I would just need to solve the problem of my car not being there during the day when the panels produce most of their energy.
Which isn't really a problem right now - typical grid loads are very low between midnight and 6 am while grid loads are much higher when the sun is shining.
Exporting solar power during the day and importing grid power at night will help improve grid efficiencies since ramping up/down power plants reduces their efficiency.
In fact, many utilities will happily put you on a time-of-use plan which will credit you full retail for peak hour solar production while allowing you to suck down off-peak electricity at a much reduced rate.
500M barrels of refined petroleum = 21B gallons of refined petroleum.
Last time I checked 500 / 42 ~= 12, not 21.:-P
Who here would thinks a 16-26% reduction in the cost of a gallon of gas would be a welcome start?
I have no idea how you equate a reduction of petroleum imports with a direct reduction in the price of gas when the price of gas is mostly made up of the cost of it's crudestock, oil.
Nevermind that the ratio of refined products that come from crude is basically 1:1 - if you reduce gasoline production by 1 gallon - you need one less gallon of crude. The percentage of a gallon of crude that actually goes toward gasoline production is irrelevant here.
If we stopped exporting gas to the tune of 0.5B barrels/day - we simply stop importing crude to the tune of 0.5B barrels/day. Which is about 5% of our current crude imports of 9B barrels/day.
Not a bad plan overall - but is hydrogen really a byproduct of natural gas production? Those hydrogen atoms don't like to float around by themselves and quickly bind to other atoms.
To get hydrogen from natural gas, I always thought you had to perform steam reforming...
Well said - it's amazing how many people harp on net petroleum product exports while completely missing the point that the crude oil used for those exports completely dwarfs those exports.
Petroleum exports are good since that means we are taking crude, hopefully refining it for a profit and selling it again - but it in no way means that we are any where close to minimizing our dependence on foreign oil.
instead of lowering prices to encourage more consumption to increase profit margins
That doesn't make any sense. Lowering prices may increase consumption, but it reduces profit margins, it doesn't increase profit margins. It may increase overall profit, but historically it's been the opposite - high oil prices = high oil company gross profits.
Never mind that while our largest export is gasoline - our exports of gasoline are still completely dwarfed by the amount of oil we import. To put this in perspective, we current have a net export about 500M barrels of refined petroleum products/day. We import about 9000M barrels of oil/day. In other words - if we stopped exporting gasoline, we'd simply lower our oil imports by about 5%. That'd be nice - but still a LONG way to go before we get close to net-zero oil imports.
Regarding gasoline exports - the main reason there are record exports is because some refineries are at very low utilization levels - oil refineries are selling refined products to keep utilization high and attempt to remain profitable.
Margins on refining operations are extremely low. Most of the cost of a gallon of gas/diesel is the cost of crude oil. If you can't keep refinery utilization high, you will lose money if you can't increase prices because of the fixed overhead cost of running a refinery.
That's the primary reason 2-3 east coast refineries are looking to be sold off - their utilization rate is in the low 60% rate - while refineries along the Gulf of Mexico and midwest are in the 90%+ rate thanks to the influx of cheap oil from shale production.
These refineries in the GOM and midwest are making great profits because of the WTI / Brent crude spot price spread. The GOM/midwest refineries are paying about 10% less for crude - the east coast refineries are forced to reduce their margins to compete and in fact they are not able to.
I pay for that as a separate line item on the bill. It is about $15/mo.
That is typically a simple "connection fee" and is used to cover costs of managing your account - this is not used towards Your electrical rate has energy and distribution charges. It looks like you are in California - by law utilities are not allowed to profit on energy charges, only distribution charges. Your typical residential rate has these charges combined into a single per-kWh cost.
The government sits on its hands and appears to be perfectly happy with things as they are - because it knows which side its bread is buttered on.
It's pretty clear that you've given up already. But hey - at least the Intarwebs is a good place to vent and at least pretend you know what you're talking about without actually doing anything about it.
Solyndra failed because their efficiency/price ratio was not good enough to compete. If they had 100% efficient panels then they could charge quite a lot of money for them, and people would be gladly paying.
