Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

Naysayers will tell you that electric cars just shift the pollution from a car’s tailpipe to an electricity-generating power plant’s smokestack, but here again I think the upside far outweighs any downside, and I’ll explain why. There are three reasons you’re not just moving the same pollution to the power plant:

1.         YOU’RE MAKING USE OF OFF-PEAK CHARGING, WHICH IS HIGHLY EFFICIENT AND WHICH CREATES NO NEW POLLUTION. When you’re charging an electric car, you’re making use of an incredible inefficiency that none of the naysayers talk about. Anybody who knows anything about power generation—talk to the people who run Southern California Edison, the Department of Water and Power, Duke Power—will tell you the same thing. All big power plants have excess capacity during off-peak hours that is not being utilized. We’re not talking about a little Honda generator that is shut down at night when there’s less demand. These big power plants run all night—they have to, just given the nature of the way they were constructed, the way they’re maintained, and the way they work. At some power plants, some of the generators can be shut down, but most keep them all running all night.

To deal with this excess capacity, utility companies build shedding facilities. They get rid of the extra power that’s generated at night—since most power plants keep producing power at the same rate 24/7, and since peak usage for electricity occurs in the middle of the day.

So a shedding facility uses up all that extra power at night. In the L.A. area, a shedding facility actually pumps water uphill at night from Lake Castaic to Lake Hughes. They pump water uphill at night! Did you know that? They pump it uphill at night, and then they run it downhill during the day when they need power.

Why do they do this? Because they have these big generators that are running all night that produce wasted electrons. Were they liquid, someone would be literally pouring these wasted electrons down a storm drain.

Utility companies are making lots of electricity that’s wasted. That’s why they’re always asking their customers, “Can you do your laundry at night? Can you vacuum later in the day?” In general, you should try to time as much of your electricity use as you can for off-peak hours. Some appliances can be set to go on later, like your breadmaker. Using power off-peak means you are using power that would otherwise be wasted rather than making the power company make more, and that’s very efficient.

And this is why there’s less pollution from an electric car, even if you’re not charging it on solar. You’re making use of these free electrons, not adding to the energy drain on the power grid during peak hours. Unless you work at an all-night doughnut shop or a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, you’re probably going to be driving during the day and you’ll recharge your car’s battery at night. You may do a little bit of charging during the day, but by and large you’re going to come home and plug in the electric car; that’s off-peak. You’re not causing the utility company to produce more electricity, you’re using what they’re already producing that goes unused.

Now, keep in mind, when we hit a million electric vehicles on the road, that will be a different story. Then we’ll need to get some new solar, wind, geothermal, or other kind of green energy going into the grid to keep all these electric cars charged. But for now, there’s a lot of perfectly good energy going to waste out there. In fact, enough to power up to a million new electric cars—if they were spread out evenly across the country—without creating any new pollution.

2.         IT’S MUCH EASIER TO CONTROL POLLUTION AT ONE POWER PLANT THAN IT IS IN A MILLION TAILPIPES. People monkey around with the emission controls on their cars. They give the guy at the smog-check station some bills and say, “I need to pass this test.” You can’t do that at a power plant. I mean, there are power plants that have tried to do that—to cheat—but they’re in violation and are going to court. It’s much harder to control a million tailpipes than it is one smokestack.

3.         AND ALSO—I SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST—25 PERCENT OF THE GASOLINE CONSUMED BY EVERY CAR OUT THERE IS USED WHEN IT’S NOT EVEN IN MOTION! It’s called idling, and it uses up 25 percent of the gasoline you pump into the tank.

Here’s why. You’re usually not driving across the plains of Nebraska. If you live in a city like L.A., there’s constant stop-and-go traffic. You sit at the stoplight or the stop sign, waiting for people to cross the street. All the while, your car needs gas to keep it humming—even though you’re not going anywhere.

With a hybrid or electric car, the minute you take your foot off the accelerator, you’re using zero amps. Zippo. You may have your air conditioner on or your CD player or your lights, but these use very little power. The big demand on the car—the motor—is using no power when you’re stopped, and that’s a big efficiency.

Convinced?

AN ELECTRIC CAR’S RANGE

Now, I can’t go everywhere with my electric car, for the simple reason that it can only go so far on a single charge. The range of my last electric car, a Toyota RAV4 EV, was 80 miles under average driving conditions. And that was round-trip—unless I had plenty of time and a charger on the other end (because it can take up to 8 hours to charge an electric vehicle’s battery from empty to full).

Practically, I could only go 40 miles each way in that car. That was enough to get me to most places I would normally drive. For example, it’s a 17-mile drive to Los Angeles International Airport. The other end of the Valley, Chatsworth, is also about 17 miles away. Hollywood is just 7 miles away. Downtown