Slashdot Mirror

Only in the US is there a lack and even here the infrastructure is going in:

https://www.triplepundit.com/2...

According the rollout at Nikola, those stations will be built and maintained by Ryder and available to all hydrogen vehicles.

Because of the federal regulation of hydrogen dispensers, there won't be any nonsense of this dispenser only works with this type of vehicle.

Yes, you have to pay... But believe it or not, with a Tesla too, you just paid up front. With the newer Teslas, the "all free" model has been withdrawn.

With every other BEV, you still have to pay... And wait while it charges.

Keep in mind, these are ALL EVs you just don't have to wait to drive with some.

Oh and it's not a fuel either. It's just a storage medium, like a battery except more dangerous, unreliable, and expensive.

If you think it's a fuel, link me to a hydrogen well or hydrogen mine.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...
https://www.triplepundit.com/2...
http://collegeofcuriosity.com/...
https://www.technologyreview.c...
https://phys.org/news/2006-12-...

Yeah, sorry, the party is over. The cheap energy blowout of the post-WWII techno-bonanza is coming to a close. Your children are already expected to have a shorter life span than you and will likely face a 19th century existence, but without cheap coal.

Maybe not take a neo-conservative website for definition? Their summary is as short as it is misleading, mostly because they try to get to the point fast and do some handwaving.

Here's a critical article:

http://www.triplepundit.com/20...

But in the end, maybe we should discuss the book, and not the cover?

I wonder how much energy was consumed in each stage of the "environmentally friendly" production. Building the collectors, fuel to get them out to the plastic, collection energy, return energy, cleaning and recycling the plastic, etc. While getting the plastic out of the environment is a good thing, source reduction would be much more efficient.I always enjoyed the Fiji water example ( http://www.triplepundit.com/20... ).

Meet the New EPA Fracking Report, Same as the Old EPA Fracking Report.

http://www.triplepundit.com/20...

If you've seen In-n-out, always crowded, very cheap food, a lot of workers.

Governor Brian Sandavol has sold out the people.

He still votes in favor of Warren Buffet's NV Enegy, and not liberty for the people.

I think a more modern reactor design / more research seem more useful and a better approach
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-n...
http://www.triplepundit.com/sp...
https://www.eskimo.com/~nanook... ..

Just get going :)

Of course Swedish parliament sadly has treated the environmentalist anti-nationalist well-fare party as some sort of center-party everyone can agree to rule with even though they are the most extreme ones after the communists. So as such we have shitty hippie stuff such as wind-power, rotten grass, rotten sea-.. uhm.. tubeanimals, energy from trees and other stupid things which won't be able to compete and won't be as efficient as say solar-power anyway so why bother?

The animals supposedly brought up phosphor and nitrogen from the sea and as such could be used as a fertilizer, that's OK I guess but I'd prefer they used plants rather than animals if they are brought up just to rot them and make energy out of them. These animals supposedly undevelop/destroy part of their "brain" once they have fixed themselves somewhere but still.

I hate these anti-progress idiots ("economical growth is bad - it ruins the environment!", Sweden have some other complete utter ridiculous leftard idiots, "who cares that mass-immigration cost money? It's irrelevant, one just need to raise taxes!", yeah, because money come from nowhere and the government / all states are just stupid who don't increase taxes. In the end it would be nice if these idiots understood that you can only share what you've produced and if the immigrants suck at producing something of value then you'd have less worth to share.)

Also white-genocide and so on. 1 800 migrants / day, 10 000+ / week, this for a country with less than 10 million people and about 8 million Swedish born and well, I don't know how many Swedes, 6 million?

I think a more modern reactor design / more research seem more useful and a better approach
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-n...
http://www.triplepundit.com/sp...
https://www.eskimo.com/~nanook... ..

Just get going :)

I pasted 'EV performance in the snow' directly from your post into Google and the #1 listing was:

http://www.triplepundit.com/20...

"The purpose of the system is to prevent wheel slip and loss of traction, but because electric motors provide maximum torque from 0 rpm, on slippery roads the wheels spin easily–whereupon the traction control promptly brakes the spinning wheel."

