I'd have to see your actual energy usage on that one. Estimates from the Department of Energy claim an average of 18% of the utility bill, which is 54$ a month for your utility bill. Not that you can't be an exception to the average, but you're claiming close to 3% which would be odd.
My electricity use doesn't matter, since I have gas. (for the purpose of heating water)
My average gas bill all year is about $100 a month, in the winter, closer to $200, in the summer, about $50.
In the summer, I still cook with it, I still run the clothes dryer. So what part of the $50 gas bill in the summer (which includes about $5 to have the connection and $40-45 worth of gas) goes towards heating water?
$10 a month? $20 maybe?
Cheap? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. Combustion wastes a lot.
Truthfully, the average customer only cares about the cost. Or lets just say that the "caring about the cost" greatly outweighs the "caring about the Earth".
Indeed, it'd be better for new home installations and in more southern climates. Where it doesn't snow, and there's lots of people. But it could still be good for you, depending on your solar exposure. Just put a temperature monitor up in your attic, and ask yourself how you feel about all that heat in the summer.
I have no problem with putting it in new home construction, the issue is the cost of retrofitting it to older homes.
Frankly, I'll be the first to admit that modern home construction in the US is nothing to be proud of, they are slapped together by cheap labor who doesn't care. Given the very least possible energy efficiency possible, and call it a day.
Why? Because people want "cheap to buy homes", rather than "cheap to own homes".
Tariffs? The UN climate change summits are a toothless tiger at the moment. but if they got serious...
e.g. You can have your $POLLUTER-built smartphone but the government will add 20% to the purchase price for any goods produced in any country that doesn't sign up to emissions reductions. All that cheap stuff you buy for zero postage on ebay from $POLLUTER will attract a $20 fee to pick it up from the post office. You can enter the EU but since your country of origin is $POLLUTER, you'll be charged a mandatory Ã500 fee at the airport. Anyone caught smuggling cheap goods from $POLLUTER will have their assets seized and jailed for 10 years.
Yes, if you ran the world, you could do that. But you don't get elected to office doing such things.
The US government can't even agree on raising the gas tax, and even I agree it is too low.
The gap between where we are and what it would take to move the needle is bigger than the grand canyon.
Ofc it does. The hight is irrelevant if you have enough water.
You're glossing over the "if you have enough water" part.
It takes a LOT of water at 30ft to make much of a difference, and that amount of water is NOT that common.
In the United States, I can think of maybe half a dozen lakes big enough for 30ft to be enough. At 300ft, the number is in the hundreds, but they are not all next to 300ft tall hills that are big enough to hold the water. Actually, almost none are.
---
What is silly is that you're somehow under the assumption that this shouldn't be that hard and only ignorance is keeping it from happening.
That is just not true. Generally the people in charge of such things aren't complete fools and almost everyone likes making money. If it was so easy, we'd be doing it.
And that doesn't even get into the NIMBY crowd who would fight it tooth and nail.
That is a better way to look at it. Right now, solar accounts for about 1% of the world's total power production. I have no doubt that number will rise, but the question is, will it rise because total production is rising, or because older power plants are being replaced?
What is the total amount of coal burned every year? Will it actually go down any time soon?
Answer: No, it won't. It might dip a bit, mostly replaced by natural gas. Is it going to 50% of current levels? No, it won't.
So what will be accomplished? Nothing much, other than a whole lot of money trading hands and a bunch of people getting rich off tax dollars.
It is not. Compared to our surrounding countries it is pretty on par, and since about 2 years power prices are dropping due to super cheap renewable power.
It isn't cheap, that is the lie. It can be made to appear cheap when enough tax dollars are tossed at it, but the true cost is quite high.
Or you can tax the crap out of coal, oil, and natural gas to make it appear cheap, but that is just raising the price of everything else.
Yes and no. You can trade hight for amount of water and vice versa. It is no difference if I pump 1 gallon of water 100 feet uphill or 100 gallons 1 foot.
Not quite, but yes, they are somewhat interchangeable. The equipment requires more than 1 foot of height to work, but the point is understandable.
