Hey, patent filing costs money. They have to be vague until the vulture capitalist gets tricked into backing the "research" project which is really a veiled attempt at keeping a materials engineering professor supplied in paychecks and lab equipment and his PhD students supplied with dissertation subjects.
If they actually disclosed anything actually informative, somebody could possibly figure out the secret and beat them to the patent filing, capture the investment dollars or prove that their idea is junk and not worth funding as a research project..
My guess is they know it doesn't work or that the commercializing of the product would be totally impossible to make work and/or mass produce. They are just looking for funding sources so they can keep food on the table while cranking out graduate students...This is Harvard we are discussing.
Storage doesn't solve the problem because it's too inefficient
As I pointed out: storage is efficient to roughly 90%... your other claims regarding it are wrong.
A simple coal plant has an efficiency of 42%, same as a nuclear plant.
A high tech gas plant is approaching 60% by combining a gas turbine with a traditional steam boiler/turbine.
So: storage is far far far more efficient than a power plant.
Shesh, yet again another crazy comparison....
You are basically comparing apples to rocks with your efficiency arguments. How on earth does a Coal Plant compare to some kind of energy storage plant?
Why don't you compare the efficiency of my lawn mower to the capacity of my lungs to oxygenate my blood? Or the efficiency of a Saturn V in carrying cargo to your electric train?
My point, which you totally miss, it that even at 90% efficiency (which I don't think is possible and you provide no evidence that it is) storage doesn't really help enough to make renewables our ONLY source of power. You cannot store enough power, renewables can have ZERO output for days... Plus, if you did have enough storage to cover you for days, you will have to build out enough additional capacity to charge that storage, PLUS carry any load that happens to be drawn. I can see an argument for storage capacity in excess of 2 peak days supply, with generating capacity nearly 150% of the average (which will get you a 4 day recharge cycle to get a 2 day reserve) or even 200% of the average (for a 2 day charge cycle for a 2 day reserve).
And your "buy power on the spot market when you run short" comment is laughable in this context. Where do you think the power you buy comes from?
I'll bet you that there are a pile of fossil fueled plants that come on line to sell some expensive power at peak prices so they can make some big Euros.
Which proves my point.... Fossil fuels cannot be done away with anytime soon and we are foolish to think that building renewable sources will allow that. It cannot. It can allow us to not use Fossil fuels as much, but you still need the capacity as a backup, or some calm cloudy day will bring your electric grid down and you will suffer an economic disaster..
It's likely going to be fruitless but I'll try one more time... Just by stating the obvious... The laws of thermodynamics apply to ALL closed systems:
First law: Energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system. (Conservation of energy)
Second law: Entropy always is increasing anytime energy moves or is transformed from one form to another. (It is impossible to reverse things and return to the previous state)
Third law: A system at absolute zero, has no entropy change left. (Everything runs down eventually)
So, where we usually learn thermodynamics in terms of temperatures, volume, and pressure the rules apply equally to energy in all it's forms. You cannot escape it, entropy is always going up, no matter what kind of energy conversion is taking place. Electrical power to magnetic Flux, Chemical storage to electrical power, bouncing a rubber ball, you name it, any time you convert energy from one form to another, entropy is increasing and the universe is running down hill towards an eventual death where there is no more entropy to gain.
The laws of thermodynamics apply to all systems, not just heat engines.... As confused and uninformed as you may be...
Each nation has the right to filter what it chooses as it crosses it's borders... This means the 1st amendment only applies to USA sovereign territory. Consider China's strict filters as an example of this run amuck, but it's their country. However, I don't think that's an issue here.
Cogent has the right (with in the net neutrality regulations of course) to carry data for you or not. So if you want to get data from some IP they refuse to route, it might be time to chose another route if you can.... Unless they are somehow a common carrier, in which case they cannot pick and choose what they carry, but I don't think they are.
I don't believe data carriers have "Common Carrier" status like the phone company.
And before you figure that the data carrying phone company does...I don't think they have that legal designation for the data traffic they carry, only the voice stuff.
What does this mean, well if you are not a common carrier, you have legal reasonability for what you are carrying. If you transport something illegal or infringing and you are NOT a common carrier, you can be held liable for it. If you are a common carrier, the shipper/receiver gets held responsible, not you.
I could be wrong... Cogent might be a common carrier, but I don't think they are.
Net neutrality? Wasn't that supposed to address this kind of thing? (I'm kidding..)
