My half-birthday gift to you - energy and the environment

Energy and the environment is not my usual topic.  But I was reading shpilk's recommended diary Small and scalable renewable energy: the New Deal solution Probably not a single one of these ideas is new.  In fact, I am sure most of them have already been written about here.  But sometimes it does not hurt to be reminded of things we in theory already know.

And the half-birthday bit?  Today I am exactly 61.5 years old:  my birthday is May 23.  And if it is truly better to give than receive, then why not offer something, however half-baked and undeveloped the idea might be?

So below the fold is a reworked and expanded version of a comment on posted on the thread of shpilk's diary.  Hope someone finds it useful.

Peace.
I focused on two points in shpilk's diary

1) many people do not have the upfront cash to make changes for local generation but might be willing to do it if the government advanced them the money through low or no interest loans.  This applies to small companies as well as individual homeowners.

2) the capacity of power plants is geared to peak demand

I immedidately realized an implication of the second point: we have a lot of excess capacity not currently being used in off hours.  There is no upfront cost to utilizing this capacity.

Against this, I had to place the following concern:  there are two priciple sources of air pollution:  power generation and vehicle emissions.  So any approach we take to address one cannot INCREASE the pollution caused by the other.  But using what we currently have more efficiently in one might well reduce the overall pollution, right?

This lead to a series of ideas exploding in my brain.  As noted above the fold, I am sure that not a single one of these is original, but sometimes being reminded of what we should already know can be useful. 

Shpilk offered the idea of the government loaning money to small companies and individual homeowners to install local power generation capacity which could be used especially to avoid increasing peak demand (and thus requiring increased overall power generation capacity).  I want to apply this idea to having  small businesses and individuals purchasing either totally electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.  These vehicles would of course need to be recharged at off-hours (usually night). 

Change the rates applied for electricity to vary by time of day to encourage leveling of electric demand.  I would think we now have the capability of easily applying variable rates.  Perhaps we could even encourage hotels/motels to have recharge stations at which personal vehicles could be plugged in and recharged overnight, expanding the range at which an all-electric vehicle could travel or a plug-in hybrid could utilize an all-electric capacity.

Examine how we can expand the idea of time-shifting electric demand.  Begin selling appliances which can similarly run on stored electricity and be recharged at off-hours (also at lower rates).  Subsidize the purchase of these either through tax credits or loans.

As an interim step, develop high-capacity home storage batteries with built-in chargers into which home appliances can be plugged:  think of the advantage of timeshifting the electric use of kitchen appliances, including microwaves, coffee makers, grinders, and the like.

Begin converting local fleet vehicles to all electric or hybrid electric.  The largest single fleet, which could have a huge impact, might be the local delivery vehicles for the U S Postal Service, whose usage could clearly be managed by off-peak recharging.  My guess is that it might be possible to do for some bus fleets as well.  Perhaps some transportation authorities could explore the idea of smaller, lighter and all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.  Perhaps the US Dept of Transportation can fund some pilot projects, including monitoring the difference in air pollutants per passenger mile?

Find a way of rewarding companies that convert their fleets to similar vehicles.  Think for example of local service companies doing home service or delivery:  cable, telephone, UPS, perhaps FedEx, lawn and pool services.  Encourage this by carrot and stick - provide penalties for the purchase of vehicles that are not either all-electric or plug-in electric hybrid.

Explore converting farm equipment from gasoline or diesel power to electric or plug-in hybrid power. 

Find ways of converting current gas-electric hybrid vehicles to plug-ins.  There are kits for the Prius, but I do not know if there are for other hybrid vehicles.  Provide some kind of incentives for manufacturers of current hybrid vehicles to allow continuation of warranties of certified plug-in kits (one problem with the after market kits is that there installation probably voids current warranties.

I am well aware that a substantial amount of our current generation of electricity is from coal, and that a time shift of electric usage will not necessarily solve the air pollution (and destruction done by mountaintop removal) done by the use of coal.  But at least it might mean that we are not further destroying our environment by building MORE coal-powered plants.

And I would think an aggressive pursuit of the kinds of things I have described above might have several other benefits.  Insofar as we could remove home )and some business) uses of electricity from peak demand we might actually be able to retire some older, less-efficient generating capacity.  Perhaps not.

Insofar as we switched from gasoline-powered to electric powered transportation, we not only decrease the pollution caused by those vehicles (especially in stop and go traffic, where the idling gasoline or diesel engine continues to put out pollution but an all electric or hybrid vehicle shuts down), but we might significantly decrease our demand for imported petroleum.  That has serious national security implications, and would also mean the amount of our wealth being shipped overseas could be significantly lowered. 

The development of such technology could also open up new markets for US imports, to other nations whose power and transportation demands are rapidly increasing (for example China and India).  This could positively affect our balance of trade as well as limit the environmental destruction implicit in economic development of such rapidly increasing demands.

There are those here far better capable of addressing these issues than am I.  This diary is the result of one person's mind briefly exploding.  It is not offered in the belief that it is complete, or necessarily even completely accurate.  I post it in the hope that it can provoke a dialog, or perhaps inspire someone who is capable of properly addressing these issue.

It is the present of my half-birthday to you.

Enjoy.

and Peace.

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