The Gulf Spill: Addiction Reaction

The reaction to the Gulf spill shows how addicted to oil we are. Although people are universally horrified, they react by trying to think of ways to more safely perpetuate oil drilling and the like.

Underneath this is a basic absence of commitment to solar and wind (and presumably electric transport). It used to be that people dismissed solar and wind as just too expensive, but wind has already shown that being cost-effective is not enough.

I believe the problem is the perception of solar and wind variability. At heart, people just do not believe we are saving many kWh by using solar and wind. I think in their hearts they fear that for every kWh of variable generation, something like that amount is being used to keep demand met – as spinning reserve, as something that is run inefficiently as back up during gaps.

I believe if we could rigorously make the statement that at various regional penetration rates, solar/wind offset a range of kWh per each kWh (say 90%, 70%, whatever it is), the case for solar and wind could be made more successfully. And I mean this without storage. Let’s find out how high the penetration rate has to get to require storage, given modern smart, responsive, well-designed grids.

I bet we could do away with gasoline for all light duty vehicles before we hit the limit (assuming we had electric transport). Remember, we only need about a third as much solar and wind electricity to do away with primary energy from oil to propel our vehicles. We need only 3.4 quads of electricity to replace 17 quads of oil used for moving all our light duty vehicles.

Normally people don’t notice this difference because they assume coal will be burned to make the electricity, which gets you back to almost 17 quads. But NO! we use solar and wind, where the electricity is the starting resource. Actually, the huge efficiency loss between oil and gasoline, about 80%, is often used against solar and wind, because oilmen make a big deal about how hard it is too replace oil. Sure, and it’s harder because they waste 80% of it (i.e., there is 5 times more energy drilled than moves your car). The huge amount of primary oil energy drilled becomes one more reason to stay paralyzed by the challenge.

3.4 quads of electricity is about 1000 TWh of electricity, which is only about 25% of today’s electricity. If added to our current demand, it would mean a 20% penetration of solar and wind, about what people feel very comfortable predicting as acceptable without making grid back-up for variability unwieldy.

Ken Zweibel