Oh that's right, ISP's and internet services are not generally seen as "common carriers" so maybe somebody wised up and started hinting at taking legal action for those folks carrying obviously (OK, Quasi) legal traffic?
I've always wondered why countries didn't start enforcement of IP law where the internet crossed international borders myself. Why a copyright owner couldn't get access to stuff they owned rights to blocked at the border by court order or something. I know it wouldn't really fix the problem, but it sure would make things like the "Kodi Box selling from the BBC" story from a few days ago easier for the UK government to address. Just block those sites that are providing the content illegally at the border, one IP/Port at a time, until it's too hard to make a buck breaking the law anymore...
Boxcars are not "intermodal" containers and for the reasons you specify are not used all that much anymore. Who's got time for all that trouble when you have trucks.
I'll bet you do receive intermodal containers, disguised as trucks... Especially if you import or export stuff.
Who cares about the fact that emergency power needs Diesel?
It is supposed to never be used...
And if you are on a ventilator, that's the risk you are having to assume. Sure hopes that thing works for you...
I see you didn't address my basic AC power systems theory question, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to argue how a power grid works with you. You need a bit more education on that subject and I don't have the time to do it on \.
Hear what I'm saying.. Renewables are not consistent power sources, they vary from one day to the next, one hour to the next and are REALLY hard to schedule. The general rule for scheduling wind power is to only schedule 20% of what's forecasted in a place where the wind is pretty consistent (Tehachapi CA) when looking 24 hours into the future. That means that you need to schedule 80% of you expected capacity from some other source. Solar is worse than this in most areas.
Storage doesn't solve the problem because it's too inefficient so you need to build out you renewable sources way beyond your average load to charge it, you don't get all your energy back that you put in (i.e. a lot is wasted) and this just pushes the price of renewables higher and higher.
My point here is that renewables are fine, and we should use them where they make sense, but they simply CANNOT replace the capacity we now have. We are dependent on fossil fueled power generation now and will remain so for decades. We CAN reduce the use of fossil fuels with renewables, when the sun shines and the wind blows, but we CANNOT just stop building and using fossil fueled plants because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun isn't always beating down on that solar collector. Your storage idea doesn't really solve the problem, though it does help with smoothing out peak demands. There is no way we can store enough energy, no technology that makes it efficient enough, to allow us to ditch the fossil fueled plants...
Personally, the ONLY technology that seems like it could, maybe, fix this problem is fusion power. However, the issue with this is we currently don't have a working commercial fusion design built, much less operating. All we really have is theory and a bunch of engineering drawings and expensive testing ahead. Truly we are decades away from working fusion power unless there is some technological break through or some new theoretical avenue discovered that makes the engineering problems easier.
90% is not possible without violating some basic rules of thermodynamics or physics..
You are an idiot.
Pumping up water: has nothing to do with thermodynamics
Let's just stop there, because in one breath you call me an idiot, then in the next you make it clear that there IS an idiot in this exchange and it's not me. Surely the first two laws of thermodynamics apply here? Yes they do, they ALWAYS apply to physical systems...
Wisely I will refrain from debating you as you don't have even a cursory understanding of what you are making such confident assertions about.
You know what would have been courage? Giving the iphone 7 wireless charging. Then they could say, no more ports. I think that would have been way more receptive to the audience. The downside would be charging would be a whole lot more complicated.
Charging would be easier, however, CHARGERS would be a lot more expensive. Remember, this is APPLE we are talking about, where the accessories cost as much as the device.
Wireless charging involves laying your phone on the surface of the charger or dropping it into the socket like the Sonicar electric toothbrushes do. Imagine the cost of a car charger now...
They don't call those metal boxes "intermodal" containers for nothing...
Actually, now days those intermodal containers are being moved by boat, train AND truck all the time. I live 5 miles away from a rail intermodal depot and they put those containers onto trailers and deliver to that last mile regularly from there.
Take it from me.... I know AC power distribution systems fairly well, although I sometimes get confused about where to use the square root of 3 and square root of 2... (If you know so much about this, explain what I just said, but I seriously doubt you can.)
Yes hospitals have "backup generators" that run on? Ding! Ding! Fossil fuels, usually diesel. By the way, where diesel motors can be started in a few minuets when necessary, they are an awfully inefficient and dirty way to generate power. But think for a moment what I'm saying... We still need fossil fueled generation capacity.... See, you agreed with me.. Also think about a backup generator and how reliable it is compared to the electric grid... Where I welcome the backup plan for that ventilator, it's getting pretty risky when there is a blackout...
