Slashdot Mirror
Will Electric Cars and Solar Power Make Gasoline and Utilities Obsolete?
cartechboy writes "Since the dawn of time (or modern civilization) two things have happened: utility companies have made money by selling us electricity, and oil companies make money by selling us gasoline. But is it possible we are on the verge of upsetting this status quo? Tony Seba, an entrepreneur and lecturer at Standford University, is writing a book in which he essentially predicts electric cars and solar power will make gasoline and utilities obsolete by 2030. How, you might ask? In his book, titled Disrupting Energy: How Silicon Valley Is Making Coal, Nuclear, Oil And Gas Obsolete, he predicts that as people buy electric cars the interest in clean energy will increase because who wouldn't want 'free travel'? Combining the use of solar panels and electric cars, consumers would be able to do just that. The miles electric cars travel on grid energy stored in their batteries eliminates the demand for gasoline, and it turns out many electric-car owners have solar panels on their homes while eliminates or dramatically reduces their dependence on utilities. So as the amount of electric cars on the road increases, the cost of both solar panels electric-car battery packs will decrease, right?"
No.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
Better bring that Coleman stove. Oh wait...
Who lumped nuclear in there? As long as a nuclear plant has US standards for quality and testing instead of Japanese standards, we're all set. I do still prefer solar and wind but I wouldn't lump nuclear in with oil and gas since it doesn't produce CO2.
I'll take it you didn't even read the title, much less the summery or the article itself?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Contrary to the write-up, civilization has not been using oil (nor gas) very much for centuries. Man has sailed with, well, sails for thousands of years.
However, when the opportunity arose, using Sun's concentrated energy proved rather attractive to all. And so it will remain until we find a way to stuff the comparable amounts of energy per unit of volume as the "fossil fuels" contain.
Imagine a solar-powered aircraft carrier... Yes, you can!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I read it just fine. Started off just like the books I read to my kids at night "once upon a time...." there was this magical land where solar was economical and worked 24/7 and every nation on the planet jumped on board and there was no more pollution ever. The end.
Will we some day go all electric? Probably.
Is it going to happen any time soon?
Fuck no!
Petroleum is still too (relatively) cheap and still far better in the energy density department.
Additionally, the infrastructure just isn't there to make electric viable enough yet.
MAYBE 50-100 years from now.
But right now we're comparing Orville and Wilbur Wright against an F-35 Lightning II.
Of COURSE it's going to be found wanting...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Locality and efficency is the best advantage. I can generate electricity and pollution in a place well suited for it and the places people live and drive are less polluted because of it.
Soon enough we can run a super conductor line from China and make sure they have all of our pollution too.
He found a way to convert arrogance to electricity. That's how Silicon Valley will save the world. They have enough of it to power the entire planet.
Mr Hubbert's predictions say gasoline will be pretty much obsolete by 2050 whatever happens.
You keep seeing that chart over and over again, just the peak is moved to the decade during which the chart is drawn.
The key here is the question specifically about *solar* power. When you look at the sum total amount of energy we consume, I think you'll find that you'd have to blanket a pretty significant portion of the usable surface of the earth with panels to provide all of it, if you went strictly solar.
(From a solar energy FAQ):
Q: How much roof space is needed?
A: A rule of thumb is 100 sq. ft. per every kilowatt (kW) of electricity the PV system produces. Module efficiency correlates with the power that is generated in a given amount of roof space. For basic planning purposes, a good rule of thumb is 10-12 watts per square foot.
10-12 watts of power generated per square foot just isn't a heck of a lot, in the grand scheme of things.
You have to couple that with the fact that battery storage isn't anywhere near 100% efficient. (Batteries "leak" power even when they sit idle for a while.)
I think electric cars will have growing usefulness, but not everyplace gets a lot of sunshine during the average day. So even companies setting up solar charging stations in parking spaces for people to plug in vehicles during the work day won't be an adequate solution everywhere.
Ultimately, I see a situation where we substitute some fossil fuel use for increased nuclear power (for the big energy generation happening at large power plants), some hydrogen fuel cell tech gaining acceptance, solar and batteries as supplemental power where applicable, a little wind energy (again where applicable), and in the shorter-term at least, more use of natural gas vs. oil or coal.
There is certainly a place for solar. But at 1 kw/m^2 at noon on a cloudless day, times whatever percentage efficiency of the cells... it isn't going to be the whole solution. Not even in California.
Solar and wind energy are not producing energy all the time. When there is no wind, wind turbine will not produce energy. When it is night, solar will not produce energy.
Storing energy is quite difficult and ineeficient. So it is not realistic to stay we will store solar energy for when it is night.
The energy consumption is not constant over time, you need to be able to deliver the proper amount of energy at any time. This is why nuclear power plant did not make coal power plant obsolete. Because starting a nuclear powerplant takes a long time, while a coal one is much faster.
I do not think we should rely on a single energy source. We need to rely on a mix of energy sources so that when one fails, other ones can pick up the pieces.
Just at the point that becomes true, flying cars* will change everything and we'll be fuel-hungry again for every last source.
Maybe the oil industry will finally do the R&D needed to get flying cars* up if they see their revenue drying up. They have the deep pockets for R&D, unlike Joe Garage Tinkerer. Gaining future markets is a mild motivator for R&D, but rescuing a dying cash cow is a huge motivator.
* Or personal vertical-take-off plane/copter hybrids like Puffin project. Probably computer-controlled to avoid collisions.
Table-ized A.I.
I've always seen our relationship with fossil fuels as a duel edged sword. First edge, they are the only reason we live in the advanced world we currently do. No oil or coal, no modern living as we now know.
But, they are a finite resource. Oil is what I worry about the most (if you buy into abiotic oil I've got quite a few bridges you may be interested in, on sale this week).
The other edge of the sword is the fact that we are fully dependent on fossil fuels. If alternative energy resources are not developed before fossil fuel resources decrease/"get really expensive" then we are screwed.
If alternatives can be developed to allow a smooth (where smooth can include a 3-day shadow, it cannot be easy given our current dependence) transition off of fossil fuel dependence then we can continue on our merry way (with less energy I guarantee, but if alternatives are mature enough before problems occur things will be much smoother).
Can the market pull it off? Maybe. I'm not too optimistic, I figure the banks would have to be involved in alternative energy development since they can't fail...
BlameBillCosby.com
This has to be stopped. It will only serve to deprive companies of the profits they're entitled to, and completely ruin the economy.
Free energy is practically communism. And communism is un-American.
If someone isn't profiting off the needs of other people, then that is EVIL.
God hisself has decreed that Capitalism is the one true system, and anything else is completely unacceptable.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
That's today's technology. If battery tech keeps going the way it's going, it'll be where it needs to be in 2030 for the book's premise to come true- if not sooner.
It seems the vast majority of professional chefs and most home cooks prefer to cook with gas. Electric ranges aren't as quick to turn on and off, and stay hot longer, so they're slightly more dangerous.
Thinking seriously about adding a solar panel + inverter + storage option for electric car charging and air conditioning, my biggest electricity usage needs. Each of these could be interrupted briefly for switchover to power company feeds without degradation in service, unlike using the solar electricity for normal household power. Since we live in an area that has abundant sunshine and high electric costs, this would seem to me to be the low-hanging fruit for solar electricity and would avoid policy and contract issues with our local power provider. So how about a few practical posts from people who have information to share, and less hyperventilating about politics and policy?
I wouldn't call anyone from the past who was using neither electricity nor petroleum modern. Definitely arbitrary, but can you think of a better measure?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Did the mass adoption of electric heaters make wood-burning fireplaces obsolete?
There's your answer.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Apparently they have the wacky notion of harnessing the energy from the sun. It's actually the 5th word in the summary.
Crazy, right? As if you could get energy from the sun.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Smog and other particulate matter from Asia will eventually blot out the sun. Enter the new dark age. Watch Blade Runner, and look at the dirt in the sky and acid rain.
Why would I mention the planet? And what "it" do I get for mentioning the law?
