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Elon Musk made $36 billion in one day this week. (Monday, October 25, 2021). Well, he didn’t really make it, he sort of won it — the New York Stock Casino bestowed it upon him after learning that Hertz, the rental-car company, had placed an order for 100,000 Teslas, the electric car that Musk’s company developed. Today, Musk is the richest man in America, perhaps the world, with a personal net worth estimated at $255 billion. His company’s market value exceeded a trillion dollars — said to be more than any other company, ever.
Musk developed the market for all-electric cars pretty much by himself, but his obvious success has stimulated such industrial mastodons as General Motors and Ford to say, hey, wait, me too. GM has gone so far as to say it will make nothing but electric cars by 2035, and will introduce 30 new models within four years. Ford launched an all-electric F-150 pickup truck, announced it would invest $22 billion in EVs and that 40% of its vehicles will be all-electric by 2030.
So the burden of powering the nation’s transportation system is about to be transferred to an electric grid that is already failing in the face of rising demand, old age, mismanagement and climate change.
One study shows that the average American home is without power for eight hours every year. That’s the average, and it is double the average of just five years ago. It is also far higher than that of any other developed country (average annual home power loss in Japan — four minutes). Consider the forces now in play to take the grid down:
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- Rising demand. Overall demand, which is rising globally, has not risen in the United States since the advent of the COVID pandemic. However, spikes in demand caused by heat waves, cold snaps and droughts can overwhelm large sections of the grid, as happened in Texas last winter. And it is certain that demand will resume rising after the pandemic, from its all-time high in 2018.
- Increasing age. There are electric lines in use today that were erected in the 1880s. Most of the grid dates back to the 1950s and 60s, and had a 50-year life expectancy when installed.
- Mismanagement. Since the dawning of Reaganomics and deregulation in the 1970s, electric utilities have not kept up with the maintenance needed to keep the grid in shape, let alone the expansion required to meet new demands. For example, far too many serious outages (and wildfires) are traced back to the utility’s failure to keep trees cut back away from power lines.
- Climate change. The generation of electricity, one of the main sources of the pollution that causes global warming, is under savage assault — because of global warming. More frequent, and more intense, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, heat waves, derechoes, microbursts — all are relentlessly on the attack, as defenders of the grid begin to look more and more like the defenders of the Alamo.
So by all means, let’s pile on to this creaky, aged, tottering system the burden of powering millions of automobiles and let’s do it real fast. What could possibly go wrong?
I’d add one more big black dot – energy resource depletion. Electricity is NOT a power source. Rather, it transmits power from actual resources: oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind and gravity (the latter two are considered ‘sustainable’ but are actually fully dependent on standard primary source inputs for manufacture and maintenance). When those resources run low, our electricity will run high…if at all.
Thanks Mr Lewis, not many people seem able to separate the ideas “climate change is real” or “resource limits are real” from “electric everything will save us.” No proposal that is not BAU but electric is even acknowledged in polite media.
As we are likely passing through the peak of industrial production, there is a chance that, in some places by 2035 electric cars will have been stripped of their motor and battery to use the regenerative braking feature for a jury rigged generator powered by whatever source; wind, water, animal or human, to make a little juice to do something that can only be done with electricity. Radios come to mind. An LED bulb.
It is significant that manufacturers talk about cars but not heavy trucks, they will still run on diesel as will trains and most machinery. So the remaining crude will be extracted, the diesel refined, and so to its necessary by-product, gasoline. And it will get burned. Perhaps the rich will have gas fired generators to charge their electric cars.
“… defenders of the grid begin to look more and more like the defenders of the Alamo.”
At least the defenders of the Alamo put up a pretty good fight. Mr. Grid is going to get knocked out like a … pick your own metaphor. Bum ah da month? Tin can? Wet noodle?
“GM … will introduce 30 new models within four years.”
Ain’t that something? It gets me thinking about all those battles I had on peak oil blogs with the paid attack dogs. I always got torn to shreds. The were all graduates of the Harvard Debate School it seemed, and man were they believably well prepared, details, details, details, and oh so relentless. Once they latched on they never let go.
Must’ve getting paid by the hour.
I wonder what they’re doing for employment these days, now that the peak oil debate is over and decided? Something more subtle I suppose. Practicing the dark art of peak oil deflection at a Beltway think tank, no doubt.
The Panic, as I call it, is upon us. Peak oil all by its lonesome would’ve brought it on here shortly, but peak oil might be number three on the list of threats most likely to crash this civilization.
