Wrong. The fact that they are public residential roads does not mean that they're designed for the kind of traffic that's flowing over them. They were designed to service the residents who live there. It becomes a public safety issue when emergency vehicles cannot get where they need to go over city streets due to the streets being clogged with traffic they were never designed to handle. Also, the gasoline taxes do not cover the cost of the roads, especially at the federal level where the federal program is getting close to being insolvent.
My neighborhood was getting filled up by people parking for the nearby BART station when BART started charging fees for parking. They made it impossible for locals to park and were dumping trash all over the place and causing a lot of other problems. It made it impossible for construction vehicles to park or for people to visit. They went so far as to start cutting the local trees and bushes when they got in their way. The City said if 90% of the homeowners could agree for a no parking during a two hour window they'd implement it. They had no problem getting over 90% of the homeowners to agree to this. Other cities solve this using parking permits.
It's not just Tesla with their gen 3. Nissan and Audi are also planning 200+ mile EVs and Nissan is looking at keeping the costs down as well. GM, Ford and BMW aren't sitting still either. It's just a matter of the battery prices to continue their downward trend in cost and upward trends in capacity and performance. The writing is on the wall for fuel cell vehicles and has been for a while. Tesla's gigafactory alone should drop their battery prices by at least 30%.
Try driving any of those cars outside of the few hydrogen filling stations. Oh wait, you can't. By the end of next year only a few cities will be linked up by hydrogen filling stations. I can drive my Tesla from San Diego to Vancouver today, or across the country. By the end of next year most of the nation will be covered by rapid chargers where only a few major cities will be covered by hydrogen. I can also charge any place there's an outlet or at most RV parks if need be. Most of my charging happens at home. I spend 5 seconds at night to plug in and 5 seconds in the morning to unplug and have a full battery with over 200 miles of range, all in the comfort of my garage. I never have to set foot in a service station and only need to charge for long-distance travel. http://www.teslamotors.com/sup...
Hyundai has a new FC car out that I can lease today. The Toyota Mirai is coming soon. show me a worthwhile EV car that's not a $90k space ship.
Those cars are very heavily subsidized. They cost far more to build than what they're charging. For $57K the Mirai is a mediocre car. There's no way anyone would pay the true cost of the Mirai. They're also only selling 700 cars next year. Tesla sells far more cars than that every week with plans in 3 years to make 500K cars per year. There's also a reason why they subsidize the cost of the hydrogen because right now it's the equivalent of $5/gallon of gasoline.
They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot
costs are on track to drop below gasoline on a per-mile basis. There are many H2 pathways that are very green and these are being scaled up rapidly. Also remember that FC cars are much more efficient than gasoline cars, so any metric has to be on a per-mile basis.
Bullshit. The cost of hydrogen right now is very heavily subsidized. It can't be made cost competitive with gasoline. It is far too energy intensive to make it. You can't transport it to service stations like you can gasoline since the volume of hydrogen required is much larger and the tanks must be much smaller and heavier due to the extremely high pressures involved. Those narrow tanks have a wall thickness of about an inch so they're also quite heavy. It pretty much must be made on-site and that is expensive to do and energy intensive. Making hydrogen from methane is a very mature technology and there's not much room left to cut costs. It is far more expensive than gasoline.
Making hydrogen from water is and always will be cost prohibitive due to the enormous amount of electricity required no matter the catalyst and fuel cell efficiency in a vehicle is maybe at best 60% efficient. Hell, it takes 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen just to compress it to 5000PSI.
depends where you are. in the PNW electricity prices are 3.5 cents / kwh. if you're smart you can play all sorts of load-balancing and green credit games to get prices down really low. As a benchmarks, it is 60 kwh to make a kg of H2, including compression.
60KWh will get an electric car 200 miles or more. A HFC car will only go a fraction of that. Most places don't have electricity anywhere near that cheap. In my area the cost is closer to $.20-$.30/kwh. The best wholesale rate you might get is $0.10-$0.12/KWh, nowhere close to $0.035/KWh. Right now making hydrogen from water is the equivalent of $6-$11/gallon of gasoline assuming economies of scale which currently does not exist.
You can't transport hydrogen over regular pipelines and you can't economically transport it by truck like gasoline.
There are plenty of H2 pipelines. also plenty of tube trailer trucks. The people who move H2 all around the country think it's viable cuz they do it.