Would digital media make real media obsolete? No, it is still charged as real media. Laws accomodate to make sure that the ones that really makes the law keeps their profit, no matter what happens. If they feel threatened there are other ways to action
We are currently at today's forcasted high temp of 5 deg. F (-21 deg. C) here in the middle of the US, not even taking into effect the 20+ mph wind. I feel sorry for the people trying to use electric heat for homes or businesses on days like today. I wonder how many solar panels I would need at my house today to still have any juice left over to turn on the lights, TV, or a computer.
Make that massively deployed. We need to start thinking about renewable energy sources that will deliver not only just enough energy but fucktons of it (it's a technical term.) Energy to desalinate water for cities, drill tunnels to link the continents with supersonic rail, launch vehicles into space using maglev, scrub the atmosphere, plasma-burn our poisonous waste, air-condition our domed cities, and all those other "big science" ideas that we'd be doing if we weren't waiting for fusion energy to finally work.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
So by 2030 we'll be powering all the large skyscraper office-towers with just local solar panels? And all those electric vehicles plugging in at the office will get their power from the same solar panels? Even if the entire network is powered by solar panels, there's no way (today) that they can generate enough capacity within city centers to power those areas. They would need to lay panels in less dense areas and transport it to the city center. And since that would still require public infrastructure, the utilities would still be the ones managing it.
Many years ago, ice was very expensive and rare. It was cut from frozen lakes in the north and was shipped all over. Unimaginable now, and not everyone could have ice. Then, refrigeration came along and anyone, anywhere could have virtually unlimited ice for just the price of a machine, the cost of its maintenance, and electricity and water. Being able to preserve food (and medicine) is one of the single biggest contributors to lifespan and overall quantity of life the planet has ever seen. Being able to keep things arbitrarily and efficiently cool is also a key component of many manufacturing processes. Or anything else we currently take for granted -- imagine Google trying to keep their servers cool with harvested ice!
But what if the ice companies of the past were as powerful as the energy companies of today? What if they got laws passed that made creating your own ice just as expensive as the older, horribly inefficient methods, for no reason other than "we're rich and we want to stay that way, but we don't want to have to compete with progress"? Imagine if it was prohibitively expensive to buy a refrigerator, and illegal or expensive to make your own. Where would we, as a society and a planet, be?
(The same argument can be applied to stifling IP laws as well.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I think it's fair to say that "modern" civilization pretty much began with the industrial revolution ...calling anything before that, "modern", is silly.
So it's sort of like fusion power then?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wait a minute, we should start to consider how much waste heat the earth's atmosphere can handle. I don't think you'd have to hook up many before you'd be on the path to boiling the planet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's ridiculous. I live in Massachusetts, and we have a solar array that generates roughly half our annual electricity needs. If our house were oriented with solar in mind when it was constructed, we could easily generate enough for all our needs and our driving needs.
Granted, that doesn't take into account our use of natural gas for heating, but if we had a geothermal system, it would.
The problem is that solar power is not a factor when houses are designed.
Solar panels need replacing every 10 or 20 years, depending on the type. Batteries need replacing much more frequently. You'll probably still need a back up generator, unless you want your food to go off after a freak hail storm destroys your solar panels.
Nuclear is by far the cleanest technology available when you factor in the environmental impact of the materials used in constructing solar panels, but it also doesn't scale well which means until good energy storage comes available, only coal and natural gas are capable of powering the grid and match the demand.
Emphasis mine. Have you looked at the density of energy stored in nuclear fuels lately? Say, perhaps tried comparing it to gasoline? Heck, there's even an XKCD on it. Batteries, flywheels, pumping water uphill: all less dense forms of storage. Nuclear fuel IS good energy storage. (Yes, like every other form of energy storage, it suffers from *some* losses while sitting, but so does your pool of water you pumped up a hill, so does a flywheel, so do batteries...)
Until they have electric cars with a 400 mile range and can recharge to 100% to give me 400 miles again within 30 minutes. that is a gigantic hell no.
Well actually there could be a way. The united states would have to invest heavily in light rail that is affordable. I can drive from Michigan to florida for $90. Until I can take a train for $90 for two tickets and load my electric car on it, with it taking a sane amount of time..... It will never happen.
Right now amtrack is as much as an airline flight and it takes 3 DAYS to get there because you have to go from detroit to chicago to Washington DC to North Carolina, to Florida. Oh and to bring your car, $3500 shipping charge and it will arrive 1-2 weeks after you arrive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are two issues, with home solar.
Issue 1. Upfront cost. Solar panels are getting cheaper, however labor rates to install them will only get higher. So it will be a fair investment to get them installed in your home.
Issue 2. Trees. I live in Upstate NY, we have these 30-100 foot tall trees that blocks a lot of the sunlight. We could cut them down... however is it worth it cutting down our best method to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, in order to use less carbon?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is no power plant outside of diesel and nuclear that can provide sufficient power to move a cargo ship that is so critical to global trade.
Ships did OK on coal.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
as people buy electric cars the interest in clean energy will increase because who wouldn't want 'free travel'?
i dont even know where to start, but i'll try. the authors argument is predicated by the tacit agreement that major multibillion dollar energy conglomerates would simply just 'let this all happen.' As more people invest in solar, traditional electric grids will find ways to properly charge their solar users for grid participation. this has already been covered on slashdot.
as gasoline becomes scarce more investment by energy companies will shift to solar and electric, but not because youre somehow now entitled to free transportation and energy at their expense. transit rail systems will allow you to absorb the cost of solar, and although batteries are cheap the model of charging will absolutely take into account any gains that may negate a healthy profit margin at the electric company.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's almost a prestigious a Hardvard!
I've got a 10^26 Watt fusion reactor I'd like to sell you. cheap.
stupid monkeys...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Obsolete?
No.
But they will become rare in the dense urban centers (aka cities) that 90 percent of America lives in.
The top selling car in the West is a Tesla. The second best selling car is a Prius.
Adapt. Because we're no longer going to subsidize your roads and your parking.
Deal with it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Your answer is "no".
You keep seeing that chart over and over again, just the peak is moved to the decade during which the chart is drawn.
Care to post some links to make it interesting? Cuz in 10 years studying the subject, I can't recall ever hearing that claim before.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Always make predictions far enough into the future that you don't have to worry about being proved wrong. Should have said 2100.
No matter where you go, there you are.
You need 300 miles or more and a recharge time of 4 minutes or less for there to be parity between an EV and today's gasoline powered car.
Even if such parity is achieved, there is still no better alternative to utility generation from fossil fuels other than utility generation via nuclear power. Batteries don't generate power, they store it.
So, we see that you don't understand the problem or the question. You probably also fail to see how positively idiotic the question posed by the article is and therefore why it is a troll.
Raioactive man called for help from sidekicks Citizen Solar and Wind Lab. Unfortunately Citizen Solar and Wind Lab are unable to help because it is too cloudy and “people don’t like the noise”
"Married to the Blob" episode
1. One reason oil and coal appear to be cheaper is that the costs of CO2 emissions are completely externalized. Introduce a cap-and-trade system or a CO2 tax and suddenly those won't look quite as economically attractive. (Obviously, you'll have to ignore this point if you think that there are no costs of CO2 emissions, as some do.)
2. Another cost of oil that is mostly externalized and doesn't apply to solar are the military efforts to secure access to oil drilling locations. Again, less oil, less need for military ventures overseas that cost ridiculously large amounts of taxpayer money.
3. The cost per KwH for solar installations has been dropping steadily. That means that the capital investment that oil and gas are competing is going down, the time needed to pay back the investment in electric bill savings is dropping, which means more people will opt for solar panels, regardless of what happens to other markets.
4. There's a libertarian argument to be made here: If you have your own solar power plant that can power your house, then you don't need the heavily regulated utility companies. A power plant that doesn't exist has no government regulatory agency and the staff of bureaucrats that go with it. So by extension, you're reducing your own reliance on the government.
5. Even without addressing points 1 and 2, the cost of accessing oil has been going up over the long-term. That's going to affect demand sooner-or-later and push people towards alternatives.