No, they failed because their energy/price ratio was too high. Even if they could produce 50% efficient panels instead of 10% efficient panels, most wouldn't pay the price premium their product commanded. (Never mind that 100% is not physically possible - their tech was probably only capable of 30% in theory at most) Why? Because space isn't an issue. Would you pay 2-3x more for their panels to save a bit of roof-top space? Their only unique feature was that their "panels" were light and wind resistant - meaning that they could be installed more quickly, more easily and on more roofs where conventional panels would require more labor intensive installs and can't be used at all on warehouse roofs because they are not strong enough.
The government doesn't inflict anything on you for having "too much power". It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
That said - most reasonable states have net-metering laws which force the utilities to compensate customers for full retail price of their energy. Most of these are written so that you can use the grid as a battery essentially for at least a year.
Yes - if you generate more energy than you use over a year - the utility will typically only compensate you at wholesale electricity rates rather than retail. But this seems somewhat fair as the utility needs to pay for maintenance of your share of the distribution grid - and with PV systems prices falling like they are, soon everyone in your neighborhood will have their own PV system.
The only way to get the utility companies to do anything different is to get your representatives to write laws to force them to change. Claiming it's the governments fault without doing anything isn't going to get you anywhere.
Only because the externalities of burning fossil fuels are not paid for by those selling and/or burning fossil fuels. Even then - wind power is already cheaper than many fossil fuels and solar is rapidly lowering costs.
manufacturing of pure silicon requires lots of nasty chemicals
PV grade silicon does not require nasty chemicals to produce - it can be produced using metallurgical methods - but then this silicon can't also be used for computer chips which does require very high grade silicon. Regardless - it's not difficult to ensure that those nasty chemicals that are used are handled properly such that risks from using them are minimal.
However failures of solar power are far more common, even despite huge injections of public money into those projects (see Solyndra.) The reason for that is simply that solar panels today are not very efficient.
Huh? You are comparing an industry which is over a century old to an industry which is only recently achieving levels of scale to become economical? I've got news for you - there will be more large scale business failures and consolidation in the PV industry in the next 5 years. This is expected as PV reaches the point where it is a commodity product and only businesses with large economies of scale deliver the majority of the market (just like any other major industry today).
Efficiency of solar panels is not the issue or cause of these business failures. A highly competitive PV market is. Today's typical 15% efficient solar panels are more than efficient enough to be useful - after all - since you have 6 kW of PV you know very well how those panels are able to generate enough electricity to power your entire household's annual consumption. Never mind that you can already buy panels over 20% efficient - at added cost per watt of course - which is why most people go with the lower efficiency, less expensive panels.
The main issue is the cost to produce those panels which is dropping quite rapidly - quite a bit more rapidly than expected thanks to massive amounts of silicon manufacturing capacity which has come online in the last 2 years - which is also what led to Solyndra's demise yet made them look promising 4 years ago. And you probably have room to double the size of your PV array - but the cost currently keeps you from doing that.
Many of the "diesel performance" guys seem to take glee in producing large amounts of diesel smoke when modifying their rigs.
A quick google/youtube search of "diesel smoke" will turn up lots of hits of people installing "smoke switches", purposefully "smoking" people, etc. Crazy!
There also was some research on particulate emissions on highways which found that gasoline engines have likely been underestimated in the amount of black carbon they emit, particularly ultra fine emissions. These emissions can also be particularly harmful since they are so easily absorbed into the blood stream and body.
Burning stuff to produce energy is harmful on a large number of levels - yet so many people are resistant to change since the full costs are rarely "paid for" by the people who benefit the most from it.
A true EV like the Leaf can go farther, but 1) the Leaf is slow as shit, and tiny too
The LEAF is not much slower than the Volt - 0-60 is 9-10 seconds or so, Volt is a second faster at most. The LEAF actually beats the Volt to 30 mph.
If you're comparing the LEAF to the Volt, the LEAF is much roomier inside. It can seat 5 (only 4 in the Volt) and a good amount of space in the hatch. As far as overall size - it's the size of your typical hatchback - really medium sized unless you're comparing it to a full-size sedan or a medium/large SUV.
