Bus Megathread

[neonjoe]

Actually Ontario has no more coal plants. They’ve all been replaced by renewables and gas plants over 10 years ago. It’s one of the least talked about most meaningful improvements in air quality in the province. We’ve gone from multiple smog days a year to typically none. For people like me who live with asthma it was a huge improvement in daily life. (It’s also one of the few ways in which the Netherlands is worse)

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly

As of 6:00pm, May 7, the Ontario electricity mix is:
- 31.4% hydroelectric
- 0.84% solar
- 7.4% wind
- 51.3% nuclear
- 9.1% gas

At the same point in time:-
- 6.6% is being exported to Quebec
- 3.6% is being exported to the US midwest
- 7.7% is being exported to New York

If you swap the brown for blue and green for red on the electricity map you essentially get the vote split of the last election.

[tomh009]

They could turn off the gas plants (and US exports) and we'd have near-zero CO2 from electrical power generation.

[plam]

They could turn off the gas plants (and US exports) and we'd have near-zero CO2 from electrical power generation.

Usually one worries about peak demand and off-peak renewables generation, hence needs batteries, but I suspect that hydro should be able to play that role, with dams etc.

[danbrotherston]

They could turn off the gas plants (and US exports) and we'd have near-zero CO2 from electrical power generation.

Usually one worries about peak demand and off-peak renewables generation, hence needs batteries, but I suspect that hydro should be able to play that role, with dams etc.

I mean, "pumped hydro storage" is a form of battery storage.

But if we don't actually need to pump, we would only have excess power to deal with, which is a problem we want to have.

[tomh009]

They could turn off the gas plants (and US exports) and we'd have near-zero CO2 from electrical power generation.

Usually one worries about peak demand and off-peak renewables generation, hence needs batteries, but I suspect that hydro should be able to play that role, with dams etc.

The natural gas plants are really for those peaks.

[danbrotherston]

Usually one worries about peak demand and off-peak renewables generation, hence needs batteries, but I suspect that hydro should be able to play that role, with dams etc.

The natural gas plants are really for those peaks.

They are, but I think the point is that they need not be so, since hydro can act as a peak plant.

But that isn't how the Ontario grid works today.

[Rainrider22]

Actually, for every Kilo Watt Hour of electricity produced by renewables. (Wind or Solar), we require the same amount of production in the form of "instant on" to cover when the solar and wind aren't working (which is quite often). The best performing instant source is natural gas. That is why you have seen so many built in the past. Milton, Brampton etc. They keep them close to use to point of consumption to reduce transmission costs.

[danbrotherston]

Actually, for every Kilo Watt Hour of electricity produced by renewables. (Wind or Solar), we require the same amount of production in the form of "instant on" to cover when the solar and wind aren't working (which is quite often).  The best performing instant source is natural gas.  That is why you have seen so many built in the past.  Milton, Brampton etc. They keep them close to use to point of consumption to reduce transmission costs.

Some misconceptions here....

First, no, you don't need every renewable generator to provided like for like with an "instant on" generator. Because while the wind might not blow on any particular windmill, rarely on planet earth does all the wind stop everywhere all at once. The point of having a distributed grid is that if the wind isn't blowing in Texas, solar farms in Arizona can pickup the load, for example.

Second, you can manage load instead of just supply. Instead of assuming that every electrical load can be turned on at every moment all the time, you can reduce loads in time of low production. This is easiest to do for large scale consumers (a smelting plant could turn their smelter off at times of low production in return for a lower price on power), but also possible at smaller scale (we already do this---your power is cheaper at different times to encourage you to use less of it at times when power is harder to generate) and there are even more advanced options, your EV could be programmed to supply the grid with power at times of low production and to charge at times of high production.

Third, natural gas, isn't the "best performing instant source" it's merely the one that is most frequently used. Hydro is just as capable of being turned on and off, and in fact, is used in hydro pumped storage for exactly this purpose. Hydro is better because for gas plants to be "instant on" the must be kept hot, which requires energy, but hydro doesn't require that. And of course by far the best form of "peak" storage is actually grid scale battery storage, which is actually instant on, unlike all the others, and also can store excess power during times of excess renewable production.

Yes the point of Ontario building these gas peaker plants is to provide instant on replacement for some enough of the renewable generation in order to stabilize the grid, but that was only done because it was the most convenient option, not because it was the best. That was the whole point of the discussion we had about hydro, that it can be used instead of gas, since Ontario has hydro in abundance and it is a renewable source itself. There are a large number of options for maintaining a stable grid with renewables and there is no one simple answer, it depends on the resources and strengths of each individual location.

Also, you mean kilowatts, not kilowatt-hours.

