A few days after I wrote part one of these blogs, Chevy came out with an estimated cost of the Volt, and my frugal Midwestern farm girl inner voice cried “Holy capped carburetors! Seriously?”
The Volt will come in at around $40,000, making it about $33,000 after the government credit. (The Nissan Leaf starts at $33,000 before the tax credit.)
A lot of people I talked to about this---for I was a bit surprised that a car the size of my right tennis shoe would cost $40,000---made valid points about it being expensive to research and develop and such. And, again, I realize that my growing-up-Heidi upbringing might have me leaning a bit cheap on most purchases. (I recently refused to buy a belt because I thought a utilitarian strap to hold up my low-riders should not be more expensive than $30 unless it is inlaid in some sort of semi-precious stone.) But, still, who’s going to buy an electric car that costs like a sports car without the sex factor?
And, really, $40,000 is the base model, before bells and whistles, and it’s the MSRP. When’s the last time you bought a car at the MSRP?
I’ve got to say, I’m still on the fence about this electric car thing, overall. I want to be persuaded. I know I can be persuaded. Heck, General Mills cereal persuades me constantly with its shiny cereal advertising, but I’m still a bit stuck on this whole cost/benefit analysis thing. The cereal has it easy: it’s cheap and tasty and convenient. Triple bonus. The Volt has it hard. I admit that. I’m a tough sell.
It reminds me of the time I looked into solar panels for my house. $20,000 for something that would need about ten years to recoup the costs but would probably have to be replaced in five---and that was if it survived a good Oklahoma hail storm.
Man, it is expensive to save the world. Unlike Al Gore---whom I like, by the way---I just cannot afford it.
But, back to the Volt. I currently drive a Kia. It cost $20,000. That’s half the price of the Volt and about the same price I could have paid for those solar panels, although the panels couldn’t drive my bad self to work. The Kia gets pretty decent gas mileage, doesn’t cost a lot in repairs and is reliable. Plus, no limit on those miles beforehand.
So, would I pay twice the cost of my current vehicle to save the world? Not right now. In the future? Maybe---really---but there’s a catch: You have to prove to me it’s going to make a difference, this large and expensive Earth purchase.
I always have the same thought with electric cars, and it centers around hype. I can get used to the inconveniences (remembering to schedule charging on down time, looking for a charging station if out and about, thinking more about a car than I’m used to), and I can even get used to the price. I had similar sticker shock when CDs began to rule over cassettes when I was a music fiend in high school.
But, I’m having trouble with the logic, with the end result.
See, I live in the Midwest where use of fossil fuels is pretty prevalent in electricity production. So, while I’d be personally polluting less with an electric car, have I not simply shifted that pollution footprint to a power company? Am I making a real dramatic difference, or is it just a slight of hand? And, is it possible that shifting the pollution footprint to a power company could make that footprint an even larger one, in the long run?
Renewables are a growing force in the power arena, but they are still hovering at 3-4% of overall power production. That means 96-97% is non-renewable. OK, so 20% is nuclear. It doesn’t pollute---at least, not in a “puffy clouds in the sky” way. So, that kicks it down to 76-77%. We’ll be generous and say 75%.
So, if 75% of power production is still the carbon-emitting kind, am I making a difference buying an electric car? And, will I feel like a schmuck for spending twice as much to get no real results on the global warming front?
It’s something to ponder. What are your thoughts?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sharing the Smart Grid in Bits and Bytes
I don’t care what your momma told you, sharing sucks. I share a driveway. (My house was built in the 1920s before the great auto explosion in American culture.) I’m always courteous---painfully aware of keeping the driveway access open for the consideration of those people right next door. My neighbors, however, are not courteous. They take over. They hog. They plant their little rubber car feet in the driveway in multiples I cannot begin to describe---nor can I begin to describe how it irks me.
For two years, I’ve been overly nice and they’ve been overly nasty. After a particularly bad incident a couple of weeks ago involving a tan Malibu that blocked me in the drive for nearly two days, I stopped being so nice. Now, I wasn’t overly nasty, either. I didn’t block them in. I wasn’t quite that childish. Childish wasn’t going to help, even if I really, really, really wanted to be childish at the time. But, I did park in an area of the drive that was a bit “in the way” for them---just to give them a taste of what I’ve been dealing with daily for two years.
In less than 10 days, they were at my door to ‘talk’ about the drive and access---because it finally became a personal problem, an issue for them. They didn’t suddenly get the hint that they were being jerks. Nah. They never will. I had simply figured out that, to get even close to a compromise, I had to make it about them, specifically. I had to get them emotionally involved, make it impact their own daily lives.
