Domain: cleantechnica.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cleantechnica.com.
Comments · 375
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Re:Over promise
Meanwhile, Tesla produced its first 10k Model 3s in the time it took GM to produce its first 1000 Bolts. I guess that's that "decades to tune their processes and supply chains" they had going for them, eh? And it costs Tesla $10k less per vehicle.
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Re:Over promise
Meanwhile, Tesla produced its first 10k Model 3s in the time it took GM to produce its first 1000 Bolts. I guess that's that "decades to tune their processes and supply chains" they had going for them, eh? And it costs Tesla $10k less per vehicle.
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Re:Cutting corners
Ah fair point there.
On china, EV sales there are ramping up rapidly. Of course, it won't be teslas as they are too expensive for that market.
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Re:Cutting corners
Tesla has gotten over 8 billion dollars in direct subsidies between the USSG and state of California
Add to the list of myths that just won't die.
SpaceX got their space rating when congress told the USAF that it would happen
No, they had to sue the USAF to break ULA's monopoly. USAF was sued because they made endless delays in conducting their engineering analysis, which SpaceX accused of being due to the fact that ULA offers an effective revolving-door policy for former USAF officials involved in approvals. SpaceX had already turned over all of the data that was supposed to qualify them to launch. And you want to talk about the fact that some people in congress have supported SpaceX... far more people in congress have continually and consistently lined up behind ULA, which carefully spreads its jobs around various congressional districts and spends large amounts on lobbying.
I'll never get why you people love crazy-expensive monopolies run by defense giants so much.
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Re:That's video
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Re:Europeans
Seriously, do you even read news?
Renault thought to be cheating at emissions tests for 25 years. (use google translate, German article) https://www.auto-motor-und-spo...
Nissan, too: (use google translate, German article) https://www1.wdr.de/wissen/tec...
Ford accused of cheating: http://www.thedrive.com/sheetm...
Fiat/Chrysler accused of cheating: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Mercedes emissions cheating: (they already had recalls) https://www.extremetech.com/ex...
BMW emissions cheating: (they already have recalls for affected cars - those had Renault engines due to a cooperation, which makes the Renault claims above more valid) https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
You can find articles like this for pretty much EVERY car manufacturer, if you simply google. Funnily, in recent testing, VW Diesels had among the lowest emissions results. Seems they fixed their stuff on newer models after the scandal.
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Re: your full of base load
Over 1 million EVs sold worldwide in 2017, huge growth rate
In the US the total number of cars sold in 2017 was estimated to be 6.3 million Of those 105,963 were EV. So about 1.7%. It's progress to be sure. Globally, the number of cars sold in 2017 is estimated to be at 79 million. I think I saw estimates that claimed close to 2 million EV's sold in 2017, which is about 2.5% of all cars sold worldwide are EV's. While many countries are planning to phase out ICE powered cars, they are still going to be with us for a long time. Poorer countries are going to have a hard time with this transition. Countries with larger landmass will too. I'm sure we'll see it in the US eventually as well, but it's going to be a very long time before the last gas station closes down.
In the 4th quarter of 2007 Apple only sold a bit over 1 million iPhones. Clearly a loser product, just like EVs.
So what. The Zune sold 1 million units in the first 6 months.
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Re:Not really
Citation needed
Hardly - it is common knowledge, but here you are anyway.
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Re:We should have batteries at every substation.
On the face of it it is but when you're a publicly traded company trying to explain to investors why you spent 12 cents a Kwh to store the electricity you generated at 6 cents a Kwh costing you a total of 18 cents a Kwh and then sold it at market price of 10 cents a Kwh it makes much more cents
:).
And to your point this article from 2015 talks about the cost of storage in depth. Pumped hydro is the cheapest overall and relatively easy to implement given a large enough body of water but battery storage technology is starting to come down in price and is more practical in urban settings. -
Re:solar and batteries noobs
B.S.
