Here's why convenience stores are not rushing to install EV chargers

[Deleted member 3316]

A 42 gallon barrel of oil is roughly 1,700 kilowatt hours. That is the figure I used when doing the oil reserve comparison.

The number of watts it takes to accelerate a weight over a distance is consistent regardless of the energy form used. Efficiency is a function of the machine selected and doesn't really matter as long as you have sufficient energy available to get the job done.

Suppose an average electric vehicle is 80% efficient and an average gas vehicle is 30% efficient. That might require storing half as much energy in reserve. That is 121,380 times what the world actually has. If electric cars were 100% efficient(impossible), we would still need 72,828 times the entire worldwide installed capacity of Megapacks to do the same work as the national oil reserve of a single country.

Feel free to criticize the manner of comparison, but if you expect to replace the 'oil' way of life with 'electric', it would be nice to know if that is actually feasible.

I didn't even account for the thousands of gallons of fuel stored underground at every gas station around the world. That alone could run the world for a couple days. If every vehicle is electric and the grid goes down for a couple days, you have what is in your batteries and that is pretty much it. Compare the energy stored at a gas station to the UPS under your desk.

Each regional refinery also has huge tank farms to maintain production if pipelines stop delivering crude for weeks. That capacity is analogous to the present grid backup batteries that last for seconds to minutes.

No, that is nonsense, it doesn’t work this way…

The “oil reserve” equivalent is the that big fusion reactor we revolve around and get to see on average 12hrs each day.

“Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth -- 173,000 terawatts of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use.”

https://www.energy.gov/articles/top-6-things-you-didnt-know-about-solar-energy

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[ldjessee]

Source does matter, especially when that source is poisoning the air and water.

Oil spills, fracking, pollution during refining, pollution during 'use'...

That is why someone can die from a running ICE car in even a not well sealed garage... Or a leaky gas appliance (stove, furnace, hot water heater).

Anyone seen a book called Consider A Spherical Cow?

Highly recommend it.
https://www.amazon.com/Consider-Spherical-Cow-Environmental-Problem/dp/093570258X

PS: The book is a chemical/environmental scientists book, not a environmentalists book.

 

[slomobile]

The oil reserve isn't used every day.

Your calculations are nonsense.

I'm sorry.

-Crissa

The oil reserve isn't used every day. True. It is used in the event of a market upset. Do you think that means it does not serve an important function every day?

One important function is to deter short term gouging during brief shortages and delay negotiations of future oil purchases until the market is favorable.

We have already seen short term gouging in the electric market as demand fees. If charger operators do not have a reliable method to avoid demand fees, they will also be disadvantaged when negotiating long term contracts.

I am not saying we immediately require an electric reserve equivalent to the national oil reserve. Currently, the grid still relies on fossil fuel reserves to maintain its stability. The oil reserve IS the electric reserve for now.

I am simply trying to quantify the amount of reserve energy that results in energy market stability (assuming the US oil market is a benchmark of stability). It is analogous to the size of capacitors required to minimize ripple in a power supply. High frequency disruptions require small fast reserves. High amplitude disruptions require additional bulk reserves.

With those data points, we can predict approximately the size of electricity reserves necessary to achieve the same level of stability in an oil free future.

The actual picture is worse than the estimate because once the work has been put into developing a barrel of oil, the energy in that barrel does not decrease except the rare case where it leaks. Stored electricity always has some amount of self discharge. This points toward increased demand generation being a better solution than storage. But renewable sources do not lend themselves to demand generation. That increases the importance of stored reserves, though not necessarily increasing the require quantity.

If you have a better method to estimate the capacity of a market stable reserve please do share. If my calculations are nonsense, please point out the error. I haven't used those skills in a while so it is very likely I made an error in the figures.

Or is it something else you feel invalidates the comparison.

Without significant electric reserve capacity, in a future without fossil fuel and with widespread high demand charging of vehicles, frequent grid outages will be the result. Social conditions deteriorate very quickly when that happens.

Some camps take that and say "See! We need oil. Lets just keep pumping oil so we don't need to think of those things."