I think Duke Energy learned a similar lesson about their smart grid Indiana plan: make it personal, make it impact the individual, and show them how it can benefit all to talk more about it. Forget greater good, energy efficiency and development for renewables. Target individual desires.
Duke’s Indiana plan for the smart grid was breathtaking---an over-arcing, 800,000-meter proposal that was a real beauty in its coverage, a showstopper. There would be a meter in just about every house and every business in all of the 69 counties Duke served in Indiana. A multi-pronged, five-year blueprint worthy of the Chrysler Building, really, Duke’s Indiana plan had all the bells and whistles a smart grid could ask for.
Duke packaged it up nicely, neatly and went along to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with the $450 million proposal. The Commission stopped the show literally. They denied the proposal. They weren’t impressed by the scope and breadth. They weren’t impressed by the technology. As a group in place to buffer costs and watch out for the consumer, they didn’t look at the beauty of the plan; they wanted to know, specifically, how that plan was going to impact them and their neighbors and the people they represent.
When they didn’t find the information they wanted, they said, “No way. Try again.”
That was last November. And it appears that Duke has learned my driveway lesson. (I always assumed the neighbors would want to be courteous to me the way I was courteous to them. Duke assumed that the regulatory commission would, to an extent, take their word about benefits with the plan. We both learned a painful lesson on trust and concessions. In the end, benefits to the individual must be laid out, spelled out, colored in and made directly, perfectly, crystal clear.)
This week, Duke returns to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with a new proposal---one that’s significantly smaller and involves a bit of lag time. Duke wants to put in about 40,000 meters and then read the data for a year, hoping to put together a good, solid argument at the end of that year for those regulators---hoping to show, in real numbers, those benefits to the individual.
We often assume---as individuals and as corporations---that a situation will be seen from our own point of view. Alas, in many cases, personal and corporate “blinkers” and “blinders” keep us from seeing anything but what falls directly into our own paths.
This psychology may need to be applied to the smart grid more often. Rather than the big picture approach, we may have to drive the path to a fully-realized smart grid in easier-to-digest, individual portions. To teach society to share, we might need to appeal to the self-centered individual preferences in all of us.
For two years, I’ve been overly nice and they’ve been overly nasty. After a particularly bad incident a couple of weeks ago involving a tan Malibu that blocked me in the drive for nearly two days, I stopped being so nice. Now, I wasn’t overly nasty, either. I didn’t block them in. I wasn’t quite that childish. Childish wasn’t going to help, even if I really, really, really wanted to be childish at the time. But, I did park in an area of the drive that was a bit “in the way” for them---just to give them a taste of what I’ve been dealing with daily for two years.
In less than 10 days, they were at my door to ‘talk’ about the drive and access---because it finally became a personal problem, an issue for them. They didn’t suddenly get the hint that they were being jerks. Nah. They never will. I had simply figured out that, to get even close to a compromise, I had to make it about them, specifically. I had to get them emotionally involved, make it impact their own daily lives.
I think Duke Energy learned a similar lesson about their smart grid Indiana plan: make it personal, make it impact the individual, and show them how it can benefit all to talk more about it. Forget greater good, energy efficiency and development for renewables. Target individual desires.
Duke’s Indiana plan for the smart grid was breathtaking---an over-arcing, 800,000-meter proposal that was a real beauty in its coverage, a showstopper. There would be a meter in just about every house and every business in all of the 69 counties Duke served in Indiana. A multi-pronged, five-year blueprint worthy of the Chrysler Building, really, Duke’s Indiana plan had all the bells and whistles a smart grid could ask for.
Duke packaged it up nicely, neatly and went along to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with the $450 million proposal. The Commission stopped the show literally. They denied the proposal. They weren’t impressed by the scope and breadth. They weren’t impressed by the technology. As a group in place to buffer costs and watch out for the consumer, they didn’t look at the beauty of the plan; they wanted to know, specifically, how that plan was going to impact them and their neighbors and the people they represent.
When they didn’t find the information they wanted, they said, “No way. Try again.”
That was last November. And it appears that Duke has learned my driveway lesson. (I always assumed the neighbors would want to be courteous to me the way I was courteous to them. Duke assumed that the regulatory commission would, to an extent, take their word about benefits with the plan. We both learned a painful lesson on trust and concessions. In the end, benefits to the individual must be laid out, spelled out, colored in and made directly, perfectly, crystal clear.)
This week, Duke returns to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with a new proposal---one that’s significantly smaller and involves a bit of lag time. Duke wants to put in about 40,000 meters and then read the data for a year, hoping to put together a good, solid argument at the end of that year for those regulators---hoping to show, in real numbers, those benefits to the individual.