Tube trailer trucks can't transport all that much hydr
Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car? The pace of battery progress is quite high. The cost are dropping rapidly and the capacity is increasing while charging times are dropping. Right now any fuel cell car is very heavily subsidized. They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot. Right now a decent hybrid will release less CO2 per mile than any hydrogen fuel cell car and there's not a lot of room for improvement. Making hydrogen from water is and always will be cost prohibitive due to the enormous amount of electricity required no matter the catalyst and fuel cell efficiency in a vehicle is maybe at best 60% efficient. Hell, it takes 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen just to compress it to 5000PSI. In the best case making CO2 from methane is 70% efficient with the byproduct being CO2. The cost of hydrogen filling stations will always be quite high due to all of the safety aspects. You can't transport hydrogen over regular pipelines and you can't economically transport it by truck like gasoline. There's still also a lot of unknowns about fuel cells like how long the PEM membranes will actually last and how they'll hold up in various climates. For example, how well does a fuel cell stack survive a Montana winter, given that the byproduct is water and typically PEM membranes must maintain a certain humidity range. What happens when these cars leak, especially if they're in an enclosed space like a garage? Hydrogen is one of the most flammable substances known, requiring extremely little energy to ignite. It's explosive over an extremely high range of mixtures, higher than methane, and given that it will rise, in an enclosed space it will tend to accumulate at the ceiling.
Then comes the problem of hydrogen filling stations. Nobody will want to invest in them because they are so costly to build unless they are very heavily subsidized. They're pushing cars with free hydrogen because they know that's the only way they'll sell. If people knew the true cost of hydrogen nobody in their right mind would buy a fuel cell car, The only way hydrogen can possibly be at all economically feasible (i.e. not 10x the cost of gasoline per mile) is to reform methane on site, and it still will be much more expensive than gasoline. HFC cars are a dead end. The safety issues alone will be costly. Hell, they've already had one hydrogen fire at the hydrogen filling station in my county for buses, and that isn't used by the general public. Fuel cells are still costly to build and still require platinum and there's a lot of additional complexity as well. Hydrogen has an extremely low energy density and the only way to store enough of it is to store it at very high pressure. Compressing hydrogen takes a lot of energy, roughly 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen for 5000PSI. Tanks will need to be distributed all over the car since the volume of hydrogen needed to get any decent range will still be quite high, so the cost of those tanks will be quite high, especially if they're going to be safe in the event of a crash.
Battery technology is rapidly dropping in cost, increasing capacity and decreasing charging time. EV charging stations are popping up everywhere. Walgreens, Whole Foods and Target are installing stations for their stores. Home charging is fairly easy and the time it takes at home generally doesn't matter since it's done overnight when there's a glut of electricity and prices are at their lowest. HFCs will never come anywhere close to the cost of an EV. The true cost of the Toyota fuel cell car is likely over double what they're asking and the car they're selling is mediocre at best. Rapid chargers are also being built out. Tesla is building out their network very rapidly and soon others will be following. Tesla's also using grid storage to even out the load to significantly reduce their peak demand. Once they get their gigafactory going and 35K 200 mile EVs are out fuel cell vehicles will be dead.
Hydrogen will lose big time. There is just no way to make hydrogen cost competitive with gasoline. If you're producing hydrogen from methane you're hydrogen powered car will release more CO2 per mile than a good hybrid. Hydrogen production and filling stations are not cheap and will always be far more costly than a gasoline station, especially with all of the safety requirements. As it is, the local hydrogen filling station in my county used for filling buses already has had one hydrogen fire.
Cracking water to produce hydrogen makes even less sense. Even with the best catylist it is still very inefficient.
Hell, you use 20% of the energy capacity of hydrogen just compressing it. Automotive fuel cells themselves are typically only 60% efficent.
EVs are far simpler. Battery technology is steadily improving while the cost is steadily decreasing with no end in sight for capacity, charging and longevity improvements.
Plus you can charge your EV at home, work or while shopping. Electricty is everywhere and building charging stations is quite inexpensive. Charging stations are also popping up everywhere. Retailers like Walgreens and Target are in the process of installing them at all of their stores. Rapid charging stations, while considerably more expensive to build, are still a fraction the cost of a hydrogen fueling station and require far less maintenance and have far fewer safety issues to worry about. Plus with an EV, if you charge at home you never have to spend time waiting at the gas pump and it is far cheaper, even in my location where we have about the highest prices of electricity in the country (PG&E). Hydrogen will never be able to compete with this. The charging times for EVs will continue to decrease and with grid storage at the charging locations they'll be able to smooth out the load (Tesla is already doing this).