[plam]

Actually, for every Kilo Watt Hour of electricity produced by renewables. (Wind or Solar), we require the same amount of production in the form of "instant on" to cover when the solar and wind aren't working (which is quite often).  The best performing instant source is natural gas.  That is why you have seen so many built in the past.  Milton, Brampton etc. They keep them close to use to point of consumption to reduce transmission costs.

Third, natural gas, isn't the "best performing instant source" it's merely the one that is most frequently used. Hydro is just as capable of being turned on and off, and in fact, is used in hydro pumped storage for exactly this purpose. Hydro is better because for gas plants to be "instant on" the must be kept hot, which requires energy, but hydro doesn't require that. And of course by far the best form of "peak" storage is actually grid scale battery storage, which is actually instant on, unlike all the others, and also can store excess power during times of excess renewable production.

I think there is an extraordinary amount of pro-fossil-fuel propaganda which is, well, not factual. Fossil gas is bad. We literally can't afford more fossil gas. As you say, we have hydro, which already is instant on. We can have batteries. We can reduce demand. Even my smart thermostat can help reduce demand (though I'm keen to get it off the fossil gas heater and onto a heat pump).

[ac3r]

The bigger issue is that electric vehicles are just objectively bad. Plus now that liberals see Elon Musk as Hitler 3.0, where does North America turn to for massive quantities of EVs given that the traditional automobile companies haven't gone all in on those yet, rightfully so? I guess there is Chinese e-waste like BYD and they even have North American operations, but nobody really wants to by driving communist vehicles. If Musk triggers people so bad for being a goofball that they burn cars down and smash infrastructure, pivoting to Chinese EVs seems just as silly, even though we already get so much stuff from China.

[tomh009]

Plus now that liberals see Elon Musk as Hitler 3.0, where does North America turn to for massive quantities of EVs given that the traditional automobile companies haven't gone all in on those yet, rightfully so?

Lots of EVs available both from new EV companies and from established car manufacturers. In Europe, Tesla's market share is only about 10%, and Chinese manufacturers have a minimal market share there.

[ac3r]

There are a lot of "starup" EV companies yes, but EVs are just awful overall which is what I mean by rightfully so. If EVs were any good, then that would be reflected in the successes of startups and existing companies EV sales but that's not the case. The technology sucks, the infrastructure sucks, their carbon neutrality sucks (varies depending on location, but we all breath the same air), their performance sucks and so on. They are objectively awful. Their use is growing for sure, but a lot of that may just be the result of clowns that glue themselves to roads adopting them.

Until the technology is further progressed, there's really no reason to be attempting to make these en masse because it's a waste of resources and money to design, create, use and then dispose of. Some EVs do make sense depending on their context and should be promoted, but it's stupid and reckless to just push them upon people over an ideology or to meet some stupid abstract goal set by some small circle of elites.

Surprisingly, even Waterloo Region had the sense to scrap its stupid EV bus pilot because...yeah...EVs are awful.

[tomh009]

Until the technology is further progressed, there's really no reason to be attempting to make these en masse because it's a waste of resources and money to design, create, use and then dispose of. Some EVs do make sense depending on their context and should be promoted, but it's stupid and reckless to just push them upon people over an ideology or to meet some stupid abstract goal set by some small circle of elites.

Surprisingly, even Waterloo Region had the sense to scrap its stupid EV bus pilot because...yeah...EVs are awful.

Ultimately "pushing" does not and will not increase EV adoption. The people that are buying EVs are buying them by choice, because they feel EVs are the best choice for them, just like the people who buy F-150 Super Duty trucks as daily drivers.

The bus use case is very different from a private vehicle, as the bus is on the road more or less continuously, with little opportunity for charging during that time. Conflating this use case with private cars doesn't really make sense.

[danbrotherston]

Until the technology is further progressed, there's really no reason to be attempting to make these en masse because it's a waste of resources and money to design, create, use and then dispose of. Some EVs do make sense depending on their context and should be promoted, but it's stupid and reckless to just push them upon people over an ideology or to meet some stupid abstract goal set by some small circle of elites.

Surprisingly, even Waterloo Region had the sense to scrap its stupid EV bus pilot because...yeah...EVs are awful.

Ultimately "pushing" does not and will not increase EV adoption. The people that are buying EVs are buying them by choice, because they feel EVs are the best choice for them, just like the people who buy F-150 Super Duty trucks as daily drivers.

The bus use case is very different from a private vehicle, as the bus is on the road more or less continuously, with little opportunity for charging during that time. Conflating this use case with private cars doesn't really make sense.

Define “pushing” Tom? The vast vast majority of people buying Ford F150 pickups are doing so because some advertising executives at ford and dodge have successfully convinced them an unnecessarily large vehicle matches their self identity. It has nothing to do with rational choice, and it absolutely is being “pushed”. The same is true for EVs except that in most cases the choice is less irrational than buying an oversized pickup truck.

[ac3r]

The CyberTruck is definitely a great vehicle that rational people purchase.