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Most Comprehensive Study Yet On Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles
An anonymous reader writes: A few articles came out Thursday talking about the recently released report from the National Bureau of Economic Research on the environmental benefits of electric cars. The general consensus is kind of obvious -- that it depends on the ratio of coal vs. clean electrical generation that is used to charge your car. What is interesting is the extent to which it makes a difference, and that when viewed on a regional basis, there are cases where the EV doesn't do so well. And when it comes to policy decisions, it seems the central focus needs to be on the replacement of large-scale coal generation, and the rest will fall in to place. Here is one cover story from Ars Technica. Google others for varying perspectives.
Its a good thing my reason for wanting hybrid and electric vehicles is purely economical. Environmental benefits are a nice side effect in many cases, but the reason I want my country less dependent on oil is almost purely to reduce foreign dependency. Money spent buying coal from West Virginia stays in our economy, while oil bought abroad does not. Also electricity produced by coal is less expensive per mile driven than gasoline, so that allows money to be spent on more productive areas than natural resources.
The environmental benefits are still important, but dealing with dirty coal is a separate issue from electric cars IMHO.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Outsource power from ... CHINA! It don't care about waste at all. First to think of this am I? Big power cable across the oceans. BIG! Pay penis on the dollar. RADICAL!
I gots first poop!
Actually, replacing coal is happening already. The percentage of plants that are coal has been going down. Moreover, the plants which are coal have been getting progressively cleaner. And as electric-plugins become more common, that means there will be more on-grid storage which will help make solar and wind more common (since one of their big problems is the intermittent nature of the power they supply). Moreover, the study uses the current crop of electric cars, where they are getting more and more efficient, and as electric cars get more efficient they'll compare more favorably in more locations.
If you buy an EV for the renewable aspect, commit to switching your electrical supplier to one that produces all electricity from green sources. For me, that's a $0.024/kwh increase.
There is no bypassing entropy. Every car has a tailpipe. Yes centralizing the system can simplify some pollution problems but it introduces others such as electrical transmission losses, battery voltage conditioning losses, battery charging losses, etc. Yes you may pay less money per mile but when you factor in the heavily subsidized battery sold way beneath cost needed at around 8-10 years it often comes back to around the same price only worse - many wont replace the 3k battery in an old hybrid, 7-8k in a leaf or 8-12k (30k+ production cost) for the larger tesla.
I'm all for electric cars, they are great! But I'm pro science and pro facts and when people run around half informed and when media spouts half truths it bothers me quite a bit. It should bother you as well.
The tesla is a great sports car. But if you want an electric for enviornmental reasons find out where your regional power comes from and do the math. It's not likely to change much for the life of your car - any changes are definitely also public record. If you need a solar instal to actually make the difference large then factor in that cost benefit too.
Never under estimate the ability of an efficient economy car to nearly get the enviornmental savings of what anelectric gets at 1/2 to 1/5 the price.
Make it happen.
Actually EV are one of the few loads that could work well with pv and wind, they are nearly all smart as in have significant computing power. So getting them to start/stop charging as directed by the utility companies and still be charged in time is feasible. Reversing the process is also rather interesting, as in allowing full battery to drain 10-20% back into the grid to avoid firing up peaking plants and recharge that before it's expected to be needed again.
The legal hurdles are pretty big, insuring that the data is not accessible by anybody ever for starters.
No sir I dont like it.
Sure
All you have to do is quadruple your electricity prices, put in a battery system in your home to capture the "clean energy", pay more for the electric car and there you are.
lets see
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...
Want to talk about a war on poverty, you might as well start dropping bombs on them.
Seriously a paywalled report and a jackass going google it ?
Why are we dignifying it by calling it a "study"? It's not published in a journal. It's not undergone peer-review. It's a "working paper" on the NBER website. It's not the same thing. If it was legitimate, they would have submitted it to a legitimate journal and gotten it published. They have not, as it stands.
