“Electric Cars Are A Go In Ontario”

Finally, the Ontario government had warmed up to the idea of allowing the use of electric cars and plug-in hybrids on our roads. The province will also provide rebates between $4 000 and $10 000. The rebate, which will start on July 1st, 2010, will cover any and all electric cars capable of driving on a (400-series) highway, which excludes Zenn cars, as those are only capable of 50 km/hr.

I think it's a great start.

The 4-10k rebate offer from Daddy Dalton should be for cars only made in Ontario!

This looks a bit more like a subsidy for the Volt than a commitment to energy efficiency. By tying this province to plug-in technology, McGuinty may be freezing development of other ideas. There certainly are people who are uneasy about encouraging the pounding of yet more coal into yet more fossil-fuelled power generating plants out in the unexplored boonies (i.e. west of Royal York Road, north of Victoria Square or east of Scarborough), just so the good folks in Toronto can more easily manage their plug-in cars -- with help from all of Ontario's taxpayers, of course.

Proper1 wrote:There certainly are people who are uneasy about encouraging the pounding of yet more coal into yet more fossil-fuelled power generating plants out in the unexplored boonies

Just curious...

Why do you think that people in Toronto don't share similar concerns about more coal-fired power plants?

Radar Identified wrote:

Just curious...

Why do you think that people in Toronto don't share similar concerns about more coal-fired power plants?

Point taken. It was unfair to swipe everybody in Toronto with the same coal-tar brush. Plug-in electric cars (in Ontario) do essentially run on coal, and they are not, today, of much use outside the province's biggest cities, so I let myself get carried away on my own rhetorical tide. Sorry.

OPG, producer of about 70% of all power in Ontario reports a generating mix of 45% nuclear, 34% hydroelectric and 22% fossil-fuelled electricity.

Also, the fossil power plants are currently operating at 1214 MW generation, while having the capacity of 8177 MW. Therefore they can simply increase production at those, given that nuclear plants are running at almost full capacity.

Another thing is that the electricity generated is dealing with consumption. Most of consumption will stay at around 50% level of generation, with one or two spikes per day going up to 85% of hydro generated.

Why talk about the generation problems before they are even there? There is another nuclear plant in the works, to be completed 2015 . I expect the uptake to be very low, at least for the time being. Even the article says "5% of vehicles by 2020".

Chevy Volt is a plug-in hybrid, therefore it would probably be the 4K rebate cheque. Given that hybrids get 3K rebate, I think it is fair. 10K is for full-electric vehicles.

Proper1 wrote:Point taken. It was unfair to swipe everybody in Toronto with the same coal-tar brush. Plug-in electric cars (in Ontario) do essentially run on coal, and they are not, today, of much use outside the province's biggest cities, so I let myself get carried away on my own rhetorical tide. Sorry.

No need for an apology, Proper1. The possibility of increasing the output of coal-fired plants is a problem, causing more pollution - but I think most people province-wide share that concern, especially in places like Toronto and Windsor where smog days are the norm in the summer (except this summer, weird weather and all). For now, yeah, I'd say electric cars are useless outside of cities. I guess the real question is, how much overall pollution would we be creating or reducing? I think racer also has a good point - most of our base-load is from nuclear reactors. While we still have Nanticoke (yikes), we might have another reactor (or two) on-line before we have to crank up the coal plants.

It is difficult to adjust the output of nuclear plants, so we likely have a lot of excess power at night that just gets grounded (and will have even more in the future as more nuclear plants go on-line). Given that most people will plug-in at night to charge for the morning commute, especially with the new smart meters, I think we'll have quite a few years to update the infrastructure should hybrid/battery technology catch on.

Personally, electric cars are a bit too "girly" - I want explosions to power me forwards.

OPG reports generating 11285 MW of power right now. Electricity consumption is about 40% at nighttime, but let's just say we have 10% of that energy output to power E-cars, over 5 hours. That is 642500 KWh available (check the math Squishy:)), enough to power up 106 000 of Tesla Roadster vehicles (these have 53 KWh batteries). Or 350 000 of 16 KWh batteries in Chevy Volts. Both figures are from 0 to full, which is theoretically impossible.

The question is not whether we have enough hydro, but how many people will actually use the electricity generated that is going to waste right now.

OPG just dropped their output to 11091 MW...

Squishy wrote:Personally, electric cars are a bit too "girly" - I want explosions to power me forwards.

Seriously, Ontario's nuclear debt stands at $38 billion. But it cost close to $60 billion to build the program. Ontario spends mere millions on alternative green energy source research.

The sub-orbital human spaceflight contest (Ansari X Prize) offered $10 million and spurred a new space race. The reward to find Saddam Hussein was $25 million.

Greenpeace estimates the cost of Ontario's new nuke to be $26 billion. Imagine what you could accomplish for that amount of reward money. Somebody would come up with a way to power the province from just a can of beans!

Urine batteries?

Cow Manure --> link.

$1 million investment with a 5 year payback! After that, it makes money for the farmer!