Some camps say "See! We need to convert everything to use clean renewable electric so we don't need to think of those things."

I'm hoping leaders will say "We need to think of these things. Oil is a critical resource which needs to be conserved and managed for the good of mankind, not the profits of oil companies. Our current habits, investments, desires are of secondary importance. We need to build the capacity to replace the common oil market while we still have oil available to do the work. To delay social collapse."

Maybe that is overly dramatic. Maybe it isn't. Have you done the calculations? Or just throwing shade? I don't mind either way. I'm just more inclined to discus it with the former rather than the later.

 

[slomobile]

173,000 terawatts of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously

Ok.

All that solar energy striking the earth is creating a massive demand for air conditioning. Why don't we have solar air conditioners at every bus stop and building on earth? If solar cannot even directly solve the problems it directly causes, how is it going to solve all our other energy needs without storage?

Oil is essentially concentrated solar energy accumulated over millions of years and released in minutes. We may be struck with 10,000 times the energy we use, but we aren't capturing it and putting it back in the ground at the rate when the earth was populated with dinosaurs and algae.

The naturally occurring radioactive elements in the earth's crust continuously release vast amounts of energy as well. But that isn't very usable. The only thing that matters is sufficient usable energy at the moment and location you need to use it.

Show me 1 transatlantic power cable that shifts solar power from a lit continent to an unlit continent.

Any major city that can run all night or day on solar power alone.

1 country anywhere on earth that can fulfill all of its power needs continuously (around the clock) with solar energy. And when you find it, are you willing to subsist in the manner of that country's citizens?

These are minimum sustainability requirements that are barely even attempted because of how futile they seem to investors. How do you propose making direct use of solar without storage?

 

[slomobile]

Anyone seen a book called Consider A Spherical Cow?

Highly recommend it.
https://www.amazon.com/Consider-Spherical-Cow-Environmental-Problem/dp/093570258X

Part of an Amazon review by Ken Caldeira

Ignorance is part of our strength, because ignorant people can ask very fundamental questions and then try to apply very simple models to get some kind of mechanistic understanding with maybe order-of-magnitude estimates. Not everybody likes this kind of "consider a spherical cow" thinking

I'm happy to be counted among those ignorant people and confused by those that don't like that kind of thinking. Because when you are ignorant, how else do you get started?

 

[Deleted member 3316]

Part of an Amazon review by Ken Caldeira

I'm happy to be counted among those ignorant people and confused by those that don't like that kind of thinking. Because when you are ignorant, how else do you get started?

Ignorance is only an insult if you refuse to acknowledge it. Discovering an area of ignorance should be considered exciting not insulting.

 

[Deleted member 3316]

Ok.

All that solar energy striking the earth is creating a massive demand for air conditioning. Why don't we have solar air conditioners at every bus stop and building on earth? If solar cannot even directly solve the problems it directly causes, how is it going to solve all our other energy needs without storage?

Oil is essentially concentrated solar energy accumulated over millions of years and released in minutes. We may be struck with 10,000 times the energy we use, but we aren't capturing it and putting it back in the ground at the rate when the earth was populated with dinosaurs and algae.

The naturally occurring radioactive elements in the earth's crust continuously release vast amounts of energy as well. But that isn't very usable. The only thing that matters is sufficient usable energy at the moment and location you need to use it.

Show me 1 transatlantic power cable that shifts solar power from a lit continent to an unlit continent.

Any major city that can run all night or day on solar power alone.

1 country anywhere on earth that can fulfill all of its power needs continuously (around the clock) with solar energy. And when you find it, are you willing to subsist in the manner of that country's citizens?

These are minimum sustainability requirements that are barely even attempted because of how futile they seem to investors. How do you propose making direct use of solar without storage?

Wow! This is truly astonishing word salad.

You clearly have some capacity for critical thought if you had the correct data points but how have you got to this point without at least googling, 100% renewable countries?

Iceland
Paraguay
Costa Rica
Norway
Many others including Australia around 2030.

There are answers to much of this energy problem, but for some reason a large (and vocal) proportion of our population are convinced by the naysayers without actually considering the solutions put forward by the proponents.