That being said, it takes a lot more than one gallon to make it work.
A million gallons of water, lifted 30 feet off the ground, or 300 feet off the ground, won't account for much storage. The cost to build a tank to hold a million gallons of water in the air is not cheap at 30ft, much less at 300ft.
Now try the math at a billion gallons, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
Nuclear is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy.
Solar is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy.:)
Private industry doesn't seem to have found a way of doing it cost effectively.
That has more to do with the laws and regulations they have to jump through, plus the NIMBY crowd.
Why exactly are nuclear reactors in the US banned from producing plutonim? There are whole branches of reactor designs that are illegal due to "oh my god, the nuclear weapons!".
Except, the United States already HAS nuclear weapons, how are we going to give them to ourselves.
The US Navy has a long record of operating nuclear reactors, mostly trouble free. Perhaps we should have them operate nuclear power in the US and let them build better reactors than the Gen 1 designs 40+ years old still being used.
30 feet doesn't offer enough height to do anything.
And the water is already about 30 feet above the lower land area, that is why the lakes were built there. The 4 lakes were built in the only place around that allowed the south end to be dammed and the water to fill in.
I suspect you don't quite understand the math behind raising a billion gallons of water a hundred feet or more into the air.
In germany they will. So in Denmark, Portugal probably Spain, Italy and even Greece, too.
Germany is going to bankrupt itself trying... The cost of power there is already stupid high and it will only go higher.
BTW, how much natural gas does Germany import from Russia? Isn't that part of the geo-political problem there?
Most of the "emerging" nations are installing solar right now instead of new coal/nuclear or other plants.
There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.
What percentage of the world's power comes from solar? What was the percentage last year? What will it be next year?
What would it cost to replace existing power with solar and wind?
Run the numbers and you'll find it is a fantasy.
Perhaps you might check the news about the "storage problem" of "nuclear waste".
It isn't a problem, except for the NIMBY crowd and for the laws against reprocessing the waste into plutonium.
And? What would be the problem with that? Just because "some one else" is polluting and destroying the planet you like to join him to pollute more and destroy faster?
Consider the person who is moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic while it is sinking, thinking it will make a difference.
If climate change is indeed a man-made problem, then the efforts that are being made now won't be enough to change the outcome.
That does not make any sense. Is China now burning more than the USA or is it catching up to burn "just as much" in the next 5 years?
The US burns less than 1 billion tons of coal, China burns 4 billion tons of it.
"And according to U.S. government projections, China will add yet another U.S. worth of coal plants over the next 10 years, or the equivalent of a new 600-megawatt plant every 10 days for 10 years."
Having a battery that has a rapid charging connection to the car (like the stand-alone chargers) fixes that problem - park for half an hour, and you're ready to go with almost a full charge.
While you're right, you miss the point.
You're asking Joe and Jane Consumer to go from a car that "recharges" in 5 min to one that, using a special supercharger, takes half an hour.
It also costs more and comes with the fun of range anxiety.
"Saving the planet" sounds nice and in polls, everyone cares about it, but when it comes down to the family car, you're going to find a level of resistance far beyond your imagination.
I asked my wife what she thought about this the other day, and her reply was, "I'll drive an EV when I don't have to worry about range and can recharge in 5 min anywhere".
She'll tell you, the vast majority of mothers driving their kids around aren't interested in even the CHANCE of being stuck on the side of the road.
When it comes down to personal safety and the safety of her kids vs. "saving the planet", rest assured that the planet comes in a VERY DISTANT second...
If Tesla ever does figure out a model for their battery swapping tech that makes sense, then long journeys in a battery powered vehicle become no big deal at all. Even without it, it's approaching only edge cases that make battery powered travel impractical.
It is ALREADY edge cases that make battery powered travel impractical.
That is the point that so many "smart people" miss.
Just because EVs actually would work today for 95% of the use cases for cars, doesn't mean people want them.
It is that last 5% that will be such a huge problem. People could make it work with 2 cars, one gas and one EV, but frankly people don't want to have to "make it work".