The only thing Hydrogen offers is the same paradime of having to drive to a filling station and filling up quickly but this advantage is shrinking rapidly.
In a few weeks Tesla will be opening their first battery swapping station. Now you can go from empty to full in 90 seconds if you want, far faster than the fastest gas or hydrogen filling station, without ever having to step out of the car, insert a nozzle, etc. Eventually the other car manufacturers will catch up with EVs.
If you're only used in big cities you're better off just going pure electric. The efficiency is much greater, the vehicle cost is lower and it's far more convenient to charge up at night than to have to wait in line at a hydrogen filling station.
According to this site converting from methane to hydrogen is around 70% efficient. You then lose another 20% of your efficiency compressing the hydrogen to 5000PSI. When you calculate the well to wheel efficiency you're better off with a hybrid car rather than a fuel cell car.
I have time of use metering for my power and have a separate meter for charging my Tesla. Most EVs allow you to set what time charging begins and I have mine set at 11:05pm when the rates are the lowest. As for peak demand for rapid charging, Tesla is addressing this by adding grid storage at their charging sites to even out the load.
Tesla is addressing the "duck curve" by installing grid storage at their charging locations in order to even out the power draw. Even with hydrogen storage, producing hydrogen by cracking water is horribly inefficient and will require four power plants for every power plant needed to charge an EV.
Financially California has been in pretty good shape the last few years. The state is running a surplus. As for the fleeing businesses, there are far more businesses starting in California than are "fleeing".
I spend 5 seconds plugging in my car when I get home and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning. I spend far less time than I spent filling my gas car up where I'd have to go out of my way to a gas station, wait in line and fill up. Yes, there's a bit of a wait on long trips, but for most of my driving I spend far less time. When battery swapping is available it will take me roughly 90 seconds without me ever having to step out of my car (and for those who don't know, battery swapping includes getting your original battery back on the return trip).
And how many of these require congress? The executive's job is to execute the laws. He can pass or veto a bill but he can't write them. He can choose how to execute the law, what laws to prioritize or not but his power is limited.
This is especially true for anything tax or budget related. All spending bills must originate in the house. Ever since he swore the oath of office the Republicans have bent over backwards with fillibuster threats for just about everything, even the stuff they wanted. The healthcare law only passed because there was only a brief window when democrats had a fillibuster-proof majority.
A bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill was passed ages ago in the Senate but what has the republican-led house done on it? Absolutely nothing.
It also doesn't help that a huge percentage of department heads have been blocked because Republicans have used the fillibuster to block many of these appointments, many since Obama began his first term.
The republicans have been up in arms and done everything to prevent him from doing his job out of spite, making constant racist comments about his birth, or that he's Muslim, etc. etc with Fox News blowing the horn for them with crazy conspiracy theories.
The republicans blame the president about illegals and children crossing the border. The border control says they need more agents and more money to better control the problem. The president says to provide more money. The republicans say no more money and continue to blame the president for something that needs funding which must originate in the republican dominated house.
They also are making a fair amount of revenue selling services. For example, my employer had so many problems with Microsoft Sharepoint that they switched to Google Drive. I use both Google and Microsoft's services. Microsoft's (at least Email) leaves a lot to be desired.
Google is also in the transaction business like Paypal and Amazon as well as hosting services.
For another organization I'm looking into Google services now to handle documents and email.
There are a lot of other costs involved with coal. Unlike China, the US requires scrubbers on all of the smoke stacks, then there's the storage of all of the ash left over, transportation costs for the coal, etc. That's why natural gas is overtaking coal. You just shove natural gas into a pipe and pull it out the other end. No long line of train cars, no scrubbers, no ash to deal with.
Your link is outdated and only considers a limited number of battery technologies, i.e. lead acid. There are many promising grid storage type batteries that are cheap and can handle far more cycles with greater energy density, such as liquid metal and liquid salt batteries. For areas with hydroelectric power there's pumped storage which is around 70% efficient. With pumped storage when there's excess supply water is pumped back into the resivoir. There's also flywheel storage, compressed air, molten salt, gravitational potential energy and many other storage methods. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage.
You also must take into account the electricity being pumped back into the grid during times of peak demand. It's helping reduce the utility's non base-load generation which is generally quite expensive compared to the base load generation.