Battery capacity has been rising about 5% a year for the last decade while battery cost has been dropping about 5% per year for the last decade.
Projections for just 2022 are for under half the price in 2015 ($50/kWH) and a third more power density than in 2015.
That's only 7 years away. It's not science fiction or magic.Source: US Department of Energy.
Charts here.
https://cleantechnica.com/2016... -
Re: Why is this necessary?
Who said wind is cheaper? Quote please?
Wind and solar are cheaper than coal in Australia.
Wind is cheaper than coal in India.
Wind directly competes with coal on price. ... and now for an opposing view:
News Flash: Wind is not cheaper than coal. -
Re:Rating my Nissan Leaf
That's great compare a gas guzzling SUV to a leaf... yea that's like coming a tank to a lambo in terms of speed.
Actually, one of my other three cars is a Porsche. The last two are a Toyota and a Mitsubishi Endeavor - the SUV. All have well over 100,000 miles, and all records are meticulously kept.
I spend $80~ in gas a month, in 5 years that only $4800~ which at that point your battery would dead of very very close to it based on the miles put on a car per year, factor that I drive 30,000 in 1 year.
Assuming that you paid a minimum of $2.00 per gallon in the U.S...$2.00x40Gal=$80 so you would use 40 Gal*12 months or 480 Gal to travel 30,000 Miles. 30,000 Miles/480 Gal = 62.5MPG.Either you get at least 62.5 miles per gallon or you are a troll. I will leave the reader to determine which is true.
Electric cars are great, but pretending they can beat the same types of cars that are fuel based is stupid, they are only better in one way, off the line torque! The rest of your advantages aren't advantages to all, You can't fix your car, you can't mod your car (to do anything useful, yes running apps on the dash wow cool but not) Electric cars are more fragile in the sense that the more electrically controlled components the weaker the overall system becomes, the more and more the car has to rely on a sensors and cameras the more things can and will go wrong with it. Tesla's have not been around for 10 years yet, show me the repair bill of a Tesla after 10~ years, if you think parts don't last forever, wait until you see what electronics last for.
There is only one real drawback to owning the Leaf - range. That is being remedied by the Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3. There are tons of advantages besides torque. One of the best is never having to be accosted by homeless people for money while filling up at a gas station.
The Leaf is not fragile in any respect. In fact, I just threw the snow tires on, while putting the Porsche up for the winter. As someone who does my own work (just replaced the 4 O2 sensors, head gaskets, spark plugs, and ignition coils in the SUV last week for $600) I appreciate the modularity of the Leaf as well as overall minimal moving parts. It's the 480V that you need to watch out for.
As for modifications, did you just get here from the 60's? Time to put a 4 barrel Holley Carb on your cherry ride?
Ohh but your saving the environment... give me a break! How do you think these batteries are produced? How do you think they will dispose of them? And don't get me started on the electrical production alone, first it takes almost twice the energy capacity of the battery to charge the battery and I can guarantee you aren't using a 100% nuclear source of power and even if you are, how do you think they are disposing of the waste? Burying it? Yea thats good! Combine all of these and it's not better then using petrol based cars, its might even be worse depending on the effects of the waste have on the planet, but go on please tell me the benefits of owning an electric car?
Where do I start, troll? Never said a thing about the environment in my post. Straw man argument. But if you want to know, batteries are recyclable. In a worst case scenario, the energy that the car uses was generated by coal. If so, the car gets the gasoline equivalent of 50 MPG. Comparatively, combustion engines average between 20% and 40% efficiency, with the remainder lost to entropy as heat.
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Re:So many lies in this BS
wow. Another idiot who knows NOTHING about this issue, but will speak about it at length.
Here, lets go to the TRIVIAL lies of yours. The Chinese gov, the CHinese oil companies, AND their academia say that they have pretty much hit peak oil and expect it to drop QUICKLY. They have exactly 3 choices which is 1) to militarily fight for ocean bottom that does not belong to them from the nations that I mentioned before, 2) import a lot more, which they are growing their imports, but absolutely do NOT want to do so, and 3) move off oil over to coal with EVs. The later is what the CHinese gov wants.
