Electric-Car Owners Hard Hit by Massive California Power Shutdown

On tbe contrary, I would happily compliment my V8 turbo diesel ute with an electric daily drive.

 

Our hospital has it's own central utility plant and isn't depended on the local utility grid. The local utility is basically a 3rd redundancy.

 

Large building complexes, some hospitals, universities often do have central utility plants that may even include water treatment. They are able to operate entirely self contained almost like a small town. They are the exception. I have worked on facilities like data centers that can't fail. One large data center had a large generator yard with (12) 17,000 kVA Cat diesel generators to provide backup for their servers, data storage, lights and some cooling. They fired up their generators once a week to test. During an outage it could provide enough power for a limited amount of time (less than 24 hours). One problem most generators have is that even with underground fuel tanks, they can't store too much fuel because it will begin to go bad after about a year. Some generators might fire up and some might not.

 

Telephone central offices have at least seven days of backup generation and contracts with multiple suppliers to keep diesel arriving as needed, the same applies macro-cells, RT's have four hours of power and inlets to connect trailer mounted generators to, those trailers can run about 5 days on a tank of diesel, CATV being entertainment not so much.

After Wilma we (BellSouth) had a lot of our RT's up and running for long as 3 months on trailer mounted generators without a problem the same with the Mobility cell sites.

And cell sites that do not have on-site generators do have inlets allowing a trailer mounted generator to be connected to keep the site on-the-air.


RT Generator.




Cell site generator.




Cell site generator.


Rooftop CO generator room.

 

And without it grid connected (intertie) solar will not work.

 

What's even dumber is people making statements that solar can charge EV batteries without understanding a thing about how much solar would be required to run a Tesla rapid charger.

 

The problem is the majority of distributed power generation must be grid tied as that is the only way to get a rebate on a solar system, off grid systems require local storage and a lot of it, and do not qualify for a rebate, causing the ROI to be so extended the system owner never breaks even by the time the panels have dropped to 50% effiency, which is considered end of life.

 

That wouldn't get to town and back unless I could recharge it in town.

 

You cannot get them for free nor do they last forever, and to charge an electric car you would need to dedicate your entire roof space to solar cells to charge up a single car.

 

If you believe that you don't know much about solar and EV charging.

 

Nothing whatsoever. The Green New Deal is a plan to generate as much electricity as we need from sustainable sources at a much reduced cost. (sunlight is free). but cons don't care. They want to continue sending money to the radical Islamic fundamentalists who run Saudi Arabia.

 

Sunlight may be free but the systems needed to gather and store it are neither free nor are they all that good for the environment.

Then why are we a net exporter of oil?

 

Certainly they care. But they just don't believe it is possible with today's technology at a reasonable cost. This is a valid sort of debate. I've got nothing against solar power but I don't think it is feasible, yet.

 

The rest of the world still buys most of its oil from them and oil is a fungible commodity. Our demand drives prices even though we are exporting

 

It all depends on what suits you best for your needs. I was looking at a gas prices yesterday. San Francisco was averaging $4.20 per gal. Louisiana had the lowest average at $2.17. Nationally, gas was an average of $2.73. In my state it was $2.29. Diesel was $3.04.

I need 4 wheel drive. I know all wheel type electric hybrid cars a being developed but I don't know of any all electric 4WD cars or trucks
Once developed, they should be more efficient since smaller electric motors can individually power the each wheel on demand better than one large motor.

I'm fairly certain that electric cars or trucks will be a choice for most for many years to come except in totalitarian states that may mandate their use, like CA.

 

Sustainably sourced electricity is now the cheapest choice

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamese...t-option-even-without-subsidies/#2cd8b1b15a6b

 

Only if one fudges the numbers and also leaves out the cost of building conventional plants to back up the unreliable power produced by solar farms, and or distributed generation.

Keep in mind people like the power to be on for more than 5 hours a days, which is the industry standard for peak power generation by solar.

As such if the off peak load is 500 Mw the solar farm must be rated for 800 Mw (500 * 1.6) to be able to meet an 8 hour daytime load, if the farm is going to charge batteries to provide power 24/7 and replace a conventional plant the farm must be rated for 3.120 Gw (500 * 3 * 1.3 (ineffiency factor)).

At a base price of $299 million per megawatt, a solar farm rated 3.120 Gw will cost between 10 to 30 times the cost of building a conventional power plant and that price doesn't include the cost of land, electronics, and storage, that's just the cost of the panels.

 

I'm going to believe an article in Forbes over some guy's back of napkin math, thankee.

 

Believe what you want but keep in mind the guy at Forbes is a writer, I hold a valid Florida Solar Contractors License and have designed off grid systems for AT&T Wireless cell sites.

 

Fine. Then electric utilities will build solar plants without government coercion or subsidies. I have no problem with that.

 

Without subsidies or tax breaks, utilities will pull back on solar farms for the short term and encourage distributed generation which is still subsidized.

Distributed generation also greatly lowers the utilities Capex as the costs of installation is borne by the utilities subscribers, not the utility, it's a win for them and many times a rip-off for the consumer, as most utilities only pay the wholesale rate for power sent back into the distribution grid, which they turn around and sell at retail to the solar systems owners non-solar neighbors.

And the really pathetic part about grid-tie solar is, when the grid goes down the solar turns off leaving the solar homeowner in the dark, now this is for safety as back feeding the grid places utility workers at risk of electrocution, but if the designers of the grid-tie systems would simply add a load-bank, they could allow the solar homeowner to power his own home during an outage, if only for a few hours a day, and that's enough to keep the fridge cool and the food fresh without having to buy a generator and store known to go bad gasoline to run it during an extended outage.

 

As I have posted by design a lot of solar goes off-line during an outage and cannot be used for anything other than to shade the roof.

 

I am pretty sure this is above the heads of most of us (it certainly is mine) and I am going to have to trust the people who sell me my electricity to know the most economical means of getting it to me. I certainly don't trust the politicians.