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Gas Prices Jump; California Hardest Hit
New submitter jefery23 writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press article (as carried by the Denver Post): "Californians woke up to a shock Friday as overnight gasoline prices jumped by as much as 20 cents a gallon in some areas, ending a week of soaring costs that saw some stations close and others charge record prices." Friday's jump followed another big one just a day earlier, too. Texas gas prices have gone up, but not quite so dramatically ($3.59 at the station nearest to me); how are they in your neck of the woods? Those Bloom boxes and charging stations can't arrive too soon.
Yeah but, according to the Labor Department gas prices had already dropped in California, so be happy.
20 cents on $4 is only 5%. Being as California is probably paying a fair bit above $4, that would put the percentage even lower. I'm surprised they would make a big deal out of it if it one just one moment in time. If it was 5% in one day, for several days in a row, that would be more noticeable, but this is barely above the variance you'd likely find between two gas stations.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
An improving economy demands more gasoline.
Since supplies are already so tight that we are increasingly using extreme sources of oil like very deep sea drilling and oil sands, we should expect to pay more for gasoline.
I hope you've all been buying fuel efficient cars...
We've been closing down refineries for many, many years in the US due to low profit margins. Basically, it's a lot more lucrative to get the crude out of the ground and sell it as a raw product than it is to turn it into something useful. Now we're left with no spare refining capacity and as soon as something happens, the laws of supply and demand send the price skyrocketing. And there's almost always something happening somewhere. That's why even when we have a surplus of crude (and we often do), gas prices don't really reflect it. And why opening the SPR would do very little to bring down gasoline prices unless there was a true break in the crude supply chain, not just refinery problems.
The prices have been artificially raised, because of the presidential debate. Just like the unemployment rate has fallen or not fallen.
Now, I can't figure out which candidate thinks he benefits from higher gas prices.
So maybe just like the unemployment rate has fallen or not fallen, maybe the gas prices haven't jumped . . . or jumped.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Economy of scale.
It's probably seen as more efficient to have a single large power generator burn the fuel and turn it into electricity that gets converted to mechanical energy; then hundreds of thousands of smaller less efficient generators burn it and turn it into mechanical energy.
It is beyond me how americans can complain about gas prices. In Sweden people pay more than twice as much, and everyone seems to be fine with it. On top of that, americans have even more money to spend than do swedes. So, are americans cheap, or just spoiled?
On this side of the pond, we're paying a bit under $8/gallon...
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism. We have no spare refinery capacity, and we have fewer gas stations per-capita than most states, and few new stations are being built.
I don't expect things to get any better. Pro-business people are leaving the state, shifting us even further to the left, and the car-culture is thriving. My son's elementary school has 800 students, and despite perfect weather almost every day, exactly two (2) of them bike to school: my son and a kindergarten girl from our neighborhood. Every morning we pedal past a long line of moms in idling SUVs waiting to drop of their kid.
Where I am it's Euro 1.73 per liter, so that's about Euro 6.55 per gallon, which is about $8.55
I'm a work-from-home computer programmer with two full time jobs doing this.
Taking the vehicle out of the equation makes the problem less relevant. Sure, the cost of food goes up because the cost of transporting it went up. But seriously: I only drive on friday once a month when I need to resupply a month's worth of beer and food.
A year ago I was bankrupt and now its looking like I could buy a house next year. Just commit to it and stick with it and these gas prices don't hurt at all.
Yeah because everyone knows you can't use solar and wind to charge your car. I mean, this guy does it: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=78 but that's a stupid idea up there with the solar (charged) flashlight! All that crap about hydroelectric dams, tidal power, geothermal and other green energy is just made up by liberals.. those things don't exist either and never will.
As we all know, if it involves change, or it's harder than flipping a switch then it's just plain not worth doing. That's the exact attitude that put a man on the moon, for sure!
Problem solved, now we can all go back to watching TV and doing nothing.
Invent something fast to inv^H^H^Hliberate Iran, Venezuela, or other oil producing country... wont lower the prices but maximize profits.
Plugin cars are making a lot more sense.
Lots of critics argue plugins don't make economic sense. But looking at the long game ( next few decades ), getting plugins to the point where economies of scale reduces their price is one of the best solutions to this energy problem.
You can thank the Federal Reserve and President. All that quantitative easing (money printing) is doing wonders to the US Dollar, making your imports more expensive, pushing up your energy imports.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
$5.22 equivalent ($1.389/L) on Vancouver Island, and here it would get it's power from Hydroelectric, possibly a small amount from wind and industrial CHP.
That's not really it. It depends on where your generating capacity is coming from. If it's coming from coal plants, you shouldn't buy an electric car—gas is cleaner. If it's coming from wind, you should definitely buy an electric car if it makes economic sense to you personally. The Chevy Volt is a nice compromise if you have a sub-30-mile commute. It would be nice if generation source information were readily available, but of course nobody has any incentive to publish it—electric car manufacturers want you to buy the car, and power companies want you to buy the power. I suppose oil companies would want you to not buy the electric car, but their incentive exists regardless of what the local generating capacity comes from. Government could do it, but they're busy being drowned in a bathtub at the moment.
The NY Times did a pretty good map of the carbon impact of electrical generation sources back in April, but I don't think they're maintaining it.
