I have worked with eColi phages and while they can be pretty hardy, you could get essentially all of them if you cook the biomass first.
Plus as we have mentioned many times, eColi don't do very well outside of the gut therefore you are going to have (relatively) little external eColi contamination.
As I recall, while phages kill off eColi, there is a percentage that become "immune" to the phage.
This will only be a real issue if you decide to reuse your cultures. If instead you do one-use cultures, you will avoid contaminating your pure culture. Since this mutation is unfavorable, the eColi would likely evolve away from it spontaneously unless you did this anyway.
More than phages, there is the question of general contamination. eColi is unlikely to be the strongest competitor in the vat unless you kill everything else off first.
You don't bother to process on the boat. If it were me I would open a processing plant:
Regardless of the quality of the algae output there is going to be SOME processing. So I would build a plant near the water front.
I would prep bottle kits. Say a bottle and a package of Algae with directions.
I would then sell these to whoever wanted them.
The buyer would fill it up with wastestock and leave it in the sun (assuming the sun is necessary which the article didn't specify). This could be floating in the ocean or on rooves or in kitchens for kitchen garbage.
When the buyer was ready I would buy back the bottles based on the quality of the contents.
I then process it at my leisure (the bottles have been filled for months, a few more days won't make a difference).
I store the oil produced in my large (cheap) tanks on land.
Every few weeks a tanker comes by and empties the tank.
I wash out the bottles, add a new packet of algae and resell the bottle.
This system minimizes my risk. It minimizes the investment of the person growing the oil. It provides an alternate income for local residents of fishermen etc. and since the storage and processing is done on land, it is very cheap. Since there isn't a time crunch on the processing I can construct my plant to work 24/7 and optimize the process.
A typical human (not infant but does include elderly) can easily stand extended 3G accelerations, breif (a few minutes) 5G acceleration, and very brief (seconds aka your delta a) 7G acceleration.
Say your SUV is 3 times a small car. You will not every get 7 G acceleration under anything approaching normal driving conditions.
This is not to say that you won't have injuries, sprains, wiplash etc, but you won't die.
As far as infants go, in properly installed car seats they can survive about as well as adults (hence the standards).
Head rests, air bags, seat belts crumple zones, roll over bars and many other safety feature make cars reasonably safe. It is really only under extreme circumstances like the saftey device is not used, used incorrectly, not maintained or you meet a Mack truck that serious injury and death occur in car accidents.
doesn't factor in cars hitting SUV/Trucks, ONLY cars getting hit (it is always true that people in vehicles hit from the side will always fair worse than people in the head on crash)
doesn't factor in modern safety features
doesn't factor in modern testing
The article you sited is from a decade ago and the latest vehicles are from 13+ years ago. In addition it didn't clearly state that they were only comparing vehicles with equivalent safety features.
Your article proves nothing more than that people put more miles on small cars than large cars.
When you standardize occupancy, mileage drive and safety features all the apparent differences drop away.
I maintain, if you drive a vehicle that passes current crash testing than you are essentially safe.
What is really surprising is that despite the common consensus, SUV's are NOT safer than small cars.
Even a tiny car vs. an SUV you are just as likely to walk away in the small car as the SUV.
Now, tiny car vs Mack truck, Mack truck wins everytime...Mack truck vs SUV and guess what, Mack truck wins every time.
It is true that you are more likely to TOTAL a small car but if it is safety you are after than ANYTHING that passes crash testing is more than safe for everyone but professional racers. Wear your seat belt, check your tires and breaks and DON'T cut people off with 36 inches to spare at 80+ MPH!
The SUV safety myth was created by marketing pure and simple.
It's a typo from the source they pulled it from NOT the actual deffinition. Look into the papers describing the deffinition and you will find it is just right.
Getting mad about a journalists typo seems like wasted effort to me.
Since the Fahrenheit degree is smaller than the Celsius degree you actually get more information when you say 32 deg F than 0 deg C.
Saying the temperature outside is 32 deg F means it is over 31.5 and below 32.5. Saying it is 0 deg C means it is over -0.5 and below 0.5. 31.5-32.5 is a smaller than -0.5-0.5 therefore Fahrenheit is more accurate for everyday use.
Personally I don't think that is a good enough reason and we in the US should switch but this is the internet man! What is there but calling people on things and proving it by inconsequentially splitting hairs!:-)
All you did was use the paper towel to wipe away the scent trail the ants were following.