So, you claim that CHina is burning less coal, that new plants are replacing old one, and that they have turned on all of the pollution controls. Ok. Assume that is true? Then why is pollution getting WORSE, not better? about 85% of China's visible pollution comes from their coal plants and their not using pollution controls. If coal use REALLY dropped, then the air would actually clean up WRT all pollutions. If pollution control was turned on, then visible pollution will drop (regular unseen pollution such as SOx, NOx, etc would continue ). If new plants were replacing the old ones, then again, TOTAL pollution would drop. BUT, that is not the case
for the last couple of year, pollution improved slightly, but that was due to their economy dropping on the industrial side. Now it is picking up as the idiots in Europe try to cozy up to them like they did with Hitler
2016, along with 2017, saw major increases.
And here.
New plants are not being built and what few are simply replacing old ones?
Nope. Only the idiots make such wild claims.
China is the largest builder of new coal plants. Much of that will still go into china, but China continues to push this all over the world, in spite of their claiming to be on-board with paris accord. As was pointed out, Trump talks about restoring coal to America, but the fact is, that unless he gets MAJOR subsidies for coal, which has nearly zero chance of passage, we will not be building anything new. In fact, America's will continue to drop.
As to your personal hatred of America, whatever. Go live in China, Russia, North Korea, etc. Please, go have a good time.
But claiming that America is polluting the world, is total BS. We emit no mercury of any amount. It is Canada, Australia, Europe India, Russia and esp China that do all that.
SOX/NOx? America emits a fraction of that.
And as has been shown by OCO2, America's emission of CO2 is about right on to what we claim, while Europe's, South Korea, Japan's, China, etc are MUCH HIGHER. And for the last decade, America has dropped the most CO2 emission of all nations. -
Re:There they go again
digging up oil, transporting it, refining it, transporting it again at least once, and then burning it is a lot more dirty than batteries. Battery costs are dropping all the time, year on year. here's a link to explain lithium "mining" and the myths on the web about it
... https://cleantechnica.com/2016... Perhaps you need to research it before saying "I'm sure mining for lithium is dirty business and manufacturing probably is", guesswork or myth believing is not a substitute for researchingI'm not comparing anything, just pointing out that mining *anything* is dirty business. It just is. I grew up around coal mines.
The issue isn't so much the mining, though, and that's the point. Everything shown in that article is contained, and that's the key. The issue with oil and coal isn't the mining part, although that's certainly dirty. The issue is that when you burn them - which is typically how you extract the energy content - the waste products go into the atmosphere and are uncontained. That is the problem.
You're apparently too dense to understand that I'm very pro-electric. My entire point above is trying to teach a libtard how to properly argue for something without barfing up something stupid about the Koch brothers. We're on the same side of this issue, so it behooves me to teach the libtard how to actually explain something rather than "duh, Koch brothers".
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Re:There they go again
digging up oil, transporting it, refining it, transporting it again at least once, and then burning it is a lot more dirty than batteries. Battery costs are dropping all the time, year on year. here's a link to explain lithium "mining" and the myths on the web about it
... https://cleantechnica.com/2016... Perhaps you need to research it before saying "I'm sure mining for lithium is dirty business and manufacturing probably is", guesswork or myth believing is not a substitute for researching -
Re: Huh?
You think that an inexpensive compact ICE car is a competitor to either a LARGE LUXURY sedan, or LARGE LUXURY X-over, or COMPACT EXECUTIVE sedan?
Direct competitors to Model S is considered to be: Mercedes S-Class, the BMW 7 Series, the Audi A8, the Lexus LS, etc.
Direct competitors to Model X is considered to be: BMW X5, MB GLS class, etc.