Also, you are wrong in how you look at the grid. You simply must have some kind of margin in your generation capacity on the grid for safety and stability. Sure, transmission problems can trigger blackouts by causing instabilities as paths go in or out of service, but the actual blackout is caused when an isolated section of the grid has an unbalance between supply and demand. Once generation capacity starts tripping offline because they are being called on to deliver too much power, blackouts happen. It's not the transmission line really, it's the lack of necessary supply on the isolated grid. But I'm sure the distinction is lost on you. Now put a pile of solar panels on the grid and imagine what happens when a cloud casts a shadow over them... Instant drop in supply... Which you need to replace from someplace or the grid (or if possible just a chunk of it) goes down. You need a safety margin of extra generation capacity to cover contingencies like the wind stops blowing, a cloud comes by or some fossil fueled plant trips off line unexpectedly. (Or as in your example, some transmission line failure isolates your part of the grid, in which case you need the power from some local source.. )
Generation capacity plays a fundamental role in keeping the grid stable.... Just like the square root of 2 and 3 figures are used all the time when engineering power grids...
Batteries are NOT 99% efficient, no way, no how... Not even close... The best chemistry you can get is about 90%, meaning for every 100 Watt Hours you put in, you get 90 out (best case). That's JUST the battery. Modern Switching power supplies can approach 95% in the AC-DC conversion, but DC to AC is a lot less efficient, PLUS the losses though the system are cumulative... You lose 5% here, 10% there and 20% there and it's looking pretty bad for efficiency, not quite 35% of total loss, but not that far away... (100 (AC-DC @ 95%) 95 (Charge discharge @ 90%) 85.5 (DC -> AC @ 80%) = 68.4 out (31.6% loss)
Pumped storage is two things.. You pump water up hill to store energy, then let it flow downhill to reclaim that energy. 90% is not possible without violating some basic rules of thermodynamics or physics.. (you pick). Just the IR losses alone in the pumps and generators are going to eat your lunch and we haven't even considered the losses that all this moving water has as it flows though pipes..
However, you do correctly point out that pumped storage is actually the most efficient way we have of storing electrical power. The PROBLEM with this storage method is finding places where you can actually build the necessary impound (say the top of a mountain) and the environmental disruption it causes when you build this elevated water storage pool and finding a location where enough water exists or can be collected to pump up hill. This is an environmental nightmare for multiple reasons..
Finally, the demand curve doesn't stop when the sun doesn't shine, but solar collection DOES. Same with wind only with more variation in forecasted supply verses actual. Both are inconsistent and don't match demand in any meaningful way, so you either need LOTS of storage or some kind of alternate supply or a mixture of both. But that's my real point. Renewables are fine, but they are NOT a replacement for fossil fuels. Nuclear isn't either. Hopefully fusion will eventually be figured out and end the problem, but nobody knows if or when that will ever be. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, fossil fuels are all we have that actually does the job reliably enough. We can supplement fossil fuels with renewables, but we cannot replace them.
However, I do think the interstate system was intended to carry more than just goods on trucks over long distances if that's what you are saying. Enabling tourism, getting to grandma's house faster and commuting to/from work where considerations as it is currently built.
Actually rail is more efficient per ton pre mile that any form of ground transportation going. It's not because it moves a lot of stuff, but that the steel on steel rolling resistance is almost nothing compared to a truck with rubber on asphalt. This is why you CAN tow a mile long train with couple of locomotives....
Rail's problem is the infrastructure costs are really high. Keeping miles and miles of rails in useable condition is hard and labor intensive. Maintaining rolling stock costs money... Getting that ton of freight from point a to b doesn't cost that much in fuel, but in labor, logistics and infrastructure suck up a lot of cost.
I don't think that many countries in Europe have an AC-induced afternoon peak electricity usage. A few blackouts would be no big deal to me, I would just go outside and do something else, get a bit of fresh air or something. Chop a few logs maybe
Still, blackouts are serious problems. Maybe not to you directly, sitting at home, but to most of the critical infrastructure you depend on for your daily needs like food, water, transportation and medical services. If you where in the hospital in the ICU on a ventilator, a power outage has a whole lot bigger impact on your immediate survival. If the blackout cause the freezer at that food supplier to thaw, you are doing to have issues getting those frozen pizzas for next weeks dinners, or if you can, they will be more expensive. Then there are all the "behind the scenes" issue of domestic water supplies, sewage treatment, emergency services or even getting off that elevator...