Look it up...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The largest contributers to the republican party represent "Big Oil" and "Big Coal". Could this be a ploy to weaken the economy and increase the chances of their candidate being elected?
What's special about CA that made them have a higher increase than the rest of us?
California has different gasoline formulation standards than the rest of the country, so gasoline cannot be brought in from other states. At this time of year, they are switching from the state-mandated "summer formulation" to "winter formulation", so inventories are low. Then, there was a refinery fire in August, which shut down some of the state's gasoline production. Combine those factors and you have all the necessary conditions for shortages.
3.59 a Gallon? I WISH I could pay that price. In Canada we're paying 6.00
(It looks like the NY Times' data source was the Union of Concerned Scientists; unfortunately, their map is also static.)
Here, its already over 5$
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
A local refinery lost power and shut down for a while.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The price of Gas is not reacting to a Supply vs Demand price rise. 2005 remains the peak of oil consumption in the U.S.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTUPUS2&f=M
On the other hand, we are producing more oil. Why hasn't the price fallen?
We have embarked on QE3 (after QE2 and QE1). We are printing money and injecting it into the Financial Institutions on Wall Street. Obviously countries who have been producing products for the United States (like oil) for decades and decades know that the value of the dollar is going to slide. Not saying crash necessarily, but there isn't any doubt in the world it is going to slide.
What do you do if you are such a country? You raise your prices. Because the dollar isn't going to be worth as much going forward.
This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.
So the result is going to be higher prices and lower real wages, less ability to buy goods (because we increasingly uses foreign components and raw materials even in domestic goods).
We are proudly following Japan into 20 years of dragging economic activity. And I think that is the up side.
This summer topped at 2.00€/lt (over 10$ per US gallon at today's change) for unleaded petrol here. Over 45% of the price is taxes.
Just saying...
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
Washington State Electrical Power (2011) (PDF)
73% Hydroelectric
14% Coal
8% Natural Gas
3% Nuclear
1.12% Wind
0.49% Biomass
0.37% Waste
0.08% Petroleum
0.05% Landfill gasses
0.02% Geothermal
0.03% Other
When you have to lie to make a point, you should realize that your point is not worth making.
=Smidge=
What do they have to do with the price of oil? They provide electricity, which currently comes from other fossil fuels (mostly). This is an issue onto itself (assuming you're not just in denial about carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) but the only cost issue here is that coal is too fucking cheap for the amount of damage it causes.
Here in the UK, petrol (gasoline) is the equivalent of about $8.30 a gallon. We buy in litres these days and I only realised we are paying > six quid a UK gallon when I did the conversion to post here.
Note to self: Nerds evidently have strong opinions about gasoline pricing, but do not display much insight one cannot get from celebrities, in fewer characters, via twitter.
Gently reply
I live in San Diego and on Monday,October 1st, the local Chevron was 4.09. When I got home, it was 4.19. When I woke up on Tuesday, it was already 4.29. Yesterday, it was already 4.89. Big Oil is saying that a refinery that is responsible for 8% of production, a power outage and the switch from Summer blend to Winter blend (appearently there is different additives during the year) is causing the spike. People out here believe there is gouging going on while the local independent stations are shutting down as they can not afford to buy the gas. That in turn means you can only buy from Big Oil.
It's a bit hard to be a work-from-home machinist.
All that crap about hydroelectric dams, tidal power, geothermal and other green energy is just made up by liberals.. those things don't exist either and never will.
I'd love (love) to see your charge your electric car from solar where I live. You might be able to make it down the street a few weeks a year. Snow, clouds, rain, and the simple fact that there is only ~8 hours of sunlight during the winter means it is almost impossible to use that here. Wind is never reliable, almost anywhere, even at the best of times. Hydroelectric? There is some, but that takes a massive amount of land, and is rather dangerous, if the dam breaks (in one instance killing 100,000+ people, but that is nearly worst case). Also, expensive. Tidal? The nearest ocean is ~1,000 miles away, good luck with that. Geothermal? Yeah, can't do that either. So unless you expect to pipe the power thousands of miles (expensive, wasteful, and difficult to maintain), none of that is going to work for me, or large sections of the world's population.
Nuclear? Works fantastic! Probably powering this computer as I speak. Other than that, it's pretty much all fossil fuels and a little bit of hydro (which is pretty limited in it's expansion options).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Learn to take the bus.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The energy market's derivatives market (itself larger than most entire industries) is not only the most profitable, but also produces the most efficient pricing to the demand.
Wait - it's actually only the most profitable. But don't worry, it's only the market far most essential to all our other economics. Wait - you should worry.
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make install -not war
Reducing your petrol consumption means that the US will finally start to contribute to reducing CO2 emissions - whether you wanted to or not. Can't argue with global economics.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
There is this neat electric grid thing we have where you can get power produced elsewhere delivered to you.
Also, the Banqiao dam wasn't only for electric generation, it was also for flood control (which it obviously failed catastrophically at during a bad typhoon). It probably would have existed, and subsequently still failed, even if it hadn't been used for hydroelectric. It's also hard to determine exactly which deaths would and would not have been caused by the typhoon if the dam hadn't been built.
It is $4 per gallon. What really irks me is that you can work the math backward and come to the conclusion that a gallon of gasoline costs less than $1.50 to extract, ship, process and distribute. Another $0.50 is tax. So the other $2 - is just pure ass-rape profit.