How long is it going to take for news sources to bother to check whether something has undergone peer-review before they start citing it as "science"? Let alone the "most comprehensive study yet"?
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
Aren't you glad this guy proved how you are wrong and how your world view is so flawed. Man, you just got "Served"! "Lousy Logic" indeed! Faced!
This is not a new study and it's already been thoroughly rebuked. Here are few major flaws:
o Study considers coal plant pollution data from 2010-12. Since then a lot of coal plants were shut down (replaced by cleaner NG plants) or were equipped with filters (per EPA mandate which was recently deemed invalid by the courts but replacement mandate is forthcoming)
o Study 'forgets' to consider pollution from processing and transporting fuel.
o Some who are in the know pointed out that study fumbled the data on how green and dirty electricity is distributed throughout the grid. What study did is similar to gerrymandering where they lumped clean energy to specific areas making other ares less clean as a result.
"Study" does not mean peer reviewed science research.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sort of, By switching from gasoline to electricity, you can then change electricity generation to be more green. But if you leave the car on gasoline, then making electricity generation more green won't help. Not all steps in a chain contribute DIRECTLY to the end result, but it doesn't mean they're not necessary to enable other steps in the chain.
Then there's the car battery, i.e. storage, so you can turn intermittent electricity into stored energy, making wind and solar more viable which always suffer from their intermittent nature.
So simply doing the emissions calc on the car alone won't tell you the benefits/losses. You need the demand for intermittent electricity to be there to justify building the solar and wind plants. Which in turn justifies more electric cars, which justifies more solar+wind and so on.
I'm looking forward to boat motors (either outboard or inboard) becoming to electric. There are some good ones available already, just need better batteries and prices for them to take over
Whereas with coal, all you have to do is tear great big holes in the ground, destroy the water supply, kill thousands of miners with black lung disease and untold thousands more with pollution, contribute to climate change and have the government subsidize the whole thing.
And there you are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But, where do you get the energy to keep the battery charged? Wind don't always blow when you need it, the sun isn't always shining, and you cannot control lightning. But the refrigerator and TV need power. And your rechargeable pacemaker, is dying, time to eat some beans?
The free market works "in theory" too...
Oh zap you have me
It isn't like "Green Energy" does any of those things
Chinese Rare earth mine
http://images.china.cn/attache...
Water Supply looks good
https://agmetalminer.com/mmwp/...
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/...
Nope no big honking holes in the ground there
Since every politician is talking about how they are making the air cleaner and wasting less energy, and hence you used gas because it was lower CO2 per energy, surely this means that using electric cars IS using less CO2, and that this is already getting more and more effective.
Or that talk of gas being cleaner is bollocks.
California: "Two or three nuclear power plants in someone else's state".
And then they can go forth in all of their environmental smugness.
Have gnu, will travel.
just when you think slashdot editors cannot degrade themselves any further.
in the new world, slashdot suggests what you google! brilliant!
And it's not just replacing current electrical generation - there would probably have to be a two or three ORDER OF MAGNITUDE expansion of electrical generation capacity.
100 to 1000 times more electricity? Really?
2014: 136.78 billion gallons of gasoline consumed.
At 33 kWhr/gallon, that's 4,514 billion kWh if you completely ignore any differences in efficiency.
2014: 4,093 billion kWh of electricity produced.
So at the absolute WORST case, it's a little more than double. But when you figure that an electric vehicle uses that energy nearly three times more efficiently, it's under 50% more.
And that's if you go ahead and replace *everything* that burns gasoline with electric, which of course you wouldn't.
Then after all that, producing ~50% more kWh does not translate into needing ~50% more power plants. You would need to factor in some diversity factor as not all power plants are running all the time nor at full capacity.
=Smidge=
What's the point of overpaying? There are already subsidies and loans available that address start-up costs. Paying more for 'green' electricity slows down the progress to make it competitive.
and it's wonderful effects on the environment, the sources (hello Afghanistan, we are never leaving now! Look forward to never ending wars), and why maintaining an old car has far less impact than junking a car, and making a new one.
