Will Electric Cars and Solar Power Make Gasoline and Utilities Obsolete?

cartechboy writes "Since the dawn of time (or modern civilization) two things have happened: utility companies have made money by selling us electricity, and oil companies make money by selling us gasoline. But is it possible we are on the verge of upsetting this status quo? Tony Seba, an entrepreneur and lecturer at Standford University, is writing a book in which he essentially predicts electric cars and solar power will make gasoline and utilities obsolete by 2030. How, you might ask? In his book, titled Disrupting Energy: How Silicon Valley Is Making Coal, Nuclear, Oil And Gas Obsolete, he predicts that as people buy electric cars the interest in clean energy will increase because who wouldn't want 'free travel'? Combining the use of solar panels and electric cars, consumers would be able to do just that. The miles electric cars travel on grid energy stored in their batteries eliminates the demand for gasoline, and it turns out many electric-car owners have solar panels on their homes while eliminates or dramatically reduces their dependence on utilities. So as the amount of electric cars on the road increases, the cost of both solar panels electric-car battery packs will decrease, right?"

Comments

Re:cartechboy

[WRSaunders]

I have an electric car, and solar panels. The answer is still no. My electric car is so efficient that it's not the largest component of my electric bill. I have gas cooking, heating, and hot water; and the electric bill is three times the car bill, in December. In the hot summers, the AC can kick the daylights out of the Tesla in terms of power consumption. By the way, electric car travel is NOT FREE. There is significant capital expense, just another way of financing energy usage. My solar panels spread this capital cost over their usage period (I pay an "electric bill" for the solar power I use). It's all just a financing shell game. You can make one number $0, but you can't make them all $0. As folks have said, they want to charge my electric car a "gas tax" to pay for the roads. They even want it to make noise, so kids and folks don't walk in front of it. None of this transportation power shuffling does anything about industrial power consumption. You're not going to like the price of aluminum foil made with solar electricity. High power industries need the high power density low cost power that renewables can't provide.

Re: Uh?

[Immerman]

The Tesla model S has a base battery capacity of 60kWh for a 208 mile range, or 3.46 miles/kWh Each square yard of well positioned budget solar panel generates around 200 Wh/day, weather permitting. A 1000 square foot flat-roof house could support up to 111 solar panels for 22kWh per day - enough to travel about 77 miles. That looks entirely workable for a lot of situations to me, I know a lot of people that don't drive even a quarter of of that on a daily basis.

In less optimal situations where your panels can't keep up with your driving and home habits, you could still be reducing your power bill. In fact that might be an even better situation - Solar in the US will typically pay for itself in 5 years regardless of system size, unless you have really cheap electricity or a poor climate for it. Excess power generation though typically goes to waste - your batteries can't store it and you usually don't get a rebate on grid tied systems, and that means the system takes longer to pay for itself.