And in Ontario, likely one of the highest consuming provices in Canada (we need all the A/C to cool down the House of Commons from the politicians hot air,) we’ve got 5 nuclear power plants which makes about 50% of the provinces electricity, which, according to the Ontario MOE, makes at maximum 14,000 MW.

By the way, Ontario is currently beginning planning to build more nukes. So all you nor’easterners can breathe easy in 10 years when they come on line.

I am not convinced about NIMBY’s. Sure they hold up other projects, but they seem to be even more rabid about nukes. Also, the long time needed to build a nuke site, combined with the many times greater regulatory hurdles allows that much more opportunity for the NIMBY’s to throw a wrench in it.

We really need some sort of NIMBY tax in this country.

Bringing more capacity online isn’t that big of a deal.

The electrical companies aren’t saying or doing anything to prepare for the “huge” demand created by plugin EV’s because, unlike all the EV suckers believers, they KNOW THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE ANY BIG FLEET OF plugin EV’s… ever.

As for timers and such, it all depends on the batteries. If it, realistically, takes 10 – 12 hours to fully charge a drained EV then no timer in the world will help. Given the brownout conditions that abound during the heavy draw days at 6 pm that isn’t an unrealistic time to charge and we’re gonna crash the system with only a few percentage points increase in EV ownership.

What makes you say it’s the cleanest source of sufficient energy? If that were true, why is wind growing four times as fast in absolute terms, worldwide, as nuclear? You seem to be making the same ignorant assumption about nuclear, that just because it has a masculine-sounding name, it’s got to be a bigger producer than solar/wind.

Subsidies

there was an excellent thread on pistonheads a while ago that contained some data on wind power in europe and how you need to build 1Mw of conventional power for every 1Mw of wind. why don’t we just use the conventional plant and start building the nuclear one?

What makes you say it’s the cleanest source of sufficient energy? If that were true, why is wind growing four times as fast in absolute terms, worldwide, as nuclear? You seem to be making the same ignorant assumption about nuclear, that just because it has a masculine-sounding name, it’s got to be a bigger producer than solar/wind.

Or is it the fact taht nuclear plants come in 1000 Mw? You need to compare the cost per unit capacity of nuclear with solar and wind. Then you wouldn’t be so impressed.

Don’t forget that nuclear has to be mined–very hazardous for miners in terms of long-term cancer risk, and the waste transported across the country if we ever get a national waste disposal site (lots of vulnerability for mishaps along the way), and the plants and their waste pools make very interesting terrorist targets.

If the meter can’t get cell reception, then they can run a simple wire to an external antenna. If they still can’t do it, then they can have it use the land line, or house Internet connection (wired or WiFi), just like DVRs do.

If none of those work, then during the monthly visit by the meter reader, his reader can sync to meter’s time.

But no, they’d rather waste fossil fuels and pollute the air than admit they’re a bunch of dumbass morons.

This very market has ALREADY proved to be rolling out much more slowly than anticipated a few years ago. Even people involved in this work (especially them) get caught up in what’s occurring in a trial here or there, and the potential benefits. In the real world, as with electric cars, these things will take LOTS of time.

As long as the cars are charged at primarily at night, the utilities and grid should be able to handle it with minimal extra investment. Power plants are often idled way down at night, but have to be ready for the high demands of mid-day. Time of day based metering is slowly rolling out and is ideally suited to the needs of plug-in users.

“What I’m hoping is to hear from somebody who is actually in the electric-power industry. Lots of interesting input from the car-plug side of the extension cord, but what about the other end of the wire? Anybody out there who really knows what they’re talkin’ about powerplant/grid-wise?”

Hmmm, does my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering count for anything here? I’m not in the electric power industry, but I know quite a lot about it.

“The vast majority of Americans do NOT have meters that account for lower cost off-peak hours.”

Ten years ago the vast majority of Americans didn’t have an Internet connection, let alone broadband. Switching over the electric meter infrastructure is actually an easier problem than rolling out cable-modems was.

