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Solar Energy Becoming More Pervasive
TheUploader writes "RenewableEnergyAccess is reporting that Solatec LLC has released a stick-on solar panel kit that charges your hybrid while parked. In related news, the world's largest photovoltaic system will be built, not on the roofs of Priuses, but on the ground of Nevada, and will provide clean energy for the US military."
I suppose at 0.6mm thick and with "aircraft grade adhesive" they must stick very well, but I still can't shake the image of these going flying off while driving on the expressway. Certainly a step in the right direction though.
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I thought http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ was a better solution
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You need something like this then... although it's not really suited for anything other than hotdogs. http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/light/solar_ho tdog_cooker.html
There are plenty of designs available for nice solar ovens & fryers.. anything collapsible is usually a little more work, but worth the effort.
And include some extra Li-Ion battery capacity and a plug-in bridge rectifier so that it's solar-and-grid-and-gas, and this would be *really* interesting for a dealership add-on. I'm willing to bet you could push it to nearly 25% increase in efficiency.
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Yeah...but, it looks like CRAP. Can't they make these 'green' cars look nice and sporty?
They hit the economy car segment first, because that is where is is marketable as a gas saving feature. For sports cars, however, you'll be seeing hybrids very soon from a number of different manufacturers and they will be very, very fast to accelerate off the line, given the benefits of stable power at the low end of the spectrum. Toyota and Mitsubishi's concept demos this year seemed particularly nice.
How about this: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/psa_peugeo t_cit.html
So we make wooden toothbrushes. :) And make more things from wood. It's an excuse to plant more trees, wood looks and feels nicer and it biodegrades a tad better than plastic. Can also make common things like that from ceramics and other materials. Heck, I *hate* plastic bathroom/kitchen stuff. Wood, ceramic or glass for me, please.
Here, we get about 70-80 percent of the electricity from a solar cell on a grey and cloudy day - yeah, it rains a lot here - but many people have hybrid cars. Way more than most other places.
So, while the hybrid car is sitting in the carpool lot, a rooftop solar panel can charge up the battery - or maybe carpool lots could provide these as plug-ins - while your car is washed clean by the soothing misty rains that drive you insane. Saves on gas cost - especially with the new plug-or-pump electric hybrids that let you plug in if you want to or just use gasoline/biodiesel.
Or you can use cheap hydro or wind power (3/4 of our energy supply) to plug in and do the same thing.
It's not like your car was doing anything - it might as well charge up while it's taking up valuable real estate.
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Indeed. Back when (for perspective) I calculated the Iraq War as being worth about 105 replacement world trade towers, adjusted for inflation, I also calculated the investment in terms of solar energy. Using existing solar boiler technology (in use in smallish generator arrays) it came to about 5% of our totaly energy use per year of all sources of energy, coal + solar + nuclear + oil.
In short, by now we have doubled the spending that was based on and we could have had upwards of 10% of our energy from green solar power. Of course there are problems such as solar not being available at night or in bad weather, and taking a lot of space in the desert, and transmitting the power. Of course you can store power during the day at some loss and the largest power demand is during the day for air conditioning. I didn't calculate the space it would take however, but there's a *lot* of desert in the southwest that gets a *lot* of sun.
But anyway these objections are largely missing the point that we've been screwed by the retards in office who are openly hostile towards science. $400 billion buys a lot of solar plant, or a lot of solar cell research, or a lot of wind turbines, etc. Instead we have jack to show for it.
Why are people even buying cars in the first place? If you city has good public transit, you could take the bus back and forth to work each day, and rent a car for the weekends for less then the price of owning a car.
Many people do not live in such a city. Also, even if you live in a place with public transit, it is unlikely that it will go where you want to go when you need to get there. One place I lived had "public transit" (bus), but I had to drive a mile to get to the nearest bus stop. Even then, it took me about 3X longer to get to work than if I had driven my car. The only reason I didn't drive to work was the parking cost was too high where I worked.
Then I moved to another place where I could take a different kind of public transit to work - ferry boat. I could walk from the boat to work, but on the other side of the water I had to drive 30 minutes to get to the boat. No bus was available and even if it had been it would have been too inconvienient.