It makes me glad that in my state they have added rules limiting stupid things HOAs try and do. HOAs cannot prevent solar from being installed and they must allow EV charging to be installed. The latest HOA laws prevent HOAs from requiring residents to water or prevent from putting in plants that require little water... we're in a major drought and some HOAs tried to fine people who wouldn't water their lawns or who put in low-water plants.
They already had one hydrogen fire at the hydrogen fueling station in my county for the county fuel-cell powered buses, and this isn't some place where idiot joe public can fill up their car.
The problem is that it takes a horrendous amount of electricity for electrolysis compared to steam reforming and it is far far more expensive, that's even with the catalysts available. 95% of all commercial hydrogen produced uses steam reformed natural gas. The cost difference is very significant.
Unlike EVs a lot more public refueling stations are required. For example with my Tesla I do most of my charging at home overnight where it takes me 5 seconds to plug in and 5 seconds to unplug. The rapid charging stations and battery swap stations (when they're built) are only needed for long trips. For HFC vehicles a lot more filling stations will be required since most people will not be filling up at home or work. Many companies (though not mine) offer EV charging stations to their employees so they can charge their cars while they work. For people who live in apartment complexes it is a bit more complicated, but as time goes on they'll start installing charging stations there for their tenants, in fact this is already happening.
A hydrogen filling station costs far far more than an EV charging station, anywhere from 500K to 5 million. It's estimated that Tesla pays around $100-200K for their supercharger stations which are generally only needed for long distance travel. Slower commercial charging stations cost a few thousand dollars. The cost of the charging stations is also dropping. An EV charging station can be built any place there's electricity. I have a coworker who just uses a regular 120v outlet to charge her Leaf. In my case I can charge just about anywhere. I can charge at most RV parks though it's a lot slower than the supercharger stations.
Most drivers in SV do 10-15 _over_ the speed limit when traffic is open. Elderly generally stay off the freeways except on Sunday... Sunday drivers tend to be slow road boulders.
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Wrong. The fact that they are public residential roads does not mean that they're designed for the kind of traffic that's flowing over them. They were designed to service the residents who live there. It becomes a public safety issue when emergency vehicles cannot get where they need to go over city streets due to the streets being clogged with traffic they were never designed to handle. Also, the gasoline taxes do not cover the cost of the roads, especially at the federal level where the federal program is getting close to being insolvent.
My neighborhood was getting filled up by people parking for the nearby BART station when BART started charging fees for parking. They made it impossible for locals to park and were dumping trash all over the place and causing a lot of other problems. It made it impossible for construction vehicles to park or for people to visit. They went so far as to start cutting the local trees and bushes when they got in their way. The City said if 90% of the homeowners could agree for a no parking during a two hour window they'd implement it. They had no problem getting over 90% of the homeowners to agree to this. Other cities solve this using parking permits.
It's not just Tesla with their gen 3. Nissan and Audi are also planning 200+ mile EVs and Nissan is looking at keeping the costs down as well. GM, Ford and BMW aren't sitting still either. It's just a matter of the battery prices to continue their downward trend in cost and upward trends in capacity and performance. The writing is on the wall for fuel cell vehicles and has been for a while. Tesla's gigafactory alone should drop their battery prices by at least 30%.
Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car?
Try driving any of those cars outside of the few hydrogen filling stations. Oh wait, you can't. By the end of next year only a few cities will be linked up by hydrogen filling stations. I can drive my Tesla from San Diego to Vancouver today, or across the country. By the end of next year most of the nation will be covered by rapid chargers where only a few major cities will be covered by hydrogen. I can also charge any place there's an outlet or at most RV parks if need be. Most of my charging happens at home. I spend 5 seconds at night to plug in and 5 seconds in the morning to unplug and have a full battery with over 200 miles of range, all in the comfort of my garage. I never have to set foot in a service station and only need to charge for long-distance travel. http://www.teslamotors.com/sup...
Hyundai has a new FC car out that I can lease today. The Toyota Mirai is coming soon. show me a worthwhile EV car that's not a $90k space ship.
Those cars are very heavily subsidized. They cost far more to build than what they're charging. For $57K the Mirai is a mediocre car. There's no way anyone would pay the true cost of the Mirai. They're also only selling 700 cars next year. Tesla sells far more cars than that every week with plans in 3 years to make 500K cars per year. There's also a reason why they subsidize the cost of the hydrogen because right now it's the equivalent of $5/gallon of gasoline.