You really need a stable electrical system in today's technical age. There is not really any question about that. Look at countries where the electrical system isn't stable, they usually suffer because it's really hard to do any kind of manufacturing if you don't have stable power, most of modern technology assumes power is available all the time.
Now if you want to go back to 1850, knock yourself out, join the Amish or something, they don't directly depend on electricity (usually anyway). Personally, I prefer the cushy life, clean water, food, lights and HVAC.
Sure, you can void the conversion losses by using DC from Photovoltaic solar panels to charge those batteries, but actually that's not going to add a whole lot of efficiency to the system. BY FAR the most inefficient part of a battery storage system is the chemical reaction (charging and discharging) in the battery, followed by IR losses (because battery electrodes are not usually good conductors) and THEN conversion losses, of which AC -> DC is usually the most efficient. You can even avoid the AC-DC-AC conversion losses by USING DC directly in a lot of your devices, but DC does NOT go though transmission systems very well, just ask Edison about how well Westinghouse cleaned his clock on that question. Full DC systems are going to be pretty distance limited..
So most of the inefficiencies of storage you cannot really bypass in an industrial scale power generation system, and even on a individual residence scale you are not going to do very well efficiency wise, leading to more power consumption, more capacity necessary and, if you are honest, more reliance on fossil fueled plants to carry the load when renewables are not available..
Because all renewable power generation goes offline at the same time,
Different forms of renewable power generation go offline at different times, and geographically separated sources don't go offline in synch. One thing you can count on is that solar power generation stops at night, but this is a known time dependence, and hence can be accounted for in scheduling; not an intermittancy, which is the hardest interruption to handle.
Actually, peak load and solar don't happen to match up well, peak load is usually in the late afternoon (summer AC). Wind is not much better and a whole lot less reliable. Both are extremely hard to schedule with sufficient margin to keep a stable power grid. This means you have to overbuild by a lot of capacity (more than double) to provide the reliable energy source necessary to keep the electric grid up.... OR you have to keep a pile of fossil fueled capacity around to pick up the slack when the renewables are not able to provide what is needed.
and there's no way to store electricity.
It's also not true that there's no way to store electricity. You should know better than that, you've never heard of batteries? What you probably mean to say is that electrical storage is too expensive to be economically viable. That statement, however, is disputable. Definitely in places where hydropower is stored in reservoirs this is untrue, and new battery, fuel cell, compressed-air, and even flywheel technologies are coming online with decreases in price.
Again, you are sort of right, but practically wrong. Energy storage is indeed expensive if for no other reason than conversion losses. A really good chemical battery is going to chew up about 30% of the input AC power when you do all the conversions and account for all the losses (AC -> DC, DC into chemicals to charge the battery.. Chemicals -> DC, DC to AC to discharge it). The equipment just doesn't scale well either and over the total cost of such systems + the loss make them *really* expensive.
Then there is the question of "how big" you need to make the storage capacity. I dare say that it's got to be a LOT bigger than you think it should be t account for the worst case. This is driven by or dependence on the electric grid and it's reliability. We simply cannot easily absorb outages and not realize that they will come with significant financial costs and even loss of life. We have nearly zero tolerance for blackouts, which drives the needed capacity in any storage system higher and higher. Oh, and don't forget the extra capacity on the generation side to recharge your storage PLUS keep the grid online...
The primary point I'm making here is that storage is NOT a viable option. Renewables as they exist today, do not have enough reliability to be anything more than alternatives and we will need to keep backup fossil fueled alternative sources ready for when the wind stops and it's raining for days longer than the batteries can cover....
But like Napster and the like, they will eventually beat down the problem, either by intimidation, lobbying for new laws so they can find users, and a whole host of jack booted methods that will scoop up a few folks who didn't actually break the law...
But by then, the whole problem will become a non-issue because advancing technology will make doing such stuff unnecessary and undesirable...By then the MPPA or whomever is pushing for this will make loud crying sounds about how their clients are losing money because this activity, but because the market has moved on to newer things, nobody will really care anymore.
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Hey, patent filing costs money. They have to be vague until the vulture capitalist gets tricked into backing the "research" project which is really a veiled attempt at keeping a materials engineering professor supplied in paychecks and lab equipment and his PhD students supplied with dissertation subjects.
If they actually disclosed anything actually informative, somebody could possibly figure out the secret and beat them to the patent filing, capture the investment dollars or prove that their idea is junk and not worth funding as a research project..