BUY NEW USELESS CRAP FOR THE ENVIRONMENT... LMFAO.
Yes, just a few weeks ago an article was posted here on Slashdot saying that the amount of electricity needed to pump up, refine and transport gasoline is about the same as that consumed by an electric vehicle for the same distance. So when you have finished filling up your gas tank, you have already used the same amount of electricity as the electric car and you haven't even started burning the fuel yet. Did this "study" take that into account?
Add to that the fact that pollution for electricity generation normally happens outside population centers. You should see the smog produced by cars in front of my kids' school on a foggy morning. I can't wait for all cars to be electric.
Electricity can be produced by multiple methods, your links are only relevant to some methods. Furthermore, those methods could be completely different in a few years/decades.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If I pay an extra 10% premium to the power company for my electricity to "come from 100% renewables," and the power company claims its total mix (all customers) is 30% renewables, and I replace my ICE car (at end of life) with an electric, that I charge at night, is that any good for the environment?
To be responsible for your actions and for the condition in which you leave the world. To me, letting CO2 (and other pollutants) out unnecessarily is similar to raking your leaves onto your neighbor's yard. It's solving your problem by making it someone else's, someone who might not actually be able to overcome the problem, such as residents of a disappearing small island or sealife being poisoned.
I'm looking at switching to a heat pump. An air source heat pump might be $13K. A ground source heat pump is $40K before subsidies/grants. The ASHP uses more electricity, but saves almost the same amount of CO2 as the GSHP. (Yes, both would be powered from green electricity.) Since society could buy 3 ASHPs for the cost of 1 GSHP, the ASHP is more effective with respect to pollution savings.
I have to wonder if this study took into account the vast amounts of electrical power used to refine gasoline? Those refineries are some of the biggest users of grid power in the country. I've even heard it suggested (though I haven't seen a by-the-numbers breakdown) that it takes, on average, as much electrical power to refine a gallon of gasoline as it would take to power a BEV the same distance driven. If that's true -- or even in the ballpark -- then it could turn the conclusions of this study upside-down.
No. What are your sources? Here are mine, from BP 2015 :
http://lecentiemesinge.blog.le...
All you have to do is quadruple your electricity prices
No. Coal is mostly being replaced with natural gas, which is cheaper than coal, and generates half the CO2. Gas moves in pipelines, which are cheaper and safer than the trains that carry coal. Gas turbines are more efficient than the steam turbines that coal plants use. Gas burns clean, and doesn't require the expensive pollution abatement equipment required by coal.
It no longer makes economic sense to build coal plants in America. Most new projects have been cancelled or suspended. Gas is cheaper and cleaner.