They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot
costs are on track to drop below gasoline on a per-mile basis. There are many H2 pathways that are very green and these are being scaled up rapidly. Also remember that FC cars are much more efficient than gasoline cars, so any metric has to be on a per-mile basis.
Bullshit. The cost of hydrogen right now is very heavily subsidized. It can't be made cost competitive with gasoline. It is far too energy intensive to make it. You can't transport it to service stations like you can gasoline since the volume of hydrogen required is much larger and the tanks must be much smaller and heavier due to the extremely high pressures involved. Those narrow tanks have a wall thickness of about an inch so they're also quite heavy. It pretty much must be made on-site and that is expensive to do and energy intensive. Making hydrogen from methane is a very mature technology and there's not much room left to cut costs. It is far more expensive than gasoline.
Making hydrogen from water is and always will be cost prohibitive due to the enormous amount of electricity required no matter the catalyst and fuel cell efficiency in a vehicle is maybe at best 60% efficient. Hell, it takes 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen just to compress it to 5000PSI.
depends where you are. in the PNW electricity prices are 3.5 cents / kwh. if you're smart you can play all sorts of load-balancing and green credit games to get prices down really low. As a benchmarks, it is 60 kwh to make a kg of H2, including compression.
60KWh will get an electric car 200 miles or more. A HFC car will only go a fraction of that. Most places don't have electricity anywhere near that cheap. In my area the cost is closer to $.20-$.30/kwh. The best wholesale rate you might get is $0.10-$0.12/KWh, nowhere close to $0.035/KWh. Right now making hydrogen from water is the equivalent of $6-$11/gallon of gasoline assuming economies of scale which currently does not exist.
You can't transport hydrogen over regular pipelines and you can't economically transport it by truck like gasoline.
There are plenty of H2 pipelines. also plenty of tube trailer trucks. The people who move H2 all around the country think it's viable cuz they do it.
Tube trailer trucks can't transport all that much hydr
Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car? The pace of battery progress is quite high. The cost are dropping rapidly and the capacity is increasing while charging times are dropping. Right now any fuel cell car is very heavily subsidized. They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot. Right now a decent hybrid will release less CO2 per mile than any hydrogen fuel cell car and there's not a lot of room for improvement. Making hydrogen from water is and always will be cost prohibitive due to the enormous amount of electricity required no matter the catalyst and fuel cell efficiency in a vehicle is maybe at best 60% efficient. Hell, it takes 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen just to compress it to 5000PSI. In the best case making CO2 from methane is 70% efficient with the byproduct being CO2. The cost of hydrogen filling stations will always be quite high due to all of the safety aspects. You can't transport hydrogen over regular pipelines and you can't economically transport it by truck like gasoline. There's still also a lot of unknowns about fuel cells like how long the PEM membranes will actually last and how they'll hold up in various climates. For example, how well does a fuel cell stack survive a Montana winter, given that the byproduct is water and typically PEM membranes must maintain a certain humidity range. What happens when these cars leak, especially if they're in an enclosed space like a garage? Hydrogen is one of the most flammable substances known, requiring extremely little energy to ignite. It's explosive over an extremely high range of mixtures, higher than methane, and given that it will rise, in an enclosed space it will tend to accumulate at the ceiling.
Then comes the problem of hydrogen filling stations. Nobody will want to invest in them because they are so costly to build unless they are very heavily subsidized. They're pushing cars with free hydrogen because they know that's the only way they'll sell. If people knew the true cost of hydrogen nobody in their right mind would buy a fuel cell car, The only way hydrogen can possibly be at all economically feasible (i.e. not 10x the cost of gasoline per mile) is to reform methane on site, and it still will be much more expensive than gasoline. HFC cars are a dead end. The safety issues alone will be costly. Hell, they've already had one hydrogen fire at the hydrogen filling station in my county for buses, and that isn't used by the general public. Fuel cells are still costly to build and still require platinum and there's a lot of additional complexity as well. Hydrogen has an extremely low energy density and the only way to store enough of it is to store it at very high pressure. Compressing hydrogen takes a lot of energy, roughly 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen for 5000PSI. Tanks will need to be distributed all over the car since the volume of hydrogen needed to get any decent range will still be quite high, so the cost of those tanks will be quite high, especially if they're going to be safe in the event of a crash.