The more expensive you make it to run refineries, the fewer you have, and then when there's a mishap at one, you're screwed.
That's not really it. It depends on where your generating capacity is coming from. If it's coming from coal plants, you shouldn't buy an electric car—gas is cleaner. If it's coming from wind, you should definitely buy an electric car if it makes economic sense to you personally.
Actually, You're missing the entire point of an electric car. People think you should get one because of environmental concerns. The reasons to get one are entirely economic, and the tipping point is almost here (if not already). Electric cars use far cheaper electricity for their operation. the EPA has an MPGe rating that gives a pretty good comparison of the *cost* of fuel. This means that for the cost of the electricity on average, you could use gas and get that same mileage for you money. There is a reason that Electric cars are rated in the high double digits or low triple digits. I own a Miev, and the cost of my daily commute is so low I haven't noticed the difference on my monthly utility bill. I drive about 30 miles a day 5 Days a week. The vehicle cost me $490 / month for 72 months. The cost of Electricity I have estimated to be about $23-$26 / month. Now comes the good part: Cost of electricity is really very stable, and does not increase very fast. That means that in 5 years when gas is $6 / gallon, and you are spending $250+ / month on gas, I will still be spending $25. Also, Gasoline engines are complex and easily damaged through mishandling and improper maintenance. A gas engine really only has a life expectancy of about 5,000 to 10,000 hours (200 to 400 k miles). Electric motors with MTBF of 50,000+ hours are not uncommon. That means that the motor in your electric car is likely to out-live you. The Motor controllers (if properly designed) have only one part with a low MTBF, and if properly designed, this $10 part should be swappable on the controller. My Miev has coolant, but it doesn't run hot, so there is little likelihood of normal operating resulting in damage to the cooling system. Regenerative braking significantly reduces the wear load on the brakes making them last for 3x or 4x longer. In all, my only real expense in the first 5 years will be tires... I expect that reduction in maintenance costs alone will save a further $40 / month. Now lets add it all up and figure out the ROI. First, We will use three use cases: the first 200,000 miles, 400,000 and 1,000,000. For 200,000 miles, the gas car uses 8,000 gallons of gas at an average of $5 per gallon (remember this has to include reasonable price increases over the next 14 years). That comes to $40,000 for gas. The cost of the vehicle is about $20,000. The cost of maintenance is about $5,500. (oil changes brakes and tires. Total cost is $65,500 for 14 years and the car is basically on its last legs. Many parts on the verge of failure, unreliable. Now take the electric: Base cost $35,000. Cost of fuel is $4,000 ($25 per month for 168 months). Maintenance costs $1,750. Total cost is $40,750, and the car is mostly in running order with one caveat: It needs a new battery. Todays cost: $10,000 (eight years from now this cost is expected to be half what it is today. Total cost for 14 years: $50,750. The electric has a clear advantage.
Now for the 400k miles scenario:
for the second 200,000 miles, the gas vehicle costs an additional $56,000 in gas (gas went up to $7 average for the period, an increase of 28% over 14 years (2% inflation). Costs of maintenance have soared as all the moving parts have worn out and needed to be replaced. $7,300. Total cost for the second 14 years: $64,300. The electric costs have gone up also. Electricity now costs $35 / month (2% across 14 years), so the cost comes to $5,900. Cost of maintenance includes another battery replacement for an additional $10,000 plus the regular $1,800. Lets add in an additional $4000 X-factor just to cover incidentals, like maybe we fried a motor controller, or some other unexpected weakness in this particular cars design. Total: $21,700.
So afte
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This is not exactly supply and demand issue, this is a shrinking economy and inflation issue. The shrinking economy causes people to use less gasoline and inflation causes nominal prices to rise (while real prices are actually falling due to the deflation, so if you measure oil in gold, then you'll see that the prices are falling, not rising).
As the productivity in USA and Europe shrinks, more of the product is distributed to the productive nations, which are able to buy more of that product, but this causes supply irregularities in the countries with less supply.
The situation is similar to what happens in the meat market due to inflation and other factors (like drought). As the supply of feed is reduced due to higher input costs because of inflation and as less supply is produced due to other factors like drought, the farmers start getting rid of their animals, they slaughter more and the prices can fall temporarily. However once that glut of meat is consumed, the overall supply of the animals is reduced and the prices for meat products will jump up.
I believe you are observing the same phenomena right now with oil prices and it's due to higher nominal cost of oil drilling and refining due to inflation as well as lower purchasing power by the population due to the inflation and due to the shrinking economy.
As a side note, the funny jobs numbers that came out (unemployment down to 7.8%) are indeed quite educating to the political situation in USA. 10,000 jobs were added in government and 16,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing sector in September (22,000 manufacturing jobs lost in August). However a 'household survey' shows that 873,000 jobs were created in September, this is the highest number of jobs added in one months since 1983. 66% of these jobs are part time, so the U6 number is unchanged (just under 15%) in September (number of underemployed people as well of those who are unemployed). Don't forget that every revision that comes out the next month revises the job growth numbers down and elections are in November. Don't forget that Obama's white house pressured the military (and other) contractors not to send out pink slips to their employees, who will be fired in 2 months and who must be notified 60 days prior, the white house promised all those contractors to take care of the penalties that they will incur due to this malpractice, this is clearly a violation and manipulation aimed at winning the elections, which is likely highly illegal.