I will limit myself to saying that 1. there will never be a cost effective plug-in hybrid, 2. there will never be an electric powered automobile that will be purchased by more than a handful of people, 3. the energy crisis will end when the last lawyer is strangled with the intestines of the last lawyer, 4. the electric grid will deteriorate into uselessness and unreliability within a generation, 5. the electric grid will be replaced by generators powered by gasoline and diesel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo

Should that even be used? Simply centering the expected charge interval at 02:00 local solar time would achieve the goal “charge during off peak hours” at almost any location on Earth.

So what that means is, if it’s a standard plug, then they probably wont use more than 1200Kw/hr.

GPS signals don’t penetrate a garage and if you go by the last GPS signal then you have clock drift which shouldn’t be significant most of the time but it still doesn’t address Time Zones or DST. You’d have to have a very sophisticated database to track all the locations that don’t observe DST, you’d have to update the database every time some law changes the DST/STD start/stop dates. Just knowing what time it is on the satellite is not a sure fire way to know what time it is on the ground.

@afuller

Your cell phone gets time/data data from the cell phone network. No cell tower, then your phones time will drift, badly in some cases (don’t even think about letting the battery completely drain when you have no service or your phone might just think it is 12:00). You do realize that cars go places where cell coverage doesn’t exist and that people live in areas with no cell service? If you lived here http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/story/105-the_quiet_zone.html how would your car behave? You have to design consumer products to work in any environment not just in the biggest city.

No you’d be better off going with GPS as your time source in most cases.

There is a big difference between noticing that a device can deal with date/time data and knowing how it works enough to design a system to handle every possibility from coast to coast. I meant it when I said I don’t trust it to be accurate in all cases. If you work in any sort of technical field or do support for more than just you and your family you have already seen enough issues with what should be simple systems to make you wary about how easy it is to properly implement a feature in a system in a fail proof reliable manner.

http://news.cnet.com/Cell-phones-could-keep-atomic-time/2100-1008_3-5330743.html shows an atomic clock might be small enough to put in the car but you still have to set it and that doesn’t solve the DST or Time Zone issue just by putting an accurate clock in the car.

Now if you want to put the control on the outlet instead of in the car how do you handle people wanting to plug in anywhere they are? If the plug is truly bog standard 3 prong plug then you can’t assume someone will plug it in on a controlled outlet. If the plug isn’t bog standard then you can’t get an emergency charge easily no matter where you are.

Plug in hybrid OK, Plug in pure electric we are a long way from that. Until we get there we’ll have plenty of time to think about these issues…

And here in Canada they tell us that they will ‘borrow’ power from the Northeastern United States when faced with blackouts. Hmm

I understand when sealing with electicity should u have maxed it, u get the same big NO as your bank account has reached the overdrawn limit.

NIMBYs aren’t particular to nukes. Cape Wind has been significantly delayed because of them. But other sources are a lot quicker to come online than nukes–see KixStart directly above you.

The people in the various solar industries would agree with you about the problems of gov’t incentives. I suspect that with Dems in charge the incentives will become more reliable, but I’m not going to tell anyone to bet on that.

Sorry, but your argument pegged my BS meter.

There have never been enough incentives to overcome the problems that you admit in your own post.

NIMBY’s and greens threaten to delay and destroy any nuclear project using every means possible with a high reliance on legal roadblocks that take time (money), and lawyers (money) to overcome.

The financial risks are really high, the liability risks are really high, and most importantly, the political risks are astronomical.

Anything that can’t be built within a single political cycle in this country is going to be very risky. So risky, that it’s amazing anyone invests anything long term.

Perhaps you have never been stupid enough to get fooled by a government incentive, but I have, twice. It won’t happen again. The more money they dangle at me, the more I will bet the other way. They will ALWAYS renig, or change the rules in such a way as to ruin your investment.

The reason that nuclear won’t work is not technological, it’s political. The fact that some of the reasons it’s attractive are also political (incentives and disincentives on competitive sources) doesn’t change that.

