I really don’t know what to think about the push for electrification of everything. 🔌

In many ways, electricity is a very elegant way of delivering and managing energy. For one, you can generate electricity a long distance away, ship it down an electrical wire at high voltage and relatively low amperages, and have relatively low losses. Electricity is easily controlled by electronics that drive IGBT transistors to deliver a perfect sine wave for powering virtually anything you would want with relatively low losses. Sounds great.

The question becomes where does all this electricity come from? God doesn’t send electrons bouncing down the wires, instead most power comes from fossil fuels, with a relatively smaller portion coming from nuclear and hydroelectric. Renewables barely make a dent. It’s hard to generate a lot of electricity from renewables when urban demand is so high and renewable energy is not dense or easy to harvest on demand.

Most of the big solar facilities being built these days are for show, they aren’t that big of contributions to the grid. Maybe they’ll scale up – wind is now a noticeable part of the electricity grid at times in New York State but it’s still a pretty minor player.

Despite optimistic predictions, I just don’t see how in a few years the majority of our electricity will come from renewables especially with demand surging as people replace fossil fuel heating with electric heat pumps and gasoline cars with electric vehicles. Existing plants along with additional renewables and natural gas capacity might allow these technologies to be integrated relatively seamlessly into the grid but it’s not going to decarbonize electricity at the same time.

That said, going electric has big advantages. For one it moves pollution out of our homes and our sense urban neighborhoods. Most large power plants are located in remote, rural areas where there high stacks carry pollution away. It’s also vastly more flexible and efficient, at least to motors compared to internal combustion engines. But also it is no guarantee that electrons will be generated from renewable sources.