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If Tesla Can Run Its Gigafactory On 100% Renewables, Why Can't Others?
Lucas123 writes Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said his company's Gigafactory battery plant, the world's largest, will be "self contained" and run on solar, wind and geothermal energy. The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location, but on a larger scale they're quite predictable and reliable, according to Tom Lombardo, a professor of engineering and technology. Lombardo points out that Tesla isn't necessarily going off-grid, but using a strategy of "net metering" where the factory will produce more renewable energy than it needs, and receive credits in return from its utility when renewables aren't available. So why can't other manufacturing facilities do the same? Is what Tesla is doing not necessarily transferable to other industries? Sam Jaffe, principal research analyst with Navigant Research, believes Tesla's choice of locations — Reno — and its product is optimal for using renewable and not something that can be reproduced by every industry.
Germany is well on the way to doing this on the scale of a whole country. It just takes some political will.
Korma: Good
Tesla is selling $100k cars, while other battery factories make batteries for $100 phones and $500 laptops. Maybe it is too expensive for them to set up a fully renewable process.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
It's because people like you want a $600 smartphone device every 2 years made by a Chinese worker getting $1 an hour using 100s of toxic, cancerous materials, all processed by coal power.
In the race to the top in the present it's the future generations that come in last.
The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily:
1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so.
2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property.
3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns.
4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down.
5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
The fiction of net metering is that you will not be paid the same amount for the electricity you generate as for the electricity you consume.
On of the purposes of "Smart Meters" is to permit differential pricing on electricity produced vs. consumed; it's not just to provide a temporal demand market. There are already tariffs in place in California where PG&E only has to buy as much electricity as you consume for a net 0 energy usage, rather than being required to purchase everything you generate over what you consume.
The idea of a large grid only works if someone pays to maintain that grid, and that pricing comes in as a differential.
Everyone can't do what Tesla is doing because not everyone is going to have the storage capacity to make it economical; Tesla can just rota the batteries it manufactures in service to the manufacturing plant itself, as part of "burn in testing", so that it'll get local off-grid storage as a side effect of the manufacturing process itself.
I suppose that "every rechargeable battery manufacturer can do what Tesla does" would be a fair statement, but that's a tiny subset of "everyone"
The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location
Yeah. How are they going to store intermittent power for when they need it later? At a battery factory?
This is a tough problem.
You cannot base any real analysis on figures take by looking at an artists rendering of the site.
The article says that they will have 85 windmills because there are 85 windmills in the picture. This is garbage. It is an artists rendering!
If you want to have a serious discussion, you have to wait until there is some actual real info to discuss.
Note that net metering is not running your plant completely off renewables. It's running it off renewables some of the time.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I really commend Tesla for the approach and the commitment to reducing environmental impact, but it's important that we recognise their strategy cannot easily be applied universally. That's likely because, in any given 24-hour cycle, their peaks and troughs of both energy production and energy consumption are likely to align with other similar contributors. So if all producer-consumers are generating periods of net surplus and net demand in the same time windows, the grid is somehow going to have to take up the slack...
There was some experimentation with this in the UK many years ago, using a reversible hydroelectric power station at Lock Awe. The idea was that at night, when demand was low, the turbines were converted into pumps that lifted water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. Then, during times of peak demand, the facility ran as a conventional hydropower unit and contributed electricity to the grid.
The challenge, of course, is finding enough suitable hydroelectric facilities nearby to make it work. As we migrate more of our energy production to renewables, the inherent inflexibility of renewable generation may become a significant limiting factor - to the extent that we may always require either a fill-in alternative of some kind.
It's generally called "co-generation", and although that applies to energy generated by a wide variety of means many are renewable. Burning methane from sewerage treatment plants to run generators is one with quite a few decades of history, another is burning plant waste such as "bagasse" from sugar cane.
How is the product relevant? Isn't it more about location? If you build a gigantic factory building, you can put all kinds of things on the roof. If you built in a location that has sun, wind and geothermal capabilities, how would your product influence whether you could go renewable?
Isn't it still about whether you can get your investment back and in what time-frame?
How does Tesla renew the lithium?
The standard way: nuclear fusion, with peaking capacity provided by supernovas.
yeah but that doesn't count since the dam isn't on the factory premises ;D. that's what the article is wanting factories to do.. it doesn't care if you do it like sensible being and put the power generation outside the plant premises..
btw the usual way to run factories a 100 years ago was on "100%" (or over 100% if you count out the extra..). the papermills etc were usually built so that they had an included hydro plant. last time i got an update the old, old hydro dam at my hometowns powerplant was only providing for lightning though. the old textile plant in the bigger city near my hometown was the first place to have electric lights(iirc in all of nordic).. and those were from hydro. to run the textile mill when it was dark with smaller risk of fires..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The Energy and Motor industries get far more in subsidies, tax breaks and bailouts.