A week ago GDP numbers came out, not that anybody should actually take those numbers at face value, they are absolutely misreported, but even as they are, they were revised down for the second quarter from 1.7 to 1.3%, and this is after using a completely fake deflator of 1.6%. How is it possible that the economy that is "growing" (officially) by 1.6% is adding all these jobs to take the unemployment down to 7.8%? The truth of course is that the economy is shrinking and if the real inflation number is used, then it becomes immediately obvious. Even if the inflation number is only 3%, then the economy is shrinking, because the pre-deflator GDP is 2.9%. The inflation is a few times bigger than that though, so adding jobs in a shrinking economy sound very fishy.
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Think about this: the official deflator for the GDP is 1.6%. Here is a chart of CPI. That's the reported number. The revised GDP is 1.3% Which is down from 1.7% earlier, before the revision. The U6 unemployment number is 15%.
You can't handle the truth.
There is no demand increase or shortage of crude oil.
The tightness in supply of gasoline is due to limited refinery capacity.
Why is there limited refinery capacity? Because the oil companies have been closing refineries.
Why are they doing that? So there can artificially limit supply and drive up price.
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3021014/Valero-CEO-believes-refining-capacity-still-too-much-in-US-western-Europe.html
Glad to hear Washington is doing so well, but it's not the norm. California doesn't have as many hydroelectric facilities, so more electricity comes from burning stuff.
Food for thought: If you add demand for charging 10,000 electric cars, which of those categories would be used to accommodate the demand? I'd presume that of the top 5, the only ones that aren't maxed out already are coal and natural gas. Maybe over time there would be more renewable energy generation and as someone else mentioned, economies of scale (one plant serving many cars rather than one plant per car). But the night you bring it home, does that coal plant burn just a little hotter?
I'd love (love) to see your charge your electric car from solar where I live. You might be able to make it down the street a few weeks a year. Snow, clouds, rain, and the simple fact that there is only ~8 hours of sunlight during the winter means it is almost impossible to use that here. Wind is never reliable, almost anywhere, even at the best of times. Hydroelectric? There is some, but that takes a massive amount of land, and is rather dangerous, if the dam breaks (in one instance killing 100,000+ people, but that is nearly worst case). Also, expensive. Tidal? The nearest ocean is ~1,000 miles away, good luck with that. Geothermal? Yeah, can't do that either. So unless you expect to pipe the power thousands of miles (expensive, wasteful, and difficult to maintain), none of that is going to work for me, or large sections of the world's population.
Nuclear? Works fantastic! Probably powering this computer as I speak. Other than that, it's pretty much all fossil fuels and a little bit of hydro (which is pretty limited in it's expansion options).
But you know, you don't have to personally have the solar panels. They could be located in a central area and have power sent to your location.
So unless you expect to pipe the power thousands of miles (expensive, wasteful, and difficult to maintain), none of that is going to work for me, or large sections of the world's population.
but but but mommy! It's too HAARD! :(
Man up. What do you think coal, oil, natural gas etc power plants do now? Do you even remember the massive power outage that affected a large portion of the United States a few years ago? Enough solar energy hits the earth in an hour to fill all our electrical requirements for a year. The only problem would be getting that energy to where people need it. Stop your whining about how hard things are. People could setup individual panels at their homes to reduce load on the grid, and plants can be setup in various locations as well. If one location is cloudy, guess what? Another one probably isn't!
Same goes for wind. Plug your car in and when the wind is blowing, your car can soak it up. They don't have to worry about building large plants in order to store the energy for when it is needed. HELL, electric cars are perfect drains for wind energy.. They can soak up the excess energy produced and then it can be used when you want it. Best part is, lots of people would want to plug in their cars at night when there is no solar but there's usually a lot of wind energy! OTOH, you might plug in your car at work to soak up excess solar energy as well.
Hydroelectric? There is some, but that takes a massive amount of land,
so it doesn't count, right?
Other than that, it's pretty much all fossil fuels and a little bit of hydro (which is pretty limited in it's expansion options).
I'm not sure what country you are from. Here in the USA there's more and more solar and wind power.
Frankly, not investing in green energy right now is going to make a lot of countries hurt worse when fossil fuels start to run out and suddenly the price of green energy skyrockets from the increased worldwide demand.
I find it interesting that no one is talking about the manufactured price hike.
This means that gas companies basically caused this on purpose (something they have been doing for quite some time).
Where the fuck is the outrage and the call for regulations or penalties?
Anyone who votes for Romney is an ignorant cunt.
Anyone who thinks Obama and Romney are actually different is an ignorant cunt. I think that's what you meant.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Every state requires its own special gasoline blend which is the most asinine concept ever developed. If California runs out of California blend they cannot buy blends designed for other states. If Nevada runs out of gas, tough shit they have to wait for the refinery to make more. What makes these two states require different gas? All the cars are made the same, a car sold in Alaska can run just fine with gas from Arizona so what is the problem here? Don't get me started on how no new refineries have been built in over 30 years. You don't make money by building refineries that's for sure.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
US Election BS related?
