I want one!

Mex, I find your posts refreshing and thought-provoking! I don't always agree with you, but it is fun to break out of my coastal California echo chamber once in a while.

But your comments have provoked this thought: let's assume that there is a surplus of solar and wind power. Let's also assume (a big assumption) that there will soon be a cost-effective way of storing that surplus power, either in centralized banks or at the consumer level. (Without cheap storage, we're done here. The energy density of stored hydrocarbons will be hard to beat.)

The deal-killing problem that you have spotted is that the present grid is not up to the task of redistributing that surplus power. Based on what you have written, I think you know what you are talking about.

But here is what I don't yet get -- if the grid is the bottleneck, and if there is sufficient demand for redistribution of excess supply, why wouldn't the power companies build extra grid capacity?

The power companies could theoretically pass those costs to everyone who relies on the grid, assuming that the Public Utilities Commission permits them to do so. (Of course, if there are lots of "cord cutters" who go off-grid, there is no way for those companies to charge the end users for the amortized cost of the capital expenditures. Let's assume that's the exception and not the norm.)

If my series of assumptions is right, the long-term role of the power companies will change from energy providers to energy distributors. Eventually, the market (guided by the awkward hand of the PUC) will adjust to the new reality. Rainbows will sprout from the high voltage pylons, and we will all be driving electric vehicles using renewables.

I am guessing that since I know nothing about the electricity industry, I am missing something here??

Nothing wrong with being open minded, just don't be so open minded your brains fall out.

Ductape wrote:
In 1917 the same belief system would predict cars will never succeed due to lack of petroleum distribution systems and refining capacity.

It's so easy to criticize new things.

time2roll wrote:
Grid is not static.

Exactly. People ignore the fact of population increases that have already happened, just Google the population increase in Florida over time as one example. And yet the grid's not failing.

In 1917 the same belief system would predict cars will never succeed due to lack of petroleum distribution systems and refining capacity. Transportation won't be solved by governments, but it will be done by private industries.

Moreover, the IOT now enables the grids to manage loads intelligently and interactively. You'll be able to choose your priorities, whether you want to purchase high cost peak power vs.low cost off peak for a particular load.

A bonus is that distributed power generation and storage is more resilient than the single points of failure presented by large facilities.

You could sure put a lot of solar panels on a semi trailer. Cover the roof and sides, coupled with the amount of time that they are on the road with no shade...

People assume government has all the answers when in truth, when pressed very hard for specifics, administrations like the Brown, administration will splutter "It will all work itself out". This scares me. Let me give you an example...

I had to spend months living in Sonoma County after snapping the end of my forarm bone off at the wrist. Ewwwww. I have 1-1/4 hands dexterity. Tough. It builds character...

But driving through the rural areas I noticed insanely thick areas of Live Oak and madrone. With distribution power lines passing within inches of tree limbs and branches. The utility up there is PG&E.

The place I was holed-up at had a woodstove and no LPG. I went from the city of Santa Rosa to Sonoma County to the state of California division of forestry to the US Forest service. Harvesting of wood from state, and county land was utterly forbidden with draconian fines and jail time. This was in 2011-2012 so it has not been that long ago.

The results of that policy sicken me and I do believe the people that forcibly forged their way to achieve such stupidity should be jailed.

So when the issue of "Nice Dream But How Does It Work" is met with stony silence by the Brown administration I absolutely know the mechanics of the stone wall. They haven't got a clue. Brown will have alzheimer's when the mandate comes due and the youngest batch of this bizarre Franz Kafka nightmare will be out of government and back to overbilling clients.

No one is challenging Brown's MANDATES. These are not ideas or platforms - they are LAWS yet to be enforced. No published studies exist, there are no scenarios and inquiries are utterly ignored or answered with boilerplate legaleeze. "The mandate will achieve a sixty percent reduction of carbon emissions and oxides of Nitrogen"

This is gobbledygook very similar to USSR officials telling residents of Pripyat, their evacuation "is only for a few days because of elevated radiation hazard especially to children".

I do not operate my life on guesswork and NO BAD DAYS self hypnosis. When someone insists something forced upon me is mandatory without options and without a description of implementation my ******** meter needle jams past the peg and busts through the case.