It costs more and adds another thing to think about. You aren't improving people's lives which is why plug in EVs are a rounding error in vehicle sales.
If they actually cost less than gas cars, then you might have an argument. Otherwise, what purpose do they serve?
Oh yes, I know, "save the planet". You know what? Joe and Jane Consumer, when at the car dealership, have that as item number 57 on their "give a crap" list. The cost of the car, the features on it, etc. matter far more. Everyone says they care about the environment, until it comes to their pocketbook.
And that is the reality and no amount of technical solutions will change it.
Of course, all that misses the point. China is aiming to cap their coal production by 2020. They might hit it, they might even be early, but that is a far cry from doing much to reduce it.
Pumping water into a high reservoir, is the usual storage, a large lake only needs a small generator pumping station so its far more efficient.
You glossed over part of that "high reservoir".
Locations with plenty of water and a large enough elevation change to matter are actually rare. They exist, and many of them are already being used.
If you have a wind turbine at home, it would be better pumping water up into a loft tank, rather than directly generating electricity. You can then generate electricity as you need it by dropping water from the high tank to a low tank as you need it. Generating the electricity then.
Yes you can, and those systems exist today. You *MIGHT* be able to run a a radio or laptop computer on it, for 10-15 min.
I suspect you don't quite understand how much power that wold make, or rather would not make.
there are no major technical hurdles to using pumped water storage, just a relatively small investment and some relatively major political/organisational issues. Just another case of why we can't have nice things.
Hmm... No major technical hurdles? A small investment?
I live in Dallas, TX, the area has about 7 million people living here. The elevation doesn't change by more than about 100 feet across hundreds of miles. The only water sources of any size are 4 large man made lakes used for drinking water.
How exactly would you use pumped storage when a 20 or 30 mile drive doesn't change the elevation by more than about 30 feet?
The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that. Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.
Our elected leaders are not as stupid as you think they are.
They fully understand two things:
1. People talk about the environment plenty, but the minute you tell them, "ok, your power bills are going to double because of the environment", suddenly people care a whole lot less.
2. It wouldn't matter if we doubled the price of power via a carbon tax in the US, because of China. And US and EU politicians have no power to make China do anything and if China doesn't change, then this is all just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You think you're being productive, but you're not.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have to see your actual energy usage on that one. Estimates from the Department of Energy claim an average of 18% of the utility bill, which is 54$ a month for your utility bill. Not that you can't be an exception to the average, but you're claiming close to 3% which would be odd.
My electricity use doesn't matter, since I have gas. (for the purpose of heating water)
My average gas bill all year is about $100 a month, in the winter, closer to $200, in the summer, about $50.
In the summer, I still cook with it, I still run the clothes dryer. So what part of the $50 gas bill in the summer (which includes about $5 to have the connection and $40-45 worth of gas) goes towards heating water?
$10 a month? $20 maybe?
Cheap? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. Combustion wastes a lot.
Truthfully, the average customer only cares about the cost. Or lets just say that the "caring about the cost" greatly outweighs the "caring about the Earth".
Indeed, it'd be better for new home installations and in more southern climates. Where it doesn't snow, and there's lots of people. But it could still be good for you, depending on your solar exposure. Just put a temperature monitor up in your attic, and ask yourself how you feel about all that heat in the summer.
I have no problem with putting it in new home construction, the issue is the cost of retrofitting it to older homes.
Frankly, I'll be the first to admit that modern home construction in the US is nothing to be proud of, they are slapped together by cheap labor who doesn't care. Given the very least possible energy efficiency possible, and call it a day.
Why? Because people want "cheap to buy homes", rather than "cheap to own homes".
Tariffs? The UN climate change summits are a toothless tiger at the moment. but if they got serious...
e.g. You can have your $POLLUTER-built smartphone but the government will add 20% to the purchase price for any goods produced in any country that doesn't sign up to emissions reductions. All that cheap stuff you buy for zero postage on ebay from $POLLUTER will attract a $20 fee to pick it up from the post office. You can enter the EU but since your country of origin is $POLLUTER, you'll be charged a mandatory Ã500 fee at the airport. Anyone caught smuggling cheap goods from $POLLUTER will have their assets seized and jailed for 10 years.
