When you have a problem, there usually is no shortage of well-meant advice. When it emerged that power shortage is the biggest problem of the quake- and tsunami-stricken Japanese auto industry, or the Japanese industry as whole, good advice came pouring in. It ranged from “why don’t they just park an aircraft carrier by the dock” to “what’s wrong with using generators?” What’s wrong with them?
Apart from the fact that until yesterday, it was against the law to fire up a big generator outside a factory in Japan, and apart from the fact that generator makers are in the same quandary, with empty warehouses, and factories waiting for parts, there simply are no generators big enough to feed the industry’s appetite for power
To get an idea of how much power a car factory needs, I called on my old contacts at Volkswagen. Those iconic four smokestacks of the Wolfsburg factory are no factory smokestacks. They are the smokestacks of a coal burning power plant. They built that first. No power, no cars. Then, tucked away in the back of the Volkswagen factory is another, more modern power plant. Volkswagen Wolfsburg calls two power plants their own. I asked about the size of these plants. Volkswagen sent me a handy link to a website. When I opened it, my jaw dropped. Both plants produce electricity and heat. The combined output of both plants together is 1,375 Megawatt (MW).
What is the capacity of Fukushima Dai-ichi? Again, there is a handy website. According to Power-Technology.com, the combined output of all 6 reactor blocks is — 4.9 MW. Excuse me? Wikipedia to the rescue: It’s 4.7 Gigawatt, or 4,700 Megawatt, a simple three digit error. Which illustrates how hard it is to get decent information. Shades of microsievert and millisievert.
From Wikipedia, we learn that the Fukushima reactor blocks have an output between 460 and 1,100 MW. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call it 780 MW each. Volkswagen would need two of the nukes, with a little spare capacity to keep the lights on for the good folks in Wolfsburg, or to sell it up the grid.
Granted, as car factories go, Wolfsburg is a big one, the biggest in the world. Fukushima is was no slouch either. Again according to Wikipedia, Fukushima is “one of the 15 largest nuclear power stations in the world.” This exercise is simply meant to illustrate the magnitude of the problem, not to determine the capacity of each substation. By now it has become clear that to power a car factory, you need more than a few Honda gensets. Even if Toyota, Honda, Nissan would put nukes in their backyards (they will not), there still are Tier 1 suppliers. And Tier 2 suppliers. And Tier 3 suppliers.
You want an easy answer?
Its a mess that will haunt the industry for years.
Other than that, there are no easy answers.
Well, lack of power is crippling for so many things, not just the car industry.
This is one of the reasons I advocate the direct and heavy subsidy of consumer-purchased solar power (both SPV and solar heat/hot water) and wind-powered electrical generation. It’s not just to combat global warming; power and heat or cooling that you can count on for at least a few hours per day is also an important Civil Defense tool. It would be very hard for a natural disaster or a terrorist group to shut down a highly distributed power supply. Could you live perfectly normally without baseload power availability? Probably not. However, in a crisis, could you live more comfortably and more safely with some reliable locally generated power for several hours per day? Absolutely.
A diversity of sources is also important. Wind (it’s always windy somewhere), solar (it gets light every day) and all the traditional sources can each play a role. It would also help to smarten up the grid to manage load-shedding and other power-management tasks dynamically, according to the amount of power available. Why should my dishwasher or washing machine start the instant I hit the button? Why couldn’t it wait until a power surplus (or green power) is available? I just need the dishes or clothes washed within some reasonable timeframe. In an emergency, a signal that there’s a surplus of electricity availalbe now could be used to tell the freezer in the cellar to take the contents down another 15 degrees, to survive a possible loss of power and warm-up later (think how handy a 2-3KWH battery could be in protecting your food, if your home was so equipped).
Median new home cost in tihs area was running $200K or so, before the collapse, and such “necessities” as granite countertops and solid cherry floors were all the rage. Imagine what it would do for us to divert 10% of the cost of a new home away from bathrooms suitable for Roman orgies and into energy production and management that makes us all safer and provides for a more sustainable economy. There’d even be the immediate cash flow benefit to the consumer of a home that was cheaper to heat, light and cool.
Japan’s very densely populated, so whether or not these strategies would play well there is hard to say (most roofs are shared by a number of families). Still, it would be nice if we learned something from their misfortune.
But we probably won’t.
One of the most sensible things I’ve read recently. Watch out or THEY will be after you for heresy.
A favored criticism of wind and solar power is that they are inconsistent. This can be largely overcome by using grids that include hydro power. And Holland used to benefit greatly from large windmills, even though naturally they didn’t work all the time. Some people criticize wind turbines as being unsightly and hazards to birds. I wonder if the same charges were leveled at the Dutch windmills?
To return to the subject, I don’t think the world has a shortage of cars.
Well said, Bertel.
A running factory without support structure around it isn’t worth much. People need places to live, shop, eat, etc, and all that requires even more electricity.
If northeast Japan becomes a wasteland, the 13-foot shift of the island will pale in comparison to the shift in its economy.
And those infrastructure problems, along with subtier impacts, are why FHI has Subaru’s Gunma factory down, despite being well away from the tsunami & earthquake zones.
where’s Enron when you need them?
Enron didn’t generate electricity, they day traded power that was already there. The ultimate no value add business.