So much so that dwindling fossil fuels can still compete economically with kinetic energy that costs nothing.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
If only the Gigafactory could figure out some way to store electrical energy until its needed. That'd be awesome! Not really something they're equipped for though, I guess...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I wuz wondering the other day (spelling is an intentional affect). What if we had light bulbs and small appliances, or medium appliance, or even big watt users like vacuum cleaners that had built in batteries? They could charge up at night, when the electrical grid could charge less for electricity. When you used them during the day or early evening off battery power, they would run off battery power first, switching to direct power if the batteries charge ran down. Thus evening out the diurnal variation of demand on the grid. With some good number crunching, we could decide if it was worth it. Setting aside politics. (Sarcasm).
Already Dyson is advertising a cordless vacuum cleaner, although on the basis of easier use; no cord to get tangled up. (I read a review; it sucks. Sorry.) On the other hand, and the other hand, I tried the Dyson new Most-est! and Best-est! (it said so on the unit) Hand Dryer in a bathroom at a local business. I slipped my hands into the unit--and was promptly spayed in the face by the water coming off my hands. They dried rather well, though. The hands, that is.
When I go to a high point in this city and look down, I see countless flat roofs that could easily host solar panels. Even with all the fog this city gets, that would make a significant impact on our use of non-renewable energy. But it is not to be. Homeowners tend not to like the upfront expense, they tend not to know about SolarCity, and a bunch of the homes are rented. Absent some regulation, they aren't going to install renewable energy.
I think the neatest time to add renewable energy to a building is during construction. Absent that regulation, unless the owner makes it a priority, then the architects are not going to add it to the plan. For example, my work place recently commissioned and moved into a new building. It has an unobstructed, south-facing, 2-story-high, 10-foot-wide window that we have to cover up on the inside to maintain the climate. My immediate thought was: Solar energy. But I had no authority; the people in charge just put a poorly designed curtain on it. It just doesn't occur to them that we could put renewables in this building.
Actually, in the current political climate, I think renewable energy gets negative publicity from these deployments. Conservatives under the thrall of Koch money see renewables as an admission of AGW, and reject it. No! That reason is stupid! And regardless of AGW, renewables will help us survive the depletion of the oil reserves! The Koch-funded people claim that there is no depletion. I live in a state of extreme pessimism.
Have a nice time.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023573267_bmwmoseslakexml.html
"Dr. Klaus Draeger, a member of BMW’s eight-member board of management, said the carmaker chose Eastern Washington for its cheap hydropower and to create a “green” supply chain using sustainable energy."
The plant is already productive and will be expanded to triple its output next year. So, in fact other companies are already pioneering that concept. When will that Gigafactory thingy be ready?
Banks of batteries are expensive and take up a lot of space. You'd need to provide several megawatts for several hours. That would require hundreds of 85kWh car battery packs.
why does the worlds largest solar power plant need/want to supplement their power generation abilities with natural gas?
Telsa has some grand plans and it might work for them but to expect for example a steel plant to follow suit shows just how ignorant most of you are.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Tesla is doing this
Uhm. They haven't even broken ground yet. So no, they're NOT.
Until the site is up and 100% operational, this is all smoke being blown out someone's ass.
Why don't others do this?
Because this sort of solution isn't suitable everywhere.
Reno sees about 250 sunny or partly sunny days a year, with roughly 60% of those being totally sunny.
A place like Chicago sees 189 sunny or partly sunny days a year with roughly 40% of those being totally sunny.
Places like Reno don't have to deal with long stretches of extreme low temperatures and snow measured in feet.
Also, there's the land use to consider. Farmland is a LOT more valuable for what it can produce than a big stretch of desert land. So converting it to a wind/solar farm from food production is idiotic.
There's also issues of space availability. If you have a factory in someplace like Los Angeles, you simply aren't going to have the land area to build a totally renewable setup.
On top of this, what other environmental impacts does building in this manner, on a wide-scale basis (not just one factory, but dozens/hundreds/thousands of businesses and their facilities) have?
There's also the issue that the local utility needs to be set up to accept power back into the system.