My guess is they know it doesn't work or that the commercializing of the product would be totally impossible to make work and/or mass produce. They are just looking for funding sources so they can keep food on the table while cranking out graduate students...This is Harvard we are discussing.
Great news but I live in Canada. Any battery tech needs to be testing at -30 Celsius before I care.
And I live in Texas where we need to survive at nearly 90 Celsius when leaving a phone in your car in August...
Between you and I, That's quite the temperature range...
Storage doesn't solve the problem because it's too inefficient As I pointed out: storage is efficient to roughly 90% ... your other claims regarding it are wrong.
A simple coal plant has an efficiency of 42%, same as a nuclear plant.
A high tech gas plant is approaching 60% by combining a gas turbine with a traditional steam boiler/turbine.
So: storage is far far far more efficient than a power plant.
Shesh, yet again another crazy comparison....
You are basically comparing apples to rocks with your efficiency arguments. How on earth does a Coal Plant compare to some kind of energy storage plant?
Why don't you compare the efficiency of my lawn mower to the capacity of my lungs to oxygenate my blood? Or the efficiency of a Saturn V in carrying cargo to your electric train?
My point, which you totally miss, it that even at 90% efficiency (which I don't think is possible and you provide no evidence that it is) storage doesn't really help enough to make renewables our ONLY source of power. You cannot store enough power, renewables can have ZERO output for days... Plus, if you did have enough storage to cover you for days, you will have to build out enough additional capacity to charge that storage, PLUS carry any load that happens to be drawn. I can see an argument for storage capacity in excess of 2 peak days supply, with generating capacity nearly 150% of the average (which will get you a 4 day recharge cycle to get a 2 day reserve) or even 200% of the average (for a 2 day charge cycle for a 2 day reserve).
And your "buy power on the spot market when you run short" comment is laughable in this context. Where do you think the power you buy comes from?
I'll bet you that there are a pile of fossil fueled plants that come on line to sell some expensive power at peak prices so they can make some big Euros.
Which proves my point.... Fossil fuels cannot be done away with anytime soon and we are foolish to think that building renewable sources will allow that. It cannot. It can allow us to not use Fossil fuels as much, but you still need the capacity as a backup, or some calm cloudy day will bring your electric grid down and you will suffer an economic disaster..
It's likely going to be fruitless but I'll try one more time... Just by stating the obvious... The laws of thermodynamics apply to ALL closed systems:
First law: Energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system. (Conservation of energy)
Second law: Entropy always is increasing anytime energy moves or is transformed from one form to another. (It is impossible to reverse things and return to the previous state)
Third law: A system at absolute zero, has no entropy change left. (Everything runs down eventually)
So, where we usually learn thermodynamics in terms of temperatures, volume, and pressure the rules apply equally to energy in all it's forms. You cannot escape it, entropy is always going up, no matter what kind of energy conversion is taking place. Electrical power to magnetic Flux, Chemical storage to electrical power, bouncing a rubber ball, you name it, any time you convert energy from one form to another, entropy is increasing and the universe is running down hill towards an eventual death where there is no more entropy to gain.
The laws of thermodynamics apply to all systems, not just heat engines.... As confused and uninformed as you may be...
Each nation has the right to filter what it chooses as it crosses it's borders... This means the 1st amendment only applies to USA sovereign territory. Consider China's strict filters as an example of this run amuck, but it's their country. However, I don't think that's an issue here.
Cogent has the right (with in the net neutrality regulations of course) to carry data for you or not. So if you want to get data from some IP they refuse to route, it might be time to chose another route if you can.... Unless they are somehow a common carrier, in which case they cannot pick and choose what they carry, but I don't think they are.
I don't believe data carriers have "Common Carrier" status like the phone company.
And before you figure that the data carrying phone company does...I don't think they have that legal designation for the data traffic they carry, only the voice stuff.
What does this mean, well if you are not a common carrier, you have legal reasonability for what you are carrying. If you transport something illegal or infringing and you are NOT a common carrier, you can be held liable for it. If you are a common carrier, the shipper/receiver gets held responsible, not you.
I could be wrong... Cogent might be a common carrier, but I don't think they are.
Net neutrality? Wasn't that supposed to address this kind of thing? (I'm kidding..)
Oh that's right, ISP's and internet services are not generally seen as "common carriers" so maybe somebody wised up and started hinting at taking legal action for those folks carrying obviously (OK, Quasi) legal traffic?