In my experience public transit works only in a few cities and for a few people in those cities. Plus, public transit is as expensive as a car (or more), very dirty, very crowded, and very likely to screw you and leave you stranded. If you are 30 seconds late, you are screwed. Oh, I can't get to work today because there is a strike. Or a bomb threat. Or a holiday. Oops, we changed our schedule from the fall schedule to the summer schedule today and now you cant' get home. Your fault for not reading some fine print.
Bah! I will never vote for public transit and I avoid it when I can (which is most of the time.)
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Then pay me my commission on this idea that I never hear talked about otherwise in any serious manner.
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It's all just marketing. When our environmental policy is determined by car manufacturers, you know we're in big trouble. The only reason hybrids are considered worth a damn is marketing.
Putting solar cells on your car is dumb:
Having PV grid-tied, means you feed electricity onto the grid at typically peak usage times, then recharge your car at night at off peak rates.
> Why are people even buying cars in the first place? If you city has good public transit, you could take the bus back and forth to work each day, and rent a car for the weekends for less then the price of owning a car. $15 a day to rent a car, plus $15 a day for insurance, that's $30 a day, times 8 days for weekends in a month, and you at $240 a month.
I'll answer the economic question first and the philosophical question second. I live in San Francisco near SF State, my job is 12 miles away on the Peninsula, and my commute options are:
*Driving*
Ford Crown Victoria LX: $15488 in August 2000, pre-owned with 23,000 miles.
4.6L V-8, 200 horsepower, 17/25 mpg (22 overall). 88,000 miles driven in 5.5 years = 16,000 miles/year. Gas costs at $2 per gallon avg over last 5.5 years = $1500 per year = $4 per day.
Insurance: $68 per month with all my discounts = $2.27 per day.
Maintenance: 3 oil changes per year at $60 at Jiffy Lube plus misc. maintenance averaging $300 per year = $480/yr = $1.30 per day.
Total consumables cost per day of car use for ownership: $7.57 per day, assuming equal use on all days of the year (long trips on weekends make up for non-use, etc).
Depreciation: car now worth $4500 = $11,000 depreciation over 5.5 years = $2000/yr = $5.50 per day.
Total cost for car ownership, daily use for commuting and pleasure, etc etc: $13.07 per day.
Time spent commuting: ~35 minutes per day for a 24 mile round trip. My car is in my apartment garage so I walk directly to it, drive to the office garage, and walk into the office.
The question is whether public transit costs more than that amount per day.
*Public Transit*
Bus to Daly City BART station: $1.50, 10 minute walk away, ~5 minutes spent waiting for the bus. 5 minute ride to BART.
$1.75 for BART ticket. 5-10 minutes spent waiting for train.
20 minute train ride to Millbrae.
Transfer to Caltrain, $1.50 ticket.
10 minute train ride.
Walk 5 minutes to office in downtown San Mateo.
One-way cost: $4.75
Time spent: 62 minutes.
Double it for daily total: $9.50, 120 minutes avg.
Assume use is halved on weekends for recreation, $4.75 and 60 minutes.
Car: $4770 per year = $13.07 per day avg.
Public transit: $2825 per year = $7.70 per day avg.
Car: 35 minutes per day transit time
Public transit: 98 minutes per day
The question now is whether the time difference makes up for the higher cost of ownership. During the week I make $45 per hour. I save over an hour per day by driving. So I can work more per day and still have the same amount of leisure time as if I worked less and took public transit. If I work the full extra hour, I make an extra $39.63 per day by driving!
Now the philosophical argument.
For people under time pressure, public transit is the worst. You end up wasting a lot of time waiting around, getting tickets, waiting in line, waiting in the terminal, walking between trains, climbing stairs, and the like. Then you have the often neglected and graffittied vehicles filled with somber, depressed people. Not to mention panhandlers, drug addicts, and blabbermouths on their cell phones trying to catch up on work and not getting much done. I would rather work (and get paid for it) than spend time sitting in a train waiting to arrive at the next station. In my car I have the ultimate freedom in transport: I'm reverse commuting, which means no rush hour traffic and no waiting, I have my iPod hooked up and I can replay the same song 100 times in a row if I want, and I can take a beautiful leisurely drive on highway 280 south, "the world's most beautiful freeway," and luxuriate in the knowledge that if nothing else, I made it in life to the extent that I can afford to drive to work until gasoline reaches about $18 per gallon because I use less than two gallons per day and made that extra $39. Driving makes absolute sense to me, especially as cars get more efficient. Add to that the freedom of being able to go wherever I want at any
Yes, but even if it eliminated the need to charge the single 12V battery at all, that does not account for 10% of the car's energy usage, 1-3% perhaps, as compared to the 28x 200V NiMh modules.