It's sane, but I don't think it will happen by 2030. There's just too much money to be made in not having widespread solar power that I doubt we'll see a changeover anytime soon. And I'd expect homes to be converted before cars, since we know how to get a solar-powered home that works well, but electric cars have limits that are currently not as easy to adjust to.
I am officially gone from
Lol. That's actually about accurate, since theists are a dying breed.
Doesn't the process of creating the batteries for plug-in electric cars use fossil fuels?
What is this JEW acronym?
All I can find is Jimmy Eat World, Jewelled Emerald Wand and Junior Enlisted Warrior
Have you done any calculations on this? It seems wrong. Especially since my boss gets 90% of the energy his house needs with present-day solar panels on just a fraction of the roof.
Wikipedia says solar energy at the earth's surface is 3.5~7KWh/m^2 per day. An average American house uses just over 30KWh per day. Average house roof is 160m^2
Energy needed to drive 40 miles (average American daily driving) = 8kwh (using Chevy Volt)
So let's say your sci-fi roof has 90% efficient solar panels and you live in an area with low sunlight. (3.5*160)*0.9=622.22KWh per day. So unless your house is also an aluminum smelting plant you're very, very wrong.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
D'oh finger slipped, it's 504KWh (point still stands).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They can make a dent in the *amount* of energy used, but electric cars will never ever have the range of gasoline powered cars, nor the power. 1 horsepower is 746 watts. The incoming insolation (not insulation but insolation) is the amount of energy hitting the earth from the sun, its usually measured in watts per square metre. The average, when the sun is shining is 1366 watts per square metre. Cloudy skies means less, night means none, winter less than summer, but the average during the day is 1366 watts per square metre. This means 1366/746=1.831 horsepower per square metre. A bare-bones 'gutless' car has 60 horsepower (don't drive in the mountains with this car). 60/1.831=32.7 square meters. 32.7 square meters can be thought of as 8x4.0959 meters. That's about 24x12 feet of panels, and if you want 120 horsepower, thats 24x24 feet of panels. It takes a whole day of charging to charge a car. Nothing left for the house. You can cut back on the amount of energy you use, panels are no replacement for gasoline. The energy density in gasoline is pristine (only nuclear has better energy density).
Apparently the word originated in the 1500's, so it's only silly from our perspective now.
http://www.etymonline.com/inde...
Two quick problems:
1. My solar panels on my roof give power to the utility company, not to charge my car. I then suck power from the grid at night from excess capacity of the power grid, who generates this power using -- yes, you know the answer -- oil, gas and coal, along with some hydro. Now it's not all bad -- the power I supply via solar panels reduces the need to build new power plants to support peak needs, but still, they are using oil, gas, coal and hydro to produce my electricity for my car (and house).
2. I can generate a lot more solar power than people farther north and those who live with crappy weather. But I still can't generate it at night when I need it. Almost no one is deploying solar panels and storing the energy locally, so this feature article is a bunch of hooey, as much as I wish it not to be.
Assuming my townhouse has a roof that is optimal to get full coverage from an optimally angled 100% efficient photovoltaic cell that is 16 square meters in size, on a clear day my solar array would produce on December 21st a bit over 10.6 kWh on average. So 254.4 kW per day on the worst day of the year.
The Tesla S uses 85 kW/h. I could drive 3 hours a day, assuming no household use and perfect transference/storage.
Or more realistically, 1 hour a day, and that leaves 269.4 kW for household use. Since the average household in the US of 1500 sq.ft. uses 864 kWh per month, I'd have an excess part way through the third day to "sell" to others.
So even at 50% efficiency, I'd have plenty of power, assuming clear skies, and the worst day of the year to gather every day.
I think the scenario in TFS is 50-100 years away, but I think mass adoption of electric cars is only 10-20 years away. Very soon they'll just make more sense for almost everyone.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you run with that, you might be able to become as wealthy as Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh by getting in on the same grift.
Good luck!
Gasoline is a fuel.
Batteries store fuel (electricity).
Batteries are roughly comparable to gas tanks, not gasoline.
If for some reason you just want to only compare the fuels, compare gasoline to electricity.
One gram of electricity is more energy than you get from One tonne of gasoline. It's about 9 orders of magnitude better, energy density wise.
It's a completely bogus comparison too, but it at least it is more sensational.
For a fair comparison, compare the weight of everything it takes to make the wheels turn;
The gas, the engine, the cooling system/radiator, tail pipe and muffler, drive train, air filter, and so on, with everything on an electric car.
However, one doesn't need to use solar cells in a vacuum --- add geothermal into the mix, and all one needs is the energy to run a heat pump.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I've got geothermal for heating/cooling, AKA a "heat pump" as my HVAC friends call it... Yes, it is powered by electricity from a coal burning power plant. I've fantasized about the day I could get enough solar power from panels to run my geothermal. I have no trees blocking sun onto my home.
Once this solar threshold is crossed to make the ROI "quicker" on roof panels I'm doing it. I just can't wait for 20 years or whatever it is for the payback versus the up front costs. My power bills aren't that high, even with the geothermal.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The problem with electric cars is the battery: high weight, limited capacity and thus range, hazardous materials which make replacement and disposal a headache. But, electric cars don't really need a battery, they need a source of electric power. Turbine engines run a lot cleaner than piston engines, have better fuel efficiency and run on a much wider variety of fuels, the problem was always stepping down the shaft speed to something a physical driveline could use. It's a lot easier, though, to run a generator at the high RPMs a turbine shaft naturally runs at, and a generator supplies electric power. I get the feeling the next step won't be pure-electric cars, but a hybrid with the conventional piston engine replaced by a small turbine and generator. That would reduce the demand for high-priced fuels, and also reduce the size of battery packs since you'd only need one with a ~20 mile range to cover short hops where it wouldn't be efficient to spin up the turbine.
Turbine start would be easy: any generator is in principle also a motor, and since with no fuel being burned the turbine shaft isn't under load it shouldn't take too much power to spin it up enough to start. I'd imagine this'd make them really popular in northern latitudes where getting cars started in the winter is a bear. A turbine would be easier to start, plus would immediately start providing heat for the interior and defrosting.
Are there any non-hybrid consumer cars with anything close to the miles-per-tank of even the worst fuel economy modern gasoline powered car?
Sometimes I will drive +120 miles (in sub-zero weather, or 100F in the summer) to get to a jobsite, work there for 4 hours, then drive back the same day. I can do this and not need to stop for gas, but with an electric car I'd have to hope that the work site has provisions for charging, assuming the car even has a range of 120 miles with the heater or AC running -- Tesla roadster wouldn't make it.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
If you've own a vehicle already you will still own it tomarrow. But when you replace the vehicle, then you will shop around. Whom ever offers the best deal will get your money. As Fuel Cell vehicles become cheaper then customers will purchase them. And with the U.S. phlanked by the planets two largest Hydrogen supplies; it's only a matter of time.
Aiming for a future where we use less energy than we do now is backwards. I'm not advocating that making existing systems more efficient is a bad thing at all, but to power things that will progress society will require more energy per person consumed than we do now regardless.
Wireless power requires 60% more base power. The often dismissed as impossible flying cars require at least 1.5MW per person. One day it is not far fetched to think we will replace the microwave with a device that can assemble atoms and completely replace farming, which will take serious power. This is what I think even the solar/wind/geothermal people who don't want to move back into caves intuitively understand is the kind of changes that will occur sometime in the future.
Solar panels belong in space. They are much less efficient than hydro-electric, which is about as efficient as coal, which is 6 million times less energy dense than nuclear fission, which is less energy dense than nuclear fusion, which is only 2 orders of magnitude less efficient than antimatter-matter reactions. Spread out to consumers, solar panels also produces a lot of waste that future generations will have to deal with.
The Wright brothers first flight was in 1903.
By WWI aircraft were used extensively.
By WWII air superiority determined the outcome of the war, and the jet engine aircraft was invented.
40 years for those advances...