I've always wondered why countries didn't start enforcement of IP law where the internet crossed international borders myself. Why a copyright owner couldn't get access to stuff they owned rights to blocked at the border by court order or something. I know it wouldn't really fix the problem, but it sure would make things like the "Kodi Box selling from the BBC" story from a few days ago easier for the UK government to address. Just block those sites that are providing the content illegally at the border, one IP/Port at a time, until it's too hard to make a buck breaking the law anymore...
Boxcars are not "intermodal" containers and for the reasons you specify are not used all that much anymore. Who's got time for all that trouble when you have trucks.
I'll bet you do receive intermodal containers, disguised as trucks... Especially if you import or export stuff.
Who cares about the fact that emergency power needs Diesel? It is supposed to never be used ...
And if you are on a ventilator, that's the risk you are having to assume. Sure hopes that thing works for you...
I see you didn't address my basic AC power systems theory question, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to argue how a power grid works with you. You need a bit more education on that subject and I don't have the time to do it on \.
Hear what I'm saying.. Renewables are not consistent power sources, they vary from one day to the next, one hour to the next and are REALLY hard to schedule. The general rule for scheduling wind power is to only schedule 20% of what's forecasted in a place where the wind is pretty consistent (Tehachapi CA) when looking 24 hours into the future. That means that you need to schedule 80% of you expected capacity from some other source. Solar is worse than this in most areas.
Storage doesn't solve the problem because it's too inefficient so you need to build out you renewable sources way beyond your average load to charge it, you don't get all your energy back that you put in (i.e. a lot is wasted) and this just pushes the price of renewables higher and higher.
My point here is that renewables are fine, and we should use them where they make sense, but they simply CANNOT replace the capacity we now have. We are dependent on fossil fueled power generation now and will remain so for decades. We CAN reduce the use of fossil fuels with renewables, when the sun shines and the wind blows, but we CANNOT just stop building and using fossil fueled plants because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun isn't always beating down on that solar collector. Your storage idea doesn't really solve the problem, though it does help with smoothing out peak demands. There is no way we can store enough energy, no technology that makes it efficient enough, to allow us to ditch the fossil fueled plants...
Personally, the ONLY technology that seems like it could, maybe, fix this problem is fusion power. However, the issue with this is we currently don't have a working commercial fusion design built, much less operating. All we really have is theory and a bunch of engineering drawings and expensive testing ahead. Truly we are decades away from working fusion power unless there is some technological break through or some new theoretical avenue discovered that makes the engineering problems easier.
90% is not possible without violating some basic rules of thermodynamics or physics.. You are an idiot.
Pumping up water: has nothing to do with thermodynamics
Let's just stop there, because in one breath you call me an idiot, then in the next you make it clear that there IS an idiot in this exchange and it's not me. Surely the first two laws of thermodynamics apply here? Yes they do, they ALWAYS apply to physical systems...
Wisely I will refrain from debating you as you don't have even a cursory understanding of what you are making such confident assertions about.
I don't think that word means what you think it means... No plug in the phone maybe, but wireless?
You know what would have been courage? Giving the iphone 7 wireless charging. Then they could say, no more ports. I think that would have been way more receptive to the audience. The downside would be charging would be a whole lot more complicated.
Charging would be easier, however, CHARGERS would be a lot more expensive. Remember, this is APPLE we are talking about, where the accessories cost as much as the device.
Wireless charging involves laying your phone on the surface of the charger or dropping it into the socket like the Sonicar electric toothbrushes do. Imagine the cost of a car charger now...
LOL, I can get wireless charging for my Note 4 right now...
They don't call those metal boxes "intermodal" containers for nothing...
Actually, now days those intermodal containers are being moved by boat, train AND truck all the time. I live 5 miles away from a rail intermodal depot and they put those containers onto trailers and deliver to that last mile regularly from there.
Take it from me.... I know AC power distribution systems fairly well, although I sometimes get confused about where to use the square root of 3 and square root of 2... (If you know so much about this, explain what I just said, but I seriously doubt you can.)
Yes hospitals have "backup generators" that run on? Ding! Ding! Fossil fuels, usually diesel. By the way, where diesel motors can be started in a few minuets when necessary, they are an awfully inefficient and dirty way to generate power. But think for a moment what I'm saying... We still need fossil fueled generation capacity.... See, you agreed with me.. Also think about a backup generator and how reliable it is compared to the electric grid... Where I welcome the backup plan for that ventilator, it's getting pretty risky when there is a blackout...
