Powering EVs: How Green is Grid?

Norbert · Apr 27, 2012

Robert.Boston said:
In Michigan in January 2012, 4,189,000 MWh of power was generated from coal, of the total 9,419,000 MWh = 44.5%.

There are some states that are very high for coal generation. Remember, though, that most states have substantial imports and exports of power, so state-specific percentages aren't very revealing. Here are the January 2012 regional coal usage numbers (derived from Tables 1.6.A and 1.7.A from the EIA). Overall, there has been a 9 percentage-point decline in coal's share in generation. The "South Atlantic" region has seen a 16 percentage-point decline, from 50% to 34%. And, remember, that January is typically a month with peak gas demand, so gas should be most uneconomic. The power plant owners I've talked to say that their modern gas generators, which would normally sit idle this time of year, are running flat out.

Region States % MWh from Coal
Jan 2011 % MWh from Coal
Jan 2012
New England CT ME MA NH RI VT 12% 7%
Middle Atlantic NJ NY PA 34% 24%
East North Central IL IN MI OH WI 66% 55%
West North Central IA KS MN MO NE ND SD 71% 66%
South Atlantic DE DC FL GA MD NC SC VA WV 50% 34%
East South Central AL KT MS TN 55% 41%
West South Central AK LA OK TX 41% 34%
Mountain AZ CO ID MT NV NM UT WY 59% 56%
Pacific Contiguous CA OR WA 4% 3%
Alaska 8% 9%
Hawaii 16% 11%
US Total 47% 38%

Robert, I used some of these numbers, and the source reference, to comment on this generally pro-EV article, which compares hybrids to EVs. The numbers for EVs don't seem to come out as well as they could with the latest percentages for coal.

Should I buy an electric car? | MNN - Mother Nature Network

MarkR · Apr 27, 2012

I'm not too worried about my use of coal to power the model S. We've got 90 solar panels at the office, 28 panels at home and have excess capacity. It will be nice to plug the car into the roof. Mark

jerry33 · Apr 28, 2012

I have the "wind power" option. While that's kind of a lie, at least someone will get electricity from wind at some future date.

dsm363 · Apr 28, 2012

jerry33 said:
I have the "wind power" option. While that's kind of a lie, at least someone will get electricity from wind at some future date.

That's what I have as well. The 100% wind option to indirectly fund wind power. Would be nice to verify the money is going for it's intended use though.

jerry33 · Apr 28, 2012

What I recall from the "fine print" is that your electricity use is added to a "wind power" total and sometime in the next six months that much extra wind power will be purchased. I have no idea how to verify if that actually occurs.

stopcrazypp · Apr 28, 2012

jerry33 said:
What I recall from the "fine print" is that your electricity use is added to a "wind power" total and sometime in the next six months that much extra wind power will be purchased. I have no idea how to verify if that actually occurs.

You can find official utility reported data here:
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/data.html

Unfortunately for renewables, there are no monthly reports (just annual ones). The annual reports are delayed about a year or two (right now the latest data is from 2010).

You can find the data for installed/proposed powerplant (including renewables) capacity for your specific utility in the:
Annual Electric Generator Report (EIA-860) > Downloads 2010 zip file (f860y10.zip) > GeneratorsY2010.xls

There's one sheet for existing capacity and another one sheet for proposed capacity (you would probably be most interested in this). You can look at the "EIA-860 Survey (2010).pdf" file included in the zip file for how to decode the data (starting on page 4).
Things to look out for is the Prime Mover code (for example WT stands for on-shore wind, WS stands for off-shore wind) and STATUS (OP stands for operational, SB means standby/backup, etc). I would first filter by your utility then by the others.

Annual Electric Power Industry Data Files (EIA-861) also has data on renewable capacity in terms of net-metering customers (means capacity owned by customers) in File5, and installed distributed/dispersed renewable capacity (means small generation, not the large powerplants in the EIA-860) in File6. Once again you can look at the pdf form in the zip file for how to decode the data.

File5 also has data on the amount of "green power" customers and the amount of revenue your power company got from it.

VolkerP · Apr 30, 2012

One year delay sucks. In the European Energy Exchange AG, located in Leipzig, you can find near-online electricity production data for Germany and Austria: Transparency in Energy Markets.
Below is a screenshot from Saturday, March 31st where nearly half of Germany was powered by renewable sources. Note that hydro power is included in the gray "conventional" bars.

Norbert · Apr 30, 2012

There is some US monthly data here, with a lag of just a few months: (derived from Robert's links):

Monthly update: Electricity Monthly Update
Monthly reports/tables: Electric Power Monthly
To start with "Summary Statistics": http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/execsum.pdf

The last link, for example, shows that wind in January 2012 was 13,823 Million kWh vs 8,659 in January 2011, an increase of 59.6%.
And it was 13,823 / 340,743 = 4.1% of all net generation.