Starting off in a higher gear to avoid wheelspin in the snow/ice isn't an option in an electric car.

I think solar is great - I have some panels on my camper, which is very conducive to solar type use because it's already designed to function off-grid. But let's be realistic. Let's say every home in America stuck a couple thousand watts of solar power on their roof, and wanted to sell the power into the grid (as opposed of having to store it on-site). How is that supposed to work? If no power generation is required by the power company when the sun is shining, but the full normal generation is required the instant clouds sweep over a community or at night, etc, then how is that supposed to work? None of the power generation plants can function in that "instant on / instant off" type of a mode. Particularly not nuclear. The point is, once the adoption reaches some (rather smallish) percentage, there will be some major problems and costs that will have to be addressed.

Before that occurs (in the US), a lot of years will have passed. Germany has had a day with 75% renewable energy production and 50% solar production and will undoubtedly get similar occurences this year too. They also still have nuclear power plants and it all works. Sure, nuclear power plants are notoriously bad to change in output on short term and will therefore gradually fade from view, which is not a bad thing alltogether (even though I am not opposed to nuclear). New technologies will come to mitigate problems of temporary overproduction, like Elon Musk's battery pack for homes.

It is all not a problem that can be solved. The only problem is big powerful companies fearing for their livelyhood and having the money and influence to prevent these changes from happening.

Electricity Prices Fall In Europe As German Renewable Energy Output Increases

According to this article, wholesale electric power contract prices in Germany and neighboring countries peaked last November at 50.50 Euro/MWh, which I believe works out to just under 7 cents/KWh. Ask folks in California whether that's "outrageously expensive".

Since then, prices have decreased in December, January, February, and March; March prices were about 4.85 cents/KWh.

Even better, due to regulations requiring grid participants to purchase renewable energy when it's available, the price of non-renewable power is sometimes actually dropping to or below zero . That's right, there were apparently brief intervals where nuclear and coal plants were paying customers to draw power from them.

As of 2011, Germany had already spent over 100 billion Euros subsidizing solar. This level of subsidization could easily produce over 20 nuclear plants and would basically end the further need for carbon free electrical energy spending, while offsetting much more carbon in a shorter period of time. Not to mention the vast economic benefits to the country from supplying a majority of the plant components versus buying from Asia. But, Germany will continue to spend even more, sending vast sums of money to Asia in efforts to just 'keep up', while their electricity prices continue to skyrocket, resulting in higher costs for business and manufacturing.

Those higher costs don't seem to be putting much of a damper on Germany's economic growth.

Oh, wait, maybe it's because Germany's renewable output actually appears to be driving down energy prices, not only for Germany but its neighbors. Prices peaked in November of 2013, and fell in December, January, February, and March -- not exactly "peak solar" months, as others have pointed out.

Citation please.
How about not just assuming it's pesticides?

Citation granted.

http://www.triplepundit.com/20...

Actually, there's evidence.

http://www.triplepundit.com/20...

Of course, don't let that stop you.

put R&D into incineration techniques

I'm all in favor of additional R&D, but enough has already been done to overcome most of the objections above. You'll find it being used on an industrial scale in, amongst other places, the Netherlands: http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/06/a-tour-of-amsterdam%E2%80%99s-waste-to-energy-plant/

Isn't it all hydrocarbons anyways? Why not just burn it in coal power plants?

That's basically what the Dutch do, and they're the golden child of recycling. They found that burning plastic is more economical than recycling it. They also recycle all sorts of metals, but after incineration.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/06/a-tour-of-amsterdam%E2%80%99s-waste-to-energy-plant/

The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.

Not likely. Dry goods (i.e. the stuff Amazon sells) is one thing, but food is entirely different. Most people like to see, smell, feel, and, when possible, taste the food they buy. Why do you think that Internet based groceries services have failed?

Amazon is getting into the grocery delivery business:

http://fresh.amazon.com/

The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.

Not likely. Dry goods (i.e. the stuff Amazon sells) is one thing, but food is entirely different. Most people like to see, smell, feel, and, when possible, taste the food they buy. Why do you think that Internet based groceries services have failed?