Direct competitors to Model 3 is considered to be: Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, etc. -
Re:Nissan Leaf
I was wanting to say, in the US the LEAF is only about 4-5% behind the Bolt in year-to-date sales as of a few months ago.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
"General Motors is the only other company within reach of Tesla" my ass. (Maybe if you cheat and include the Volt)
=Smidge= -
Re:What happens in 15-20 years?
It's like that in texas too. We used to have 6 good weeks of winter with regular periods longer than a week where there was ice on the ground while I walked to school.
Now, we get a few hours at night of freezing temperatures. But (on topic) we did get 8 weeks of overcast a couple years ago. That would have been a bad case for solar.
That said...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
Germany has gotten 85% of their total power generation from solar some days this year and projects that such days will become increasingly common going forward. By 2030, they project year round coverage (which means during sunny months they will have power to spare.).
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Re:Not if we continue global renewables expansion
There is no information on Bloomberg (or anywhere that I can find) to support your statements. You are wrong. The largest automakers in the world are not selling many electric cars right now, and will not be in 2018.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017... -
Google invests in Lyft. Wants to kill Uber. Shock.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that Google is in talks to invest $1 Billion in Lyft. Wouldn't it be convenient if Lyft's primary competitor had a stranglehold put on their capital?
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Re: Get back to me when you can charge it in 3 min
This is a problem with all new technologies: people with no experience with it create worst-case scenarios in their mind and inflate them, while making little of the problems of the technologies they're replacing.
Yes, you can make your occasional trips, using the sort of break times that you're supposed to take when driving on long trips (regardless of whether you actually take them or not). But that's not your everyday life. EVs start every day with a full charge and you never need to randomly detour from your life to go to a gas station. Now, in your mind, the "taking breaks on trips" thing is huge (because it's unfamiliar), while the "detouring to go to gas stations" thing is little (because it's familiar). But for people who own EVs, that situation rapidly becomes reversed. They get totally used to the luxury of having a full charge every day, and whenever they for whatever reason (maintainance, accident, etc) are forced to use a gasoline car, they end up griping bitterly about the inconvenience of going to gas stations. I've seen it time and time and time again.
And unlike you, they all have experience with both owning gasoline and electric cars. But the conveniences of electric cars become a second-nature expectation very quickly.
Another issue that quickly becomes annoying about gasoline cars can be well summed up by this article: Our Tractor Keeps Shaking Violently & Has A Sore Throat. That's not a one-off, that's an extremely common experience for people once they start driving electric. EV owner surveys have extremely high rates of satisfaction with EVs in general. This translates to brand loyalty as well - Tesla generally blows away all other competitors on brand loyalty - most recently with 91% "would buy again", vs. the next highest (Porsche) at 84%.
Again, though, you haven't ever owned an EV, so you have no experience with this. So your mind makes any perceived downside into an insurmountable wall, while making excuses for what you have to endure for your ICE vehicle and playing them down as if they're nothing.
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Re:Too little, too late
With most issues raised about lithium for EV batteries, no-one seems to care about it relating to their phone/laptop, they will quite happily take them everywhere.
"Almost all that lithium—greater than 95 percent of it— is produced through a process of pumping underground brine to the surface and allowing it to evaporate in big pans. It’s separated from the brine using electrolysis." quote from https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
The photos circulating the net pretending to be open lithium mines are actually copper or tar sands http://www.snopes.com/lithium-...
Recycling is already happening and they can be recycled into new storage systems like home solar batteries as they don't need to be powerful as an EV requires.They make their money at the moment from extracting the other elements like cobalt.
Carbon fibre recycling is being worked on and getting better: http://www.compositesworld.com...
There are risks with all forms of transport and power generation, you just have to mitigate it in some way. ICE did explode (google Ford Pinto) before better design happened.
Yes, the dangers of not disposing of batteries correctly is known as are the dangers of lighting a match next to petrol/gas are also known - you take a horse to water but you can't make it drink. -
Re:Slashdot sure has become a shithole
Smart investors never gave their money to tesla in the first place
Yeah, try googling "Tesla stock" and clicking the "5 year" button. All of those smart people who craftily avoided having their money increase 12-fold....