Also, you are wrong in how you look at the grid. You simply must have some kind of margin in your generation capacity on the grid for safety and stability. Sure, transmission problems can trigger blackouts by causing instabilities as paths go in or out of service, but the actual blackout is caused when an isolated section of the grid has an unbalance between supply and demand. Once generation capacity starts tripping offline because they are being called on to deliver too much power, blackouts happen. It's not the transmission line really, it's the lack of necessary supply on the isolated grid. But I'm sure the distinction is lost on you. Now put a pile of solar panels on the grid and imagine what happens when a cloud casts a shadow over them... Instant drop in supply... Which you need to replace from someplace or the grid (or if possible just a chunk of it) goes down. You need a safety margin of extra generation capacity to cover contingencies like the wind stops blowing, a cloud comes by or some fossil fueled plant trips off line unexpectedly. (Or as in your example, some transmission line failure isolates your part of the grid, in which case you need the power from some local source.. )
Generation capacity plays a fundamental role in keeping the grid stable.... Just like the square root of 2 and 3 figures are used all the time when engineering power grids...
Batteries are NOT 99% efficient, no way, no how... Not even close... The best chemistry you can get is about 90%, meaning for every 100 Watt Hours you put in, you get 90 out (best case). That's JUST the battery. Modern Switching power supplies can approach 95% in the AC-DC conversion, but DC to AC is a lot less efficient, PLUS the losses though the system are cumulative... You lose 5% here, 10% there and 20% there and it's looking pretty bad for efficiency, not quite 35% of total loss, but not that far away... (100 (AC-DC @ 95%) 95 (Charge discharge @ 90%) 85.5 (DC -> AC @ 80%) = 68.4 out (31.6% loss)
Pumped storage is two things.. You pump water up hill to store energy, then let it flow downhill to reclaim that energy. 90% is not possible without violating some basic rules of thermodynamics or physics.. (you pick). Just the IR losses alone in the pumps and generators are going to eat your lunch and we haven't even considered the losses that all this moving water has as it flows though pipes..
However, you do correctly point out that pumped storage is actually the most efficient way we have of storing electrical power. The PROBLEM with this storage method is finding places where you can actually build the necessary impound (say the top of a mountain) and the environmental disruption it causes when you build this elevated water storage pool and finding a location where enough water exists or can be collected to pump up hill. This is an environmental nightmare for multiple reasons..
Finally, the demand curve doesn't stop when the sun doesn't shine, but solar collection DOES. Same with wind only with more variation in forecasted supply verses actual. Both are inconsistent and don't match demand in any meaningful way, so you either need LOTS of storage or some kind of alternate supply or a mixture of both. But that's my real point. Renewables are fine, but they are NOT a replacement for fossil fuels. Nuclear isn't either. Hopefully fusion will eventually be figured out and end the problem, but nobody knows if or when that will ever be. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, fossil fuels are all we have that actually does the job reliably enough. We can supplement fossil fuels with renewables, but we cannot replace them.
But it IS a nice benefit of the system...
However, I do think the interstate system was intended to carry more than just goods on trucks over long distances if that's what you are saying. Enabling tourism, getting to grandma's house faster and commuting to/from work where considerations as it is currently built.
Actually rail is more efficient per ton pre mile that any form of ground transportation going. It's not because it moves a lot of stuff, but that the steel on steel rolling resistance is almost nothing compared to a truck with rubber on asphalt. This is why you CAN tow a mile long train with couple of locomotives....
Rail's problem is the infrastructure costs are really high. Keeping miles and miles of rails in useable condition is hard and labor intensive. Maintaining rolling stock costs money... Getting that ton of freight from point a to b doesn't cost that much in fuel, but in labor, logistics and infrastructure suck up a lot of cost.
They are REALLY efficient too... A whole lot more effect than that thing with 18 rubber tires flying down the road..
I don't think that many countries in Europe have an AC-induced afternoon peak electricity usage. A few blackouts would be no big deal to me, I would just go outside and do something else, get a bit of fresh air or something. Chop a few logs maybe
Still, blackouts are serious problems. Maybe not to you directly, sitting at home, but to most of the critical infrastructure you depend on for your daily needs like food, water, transportation and medical services. If you where in the hospital in the ICU on a ventilator, a power outage has a whole lot bigger impact on your immediate survival. If the blackout cause the freezer at that food supplier to thaw, you are doing to have issues getting those frozen pizzas for next weeks dinners, or if you can, they will be more expensive. Then there are all the "behind the scenes" issue of domestic water supplies, sewage treatment, emergency services or even getting off that elevator...