We often assume---as individuals and as corporations---that a situation will be seen from our own point of view. Alas, in many cases, personal and corporate “blinkers” and “blinders” keep us from seeing anything but what falls directly into our own paths.
This psychology may need to be applied to the smart grid more often. Rather than the big picture approach, we may have to drive the path to a fully-realized smart grid in easier-to-digest, individual portions. To teach society to share, we might need to appeal to the self-centered individual preferences in all of us.
Monday, July 19, 2010
How Practical Are Electric Cars?
Last week, the Department of Energy released a new report on electric cars, sort of. It wasn’t so much about the cars, really, as it was about how the money the Recovery Act poured into electric car technology has done.
According to the report, that money has been spent wisely. In part, the report reads:
Investments in batteries alone, for example, should help lower the cost of some electric car batteries by nearly 70 percent before the end of 2015. What’s more, thanks in part to these investments, U.S. factories will be able to produce batteries and components to support up to 500,000 electric-drive vehicles annually by 2015. Overall, these investments will create tens of thousands of American jobs.
Batteries, chargers, components, tax credits, and even loans to car companies are among the vast array of investments under the Obama plan to kick start the electric vehicle boom. But, will this electric vehicle future actually arrive? Is this a fruition-filled, overarching plan of infrastructure brilliance like Eisenhower’s interstate highways, or an oddity that will plainly fizzle out like Bush’s hydrogen economy?
There’s little doubt of the facts: The money invested has created some movement, as any money invested would. If you give a man money and tell him he has to build X or he doesn’t get it, he’ll get up off his keister and build X faster than anything. So, 26 of 30 manufacturing plants have broken ground and started construction on new facilities or began updating old ones. Eight demo projects are up---if not actually running---with a projected outcome of 13,000 more electric vehicles plugged in and 20,000 more charging stations available, both public and private.
The most interesting bit of investment might be the green being funneled into research projects on batteries. Today’s lithium-ion EV batteries are restrictive and problematic. If that storage technology can be updated, leading to cheaper batteries and longer driving range, then, absolutely, electric vehicles are on their way to integration---potentially as fast as they can slap together charging stations atop or aside gas stations. (The same can be said for renewables getting a larger chunk of generation if they can clean up storage issues.)
But, if that tech doesn’t come to a fabulous breakthrough soon, electric vehicles’ lack of practicality may relegate it to that discard pile teetering atop the junked hydrogen economy.
Want to read the report? Click here.
According to the report, that money has been spent wisely. In part, the report reads:
Investments in batteries alone, for example, should help lower the cost of some electric car batteries by nearly 70 percent before the end of 2015. What’s more, thanks in part to these investments, U.S. factories will be able to produce batteries and components to support up to 500,000 electric-drive vehicles annually by 2015. Overall, these investments will create tens of thousands of American jobs.
Batteries, chargers, components, tax credits, and even loans to car companies are among the vast array of investments under the Obama plan to kick start the electric vehicle boom. But, will this electric vehicle future actually arrive? Is this a fruition-filled, overarching plan of infrastructure brilliance like Eisenhower’s interstate highways, or an oddity that will plainly fizzle out like Bush’s hydrogen economy?
There’s little doubt of the facts: The money invested has created some movement, as any money invested would. If you give a man money and tell him he has to build X or he doesn’t get it, he’ll get up off his keister and build X faster than anything. So, 26 of 30 manufacturing plants have broken ground and started construction on new facilities or began updating old ones. Eight demo projects are up---if not actually running---with a projected outcome of 13,000 more electric vehicles plugged in and 20,000 more charging stations available, both public and private.
The most interesting bit of investment might be the green being funneled into research projects on batteries. Today’s lithium-ion EV batteries are restrictive and problematic. If that storage technology can be updated, leading to cheaper batteries and longer driving range, then, absolutely, electric vehicles are on their way to integration---potentially as fast as they can slap together charging stations atop or aside gas stations. (The same can be said for renewables getting a larger chunk of generation if they can clean up storage issues.)
But, if that tech doesn’t come to a fabulous breakthrough soon, electric vehicles’ lack of practicality may relegate it to that discard pile teetering atop the junked hydrogen economy.
Want to read the report? Click here.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Obama, the Smart Grid and Idealist Ideology
Obama and I have a couple of things in common.
One: We were both born during a Chinese cycle of the ox---although he was born the cycle before I was. So, we have that going for us if we need to make small talk at some imaginary state dinner that I can script in my head. But, secondly, we both seem to be a tad too pragmatic in a time of idealists. And idealists, whether red, white or blue, seem to truly abhor pragmatists---abhor to the point of verbal stone-throwing, really, although Obama gets it way worse than I ever will.