But the real one to beat is of course the Prius, which is downright reasonable at only $23k, though it doesn't have a plug-in option. There is a different Prius model just now coming out, with limited availability, that's a plug-in, but it costs $32k, a whopping $9k more than the regular version, though again the $7500 tax credit probably applies here; don't know if you can get that credit with the regular Prius but I doubt it.
The Prius plug-in only qualifies for a $2500 federal tax credit - the credit is based on the size of the battery and the Prius plug-in has a tiny one good for about 11 miles of EV range per charge. There really is not much difference in the price of the Prius plug-in and Volt similarly equipped after tax credits.
The Prius plug-in with it's 50 mpg can't be beat for long trips. But for your average driving the Volt will use a lot less gas.
Even better, auto stop/start systems should be made mandatory on all vehicles. People are idiots and lazy in general. Until you make it mandatory, you'll never get mass compliance. Especially because manually turning the car off/on requires a lot of attention to do it without adding delay.
I can't tell you how many douche-bags I see sitting in their cars while parked with the engine running, poking at their phone on a nice day when they could turn the car off and enjoy the breeze instead of adding air pollution. Yeah - even with gas over $4/gallon around here and the typical car burning at least $2/worth every hour.
Increased electrification of the fleet (auto start/stop is a step in this direction as it requires beefier starter and battery to handle the additional starts) will result along with other fuel economy benefits.
Global warming concerns aside, particulate matter, especially fine particulate matter is known to aggravate respiratory issues in humans causing deaths and hospitalizations.
Moving high concentrations of these pollutants away from population centers through electrification will improve the health of people living near roads.
Yes - power plants should have improved scrubbers installed as well to reduce their particulate emissions as well.
Actually Algae might. 250000 gallons of oil per acre in the lab.
That number is useless unless you also define the amount of time as well.
For example - On one acre one can install about 750 kW worth of solar on an acre. The US ranges from about 5-8 kWh of sun a day depending on where you live, so that 750 kW solar farm will produce anywhere from 3.7 MWh to 6 MWh a day. That's about enough for 100-200 households depending on the house. It's also good for about 11,000 - 18,000 electric vehicle miles / day assuming your EV uses 1 kWh to go 3 miles.
B.S. According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels. link.
You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.
We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.
The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.
To put that in car terms that's a little under 600HPh (350kWh).
Huh? 1 kW is 1.36 HP. So 350 kWh would be 476 HPh.
Assuming you are going 100mph your car produces 60HP? I don't think a 60HP car can do 100MPH.
This is besides the point, but it depends on the size and aerodynamics of the car, but 60 HP will get you right around 100 mph.
Assuming you are going 50mph, 30 ponies?
No, the power required to travel 50 mph is a fraction of the power required to travel 50 mph thanks to the exponential effects of aerodynamic drag. If we assume 60 HP to travel 100 mph, it takes less than 15 HP to travel 50 mph.
Let's assume it takes 15 HP or 11 kW to maintain 50 mph and you want to drive 1000 miles.
That will take 20 hours and use 220 kWh (20h * 11kW) over that period of time.
The new reactors would power 1,000,000 homes or 500,000 electric cars.
MOST people don't recognize the load that a mass switchover to electric cars would put on the power grid.
To drive your typical car 1000 miles you need about 250-350 kWh. Which is anywhere from one half to one quarter your typical household's monthly usage.
Never mind that 98% of the time you will charge your EV at night or whenever there is excess generation capacity because the utility company will happily charge you lower rates to do so. A very large portion of our vehicle fleet could be electrified without adding any additional generation capacity.
When on average about 2/3rds of the energy we use is thrown away as waste heat before we can actually use it (never mind that ultimately ALL energy we use ends up as heat), there's plenty of room for reductions in energy use through efficiency.
Now if we can get politicians to quit treating building more oil refining capacity as a political football, we might take another meaningful step toward energy independence.
What does refining capacity have to do with energy independence?