And finally, if everyone's doing this, how do you maintain a stable power production industry? And how does the industry finance maintenance, expansion and construction of new facilities to replace old/obsoleted facilities that have met/exceeded their productive lifetimes?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Banks of batteries are expensive and take up a lot of space. You'd need to provide several megawatts for several hours. That would require hundreds of 85kWh car battery packs.
And they'll be producing several hundred thousand such packs annually once the factory is operational.
Also, it's going to be a 10 million square-foot facility, with a few hundred more empty acres around it. I don't think they'll be pressed for space.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
And here in Grand Rapids Michigan we have several places that do it. The Van Andel Institute for example is covered in solar on their roofs and their solar program is very successful even through last winter when we saw more snow than Minnesota saw.
How about instead of wild speculation you actually look up the places that ACTUALLY have done it and have been running that way for years successfully?
Even Michigan Tech way the hell up against Lake Superior has a successful Solar power generation system in a place where they get on average 6 feet of snow falling per winter storm and over 30 feet of snow fall for the winter.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Right now Tesla's Gigafactory does nothing, because it's just some hype that's been used to get funding.
We need to wait for it to be built and see some results. Otherwise, we might as well be discussing the environmental soundness of the warp drive on the starship Enterprise, or the predicted efficiencies from the dreams any other capitalist has spun up.
Show us results before saying more.
Fukushima discredits the Soviet system.
http://www.businessweek.com/ne...
RWE AG said Aug. 12 it will halt an extra 1,005 megawatts of coal and lignite capacity by the first quarter of 2017, taking the total planned capacity cuts to 8,940 megawatts. Old lignite plants are candidates for closing, according to New York-based Pira, whose clients include oil companies, utilities and governments. A thousand megawatts is enough to power 2 million European homes.
They are shutting down the old coal plants, replacing them with new, more efficient and cleaner ones... and now they have to shut down and reduce production of those too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Wind and solarâ(TM)s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42 percent by next year from 30 percent in 2010, according to European Union data compiled by Citigroup Inc. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28 percent from 32 percent, the data show.
German utilities plan to start new hard-coal plants with 5,606 megawatts of capacity this year and next, data from Bonn-based national grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur show. That compares with a target of at least 10,000 megawatts from new solar and wind installations in 2014 and 2015 under Germanyâ(TM)s renewable energy act, which takes effect Aug. 1. Solar output reached a record 24,244 megawatts on June 6, according to EEX.
Because... They are getting more out of all the solar and wind than expected. They are getting negative electricity prices in January and May.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
in the case of reno specifically, the area there is powered by a geothermal plant. if theres enough capacity in it to also supply the factory, then that would also offest it some. (note that I havent been back in sometime, and its grown a lot since then, so the plant may not have capacity left)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
They could 'test' their product by using each pack as energy storage for the factory for a couple of days before giving it the green light.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Tesla recycles its batteries.
Life is not for the lazy.
Lithium comes from big bang nucleosynthesis primarily and is usually destroyed in stars. Deuterium tritium fusion relies on destroying lithium to produce tritium to continue the reaction. However, in a battery application, lithium is not destroyed and can be recycled. That makes it different, in that application, from fossil fuels which are destroyed when used as fuel.
You made the point I came here to make. Why don't we wait until Tesla actually does it before we ask why other companies don't? It is all very well and good to praise Tesla for making the effort, but before we condemn others for not making the same effort we should wait to see if Tesla succeeds. Once Tesla has this plant up and running we can analyze their results against what they had to do to obtain those results and then judge whether or not this is something other companies should implement. For example, if Tesla's solution depends on the factory being located in Reno, NV with annual rainfall of about 8 inches, do we really want all of our manufacturing (and the people employed doing it) located in areas with such low annual rainfall? I was hoping to get an average for the entire U.S., but the average rainfall east of the Mississippi is slightly about 30 inches, close to 4 times that of Reno.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Exactly. Business is about profit, and being "wasteful" is often more profitable... For example, the infrastructure investment into the self sufficient factory might have been better used by building TWO conventionally powered factories. Then again, the publicity from this Reno plant will pay for the construction :-)
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Don't forget that Elon's first focus is not making money but about changing the world.
If he can push the needle on sustainable factories, even if it's profit neutral, he will be very happy.
Even this discussion is exactly what he wants.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
One of our production facilities installed two large windmills that supply roughly 10-15% of the power the plant uses. You would think this would lower the cost for purchased electricity, but it didn't.
The electric company raised the rates for our plant because the usage dropped enough that they entered a lower usage bracket which has a higher cost per KW/h. We actually pay MORE each month in electricity costs even though the plant purchases 10-15% less electricity..
