
> >> one knows.
> >
> > Which moves the problem back to the realm of politics, which
> > is my main point.
>
> It's only political if you think you can force companies to operate on
> uneconomic terms -- and I'll point you to disaster insurance in
> California or Florida. Maybe if you nationalized these things you'd
> get some result (good luck), but otherwise they will just stop
> providing the service.
>
> Remember when local phone service was cheap and long-distance was
> expensive?
>
> > Continuing to burn fossil fuels is not due to technical
> > barriers to change. It is a political and social problem.
>
> It certainly is a political and social problem. But it is also a huge
> technical problem as well. Denying that just seems silly to me. It is
> not just a matter of will. I could give you a long list of challenges,
> but I suspect you already know them: you're just downplaying them for
> some reason. Ok, I'll give you one:
>
> >> Electric cars with decent battery capacitiy could be ...
>
> This is a very hard problem, and it's not advancing the way you'd need
> it for significant change. Batteries are big, heavy, inefficient,
> expensive, and dangerous. It's getting better. There is a whole
> industry devoted to it. In the time that people have been saying
> "electric cars with decent battery capacity could be ..." we've also
> seen the availability of better-than-zero-emission gasoline-powered
> cars. Food for thought ...
>
> /jordan
>
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