Future of Electric Load


The following link is to a WSJ article regarding Elon Musk’s view of the future electric load and the available generation to support it. 

Musk is warning that there will be insufficient generation to support the coming loads.  Where I differ with Musk is that he wants to run existing generation 24/7/365 and store it in batteries.

The existing 35% efficient gas turbines or coal plants have a delivered energy efficiency of about 28% to the vehicle charger.  If you charge an 80% efficient EV from that, the net energy efficiency is 22.4%, or about the same as an internal combustion engine.  If you lose an additional 20% of the energy because of battery storage, the net efficiency drops to 18% but Musk sells a bunch of cars and batteries and becomes even wealthier while everyone else spends a bunch of money for no net benefit.

However, if you replace the existing gas generation with enough 55% efficient combined cycle generating plants so that you don’t need batteries, then in addition to it costing a fraction of the price, the delivered efficiency is about 48% to the charger.  An 80% efficient EV will have a net efficiency of about 38%, or about 16% higher than the Internal combustion vehicles and use 42% less energy overall (=1- 22/38) than the internal combustion engines.

Regardless, we are going to need far more generation than what the state is planning for and the state certainly doesn’t have the trillions of dollars that would be required to execute Musk’s plan as he lays it out.