The Future is Electric
I would like to make a prediction: the future is electric. In the not so distant future, assuming oil doesn’t continue falling $15 as it did this week, our lives will be powered predominantly by electricity. Currently, a good portion of our lives already are powered by little electrons zooming around copper pipes: lights, air conditioning, iPods, Zunes (for those of you that have a Zune), computers, refrigerators, hot water heaters. Our cars are small power plants that produce electricity for all those creature comforts contained in the cabin. You might ask, what’s left for electricity to power? Your car.
All the current technologies for cars involve electricity. The Toyota Prius’ gas engine charges a battery to provide power to the car. The car also, I believe, uses the heat generated by braking to produce electricity which charges the battery. Besides more efficiency gains, one possible addition to these electricity sources is your wall socket. There is talk of a “plug-in” hybrid car. This car would be similar to the Prius. Hopefully not in its looks. Can we please have someone design an environmentally friendly car that looks cool? Anyone sit on the board at BMW? A “plug-in” hybrid houses a battery that is sufficient for most peoples’ daily commute, about 40 miles. The car would be plugged into a power outlet every night, and in the morning it would be ready for the commute. The car would also have a regular gas engine, so if you needed to go longer than 40 miles or so, you could.
There is also the purely electric car. GM produced the EV1 in the 1990’s and shelved it. Oil was cheap back then. GM is planning to roll the Volt off the line in 2010. The Volt doubles as a messiah for Messrs McCain and Obama. Tesla Motors is producing a hip electric car called the Roadster.
I predict that electric cars are the future. Electric cars produce no emissions. They let the sources of electricity do all the emitting. Most electricity is produced from fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas. Another significant portion is produced by nuclear power. The beauty of having cars powered by electricity is the fact that they are agnostic to the grid, the source of electricity. An electron is an electron to them. They do not discriminate. This would put in place a system where the entire stock of cars would not need to be upgraded to take advantage of new advancements in the production of electricity. Suppose we develop a method to break down all our nuclear waste, which is a byproduct of our nuclear power plants, and in the process produce electricity? A fleet of electric cars would hum right along without a blip, but now our electricity would be produced with a lot less fossil fuels. The same would be true of an advancement in the production of solar cells or wind plants.
This electric future will require some investments in electricity infrastructure. However, most of this investment would occur irrespective of government involvement. With the extra demand for electricity from cars, the capacity of the nation’s transmission system, the interstate highway system of electriciy, would need to be increased. This would require upgrading existing lines and building new ones. There are several public issues, mainly property rights, that arise. This is where government action would provide the most benefit. There are several recent technological advancements that would make this upgrade less costly.
You heard it hear first.
The future is electric!
2 comments
The future is indeed electric.
Keep in mind that while the USA is no longer self-sufficient in energy,
I suspect that the USA and Canada combined are. Hence energy policy in both countries should work towards a seamless integrated energy network and market. I don’t see why Canada would not be a willing partner here.
The event I am most eager to see is the emergence of an affordable technology enabling us to power our cars from the grid. Most oil is used to power the cars we drive to work, and use to run errands and do fun things. The mileage is poor because we are constantly stopping, then accelerating.
The greatest near-term benefactor of humanity will be the one who invents an affordable and recyclable battery capable of powering a 4 passenger car for 200 km (300 km would be really nice), rechargeable in the workplace parking lot during the day, and every night while in the garage.
Where to get the electricity for all this town driving? Nuclear power plants burning thorium, not uranium. Proven thorium reserves are triple those of uranium. The nations with the largest thorium reserves are Australia and Canada, reliable and friendly. Moreover, you can’t make weapons out of thorium or thorium waste. One result is that urban smog goes down, as does the USA’s obscene carbon profile. On the greenhouse gas front, the USA is one of the prime offenders.
You want to do a two week family vacation driving around the American West, and spend nights in campgrounds where recharging your car’s battery recharge is not an option? No problem; rent a hybrid van or SUV. I expect some sort of fuel to be sold at interstate exits, for the indefinite future.
I read that wireless transmission of electric power is being worked on. Nice idea, but I can’t say whether it will prove feasible in our lifetimes.
I fully agree that the network of high tension lines and transformers are among the very most important part of a nation’s infrastructure, and we need to get those right and keep them up to date. Normally, I frown on the use of eminent domain to free up land for private profit making ventures, but am willing to make an exception for high tension lines.
I read as a boy that about 30% of the electricity that leaves a power plant is dissipated over the wires that carry the electricity to end users. Is that 30% still correct? Whatever that percentage is, anybody who can halve it is another huge benefactor of humanity.
Donald McCloskey taught me a generation ago that the Industrial Revolution was the single most important event in the history of our species. (I now think he overlooked the invention of language and the discovery of agriculture.) I submit that the single most important part of that Revolution is the domestication of the electron, for data processing as well as for power.
I’ve long been shocked at the cost of generating heat using electricity, starting with toasters and irons. Too bad, because electricity is a convenient way to heat our homes and water. The current fashion where I live is heat pumps, but I think we can do better.
Proven reserves of gas (methane) considerably exceed those of oil. It is also possible that a lot of natural gas is not a fossil fuel, but is left over from the formation of the solar system. Gentle modifications to
carburation would enable cars with internal combustion engines to burn natural gas. Burning methane emits CO2, but is very clean in all other respects. The problem is the distribution network, and finding a way of minimizing the chance that the gas explodes as a result of a highway wreck.
Electric cars considerably simplify using natural gas to power cars. Gas pipelines and gas fired power plants are technologies of proven safety and reliability. Gas fired power plants have modest capital costs. Transform methane into electrons, and we’re off.
Electric powered rapid transit is an off the shelf turnkey technology. But it suffers from 3 fundamental problems:
* The ridership needed to recover the capital cost is impossible without a degree of residential density that nearly all Americans object to;
* We often work as well as live in suburbs. Public transit does not work well when jobs are not locationally concentrated;
* We don’t simply commute to work. We drop off and pick up kids at school and daycare. We run errands while driving home. Europeans often see their doctors, lawyers, and accountants in the early evening after work, and I bet that the USA will move in that direction sooner or later. Public transit is not very useful given the lifestyle realities I have just described.
This could all change if public transit consisted of driverless electric vans and minibuses, summonable by cellphone and paid by scanning a bar code. The main challenge is coming up with a computer autopilot enabling dispensing with drivers.
To follow up on your question regarding transmission losses in electricity. Total losses are between 7 and 8 percent. About 5 percent are from local distribution, at low voltages. This is from your house to a nearby substation. The other 2 to 3 percent are from high voltage transmission. This is from the nearby substation to all the power plants.
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