In August I sent from Chula Vista California a return receipt letter POLITELY inquiring WHY a regulation forcing manual battery charger manufacturers to install a timer limiter on battery chargers was not chosen over BANNING manual chargers in favor of automatic chargers that destroy batteries. In October I got their answer. From The State Resources board. A pound and a half of printed rules and regulations about this law and even more absurd considerations. The issue of a timer was absent. Laugh on residents of California YOU from your paycheck helped pay the four dollars and some odd cents postage and some tree gave up it's life and who knows how much in state Salary and benefits were wasted in delivering garbage to me. Fuel was burned ink was used and government budget was consumed.

This and the Sonoma county nightmare is not lost on me. Nor is the attention paid to LOST MARIJUANA CROPS DUE TO FIRE while news of orchards and truck farm obliteration was absent. Read again the stonewall about harvesting impossible to walk through tangles of live oak and madrone. Superb firewood.

And I am supposed to be enthusiastic about NO MORE PETROLEUM MOTOR VEHICLES?

If you get bored about researching this, there is always the nightmare of the great Yellowstone National Park NPS mismanagement in the 1980's that allowed lodgepole pine overgrowth to go up in smoke worth a hundred million dollars.

Environmentalists became wraiths then, just as they are wraiths today in California about woodland management. They have other goals. Take a guess at which one tops the list?

BTW: Debate Rules: When a comment mentions a forum participant rather than an issue they forfeit the argument -- utterly.

Grid is not static.

John & Angela wrote:
So it couldn't be something as simple as people just like driving them better. And as far as completely non polluting gas engines, probably best to continue to leave your garage door open when your car is running inside.

And to assume that everybody else is too stupid to figure out that there are challenges is...well...yah...kinda condescending.

Too each his own.

Cheers.

(amended) ....

People MAY like EV’s better, but that doesn’t mean its the best overall solution, or that the grid can support a vast multitude of EV’s....

So it couldn't be something as simple as people just like driving them better. And as far as completely non polluting gas engines, probably best to continue to leave your garage door open when your car is running inside.

And to assume that everybody else is too stupid to figure out that there are challenges is...well...yah...kinda condescending.

Too each his own.

Cheers.

Ductape wrote:
Meanwhile in the real world...
Tesla is not alone

Oops another foolish company

A rather routine manufacturer’s advance contingency - sage preparation for another potential profit center to cash in on (the green but not-so-green elightenment movement).....

But this does not make a comprehensie case for EV’s, nor is it Benz’s obligation to do so....

Problem is that actual science (empiricism) has been displaced by a disturbing form of ‘populist scientism’ and this is currently the source of the nonsensical inertia behind the EV movement.....

No one even bothers to ask even the most rudimentary of questions as the art of inquiry has been celebrated as something passe’ ....“Please check your thinking at the Door”!!

The capability of the grid is casually overlooked as something “not of my concern”, but beyond that, nobody even attempts to pencil out an example that (in terms of net pollution) a EV pollutes less than a modern gasoline vehicle which emits mostly (except during extremes) CO2 and water vapor ....Ever wonder why?? (a glaring omission, eh - lol !!)...

Fact is, the modern I/C engine is very nearly a zero pollution vehicle, yet the P.T. Barnum’s of the popularist movement continues to (successfully so!!) ‘preach’ the green religion that carbon dixoide is a pollutant when in fact it is a fertilizer for plants and rain forest, without which we’d ourselves suffocate due to a lack of replenished oxygen....Science (Follow the Grant money...) has been outsourced to parrots owned by P.T. Barnum...

Grid issues and net CO2 emissions aside, has anybody made a rational case that EV’s are a more practical or far better choice than to simply convert our existing fleet of vehicles to a plentiful, clean burning natural gas??..... Ever wonder why??...(again, Crickets....).

I don’t fault Musk or Mercedes, or anybody else who enters ‘the game’ , but this ‘assumed’ mass-Pollyannish push behind whats an ‘Enquiry free’ movement is driven more by a Unicorn ideology than real empirical science....Just another sign of our ‘very confused’ (at every institutional level.....) times.....

Not meant to be condensending, but I seriously doubt that some will ever ponder these issues...

3 tons