France wants to ban petrol and diesel. Should New Zealand?

The global company for which I work is looking at electric cars as the big future market. Should NZ be at the forefront? I have driven the Toyota Prius which is about 98% electric .. it charges itself, but needs a small amount of petrol to just get it started. It performs really really well, you wouldn't know it wasn't petrol. So .. whether we ban petrol and diesel, the electric revolution will be upon us soon. And we will need an alternative transport. Perhaps the way to go is to encourage the alternatives? (The greens may have a policy on this)

Green Policy

wow that is an amazing and interesting document Tane! OK so I skimmed it until I got to the nuts and bolts on page 45 ... thanks for that!

OK. France has a lot of nuclear power stations. We don't. To supply the power we would need large scale generation.

In 2017 we have roughly 3754916 vehicles so I am going to round that up to 4,000,000.

Each vehicle uses roughly 3-4 MWh/yr at current tech levels.

4,000,000 x 4 = 16,000,000 MWh/yr or 16000 GWh/yr

Manapouri creates 4800 GWh/yr so we would need another two and a bit Manapouri's to make up for the shortfall. That isn't going to work......

Solar generation in New Zealand has started to double each year so perhaps that might be able to make up the shortfall. It stood at 32.6 GWh/yr in 2015 and assuming continued doubling each year would meet the shortfall by 2024.

(My estimates are a little flaky so someone should check my logic/numbers)

Based on the above I would say if we are to achieve it in an ecologically stable way we would need to;

• Continue the doubling of solar.
• All homes should have a solar and battery system that connects to a smart grid in order to spread the load.
• Battery tech for home storage should be based on Salt Water batteries. Currently the only eco stable battery.
• Massively upgrade the power system.
• Swap Manapouri off Tewai Smelter and onto the grid (600 mil from memory).

At a rough guess we could do it by 2025 if we really had to.

France has a lot of nuclear power stations.

That's really not going to help them. They already use all that power.

To supply the power we would need large scale generation.

Yes, if we only consider personal cars. On the other hand, if we focussed on getting our public transport electrified first we wouldn't need anywhere near as much.

Personally, I think we should be doing all our roads with these solar roads. Considering how many roads we have we'd probably get more than enough generation from them.

I like the idea but a lot of money will need to be spent on infrastructure.

The vehicles will need to be recharged in public spaces.

An example of this would be supermarket car parks. The car parks would need to be underground cabled to each parking location with a vehicle charger at that location. Then there is the car parking buildings.

There will need to be recharge stations to replace the petrol stations that are located between our cities and towns with waiting facilities for families to entertain themselves while their vehicle recharges.

Just quickly skimmed the Green Policy. Man I would love to have the time available to me to develop reports to that depth.

I like the idea but a lot of money will need to be spent on infrastructure.

Not an issue.

In other words, a currency-issuing government can always absorb any outstanding liabilities (public debt) if it chooses, and, effectively, never have to repay the obligation.

It can do that by purchasing these liabilities in secondary bond markets, and then just ignoring the maturity obligations, and with the stroke of a computer keyboard set the value to 0.

Alternatively, it is obvious that such a government is never in danger of defaulting on any outstanding liabilities which remain in the non-government sector until maturity and presentation for repayment.

Alternatively, what this clearly demonstrates, is that such a government never has to issue debt in the first place.

And if we use all our own resources we don't even need international trade.

And, as I said to Tane, if we focus on public transport then the infrastructure build is less to achieve the same end.

Like most things we talk about here, this a little more complicated than it seems on the surface.

If I was to suggest a lot of power for sustaining the current ideas around infrastructure. It would be geothermal l, because we have tons of it, no nuclear needed. I'll fire some links in a future post, but have to address the real issue with solar here:

The centralised Grid is part (most?) of the problem.

PhotoVoltaic (PV aka Solar Panels) are problematic for grid power. It wouldn't work if we were 100% PV with batteries for example.