Never mind that refineries are shutting down because of low utilization rates and cut-throat competition (IE big refineries buying out small refineries and shutting them down to raise profits). A significant portion of our refining capacity is currently used to export finished oil products.
There isn't anywhere close to enough oil in the USA that can be pulled out of the ground fast enough to satisfy our oil demands (oil is the biggest contributor to energy dependence on foreign countries).
The only way to achieve energy dependence is to cut oil demand in half through a combination of efficiency and moving oil powered transport onto other fuels through electrification of the motor vehicle fleet where it makes sense.
At which point we'll have an even bigger surplus of refining capacity.
Implying that SSDs are equal because they use the same controller is like saying a Apple iMac and a Dell are the same because they use the same CPU.
The firmware that runs on the SSD is highly unlikely to be the same on Intel branded drives compared to OCZ branded drives. And firmware is what is a leading cause of reliability issues on SSDs.
You are correct. Nissan got a DOE grant to build a large battery manufacturing plant there in Tennessee. The 2013 LEAF will be produced there and will have a very high domestic content label. Probably not as good as the Camry which has had the highest domestic content for a number of years. But it will be a lot better than the basically 100% foreign LEAF now. It will probably be better than the Chevy Volt which gets it's batteries from Korea.
I'd wager that the LEAF will be the most "American" EV on the market for model year 2013 unless a domestic manufacturer builds an EV using A123 batteries (GM may be closest to doing this, I think).
Just how long is your commute and poorly timed are your traffic lights that you can cut 5 min/day from your commute by stomping the gas?
Unless on the freeway, I find that the majority of the time I catch up to the guy "stomping the gas" at the next light because he's had to stomp the brakes at the next red light.
And are you really finding that 5 minutes noticable?
Personally, I find that many people turn into arrogant, self-serving, aggressive douche-bags when behind the wheel of a 2-ton automobile. And they'll use any excuse to blame that behavior on something else when driving aggressively is clearly linked to increased accident risk. (and yes, scientific studies back this up)
Hopefully my next car can be a pure electric, if I can make my Prius last that long. Maybe a plug-in Prius or Chevy Volt would be a reasonable alternative. That carpool sticker saved me thousands of hours of time as well (over the years). I really miss it!
Unless you can charge at work, there aren't any EVs on the market I would suggest for 70 miles of freeway driving. The LEAF is EPA rated at 73 miles / charge which would be cutting it a bit close unless you limit speed on the freeway. Charging at work would make this a non-issue.
The Volt will be available with AT-PZEV compliance soon (current models don't qualify) that will get you into the carpool line and should get you about half your daily commute on electricity and about 40 mpg on the other half.
The Plug-in Prius will also be shipping soon and will be eligible for the carpool stickers. This has 15 mi EV range (though is limited in EV power so acts like a regular Prius on steroids at high speeds and high load demands) and gets basically the same fuel economy as a regular Prius after that.
Both the Volt and Prius plug-in will benefit if you can charge at work, too - the Volt has a chance of making nearly your whole trip on electrons if you do so.
The only other EV coming soon that would have sufficient range for reliable 70mi / day freeway commuting is the Tesla Model S - but that will cost you quite a bit of money.
The milage is less then the EPA estimate, but it is way ahead of any other car I owned. My lifetime average MPG is 45.3.
The updated EPA numbers (which are supposed to be more realistic) for the 2004-2009 Prius is 46 mpg. I would hardly consider 0.7 mpg (or 1.5%) significant.
FWIW - my 2008 Prius gets similar fuel economy - 45-46 mpg on average as measured from the gas pump and odometer readings.
Interesting, I typically do slightly better than EPA on the highway rating of 45 mpg unless there is a strong head or cross wind or pushing speeds over 75 mph. Typically pure city driving is worse than the EPA rating of 48 mpg where I typically get low 40s mpg. I blame the poorly timed lights and high surface street speed limits (45-55mpg) around here - regenerative braking can only do so much!
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I would just need to solve the problem of my car not being there during the day when the panels produce most of their energy.
Which isn't really a problem right now - typical grid loads are very low between midnight and 6 am while grid loads are much higher when the sun is shining.