Yes, if you ran the world, you could do that. But you don't get elected to office doing such things.
The US government can't even agree on raising the gas tax, and even I agree it is too low.
The gap between where we are and what it would take to move the needle is bigger than the grand canyon.
Yep, people who live next to a mountain don't know what "flat" really is.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
That is FLAT, and it goes on for a LONG way...
Ofc it does. The hight is irrelevant if you have enough water.
You're glossing over the "if you have enough water" part.
It takes a LOT of water at 30ft to make much of a difference, and that amount of water is NOT that common.
In the United States, I can think of maybe half a dozen lakes big enough for 30ft to be enough. At 300ft, the number is in the hundreds, but they are not all next to 300ft tall hills that are big enough to hold the water. Actually, almost none are.
---
What is silly is that you're somehow under the assumption that this shouldn't be that hard and only ignorance is keeping it from happening.
That is just not true. Generally the people in charge of such things aren't complete fools and almost everyone likes making money. If it was so easy, we'd be doing it.
And that doesn't even get into the NIMBY crowd who would fight it tooth and nail.
[About new solar power] There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
Great, more government money paying for systems that otherwise wouldn't make sense.
If you read it closer, while the numbers sound impressive, the systems are very small and the total amount of power produced is minor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
That is a better way to look at it. Right now, solar accounts for about 1% of the world's total power production. I have no doubt that number will rise, but the question is, will it rise because total production is rising, or because older power plants are being replaced?
What is the total amount of coal burned every year? Will it actually go down any time soon?
Answer: No, it won't. It might dip a bit, mostly replaced by natural gas. Is it going to 50% of current levels? No, it won't.
So what will be accomplished? Nothing much, other than a whole lot of money trading hands and a bunch of people getting rich off tax dollars.
It is not. Compared to our surrounding countries it is pretty on par, and since about 2 years power prices are dropping due to super cheap renewable power.
It isn't cheap, that is the lie. It can be made to appear cheap when enough tax dollars are tossed at it, but the true cost is quite high.
Or you can tax the crap out of coal, oil, and natural gas to make it appear cheap, but that is just raising the price of everything else.
Yes and no. You can trade hight for amount of water and vice versa. It is no difference if I pump 1 gallon of water 100 feet uphill or 100 gallons 1 foot.
Not quite, but yes, they are somewhat interchangeable. The equipment requires more than 1 foot of height to work, but the point is understandable.
That being said, it takes a lot more than one gallon to make it work.
A million gallons of water, lifted 30 feet off the ground, or 300 feet off the ground, won't account for much storage. The cost to build a tank to hold a million gallons of water in the air is not cheap at 30ft, much less at 300ft.
Now try the math at a billion gallons, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
Not really... it was suggested (I don't recall by who) that replacing hot water tanks with solar water heaters would save a lot of money...
It might, if the water was heated by electricity. Since it isn't in many cases, that doesn't apply.
Replacing gas hot water heaters with solar, when your gas is as cheap as ours is, makes no sense.
Energy bills don't have to double, and the US and EU emit more CO2 per year than China does, for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
So sure of that, are you?
China emits about 25% of all the CO2 in the world. The United States emits 16%.
China''s emissions are rising, the US and Europe have done a pretty good job of tapering off.
But that misses the point, it isn't REDUCING THE INCREASE that needs to happen, it is CUTTING THE TOTAL.
And that isn't going to happen any time soon.
It doesn't matter what the US or Europe does,
and therefore you can do whatever you want?
You sound like a little kid./quote
No, actually I'm the grownup in the room.
It is the kid who has the ideal worldview who thinks that if we all just hold hands, it'll all work out.
What I said is the truth, you just don't want to hear it.
Nuclear is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy.
Solar is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy. :)
Private industry doesn't seem to have found a way of doing it cost effectively.
