Distributed Generation and Electric Vehicles
There are those who argue against the validity of the electric vehicle movement, on the basis that, in most cases in the US, putting additional load on the grid means burning more coal. Yet regardless of the extent to which this is true, the position completely evaporates in the face of distributed generation.
I’m going to be helping my friends at Continental Wind Power tell their story of midsized wind (200 – 900 kilowatts) to an audience of managers of factories, farms, schools and universities, municipalities, military bases, etc. It’s easy to see how well this plays into an integration of EVs. For instance, I would tell a farm: If you’re in a decent wind area, install one of our 400 kilowatt turbines and knock out about 2000 kilowatt-hours per day off your electric bill. Or install two, and, on top of that, charge your fleet of electric farm vehicles. Cut out all that diesel from your budget – and all that pollution from our skies.
Sounds pretty compelling to me.
If coal plants are running at full capacity and no new plants are going to be built because of low NG prices, adding EVs to transportation will not cause additional coal to be burned.
That’s not precisely true, according to some analysts (e.g., Glenn Doty), since the prevailing lowest cost of baseload power is coal, and that will remain the case for some time to come.
James,
No coal plant in America is running at full capacity. Most are running at ~50% capacity. They are eager to increase their load, and if you give them a predictable overnight demand, they will happily ramp up to serve.
“Sounds pretty compelling to me.”
But how compelling it is to the farmer, this depends a lot on the relative capital costs of diesel vs electric vehicles and if they are available. I guess the farmer will do the relevant LCOFT (levelised cost of farm transport) before switching.
Good point. I should have mentioned that the farmer gets his money back in 4 – 5 years, depending on wind characteristics and local incentives. In addition, he demonstrates to himself and the world that he cares about his fellows and their descendents.
Craig, I don’t know of any electric ‘Farm’ vehicles. A wind turbine on the farm may give the farmer an additional revenue source, but no help for vehicle cost reduction.
I do see an incentive for farmers to purchase and use flex fuel vehicles. These vehicles use internal combustion engines but can efficiently use alcohol fuels, sometimes mixed with gasoline, sometimes with pure ethanol or methanol. Ford Motor Company invented the technology.
Both Ford and General Motors build and sell flex fuel vehicles in Brazil, but we can not even buy them in the USA.
The ‘Flex Fuel’ vehicles we see in America are optimized for a low percentage of alcohol fuel mixed with gasoline. Those vehicles are only warranted to run on E85 (85% Ethanol). Farmers and Foresters grow the agricultural products used to make alcohol fuels. That is a double gain. Grow and sell the biomass crops to make ethanol & methanol, then use those alcohol fuels to replace petroleum fuels. More money in, less money out. For more information research ‘Open Fuel Standard’.
I also think that farmers would rather have a ‘Doty – Windfuels’ wind turbine on the farm to provide fuel as a by product to excess wind generation. The windfuels concept is also a gain to the farmer, if he runs diesel equipment that can be modified to run on the NH3 (ammonia) type fuels.