You really need a stable electrical system in today's technical age. There is not really any question about that. Look at countries where the electrical system isn't stable, they usually suffer because it's really hard to do any kind of manufacturing if you don't have stable power, most of modern technology assumes power is available all the time.
Now if you want to go back to 1850, knock yourself out, join the Amish or something, they don't directly depend on electricity (usually anyway). Personally, I prefer the cushy life, clean water, food, lights and HVAC.
Sure, you can void the conversion losses by using DC from Photovoltaic solar panels to charge those batteries, but actually that's not going to add a whole lot of efficiency to the system. BY FAR the most inefficient part of a battery storage system is the chemical reaction (charging and discharging) in the battery, followed by IR losses (because battery electrodes are not usually good conductors) and THEN conversion losses, of which AC -> DC is usually the most efficient. You can even avoid the AC-DC-AC conversion losses by USING DC directly in a lot of your devices, but DC does NOT go though transmission systems very well, just ask Edison about how well Westinghouse cleaned his clock on that question. Full DC systems are going to be pretty distance limited..
So most of the inefficiencies of storage you cannot really bypass in an industrial scale power generation system, and even on a individual residence scale you are not going to do very well efficiency wise, leading to more power consumption, more capacity necessary and, if you are honest, more reliance on fossil fueled plants to carry the load when renewables are not available..
Both of your statements are incorrect.
Because all renewable power generation goes offline at the same time,
Different forms of renewable power generation go offline at different times, and geographically separated sources don't go offline in synch. One thing you can count on is that solar power generation stops at night, but this is a known time dependence, and hence can be accounted for in scheduling; not an intermittancy, which is the hardest interruption to handle.
Actually, peak load and solar don't happen to match up well, peak load is usually in the late afternoon (summer AC). Wind is not much better and a whole lot less reliable. Both are extremely hard to schedule with sufficient margin to keep a stable power grid. This means you have to overbuild by a lot of capacity (more than double) to provide the reliable energy source necessary to keep the electric grid up.... OR you have to keep a pile of fossil fueled capacity around to pick up the slack when the renewables are not able to provide what is needed.
and there's no way to store electricity.
It's also not true that there's no way to store electricity. You should know better than that, you've never heard of batteries? What you probably mean to say is that electrical storage is too expensive to be economically viable. That statement, however, is disputable. Definitely in places where hydropower is stored in reservoirs this is untrue, and new battery, fuel cell, compressed-air, and even flywheel technologies are coming online with decreases in price.
Again, you are sort of right, but practically wrong. Energy storage is indeed expensive if for no other reason than conversion losses. A really good chemical battery is going to chew up about 30% of the input AC power when you do all the conversions and account for all the losses (AC -> DC, DC into chemicals to charge the battery.. Chemicals -> DC, DC to AC to discharge it). The equipment just doesn't scale well either and over the total cost of such systems + the loss make them *really* expensive.
Then there is the question of "how big" you need to make the storage capacity. I dare say that it's got to be a LOT bigger than you think it should be t account for the worst case. This is driven by or dependence on the electric grid and it's reliability. We simply cannot easily absorb outages and not realize that they will come with significant financial costs and even loss of life. We have nearly zero tolerance for blackouts, which drives the needed capacity in any storage system higher and higher. Oh, and don't forget the extra capacity on the generation side to recharge your storage PLUS keep the grid online...
The primary point I'm making here is that storage is NOT a viable option. Renewables as they exist today, do not have enough reliability to be anything more than alternatives and we will need to keep backup fossil fueled alternative sources ready for when the wind stops and it's raining for days longer than the batteries can cover....
To fire all the people in HR and outsource that function..... It's worked for other companies!
Meet Mr. Kettle...
Wikipedia is calling the Daily Mail an unreliable source? LOL. This stuff writes itself, I swear..
But like Napster and the like, they will eventually beat down the problem, either by intimidation, lobbying for new laws so they can find users, and a whole host of jack booted methods that will scoop up a few folks who didn't actually break the law...
But by then, the whole problem will become a non-issue because advancing technology will make doing such stuff unnecessary and undesirable...By then the MPPA or whomever is pushing for this will make loud crying sounds about how their clients are losing money because this activity, but because the market has moved on to newer things, nobody will really care anymore.