That has more to do with the laws and regulations they have to jump through, plus the NIMBY crowd.
Why exactly are nuclear reactors in the US banned from producing plutonim? There are whole branches of reactor designs that are illegal due to "oh my god, the nuclear weapons!".
Except, the United States already HAS nuclear weapons, how are we going to give them to ourselves.
The US Navy has a long record of operating nuclear reactors, mostly trouble free. Perhaps we should have them operate nuclear power in the US and let them build better reactors than the Gen 1 designs 40+ years old still being used.
No, they are not...
In the summer my gas bill is under $50, sometimes in the $30ish range.
That has to cover cooking and drying clothes as well as heating water.
If you are spending $10 a month to boil a kettle, you must be paying a stupid amount of money for power, and using electricity to do it.
30 feet doesn't offer enough height to do anything.
And the water is already about 30 feet above the lower land area, that is why the lakes were built there. The 4 lakes were built in the only place around that allowed the south end to be dammed and the water to fill in.
I suspect you don't quite understand the math behind raising a billion gallons of water a hundred feet or more into the air.
In germany they will. So in Denmark, Portugal probably Spain, Italy and even Greece, too.
Germany is going to bankrupt itself trying... The cost of power there is already stupid high and it will only go higher.
BTW, how much natural gas does Germany import from Russia? Isn't that part of the geo-political problem there?
Most of the "emerging" nations are installing solar right now instead of new coal/nuclear or other plants.
There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.
What percentage of the world's power comes from solar? What was the percentage last year? What will it be next year?
What would it cost to replace existing power with solar and wind?
Run the numbers and you'll find it is a fantasy.
Perhaps you might check the news about the "storage problem" of "nuclear waste".
It isn't a problem, except for the NIMBY crowd and for the laws against reprocessing the waste into plutonium.
And? What would be the problem with that? Just because "some one else" is polluting and destroying the planet you like to join him to pollute more and destroy faster?
Consider the person who is moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic while it is sinking, thinking it will make a difference.
If climate change is indeed a man-made problem, then the efforts that are being made now won't be enough to change the outcome.
That does not make any sense. Is China now burning more than the USA or is it catching up to burn "just as much" in the next 5 years?
http://www.climatecentral.org/...
The US burns less than 1 billion tons of coal, China burns 4 billion tons of it.
"And according to U.S. government projections, China will add yet another U.S. worth of coal plants over the next 10 years, or the equivalent of a new 600-megawatt plant every 10 days for 10 years."
Your assumption you only use $10 per month to heat water is completely silly.
If you really stretched it, it might be $20 a month.
Natural gas is so cheap in Texas they are almost giving it away.
My average gas bill is under $100 a month. I use gas for cooking, cleaning (laundry), heating the house, the fireplace, heating water, etc.
It gets quite cold here in the winter, my bill in the winter is often $200 a month, the bill in the summer is perhaps $30 or so.
Considering that I still cook and dry the clothes in the summer, heating the water isn't a major user of gas.
Having a battery that has a rapid charging connection to the car (like the stand-alone chargers) fixes that problem - park for half an hour, and you're ready to go with almost a full charge.
While you're right, you miss the point.
You're asking Joe and Jane Consumer to go from a car that "recharges" in 5 min to one that, using a special supercharger, takes half an hour.
It also costs more and comes with the fun of range anxiety.
"Saving the planet" sounds nice and in polls, everyone cares about it, but when it comes down to the family car, you're going to find a level of resistance far beyond your imagination.
I asked my wife what she thought about this the other day, and her reply was, "I'll drive an EV when I don't have to worry about range and can recharge in 5 min anywhere".
She'll tell you, the vast majority of mothers driving their kids around aren't interested in even the CHANCE of being stuck on the side of the road.
When it comes down to personal safety and the safety of her kids vs. "saving the planet", rest assured that the planet comes in a VERY DISTANT second...
I suspect you overestimate how many such locations exist.
You need a lot more than a 100ft elevation change and a lot more than a small lake, to produce a decent amount of power.
It takes a LOT of water and a LOT of height to make a LOT of power.