It isn't like coal fired power plants have a magic mystery electricity fairy inside them.... they need rare earths as well. Coal just has tons of problems ON TOP of the problems that green energy has.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
these coal vs petroleum studies distract from the real transformative nature of EV: the transportation sector will NEVER transition to clean energy if you never change the fuel powering the vehicle. Arguing that somehow ICE and EV are "equivalent" in certain areas of the country simply allows (lazy thinking) people to falsely continue their current patterns with seemingly "analytical" justification. this also means they will NEVER be able to decouple from the world geopolitical energy dependencies either. Since if i can't drive to work because i am utterly dependent on my car having gasoline because i CHOSE to buy a new ICE instead of an EV, that means i am likely utterly supporting some evil empire somewhere. if you don't really care about these bigger issues, then nothing anyone can say will convince you. But EV is vastly more pleasurable experience than ICE for both the driver and passenger. Most of the people posting negative EV opinions have never actually experienced one so their ICE-only vision of the world limits them. For the few who've put or find themselves in a life position of having to drive 100's of miles a day or live in an apartment with no easy charging, obviously EV is not your choice, yet. But for many people, they are a great choice. if you purchase green energy on your power bill, you are 1) supporting the transition of the grid infrastructure to cleaner energy which is happening faster than expected, whining about it not being sufficient to power ALL of the needs is similarly shortsighted. 2) completely undermining the thesis of this study. You can purchase green energy at parity to conventional if you care to look. And where it's not parity, it generally not much more than a penny higher per kilowatt. Many energy markets are deregulated now so it's very likely most parts of the US can purchase green energy from a supplier in their section of the grid.the price per kilowatt/mile still dwarfs the price of btu/mile. my Leaf adds maybe $15 a month to my electric bill. that's just one visit out of several to the gas station for our other ICE car. if you are a high electric user and you decide to install solar panels, it's trivial and cheap to add a few more to accommodate the extra energy consumed by an EV. There's a compelling economic story emerging that should further shut up the EV nay sayers. what's interesting to observe too is the coal industry is actually dying in this country. the thesis of coal vs petroleum would be valid if the electric grid stayed constant. it's not. it's moving to a greener place.thus the point of the study is lost on me. there's a deeper point to all of this and that's to drive less period, EV or ICE, neither is good. Until we can accept and live like that, much of this discussion will continue to wallow in circles.
It is true that america's coal plants are being shut down quickly. However, both Australia and China are not. In fact, china's % is around 80 and still climbing. Worst yet, they do not turn on their pollution controls.
And yet, wind, natural gas, and nukes are much cheaper than coal, which is why coal is being shut down.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you're going to take into account the whole supply chain for electric cars, you have to do the same thing for gasoline cars. This study doesn't do that. It calculates the CO2 cost of electricity generation for electric cars, but assumes that gasoline just magically shows up at the pump and doesn't incur any environmental costs in getting there. The CO2 emissions resulting from extraction, refining, etc. are completely ignored.
The NBER is a conservative funded "think tank". It gets most of its money from large corporations and people with an interest in the oil and gas industries.
This "study" is just a hit piece against electric cars funded by the oil and gas industries... it's worthless.
One example of its bias: It uses a "well to wheels" analysis of electric car energy use but for fossil fueled vehicles, it only uses the "pump to wheels" emissions, leaving out all of the energy impacts of extraction, refining and transportation of fossil fuels.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Huh. And exactly HOW did your electrons get separated from the polluted source electrons?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My wife and I purchased a Leaf for the following practical reasons:
-The purchase price was less than a similarly size and year of used car.
-The monthly payments are actually less than filling the gas tank on our old SUV (which we still have).
-Routine maintenance is almost unnecessary (no oil to change, no spark plugs, no alternator, no belts, no muffler, no transmission, reduced use of brakes).
-It is a quiet pleasure to drive.
-It is a very powerful, maneuverable car in city driving.
-It can easily handle highway speeds up to 90 mph.
-We have other vehicles to use for long trips.
-It charges to 100% on 110v overnight, every night.
-With 100 miles between charges, and work 25 miles away, we NEVER need to stop at a charging station for daily use.
-The cost of driving this car is not tied to the price of a barrel of oil.
-We live in a house (an apartment would change our power options).
-The car is fine in the winter (although the eco-tires will have to go).
Now for the environmental benefits:
-It is easier to change power plants than all of the engines in all of the cars.
-About 20% of our electricity comes from renewals (wind). Another chunk from nuclear.
-Even the power coming from coal and natural gas is made at peak efficiency.
-There is very little energy loss from the car due to heat and friction.
-At 24 Kw, the car can be driven 100 miles on the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline.
For the naysayers:
-If you work over 50 miles from where you live this car may not be for you (or perhaps your lifestyle is an issue).
-Nobody is going to make you sell your ICE car (I have three others).
-The car has never left us stranded.
-The battery can be recycled.
-The battery will be upgradeable.
-The cost of a new battery will be significantly less than paying for gasoline ($5000 at the moment).