Obviously they are negotiating the contract terms now (it may be done) but this is just one example of how the utilities have everyone by the balls. They are going to get their money, one way or another.
I'm sure for Tesla, it will be easier since they are starting from the beginning instead of doing a retrofit. However I hear similar stories from residential users. Most times people want to make the choice to use returnables but outside factors make it monetarily difficult to pursue.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Alternatively, there will always be some number of batteries that are functional but don't meet the stated specs for whatever reason. Producing 10s of thousands of batteries a year, that could easily leave you with several hundred mostly functional batteries that are otherwise worthless to you.
I teach physics. The most depressing part of my job is teaching a general-education class where I have to explain global warming.
Scientists don't have a private agenda. We would LOVE to be wrong about this, but:
- Temperatures are going up worldwide
- Global temperatures are historically very well correlated to CO2 concentrations
- CO2 concentrations have a straightforward and well-understood effect on infrared light produced by
earth's blackbody radiation
- Even small changes to global temperature will create big changes to local climates
- We can stop this, but only if radical action is taken right now
so
- We're all fucked.
This is not the time for the debate about whether the effect is real. This is the time for debate about just how MUCH we should be panicking. We're in the deep shit here. We're talking about large proportions of humanity not having enough food to eat. The resulting warfare and hardship will be devastating.
"Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good" By SPIEGEL Staff on 09/04/2013:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Could burn other byproduct of sugar production, but why waste good ole grog!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
...but when it is not producing energy from a renewable source it is consuming it from a non-renewable source.
The US doesn't have a single power grid, it has three power grids that are almost completely independent of one another. Asking the renewable vs non-renewable question on a scale larger than the interconnect is inappropriate. And to some extent, asking the question on a scale smaller than the entire interconnect is an accounting fiction. Each of the three interconnects has a very different generating profile. Nevada is part of the Western Interconnect. Generation in the Western Interconnect as a whole runs 40-45% from non-fossil sources over the course of a year. The biggest contributor to that is conventional hydro power, with nuclear second. By 2016 or so, wind will overtake nuclear; sooner than that if any of the six commercial reactors operating in the Western Interconnect have major problems.
There have been a large number of nuts-and-bolts studies for doing low-carbon power in the US. All draw basically the same conclusion. It's straightforward to do in the Western Interconnect because of the available resources and geography. For the rest of the US it's an enormously harder problem.
Your right. We should just quit trying and listen to your ideas...........I'm tired of hearing "we can only produce 40% of the power we need not 100% so this idea sucks.
Totally not what I said.
I said that there are places where this simply doesn't make sense. Either for logistical and/or economic reasons.
YOU added the "so we should never do it" sentiment.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
is better if I'm not buying a new smartphone every 2 years?
What's it like to be an idiot?
Maybe others can't/don't do this because there are very few locations that have the right conditions for wind/solar/geothermal production.
Wood burning trucks in North Korea. Renewable Juche!
My first thought as well, if it actually works out that is one thing, but they are jumping the gun a little saying why can't everyone, when they have actually built it themselves.
Probably, yes. Paying people to do things cheaply does not necessarily improve their life. The quality of life of a hunter gatherer is arguably better than that of a farm worker, and the quality of life of a farm worker is arguably better than that of a factory worker. None of this stops people converting from hunter gatherers to farmers to factory workers, because they want more resources and stability to look after their their children, but it doesn't usually work out that way. The extra 'richness' tends to support larger and larger populations of children, and richer and richer elites, while the quality of life of individuals does not get better on the whole.
Korma: Good
So, by that logic the Quality of Life of a Homeless bum must be better than that of the average American worker. Doesn't sound quite right...
advertising isn't that expensive and tesla doesn't need it... the ad value is not even remotely worth the cost of a major factory. Were it, then apple would stop using sweat shop labor instead of spending tens of millions on advertising every year.
It doesn't work that way.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
And how is that relevant? The fact remains that the cheapest Tesla you can buy is $70k. Tax breaks and bailouts for the US auto industry are reprehensible, but you can buy a foreign car that didn't receive any of those and it still costs a fraction of the Tesla.
Free kinetic energy? Where?
Spoken by someone that's never been to Reno, NV in the winter time. Average snowfall is two feet. You Googled some info for your rant but not enough. I am guessing you work for the coal industry?
Do yourself a favor and pull off the tinfoil hat kid.
And that's average snowfall over the entire year. Or an average of 2 inches a month.