Tesla will be out of business in a year.
Hey, you should write for TTAC!
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Re:... with a little bit of nuclear
There was no large scale solar or wind power plant accident so far
... facepalm.Irrelevant. Dead is dead and per gigawatt-hour produced more people died from solar power than nuclear power, and by a large margin.
I'm old enough to remember all the way back to yesterday when I wrote this:
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason.
I knew you'd say this, I told you I knew you'd say this, and yet you still brought out this straw man.
You don't seem to be disputing that people have died from solar power, only that they "don't count" because their deaths don't make it beyond the obituary pages in the newspapers. Can we make solar power safer? Sure. Can we make nuclear power safer? Of course. As it is right now nuclear power is safer than solar power by a wide margin.
And regarding CO2 you have no numbers, as I pointed out solar cells/plants can be 100% CO2 neutral, and you pointed out nuclear plants build from concrete/cement: can't.
I gave numbers and I'll give you more. You gave nothing but an unsubstantiated claim.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/u...
https://cleantechnica.com/2014... -
Re:Why am I not surprised?
n/t
Lots of typical knee-jerk reactions to this story. Most automakers do not have EV and car battery manufacturing facilities in China and China has reduced or removed subsidies making imports much less attractive. It seems, after a bit of quick basic research, that the slowdown request is to allow non-chinese car companies time to be able to ramp up the ability to product EVs on a large scale in China. It's not a plot to stay on old tech or to derail EV cars.
https://electrek.co/2017/05/08...
http://insights.globalspec.com...
https://electrek.co/2017/04/27...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...
I don't think there is an all-year-around electric car that can be used in Canada, unless it is to be driven from garage to garage. With 20 below zero weather, batteries drop to 10% of what they can deliver in summer. Just get caught in a traffic jam with -20 and hope for the best. In my view, the best would be the tow-truck.
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Re:Why am I not surprised?
n/t
Lots of typical knee-jerk reactions to this story. Most automakers do not have EV and car battery manufacturing facilities in China and China has reduced or removed subsidies making imports much less attractive. It seems, after a bit of quick basic research, that the slowdown request is to allow non-chinese car companies time to be able to ramp up the ability to product EVs on a large scale in China. It's not a plot to stay on old tech or to derail EV cars.
https://electrek.co/2017/05/08...
http://insights.globalspec.com...
https://electrek.co/2017/04/27...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.
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Re:It will always be better to share
you are correct - the position has changed. The technology exists currently (not a "in 10 years" problem) -- political might is the weak link. Although there are missing components to make it real - using storage tech and a smart grid it could be done by 2050.
https://cleantechnica.com/2015...
Thanks
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Don't Shill for Big Oil
The truth is that the intermittency problem with wind and solar is so severe that when you get more than a few percent tied into the grid it actually has negative value.
Only if you do it stupidly. California is already seeing days where renewable make up 50% of their electric usage and their problems with negative value are relatively small, manageable and are in the process of being mitigated. BTW, the term for what you call intermittancy is the duck curve.
The smart way to do it is:
- Improve the grid so that, for example, when the wind stops blowing off the east coast you can bring in electricity from the plain states to fill the gap.
- Build natgas plants that can easily and rapidly spin up and down to also buffer the supply.
- Include storage as part of the plants. California has recently added that to the law regulating all new forms commercial power generation in the state.
What you can't do is rely on baseload power (like nukes and coal) which get tons of subsidies in the form of guaranteed returns.
What's more, most of the energy used to PRODUCE solar panels, and much of the energy used to produce wind turbines, comes from soot-belching, coal-fired power plants in China, and most of the energy REPLACED BY these devices would have been produced in clean power plants with state-of-the-art "scrubbers" in North America, Europe & Australia.
That's all bullshit of the highest degree.