Your analogy doesn't work.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
this article is totally ignorant of the fact that even if you could convert 100% of the sunlight delivered to the roof of your house to electricity you still don't have enough energy to run a household and a car.
You must have a very small house and use a lot of energy. Apartment buildings will have trouble doing it, but for regular houses it is no problem at all, even with the typical solar cells that people buy today. Canada and Siberia may be exceptions, but at 100% efficiency they should be OK too in most areas. Storage is a problem.
Look at it another way: we can either grow ethanol maize at 1% efficiency sun-to-wheel (with a lot of luck) or build solar cells with 10-20% efficiency. The area problems are immense when you are stuck at 1% efficiency.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Yes, solar power will eventually obsolete all other forms for non-industrial use.
Easily and demonstrably not true unless you invoke as-yet undeveloped technology of uncertain viability. I think solar is terrific and should be used much more but it's not a cure all solution for every energy problem.
For non-transport use, we could really switch to solar-thermal today (not photoelectric cells, but the less efficient black pipe, mirror, and turbine solution). It's simply more expensive than other power sources, and storing power for overnight use is still more expensive so we don't.
No we could not. Even if the technology were adequate (it isn't - we don't have adequate battery technology) the economics of it are prohibitive. When I say cost prohibitive I don't just mean that it is a little more expensive. I mean that given the current state of the technology the cost would be astronomical. There are all sorts of unresolved technical issues and the conversion costs would be outrageous. Little of our transportation infrastructure is set up for electric, gas is widely used for heating, you have to allocate space for the power generation. Not to mention that generation in the rather cloudier and snow prone regions can be problematic.
Since all that's required is ordinary technological process, the change to electric cars will inevitably happen, but over the course of several decades.
What about airplanes? There is no reasonably feasible flight technology that is not based on fossil fuels.
From what I've seen, the Tesla uses a LOT of electric power to charge. If you drive it during the day you won't be charging it at your home solar installation.
If I need to recoup 60 miles of range per night, I need 20kWh of power at night. Assuming perfect storage efficiency, I need something like 135 square meters of solar just to keep a minimal driving distance on my car. None of this says anything about my actual power consumption in my home, which might double my total solar area or larger once you factor in inefficiencies. At this point, I've already tripled the square footage of my actual roof space and am starting to approach something like half of my entire lot size.
I also live in Minnesota, so I could probably increase all this by a third to account for the lack of sunlight in the winter.
I think it will take a factor of 10 improvement in batteries and solar panel efficiencies to make any of this possible.
He found a way to convert arrogance to electricity. That's how Silicon Valley will save the world. They have enough of it to power the entire planet.
You forgot Wall St. They have enough arrogance to power several civilizations across the galaxy!
High-density ultracapacitors also have their own issues with lifespan. I see shelf-life figures of 3-4 years, service life of 10 years at cool temps (25 C), degrading to 1500 hours at 65 C. In a possibly hot, possibly even self-heating regime like automotive operation, I'm not sure they would last as long as even today's batteries.
When comparing batteries to capacitors, it's tempting to think of an ideal capacitor -- no internal resistance, unlimited charge/discharge rate and cycles, unlimited shelf life. Real ultracapacitors are still far from that ideal.
I have an electric car, and solar panels. The answer is still no. My electric car is so efficient that it's not the largest component of my electric bill. I have gas cooking, heating, and hot water; and the electric bill is three times the car bill, in December. In the hot summers, the AC can kick the daylights out of the Tesla in terms of power consumption. By the way, electric car travel is NOT FREE. There is significant capital expense, just another way of financing energy usage. My solar panels spread this capital cost over their usage period (I pay an "electric bill" for the solar power I use). It's all just a financing shell game. You can make one number $0, but you can't make them all $0. As folks have said, they want to charge my electric car a "gas tax" to pay for the roads. They even want it to make noise, so kids and folks don't walk in front of it. None of this transportation power shuffling does anything about industrial power consumption. You're not going to like the price of aluminum foil made with solar electricity. High power industries need the high power density low cost power that renewables can't provide.
Well, there are those people who insist we no longer live in "modern society", but instead "postmodern".
There is no electric motor that can be provide enough power to match a diesel engine in an 18 wheeler truck that is so critical to national trade in every country.
You clearly haven't heard of diesel electrics then.
Many large ships are actually diesel electric - i.e. the diesel engines turn some generators that produce electricity that powers motors that in turn moves the ship.
This isn't to say that it will be easy to replace diesel for cargo, but it probably isn't as hard as you imagine once we get battery technology competitive with fossil fuels.
There is no electric motor that can be provide enough power to match a diesel engine in an 18 wheeler truck that is so critical to national trade in every country.
That's funny, electric motors work just fine in railroad locomotives and aircraft carriers.
Horses and buggies never went completely away, did they.
The only people who use either of those are Luddites (Amish), and spoiled rich women who use horses as a hobby.
For something a little more modern, look at steam engines (which replaced horse-driven cross-country transport with the advent of the railroad). No one uses steam engines any more, except for historical railroads (which are basically just museums that travel).
Okay, compare a contemporary battery -- say, the battery system of a Nissan Leaf -- to a fuel tank that weighs 200kg, but holds only 4 liters of fuel, and can only accept fuel at 120 ml/minute. That's if you can find a "fast pump"; the "standard pump" you have at home can only feed it about 15 ml/minute.
I do expect battery technology to improve, and I do expect it to displace fossil fuel -- in decades, not years or centuries. My initial comment contradicts neither this expectation nor the points in the article.
I think he was concerned less with the density and more with the ability to respond to cyclical changes in demand. Nuclear plants like to run at a steady output and aren't the best at changing that level quickly. A good storage system can mitigate this by saving excess power produced at low demand times and giving it back at high demand times, but currently the preferred method is to use constant stuff at the low demand level and pull in something like natural gas that can spin up quickly to fill in the peaks.
When I can put 500-600 KM of range in my car in about 5 minutes like with gasoline.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The car rental companies should be jumping at the chance of getting a decent subscription based revenue model. Main problem with electric cars is, occasionally you need a gas car with greater range. If the car rental companies sell a subscription model [*] more people would buy electric cars. The electric car makers and dealers might give you one or two years free subscription to entice buyers. People who have decent public transport but still are forced to keep a car around also might find this subscription model appealing.
[*] My idea of a subcription model: something like 50$ a month gets you two days and 200 miles, unused miles and days will accrue in your account, once you reach the maximum accrual subscribers pay a small annual fee to keep the account current, car rentals will provide electric car recharging stations, use a web app to schedule pick up of gas cars
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What prevents regular folks from having them is FAA regs and costs. I would LOVE to have my own Robinson R22 but I can't afford to operate it let alone actually buy one.
Helicopters require a huge amount of training and skill to operate, which costs at least $100k to get all the licenses. R22s are the most difficult to operate and most dangerous, simply because they're so small (the semirigid rotor system doesn't help; the C300's fully-articulated system gives it a much higher weight rating, but the hourly cost is significantly higher even though the engine is the same). You also can't safely operate an R22 in winds gusting over 30 kts, which severely limits its utility.
But the skill thing alone prevents them from being useful as any kind of mass transport, even if the fuel costs weren't a big factor. Most people can't drive cars on roads worth a damn, and constantly have accidents. There's no way that most of the population could handle operating an aircraft (in 3 dimensions rather than 2) safely. Don't forget the atrociously poor maintenance that many cars have. With personal helicopters, they'd be falling out of the air left and right, running into each other, falling on buildings; it'd be a bloodbath.
I'm always stunned and amazed at what so-called academic professionals will write about the near future. This one is 'predicting' that there will be mostly electric cars in , what, 16 years and that gasoline engine service stations are going to obsolete and gone by that time?. He actually gets paid for this?
Girlfriend, in 16 years the only thing that is really likely to change is the color of the table counter-tops at the local Burger King and the name on the alcohol/caffeine combo drink sold at the Arco Mini-mart. Plus the annoying junk-mail and stuff that you are throwing away now is going worth a lot of money to retarded collectors of 2010-era nostalgia that have too much money.