-The battery is warranted to 2018.
-Nissan has only had to replace 3 batteries so far ( http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/25/99-99-nissan-leaf-batteries-still-operation/ ).
-I can charge for free at a Nissan dealership (but only did so once during a warranty software update over 50 miles from home).
-Buying gasoline sends wealth out of most countries (and possibly funds terrorists).
That's the way electricity is sold in the U.S. The utility company maintains and charges for the wires. The electricity is sold by another company, and you get to pick which company you're buying it from. If you choose to get it from renewable sources, the cost is higher but the energy part of your bill gets sent to them. The individual electrons are not sorted, but the sum balance of them are.
That said, this is like diesel vs. gasoline, where the crude oil wants to break down into a certain fraction of diesel vs gasoline. As long as your demand for those two products equals the supplied amount, prices remain low. If demand gets skewed in one direction, then you end up having to do inefficient refining to convert diesel to gasoline (or vice versa), and the price goes up. Same thing here - as long as electrical demand for conventional vs. renewable sources remains about the same as the supply, the marginal price for renewables will remain rather low. But if you start pushing for 100% renewables, the price will skyrocket due to the inefficiency of matching renewable power generation profiles to power demand profiles.
I'm sure the same people that are claiming this NBER study doesn't deserve consideration because it is not peer reviewed will at the same time embrace the information you reference which appears to be just patched together by a reporter. The NBER at least has a history of credible work and noble prize winning contributors.
This study appears to be very clear on what it takes into account, with the core data.
I don't understand some of the criticism. The results come out to what any reasonable person with an engineering background would expect. FWIW, extracting petroleum is much easier per BTU than extracting coal, so I actually am more skeptical of the conclusions of the reporter you reference. The "amount of electricity" used is really not even important, as much of the energy used is not electrical.
One example of its bias: It uses a "well to wheels" analysis of electric car energy use but for fossil fueled vehicles, it only uses the "pump to wheels" emissions, leaving out all of the energy impacts of extraction, refining and transportation of fossil fuels.
Apply your skepticism objectively, and you may get a different take. You clearly don't like the conclusions of the study. It seems reasonable to be.
Evidently, they are very clear that they did not include the price of energy extraction and transportation for the coal that powers the EV, the gas for the ICEs, nor the gas or coal for the Hybrids.
It seems open and reasonable. Extraction and distribution of a BTU of petroleum is much easier energy-wise than 1 BTU of coal. Due to a much lower energy density, transportation of a BTU of coal is likely more costly than petroleum as well. I doubt counting all those factors would have a bit impact on the results.
actually, no. Basically, those 'clean' companies sell their electricity regardless if you 'buy' from them or not. Think back about 10-15 years ago when every ISP was selling you DSL. They would claim that it was THEIR DSL, and not the RBOCs. Of course, it was a lie. Basically, the electrons ran through RBOC's systems.
The ppl that 'pay' for clean energy from other sources are no different than my solar system. I have 43 panels on our roof. We generate 9.8KWs. And when we buy our Tesla shortly, it will HELP charge it. BUT, the reality is, that most of the electrons charging it will be from nighttime, not daytime. As such, my solar system lowered my costs and helped with daytime electricity, but my charge will still be coming mostly from the grid, which is still around 36% coal, 27% Nat Gas, less than 1% oil, and then the rest is clean. So, only around 40% is REALLY clean.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
FWIW, extracting petroleum is much easier per BTU than extracting coal, so I actually am more skeptical of the conclusions of the reporter you reference.
Are you saying they should use gasoline rather than coal to produce electricity?
No, I am not saying that. Why would you think I was?
Have you ever looked at the process for making lithium batteries? Digging all those minerals out of the ground is very damaging to the environment and water supplies. Funny how when it is something we like we ignore the damaging effects in the process.