Yes, solar is not a complete solution without storage. Lots of storage, but not quite as much as back of the napkin math might suggest.

This is not an insurmountable problem. Complex but not insurmountable.

Only thing slowing a transition to sustainability is vested interests attempting to maintain their hold on political power and their capacity to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few.

Solar energy isn’t just converted directly from photons it’s also stored by our oceans and atmosphere as heat, that heat is released on the dark side of the planet, the differential between the hot side and the cold side creates a differential in air temperature. That differential attempts to return to equilibrium creating wind. It’s pretty consistent. If the world stops spinning we might then need a hemispherical cable but for now we just need solar wind and battery.

For your interest look up sun cable… Plans for Australia to supply Asia with electricity.

 

[Deleted member 3316]

The oil reserve isn't used every day. True. It is used in the event of a market upset. Do you think that means it does not serve an important function every day?

One important function is to deter short term gouging during brief shortages and delay negotiations of future oil purchases until the market is favorable.

We have already seen short term gouging in the electric market as demand fees. If charger operators do not have a reliable method to avoid demand fees, they will also be disadvantaged when negotiating long term contracts.

I am not saying we immediately require an electric reserve equivalent to the national oil reserve. Currently, the grid still relies on fossil fuel reserves to maintain its stability. The oil reserve IS the electric reserve for now.

I am simply trying to quantify the amount of reserve energy that results in energy market stability (assuming the US oil market is a benchmark of stability). It is analogous to the size of capacitors required to minimize ripple in a power supply. High frequency disruptions require small fast reserves. High amplitude disruptions require additional bulk reserves.

With those data points, we can predict approximately the size of electricity reserves necessary to achieve the same level of stability in an oil free future.

The actual picture is worse than the estimate because once the work has been put into developing a barrel of oil, the energy in that barrel does not decrease except the rare case where it leaks. Stored electricity always has some amount of self discharge. This points toward increased demand generation being a better solution than storage. But renewable sources do not lend themselves to demand generation. That increases the importance of stored reserves, though not necessarily increasing the require quantity.

If you have a better method to estimate the capacity of a market stable reserve please do share. If my calculations are nonsense, please point out the error. I haven't used those skills in a while so it is very likely I made an error in the figures.

Or is it something else you feel invalidates the comparison.

Without significant electric reserve capacity, in a future without fossil fuel and with widespread high demand charging of vehicles, frequent grid outages will be the result. Social conditions deteriorate very quickly when that happens.

Some camps take that and say "See! We need oil. Lets just keep pumping oil so we don't need to think of those things."

Some camps say "See! We need to convert everything to use clean renewable electric so we don't need to think of those things."

I'm hoping leaders will say "We need to think of these things. Oil is a critical resource which needs to be conserved and managed for the good of mankind, not the profits of oil companies. Our current habits, investments, desires are of secondary importance. We need to build the capacity to replace the common oil market while we still have oil available to do the work. To delay social collapse."

Maybe that is overly dramatic. Maybe it isn't. Have you done the calculations? Or just throwing shade? I don't mind either way. I'm just more inclined to discus it with the former rather than the later.

This is not really the best forum for lectures… it’s for discussion. If you want honest and cogent discussion keep it to one or maybe two points.

There are way too many concepts in this post that clearly need addressing.

The current energy system is one of central ownership and control. The proposed new sustainable energy system is distributed and significantly more capitalist than the socialist system we currently have in place.
Yes, think about it fundamentally.
Capitalism and socialism are two sides of the same coin functioning in unison. A system that enables distributed energy generation enables individuals to be responsible for their own generation as well as consumption, very capitalist. The current energy system relies on central control and regulation, very socialist but very beneficial to those purporting to be capitalist.

 

[mhaze]

Touche. Absolutely correct.
Power companies do not have the mandate to protect the citizens of the United States. The Federal government does. Primary investment in non oil bulk energy storage would need to come from a National security imperative in order to overcome profit motive. The same would hold for any of the worlds governments.

