scotia wrote:Electric Utopia!
If the power consumed by all current petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles is transferred to Electricity - then we need to generate that electricity and distribute it. The only viable non-carbon-emitting, reliable, Electric Power source is Nuclear. ........ The result may be better for the environment - but I can't see it being cheaper.
The combination of wind & solar together is predictable, forecastable, and not as intermittent as you might think. It will be a long time before that combined 'system' intermittency becomes a full-system issue that is bigger than other system intermittency issues (of which the biggest is one of the large nuclear plants falling off the bars with no warning; or demand-side fluctuations). For the UK grid it is a relatively trivial problem through to 40% renewables penetration and the UK grid is now at 25% renewables penetration. Furthermore if you carry out system modelling it suggests that storage (mostly batteries) of relative small amounts gets a typical grid through to 80% renewables penetration with little or no additional cost vs alternatives.
Given that renewables penetration of 25% in UK is growing at a bout 1% per year, and we hope to get that up to 2% per year with a big effort, then things are looking fairly well controlled, i.e. by the time we need large scale storage the factories to build it will have been built, ditto for the big interconnectors. This is all going on now and the results are looking good.
Grid losses are not that great. Trivial compared to thermal losses. On levelised cost basis it looks to be at worst parity compared to conventionals, likely slightly cheaper.
The biggest EV issue I see at present is the charging problem for anyone who does not have off street parking at home and/or at work. That is quite an adoption killer because it forces centralised decision making about street-level charging solutions. Which inhibits adoption.
regards, dspp