Extraction and distribution of coal and oil are probably about equal. However, refining oil takes about as much energy as cars get out of the gas or diesel. In fact, if you took the electricity that oil refineries use and put that into an electric car, it would drive the car as far as the gas and diesel that the refinery produces (without all that nasty pollution).
Either way, its a major flaw in the study when they don't include major costs of fossil fuel but do include those costs for electricity. Flagrant bias.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
When you charge a BEV at night, you are using power that would otherwise be wasted, because steam turbines, such as those used by Coal and Nuclear power plants, cannot be shut down fully at night, when the power load decreases. Enough power is generated and wasted every night to charge up 100 million BEVs. Those tons of Coal will be burned even if nobody is using the power, so charging a BEV at night is causing no net increase in CO2 emissions. This is the reason why electricity is so cheap late at night - it is surplus power.
I have driven a LEAF to work for over two years, and I work 30 miles from home. The LEAF already has enough range for 90% of commuters to get to work every day. In a couple years, that percentage will increase as lower-priced higher-range BEVs become available (200 mile range is a common target). Even if you don't believe that CO2 emissions are a problem, you can save a significant amount of money by driving a BEV, even when compared to driving a 50MPG hybrid. BEVs are practical for many commuters right now.
Either way, its a major flaw in the study when they don't include major costs of fossil fuel but do include those costs for electricity. Flagrant bias.
No, they don't include those costs for either. You are just viewing it through a flagrantly biased lens.
They don't include refining costs for fossil fuel... major flaw.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The study is not a cost comparison. The study is not even an energy use comparison. The study is a pollution comparison.
Once again, they also do no include the sourcing and transportation contributions of coal either. And they are very transparent regarding what is included.
They also don't include the impacts from lithium extraction and distribution for batteries. Nor the impacts of battery replacement/recycling.
It also has tons of advantages
Which is why in any country that isn't taxed the hell out of, it's the preferred power source.
Your source is for worldwide. The study in question was US specific, and for the US it is going down. See this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If oil were cheaper per btu than coal for electricity generation, there would be no coal fired power plants. The coal industry is facing a storm of artificially low natural gas which is hurting it (as well as an administration hostile to its existence). Consumption of natural gas will increase, driving up prices greatly to the point that coal is much cheaper. Gas companies in most cases are beneficiaries of heavily hedged positions for their core volumes, so they're still happily pumping away. Once higher hedged prices drop off poof goes some of your production.
Electric cars don't mandate the use of rare earths (apart from minute amounts in LCDs and microelectronics). It's totally possible to use AC motors that don't require anything more exotic than copper. Tesla does this, for example.
Would you like pictures of Lithium and Nickel mines ?
lol... this study is squarely in the class of "we've determined that most water is wet" or for a more complex example, "statistics clearly indicate that the majority component of the contents of a glass packed full of water ice, is water ice,. *(But this is only true until or unless it melts)"
FFS, yes, there are environmental costs to making vehicles and renewable power systems, and those are further impacted by lifetime and reliability factors, and there are huge environmental costs to burning fossil fuels, and the less we do of that, the better.
Thanks, I'll take my million dollar NSF grant as a cashier's check. I hope to have another study ready tomorrow; I plan to definitively, once and for all, determine if most humans are air breathers. Stay tuned. But don't hold your breath. I'm going to be out spending today's million tonight on strippers and fine whiskey. I may take a... breather... tomorrow. As the Italians say, "Alveoli, amici miei!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The sun is always shining. What you mean to say is that the sun is not always visible due to clouds or fog, or on the side of the planet that would be optimum for power generation when the sky is clear. I'm not just being pedantic. Because:
Although that is all factual, the idea that solar does not generate power when when not in direct sunlight (cloudy, foggy, shaded, etc.) is wholly incorrect.
Solar works all day, every day, no exceptions. Rather than "not work", it varies in efficiency, and not so much that it doesn't remain useful when it is cloudy; efficiency of a well aimed system on cloudy days varies from about 20% to 50%, depending on the tech in the panel and just how dense the occlusion is. Here's a back-yard demonstration of exactly that. (TL;DW -- he gets about .6 amps out of his 4-amp panel on a cloudy day, without aiming: about 15 % efficiency.)