If someone came up with a good in-road delivery system for electricity for cars, they could probably successfully pitch wiring all our roads for electricity
There are already good proposals for doing this that do not require wiring the roads. These proposals assume that in the future cars will be capable of driving in "platoons", separated by only a few inches to reduce drag and increase road capacity.
Option 1: inductive coupling. Cars contain coils in their bumpers that can transmit and receive energy from cars immediately in front or behind them. If you are on a long drive, the computer in your car negotiates with the computer in the other cars and buys power from them. If you are on a short commute, and have spare power, you sell the power to other cars as you drive and make a small profit.
Option 2: magnetic coupling. This is similar, but the bumpers contain electro-magnets that pull or push leading or trailing cars. So if you are on a long trip, you get on a freeway, join a platoon, automatically negotiate to buy power, and then coast to your destination without consuming any of your own battery power. You could even use your engine to recharge your battery as you siphon power from the rest of the platoon.
Both of these proposals assume that cars on short trips are more common than cars on long drives. That is mostly true. But on long stretches of highway it is possible that dedicated vehicles with big batteries (or CNG generators on board) will be used to convoy platoons of regular cars.
Here in lower Michigan I filled up last night at $3.79, at least according to GasBuddy that same station is up to $3.94. Unfortunately this kind of thing is far from usual around here at least. At least once a month it will shoot up 20-30 cents in a day or two, then slowly go back down. Its of course blamed on refinery issues, or pipeline maintenance, or some other excuse. But in all likelihood the gas companies simply know they can.
Man up. What do you think coal, oil, natural gas etc power plants do now? Do you even remember the massive power outage that affected a large portion of the United States a few years ago? Enough solar energy hits the earth in an hour to fill all our electrical requirements for a year. The only problem would be getting that energy to where people need it. Stop your whining about how hard things are. People could setup individual panels at their homes to reduce load on the grid, and plants can be setup in various locations as well. If one location is cloudy, guess what? Another one probably isn't!
Guess what? That means you need to build twice as many panels/wind generators as you nominally need (at least). That increases the cost 2x, plus of course the cost of a robust power grid to transmit the power. Again, not quite so easy in a part of the world near tornado alley, where power loss is already moderately common... and where loosing power in the winter means people can start dying.
If everyone starts using electric cars, that represents a massive increase in demand. According to this [PDF WARNING] report, ~28% of US energy demand is in transportation, which means our demand for electrical power will go up significantly (30-40% is probably a decent estimation). If you double production costs and increase demand, combined with the vastly increased cost of electric cars (themselves hardly environmentally friendly to make. Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors) and suddenly you are looking at transport costs 2-3 times greater than they are now. Good luck getting that to happen, considering people already complain about the high costs of gas (which already has significant economical impact).
My point with hydroelectrical was it doesn't scale. If you try to make it scale, you run out of land for people to live and farm, and your entire cost of living goes up considerably. My entire point is that while green energy sounds nice, it is nowhere near practical yet, and won't be for years yet. Electric generation and storage is simply not good enough yet, and that is ignoring the fact that green power sources rarely are as green as they seem (like the Prius mentioned earlier: they always have environmental costs people don't like to talk about). Such as, for example, the fact that magnets used in electric motors requires rare earths, which have massive pollution by-products. I'm speaking realistically here when I say the only green technology we have, right now, that could fill our electric needs not only practically but cost-efficiently is nuclear.
Doesn't matter how much energy is hitting the planet from the sun, we simply cannot collect it effectively. Even an efficient solar panel is only 15% or so efficient. And expensive. And unreliable.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
What does the weight of lithium and gasoline have to do with anything? Does weight mean everything in your world?
It's not hard to actually dig up the data. You don't have to presume or guess anything.
Where would the power for 10,000 EVs come from? all sources. It's not as if they run Hydro at 100% until they max it out, then run up Coal until that's maxed out, etc... If anything, they run coal flat out all the time because that's the most economical way to operate it. Coal and other thermal cycle powerplants are slow to respond to changes, Hydro is not. So I'd actually posit that the lion's share of power for 10,000 EVs would be from untapped Hydro power.
Scraping Wikipedia, Washington State has over 27,000 MW of potential hydro power installed. Obviously not all of that will be usable year-round or necessarily all at once, but even if we cut that in half (say 13,000 MW) that's 113,880,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2011 they used 59,576,028 or 52% of that. 52% of half their installed capacity. There's plenty of headroom there.
To put that into perspective, 10,000 vehicles driving the national average of 15,000 mi/yr with a very conservative 3 mi/kWh would need an extra 50,000 MWh of electricity... a 0.05% increase over the 91,106,272 MWh they already use. Drop in the bucket. If everyone in the entire state bought an EV - even the ones who don't currently own or are even eligible to own a car - power consumption would rise about 37%. You're still well within the state's installed hydroelectric generating capacity.
So no, I don't think the coal plants will burn any hotter at all.
For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons along with selling power outside the state.
=Smidge=
The stock market is at 40 year low priced in gold. The fact that the stock market value went up in dollar prices only confirms my point about inflation, it doesn't do anything to help your point.
As to the market being at 2x the nominal value from 2009, yeah, first of all you are looking at the 2009 dip, which was pretty steep, so you are comparing 6,626 in 2009 during the crash to today at 13,610. Compare to 2000. It was around 10,000 in the year 2000.
