Plug-in Hybrids and the Grid – or you gotta love it when a plan comes together.

What will power the car of the future?  Hydrogen?  Biodiesel?  Batteries?  No one knows – yet.

I kind of like that.  Life, as we all know, is not a guided tour.  The unfolding is half the fun.  How dull to know in advance how everything would turn out.’

Here’s an irony; the future car may come from GM of all places.  Heaven knows the American auto industry of the past few decades has been the opposite of clairvoyant when strategizing the big picture.  But there is a really good idea on the way.  It is a plug-in hybrid called the Chevy Volt.  It will go 40 miles without using any gasoline at all.  They picked 40 because most people drive that many miles or less on most days. 

When I first heard about plug in hybrids, I thought immediately about the source of the electricity (the grid.)  Wouldn’t all that extra electricity going into cars cause grid overload?  Wouldn’t we just be adding to the CO2 problem?

The answer is no!  And here’s why.  As soon as I tell you this, you’re going to think “oh yeah, I hadn’t thought about that”.  So here goes:  If power companies had their dreams come true, their plants would run at a steady pace all day and all night producing a perfectly smooth stream of electricity with no fluctuations.

How are things really for the power company?  The opposite of their dream.  The need for electricity is much higher during the day, with spikes in demand all the time.  Think about this for a moment – somehow the power company has to perfectly match the output of its power plants with the demand of the moment.  Collectively, we take it for granted that when we turn the switch on, the juice will be there to make “it” run – whatever “it” is.  But for the guys who make sure that happens, every day is like a high wire juggling act.  Then at night, everyone goes to bed and the demand for power plummets – which means power plants have to be partially shut down. 

Now here comes the big piece of the puzzle.  When would hybrids be plugged in?  For the most part – at night!  Increase the load at night (by plugging in your handy hybrid for instance) and power plants can avoid the wasteful shut down – rev up cycle.  It is far more efficient to keep the plants running 24/7.  The grid (which btw, refers to everything that brings power from the big plants to all of us who need it) needs a serious face lift to keep up with the changes coming in the new energy reality.  The good news is that plug-in hybrids would make far more efficient use of the grid we have now.  Could easily be that future cars will run on biofuels made from garbage and wood chips (more on that later.)  But for the here and now, plug-in hybrids can be a great bridge from here to the future.

And about that carbon footprint thing?  Here’s the good news:  If you take electricity from a big power plant and put it in a battery to run a car, you create less CO2 than if you burned gas to cover those same miles.  Surprised?  Me too!  The DoE (Department of Energy) says if we converted three quarters of our fleet to plug in hybrid, we’d cut our CO2 emissions by 27%.  And that is with the grid in its current high carbon configuration.  If the entire grid was low carbon like California’s, we’d cut down emissions by 40%.

Wow!