Exporting solar power during the day and importing grid power at night will help improve grid efficiencies since ramping up/down power plants reduces their efficiency.
In fact, many utilities will happily put you on a time-of-use plan which will credit you full retail for peak hour solar production while allowing you to suck down off-peak electricity at a much reduced rate.
They just released an update today. flash-plugin-11.2.202.236-release.x86_64 is available to download from their website.
500M barrels of refined petroleum = 21B gallons of refined petroleum.
Last time I checked 500 / 42 ~= 12, not 21. :-P
Who here would thinks a 16-26% reduction in the cost of a gallon of gas would be a welcome start?
I have no idea how you equate a reduction of petroleum imports with a direct reduction in the price of gas when the price of gas is mostly made up of the cost of it's crudestock, oil.
Nevermind that the ratio of refined products that come from crude is basically 1:1 - if you reduce gasoline production by 1 gallon - you need one less gallon of crude. The percentage of a gallon of crude that actually goes toward gasoline production is irrelevant here.
If we stopped exporting gas to the tune of 0.5B barrels/day - we simply stop importing crude to the tune of 0.5B barrels/day. Which is about 5% of our current crude imports of 9B barrels/day.
Not a bad plan overall - but is hydrogen really a byproduct of natural gas production? Those hydrogen atoms don't like to float around by themselves and quickly bind to other atoms.
To get hydrogen from natural gas, I always thought you had to perform steam reforming...
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/fuels/hydrogen/currenttechnology.html
Well said - it's amazing how many people harp on net petroleum product exports while completely missing the point that the crude oil used for those exports completely dwarfs those exports.
Petroleum exports are good since that means we are taking crude, hopefully refining it for a profit and selling it again - but it in no way means that we are any where close to minimizing our dependence on foreign oil.
instead of lowering prices to encourage more consumption to increase profit margins
That doesn't make any sense. Lowering prices may increase consumption, but it reduces profit margins, it doesn't increase profit margins. It may increase overall profit, but historically it's been the opposite - high oil prices = high oil company gross profits.
Never mind that while our largest export is gasoline - our exports of gasoline are still completely dwarfed by the amount of oil we import. To put this in perspective, we current have a net export about 500M barrels of refined petroleum products/day. We import about 9000M barrels of oil/day. In other words - if we stopped exporting gasoline, we'd simply lower our oil imports by about 5%. That'd be nice - but still a LONG way to go before we get close to net-zero oil imports.
Regarding gasoline exports - the main reason there are record exports is because some refineries are at very low utilization levels - oil refineries are selling refined products to keep utilization high and attempt to remain profitable.
Margins on refining operations are extremely low. Most of the cost of a gallon of gas/diesel is the cost of crude oil. If you can't keep refinery utilization high, you will lose money if you can't increase prices because of the fixed overhead cost of running a refinery.
That's the primary reason 2-3 east coast refineries are looking to be sold off - their utilization rate is in the low 60% rate - while refineries along the Gulf of Mexico and midwest are in the 90%+ rate thanks to the influx of cheap oil from shale production.
These refineries in the GOM and midwest are making great profits because of the WTI / Brent crude spot price spread. The GOM/midwest refineries are paying about 10% less for crude - the east coast refineries are forced to reduce their margins to compete and in fact they are not able to.
I pay for that as a separate line item on the bill. It is about $15/mo.
That is typically a simple "connection fee" and is used to cover costs of managing your account - this is not used towards Your electrical rate has energy and distribution charges. It looks like you are in California - by law utilities are not allowed to profit on energy charges, only distribution charges. Your typical residential rate has these charges combined into a single per-kWh cost.
The government sits on its hands and appears to be perfectly happy with things as they are - because it knows which side its bread is buttered on.
It's pretty clear that you've given up already. But hey - at least the Intarwebs is a good place to vent and at least pretend you know what you're talking about without actually doing anything about it.
Solyndra failed because their efficiency/price ratio was not good enough to compete. If they had 100% efficient panels then they could charge quite a lot of money for them, and people would be gladly paying.
