By Paul Homewood
While we are talking about demands on the grid from EVs, it is worth looking back to Lord Oxburgh’s report to the Secretary of State in 2016 on decarbonising heat.
This was what he found:
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To summarise:
1) Even with much better insulation, maximum heating demand would amount to 200 GW, four times the maximum demand for electricity
2) On top of this would come additional load from EVs.
3) There would be issues with grid stability if we went the heat pump route. Heat pumps in any event are not a practical solution for existing housing stock.
4) Even with extra wind power, there would need to be a significant amount of dispatchable generation from either CCGTs and/or small nuclear reactors.
5) There is currently no known cost-effective form of inter-month storage available at the scale required to meet these demands
6) Electrification of heating would involve an enormous increase in generating capacity to meet winter demand, but this would be of little use for the rest of the year.
7) The only alternative would be hydrogen, which is ridiculously expensive, wasteful, and crucially still needs CCS to mitigate emissions.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 3, 2020 at 05:06AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 