If Tesla ever does figure out a model for their battery swapping tech that makes sense, then long journeys in a battery powered vehicle become no big deal at all. Even without it, it's approaching only edge cases that make battery powered travel impractical.
It is ALREADY edge cases that make battery powered travel impractical.
That is the point that so many "smart people" miss.
Just because EVs actually would work today for 95% of the use cases for cars, doesn't mean people want them.
It is that last 5% that will be such a huge problem. People could make it work with 2 cars, one gas and one EV, but frankly people don't want to have to "make it work".
It costs more and adds another thing to think about. You aren't improving people's lives which is why plug in EVs are a rounding error in vehicle sales.
If they actually cost less than gas cars, then you might have an argument. Otherwise, what purpose do they serve?
Oh yes, I know, "save the planet". You know what? Joe and Jane Consumer, when at the car dealership, have that as item number 57 on their "give a crap" list. The cost of the car, the features on it, etc. matter far more. Everyone says they care about the environment, until it comes to their pocketbook.
And that is the reality and no amount of technical solutions will change it.
they are closing down old, inefficient coal burners and investing heavily in wind and solar.
And building new coal plants...
http://www.climatecentral.org/...
http://energydesk.greenpeace.o...
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
It dipped 2.9%, I wouldn't say that is "less coal for the past few years.
We shall see if that is a trend (a single datapoint doesn't made one) or a blip.
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Of course, all that misses the point. China is aiming to cap their coal production by 2020. They might hit it, they might even be early, but that is a far cry from doing much to reduce it.
I only use about 10 kwh a day.
Then you are neither the problem nor the solution.
I use, on average, about 93 kWh per day. Even then my electric bill averages about $300 a month or $3,600 a year.
To pay for a $13,000 battery and a $13,000 solar panel system ($26K), I'd have to live here for... the rest of my life, to pay it back...
Really, the life of the system is lower than the payback period... It makes no sense.
I currently pay about $.22 a kwh plus about $1 a day just to have the grid there.
You pay twice as much per kWh as I do (11 cents) and you pay a LOT more for the monthly connection (I pay about $5 a month for it).
So if the numbers don't really make sense for you, imagine how stupid they are for me?
Like I said, this simply makes no financial sense. Unless they can get the cost way down. If they can, we can revisit the numbers.
Best know energy storage right now is to pump water up dams when we have too much energy.
Sure, if you happen to have a large hill near by and a large source of water.
That actually doesn't exist in very many places.
Pumping water into a high reservoir, is the usual storage, a large lake only needs a small generator pumping station so its far more efficient.
You glossed over part of that "high reservoir".
Locations with plenty of water and a large enough elevation change to matter are actually rare. They exist, and many of them are already being used.
If you have a wind turbine at home, it would be better pumping water up into a loft tank, rather than directly generating electricity. You can then generate electricity as you need it by dropping water from the high tank to a low tank as you need it. Generating the electricity then.
Yes you can, and those systems exist today. You *MIGHT* be able to run a a radio or laptop computer on it, for 10-15 min.
I suspect you don't quite understand how much power that wold make, or rather would not make.
there are no major technical hurdles to using pumped water storage, just a relatively small investment and some relatively major political/organisational issues. Just another case of why we can't have nice things.
Hmm... No major technical hurdles? A small investment?
I live in Dallas, TX, the area has about 7 million people living here. The elevation doesn't change by more than about 100 feet across hundreds of miles. The only water sources of any size are 4 large man made lakes used for drinking water.
How exactly would you use pumped storage when a 20 or 30 mile drive doesn't change the elevation by more than about 30 feet?
The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that.
Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.
Our elected leaders are not as stupid as you think they are.
They fully understand two things:
1. People talk about the environment plenty, but the minute you tell them, "ok, your power bills are going to double because of the environment", suddenly people care a whole lot less.
2. It wouldn't matter if we doubled the price of power via a carbon tax in the US, because of China. And US and EU politicians have no power to make China do anything and if China doesn't change, then this is all just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You think you're being productive, but you're not.