Yup, humans are in, full panic mode. And should be. Better than being a composed and steadfast frog in boiling water.
*1980 (not 1880)
Excellent points all around.
Apologies…I was reading that wrong. Please ignore my comment.
Nicole Foss (then writing with the moniker Stoneleigh) had a good expose on the complexity of the power grid on the web site Automatic Earth. This was posted twelve years ago, but it still is relevant to the grid today.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2009/07/renewable-power-not-in-your-lifetime/
Two posts for two different categories to the problem. As I sit here in a 345 kV substation in the U.S. northeast as part of the effort to replace aging components – so this hits close to the mark.
Point #1, Utilization of the grid investment. This is what I term “When the Biz Kids took over”; or the effect of Reaganomics I suppose. Prior to this paradigm change and resultant change of utility upper management, a utility would look at parallel transmission lines as redundancy and resiliency. When the Biz Kids took over they look at it as capacity that can be optimized and monetized. That pretty much sums up the whole situation.
How can a utility take out an asset that is maximized and has no redundancy option? It cannot obviously. Painted into a corner. Part two regarding EV’s I will put in the Reply.
BC, may I ask you a question? I have heard that
1. most power transformers are custom orders, there are no standard models; and
2. there are no manufacturers of transformers outside China.
Is any of this remotely true?
I have heard both those things, plus that it takes up to ten years to fulfill an order and install it. BC-EE?
Typical order cycle is 18 months. At this present time, same issue, supply chain. A power transformer is like an automobile where it is an amalgamation of many different vendor supplied parts.
Rush order would be 12 months. Transportation logistics are an artform.
A Transmission substation can take 10 years. Usually the plot of land is the least of the worries. Its the overhead transmission lines that give all the heartburn. Also the reason for more utilization of underground cabling.
Good information. Thank you very much.
Power transformers above ~1000 kVA, or 1 MVA are custom orders. Transformers above 50 MVA are not made in N. America any more.
Transformers are measured in Volt-Amperes (VA) and not Watts or MW. VA is the complex power, vector based calculation.
However, the transformers come from different parts of the world. We have been using S. Korean units, and the latest project had 250 MVA transformers from Italy.
We don’t use Chinese transformers because they live up to their reputation. That has most likely changed in the last 10 years as China has been a world leader in grid scale electrification. I would go so far as to say China has become the world leader in HVDC systems – brought along by the usual companies such as Areva, ABB, and Siemens.
Thank you, BC.
The EV problem. Every time I hear manufacturers bragging on the exceptionally low charge time I cringe. This is the kernel of the problem. Some quick and easy math (hint, one does not need electrical engineering differential calculus to figure this one out!):
Charge a 75 kWh battery in 15 minutes. Fantastic, right?
75 kWh/0.25 h = 300 kW power demand. One vehicle!
That’s a medium sized grocery store. And we want to put four of these in each repurposed gas station on almost every corner?
It’s not so much the transmission part of the grid that has an issue keeping up with the energy demand, it is the Distribution part of the grid keeping up with the power demand. It takes five years minimum to get a substation built (except in wide non-urban parts of Texas).
If we were to get an idea of the potential dystopian look, have a look at the original Edison DC power system with a central power plant every few blocks. Not quite the same, but similar idea.
And I’ll throw another curve-ball at the plan. EV’s as grid battery sources. How many EV owners are going to offer up their car battery for grid support when the very expensive battery component has a limited charge/discharge capacity? I know I wouldn’t. It would never pay for itself to charge and discharge energy and then replace the battery a whole lot sooner.
Since I use 4 KVA worth of transformers to protect my A/V system, that 1000 KVA threshold looks mighty precarious.
Mr. Lewis,
Perhaps some of our fellows might take a look at the current solar on your rooftop, sell it back to the utility model. Is there a level of rooftop generation that would result in a disincentive to the supply/demand grid? What percentage of suburban homes could have installed solar (sell it to the utility) before the situation outlined in the Stoneleigh article above came into play – supply/frquency/transmission?
Thanks to all for the information presented.
I have believed for a long time that the only way through this (we can’t save everyone — but we can save anyone) is for every family and settlement to produce its food and energy where it is consumed. Forget selling to the utility. Scale back your needs and provide for them yourself. The grid is simply not going to be here long term, and therefore, anyone who depends on the grid for survival will not be here long term, either.