The more exposure and better angle you have, of course, the better it all works. But clouds and fog... facts of life. Yet you can still get all the energy you need from a solar system on days that aren't perfectly clear. You can even plan for it, and build in enough overcapacity (with full sunlight in mind) so that you always have enough power.
Concrete example: I have a small trailer that I have some 12 vdc ham gear in. It has lights, a refrigerator, and a 100-watt HF transmitter that pulls about 200 watts, worst-case. On the 10x6 roof, I have 6, (nominally) 100 watt solar panels. Minimum I've *ever* seen out of them at midday, on a cloudy winter day, is about 6 amperes. That's about 90 watts of continuous charge. I never, ever run out of power. Sunny days I have ridiculous amounts of excess power available, and I run an air conditioner or a heater with it.
I have an (unfortunately large, this tech isn't really where it needs to be yet) bank of ultracaps in the trailer. No batteries. I also run LED lighting and a very efficient small refrigerator. Surge power to start the compressor is no problem - the ultracaps can deliver far more than is required. Once running, the fridge's power draw is negligible. The charge and supply electronics are of my own design (ultracap discharge slopes aren't like batteries, so you need something significantly more complex than a wire and a fuse) and no doubt they could be improved, but I have never run out of power and I transmit quite a bit at times.
I've also gone out at night and done many hours of shortwave dx'ing (in the country, away from the town's copious RFI), lights on, opening the frig once about every half hour, and not run out of power.
My home's main roof area is 60x45. That's room for about 360, 100-watt panels, or about 36,000 watts of peak capacity. At 80% derating -- what we can anticipate on a really, really overcast day -- peak output is still about 7,000 watts. Quite usable for lighting and light duty loads. the pacemaker will get charged. :)
My house is very well insulated, too, so that's a bonus, heating- and cooling-wise.
Solar is the way to go. Period. All those rooftops, all those square miles of empty space, just waiting for us to get in gear.
Currently, individual ready-to-mount 100-watt solar panels are about $135 on Ebay, with a 25-year warranty. less in quantity. The math is quite compelling, even with the major shortcomings of battery lifetime. Set up a small system to run something. Learn the basics and work through it so you understand it. Batteries, charge controllers, panels, aiming and auto-aiming and either low voltage client devices like my trailer system, or an inverter and the usual type of 120 vac power clients. If you do, I suspect your enthusiasm level will change dramatically for the positive. There's something ultimately satisfying about spending money on YOUR infrastructure and giving the bird, even if it's a very small bird, to the power company.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Lithium batteries are one way to store energy. They are not the only way at this time, nor is it reasonable to presume that there will not be new ways available in the future. Don't mistake media and/or manufacturer hype for a technology as an indication that it is your only option. That's often not the case, and it certainly isn't with energy storage.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It also has tons of advantages Which is why in any country that isn't taxed the hell out of, it's the preferred power source.
It has one advantage, it's cheap, and it's the preferred power source when coal isn't taxed (or more commonly where it's actually subsidized), because it's cheap. Additionaly, since most of the disadvantages are either invisible (for example, cancers caused by radioactive coal soot) or are somebody else's problem (like coal sludge dumped in someone else's water supply), those costs are not factored into the average user's decisions.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In case you haven't noticed, wind and solar spot rates are a fraction of oil and gas generated electricity and competitive with coal not counting coal's externalities which if fully accounted for would make using coal much more expensive.
To me, what is so interesting about Tesla's home/industrial battery offering (and other storage vendors) is the potential for off grid storage and creating micro-grids of neighbors. The ultimate F-you to the power companies that have refused to modernize their grids, refuse connecting solar panels to the grids and cling to fossil fuels.
Solar is pretty expensive at night.
