EVs, Solar Panels - why are these guys so anti-EV/PV??!!

What size is your EV array? kW?

fair warning: JP article.

JP is amazing. But his beef seems to be with subsidies and I think he is right. And then the reality that it is hard to get to 7 billion EVs powered by solar.

And he feels that as the US and Europe reduce their oil use, the rest of the world will buy it up. He is right.

Overall he is just very pessimistic about resources going forward and expects a world economic collapse because of it. So he is actually an environmentalist is a sense but he has given up on a solution short of deindustrialization. I suppose he might be right....

It's interesting that JP is always fretting that we'll run out of some metal or mineral, lithium or cobalt, while at the same time he seems completely undisturbed by the prospect of running out of oil. Of course, we won't really "run out" of either - the cost to extract will keep going up, crowding out low-value uses. JP is stuck in the old Club of Rome Limits to Growth thinking that has been so roundly disproved by the last 40 years.

Nonetheless, I share JP's concern that we've created a large and growing industry that is, by and large, entirely dependent on government subsidies. "Subsidy seeking" is rarely a high-value economic activity from a societal POV. The problem goes back to the unwillingness of most societies to levy an appropriate carbon tax, remove all subsidies on renewable energy and other carbon-reducing measures, and let 'er rip. Absent such a broad-based tax, governments end up in a more command-and-control policy approach, using subsidies to pick winners. Solar is undoubtedly part of the "best technology" set, but I'm equally convinced that current policies over-encourage solar and under-encourage other investments such as energy efficiency and smart-grid management.

Doug_G said:

Such as the oil industry?

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The "oil" industry will prosper with or without subsidies. The same is not true about the green industry, such as PV, EV, wind power, etc. Those industries depend heavily on subsidies.

Oil is dying; The future belongs to PV, EV, Wind and Hydro. In 2020 the Balance of system cost for PV will be <$1/w or <$0.02/kWh for most areas.

montgom626 said:

The "oil" industry will prosper with or without subsidies. The same is not true about the green industry, such as PV, EV, wind power, etc. Those industries depend heavily on subsidies.

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But if the oil industry had to bear the cost of and pass on to their customers all of the direct and indirect costs of their product, the PV, EV and wind power industries would need no subsidies to thrive.

donauker said:

But if the oil industry had to bear the cost of and pass on to their customers all of the direct and indirect costs of their product, the PV, EV and wind power industries would need no subsidies to thrive.

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Agreed -- a carbon tax would be a good start on how to charge those costs. But the "no new taxes" coalition in DC will block anything that smells of a carbon tax.

I think the oil and coal lobbies fund the "no new taxes" coalition so they can keep using that excuse to block a carbon tax.

richkae said:

I think the oil and coal lobbies fund the "no new taxes" coalition so they can keep using that excuse to block a carbon tax.

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And the financial services lobby funds everyone else to try and get cap-and-trade instead.

While there's room to quibble over the relative efficiency of power plants and automobile engines, it's basically a zero sum game.

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It's hard for me to get past that line.
You can quibble over whether large stationary power plants are 2 or 8 times more efficient than automobile engines, but you can't realistically argue that it's a zero sum game.


The thing is that all the organizations whose primary motivation is the environment all seem to think that electric cars and PV systems are good for the environment.
The organizations/people whose primary motivation is using energy that destroys the environment all seem to think that electric cars are bad for the environment.

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I will say this, though:
His point that PV electrons don't care if they're powering a car or a toaster is true, and something I feel like we overlook in our threads that talk about our cars being solar powered.
I have a PV system. I have an electric car. but my PV system doesn't power my car. My PV system powers the neighborhood's toasters during the day while my car is powered by natural gas plants at night.

Regardless, PV is good for the environment. EVs are good for the environment. Anyone telling you differently has an agenda that isn't motivated by the environment.

Here's another way to think about it.

There is a certain base load, that has to be running all the time regardless ( some plants get taken off line due to seasonal variability)

Now you have day time usage. Of everyone had solar, and we could run off solar exclusively, then you switch and the baseload and excess energy can be stored and used for night time uses.

What your solar does is decrease the number of inefficient peak load plants.

What an EV does is increase the baseload. Base load plants are typically more efficient than their peak load counter parts.

Ideally solar could be used for peak and the baseload could be used to a higher degree since EVs would increase the baseload.

Dan5 said:

Here's another way to think about it.

There is a certain base load, that has to be running all the time regardless ( some plants get taken off line due to seasonal variability)

Now you have day time usage. Of everyone had solar, and we could run off solar exclusively, then you switch and the baseload and excess energy can be stored and used for night time uses.

What your solar does is decrease the number of inefficient peak load plants.

What an EV does is increase the baseload. Base load plants are typically more efficient than their peak load counter parts.

Ideally solar could be used for peak and the baseload could be used to a higher degree since EVs would increase the baseload.

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Just to be clear, there is never "excess" generation. "Base load" plants can and do ramp up and down as load changes. Generators that are normally operated at SOME level 24/7 are called "base load," but they might only operate at 30% capacity overnight.

Electricity is really, really expensive to store. We know those from our EVs, and it's hardly easier at grid scale.

If skies were cloudless so that solar was fully predictable, we could run grids with the base load + solar vision you lay out, but in fact we need to have a bunch of dispatchable gas-fired plants fired up and ready to fill the gaps that unexpected changes in renewable output or in demand cause.

Robert.Boston said:

If skies were cloudless so that solar was fully predictable, we could run grids with the base load + solar vision you lay out, but in fact we need to have a bunch of dispatchable gas-fired plants fired up and ready to fill the gaps that unexpected changes in renewable output or in demand cause.

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That's the great part of a renewable roll-out. We already have a ton of load following natural gas, so the more renewables we add to the grid, the more excess capacity we have from existing generation.

Robert.Boston said:

Just to be clear, there is never "excess" generation. "Base load" plants can and do ramp up and down as load changes. Generators that are normally operated at SOME level 24/7 are called "base load," but they might only operate at 30% capacity overnight.

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Well, perhaps now that's true. There used to be periods when hydro plants just had water dumped over the spillway, or where coal plants were "unhooked" from the grid with big switches while still keeping the fires going. I guess that doesn't happen so much any more.

omgwtfbyobbq said:

That's the great part of a renewable roll-out. We already have a ton of load following natural gas, so the more renewables we add to the grid, the more excess capacity we have from existing generation.

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Here in Germany the problem is that solar generation replaced gas-fired peak load plants and made whole sale electricity prices for mid-day peak plummet to where base load prices used to be. Gas fired plants don' earn enough money when running and don't have enough operation hours over the year to cover stand-by costs. Power companies submit requests to the grid authority to shut down their gas fired plants. Either that or get compensation for "generation capacity reserve" to have the plant ready in stand by for most of the year.