Norbert · Apr 30, 2012

4.1% for wind of all electricity net generation, is a surprisingly large number.

Dave EV · Apr 30, 2012

Since this thread was forked from the Anti-EV gibberish thread and is now talking about how "green" wind power is, thought I'd link this article which has a completely wrong title (though the content reflects the actual study correctly):

New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming - Fox Nation

What's funny is that article references Reuters which has this headline:

Wind farms may have warming effect - research - Reuters

Hmm - some bias in the reporting there at Fox?

stopcrazypp · Apr 30, 2012

VolkerP said:
One year delay sucks. In the European Energy Exchange AG, located in Leipzig, you can find near-online electricity production data for Germany and Austria: Transparency in Energy Markets.
Below is a screenshot from Saturday, March 31st where nearly half of Germany was powered by renewable sources. Note that hydro power is included in the gray "conventional" bars.

I should have made it a bit more clear. Like Norbert points out, there is monthly data if you want to look at generation data (like the mix of power for your state or for the whole country).

But for what jerry33 wants (installed/proposed wind generation capacity for his specific utility company, not just the amount of wind energy generated by state or the whole country or utility), that data is only released publicly with about 1 year of delay. I'm not sure if other countries even have publicly available data at that kind of granularity.

Actually a small correction I have to make is that it is actually possible to browse the monthly generation (in MWh) of a specific power plant (including renewable ones) from the data here (just choose plant level data here):
http://www.eia.gov/beta/enerdat/

But in terms of installed/proposed capacity (in Megawatts, a unit of power), that's only available/reported per year.

Dave EV · Apr 30, 2012

stopcrazypp said:
Actually a small correction I have to make is that it is actually possible to browse the monthly generation (in MWh) of a specific power plant (including renewable ones) from the data here (just choose plant level data here):
http://www.eia.gov/beta/enerdat/

That site is pretty cool.

I looked up a well known local power plant (Encina Power Station in Carlsbad) and Googled to find a CCGT plant in California and found the Inland Empire Energy Center.

The Inland Empire Energy Center is twice as efficient as the Encina Power Station.

Encina (965 MW capacity) produced 474,000 MWh and consumed 6,464,000 MMBtu of natural gas.
Inland Empire (800MW capacity) produced 3,044,000 MHw and consumed 21,327,000 MMBtu of natural gas.

1 MWh = 3.413 MMBtu

Thus thermal efficiency of Encina is around 25% and Inland Empire is 48%.

FWIW - The Inland Empire plant has a peak efficiency of ~60%. The Encina plant has been running at full capacity since San Onofre went off line not long ago.

There must be a map somewhere that shows power plants so one can find power plants near them?

stopcrazypp · Apr 30, 2012

drees said:
That site is pretty cool.

There must be a map somewhere that shows power plants so one can find power plants near them?

Yes, that site is very useful to get up-to-date data on your own specific power plants.

I don't know about a map, but from my original post about EIA data, the page here has the addresses of all the powerplants, plus you can also filter by utility (so you can find all the powerplants owned by your utility):
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/eia860.html
Annual Electric Generator Report (EIA-860) > Downloads 2010 zip file (f860y10.zip) > GeneratorsY2010.xls

NPR has a powerplant map (click powerplants in the below link), but it doesn't let you zoom and doesn't include all powerplants:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

Search

Powering EVs: How Green is Grid?

Norbert

TSLA will win

MarkR

Member

jerry33

(S85-3/2/13 traded in) X LR: F2611##-3/27/20

dsm363

Roadster + Sig Model S

jerry33

(S85-3/2/13 traded in) X LR: F2611##-3/27/20

stopcrazypp

Well-Known Member

VolkerP

EU Model S P-37

Norbert

TSLA will win

Norbert

TSLA will win

Dave EV

Active Member

stopcrazypp

Well-Known Member

Dave EV

Active Member

stopcrazypp

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Region	States	% MWh from Coal Jan 2011	% MWh from Coal Jan 2012
New England	CT ME MA NH RI VT	12%	7%
Middle Atlantic	NJ NY PA	34%	24%
East North Central	IL IN MI OH WI	66%	55%
West North Central	IA KS MN MO NE ND SD	71%	66%
South Atlantic	DE DC FL GA MD NC SC VA WV	50%	34%
East South Central	AL KT MS TN	55%	41%
West South Central	AK LA OK TX	41%	34%
Mountain	AZ CO ID MT NV NM UT WY	59%	56%
Pacific Contiguous	CA OR WA	4%	3%
Alaska		8%	9%
Hawaii		16%	11%
US Total		47%	38%