The energy required to manufacture wind turbines is recouped within about 6 months of operation.And, in case anyone is interested:
The energy required to manufacture solar panels is a tiny fraction of how much they will generate over their lifetime.
In Middle Europe, where irradiance is about equal to that of Alaska, PV panels built with 10 year old manufacturing technology reached a net energy cost of zero within 3 years. In Southern Europe it was between 0.5 and 1.5 years.
Furthermore for every doubling in solar manufacturing capacity energy used to produce solar panels decreased by 12-13 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 17-24 percent. Over the last decade, solar manufacturing capacity has increased 10x.As for "scrubbers" and coal, China is way ahead of the US.
China recently cancelled construction of 104 new coal plants equal to one third of the US's total installed coal capacity. Even then, China's coal regulations are so much cleaner than the US's that by 2020 not one single US coal plant would be clean enough to legally operate if it were in China. -
Re:30 MW for $256M
I expect some will make that mark and longer ( https://cleantechnica.com/2015... ) and some will be lower - nothing is perfect and totally predictable when dealing with electro-mechanical devices. Its like saying on the last day of its 25 year predicted lifespan, it will not turn again on the 1st day of its 26th year.
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Re:But how much did this electricity cost?
I suspect that solar power advocates don't like to talk about the cost of the solar watt-hour because if they did that then the charts would not look so great.
Utility-scale solar power is now selling for less than three cents per kWh. So that would be less than $.00003 per watt-hour.
This compares favorably to coal and other forms of traditional power generation.
My suspicion is that when you think about solar power, you are thinking only about residential rooftop solar power, which is indeed more expensive to due lack of economies of scale. That would be an error, since utility-scale solar power is where the advances in cost-effectiveness are occurring.
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Re:But how much did this electricity cost?
I suspect that solar power advocates don't like to talk about the cost of the solar watt-hour because if they did that then the charts would not look so great.
Utility-scale solar power is now selling for less than three cents per kWh. So that would be less than $.00003 per watt-hour.
This compares favorably to coal and other forms of traditional power generation.
My suspicion is that when you think about solar power, you are thinking only about residential rooftop solar power, which is indeed more expensive to due lack of economies of scale. That would be an error, since utility-scale solar power is where the advances in cost-effectiveness are occurring.
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Re:But how much did this electricity cost?
How often do people ask why solar is so unpopular?
Almost never since about 2005, because solar has actually become extremely popular.
After being subsidized heavily in the USA for decades this is all we have to show for it. Perhaps we need to stop and think if this is in fact a good use of our tax money.
The price per watt of solar power drops every year and shows no sign of leveling out any time soon. If you don't like the price this year, wait until next year. If you don't like solar power period, at any price, that's fine too -- the world will continue to adopt solar power at an ever-increasing pace, with or without your support.
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Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars
Looks like something out of a Transformers cartoon, but still cool
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Re: NO; America needs to leave it and tax instead
You are STILL building, and that is the problem. 14% of Germany's power comes from nukes which you are shutting down. AE is not able to replace it, since a true baseline is needed. As such, Germany will have to decide wether to stay with nukes and phase out their 40% coal dependancy, OR increase coal to 54%
America has brought our coal from around 1TW down to below .3Tw, and by end of 2018, will be below .2TW in coal. There is very little that trump can do to restart it as NOBODY in American utility is going to pick coal over nat gas.
However, neither Germany nor western europe, is the real problem. The real problem are nations like CHina, India, pakistan, poland, etc that are building new GW of coal EACH YEAR. China will add 40 GW of new coal plants THIS YEAR. Yes, by end of 2017, they will have added another 40 GW. America will have dropped 10 GW of coal with more coming in 2018, but China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and I believe even poland will add more than 10 GW EACH.
This is how we lose at AGW. We need to get EVERY NATION TO STOP BUILDING NEW COAL PLANTS. Then and only then can we start to back off. -
Re:Power hungry
India just opened the largest solar plant in the world and it only took 8 months to build. Much faster to install solar than anything else. (Coal plants take years and nuclear takes forever)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...India expects to install 10 GW of solar this year:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017... -
Re:Storage?