Wind still has the problem that turning on the lights doesn't make the wind blow.
Please take a look at the electricity costs in nations that "Have modernized their grids" Hell the proposed epa rule changes are going to be raising electric rates in the west and northwest by 40% by god the Republicans should just let those go through.
Well, if people are complaining about electricity being dirty because in many places it's still produced using coal, and you say that extracting petroleum is so much easier than extracting coal, a logical conclusion would be that we should ditch coal and just burn petroleum to make electricity. OK, you didn't actual "say" that, but it would be a logical conclusion. And if it was a wrong conclusion (which I think it is), there must be something wrong with one of the premises.
Anyway, we've got plenty of clean energy in Europe and getting more and more, so at least over here in the developed world the choice for electric cars should be clear.
Okay, thanks for the explanation.
From the title, I thought it's a global study.
It's not like the atmosphere care about the nationality of CO2.
Well, if people are complaining about electricity being dirty because in many places it's still produced using coal, and you say that extracting petroleum is so much easier than extracting coal, a logical conclusion would be that we should ditch coal and just burn petroleum to make electricity. OK, you didn't actual "say" that, but it would be a logical conclusion.
It would only be a logical conclusion for someone that really knows very little about energy production and delivery, and doesn't think hard. There are reasons different sources are chosen for different applications. Cost per BTU extraction is really only a small part. And when you mix prices vs extraction energy in your logic, you confuse yourself, they are two very different things, even if though there is a relationship.
Other things that matter are... value of energy density, storage needs and methods (power plants need a 90 day supply and don't care about volume and large tanks are expensive, cars need very high energy density and small tanks are cheap.... , pollution for given application (ICE can burn petro a lot cleaner and more efficiently than a boiler), Those are just a few off the top of my head, there are more if you think it through. But even with that, you may have not realized that burning oil was the popular form of electrical production in the early days.
And if it was a wrong conclusion (which I think it is), there must be something wrong with one of the premises
No, there was something wrong with your application of the premise, mixing of price and energy extraction, and lack of understanding of the many factor at play. Or it was simply you trying to be clever but not really achieving it.
Anyway, we've got plenty of clean energy in Europe and getting more and more, so at least over here in the developed world the choice for electric cars should be clear.
Don't kid yourself. You have invested a lot in renewables, mostly by Germany, but you still have a lot of coal burning. Your overall CO2 output has not really dropped, at least not in any amount enough to make any difference. If the goal is to have a lot of solar panels and windmills, you are doing well. If the goal is solve the CO2 problem, nobody is really getting anywhere.
you also forgot releasing sulfur, mercury and uranium into the atmosphere....
Seeing as lithium can be produced without any mining what so ever, I'd say your question is entirely nonsensical.
Don't kid yourself - you are looking at the present and are completely unaware of what's being planned for the future. Big shock.
So the study is just a bunch of half-baked bullshit, never once approaching an accurate view of the reality it purports to lay bare. And you love it.
I don't love it, nor hate it. I just analyze it. You are happy to find excuses to dismiss it entirely. How wonderful an approach to learning.
http://images.dailytech.com/ni...
tell it to this guy
Sorry, remind me please, which of these two is a rare earth?
That guy's chipping at evaporites from a concentrating pond.
Sorry remind me how it has to be a rare earth ?
If you want an energy efficient car, consider clean diesel. 55 mpg all day, VW has been doing it for years without the complication of hybrid or electric.
Battery storage in houses, neighborhoods and at Grid substations will store Solar so that it is perfectly usable when the sun isn't shining.
Windmills in a large enough grid will always provide power. And when connected to Battery Storage, will always provide power when needed.
If modernizing the grid requires higher operating costs (or more correctly, capital recovery costs) then that is the cost of the externalities of using coal or other fossil fuels. e.g. it would be the correct cost to pay for electricity. If anything, if we fully account for the externalities of carbon and tax/price accordingly, then switching to renewables would likely save you money.