The idealist far left is angry at Obama that he hasn’t made gay marriage legal, stopped the wars, freed all the Gitmo detainees and tapped out the BP oil leak with his burning laser-eyed superpowers. The idealist far right is angry that he tried to stimulate the economy more because economists think that’s a darn tootin’ good idea, wants to continue to help the poor and unemployed, and hasn’t freed corporations from the regulation slavery that’s bringing down the true American spirit of Capitalism.
Instead, Obama seems genuinely focused on trying to make progress on laws, bills, war fronts and economic changes---on political details, if you will. Whether or not you see those details as fitting into your particular ideal for this country, it’s obvious the man is more about connections and thinking than he is about emotions and praying, despite that campaign based on hope. That’s pragmatism.
But, unfortunately for Obama, pragmatism isn’t really an American ideal these days, if the comments section on CNN’s Belief Blog or the responses to the BBC’s Mark Mardell (a British reporter discussing life in America, as he once discussed life in Europe) are any indication. We are an angry bunch of idealists, as a national whole. We are fighting amongst ourselves, loudly. We call the other side “stupid” and “evil.” We have left “live and let live” and “let’s talk about this calmly” behind and have, instead, picked up “if I yell at you long enough, you will see all how wrong you’ve been your whole darn life.” We’ve adopting rather polarizing mantras.
Reports on the smart grid have often followed this same blind idealist climb to the summit over the last few years since the term has become household-known. You either believe the smart grid will save the industry, or you think it’s a bunch of hooey. You either love it, or you hate it. And, there’s not a gray area. And, if you’re in the wrong room, you may be cornered by a mob trying to change those beliefs. (Last year, I wrote two articles for POWERGRID International titled “Will Smart Grid Take Over the World?” That title was a play on this concept of growing smart grid idealism.)
But, back in reality, there is a gray area in the smart grid---and a lot of it, for us pragmatists in that mobbed-up room. The smart grid (more than Obama, CNN or the BBC’s Mardell) lends itself to a lot of gray areas, a lot of pragmatism, a lot of maybes. The technology involved in the smart grid may not be the “end all, be all” of a technological savior, but it is an improvement for a system that, in many cases, hasn’t seen much improvement in half a century.
And, on the other end, there is a lot of hype, a lot of expectations that may not come to fruition. Should we really be looking at solar installations and wind installations and sinking money hand over fist down the renewables road when the smart grid, alone, cannot possibly overcome the limitations of intermittency? Personally, as a pragmatist, I’d look first toward solving energy storage before I’d be sketching out plans for a multi-country, offshore grid infrastructure, as Friends of the Supergrid are working on. However, that spending isn’t money wasted if it brings us to a better system and a better end---albeit, perhaps a roundabout one. And, yay for them for finding a positive “button” to stimulate some funding.
Americans tend to feel strongly about everything from presidents to Pepsi, from couches to Congress. In many cases, that makes us fascinating. However, in entrenching ourselves in personal ideals without a willingness to find that gray area, meet there and see if we like it, we often prevent real technological progress and any actual development, instead miring ourselves down, holding ourselves back.
The smart grid needs fewer zealots and more pragmatists---according to this particular pragmatist, at least. No, the smart grid is not the electric messiah, but it’s also not the devil himself. It’s not everything we need for the next generation; it’s not a ridiculous waste of funding. Now that all those waving flags are out of the way, let’s meet and think---as Pooh said, “Think, think, think, think.”---about what the smart grid really is, can really bring to the table and what its limitations are. And, let’s do so honestly. It’s time to step out from behind ideals and spiels and truly come to terms with what can be accomplished with smart grid technology and, realistically, what cannot.
To the idealist industry left, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to allow you to plug in various solar panels, a personal wind turbine and your PHEV with the ease of plugging in your hair dryer. But, it’s not. On the plus side, it will help you manage appliances and energy. To the idealist industry right, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to infuse mountains of capital into the industry to the point that you could swim in it and then use the leftover cash for a towel. But, it’s not. After initial stimulus funding, you will still have to convince the fearful to overcome the hump of investing in the relative unknown of the future---oh, that pesky unknown future. On the plus side, that pragmatist Obama has opened that investment door a crack and helped you get your foot into it. Now, wiggle. Wiggle what your momma gave you and work that gray area.
Cuz, that gray area is all you’re gonna get.