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Re:hypocrits
fossil fuel subsidies dwarf anything solar gets so thats a non-starter some reading for you.
https://www.ft.com/content/fb2...
https://cleantechnica.com/2016... -
Re: It's just too expensive
Thanks to the internet and Google, it's very easy to find out the cost of wind and solar renewables and how they compare to nuclear and fossil fuels.
Here are a few references from the first pages of Google results:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://www.greentechmedia.com...
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...Try it yourself, you might learn something.
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Re: It's just too expensive
Thanks to the internet and Google, it's very easy to find out the cost of wind and solar renewables and how they compare to nuclear and fossil fuels.
Here are a few references from the first pages of Google results:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://www.greentechmedia.com...
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...Try it yourself, you might learn something.
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Re:Not about winning a bet
It all depends on how much the batteries are being drained before being recharged. Discharging past 80% of capacity will drastically cut the number of cycles you can get out of them. https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
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Re:Not peak battery
Hm. The costs of solar power have plummeted -- more than a hundred-fold decrease since 1977. Plentiful is mainly about political choices at this point.
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Re:Charge?
and this one also helps. https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
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Re:keeping the batteries charged may not be that h
this is what you are talking about. https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
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Re:Lack of Range
you are bullshitting yourself, it would help if you did some research on EV buses etc before commenting. here's one solution for you. https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
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Re:Charge?
There are technologies that can charge a bus at rates from 400kW to 600kW.
Buses go through predictable routes, so you can put these chargers on the routes (or where routes intersect) and do 15 second charges every pass, if needed. -
Re:Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive
Here is some real data from a financial firm showing wind and solar to be cheaper:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
Do you have any references for your WAG assertions? -
Re: Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive
This was posted below:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
The data is from Lazard Asset Management... a reputable source. -
Re:Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive
Believe it or not, a lot has changed in 20 years.
To get you up to date, here's a good article (with real data) showing solar and wind are cheaper than coal and nuclear:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
Short version for the click impaired: $Cost per MWh: Wind $32, Solar $39, Coal $60, Nuclear $97
These are unsubsidized prices for wind and solar... coal and nuclear are the subsidized prices and do not include the cost of external damage.
"A study led by the former head of the Harvard Medical School found that coal cost the US $500 billion per year in extra health and environmental costs — approximately 9/kWh ($90/MWh) to 27/kWh ($270/MWh) more than the price we pay directly. To fool yourself into thinking these are not real costs is to assume that cancer, heart disease, asthma, and early death are not real.
The air, water, and climate effects of natural gas are not pretty either. On the nuclear front, the decommissioning and insurance costs of nuclear power — unaccounted for above — would also put nuclear off the chart." -
Re:Should it require fewer people?
define "a lot of maintenance". i've yet to see anyone on a roof doing anything to a solar panel, even if a person gets up onto a roof once a year, its not a lot.
"They're very expensive to produce" - its a fairly new industry so its to be expected and they are getting cheaper all the time, do some research on the trials and tribulations of when fossil fuel generation started and compare.
"don't recycle well" Recycling can recover up to 90% of the photovoltaic glass and also up to 95% of the semiconductor material necessary for further production
"don't last nearly as long as advertised" https://cleantechnica.com/2015...
You are either just making stuff up or reading posts from others without checking their validity -
Re:Should it require fewer people?
Solar panels require a lot of maintenance to keep them in their optimal conditions
The workaround for that problem is simple -- don't bother keeping them in their optimal conditions. It's cheaper to plan ahead and install a few additional panels to compensate for dust buildup than it is to send someone out to wash them every week. In areas that receive at least a small amount of rain, the rain will clean the panels well enough.
They're also very expensive to produce, don't recycle well and don't last nearly as long as advertised.
Those talking points would be more convincing if you were able to back them up with a citation. Raw assertions are meaningless.