How secure would a national smart grid be?
Forget storm outages, what about cybersecurity?It's 2020. Now, imagine a 90 square mile patch of solar panels in the desert of the SouthWest powering all of America via a super grid. Now imagine plug-in vehicles throughout America powering up via clean, green solar power. No oil. No dirty coal. Just clean, green solar energy.
Sounds great, right?
Right up until some cyberterrorist shuts the grid down for a couple of weeks and you can't power your home or your electric car. Good thing I'll be driving a plug-in hybrid, and living in a home with solar panels (hopefully)!
All kidding aside, the recent cyberterrorist scouting of the current electric grid is a reminder that the plug-in revolution isn't without obstacles, perhaps massive obstacles which might significantly increase the costs of electric power.
Certainly, we should continue to move forward with national smart grid plans and solar farms, but more effort in the short-to-midterm, in my opinion, should also be focused on small battery plug-in hybrids - versus large battery vehicles - and more distributed energy, especially regarding home solar and wind solutions.
Labels: electric cars, plug-in hybrid vehicles
posted by Dahcredyns at
2:32 PM
6 Comments:
Definitely with you on the merits of distributed power production Dahch. That can really be a game changer by implementing it by both power source (wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, coal) and power plant size (i.e. individual, neighborhood, and regional).
And yes I definitely think a plug-in hybrid is the way to go as we transition off of a carbon-based economy. Still, I am all for the folks that want to reach all the way for "big-battery" plug-in hybrids or all electric vehicles.
Distributed, I think, provides more bang for the buck in the short term.
I'm definitely not against the large battery vehicles, I just think that smaller battery plug-ins are probably more consumer-friendly for the masses.
In fact, I'd really like to see a tax credit for all lithium hybrids. Push Toyota into a lithium Prius, or Ford into a lithium Fusion. Help them make the transition, as long as they buy cells produced in America, or at least packaged in America.
Knowing that Toyota could guarantee a contract with a US company for enough cells for 200,000 hybrids per year, minimally, helps guarantee year-on-year demand for startups, etc.
More important, all these lithium hybrids could easily be converted into plug-in hybrids once lithium costs come down further. American battery companies like A123Systems have already proven that.
Add a tax credit for that conversion and you have another need for further lithium supply chain development.
I think sometimes you have to walk before you run, but once you start walking running isn't that far away. We have to find to find our pace, but we have to get a good walk going first.
There's been talk about using PHEV's as a back up power source for homes in case of a black out.
But I like the idea of back up power plants in homes using portable methanol fuel cell power plants.
in blackouts, it'd be nice to have any kind of battery backup.
still, my concern is the cyberterrorism that such a smart grid could face. already this possibility is being explored and tested by many outside the US.
if such an attack were successful, battery back up might not help much.
still, that's a worst case scenario. what is probably more likely is a never-ending and ever-increasing counter cyberterrorism program that could greatly increase the expense of electric power.
of course, perhaps consumers wouldn't pay at these costs at the meter. instead, these would be hidden military taxes.
plug-ins are way over-rated. california is thinking about banning large screen tvs because the grid is almost out of juice, yet we're to believe a few million plug-ins won't have any adverse affects?
the plug-in movement is just a power grab by utilities.
i read about that as well, but i don't think it means plug-ins are over-rated, it just means there are issues to be resolved.
furthermore, i think it supports the need for distributed power in the short term.
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