In the year 2000 gold was 300 and today it's 1778.
When gold was at 300, the Dow was at 10,000, so that's about 1 to 33 ratio.
Today the ratio is 1778 to 13610, which is 1 to 7.6 The value of Dow went down 4.3 times over since 2000.
Eventually Dow and gold will be 1 to 1. Maybe at 10,000 to 10,000 maybe at 100,000 to 100,000, whatever it may be, nominal values do not matter, what matters is the trajectory.
Oil prices are going up, gold is going up, all of the commodities are going up. The product costs and prices are also going up, not as fast, because the market is good at finding efficiencies and bringing costs down despite inflation, but the market cannot beat the laws of thermodynamics and so inflation catches up.
Today more oil is extracted than ever and yet USA consumes less oil than every year since 2005. The prices are going up in nominal terms, while falling in real terms and this is not about supply and demand. Supply and demand curve pushes prices down, it's the inflation that is pushing prices up.
You can't handle the truth.
The stock market is at 40 year low priced in gold.
I get paid in dollars, and I'm doing just fine.
You can take your gold and shove it. Oil is a much more valuable commodity.
Americans do drive twice as much per capita as Europeans but they actually manage to consume four times as much gas.
It's interesting in the context of the fuel economy demands for the year 2025 (2020? I forget) that have been debated in the US. I checked what the situation in the EU is, and cars sold here actually would be close to these limits already. I suspect most of the difference is due to American consumers simply wanting larger cars and more powerful engines.
Low gas prices mean an Obama Win, High prices a Romney Win. So both camps are fighting to move them in the desired direction. Obama's using the threat of the US Reserves to try to keep prices down, meanwhile Romney's got strong support from the investor class that's pushing to keep them up in the hopes of a big pay day in the form of tax cuts if Romney's elected.
The rest of the price increases are just speculators skimming off the top of our civilization. The UN has several studies showing most of the increase of food/energy is due to deregulation in the market that's been going on for 20 years or so.
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I have no idea how much gas costs, my bicycle runs on doughnuts. The car has been in storage for more than a year and I haven't looked back, I'm healthier and wealthier than ever before.
the most powerful intellect is that unbounded by indubitable preconception
So 1 gallon of gasoline costs 3.78541 times 2.22488 or $8.42
Now stop complaining.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Romney changes his stripes so often, it's hard to tell whether he's different from Obama or not.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well, in Washington State, most of the power is hydroelectric. 80% - 90%
http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter12.html
Anyone who votes for Romney is an ignorant cunt.
Anyone who thinks Obama and Romney are actually different is an ignorant cunt. I think that's what you meant.
I think Obama's 2 cent titanium tax goes too far
On the other hand Romney's 2 cent titanium tax doesn't go to far enough
The largest part of California's grid is powered by natural gas (40%), which is far, far less polluting than ICE's. About 10% from large hydro plants. Another 14-15% comes from other renewable sources (wind, solar, biogas, etc.). Well less than 10% of California's electricity comes from coal plants.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
You're joking.
Right now it's a comparison of industrial strength electric motors with consumer gas engines. As the electric car will become more popular, the same trade-offs will be made (weight, durability, price) as for consumer gas engines.
Window wiper motors, window motors, fan motors all die multiple times before the engine fails. Most cars are wrecked with a capable engine. Most engines are not economic viable once difficult-to-reach seals need be replaced. Nevertheless, gasoline engines have a huge tolerance for maluse and neglect (excessive play, valve problems, etc.), electric tends to be more of the ON/OFF type.
When both applications are compared in the same industrial environment, large freighters, heavy machinery, I've seen electrical (sub)engines always need be replaced multiple times, under far less demanding conditions. wartsila.
Design, bearings, choice of material and maintenance is ever important, the real culprit is not technical, but more related to the way consumerism works.
They *are* different. Each one wants to screw you differently. You still get to choose which way you prefer. BTW anyone who claims otherwise is an ignorant cunt.
Right now it's a comparison of industrial strength electric motors with consumer gas engines. As the electric car will become more popular, the same trade-offs will be made (weight, durability, price) as for consumer gas engines.
Umm, what? Lets take this whole thing point by point. You're clearly suffering from a lack of actual knowledge. Let me help you with that. To put this in perspective, I work for an industrial transportation company. We have a large commercial fleet of vehicles, some of them EVs, most conventional. We also have a large warehousing and freight forwarding operation which makes use of vast quantities of industrial electric motors. So, we can be described as having a pretty good perspective on all of the various technologies involved, as well as what would be described as expert knowledge of the operational profiles of the most industrial equipment available.
Window wiper motors, window motors, fan motors all die multiple times before the engine fails. Most cars are wrecked with a capable engine. Most engines are not economic viable once difficult-to-reach seals need be replaced. Nevertheless, gasoline engines have a huge tolerance for maluse and neglect (excessive play, valve problems, etc.), electric tends to be more of the ON/OFF type.