And uh, clutches were meant to be trashed :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But, do you park your car at home? Most people park at work.
...]
The best thing to do, IMHO, is to:
1. get a plug-able biodiesel hybrid car. (most hybrids don't plug in)
2. drive to the nearest park and ride or carpool to work.
3. plug in your biodiesel hybrid car at the park and ride or work carpool lot - either to wind-power or solar-power or hydro-power.
4. PROFIT!
Nothing wrong with having solar in your house, but it's best used there if you're:
a. retired;
b. working at home;
c. taking the biodiesel bus or hydro-powered SkyTrain to worl; or
d. using it to heat the hot water heater or provide passive solar stored for evening heat.
[ok, so I was one of the first 100 Solar Energy Society of Canada members
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I've even heard that there will be a new Nissan Skyline hybrid. Supposedly, the weight of the batteries and motors isn't hugely higher than the weight of the AWD system that it's replacing. The new car would likely have electric drive in front and conventional drive in the rear. But then, there's more Skyline rumors than Apple rumors...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The other thing that needs to be considered is what kind of driving you do.
... but if it's true, it could seriously impact the efficiency numbers in certain climates. A diesel engine sees some efficiency hit as a result of the A/C compressor, but its not that significant. (I measured the MPG of my VW with the compressor running and not, and could never get a good handle on what the change was. It was below the error caused by month-to-month differences in my driving style, anyway.) I don't know about anybody else, but I am not prepared to drive without air conditioning, at least until gas is well into the double-digit dollars per gallon.
A gasoline hybrid like the Prius gets its best mileage in city, stop-and-go driving, because of the regenerative braking.
A diesel engine gets its best milage while cruising on the highway at a basically constant speed, in the transmission's highest gear.
I used to drive a diesel VW and *loved* it. It was fun to drive (torquey as hell) and had excellent highway range, well in excess of 500 miles to the tank. However that mileage went into the toilet if I had to do a lot of stop and go driving. Still better than a conventional gasoline car for the same driving, but nothing like a hybrid.
I think there will be a place for both types of vehicles in the future, and which one is most efficient for you depends on the type of driving you do. For me, it's almost highway driving -- a hybrid wouldn't have much of an advantage.
The other thing to consider is the air conditioning and heating requirements. I have heard it said that the hybrids derive a lot of their fuel savings by being able to shut off the gas engine when it's not needed (in city driving), but that if you have the A/C running, it won't shut off because there's no way to run the compressor electrically. If anyone can verify this I'd be interested
What I would like to see is a diesel-electric hybrid: combine the best of both worlds.
I also wish that there was some sort of tax relief for diesel passenger vehicles on the diesel fuel taxes, which are really excessive. They're aimed at truckers, but they've had the side-effect of making diesel artifically expensive relative to gasoline, and hurting diesel car development in the US. This is too bad, because it's a technology that really has a lot of potential. There are better/alternative ways of taxing trucking than putting a tax on diesel fuel. At the very least, we should have some sort of rebate program to allow diesel passenger car owners to get back the difference in taxes they pay over an equivalent amount of gasoline (if not the amount of gasoline that they would have needed to buy to drive the same number of miles, which would be more fair).
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Back to the source of the oil. Iran is the second largest OPEC nation, an organisation which controls almost 40% of global oil production. Even by your own figures, I think a sudden loss of one fifth of your oil supply would have a drastic affect on the price of oil. Don't forget the US is not the only country burning oil at a terrible rate, many other countries are going to be bidding for that Venezualan oil if/when the middle east decide they don't want to deliver to anyone in the "coalition of the willing".
The slightest hiccup in oil production over the past 12 months (hurricanes, strikes, fires, threats of civil unrest, military coups, etc.) have regularly resulted in +10% movements in price. I can only imagine what would happen to prices if 20% of production just suddenly turned off, and really turned off not just speculation on what might occur.
Glenn
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