I've not seen any electric tanks, fighter planes, or war ships. That is just an observation. I am not advocating for those things at all. The electrification of the Federal road fleet was rather anemic. That indicates oil remains the actual strategic priority, despite any lip service to the contrary. That is unlikely to change until oil actually runs out.
A strategic energy reserve(battery, hydrogen, protection of renewable sources), coupled with electrification of government road fleets could be lobbied as a reduction of demand on the oil reserve. That could explain the otherwise inexplicable money thrown at hydrogen, and why progress is not widely known. Strategic secrets?

I'll open a new thread if anyone shows interest in continuing this discussion. It risks triggering politics moderation. I'm curious if people believe a strategic energy reserve(not petroleum) is a worthwhile use of government resources. If so, what tech is appropriate for long term energy storage?

I've always found the fascination, and I guess you could use the phrase "faith" in hydrogen use for consumers to be curious, given some understanding of its use with rockets. Somehow I always go back to all the negatives, but others know nothing of the negatives and tout a bunch of supposed positives. Keep in mind they have never handled it or walked past a tank of hydrogen...

 

[slomobile]

This is not really the best forum for lectures… it’s for discussion. If you want honest and cogent discussion keep it to one or maybe two points.

Yeah, sorry bout that. It wasn't intended as a lecture. What you got was stream of consciousness as I processed these thoughts for the first time. Thus no time to Google without becoming distracted. Writing them down helped me organize my thoughts and I didn't want to stop writing till I stopped having new ideas. Not very accessible without my train of thought I guess..

 

[slomobile]

I've always found the fascination, and I guess you could use the phrase "faith" in hydrogen use for consumers to be curious,

I think it has something to do with igniting HOH baloons filled by water electrolysis in high school physics. Its dramatic, common, easy to understand, and apparently so simple a (supervised)child can do it.

Auto shop class experimented with HOH injection, and metal shop demonstrated hydrogen gas welding from commercial bottles. We didn't have an opportunity to experience the problems of purification, storage, and use at scale. So warnings about hydrogen danger fall into the mental bin with overblown warnings like removing pillow tags. or everything causing cancer in California.

 

[Deleted member 3316]

Yeah, sorry bout that. It wasn't intended as a lecture. What you got was stream of consciousness as I processed these thoughts for the first time. Thus no time to Google without becoming distracted. Writing them down helped me organize my thoughts and I didn't want to stop writing till I stopped having new ideas. Not very accessible without my train of thought I guess..

I glad we have a forum here where you feel comfortable just throwing out a stream of consciousness. If you bring it to a proposition or assertion at closing it helps people see what you think is the salient point to discuss. Otherwise the thread gets thrown off topic and results (at best) in posts like this one I’m writing right now or (at worst) devolves into a political or ideological rant; in no way related to the thread topic.

Closing with a salient point it makes it clear where the discussion is going or where it should stop.

 

[mhaze]

I think it has something to do with igniting HOH baloons filled by water electrolysis in high school physics. Its dramatic, common, easy to understand, and apparently so simple a (supervised)child can do it.

Auto shop class experimented with HOH injection, and metal shop demonstrated hydrogen gas welding from commercial bottles. We didn't have an opportunity to experience the problems of purification, storage, and use at scale. So warnings about hydrogen danger fall into the mental bin with overblown warnings like removing pillow tags. or everything causing cancer in California.

I'm just curious, what year did you see H welding in class? that is a seriously lost art. Well understood during ww2 as a substitute for acetylene. In recent years as far as I know only used for welding lightweight sheet AL, like for antique aircraft and such.

 

[slomobile]

I'm just curious, what year did you see H welding in class? that is a seriously lost art. Well understood during ww2 as a substitute for acetylene. In recent years as far as I know only used for welding lightweight sheet AL, like for antique aircraft and such.

That would have been '89 or '90. Our city had a Great Lakes shipyard, regional iron ore mines, rail and a still operating steam works, so lots of welding very large steel. I think it was used mostly for preheating thick plates and cutting scrap.

 

[mhaze]

.......How do you propose making direct use of solar without storage?

The obvious answer would be to use chemistry, use the solar to provide energy for any of several chemical processes that result in a valuable product. Desalination is one example.

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