Chinese Economics Thread

[AndrewS]

On the electricity supply side regarding Wind and Solar.

Transmission and storage are legitimate issues, but if we have millions of battery powered cars which only charge themselves when there is surplus electricity, that is half the problem solved.

That will kill gas power plants first, then coal afterwards.

Solar and wind is now the same price or cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity in more than 30 countries, the WEF reported in December (pdf). As prices for solar and wind power continue their precipitous fall, two-thirds of all nations will reach the point known as “grid parity” within a few years, even without subsidies.
...
Solar is projected to fall to half the price of electricity from coal or natural gas within a decade or two. That milestone has already been reached in some locales. In August, energy firm Solarpack contracted to sell solar electricity in Chile at just

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, 58% below prices from a new natural gas plant.

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Global solar costs set to fall 59% by 2025: IRENA

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) from solar power plants could fall by 59% by 2025, to an average 6 cents/kWh, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said in a report published June 15.

PV module prices have fallen 80% since 2009 and module prices drop 20% with every doubling of cumulative installed capacity, IRENA said

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[AndrewS]

On the policy side, we can see Europe, China and India all phasing out combustion engine vehicles in favour of electric cars.

These countries represent the majority of global automobile demand now, and in the future.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s aggressive push to electrify all new vehicles by 2030 is compelling auto part manufacturers and carmakers to draw up early plans for electrification, company executives said.

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China will set a deadline for automakers to end sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, becoming the biggest market to do so in a move that will accelerate the push into the electric car market led by companies including BYD Co. and BAIC Motor Corp.

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,

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,

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and Norway all want to completely ditch gas and diesel cars in favor of cleaner vehicles.

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[broadsword]

I can't believe we have to deal someone's half-baked delusions.

 

[AndrewS]

On the cost/demand side:

1. Battery costs are a huge proportion of the overall car costs. They have decreased by 5x from 2011-2016. Furthermore, improvements in materials, design, production and electronics means costs are still going down.

Tesla (and presumably the Chinese battery companies) expect to half the cost of batteries to $100/kwh in the 2016-2020 timeframe. At that level, electric cars will have a lower cost of ownership than combustion engine cars in the USA. But cost-parity will come sooner in China due to the nature of its densely populated cities which means shorter journeys that require smaller and cheaper batteries.

2. China is looking at 1 in 8 vehicle sales being electric by 2020, which would mean at least 4million vehicles per year. And if the cost of electric cars is cheaper than combustion engine cars, the market for electric cars will see explosive growth. China would be producing at least 32 million automobiles every year, which would be around 3 in 10 of all car sales in the world. And after a few years, this will decimate demand for oil, so it's no wonder that Exxon is in denial.

Under the proposed quotas, electric and hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles would have to make up 8 percent of each automaker's output next year, 10 percent in 2019 and 12 percent in 2020. Automakers that fail to meet their target could buy credits from competitors that have a surplus.

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3. China is setting up a comprehensive car charging infrastructure now, in anticipation of an electric car future. Remember that there are only 100,000 petrol filling stations in China.

A comprehensive electric vehicle powering grid will be rolled out in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

China plans to build 800,000 charging points, including 100,000 public ones, for electric vehicles this year to meet increasing demand, the National Energy Administration announced on Thursday.

A total of 100,000 public charging points were installed nationally last year (2016), a tenfold increase on the total for 2015, bringing the total number of public charging points in China to 150,000, it said.

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[vesicles]

Has anyone compared central A/C (not the flimsy window units) vs charging a car battery? Not sure which one takes up more juice...

If the current electric grid can support millions of A/C units running at the same time 24/7 especially in the summer (most two-story houses in Texas have two full central A/C units, one for downstairs and one for upstairs), charging a few cars doesn't seem to be a huge burden... my guess though...

 

[SamuraiBlue]

Has anyone compared central A/C (not the flimsy window units) vs charging a car battery? Not sure which one takes up more juice...

If the current electric grid can support millions of A/C units running at the same time 24/7 especially in the summer (most two-story houses in Texas have two full central A/C units, one for downstairs and one for upstairs), charging a few cars doesn't seem to be a huge burden... my guess though...

Around 3.5kW

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But that is not the point you add on the EV power consumption amount on top of the ACs since people are not going to select between turning on the AC OR recharging the EV, most people will want both.

Here is the chart for charging time and the required power.

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[vesicles]

Around 3.5kW

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But that is not the point you add on the EV power consumption amount on top of the ACs since people are not going to select between turning on the AC OR recharging the EV, most people will want both.

Here is the chart for charging time and the required power.

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I'll admit that I'm not an electrical engineer. Based on why I can understand, the power value that you gave me is for every 3 hours. The website you cited has a calculator for estimating how much power I need. In a Texas summer, our central A/C is typically on half of time. So that's 12 hours a day. That would be ~42 kWh a day.

On the Wiki page for charging electric cars, the chart for charging time and power shows that if you charge your car at night using lower power settings, you would only use 3.3 kw of power. That's less than an A/C.