These guys are almost as dumb as the Hollywood types that do CGI graphics of cities 20-years in the future that look like cities may be in 1000 years if techno development continues at the same pace that it has in the past 100 years. Like the 2010 city in 1983's Blade Runner.
I certainly understand the thermodynamic tragedy of the internal-combustion power train. It's a crying shame to burn petroleum derivatives, at 15% efficiency if we're lucky, instead of saving them for chemical feedstocks.
But until electric cars offer adequate range on a single charge, even with the heater or A/C operating, and until we have either ubiquitous quick-charge stations or ubiquitous charge-where-you're-parked (or both), they aren't going to render the IC vehicle obsolete. Again, this does not contradict the linked article.
Flywheels suspended in magnetic bearings spinning in vacuum have great duty cycle, fast charge/discharge times and very good efficiency. They interface beautifully with a motor/generator for charging and discharging. No chemicals or strange materials. Their main disadvantage is the angular momentum makes putting it in a car a little difficult. They can pack batteries in twin-packs with opposite spin to cancel the angular momentum. But greater danger is accidents. The containment is very poor. The heavy flywheel spinning at some 400,000 rpm delicately balanced in magnetic bearings would literally, yes literally not figuratively, explode in an accident. But for home use, you can bury it underground below some six inches of concrete. This can act as a super large capacitor to store the solar energy of night use and for cloudy days. UT Austin demonstrated a 50 Kwh storage unit.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
the big hype was telecommuting. If only the guys at Cisco did their jobs right we'd all be able to work from home. That was 20 years ago.
Recently, Yahoo put an end to their telecommuting experiment. Many companies never allowed ANY telecommuting.
So now I'm supposed to believe that I'll be driving around in a solar powered/charged electric car thanks to the brain power of silicon valley? Will that arrive before or after my helicopter back-pack?
The ice industry never got that kind of power, but the salt industry did.
Even if solar were made super efficient (AND affordable) today it would still be nowhere near ready that quickly. I'm not convinced it will even start moving in that direction that quickly, let alone arrive.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
In August, I put a 7.685 kW solar system on my small townhouse. The solar cells produce 10-40 kWh per day, depending on weather. In November, I purchased a 2013 Nissan Leaf. The Leaf can go 3-4 miles per kWh of electricity.
Combining both my house and car's electrical usage together only amounts to around 20-30 kWh per day, leaving my electric bill decisively negative for the last 5 months. I'd expect an even greater difference during the summer months.
The kind of status-quo-maintaining garbage you are spouting is nothing short of deliberate evil, given what a careful read of the relevant scientific literature would tell you. If we check back in 2025 and find the warming continuing, do you give us permission to banish you to the island of Vanuatu, where you can sink or swim on the strength of your convictions?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In Texas all new highways will be privatized toll roads thanks to crony capitalism. Never mind that roads are natural monopolies the Republican lead Texas state legislature thinks it is a wonderful idea to confiscate private land and lease it corporations for 50-100 years who will then charge commuters per mile royalties with guaranteed profits backed by the government. In metropolitan areas the toll rolls will fluctuate based on traffic conditions. Near free energy for transportation would be wonderful but at least in Texas toll trolls will be there to extort their margins.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Computer-control would probably be necessary in non-rural areas to provide sufficient safety.
As far as the cost, being stuck in traffic is also cost. One is stuck in 2D gridlock, looks up and sees all that empty unused space above them and thinks, "why the hell can't we use that space instead of being stuck here?"
Remember, time is money. If the daily cost of a personal flyer is less than the daily cost of time of sitting in 2D traffic, then it's worth it to the individual.
We just need sufficient investment in infrastructure and economies of scale to get it kick-started. (Nash Equilibrium?)
Table-ized A.I.
"In 2012, National Science Board member James Lawrence Powell investigated peer-reviewed literature published about climate change and found that out of 13,950 articles, 13,926 supported the reality of global warming. Despite a lot of sound and fury from the denial machine, deniers have not really been able to come up with a coherent argument against a consensus."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We only have panels on a small part of our roof, because, as I pointed out, our house wasn't designed with solar in mind. Likewise, putting in a geothermal system would be much cheaper when done with new construction.
I did point out that I'm in Massachusetts, which is not a prime solar location. I just wish we could keep Daylight Savings Time year round so that we could generate more power. :)
I'm not saying that it's practical or cost effective now. I am saying that it is practical and cost effective when put in with new construction and financed as part of a 30-year mortgage. On average, the increase in mortgage payment is more than offset by the reduction in utility bills.
Actually, the analogy works just fine.
Pedantry aside, electric vehicles currently cannot (and I repeat, CANNOT) fullfill all the roles occupied by petroleum ICE vehicles.
The technology is currently in its very early infancy, and there's no realistic infrastructure to support a full-scale migration.
In the last 100 years, petroleum ICE vehicles have gone from a clunky, unreliable rich man's toy to a staple of everyday life and business in this country.
While the electric vehicle doesn't have to go through many of the same engineering hurdles that their ICE counterparts have gone through in that century, they have their own logistical problems. And at the current rate of advancement, we're still decades away from the sort of ubiquity and utility currently enjoyed by ICE vehicles.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Additionally, I've not even addressed the idiocy of the notion that electric vehicles will make power utilities obsolete until now.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you start taxing people on the basis of things they're not doing
That's the exact logic Chief Justice John Roberts used to rule that Obamacare was constitutional: he said that not buying health insurance is a taxable activity, and the courts can't interfere with Congress' power to tax.
The tax that's assessed if you choose not to buy health insurance will be collected by the IRS. Before the issue went to the Supreme Court, the president insisted this was a fine, not a tax, telling George Stephanopoulus, "I absolutely reject the notion" that it's a tax. But when its constitutionality depended on it being a tax, he suddenly no longer objected to calling it a tax. And then a few short months after the Supreme Court decision, the sheeple forgot what its constitutionality depended on, and the White House reverted to calling it a "fine" again.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
When enough people own electric cars & solar panels, then the price of gas & grid electric will drop, which will disincentivize people from investing in new tech.
go take a look at theoildrum.com the site is archive only now (http://www.theoildrum.com/special/archives) but numerous versions of charts like that were posted there.
It's somewhat misleading to call the current versions "Mr Hubbert's predictions" since he died in 1989 and we keep changing the charts as new numbers are revealed by the oil industry.
>Okay, compare a contemporary battery...
No, that's precisely my point - don't compare a tiny subsystem of the car and pretend that's the whole problem.
It's not just the fuel, or the fuel plus the fuel tank.
It's the fuel, the tank, the engine, the wheels, the cooling system, the exhaust system - basically everything.
Fusion power is also always a billion dollars away, too.
You can find scans of old books and journal articles around on the internet, although it is nowhere that you would consider to be reputable. Go to your nearest university library, and look for older sources on peak oil (think 1930-1970). This might include looking at musty old books, or possibly even using a microfilm reader. The doom forecast by many of these sorts of articles was imminent in nature, and charts were typically provided to support the notion. If you are interested in the subject, the history lesson would certainly be interesting... supposing the books have not disappeared.
Industry uses enormous amounts of electricity. You're not going to have your fancy electric cars and solar panels without the factories to process the ore, manufacture the chemicals, fabricate the raw component parts and assemble the product. United States electrical energy usage for aluminum production alone is 45,700 GWh per annum (U.S. Energy Requirements for Aluminum Production, U.S. DOE, 2007). There will continue to be demand for an electric utility.
It's somewhat misleading to call the current versions "Mr Hubbert's predictions" since he died in 1989 and we keep changing the charts as new numbers are revealed by the oil industry.
Very valid point. Also worth noting is that the notion of peak oil was around long before Hubert too.
Where do people think the electricity to charge their electric cars come from? The electric fairy? Most electricity today is provided by coal, oil, and natural gas. All fossil fuels. Keep buying those electric cars and telling yourself you're doing your part. You're just putting your part off on someone else (the utility company)
I think, in places like Oklahoma, it's mostly coal and NG, and you'd only need a car that got 40mpg to have comparable fossil fuel usage and emissions.
