- Where will the hybrid fleet get its energy? by
- Politics & Energy | 9:26 a.m. | Thu 13 Dec 2007
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Many of the UK’s power stations are ageing and will need to be replaced in the next 10 years. But if we set ourselves the goal of making every car on the road a hybrid, we’d have accommodate new electrical loads of 25 million large battery-chargers. This would require either three more fossil-fuel power stations like Drax in North Yorkshire; six new nuclear plants like Heysham in Lancashire; or 10,000 wind turbines.
The easy option for the government would be to build more power stations fuelled by oil, gas or coal. But this would not fulfil the potential of a hybrid fleet, since there is no point generating electricity from fossil-fuels and transmitting it across the country through the national grid, only to put it through a battery charger and into the battery of an electric vehicle. One might as well just burn petrol or diesel in the car.
Natural gas produces rather less CO2 than oil, but the UK is already concerned about security of supply when most of our gas comes from Russia and its eastern neighbours.
Coal is more plentiful, but coal-fired power stations produce far more CO2 than other fossil fuels. It is theoretically possible to capture the CO2 using a chemical process before the fuel is burned (the creation of so-called "clean coal"), or by extracting it from power station exhaust fumes. However, these techniques have so far only been demonstrated at 1/1000th scale, and to build a fleet of power stations using such technology would, at present, be a formidable challenge.
Nuclear power is therefore at the core of the government’s energy strategy. However, plans to build new reactors are facing major resistance from the public and special-interest groups, over worries about proliferation and long-term waste policy.
The final option, renewable energy, is in principle the ideal solution. But, so far, it accounts for only a few per cent of the UK’s electricity generating capacity, and there is no point using it for road vehicles if, to provide electricity for homes and businesses, we then have to burn more coal or gas.
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What is the point of replacing nuclear power with wind when this won't save any carbon? Clearly if we are going to make a huge investment in wind, we should also allow a huge investment to replace our nuclear powerstations. We need wind, but we also need nuclear power. It is not practical to expect the grid to cope with more than about 20% of our electricity coming from intermittent sources. Compared to fossil fuel, nuclear power is incredibly safe and non-polluting. Compared to renewables it is cheap too.
Micro-generation is a complete red-herring. It is more efficient to build large-scale farms of renewable generators in optimal locations than it is to place small turbines and solar PV locally. Yes, you save on transmission loss if the generator is local, but this only accounts for about an 8% loss. In contrast if the windspeed locally averages 8m/s instead of 10m/s then your electricity production drops by 50%. Small is useless.
Micro CHP makes a little more sense, but how much of this would be powered by biomass? Realistically CHP is going to be gas-powered, which means CO2 emissions and lack of security of supply.
The whole decentralised generation idea is only pushed by the likes of Greenpeace because they think that it would exclude nuclear power. In reality, nuclear powerstations could be used for CHP generation, as is the case in Switzerland.
Roger's original point is that if we are going to move towards electricity for transport then our overall electricity production is going to have to increase, even if overall energy use is reduced. If we are going to do this without carbon, in the medium term (and probably log term) this will mean a combination of massive investment in large-scale renewables and nuclear.
Most charging of plugin hybrids will be done at non-peak times. We probably should have some safeguards that prevent car charging producing excessive strain on the grid at unsuitable times.
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