There are some MONTHS (hell, in some storms, single DAYS) where a place like Chicago, Detroit, etc sees that much or more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hi. This was obviously a joke. However, if you want to be literal then I will point out that lithium can be formed via other fusion reactions besides the big bang, and, furthermore, that a supernova will indeed form lithium.
Finally, it's disingenuous to say that the lithium is not destroyed/is recyclable and simultaneously assert that fossil fuels *are* destroyed when used. Unless you're going to assert that burning fossil fuels is a nuclear reaction, then all the constituent elements are still present and can be recycled back to hydrocarbon form by using energy in the proper reaction context. Just like lithium from the batteries can be recycled using energy in the proper reaction context.
If you're going to pedant a joke, at least do it correctly.
Tesla is able to make profit from producing 40,000 cars a year. Most car companies make that number in a month. The Honda plant that makes civics produces 245,000 cars in a year alone. If more car companies went back to a pull system rather than a push system I could see them accomplishing this, but more production requires more energy. That extra energy might not be enough for renewables to supply.
It's funny... you keep using the subjective word "successful" to imply reaching an objective goal. And all without providing any links to back up your subjective claims.
The problem with renewable energy is energy storage. This is a factory that will make gigantic batteries by literately the millions. They probably also get huge subsidies from the government. As with most energy projects, the up front capital costs are where the problem is. What company is going to do this when energy is cheap and available. Unless you make an electric car and it is probably worth the PR.
The hydrocarbon's use as a fuel is ended. As a fuel, it is destroyed. I mention that because the thread was not distinguishing between renewal and recycling.
"Stellar nucleosynthesis, quiescent or explosive, forge the whole variety of nuclei from C to U but LiBeB nuclei are destroyed in the interior of stars, except 7Li which is produced in AGB and novae. The destruction temperatures are 2, 2.5, 3.5, 5.3 and 5 millions of degrees for 6Li, 7Li, 9Be, 10B and 11B respectively. It is worth noting that 7Li and 11B could be produced by neutrino spallation in helium and carbon shells of core collapse supernovae, respectively [96], [91]; however, this mechanism is particularly uncertain depending strongly on the neutrino energy distribution. It is clear that another source is necessary to generate at least 6Li, 9Be, 10B and this is a non thermal mechanism, namely the break up of heavier species (CNO, mainly) by energetic collisions, also called spallation." http://cds.cern.ch/record/3933...
"If Tesla Can Run Its Gigafactory On 100% Renewables, Why Can't Others?"
Because others don't charge $100,000 a pop for their products!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
The title was "If Tesla Can Run Its Gigafactory On 100% Renewables, Why Can't Others?" However, the factory isn't there yet. Shouldn't we wait to see if it is actually possible before taking it as a given?
If other companies can survive and suceed without millions and millions in tax breaks, do not require state and federal sponsorship (i.e. corporate welfare*), as well as not depending on government subsidized rebates to move their inventory? Then why can't Tesla survive without state sponsorship and compulsory citizen funding?
* See the insane price Nevadans are paying to get a Tesla battery factory.
Respect the Constitution
Recharging lithium batteries and recovering hydrocarbons from exhaust waste are not equivalent. Lithium battery discharge is a reversible process, so the original state can be recovered by input of the same amount of energy as was originally extracted from the system. Gasoline & turbine engines (like all heat engines) are non-reversible, which means it takes more energy to recover the initial state than was extracted as useful work. This is because only a portion of the energy produced by burning hydrocarbons can be extracted as work -- the rest escapes as heat.
Only a complete, total, and utter moron would not take advantage of the free storage battery that is the grid.
Come on back little kid when you actually know how this stuff works.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Free kinetic energy? Where?
In the wind. There is no capital cost for making the wind blow.
There's a capital cost for building and maintaining the equipment required to tap that energy, but the energy itself is free once you've covered that initial cost.
Also, the Model S is not their "entry level" vehicle. That vehicle is still under development. Tesla aimed to cover the high cost of relatively low volume early production vehicles by producing their high end sport offering (Roadster) first, then their luxury offering (Model S). Part of the reason the gigafactory is such a big deal is it would help lower the cost of the battery packs, reducing the price of future vehicles.
=Smidge=
"Maintaining" isn't capital cost, and those things require constant maintenance. They'll break in big storms. They wear out and develop cracks. They need to be replaced eventually, usually around every 20 years. Then there are the costs for leasing/owning the land, insurance, and environmental impact.
You might as well say that fossil fuel plants have "free chemical energy": it's right there, in the ground, for free! All you need to do is dig it up and burn it!