The capacity of currently available car batteries is between 20kwh and 80kwh. So at most, it's like two A/C units. It's a lot but doable. Some of my friends have 3 full central A/C units in their houses. It doesn't seem to cause any issues at all. They had full power even during hurricane Harvey, a disaster that's once in every 80 year event.

The most common car batteries seem to be the 20kwh type. I would think that's the kind that most people can afford anyway. That's half of an A/C. It would be like breeze for most people.

No electric company will run their grids at max capacity. Adding a few more electric devices equivalent to a central A/C should be perfectly fine. Plus, if no one uses gas any more, the fossil fuel left would be used to generate more electricity to support the increase in demand when there are more electric cars. In fact, that is the main drawback of electric cars. You are not saving energy. It's simply a difference between using fossil fuel in your own car vs. using the same amount of fossil fuel in electric generators of electric companies. Nothing saved.

 

[AndrewS]

I'll admit that I'm not an electrical engineer. Based on why I can understand, the power value that you gave me is for every 3 hours. The website you cited has a calculator for estimating how much power I need. In a Texas summer, our central A/C is typically on half of time. So that's 12 hours a day. That would be ~42 kWh a day.

On the Wiki page for charging electric cars, the chart for charging time and power shows that if you charge your car at night using lower power settings, you would only use 3.3 kw of power. That's less than an A/C.

The capacity of currently available car batteries is between 20kwh and 80kwh. So at most, it's like two A/C units. It's a lot but doable. Some of my friends have 3 full central A/C units in their houses. It doesn't seem to cause any issues at all. They had full power even during hurricane Harvey, a disaster that's once in every 80 year event.

The most common car batteries seem to be the 20kwh type. I would think that's the kind that most people can afford anyway. That's half of an A/C. It would be like breeze for most people.

No electric company will run their grids at max capacity. Adding a few more electric devices equivalent to a central A/C should be perfectly fine. Plus, if no one uses gas any more, the fossil fuel left would be used to generate more electricity to support the increase in demand when there are more electric cars. In fact, that is the main drawback of electric cars. You are not saving energy. It's simply a difference between using fossil fuel in your own car vs. using the same amount of fossil fuel in electric generators of electric companies. Nothing saved.

Except that solar and wind power are set to produce lower cost electricity than coal or gas

 

[PiSigma]

Except that solar and wind power are set to produce lower cost electricity than coal or gas

Didn't someone just say solar and wind are surge power generation? So how much solar is going to be available at night if there isn't much storage capacity? Need to spend money on that storage first. And wind doesn't necessarily blow during times people are charging their car. So have to depend on coal/nuclear to charge car, so that EV is still coal powered.

 

[Quickie]

I'll admit that I'm not an electrical engineer. Based on why I can understand, the power value that you gave me is for every 3 hours. The website you cited has a calculator for estimating how much power I need. In a Texas summer, our central A/C is typically on half of time. So that's 12 hours a day. That would be ~42 kWh a day.

On the Wiki page for charging electric cars, the chart for charging time and power shows that if you charge your car at night using lower power settings, you would only use 3.3 kw of power. That's less than an A/C.

The capacity of currently available car batteries is between 20kwh and 80kwh. So at most, it's like two A/C units. It's a lot but doable. Some of my friends have 3 full central A/C units in their houses. It doesn't seem to cause any issues at all. They had full power even during hurricane Harvey, a disaster that's once in every 80 year event.

The most common car batteries seem to be the 20kwh type. I would think that's the kind that most people can afford anyway. That's half of an A/C. It would be like breeze for most people.

No electric company will run their grids at max capacity. Adding a few more electric devices equivalent to a central A/C should be perfectly fine. Plus, if no one uses gas any more, the fossil fuel left would be used to generate more electricity to support the increase in demand when there are more electric cars. In fact, that is the main drawback of electric cars. You are not saving energy. It's simply a difference between using fossil fuel in your own car vs. using the same amount of fossil fuel in electric generators of electric companies. Nothing saved.

The charging rate is independent of the electricity storage capacity. The charging station, especially if it's a home based one, will limit itself to a maximum power that it can draw. This is for safety reason since most power points in a house can only supply a max power of anywhere from 3KW to a few KW higher (for air-cons). The charging station, as an example, could be plug into 2 high power points for a total of 10KW.

In fact, that is the main drawback of electric cars. You are not saving energy. It's simply a difference between using fossil fuel in your own car vs. using the same amount of fossil fuel in electric generators of electric companies. Nothing saved.

Whether it will safe energy will depend on how efficient the energy conversion is at the electricity generation plant.

A higher energy conversion efficiency (from fossil fuel to electricity) of let's say 40% over that of the fuel engine of lets say 20% will provide an opportunity for energy saving, depending on how much energy is lost in the electricity transmission and how efficient is the energy conversion of the electric car, which should be much better than that of a fossil fuel engine powered car.