Grid power is much like a lake of water. When we use power it starts to drain. Then power generation fills the lake up as we drain it. To take this analogy further, the lake (transmission networks) then flows into smaller ponds that are the substations (distribution networks) your more familiar with, and that's how the homes and business drain from. We all have hoses leaking energy out past energy meters to then pay for the power bills. You can't actually say that my power was generated at A or B power plant (sorry powershop). What you can say is you used X power and I want to replace that power with Y generated power (woo thanks poweshop) filling up the lake with power you used.

Keeping that lake filled and working is the transmission and generation problem. PV (Solar) is temperamental and works ONLY when the sun is out. The quality of power provided to the grid is really all over the place and makes the quality of that power really hard to maintain. In the US they're making a new market (actually been for a while) around voltage to help incentivise the power QUALITY (V) over QUANTITY (W) which favours predictable generators who can fill the lake fast with predictable stability.

I know this sounds like I support dirty power, and I don't, this is just the reality of power generation on centralised grids. Grids are part of the problem. They don't scale well with costs. Side note: we have some of the best maintained power in the world btw those guys are awesome.

Micro grids/micro generation. If we have home batteries and PV then we can offset charging our cars. That is dealing with localised power outside of the grid.

Problem with this is it can't be maintained when there is no sun so people need big expensive batteries for doing this.

A hybrid solution could be to generate power in communities with street batteries and PV and wind, topped up or supplying the grid when needed. And that's micro generation. Solving the issue of charging cars/offsetting the energy increase, with smaller community investments that are much cheaper solutions compared with work done on the grid.

If people have less reliance (less draining the lake, less water being generated back in) how does the cost of grid power stay low? As less people need grid power the cost to maintain the lake level won't drop at the same rate. Meaning people who can't have micro generation are left with paying more for grid that is less utilised.

I'll do a follow up on things with links.

My thoughts.
John

You're making the mistake of thinking that the sun goes out all over the place during the day when it doesn't. You're also assuming that we'd only use solar when we already have so much hydro, wind and geothermal.

To do renewables properly requires using all of them and probably having some sort battery system. During the day with the sun out we'd wouldn't be using the hydro lakes. In fact, if they're low we may consider pumping back into them from down stream (that would be dependent upon how much could be taken from the rivers while keeping them healthy). At night we could then draw on the hydro lakes essentially using them as a battery.

With the correct blend of renewables and storage we could easily get smooth power provision.

BTW, there's a limit to geothermal as well and that comes down to maintaining ground water.

As less people need grid power the cost to maintain the lake level won't drop at the same rate. Meaning people who can't have micro generation are left with paying more for grid that is less utilised.

And that is why we need to turn power back into a government service. We'd have it so that each account holder got a block of power to use free and anything above that they had to pay for. Power infrastructure would be paid for by everyone through taxes.

@John Grant

The big problem I see with your proposal is that we use a centralised grid at all. If we were all allowed to use our own solar or wind or water etc power we would be self sufficient and not at all reliant on government for power itself. I believe that at the moment if you are self sufficient with power you are still charged? I am not sure I just heard that somewhere ... it might be in a different country, it might be in the thought process ... but I would not like to go that way.

On ENERGY itself I think we can be incentivised to be independent, rather than DEpendent.

I worked for Mighty River Power for a short time and learned about how power was uploaded to the grid. It is done like a currency trader, the power company SELLS to the grid when the price is right, then it sends a message to the appropriate power station (eg one of the ones on the Waikato) to release some water (which empties it's reservoir but sends it to the reservoir of the next station on the river .. ) to provide the power.

Solar and wind, you are right, they are not so reliable but they are viable (just look at all the wind farms we have now).

And I agree with Colin, power is saved in batteries.

@Colin England

Correct, there is a limit to geothermal, not to mention its effect on our Tourism industry!

I would rather a policy on our waterways .. back to basics .. actually ... (just saying)