No, they failed because their energy/price ratio was too high. Even if they could produce 50% efficient panels instead of 10% efficient panels, most wouldn't pay the price premium their product commanded. (Never mind that 100% is not physically possible - their tech was probably only capable of 30% in theory at most) Why? Because space isn't an issue. Would you pay 2-3x more for their panels to save a bit of roof-top space? Their only unique feature was that their "panels" were light and wind resistant - meaning that they could be installed more quickly, more easily and on more roofs where conventional panels would require more labor intensive installs and can't be used at all on warehouse roofs because they are not strong enough.
The government doesn't inflict anything on you for having "too much power". It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
That said - most reasonable states have net-metering laws which force the utilities to compensate customers for full retail price of their energy. Most of these are written so that you can use the grid as a battery essentially for at least a year.
Yes - if you generate more energy than you use over a year - the utility will typically only compensate you at wholesale electricity rates rather than retail. But this seems somewhat fair as the utility needs to pay for maintenance of your share of the distribution grid - and with PV systems prices falling like they are, soon everyone in your neighborhood will have their own PV system.
The only way to get the utility companies to do anything different is to get your representatives to write laws to force them to change. Claiming it's the governments fault without doing anything isn't going to get you anywhere.
Solar and wind are enormously expensive
Only because the externalities of burning fossil fuels are not paid for by those selling and/or burning fossil fuels. Even then - wind power is already cheaper than many fossil fuels and solar is rapidly lowering costs.
manufacturing of pure silicon requires lots of nasty chemicals
PV grade silicon does not require nasty chemicals to produce - it can be produced using metallurgical methods - but then this silicon can't also be used for computer chips which does require very high grade silicon. Regardless - it's not difficult to ensure that those nasty chemicals that are used are handled properly such that risks from using them are minimal.
However failures of solar power are far more common, even despite huge injections of public money into those projects (see Solyndra.) The reason for that is simply that solar panels today are not very efficient.
Huh? You are comparing an industry which is over a century old to an industry which is only recently achieving levels of scale to become economical? I've got news for you - there will be more large scale business failures and consolidation in the PV industry in the next 5 years. This is expected as PV reaches the point where it is a commodity product and only businesses with large economies of scale deliver the majority of the market (just like any other major industry today).
Efficiency of solar panels is not the issue or cause of these business failures. A highly competitive PV market is. Today's typical 15% efficient solar panels are more than efficient enough to be useful - after all - since you have 6 kW of PV you know very well how those panels are able to generate enough electricity to power your entire household's annual consumption. Never mind that you can already buy panels over 20% efficient - at added cost per watt of course - which is why most people go with the lower efficiency, less expensive panels.
The main issue is the cost to produce those panels which is dropping quite rapidly - quite a bit more rapidly than expected thanks to massive amounts of silicon manufacturing capacity which has come online in the last 2 years - which is also what led to Solyndra's demise yet made them look promising 4 years ago. And you probably have room to double the size of your PV array - but the cost currently keeps you from doing that.
Many of the "diesel performance" guys seem to take glee in producing large amounts of diesel smoke when modifying their rigs.
A quick google/youtube search of "diesel smoke" will turn up lots of hits of people installing "smoke switches", purposefully "smoking" people, etc. Crazy!
There also was some research on particulate emissions on highways which found that gasoline engines have likely been underestimated in the amount of black carbon they emit, particularly ultra fine emissions. These emissions can also be particularly harmful since they are so easily absorbed into the blood stream and body.
New real-time measurements suggest that black carbon emissions from light-duty gasoline vehicles are significantly underestimated
Burning stuff to produce energy is harmful on a large number of levels - yet so many people are resistant to change since the full costs are rarely "paid for" by the people who benefit the most from it.
A true EV like the Leaf can go farther, but 1) the Leaf is slow as shit, and tiny too
The LEAF is not much slower than the Volt - 0-60 is 9-10 seconds or so, Volt is a second faster at most. The LEAF actually beats the Volt to 30 mph.