“Enron didn’t generate electricity,”
I’m pretty sure Teesside generated quite a bit of electricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesside_power_station
This one is for sale used – only $34,000,000
http://www.megawattpower.com/power_barges.php
48 MW. You need 29 of those to keep the lights on in Wolfsburg. Got some more?
was at a shop they sell a small wood burning heater, a guy I talked to if no juice u get no heat.
So if everything went wong, atleast u can find some fire wood.
Here when the sh*t hit the fan, the power can be out for few days, then u do what?
Also what if the fuel supply gets cut off, then?
something we need to think of.
I appreciate the excellent coverage on what’s going on in Japan. This is going to affect the new- and used-car markets for a very long time.
Plenty of diesel generators in China.
And you don’t need to power up a car factory. Use the grid for that, then use generators for smaller factories, and save the power for the big ones.
Emergency plant for getting electricity from the South.
As I recall, Quebec had a really bad ice storm about a decade ago that shredded the electric transmission lines. One short-term solution for towns that lost their power was to wire up diesel locomotives as ad-hoc generators until the lines could be repaired.
Japan’s problems are rather more wide-ranging than that, and getting the factories running is pretty low on the list of priorities, but something similar might be useful to provide electrical service for more basic needs.
“short-term solution for towns that lost their power was to wire up diesel locomotives as ad-hoc generators until the lines could be repaired.”
Back many years ago, steam locomotives were used for heat, cooking and clean water supply, too. Railroads to the rescue!
At least, Quebec had its HYDRO-ELECTRIC power generation infrastructure intact… (NO NUCLEAR in Quebec’s arsenal)
If Quebec runs short, we in Ontario supply them with power from OUR nukes.
We had a plant in Saudi Arabia that was modifying military vehicles. Brand new plant, run on three big diesel generators. When you looked out the back door of the plant, there were at least 5 separate high voltage power line corridors. When we asked why the generators when you had all these power lines nearby, the answer was that the Minister of Electricity did not have any excess capacity. Always struck me as the ultimate irony.
Aircraft carrier propulsion power is around 200MW. There are 10 Nimitz class carriers. If you assume that other requirements and efficiency factors take as much power as propulsion (I have no idea), you’d still fall short of Fukushima if you docked all 10 as floating power plants.
I do like the idea of nuke powered ships to respond to emergencies – combined field hospital with heliport, large power supply, desalinization/purification plant, emergency stores supply – what’s not to like? Build them in the US using money diverted from our ‘contributions’ to the worthless UN and preposition them in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Most of the world’s population lives in coastal areas and a % of them are in at risk zones for earthquakes and tsunamis.
There is no way that a car factory uses 1300mw, those plants must provide power to surrounding towns etc as well. 1300mw is enough electricity for an aluminium smelter, or a decent sized city.
Yes, I think you’re right. Because Wolfsburg is NOT a normal size plant.
According to a web site: ‘According to the park’s official guide […], “the Principality of Monaco would fit into the halls alone.”
The Volkswagenfabrik has 75 km or 46 miles of streets, employs 23,000 people, and has 1,140 robots. The fire department alone has a staff of 76. The VW factory even has its own butcher shop, which processes some 500 tons of meat for 1.5 million curry sausages per year. In addition toCurrywurste, the factory produces cars: about 4,000 daily, mostly Golfs (Rabbits in the U.S.), Jettas, Tourans, and variations on the Golf platform.‘
It’s literally a small size city.
Why do you think it says in the article “as car factories go, Wolfsburg is a big one, the biggest in the world?” So ok, a regular sized car factory makes 2,000 units, and uses one power plant.
in 2005 Spring Hill, Tennessee produced 198,000 vehicles. That works out to 542 per day, 365 days per year.
Oshawa, Ontario, one of GM’s largest plants, can produce 220,000 vehicles per year. That’s only 600 per day.
And Wolfsburg doesn’t just assemble vehicles. I understand that Wolfsburg also has its own injection molding plant and some other parts lines that would be outsourced to other plants or suppliers in a US plant, that should give an indication of the size of the plant.
@ Norma,
sounds kinda wasteful to me, Toyota here in Georgetown can make that many cars in a day and isn’t nearly that big. Its big but not that big.
Look at the specs for Rouge River. Massive. These are NOT assembly plants. These are manufacturing facilities. Onsite steel factories. Parts manufacturing. Blow and injection molding. Extruders. And assembly plants. And it’s not a coincidence that Oshawa is between 2 very large nuclear plants in S. Ontario.
All the “green” intitiatives have focussed on residential uses because it is the most flexible and able to shift demand. Industry demands smooth, consistent power in massive quantities. Don’t get it long enough and industry moves someplace where it does. In Japan’s case, it’s scary enough that the companies might have to move offshore for *survival* not just for political points.
Watch for new investment in China and the american plants for the tier 3 parts suppliers. Smaller, more nimble and able to move under the radar.
1. From VW: “The two power stations operated in Wolfsburg by Volkswagen Kraftwerk GmbH generate supplies not only for the Volkswagen plant, but they also supply power and district heating to the City of Wolfsburg. Both power stations have an installed electricity capacity of 442 megawatts at their disposal.”
2. The production volume of the assembly plant is about twice the size of TMMK, I guess. They don’t budget production for 365 days a year, probably 250 work days only (Oh, how about the mandatory summer vacation?) Furthermore, it’s a vertical integrated industrial mammoth, even with sausages production and firehall!
Here’s a 1990s view of the plant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmjyIU8Z4cw
(I suppose that these links are allowed on TTAC?)
You don’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry.