Why charging an electric car at night is worse for the environment

[Lowell_Greenberg]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pb...ric-car-at-night-is-worse-for-the-environment

I came across this artice, published in Scientific American in 2016, and written by David Biello, a credible journalist on the environmental front- with no apparent political axe to grind.

Whether or not the analysis is correct, it seems obvious to me that any truly environmentally positive impact (significantly mitigating climate change) of the shift to EVs must continue to be accompanied by a shift by utilities away from fossil fuels, particularly coal.

In addition, there is the following article, that shows increased EV efficiency and that shifting over time of more of the grid away from coal and other fossil fuels has a significant benefit now and in the future.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner

The case made by the former mentioned piece is actually too general to fully contradict the latter.

I suppose my major point is that the shift to EVs must be accompanied by a shift of the grid away from coal- or whatever benefits result from EVs will not be sufficient to help head off the dangerous impacts of climate change.

Finally, as a secondary point, we may be past that time anyway- so irresponsible has been the behavior, particularly of major coal burning nations such as the US- that major climate destabilization to catastrophic levels is inevitable.

While I know it is not helpful to my own psychology, everytime I see a driver of a gasoline vehicle push hard on their accelerator to gain a few seconds of..what time???- I want to puke. In fact, ignoring that an emergency may dictate a faster speed- in most cases this is an act of violence plain and simple.



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[bwilson4web]

I bought my EV and range extended EV to save money when driving. They both rock on the streets and very low maintenance. Reducing CO{2} was a freebie.

Bob Wilson

 

[brulaz]

I bought my EV and range extended EV to save money when driving. They both rock on the streets and very low maintenance. Reducing CO{2} was a freebie.

Bob Wilson

You are saving while driving but initial costs are still much higher than an equivalent ICE.
The most expensive Kona ICE starts at C$32K.
The cheapest Kona BEV (not currently avail.) starts at C$45K (C$40K in ON with Guv incentives)
Those batteries are still rather expensive making lifetime costs of ownership higher.
Reducing CO2 is not cheap.
Still worth the effort if you can afford it IMHO.
Besides, I want one cause of the low-end torque. Our other vehicle is a Cummins diesel.

 

[bwilson4web]

You are saving while driving but initial costs are still much higher than an equivalent ICE.

There is a budget approach that separates CAPITAL from OPERATIONAL budgets. One is paid once and the other bleeds money all the time. One has residual value and the depreciation is tax deductible for a business. The other goes up in smoke.

Some claim CAPITAL and OPERATIONAL dollars are the same. I disagree so I’ll handle my budgets my way.

Bob Wilson

 

[brulaz]

I'm retired, so am not making a capital investment to make more money down the line.
Just for our own needs and pleasure, and to reduce our carbon footprint.

It helps me when spending that extra money on a BEV that it has many of the same qualities as a Porsche.
Hence our interest in the Tesla 3.

 

[marshall]

I think it's too late unless some very smart people figure out a way to remove CO2 and methane from the atmosphere. I just hope I'm too old to miss the worst of it.

 

[brulaz]

Certainly been a lot of negative Environmental news lately.
Just hope some of it will induce more people to get their heads out of the sand and do something about it.

Like vote for a greenish candidate. Individuals can only do so much.
IMHO Guv/Group/Political action/leadership is required.

Also, on a personal not environmental note, we can be thankful that we live in a first world country.
It's the third world (humans and the environment) that's really getting screwed over by this.

 

[marshall]

Certainly been a lot of negative Environmental news lately.
Just hope some of it will induce more people to get their heads out of the sand and do something about it.

Like vote for a greenish candidate. Individuals can only do so much.
IMHO Guv/Group/Political action/leadership is required.

Also, on a personal not environmental note, we can be thankful that we live in a first world country.
It's the third world (humans and the environment) that's really getting screwed over by this.

Well according to the scientists, the East coast will have some very expensive flooding issues.

However, the big issue is food. Farming is very weather dependent and the oceans are acidifying. So it's not looking good. Hungry people get pretty desperate.

Again, I'm not optimistic unless some very smart people figure out a way to remove green house gases from the atmosphere.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037941

 

[@stanford]

There is a budget approach that separates CAPITAL from OPERATIONAL budgets. One is paid once and the other bleeds money all the time. One has residual value and the depreciation is tax deductible for a business. The other goes up in smoke.

Some claim CAPITAL and OPERATIONAL dollars are the same. I disagree so I’ll handle my budgets my way.

Bob Wilson

Dollars out are dollars out. You can deduct asset depreciation and fuel costs as a business just the same. If you fully depreciate the asset to 0 then there is no residual value to retain.

 

[bwilson4web]

My only interest was to explain why some assertions have little to no effect on me. We are doing different analysis of similar data.

Bob Wilson

 

[Jimmy Truong]

You are saving while driving but initial costs are still much higher than an equivalent ICE.
The most expensive Kona ICE starts at C$32K.
The cheapest Kona BEV (not currently avail.) starts at C$45K (C$40K in ON with Guv incentives)
Those batteries are still rather expensive making lifetime costs of ownership higher.
Reducing CO2 is not cheap.
Still worth the effort if you can afford it IMHO.
Besides, I want one cause of the low-end torque. Our other vehicle is a Cummins diesel.

And you compare a cheap Korean made car to Luxury Tesla? It’s loke comparing Kia to Mercedes!


JT

 

[bwilson4web]

We agree:

And you compare a cheap Korean made car to Luxury Tesla? It’s loke comparing Kia to Mercedes!

What appears to be “one dimensional thinking” where only one single aspect is criticized becomes a common pattern. For example, nickel in the Prius Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) at one time inspired a lot of wasted words about nickel mining in Sudbury Canada. Then Sudbury sued the slander and that silenced the original liars.

Arguing about purchase price with someone who’s second car, 2014 BMW i3-REx, sold originally sold for $53k is singularly a waste of their time. I explain my thinking BUT I don’t waste time when their follow up reveals they don’t understand or choose to revel in their folly. They are sparrows that must be left to God’s will.

Bob Wilson

 

[brulaz]

And you compare a cheap Korean made car to Luxury Tesla? It’s loke comparing Kia to Mercedes!


JT

??? What are you talking about ???
I compared an ICE Kia Kona to a BEV Kia Kona.
And in a later comment I favourably compared a Tesla 3 to a Porsche.
???

While the BEV's lower operating costs may be all that interests Bob W., the overall or lifetime cost of BEVs relative to a similar ICE is an important issue to many of us and clearly impacts the transition from ICE to BEV.

 

[jim]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pb...ric-car-at-night-is-worse-for-the-environment

I came across this artice, published in Scientific American in 2016, and written by David Biello, a credible journalist on the environmental front- with no apparent political axe to grind.

Whether or not the analysis is correct, it seems obvious to me that any truly environmentally positive impact (significantly mitigating climate change) of the shift to EVs must continue to be accompanied by a shift by utilities away from fossil fuels, particularly coal.

In addition, there is the following article, that shows increased EV efficiency and that shifting over time of more of the grid away from coal and other fossil fuels has a significant benefit now and in the future.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner

The case made by the former mentioned piece is actually too general to fully contradict the latter.

I suppose my major point is that the shift to EVs must be accompanied by a shift of the grid away from coal- or whatever benefits result from EVs will not be sufficient to help head off the dangerous impacts of climate change.

Finally, as a secondary point, we may be past that time anyway- so irresponsible has been the behavior, particularly of major coal burning nations such as the US- that major climate destabilization to catastrophic levels is inevitable.

While I know it is not helpful to my own psychology, everytime I see a driver of a gasoline vehicle push hard on their accelerator to gain a few seconds of..what time???- I want to puke. In fact, ignoring that an emergency may dictate a faster speed- in most cases this is an act of violence plain and simple.



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Most of the remarks here don't seem to be on the subject off Charging at night.
I have GRID Tied Solar. We make more than we use.
I always Charge At Night. BECAUSE
There is excess power in the GRID at night.
They can't turn down COAL, Nuclear or even Hydro!
So they dump excess at night.
I send all my Solar to the GRID during the day to help them meet the Peak Demand days.
There is also excess capacity on transmission lines at night so it's the best time to charge.

Some day when we have more Renewable Energy from Solar it might be better to charge Days.
But today we have to work with what we have in the GRID today.
Also a lot of Wind energy comes at night.
TUX Utility in Texas give free power 11 pm -5 AM since they have excess wind at night and no storage yet.

Lucky Utilities are adding storage. They never had any for 100 years.
The Tesla Power Packs are sold by the Mega Watt.

 

[eastpole]

Most of the remarks here don't seem to be on the subject off Charging at night.

There is excess power in the GRID at night.
They can't turn down COAL, Nuclear or even Hydro!
So they dump excess at night.

Good work on your solar PV installation, Jim.

I am just here to point out that the truth of many statements about 'the power grid' depend on where you live and what priorities are currently driving the operation of that regional grid. E.g. here in Ontario, Canada, we used to burn a fair bit of coal. We did, in fact, turn it up and down depending on demand. There was always a bit burning (because of the operational problems with coal-fired plants trying to start from cold), but every day you could watch the coal power totals come from 0.1 GW up into the several GW range during peak, and then back down again as people went to bed. [1]

Also, we have for many years "throttled" hydro in the same way. It seems weird, but if you have a big enough reservoir, or if your waterfall is a major tourism attraction that people like to see *falling*, it turns out you can do it. In fact, at Niagara we even pump water uphill at some times to supply more clean power at other times. [2]

Now that we have ditched coal entirely and have several GW of wind power, the amount of natural gas we burn varies widely with wind and with load. Most of our load variability is driven by weather, so when it's very cold or very hot we burn more natural gas. But in almost every scenario, here in a province of 12 million people, a car charged during the surplus-power hours of 2am-6am is generating very little CO2. Due to our time-of-use metering, it's also very cheap.

Of course this won't be true in Kentucky, but a surprising number of power grids offer base generation (i.e. it'll run all night and day) from hydro (the Pacific Northeast) or from nuclear power (NY, California.)