Without regular maintenance (weekly oil and water, Three month PMI, yearly state inspection and daily pre-trip inspection of our vehicles, they would quickly become dangerously non-functional. Engine problems are the usual trouble and engine failure is frequent enough that our vehicle specifications require easy engine replacement procedures compared to passenger vehicles. We typically go through 2 to three engines in a vehicles operational life of fifteen years. Typical mileage on the vehicles at retirement is between 300k and 600k miles. 400k is considered quite good for one of our engines (They are rated for 10,000 hours or 300k miles). By contrast, most of our vehicles are taken out of service with the original wiper motors, fan motors (only a small percentage of the fleet has electric fan motors) or water pumps. Even more telling, we can use the stats for the belt drive motors in use in our local warehousing facility. The drives are rated at 18kW continuous with peak load handling of 30kW for 10 seconds. We have around seventy five of them in our warehouse. I have been stationed in this building for ten years, and in that time, we have had one drive motor fail after a new variable speed controller was installed wrong and overloaded the motor (and itself). The MTBF on our motors from the manufacturer are 100,000 hours continuous operation, and 75,000 hours for 50% rapid duty cycle operation, but in our operation we have many motors that are well past the 200,000 mark, and none that have failed in service. The manufacturers don't even list MTBF information because its pretty meaningless. I had to go digging to even find Baldors specs on it, and they have a disclaimer that they really don't know what the expected life span is because almost all of their motors are decommissioned long before they fail. Whenever you hear about motor failures, its always because they're being overloaded / pushed beyond spec.
When both applications are compared in the same industrial environment, large freighters, heavy machinery, I've seen electrical (sub)engines always need be replaced multiple times, under far less demanding conditions. wartsila.
Yeah, whatever. Making electric motors last is a matter of correctly sizing the motor for the application. If you're constantly frying motors, its because you used a motor that is not large enough for the application. Going to the next size up will fix most of that problem for you. A sufficiently sized and maintained electric motor can and will last decades. We have several 275kW Baldors in our building that have been in service since the 50's. They are never run past 25% capacity which keeps them nice and cool. B
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons
According to my municipal power distribution company, their mandate (from the government) is simply to buy what's cheaper - which is how they end up with coal, gas etc in the mix. They actually have a program whereby you consent to pay a higher rate on your bills, which then goes to a fund that's used to cover any extra expenses from extra "green" watts, so the more people do it, the fewer environmentally unfriendly sources are used.
THANK YOU for actual information. I've always been curious. Mod up parent, please.
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
I thought about it, and I decided that it's bullshit. Even a little common sense thinking makes it clearly improbable -- an electric car can hold only a tiny fraction of an 18 wheeler load of batteries, yet range is commonly 70 miles or more -- more than twice as far as a typical gasoline power car can travel on a single gallon of gas. Are you really suggesting that an electric car is so energy efficient that it only needs a tiny fraction of the energy that a gasoline power car needs to travel the same distance?
A Nissan Leaf has a 24KWh battery, and a gallon of gas has 33KWh of energy (assuming you can burn it at 100% efficiency). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent for details.
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
I thought about it, and I decided that it's bullshit.
I did some more thinking and wanted to see how heavy and how big a rechargable battery pack would be that's the equivalent of a gallon of gas.
I found these cells:
Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4)
Voltage per Cell: 3.2V
Capacity: 100Ah
Size: LxWxH 7.04in x 2.44in x 8.58in
Weight: 7.71 Lbs
So at 320 Wh per cell, it would take about 100 of them to be equivalent to a gallon of gas, would weigh 770 lbs, and would fit in the space of 8 cubic feet (a cube 2 feet per side). Wiring and cooling would add to the weight and volume.
Damn your thick headed. I'm saying gasoline is many times more powerful than batteries so you need a shit ton of batteries to get the same power as a gallon of gas.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Where will the charging station get its power from? Coal, natural gas.... try to think it through.
You're in western Washington and you think your electricity comes from coal? My Leaf runs mostly on hydroelectric here in the Seattle area.
But the ones that aren't trying to think it through are those trotting out the same tired arguments. Even if western WA was powered by coal plants, it's easier to clean up one big plant than a million individual little power generators.
Damn your thick headed. I'm saying gasoline is many times more powerful than batteries so you need a shit ton of batteries to get the same power as a gallon of gas.
*you're
I don't know the mass of a "shit ton", but if you look at my followup post, it takes well under half a ton of batteries to equal the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. And even less if you consider how much of the energy from gasoline actually makes it to your wheels compared with an electric drivetrain.
And I think you mean "energy" rather than "power".
Two tanks of gas ago, the radio was reporting $3.99 as the lowest price in half a dozen parts of the Bay Area, and I was mainly seeing under $4.10 at the cheaper stations and $4.20-4.30 at the pricier ones. This week my local cheap station jumped from $3.99 to to $4.07 and then to $4.47 for cash, 10c more for credit. Today in San Francisco the cheaper stations were mostly $4.49 and the expensive ones were $4.75 (though I haven't driven that route recently enough to know what their usual price gap is.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes. (Ok, probably no, because I'm lazy and didn't like most cars on the market, but I should have done something different when I was in your place :-)
I went through these calculations about a year ago, having driven my mid-80s Chevy van into the ground (well, driven it 110K miles, replaced the engine, driven it another 110K miles, decided not to replace the transmission.) A typical car lasts about 200K miles, so it will use 200K/mpg gallons over its lifetime, gas will cost about $5/gallon, so that's $1million/mpg. (You can quibble about the numbers, but they're in the right ballpark, and $1M is a nice round shiny attractive number.)