In different words, it is their entry level vehicle.
Thanks for illustrating again how absolutely out of touch people advocating "alternative energies" are with the real world of machines, the environment, and engineering.
There are dozens of reasons. Lets start with, the costs go up. Its the free market after all, if a company could _ACTUALLY_ reduce their power bill they would do it.
Second, lots (most?) of companies are strongly OPEX leaning, meaning that they are already shifting all their CAPEX , and investing in solar/wind is overwhelmingly CAPEX (or its going to drive up their debt).
Third, most companies are busy worrying about their next product, and a long list of other issues.
I could probably list another dozen things, but I'm betting that combination pretty much covers 99% of US companies.
You failed your pedantry yet again.
Go read the joke. Did I say they used "stellar nuclear fusion, with peaking capacity provided by supernovas"? No, I didn't. I specifically stated nuclear fusion. You projected the stellar part.
Just stop. You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.
Lithium battery discharge is a reversible process, so the original state can be recovered by input of the same amount of energy as was originally extracted from the system.
Ooookkkaayy. Time for you to take remedial thermodynamics if you believe recharging or restoring lithium batteries is a 100% efficient process.
And, for that matter, who said the hydrocarbons had to be burned? Since you're imagining a 100% efficient lithium restoration process, now I'm countering with a 100% efficient solid oxide fuel cell that extracts the energy from the hydrocarbons without burning them, thereby bypassing the Carnot efficiency limit. You know, because it's not applicable because it's not a heat engine. This SOFC technology is real, it's just the 100% efficiency part that's obviously imaginary.
Just drop the pedantry and enjoy the transient amusement from the obvious absurdity of the joke.
Ah. The "I made a claim, you can waste time and try to Google it for me."
And this is why you're posting AC.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
your writing skill is very attrractive.......if you write day by day increase your career. pls visit this site http://www.freeurltracker.com/...
TMI discredits the Soviet system.
If lithium was created during the Big Bang, then it's not going to be renewed as easily as something created in stellar fusion.
Okay, for the last time: there are nuclear fusion reactions that produce lithium. These reactions can happen both in supernovas as well as non-Big Bang nuclear fusion. None of this is really under debate. If you want to continue perseverating, feel free to peruse "Thermonuclear Reaction Rates V" by Caughlan & Fowler in order to educate yourself.
For you aspies out there, perhaps your hint that the entire suggestion might be absurd is the allegation that Tesla could harvest additional lithium by triggering supernovas on demand and harvesting from the output. Go ponder that for a while. Perhaps you might even learn to grok humor.
FFS, I don't mind being pedanted on a joke, but the incompetence being displayed is just sad.
You're probably right -- I do need to review my thermo. University was many years ago, and thermo was taught in a hot class room in the middle of summer by a prof who was in his 60s and coasting to retirement. But I meant to claim that lithium battery chemistry was thermodynamically reversible _in theory_, whereas a heat engine (such as a gasoline engine) is not. Although I'm not really sure if this is true either, but practical efficiencies are in the 90% range (according to the sources cited by wikipedia), which includes internal impedances, and other real-world losses. So it seems likely to either be theoretically thermodynamically reversible, or very close.
But you were the one who said the hydrocarbons were being burned (in your previous post). In this case, lithium battery discharge/recharge cycle is up to ~90% efficient, whereas gasoline burning has an average efficiency of 25-35%. So ignoring the efficiency of the hypothetical gasoline recovery process, that's a difference of at least 55%.
I think it's ironic that you consider a difference between 100% and 90% completely invalidates what I'm saying, but me pointing out a difference between 90% and 35% is being pedantic.
You failed to rescue your pedantry.
I never said hydrocarbons *had* to be burned. Yes, in my first example I mentioned them being burned, but you switched discussion contexts so I decided to do the same. Now you're continuing to discuss hydrocarbons in heat engines and comparing them to theoretical maximum efficiencies of lithium, while simultaneously implying I'm using strawmen. That's irony.
As I said, using hydrocarbons in a fuel cell bypasses the Carnot efficiency limits because a fuel cell is not a heat engine and therefore your comments about heat engines are irrelevant, and we can just ignore your second and third paragraphs.
Or, I suppose I can turn the tables and do what you did by comparing the theoretical max efficiency of hydrocarbons in a fuel cell against some inefficient application of lithium.
The point of all of this is that once you decide to pedant a joke, you had best be sure your facts and pedantry are completely, unambiguously correct. mdsolar decided to take us down this path, and you joined in.