I think, where I live, in Arizona, it's a blind of coal, NG, hydro, solar and nuclear, and I'd need a car that got 50mpg to have comparable fossil fuel usage and emissions.
I think, in California and the Pacific Northwest, it's a good blend of solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, plus some coal and gas, and I'd need a 65+mpg car to compare.
This NYT article doesn't take into account battery production overhead, and a few other factors that hit a few places (like Arizona, where new solar has gone online), but does provide a simple map that easily illustrates the difference location makes.
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
So, take the numbers on the map with a grain of salt, but the point stands: Some grid electricity is WAY, WAY better for you than burning gasoline.
... and you will get much more miles out of every kWh of juice
The Tesla model S has a base battery capacity of 60kWh for a 208 mile range, or 3.46 miles/kWh
What is the current weight of a Tesla car ? More than one metric ton ?
If the weight can be cut down, let's say, by 50%, it'll be more than 500KG less of mass to haul, which translate to more miles per kWh.
What is the total weight of the batteries in the Tesla vehicle ? If someone can improve on either the capacity of the batteries and/or reducing the weight of the batteries, that will boost the efficiency of the Tesla vehicle even more.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yes, well, I'm not so much looking for charts in general, but an aggregation of charts over time showing the peak shifting ahead over the decades, as you claimed before.
For example, I've been visiting the oildrum for some time now, and I don't recall anyone referencing peak oil being that ephemeral. Certainly, in the last decade, predictions and assessments of actual peak have been fluid, but nowhere near on the order of decades your original post implies.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
My car adds about $20/mo to my electric bill, or 10%. They're not much of an issue if you can already power your house.
In countries with advanced technology there is a wire over the train tracks that provides the electricity.
I don't have solar but a couple of hours ago I was reviewing my electricity usage. I have two meters on my house, one for my car (Tesla model S) and the other for my house. Now I have a couple computers running full-time and an electric stove, gas hot water, dryer and heat and my home electrical usage is significantly more than my car, and I'm doing over 1000 miles per month and I'm not the super efficient driver (the Tesla acceleration is addictive and it's too easy to exceed speed limits). During the summer months when the AC kicks in my home electricity usage is well over double what my car uses. All of my appliances are very energy efficient (except my old stove) and all of my lighting is LED or fluorescent.
Even with the high California rates through PG&E I'm averaging around $46/month for powering my car using the EV rate. If I could get a 7 KW solar setup it would mostly offset all of my electricity usage. The problem is that I have to replace my roof in order to install solar and I have a lot of trees that shade things.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Too bad most of that energy in the ground is just another form of stored solar energy.
The answer is NO.
Two things electric cars need to have to become viable alternatives to petroleum-fueled cars: 1) the vehicle must have a range of at least 600 km (373 miles) and 2) the vehicle can recharge quickly from a commercial DC charger in under 15 minutes. I think that could be possible as early as 2020 when improved battery designs are available.
Please get the name of the university correct.
For future reference:
The maximum theoretically possible conversion efficiency for sunlight is 86% due to the entropy of the photons emitted by the sun's surface.
From a paper published in Applied Physics.
Your sci-fi roof tops out at 86%, not 90%. :)
Figure out how much energy your car uses, then the area of solar panels needed to provide that energy. Then add on the need to use the car during the short cold days of winter.
And you can't use the solar panels to charge the car at night, unless you have another set of batteries to store the energy made by the panels during the day while the car is not there.
You will still be using grid power. Or some liquid or gaseous fuel. With luck you will use less of it than now.
The utility will probably just charge you a fixed connection fee to be on the grid so they get maintenance money regardless of how much power you use. My electric bill is already set up that way. I pay 41 cents a day for that connection fee, and the actual kw-h charge is above that.
I can only assume you're referring to your own public school education and subsequent failure at math.
the answer is usually no. So umm no.
My car has a 416HP induction motor with 445 ft-lbs of torque the size of a large watermelon. High powered motors can be quite small. People are always shocked when I open the hood of my car to put in groceries and ask where the engine is. It's hidden under the trunk.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
So do most people leave their electric cars at home when their solar panels are generating electricity? No? Well then they need the power grid to soak up the electricity their solar panels generate during the day, and then they can recharge their electric car batteries at night off the power grid.
In effect, the power grid becomes a sort of storage battery for their "free" electricity.
If I drive my plug-in electric car, say, 50 miles a day, how big a solar array will I need to generate enough power to recharge my car at night? Probably pretty a pretty big one.
I wonder, how many rooftop solar arrays make economic sense without taxpayer subsidies?
Ken
Great, can't wait to see diesel-electric locomotives with rubber tires driving down the highway.. you don't think those road-ready locamotives will put increased wear and tear on the roadway, do you?
And BTW, there are only two ways to power electric locomotives - overhead wires or through on-board diesel generators - how do you propose to power your imaginary plug-in electric "18 wheeler"? A trailer full of batteries? That would kind of cut into the carrying capacity of the truck, wouldn't it? And the cost... Oh, that will be one very expensive battery pack.
Ken
Not gonna happen anytime soon... I can put 30 gallons of gasoline in my suburban in less than 7 minutes, then drive almost 600 miles before I need to refill my truck... Can you imagine a battery pack that can recharge in under 10 minutes and then drive 600 miles? A Chevy Volt has a $10K battery pack (as I recall) and a range of 38 miles - how long does it take to recharge that battery pack? Four hours if you have a charging station, 10+ hours off a standard 110V outlet.
Batteries are not even in the same league as fossil fuels.
Ken
I've done quite a bit of prelim research figuring out what I'd do for an off grid house and the biggest problem I find currently is the inability for me to change electric car batteries myself. They have expensive robots in the works for the cars but they lack standards and I don't need a robot, some tools to pull the battery and swap it are all I'd need - and it can be expensive, that isn't really the issue.
The smart thing would be to charge the car battery during the day while you are at work; then swap batteries. Sure an extra battery will cost $10k (sooner than you think and obviously I'm not thinking of Tesla's massive one) but to connect a new house to the grid around here costs about $10k. The grid and the monopoly are not setup for a fair deal as far as putting power back into the grid. May as well put that grid tie into your own solution. (and don't forget about connection fees and the possibility you'll be charged future ones as they get threatened by solar.)
It gets costly and quite wasteful to lose all that energy storing it into poor quality (but cheap) batteries that even at their best lose MOST the energy only to hold it until the car can then chuck a % of it recharging. You can make an array large enough to charge the car during the day and it can fit on a roof; however, when you start including % losses in the storage process it gets unrealistic. Sure you can find new expensive storage methods-- but the reality is most that power needs to go into the car and the car is not around during the day - the least wasteful thing is a personal battery swap - and that is not unrealistic... but we are not even given the option of buying such a thing at this time (plus the battery's charge electronics are likely not in the battery so add some more cost.)
I've never thought that I must perfectly replace the current lifestyle; some changes are expected. Too many wimps who can't be inconvenienced even slightly are what keep progress from happening. So what if a car recharge takes an hour; I can waste an hour going out to eat, shop, etc. Shopping malls should be jumping at infrastructure to charge all these cars... slowly. Tesla is genius if they own enough land to setup coffee shops at their charging stations, it'll more than pay for the free electricity.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You are obviously an idiot. The AC OP said that electric motors couldn't generate the power needed for an 18 wheeler, when clearly we have electric motors that power aircraft carriers, which are far larger. I never said anything about the electricity source. The only reason diesel is still used is because batteries don't have the energy density of diesel fuel, yet (taking into account the massive inefficiency of burning fossil fuel). We're not very far away from bridging that gap, since Teslas can already go nearly as far as regular gas-powered cars, but the battery cost is a big issue.
For fixed energy storage at very large scale, it is basically solar thermal with molten salt stored in underground tanks seems most viable.