$10Billion in nukes gets you your first watt of power in about 10 years and you’ve got interest charges mounting up long before that happens.

Whatever you choose to spend on solar or wind gets you your first watt of power within in a few months and the first watt might beat the arrival of the bill for much of the product and installation. Wind, in particular, has actually become fairly cost-effective.

At the present time, a considerable amount of electric generation is done with natural gas. Wind and solar can’t entirely replace reliably dispatchable natural gas generation but they can supplant it when conditions are favorable, which would help hold the line on natural gas prices.

I disagree. There are huge incentives for power companies to go to smart metering. First, smart meters aren’t expensive. Single-unit pricing for a smart meter with an ethernet interface is under $100 in quantity. Second, more accurate usage statistics has the potential to radically reduce the up-front costs involved in building new plants. Further, there’s a free market in power suppliers. Smart meters allow consumers to play in that space. Using existing power-line modems and smart outlets, many energy-consuming devices can be monitored and controlled without expensive retrofits.

I was involved in responding to a number of RFPs from some very well-known utility companies for smart metering at the residential level. There’s a lot of interest in this in the market. It’s going to really explode over the next few years. Dumb meters are simply too expensive, the costs are too high.

- The vast majority of Americans do NOT have meters that account for lower cost off-peak hours. Look at your meter. It doesn’t know when you burned up that 1000 Kilowatt hours. Someday maybe, but how long will it take to install next-generation meters for 120 million households?

Not that long at all. First, using existing braodband internet connections and even phone lines, two-way communication between meters and the power company are a reality. And if you need an even better reason for replacing existing meters consider this: a smart meter doesn’t need some guy in a van to come around each month to read it. Eliniating that cost is a huge incentive.

Thank you for this link!

Eyeballing the graph for today, I see about (26-18)*24/3 = 64GWh of spare capacity per day. According to

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/trade14b.htm

there are 7 million cars (”under 4500kg”) in the province. Call the travel distance per car per day D, and assume they are all PHEV’s tomorrow, and further assume will get the Google rate

http://www.google.org/recharge/

of ~60 watt-hours per kilometer, then

64 GWh = 7e6*60*D -> D = 150 kilometres

!

Of course, this is only obtained if recharging fits perfectly into the below-peak section of the demand curve, and that the whole system could run at peak capacity indefinitely (doubtful). More likely about 1/3 to 1/2, and not all 7 million cars will be online.

As far as I am concerned, if the all-electric range of D=50km is attained, I’m happy.

Kevin: Assuming brilliant PHEvs actually do come out by early 2011, it will be 2020 before they represent 1% of vehicles on the road.

I can’t agree with this. Initially there will be few, but up-take will be very fast. Right to the limit of production.

Somewhere, deep within the Earth, there are barrels of oil weeping.

Among the low carbon electricity sources, wind is growing worldwide about four times as fast as nuclear. The reason is simple. Nuclear plants are probably the most expensive low carbon source of electricity. They take a decade to get on line, unlike wind, solar, and ocean (http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2007/115-12/innovations-abs.html). Costs are dropping steadily and the solar storage problem is fast becoming a red herring.

If incentives are not technology specific, nuclear is not likely to amount to much. If it is good enough to amount to much under technology neutral incentives, or no incentives, and with the terrorism and waste problems dealt with, fine, let the market bring it on.

I get really tired of hearing nuclear invoked as if it were some magic bullet that would save us if the greens would only come to their senses or disappear. There have been far more incentives for nuclear (since Ike inaugurated Atoms for Peace in the ’50s!) and it never went very far. Blame the market, not the greens.

But I for one expect to have PVs on my roof 5-10 years from now, providing most of my power, if not all, the remainder going into the grid. And if I have to have an electric car (I love internal combustion, and just don’t get off on copper windings) I will probably power the thing largely from my roof.

The grid does need to be beefed up something fierce and switched to DC so that power can be shipped around the country without huge losses.