Battery technology is rapidly dropping in cost, increasing capacity and decreasing charging time. EV charging stations are popping up everywhere. Walgreens, Whole Foods and Target are installing stations for their stores. Home charging is fairly easy and the time it takes at home generally doesn't matter since it's done overnight when there's a glut of electricity and prices are at their lowest. HFCs will never come anywhere close to the cost of an EV. The true cost of the Toyota fuel cell car is likely over double what they're asking and the car they're selling is mediocre at best. Rapid chargers are also being built out. Tesla is building out their network very rapidly and soon others will be following. Tesla's also using grid storage to even out the load to significantly reduce their peak demand. Once they get their gigafactory going and 35K 200 mile EVs are out fuel cell vehicles will be dead.
I can charge my
Hydrogen will lose big time. There is just no way to make hydrogen cost competitive with gasoline. If you're producing hydrogen from methane you're hydrogen powered car will release more CO2 per mile than a good hybrid. Hydrogen production and filling stations are not cheap and will always be far more costly than a gasoline station, especially with all of the safety requirements. As it is, the local hydrogen filling station in my county used for filling buses already has had one hydrogen fire.
Cracking water to produce hydrogen makes even less sense. Even with the best catylist it is still very inefficient.
Hell, you use 20% of the energy capacity of hydrogen just compressing it. Automotive fuel cells themselves are typically only 60% efficent.
EVs are far simpler. Battery technology is steadily improving while the cost is steadily decreasing with no end in sight for capacity, charging and longevity improvements.
Plus you can charge your EV at home, work or while shopping. Electricty is everywhere and building charging stations is quite inexpensive. Charging stations are also popping up everywhere. Retailers like Walgreens and Target are in the process of installing them at all of their stores. Rapid charging stations, while considerably more expensive to build, are still a fraction the cost of a hydrogen fueling station and require far less maintenance and have far fewer safety issues to worry about. Plus with an EV, if you charge at home you never have to spend time waiting at the gas pump and it is far cheaper, even in my location where we have about the highest prices of electricity in the country (PG&E). Hydrogen will never be able to compete with this. The charging times for EVs will continue to decrease and with grid storage at the charging locations they'll be able to smooth out the load (Tesla is already doing this).
The only thing Hydrogen offers is the same paradime of having to drive to a filling station and filling up quickly but this advantage is shrinking rapidly.
In a few weeks Tesla will be opening their first battery swapping station. Now you can go from empty to full in 90 seconds if you want, far faster than the fastest gas or hydrogen filling station, without ever having to step out of the car, insert a nozzle, etc. Eventually the other car manufacturers will catch up with EVs.
If you're only used in big cities you're better off just going pure electric. The efficiency is much greater, the vehicle cost is lower and it's far more convenient to charge up at night than to have to wait in line at a hydrogen filling station.
According to this site converting from methane to hydrogen is around 70% efficient. You then lose another 20% of your efficiency compressing the hydrogen to 5000PSI. When you calculate the well to wheel efficiency you're better off with a hybrid car rather than a fuel cell car.
Which is already happening. Tesla is in the process of installing grid storage at their superchargers.
I have time of use metering for my power and have a separate meter for charging my Tesla. Most EVs allow you to set what time charging begins and I have mine set at 11:05pm when the rates are the lowest. As for peak demand for rapid charging, Tesla is addressing this by adding grid storage at their charging sites to even out the load.
Tesla is addressing the "duck curve" by installing grid storage at their charging locations in order to even out the power draw. Even with hydrogen storage, producing hydrogen by cracking water is horribly inefficient and will require four power plants for every power plant needed to charge an EV.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/...
Hydrogen just makes no sense.
Financially California has been in pretty good shape the last few years. The state is running a surplus. As for the fleeing businesses, there are far more businesses starting in California than are "fleeing".
I spend 5 seconds plugging in my car when I get home and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning. I spend far less time than I spent filling my gas car up where I'd have to go out of my way to a gas station, wait in line and fill up. Yes, there's a bit of a wait on long trips, but for most of my driving I spend far less time. When battery swapping is available it will take me roughly 90 seconds without me ever having to step out of my car (and for those who don't know, battery swapping includes getting your original battery back on the return trip).
Good luck with that. The current batch of republicans have been the least productive house in the history.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/politic...
http://www.eclectablog.com/201...
And how many of these require congress? The executive's job is to execute the laws. He can pass or veto a bill but he can't write them. He can choose how to execute the law, what laws to prioritize or not but his power is limited.