For home use scale, using underground chambers with concrete covers for containment, flywheels would work very nicely. Already there are prototypes storing some three days worth of electricity. Mass production and deployment can get store two weeks use of electricity of a typical home in reasonable prices. No technical breakthrough needed, just breakthroughs in funding, payment, economics breakthrough needed for this. Most likely to happen in remote rural areas, data centers needing UPS, remote science outposts etc and gradually come down to home use.
For transportation, it is difficult for me to say whether flywheels would work or not. But the industry seems to think flywheels do have a transportation application. UT Austin is working on flywheels in commuter trains, private companies use it automobiles and buses.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The main problem with purely electric vehicles is long recharge times, low battery energy density and lack of backward compatibility with current infrastructure. Plug in flex fuel hybrids seem like the way to go. The best option seems to be a Brayton cycle turbo-electric drive-train with a battery backup. The advantages of having the US car and truck fleet switch to this include: - It has a backward compatibility with current infrastructure. - Power to weight ratio of the drive-train is comparable to conventional cars. - Regenerative braking allows for better efficiency. - Brayton cycle engines run on just about any liquid or gaseous fuel without modification. This allows an easy transition to alternative fuels. - It is an established technology that is used on excavation dump trucks and locomotives. - There is an advantage over purely eclectic vehicles. Apartment dwellers who cannot run an extension cord to there car can still use it. It can still be used for long trips. - Regenerative breaking reduces fuel consumption - The drive-train has fewer moving parts and is much more reliable. Cars with a disabled turbine can still function as purely electric vehicles. - The turbine and battery pack can be made to be easily removable and upgradeable. - It increases elasticity in oil demand thereby reducing oil price spikes.
First the good about solar:
Solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020.
So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain.
Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. Instead you might opt to add 50%-100% more panels, and keep using the old ones as well. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely.
Now the bad:
Some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan). But how are you going to heat those houses in the winter, even if they get the best weather proofing money can buy.
Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040.
Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands). All with walkaway safety reliability (no humans or computers needed to shutdown the plant in case of a serious accident, the plant shuts it self down with simple melting of the freeze plug upon loosing electricity).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a let's leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s. Light water nuclear reactors are for subs, aircraft carriers and large ships, but the pentagon notorious cost inefficiency allowed those reactors to get so expensive they can't afford them in destroyers and cruisers.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie:
"Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe.
But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor.
Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a
The oil companies will kill that...perhaps literally. They have the world's greatest standing army at their disposal. Big Oil will just yank their Congressional leashes and the U.S. Military will pounce on whatever Oily needs to protect its profit margin.
Seriously, might want to check little things like that when posting.
A bunch of my friends are profs there.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is all you think about a) your home, and b) your car?
Solar power, and windmills, might cover *part* of a high-rise office building's needs. (You *don't* want to begin to think about the servers and their power supplies running 24x7x365.25).
HOWEVER, there's still manufacturing. Go read up on how aluminum, for example, is made.
We *can* massively cut down non-renewable power, Hell, even a 25% or more (and for those that don't read, Germany, I think it is, is aiming for a very large percentage of its power from renewable resources within 10 or 15 years. but there's still going to be a need for other sources, be they water, wind, or something better than nuclear as we know it (now, get some solar power satellites up there, and all bets are off).
mark
Electric cars actually cause more pollution but relocates the pollution to the power plants instead of the highways for a net increase in carbon footprint and release of toxins into the air.
Look up the power factor on electric motors and electric generators.
Look up the median failure rate of solar panels. (Last I looked, the mean failure time was below the break even point of generating as much energy as it takes to manufacture them. Good for relocating a small source of power but overall increases the system load.)
Look at the whole system instead of focusing on a tiny portion and claiming it is a universal solution.
NRRPT/RCT
The Tesla can do 300 miles on a single charge today, and with the improvements in battery technology, 600 miles is not infeasible in the near future.
The battery on an electric vehicle can be swapped for a fully charged one, and I can see one day a network of battery swap stations. All that is needed is for some standardisation of the batteries and "recharging" will be quicker than refuelling. One could change their battery in a minute and be off.
The distribution of fuel would essentially be done by power lines to the battery swap stations, which would be more efficient than moving billions of litres of oil from Saudi Arabia, Canada and Venezuela to the US every year, and then moving them around the country to where they are needed.
Impossible to build a safe car with that kind of efficiency. Those cars go 15 mph on running tracks with jockey sized people taped into them, lying down.
1 liter gasoline == about 8 kwh. 2meters^2 solar = 400W/hour at best. You're assuming a very shitty gasoline engine efficiency and maximum everything for solar.
Put down the bong and step away from the keyboard.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Will change the world biblicaly. The last shall be first and the first shall be last type.
I'd rather see foil double in price than continued subsidies of "old" energy. I'd like to see an end to all subsidies, and any future subsidies be set for only for specific times, with specific stated goals for early termination. There's no reason to indefinitely subsidize anything, unless the goal is pure socialization (leveling fixed-line phone costs between low-density rural and high-density urban areas).
Until the subsidies are wiped, we can't see how much of the foil cost is subsidized. The difference between unsubsidized coal and unsubsidized solar may not be as large as assumed.
Learn to love Alaska
I would LOVE to have my own Robinson R22 but I can't afford to operate it let alone actually buy one.
$100 to $150 an hour. Given you go about 100 miles in that hour, that's about $1 per mile. The IRS claims $0.56 per mile for cars, and I've seen elsewhere a higher number. So that puts the operating cost of an R22 right about the total cost of ownership of a car. My problem with it is the inability to find convenient locations to land near my destinations.
Learn to love Alaska
R22s are the most difficult to operate and most dangerous,
Yet are one of the most popular training helicopters, and around here are (by far) the most popular for agricultural use.
There's no way that most of the population could handle operating an aircraft (in 3 dimensions rather than 2) safely.
So you are saying that the pilot licensing program passes a large number of unsafe pilots?
Don't forget the atrociously poor maintenance that many cars have. With personal helicopters, they'd be falling out of the air left and right, running into each other, falling on buildings; it'd be a bloodbath.
Most of the operating cost per hour of aircraft is amortized maintenance, not fuel or other direct costs. You are suggesting that maintenance rules should be lowered when the incompetent fliers are allowed?
Learn to love Alaska
>Yet are one of the most popular training helicopters, and around here are (by far) the most popular for agricultural use.
That's only because it's the cheapest helicopter in existence to purchase and to operate (in per-hour costs), aside from kit-type helicopters such as the Mosquito (which is only 1 seat). Helicopters are enormously expensive, so of course people are going to go for the cheapest thing available. Luckily, the R-22 is also an extremely reliable helicopter, so they're not getting something dangerous (from a mechanical standpoint), but it is difficult to fly because of its characteristics (esp. weight).
> There's no way that most of the population could handle operating an aircraft (in 3 dimensions rather than 2) safely.
So you are saying that the pilot licensing program passes a large number of unsafe pilots?
Where did I say that? Most people could not actually pass the pilot licensing program. Lots of people wash out early on, because they're simply unable to master basic maneuvers, most especially hovering. Not everyone can do it. Some people have a natural ability for it, and pick it up quickly. Other people take more time. Some people take too much time, and run out of money and/or quit. Some people just can't do it no matter what. It's something that requires real physical aptitude, and just like not everyone is able to master something like skating or skiing or bicycling, not everyone is able to fly a helicopter.
>Don't forget the atrociously poor maintenance that many cars have. With personal helicopters, they'd be falling out of the air left and right, running into each other, falling on buildings; it'd be a bloodbath.
Most of the operating cost per hour of aircraft is amortized maintenance, not fuel or other direct costs. You are suggesting that maintenance rules should be lowered when the incompetent fliers are allowed?
You really have reading comprehension problems, don't you? Where did I suggest that? Most people don't maintain their cars very well; it's a simple fact. Helicopters (and other aircraft) don't have such a problem here because they're so expensive that only rich people and for-profit companies own or lease them. Some guy who earns $25k or $50k simply isn't going to own a helicopter. Because of their high cost and the nature of their owners, they're generally well-maintained. The same is NOT true of cars; people will drive any old piece of shit around, frequently because they simply can't afford meticulous maintenance. If helis were as cheap as Chevies, you'd have the same maintenance problems; it'd be a bloodbath.