Someone on this board pointed out that once we have autonomous cars, you can have them do errands for you. His example was grocery shopping. Do your shopping online a'la Amazon, then send the car to pick up the groceries once a week.

The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.

This frees up an enormous number of personal hours and resources, it essentially automates a labor-intensive process.

And that was one example. Sending the car to pick up the kids after school, or to take them to/from soccer practice. Automated FedEx delivery, all manner of trucking and delivery - the potential savings in time is enormous.

This would be yet another economic force pushing us to a wealth economy, something of which I'm wholly in favor.

But I'm also aware without government subsidies, it's not economically viable. On the large scale.

Yet. The point at which solar energy becomes cheaper than the competition is called 'grid parity', and it's already happened in some countries. Over the next few years we'll see it happen in more and more places.

if we want to impact global warming we have to use nuclear power.

I'd agree if it weren't for that fact that corruption[1] in the regulation systems[2], and at other levels, leave nuclear energy too hazardous to be a reliable alternative.

Think of it this way. You buy an electric car. The charging cable becomes frayed. The government offers you an energy credit of $1500 to buy a new cable. You take the credit and buy a new Bass Boat and duct tape the cable. Eventually, the cable starts a fire in your garage and burns down an entire city block killing 1500 people. This is the way our private energy companies work and the reason we can't have nice things. Like safe nuclear energy.

INSIST that the best no CO2 power generation options we have right now be abandoned.

It's may be the most C neutral, but the safety factor makes it a moot point. Would you pack up all your belongings and take the wife and kids to live in Fukishama? No.

then the worlds turning its back on its functioning nuclear power plants has to stop!

I think the world is looking for a safer, more environmentally friendly, alternatives[3] but Enriched Uranium power needs to be shelved until the world is more responsible with it. It's just too dangerous in the hands of fools.

[1] - http://nucleotidings.com/article/corruption-1-yukuza-fukushima
[2] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/flood-threat-nuclear-plants-nrc_n_1885598.html
[3] - http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/liquid-fluoride-thorium-power-pros-cons/

If you adopt Mitt Romney's look.

are you asking why people might find it difficult to put big oil/coal companies out of business?

You mean the big oil companies that are using solar themselves?

Energy Star Skewered by Congressional Audit

Coal contains mercury, along with other nasties. If the power used to light the bulb is from coal (in the US, it likely is), then an equivalent incandescent bulb results in more mercury release than its CFL equivalent.

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-mercur-1.php

You mean like this?

And did you not back it up with any sort of link? If it was accurate, I could forgive the lack of citation, but for blatantly false information it's not tolerable.

Comparing Apples to Apples: Well-to-Wheel Analysis of Current ICE and Fuel Cell Vehicle Technologies
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/HV/300.pdf

Tesla Motors Well To Wheel Comparison
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php

AskPablo: Well to Wheel Efficiency Tutorial
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-well-to-wheel-efficie-002461.php And let's be honest. Car and Driver? Not the most intelligently written rag out there.

In the 2007 World Solar Challenge which was held last month there were cars with engines that are 95-97% efficient [1]. Why should mass-market models have to settle for a 22% efficiency?

Electrical motors constructed according NEMA Design B must meet the efficiencies as mentioned on this page [2].

Also, gasoline vehicles have faar more moving parts than electric vehicles. In a video about the Tesla roadster I believe a 1000-ish vs 12 moving parts was mentioned. Skipping all the pulleys, shafts, transmission, etc. really really helps to get a more efficient 'energy down to the wheels on the road' score.

I believe it's more efficient to generate electricity in a central location and charge the batteries in a car than it is to load an amount of petrol in a car. I believe a 'well to wheel' efficiency percentage for a gasoline car is somewhere in the 15-20% range.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuna4
[2] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motor-efficiency-d_655.html
[3] http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-well-to-wheel-efficie-002467.php

Finally: just to move away from the polluted air I would rather see electric cars than gasoline vehicles. Since I've seen a demonstration of the former, I'm completely sold... even though I absolutely loved the big V8 blocks before, I barely stand them anymore.

And the sound? Well.. I bet there's enough power in a Tesla roadster to drive a good set of speakers. ;)