If you're comparing the LEAF to the Volt, the LEAF is much roomier inside. It can seat 5 (only 4 in the Volt) and a good amount of space in the hatch. As far as overall size - it's the size of your typical hatchback - really medium sized unless you're comparing it to a full-size sedan or a medium/large SUV.
But the real one to beat is of course the Prius, which is downright reasonable at only $23k, though it doesn't have a plug-in option. There is a different Prius model just now coming out, with limited availability, that's a plug-in, but it costs $32k, a whopping $9k more than the regular version, though again the $7500 tax credit probably applies here; don't know if you can get that credit with the regular Prius but I doubt it.
The Prius plug-in only qualifies for a $2500 federal tax credit - the credit is based on the size of the battery and the Prius plug-in has a tiny one good for about 11 miles of EV range per charge. There really is not much difference in the price of the Prius plug-in and Volt similarly equipped after tax credits.
The Prius plug-in with it's 50 mpg can't be beat for long trips. But for your average driving the Volt will use a lot less gas.
Even better, auto stop/start systems should be made mandatory on all vehicles. People are idiots and lazy in general. Until you make it mandatory, you'll never get mass compliance. Especially because manually turning the car off/on requires a lot of attention to do it without adding delay.
I can't tell you how many douche-bags I see sitting in their cars while parked with the engine running, poking at their phone on a nice day when they could turn the car off and enjoy the breeze instead of adding air pollution. Yeah - even with gas over $4/gallon around here and the typical car burning at least $2/worth every hour.
Increased electrification of the fleet (auto start/stop is a step in this direction as it requires beefier starter and battery to handle the additional starts) will result along with other fuel economy benefits.
Global warming concerns aside, particulate matter, especially fine particulate matter is known to aggravate respiratory issues in humans causing deaths and hospitalizations.
Moving high concentrations of these pollutants away from population centers through electrification will improve the health of people living near roads.
Yes - power plants should have improved scrubbers installed as well to reduce their particulate emissions as well.
Actually Algae might. 250000 gallons of oil per acre in the lab.
That number is useless unless you also define the amount of time as well.
For example - On one acre one can install about 750 kW worth of solar on an acre. The US ranges from about 5-8 kWh of sun a day depending on where you live, so that 750 kW solar farm will produce anywhere from 3.7 MWh to 6 MWh a day. That's about enough for 100-200 households depending on the house. It's also good for about 11,000 - 18,000 electric vehicle miles / day assuming your EV uses 1 kWh to go 3 miles.
How does biofuel from algae compare to that?
B.S.
According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.
link.
You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.
We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.
ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.
To put that in car terms that's a little under 600HPh (350kWh).
Huh? 1 kW is 1.36 HP. So 350 kWh would be 476 HPh.
Assuming you are going 100mph your car produces 60HP? I don't think a 60HP car can do 100MPH.
This is besides the point, but it depends on the size and aerodynamics of the car, but 60 HP will get you right around 100 mph.
Assuming you are going 50mph, 30 ponies?
No, the power required to travel 50 mph is a fraction of the power required to travel 50 mph thanks to the exponential effects of aerodynamic drag. If we assume 60 HP to travel 100 mph, it takes less than 15 HP to travel 50 mph.
Let's assume it takes 15 HP or 11 kW to maintain 50 mph and you want to drive 1000 miles.
That will take 20 hours and use 220 kWh (20h * 11kW) over that period of time.
The new reactors would power 1,000,000 homes or 500,000 electric cars.
MOST people don't recognize the load that a mass switchover to electric cars would put on the power grid.
To drive your typical car 1000 miles you need about 250-350 kWh. Which is anywhere from one half to one quarter your typical household's monthly usage.
Never mind that 98% of the time you will charge your EV at night or whenever there is excess generation capacity because the utility company will happily charge you lower rates to do so. A very large portion of our vehicle fleet could be electrified without adding any additional generation capacity.
When on average about 2/3rds of the energy we use is thrown away as waste heat before we can actually use it (never mind that ultimately ALL energy we use ends up as heat), there's plenty of room for reductions in energy use through efficiency.
Now if we can get politicians to quit treating building more oil refining capacity as a political football, we might take another meaningful step toward energy independence.
