Hmmmmmm. Where were we? Ah yes! We were discussing whether my gushing over electric vehicles was excessive, considering that all it would take is a power-outage to leave EVs incapable of recharging. Right, that sounds unpleasant.
Okay, let’s dispense with something first. I agree that, as an EV owner, I’m stuck in that situation. It turns out that electric vehicles do in fact need electricity. I can’t make my Nissan Leaf run on candy and rainbows, despite my best efforts.
But here’s the thing – gasoline vehicles are in the same boat. Think about it. When you need to fill up your gas-powered car, you pull up at a gas station pump that is powered by…wait for it…electricity.
Sure, gas-powered vehicles currently have a longer range than electric vehicles. In my opinion though, an extra two or three hundred miles of range isn’t worth that much. At least my Leaf only needs electricity to work, rather than gasoline and electricity, so I still think of gasoline cars as the riskier vehicle.
Okay, now that I got that out of the way, let’s move on to a bigger point – what would happen if a major city suffered a long-term power outage?
As I’ve just written, practically none of our automotives would be able to refuel, effectively crippling transportation capabilities and commercial activities. Lost revenue for the city would add up in a hurry. Further, people wouldn’t be able to heat and cool their homes, which could be a big problem in the winter or summer. Even more serious, food would spoil in our refrigerators and at our stores, threatening the entire city with starvation.
Granted, our local utilities aren’t going to just stop producing electricity. But the risk is still there, especially from a national security standpoint. If enemies of the United States wanted to bring a big city to its knees, the obvious target would be that city’s electricity generation facilities.
So what’s the answer? What model will ensure my electric vehicle can always recharge and, more importantly, my city won’t be thrust into chaos? I present “distributed generation” for your consideration.
Here’s the basic idea: instead of a small number of power plants providing a lot of people and businesses with power, we can instead use a large number of small-scale electricity generators, each providing a small number of local users with power. As the link above shows, a wide range of technologies can be used, including diesel generators, wind turbines, photovoltaics and batteries.
If you’re curious to learn more, take a look here and here. I’ll conclude with my prediction for our distributed generation future.
Sooner rather than later, technological gains in solar panel efficiency, battery storage capacity, and energy efficiency will allow nearly every community to generate all of its electricity needs from rooftops and community spaces. At that point, we will have a stable, secure, low risk, low carbon and low cost energy model.
What will it take? Investment. Rebuilding our electricity infrastructure won’t be cheap, but it will be worthwhile, and a lot of that investment is happening now. I believe this future is remarkably close all things considered, and it will be a good future.
And when it arrives, electric vehicles will be no-brainers. We won’t need cars powered by gasoline (or candy and rainbows, for that matter) because we’ll have the most reliable electricity generation system ever created.
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