One: We were both born during a Chinese cycle of the ox---although he was born the cycle before I was. So, we have that going for us if we need to make small talk at some imaginary state dinner that I can script in my head. But, secondly, we both seem to be a tad too pragmatic in a time of idealists. And idealists, whether red, white or blue, seem to truly abhor pragmatists---abhor to the point of verbal stone-throwing, really, although Obama gets it way worse than I ever will.
The idealist far left is angry at Obama that he hasn’t made gay marriage legal, stopped the wars, freed all the Gitmo detainees and tapped out the BP oil leak with his burning laser-eyed superpowers. The idealist far right is angry that he tried to stimulate the economy more because economists think that’s a darn tootin’ good idea, wants to continue to help the poor and unemployed, and hasn’t freed corporations from the regulation slavery that’s bringing down the true American spirit of Capitalism.
Instead, Obama seems genuinely focused on trying to make progress on laws, bills, war fronts and economic changes---on political details, if you will. Whether or not you see those details as fitting into your particular ideal for this country, it’s obvious the man is more about connections and thinking than he is about emotions and praying, despite that campaign based on hope. That’s pragmatism.
But, unfortunately for Obama, pragmatism isn’t really an American ideal these days, if the comments section on CNN’s Belief Blog or the responses to the BBC’s Mark Mardell (a British reporter discussing life in America, as he once discussed life in Europe) are any indication. We are an angry bunch of idealists, as a national whole. We are fighting amongst ourselves, loudly. We call the other side “stupid” and “evil.” We have left “live and let live” and “let’s talk about this calmly” behind and have, instead, picked up “if I yell at you long enough, you will see all how wrong you’ve been your whole darn life.” We’ve adopting rather polarizing mantras.
Reports on the smart grid have often followed this same blind idealist climb to the summit over the last few years since the term has become household-known. You either believe the smart grid will save the industry, or you think it’s a bunch of hooey. You either love it, or you hate it. And, there’s not a gray area. And, if you’re in the wrong room, you may be cornered by a mob trying to change those beliefs. (Last year, I wrote two articles for POWERGRID International titled “Will Smart Grid Take Over the World?” That title was a play on this concept of growing smart grid idealism.)
But, back in reality, there is a gray area in the smart grid---and a lot of it, for us pragmatists in that mobbed-up room. The smart grid (more than Obama, CNN or the BBC’s Mardell) lends itself to a lot of gray areas, a lot of pragmatism, a lot of maybes. The technology involved in the smart grid may not be the “end all, be all” of a technological savior, but it is an improvement for a system that, in many cases, hasn’t seen much improvement in half a century.
And, on the other end, there is a lot of hype, a lot of expectations that may not come to fruition. Should we really be looking at solar installations and wind installations and sinking money hand over fist down the renewables road when the smart grid, alone, cannot possibly overcome the limitations of intermittency? Personally, as a pragmatist, I’d look first toward solving energy storage before I’d be sketching out plans for a multi-country, offshore grid infrastructure, as Friends of the Supergrid are working on. However, that spending isn’t money wasted if it brings us to a better system and a better end---albeit, perhaps a roundabout one. And, yay for them for finding a positive “button” to stimulate some funding.
Americans tend to feel strongly about everything from presidents to Pepsi, from couches to Congress. In many cases, that makes us fascinating. However, in entrenching ourselves in personal ideals without a willingness to find that gray area, meet there and see if we like it, we often prevent real technological progress and any actual development, instead miring ourselves down, holding ourselves back.
The smart grid needs fewer zealots and more pragmatists---according to this particular pragmatist, at least. No, the smart grid is not the electric messiah, but it’s also not the devil himself. It’s not everything we need for the next generation; it’s not a ridiculous waste of funding. Now that all those waving flags are out of the way, let’s meet and think---as Pooh said, “Think, think, think, think.”---about what the smart grid really is, can really bring to the table and what its limitations are. And, let’s do so honestly. It’s time to step out from behind ideals and spiels and truly come to terms with what can be accomplished with smart grid technology and, realistically, what cannot.
To the idealist industry left, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to allow you to plug in various solar panels, a personal wind turbine and your PHEV with the ease of plugging in your hair dryer. But, it’s not. On the plus side, it will help you manage appliances and energy. To the idealist industry right, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to infuse mountains of capital into the industry to the point that you could swim in it and then use the leftover cash for a towel. But, it’s not. After initial stimulus funding, you will still have to convince the fearful to overcome the hump of investing in the relative unknown of the future---oh, that pesky unknown future. On the plus side, that pragmatist Obama has opened that investment door a crack and helped you get your foot into it. Now, wiggle. Wiggle what your momma gave you and work that gray area.
Cuz, that gray area is all you’re gonna get.
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