What does refining capacity have to do with energy independence?
Never mind that refineries are shutting down because of low utilization rates and cut-throat competition (IE big refineries buying out small refineries and shutting them down to raise profits). A significant portion of our refining capacity is currently used to export finished oil products.
There isn't anywhere close to enough oil in the USA that can be pulled out of the ground fast enough to satisfy our oil demands (oil is the biggest contributor to energy dependence on foreign countries).
The only way to achieve energy dependence is to cut oil demand in half through a combination of efficiency and moving oil powered transport onto other fuels through electrification of the motor vehicle fleet where it makes sense.
At which point we'll have an even bigger surplus of refining capacity.
Implying that SSDs are equal because they use the same controller is like saying a Apple iMac and a Dell are the same because they use the same CPU.
The firmware that runs on the SSD is highly unlikely to be the same on Intel branded drives compared to OCZ branded drives. And firmware is what is a leading cause of reliability issues on SSDs.
I don't believe that Coda has received any federal money.
You are correct. Nissan got a DOE grant to build a large battery manufacturing plant there in Tennessee. The 2013 LEAF will be produced there and will have a very high domestic content label. Probably not as good as the Camry which has had the highest domestic content for a number of years. But it will be a lot better than the basically 100% foreign LEAF now. It will probably be better than the Chevy Volt which gets it's batteries from Korea.
I'd wager that the LEAF will be the most "American" EV on the market for model year 2013 unless a domestic manufacturer builds an EV using A123 batteries (GM may be closest to doing this, I think).
Just how long is your commute and poorly timed are your traffic lights that you can cut 5 min/day from your commute by stomping the gas?
Unless on the freeway, I find that the majority of the time I catch up to the guy "stomping the gas" at the next light because he's had to stomp the brakes at the next red light.
And are you really finding that 5 minutes noticable?
Personally, I find that many people turn into arrogant, self-serving, aggressive douche-bags when behind the wheel of a 2-ton automobile. And they'll use any excuse to blame that behavior on something else when driving aggressively is clearly linked to increased accident risk. (and yes, scientific studies back this up)
Hopefully my next car can be a pure electric, if I can make my Prius last that long. Maybe a plug-in Prius or Chevy Volt would be a reasonable alternative. That carpool sticker saved me thousands of hours of time as well (over the years). I really miss it!
Unless you can charge at work, there aren't any EVs on the market I would suggest for 70 miles of freeway driving. The LEAF is EPA rated at 73 miles / charge which would be cutting it a bit close unless you limit speed on the freeway. Charging at work would make this a non-issue.
The Volt will be available with AT-PZEV compliance soon (current models don't qualify) that will get you into the carpool line and should get you about half your daily commute on electricity and about 40 mpg on the other half.
The Plug-in Prius will also be shipping soon and will be eligible for the carpool stickers. This has 15 mi EV range (though is limited in EV power so acts like a regular Prius on steroids at high speeds and high load demands) and gets basically the same fuel economy as a regular Prius after that.
Both the Volt and Prius plug-in will benefit if you can charge at work, too - the Volt has a chance of making nearly your whole trip on electrons if you do so.
The only other EV coming soon that would have sufficient range for reliable 70mi / day freeway commuting is the Tesla Model S - but that will cost you quite a bit of money.
Disclaimer: I own a Nissan LEAF and a Prius
The milage is less then the EPA estimate, but it is way ahead of any other car I owned. My lifetime average MPG is 45.3.
The updated EPA numbers (which are supposed to be more realistic) for the 2004-2009 Prius is 46 mpg. I would hardly consider 0.7 mpg (or 1.5%) significant.
FWIW - my 2008 Prius gets similar fuel economy - 45-46 mpg on average as measured from the gas pump and odometer readings.
Interesting, I typically do slightly better than EPA on the highway rating of 45 mpg unless there is a strong head or cross wind or pushing speeds over 75 mph. Typically pure city driving is worse than the EPA rating of 48 mpg where I typically get low 40s mpg. I blame the poorly timed lights and high surface street speed limits (45-55mpg) around here - regenerative braking can only do so much!