Record Winter Energy Use
On Monday Feb 5th, 13 midwest states set a daily record for winter energy use at 119,206 megawatts as supplied by PJM Interconnection. These numbers are very similar to the peak energy use in summer months, with the idea being more electricity is used in heating homes, and at night. The highest prior day of use came in 2005.
So not only are we seeing energy grid demand increasing in the summer months due to air conditioner use, but also in the winter months.
Now lets add to this scenario 1 million plus Volts (or similar PHEVs) sucking from the grid every night. Yes we may initially save money at the pump, but that power has to come from somewhere.
This will increase demand dramatically, which will lead to supply shortages, increased prices, and increased greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
We must be careful about shifting energy use as opposed to eliminating it, and not be lulled into a false sense of complacency.
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5 Responses to “Record Winter Energy Use”
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February 7th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Good reason to start building nuclear power plants now. If France can supply 75% of their power from nuclear power so can we!
February 7th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Thats one solution, only problem is what to do with the spent rods?
February 7th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Spent fuel cells is more of a problem than control rods but the bottom line is, we have to store them until we figure out a better solution. The good news is that while the radioactive decay may last for many thousands of years, most likely we will have the means to safely transport then in to the sun or some other such solution well within the next 100 years or so. Determining a way to safely store them for the 100 to a 1000 years until then is not a very difficult engineering problem. Storing them for the lifetime of the radioactive decay would be a hard problem, but them that should not be necessary.
February 12th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
The idea of charging a portion of the transportation fleet from the electricity grid is a sound concept for most developed nations. The US has a respectable mix of coal, nuclear, natural gas, oil, hydro and wind. During the evening hours, many of these resource (about 1/3) are turned off to meet the reduction in demand. Charging a portion of the vehicle fleet at that time will defer our use of gasoline to that of the national electricity mix. The present grid can support about 20-30% of the transportation needs of the US without too much strain. I believe 50% to be a stretch goal given the latest analysis from the National Labs and some power system folks.
This “night time” charging will flatten the power consumption profile and it would make the grid more welcoming of “base loaded” sources like nuclear (rather than adding more CNG peaking units).
April 4th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I would like to see our utility companies get “smarter”. They should charge more for power used at peak times, and less for power used when peak is low. There is no reason why a car couldn’t be smart enough to charge itself between 1am and 5am, if that was the time that I could get the best rate on electricity.