The original article is careful to point out that the headline conclusion is only true sometimes, in some places. But it is interesting. Unfortunately not enough detail is included to determine whether or not the impressive efficiency of electric motors (and large stationary steam turbines) was taken into account in the comparison with the internal combustion engine, with its wasteful "torque band," waste heat, and expensive mobile mitigation efforts (catalytic converter.)

Cheers, and thanks to the Lowell, the original poster.

tai
[1] http://www.ieso.ca
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Adam_Beck_Hydroelectric_Generating_Stations

 

[interestedinEV]

Let us say in order to meet the increased electricity needs, we have to generate more electricity from both renewable sources and from fossil fuels. Let us say the increase in emissions is X (what every units you want to use) due to more fossil fuel usage. This will reduce emissions from ICEs and let us say that the reduction is Y units. As long as X is smaller than Y, the planet will benefit. Simple, we need to reduce overall emissions, and this might need some increase in emissions due to increased electricity demand as long as there is a larger reduction somewhere else. It is easier to control pollution using scrubbers etc. in a coal fired plant then having thousands of cars emitting smoke in a crowded street. So what is the delta? No one seems to want to talk about that.

The other fact that we often miss is that we need more trees and plants. The deforestation has had an effect on climate change. We need to increase the amount of plants and forests. So there is no one solution, it is a bag of solutions that we need to address.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

I came across this artice, published in Scientific American in 2016, and written by David Biello, a credible journalist on the environmental front- with no apparent political axe to grind.

Yeah, but anyone is capable of making an error of logic and jumping to a conclusion. Even people getting published in Scientific American. Usually the editors there are pretty good at separating the wheat from the chaff, but in this case I think they overlooked a rather large error in reasoning.

Quoting from the article in question:

What time of day the recharging electrons flow form a wall plug into an electric car’s batteries also matters in this calculation. Nighttime is often when the wind blows but it is also when utilities like to run only their coal-fired power plants. A recent study found that an electric car charged by utilities at night in the regional grid that stretches across Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia creates more greenhouse gas pollution...
​

What is missing from this analysis is the difference between "base load" power plants and "on demand" power plants. Base load power plants are run at a fixed output level 24/7, because it's more efficient to run them that way than to crank them up during the day and crank them down at night. Older coal-fired power plants, and nuclear power plants, are typically run as base load power plants.

The fallacy here is assuming that charging an EV at night actually causes some power plant, somewhere, to increase the amount of fuel it consumes or CO2 it emits. This may well not be true. A base load coal-fired plant is gonna be fed the same number of tons of coal per hour regardless of what the current grid demand is. And for nuclear power plants... well, those don't emit any greenhouse gasses in operation, so they are completely irrelevant to the question. (A nit-picker may point out that, technically, the water vapor emitted by a nuclear power plant's cooling towers is a greenhouse gas... but it's not one that contributes to global warming, because it doesn't linger in the atmosphere any longer than the next time it rains.)

A greater percentage of the power fed to the grid at night comes from base load power plants, because there is lower demand at night, and there may well be no more demand than what the base load power plants are providing. If all the power comes from base load power plants, then plugging the EV in won't increase greenhouse gas emissions in the slightest. And even if not all the electricity is being generated by base load power plants, certainly a greater percentage is, and this difference isn't accounted for in this article's analysis.

Furthermore, if an increasing number of EVs being charged at night increases the grid demand above what the base load power plants are providing, the on-demand power plants that are used to make up the slack are likely natural gas fired plants, with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Seems to me this article is so flawed on its most fundamental level that it should be thrown into the dustbin.

 

[interestedinEV]

What is missing from this analysis is the difference between "base load" power plants and "on demand" power plants. Base load power plants are run at a fixed output level 24/7, because it's more efficient to run them that way than to crank them up during the day and crank them down at night. Older coal-fired power plants, and nuclear power plants, are typically run as base load power plants.

The fallacy here is assuming that charging an EV at night actually causes some power plant, somewhere, to increase the amount of fuel it consumes or CO2 it emits. This may well not be true. A base load coal-fired plant is gonna be fed the same number of tons of coal per hour regardless of what the current grid demand is. And for nuclear power plants... well, those don't emit any greenhouse gasses in operation, so they are completely irrelevant to the question.
Furthermore, if an increasing number of EVs being charged at night increases the grid demand above what the base load power plants are providing, the on-demand power plants that are used to make up the slack are likely natural gas fired plants, with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Seems to me this article is so flawed on its most fundamental level that it should be thrown into the dustbin.

I do agree with you, but for the sake of argument, let us assume that the base load goes up and there is an increase in emissions as more people are charging at night. But then you have taken off 1000's of gas guzzlers of the road, which has reduced emissions. So what is the net net of that? Has overall emissions gone down or up? . I am going to hypothesize that there is overall reduction and that is what we need. If I am going to spend $10, but get back $25, then it is a great return. However, if I do not want to spend the $10, I will never get the $25.

Also, you can locate fossil fuel plants away from population centers, so there is greater ability for the emissions to disperse. On the other hand, with ICEs, their concentration of emissions is in more densely packed areas, where emissions disperse less easily. So there are multitude of factors. You can cherry pick one factor and ignore the others, to make your case. That will fool some people all the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time.