You really have reading comprehension problems, don't you? Where did I suggest that?
When you suggested that making aircraft available would necessarily result in poor maintenance of aircraft. If the regulations work now, why would you think they'd fail if a new R22 cost $20k?
You can't get to work without a car. At least in large cities with established mass transit. In Dallas, I tried to replace my 15 minute drive with a bus. The "optimal" path (verified with a person on their help line) was 3 busses, 2 transfers, and about 2 hours. The one time my car broke down in high school, I ran to the nearest bus stop (about 1/2 mile) and waited for 2 hours for a bus. Then took 2+ hours from that point to replace a 30 minute car trip.
If someone can't afford a Cadilac, they'll take whatever gets them there. If they could afford a helicopter, they can also afford a car. So if they have trouble keeping up with the maintenance of the helicopter, they can sell it and drive. Someone with a car in bad shape doesn't have that option. Spending 6 more hours a day commuting to take the bus doesn't seem like an option to most people. Having helicopters accessible to the 10%, rather than 1% isn't going to have any of the effects you assert. But yes, if everyone was given a free 206LT (or pick your favorite twin turbine helicopter), and the inspections were no more than cars, there's be lots of trouble. But cutting the cost of helicopters by half (capital and expenses) wouldn't have nearly the effect you assert.
Some people just can't do it no matter what. It's something that requires real physical aptitude, and just like not everyone is able to master something like skating or skiing or bicycling, not everyone is able to fly a helicopter.
I've never met anyone who wanted to learn skating or riding who couldn't pick it up. So I don't get the analogy. As for flying, it's one of those things that anyone who would be bad at it would probably find out their first time in one. The high-strung panicky people (I've ridden with many in cars) would, without an instructor dampening their inputs, get a boom strike and kill themselves pretty quickly. Especially in a Robinson (every death in a new R66 so far was from a boom strike, last I read up on it).
Learn to love Alaska
When you suggested that making aircraft available would necessarily result in poor maintenance of aircraft. If the regulations work now, why would you think they'd fail if a new R22 cost $20k?
Because regulations are not enforced. There's various laws about the state your car needs to be maintained to, and they're rarely enforced. There's simply no way to enforce that. An R-22 has to have regular maintenance every 100 hours. What you are you going to do, train an entire army of government inspectors to run around and check every owner to make sure they've done their 100-hour maintenance? No one cares that much with cars, because if your car engine dies, you just pull over to the side of the road. If your helicopter engine fails, you crash. Good pilots might be able to autorotate and avoid a catastrophe, but that's only if there's a clear spot for them to land it: in the middle of a city, that's not so easy, and many skilled pilots have crashed helicopters in cities (frequently resulting in fatalities) simply because there was no place for them to land. And if you think the general population would be able to react fast enough to autorotate (you have a little over 1 second to slam the collective), then you're an idiot.
So if they have trouble keeping up with the maintenance of the helicopter, they can sell it and drive.
No, they'll keep it and continue flying. Who's going to stop them?
As for flying, it's one of those things that anyone who would be bad at it would probably find out their first time in one.
Look, you're obviously not a pilot, so you really don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Almost no one finds out in their first flight if they're able to do it or not. It takes many flights for normal pilots to get good at it. R-22 training time is around $250-300 per hour. Lots of aspiring pilots spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to learn to fly before they finally give up because they realize they're never going to be to master it enough to pass their check rides.
The high-strung panicky people (I've ridden with many in cars) would, without an instructor dampening their inputs, get a boom strike and kill themselves pretty quickly.
So Darwinism? You don't think there'd be a huge public outcry if tens of thousands of people started dying in helicopter training?
The high-strung panicky people (I've ridden with many in cars) would, without an instructor dampening their inputs, get a boom strike and kill themselves pretty quickly.
Wrong.
Present battery technologies will get cheaper for a while, but eventually the supply of - say - lithium will be exceeded and the price will start to go up.
Any future battery technologies that depend on uncommon materials will have the same problem. Possible disruptive events such as development of a new battery chemistry which doesn't require uncommon minerals may happen (I'm still waiting for the mid-1990s discovery of a potential magnesium-based rechargeable battery chemistry to make it to market), but are certainly not guaranteed to happen.
Improvements in recycling may blunt the cycle, but in a finite world (i.e., the one we live in) you're always going to run into supply problems if you use uncommon minerals.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Look, you're obviously not a pilot, so you really don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Why are you being so angry?
Almost no one finds out in their first flight if they're able to do it or not. It takes many flights for normal pilots to get good at it.
People often decide in their introductory flight whether they hate it, or can't live without it. Yes, some who decide they can't live without it might never be good at it, but often those who don't have the touch will scare themselves enough on the first flight that they'll come to the correct conclusion.
Lots of aspiring pilots spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to learn to fly before they finally give up because they realize they're never going to be to master it enough to pass their check rides.
And I've seen the TV series about drivers who have been on learner licenses for years, and can't pass the driving test for a full license. Yes, there are plenty of people who just won't be able to do it.
If you aren't controlled enough in your movements, you'll never be able to hover an R22. You might be able to keep it relatively close to a fixed point, but the constant over-corrections will result in the closeness never being within a "pass". Learning the calm is hard. People know after an intro ride whether they had any aptitude for it, or would be forcing a square peg in a round hole. Of course, that does't stop the non-introspective from spending $20,000 before realizing the answer that was clear to the instructor on the first flight.
So Darwinism? You don't think there'd be a huge public outcry if tens of thousands of people started dying in helicopter training?
So what's your objection. You claim that if everyone were to fly, then there'd be mass death. When I'm agreeing with you, but pointing out that there wouldn't be "mass death by licensed pilots" because those that unsafe would be identified in the training stage, you disagree with me. Why do you disagree with me when I agree with you? Are you mad at yourself, and arguing with yourself?
You don't think I'm a pilot. But you are wrong. I'm not going to scan my logbook and email it to you, so I have no way of proving anything, so I'm sure you'll take your incorrect opinion over the correct reality. I hope you aren't a pilot.
Learn to love Alaska
Why are you being so angry?
Because you keep spouting incorrect bullshit about things you know nothing about.
People often decide in their introductory flight whether they hate it, or can't live without it. Yes, some who decide they can't live without it might never be good at it, but often those who don't have the touch will scare themselves enough on the first flight that they'll come to the correct conclusion.
And how exactly do you know this? Do you have a pilot's license? How many people have you seen this happen to? Or are you just making up shit?
People know after an intro ride whether they had any aptitude for it,
No, they don't. Lots of people spend lots of money before finally giving up. You're lying again. Stop lying.
Of course, that does't stop the non-introspective from spending $20,000 before realizing the answer that was clear to the instructor on the first flight.
Bullshit. Flight instructors do not tell this stuff to prospective students because they'd be fired. What kind of businessperson would turn away customers? Flight school owners will always tell you how easy it is to fly, that you can get your private license in 40 hours (total bullshit unless you're already a proficient fixed-wing pilot), and will gladly fly you around in circles to drain you of your money so they can keep their flight school going.
I'm done arguing with you. You're a fucking moron who doesn't know shit about helicopters.
You don't think I'm a pilot. But you are wrong
Do you often fly your helicopter in actual IFR conditions?
Do you have a pilot's license?
Yes. Do you?
Learn to love Alaska
Rarely. It's safer to practice IFR in VFR conditions. I will not fly in IFR conditions, if I can avoid it (as I don't fly for a living, all my flying is recreational, so I'll err on the side of caution). If I ever get a paid flying job, I'm sure that will change, but I'm not well dispositioned for being a flight instructor, and that's pretty much the only thing you can get right out of the gate with a CPL. I fly as money allows and when my hours are high enough, I might be able to find something else.
Learn to love Alaska
A wind turbine can be build from cheap materials and made big enough, today. People have built their own wind turbines that generate several KW/h.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Pr...
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/