3 ms·
> You don't need 1.2TW to provide well under 300GW. And you certainly don't need to store energy in a battery to store it in a battery. Just plug most cars in m
by robomartin 4y ago
> You don't need 1.2TW to provide well under 300GW. And you certainly don't need to store energy in a battery to store it in a battery. Just plug most cars in most of the time and they become 3-day dispatchable load that massively drops the storage required for electrification.
You continue to say thing that reveal you have never bothered to do the math at all. I have done this. I have written reasonably detailed simulations in order to understand just how much power full electrification of ground transport would require. My answer was in a range between 900 GW and 1400 GW. Years later Elon Musk confirmed this. His estimate is pretty much exactly in the middle of the range I predicted.
What he said is that electricity demand will more than double when we shift all transport to electric. The US currently has a capacity of 1.2 TW. A doubling, then, means we need an additional 1.2 TW of power generation and, most importantly, the ability to deliver that power (today, we cannot).
https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/Americas_Electricity_Generation_Capacity_2022_Update.pdf https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/Americas_...
The 1.2 TW number comes from page 2 of the report linked above.
It is also important to understand how we generate power. Page 2:
Natural gas 43.9%
Coal 18.5%
Wind 10.7%
Hydro 8.1%
Solar 5.3%
Geothermal 0.3%
The balance of approximately 13.5% is pretty much all produced by burning different types of fuel.
Anyhow, you go ahead and believe what you believe.
Come back and check your notes against this discussion in ten years and see where your beliefs land you.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoThe available work of all oil that the US uses is around 300GW on average once it is refined and run through an ICE. EV motors do significantly less work than a typical ICE because they are more aerodynamic and have regen. With negligible chemical or hydro storage (or even fossil fuel backup at insignificant usage) for the 4 days a year where demand spikes, all you need to do is make it so most EVs are available to charge most of the time to spread the load. This can be achieved either by an extension cord, or if that is really too difficult for you to imagine, by taking a few days worth of EV battery (about 10-30%) and separating it from the car (either at point of charge, at the owner's house or on grid) most of the time so it can be charged whenever. Exclusively fast charging and peaking with nuclear is the stupidest possible way of achieving this. Please do share your simulation so it can become apparent what other unfounded assumptions you've made. You've also just attempted to move the goal posts with your "prediction". Peak capacity isn't generation. Markets shift, and much more than just transport will be electrified. There will be several net terawatts of renewables dedicated to US energy needs in the coming decades, but it has nothing to do with your logic. Finally appealing to authority using an ambiguous and off handed comment of a serial liar whose quantified predictions are consistently wrong is evidence against your case, not for it.