That means a 50mpg Prius will need $20K of gas, a 33mpg Honda will need $30K of gas, a 20mpg minivan will need $50K of gas, and 11mpg BMW will need $90K of gas. The Prius cost about $8K more than the 33mpg car I bought, and would have saved about $10K of gas, so that's pretty close. And 2013 car engine models are a few mpg better than the mid-2012 models (I got an early-2012; a bunch of manufacturers didn't have their new engine models out until October/November.)
What I obviously should have done was replace my van with a Prius a couple of years ago when I started a job with a long commute, when there was still a huge tax deduction for buying Priuses - the second van engine only got about 13mpg, so I probably spent $15-20K in gas during its last 50,000 miles. Making a car isn't zero-footprint for the environment, but I was burning through twice its weight in gasoline a year.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's on top of the lost refining capacity from northern California (Richmond, CA) due to the refinery explosion back in August.
Also, due to California's geography (mountains separating the state from elsewhere), they can't import gasoline from the rest of the continent very easily anyway even if other refineries on the continent produced similar blends of gasoline.
Guess what? That means you need to build twice as many panels/wind generators as you nominally need (at least).
Stupid. If you need that amount of solar panel to get enough energy taking into account period of no power generation, that's not twice as many generators as you nominally need, it's *exactly* the amount of generators that you need.
Thank you for the elaborate info.
I need 10000-50000 kW engines running at well over 25% capacity continuously in a moving contained space with portable power source, millions of miles without single failure.
The electrical support engines are oversized 2-3 times and still fail.
Much smaller, Mercedes G class engines run well over 100k miles without an oil change.
Calling an engine running at 25% more durable than an engine running at 80-90% of its max is not a fair comparison, which is why I thought you're jesting.
Considering the applied load, the tolerance for failure is immense for petrol, electric simply succumbs.
1. We had the freak situation of THREE major oil refineries shut down and a critical oil pipeline also shut down, which severely constrained gasoline production in the first place.
2. Oil speculators in the commodities markets drove the price of unleaded gasoline through the roof, which made the problem worse, not better.
But now that two of the refineries and the oil pipeline are coming back online this coming week, expect prices to drop 40 cents or more per gallon, since nobody wants to be left "holding the bag" on overpriced petroleum products.
You're assuming you're burning the lithium batteries to get your energy.
The energy obtainable from burning one US gallon is 115,000 BTU (34 kWh). The Leaf uses 34kWh to go 100 miles.
Where's your magical 'think about it' 100 MPG vehicle?
Well, some of us here use that air to breathe with... YMMV.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
They learned that Americans are actually stupider than even their most wildly optimistic stretch of imagination projected. They kept prices low to keep selling the guzzlers, and ta-da, look at the highways. Watch how this affects (not) our choice of vehicle purchase.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
The power plants are not likely the source of all the problems, they can be upgraded or revised to generate more electricity. The actual infrastructure is. The GP is forgetting something: If almost everyone gets an electric car in the next ten years, there's absolutely no way the power costs will remain the same. Everyone will have to upgrade the infrastructure to transport this current to where it's needed. This is not cheap, we're talking new transmission lines and base stations to move this power around for the batteries in cars.
If everyone had electric cars our electric prices would skyrocket, possibly even to the tune of 20-30% to pay for the infrastructure upgrades, not the 2% that he's using in his calculations!
I highly doubt Mercs G average used/max power ratio is higher than 10%.
Other countries tend to have higher gas prices than the USA because of taxes levied to support various social programs.
This is bollocks, please stop repeating it.
Actually, taxes on fuels are levied to pay for the roads the cars drive on.
In Australia 37.5 Australian cents are levied out of every litre to pay for road maintenance and it still isn't enough. In my state 100% of speed camera revenue goes to road construction and maintenance yet still there is money taken from income and corporate taxes to make up the shortfall.
In the US, they just take 100% of the money to pay for roads from taxes (or debt, which will eventually be take from taxes).
I prefer fuel taxes to income taxes as they work on consumption. In effect they punish the heaviest and most inefficient users, people who use their car less pay less... and saying this, I own a sports car (not cheap on fuel).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What are you doing, converting matter straight to energy? A typical car will go (maybe) 30 miles on a single gallon of gas. A Volt will do 30 miles on its batteries. Thus I'd consider one roughly equivalent to another, and as such I don't need a 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries.
Further, once you've burnt that gallon, you're done. Got to import another one. The batteries, OTOH, can be recharged and resued any number of ways,
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Who do you work for, Exxon Mobil or Shell?
To quote, "A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of these 198 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. ... Researchers found, in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for ALL [emphasis mine] of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries."
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204
"Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors)..."
Emphasis on "supposedly", since the Prius "report" was done by an shell organization hiding behind a POBox, and was totally debunked.
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius_redux.pdf
In fact, since the report was done, we now know the Prius numbers are even better than those determined in 2008. Further, old Prius batteries are not simply thrown away or even recycled. Many go on to supplement power plants and other systems during peak power loads, supplanting other batteries that would have had to have been purpose built for that use.
Rare earth issues do exist, which is why a team at Boston's Northeastern University, among others, have been working on substitutes and replacements.
And on. Your anti-green energy talking points are out of date, misleading, and, in some cases, appear to be total fabrications.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
But it's been there for a few weeks already.