This is especially true for anything tax or budget related. All spending bills must originate in the house. Ever since he swore the oath of office the Republicans have bent over backwards with fillibuster threats for just about everything, even the stuff they wanted. The healthcare law only passed because there was only a brief window when democrats had a fillibuster-proof majority.
A bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill was passed ages ago in the Senate but what has the republican-led house done on it? Absolutely nothing.
It also doesn't help that a huge percentage of department heads have been blocked because Republicans have used the fillibuster to block many of these appointments, many since Obama began his first term.
The republicans have been up in arms and done everything to prevent him from doing his job out of spite, making constant racist comments about his birth, or that he's Muslim, etc. etc with Fox News blowing the horn for them with crazy conspiracy theories.
The republicans blame the president about illegals and children crossing the border. The border control says they need more agents and more money to better control the problem. The president says to provide more money. The republicans say no more money and continue to blame the president for something that needs funding which must originate in the republican dominated house.
They also are making a fair amount of revenue selling services. For example, my employer had so many problems with Microsoft Sharepoint that they switched to Google Drive. I use both Google and Microsoft's services. Microsoft's (at least Email) leaves a lot to be desired.
Google is also in the transaction business like Paypal and Amazon as well as hosting services.
For another organization I'm looking into Google services now to handle documents and email.
It comes from fission. All that U235 splits into other elements, which then split further down the line.
Solar cells do not use mirrors unless you're Solyndra. Anyway, the amount of silver is fairly low since only a very thin layer is required.
There are a lot of other costs involved with coal. Unlike China, the US requires scrubbers on all of the smoke stacks, then there's the storage of all of the ash left over, transportation costs for the coal, etc. That's why natural gas is overtaking coal. You just shove natural gas into a pipe and pull it out the other end. No long line of train cars, no scrubbers, no ash to deal with.
Your link is outdated and only considers a limited number of battery technologies, i.e. lead acid. There are many promising grid storage type batteries that are cheap and can handle far more cycles with greater energy density, such as liquid metal and liquid salt batteries. For areas with hydroelectric power there's pumped storage which is around 70% efficient. With pumped storage when there's excess supply water is pumped back into the resivoir. There's also flywheel storage, compressed air, molten salt, gravitational potential energy and many other storage methods. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage.
You also must take into account the electricity being pumped back into the grid during times of peak demand. It's helping reduce the utility's non base-load generation which is generally quite expensive compared to the base load generation.
It makes me glad that in my state they have added rules limiting stupid things HOAs try and do. HOAs cannot prevent solar from being installed and they must allow EV charging to be installed. The latest HOA laws prevent HOAs from requiring residents to water or prevent from putting in plants that require little water... we're in a major drought and some HOAs tried to fine people who wouldn't water their lawns or who put in low-water plants.
Thankfully I don't have to deal with an HOA.
They already had one hydrogen fire at the hydrogen fueling station in my county for the county fuel-cell powered buses, and this isn't some place where idiot joe public can fill up their car.
The problem is that it takes a horrendous amount of electricity for electrolysis compared to steam reforming and it is far far more expensive, that's even with the catalysts available. 95% of all commercial hydrogen produced uses steam reformed natural gas. The cost difference is very significant.
Unlike EVs a lot more public refueling stations are required. For example with my Tesla I do most of my charging at home overnight where it takes me 5 seconds to plug in and 5 seconds to unplug. The rapid charging stations and battery swap stations (when they're built) are only needed for long trips. For HFC vehicles a lot more filling stations will be required since most people will not be filling up at home or work. Many companies (though not mine) offer EV charging stations to their employees so they can charge their cars while they work. For people who live in apartment complexes it is a bit more complicated, but as time goes on they'll start installing charging stations there for their tenants, in fact this is already happening.
A hydrogen filling station costs far far more than an EV charging station, anywhere from 500K to 5 million. It's estimated that Tesla pays around $100-200K for their supercharger stations which are generally only needed for long distance travel. Slower commercial charging stations cost a few thousand dollars. The cost of the charging stations is also dropping. An EV charging station can be built any place there's electricity. I have a coworker who just uses a regular 120v outlet to charge her Leaf. In my case I can charge just about anywhere. I can charge at most RV parks though it's a lot slower than the supercharger stations.
Most drivers in SV do 10-15 _over_ the speed limit when traffic is open. Elderly generally stay off the freeways except on Sunday... Sunday drivers tend to be slow road boulders.