Ant trails are created by scouts doing a random walk. When they find something tasty hey follow their own trail back to the nest and all the other ants follow that same trail and also strengthen it.
Occasionally an ant gets lost, starts a random walk and often run into the line again. If this new path is faster it will tend to displace the original line. Once the food is gone the ants will disperse where the food was and the return path will weaken and eventually go away.
By disrupting the path long enough you removed the scent and the colony reacted as is the food from that source was used up. Eventually another scout randomly found the food and started a new path.
I am very comfortable with computers running simple programs and always reacting the same way to stimuli.
When a computer can analyze itself and reprogram itself based on it's own interpretation THEN I will be worried.
I think we can both agree that the current electrical system will not cut it for much longer. We are currently a petroleum society and I hope we can move to an electrical one. The EV will probably cause major disruption but in the end will accelerate the trend.
At this point I think we can also agree that for some solar off as well as on-grid systems are not only economical but also practical. However most people would not benifit yet and in the end there will always be a need for centrally generated and distributed power.
I would like to point out that your strategies for managing power plants are already being used and it just barely make it right now. The hydro plants are what make it really possible since they can change fairly quickly. But the major problem is that the hydro potential of the US is pretty well tapped out. Only non-power plat load balancing will enable the current system to stay intact. The problem with non-power plant load balancing is that they are non-productive. They don't generate power they only add overhead to the system and we already established that the overhead of the whole system is the major problem with the current system.
Remember the whole issue is the disparity between baseline and peak.
Off grid house DO have the same issue with storage. The difference is that the inefficiencies come primarily from the inverter and these are already factored into the quoted price. Next the difference between the baseline and peak for residential systems are significantly more favorable. Finally residential systems don[t need to store nearly as much.
You are correct that people who want EV's to act like Gas vehicles they will just buy a gas one...until gas costs $12+ a gallon while an EV will cost an equivalent of $1 a gallon while at the same time EV's cost less because battery tech has improved. Once it becomes blatantly uneconomical for daily commuters to use gas people will expect the same function as their last car.
Now remember battery tech and solar tech has been increasing fast while the price is dropping even faster. Current projects suggest that a full off-grid system will cost 10-15K total in 10 years. or you can spend 8-12K and an extra 2000 a year just for a grid connect. The economics for residentials become very different. A 10% drop in on-grip people is not unreasonable in the next decade.
As for as power plants go I see a dramatic change from large centralized systems to regional systems. So you have a large power plant feeding factories that are very close by and those factories operate 24/365 (with electricity and maybe waste heat). Residential systems will be significantly smaller either on an individual basis or local community. The problem with cogen plants is that everything has to be extremely close to each other for an effective use.
Yes I know that residential is not all power. You also have commercial and municipal. Residential is less than 1/3 of total power consumption. But given that as a fact, if 10% of RESIDENTIAL consumers move to off grid solar (or wind etc) than many power companies will have to go bankrupt.
The reason is the 80% number. Most power plants can't spin up and spin down very easily. It can take 3+ days to spin up a nuclear power plant. Coal plants take 6-12 hours. Hydro is a bit better at about 1 hour. Now during the day most residential consumption is almost nil (you have fridges, a few lights and a little AC/heat). Commercial and municipal take a HUGE portion of the power. This is where the peak power from baseline comes from. However after closing the power used by commercial and municipal drops to almost nothing (yes a few business run 24 hrs a day but those are relatively rare and just add to the baseline number). At the same time residential spins up, people turn on TV's computers, AC/Heat goes on high, laundry gets done, lots of lights, dinner gets cooked etc.
Therefore "Baseline" is actually residential evening use plus a tiny bit of manufacturing. If 10% of the baseline goes away it now becomes uneconomical to run enough power plants to be able to supply peak usage since a lot of power plants will drop below 80%. This will demand a much higher rate (or a LOT of additional subsidies) to make it economical again.
If electric vehicles become standard part of it will be the demand for quick charges. The technology already exists for a 5 minute recharge but it requires essentially a direct high power line hookup or a slow charge. Most houses will have slow chargers but people will expect electrics to act like gasoline powered cars therefore with a 5 minute recharge people will "fuel" up while they are out and about during the day which will just increase the disparity between baseline and peak. The 10% off grid will probably also charge during the day...
Power plants release extra heat because it is useless. Look up Carnot efficiency. The amount of useful work in heat is directly related to the temperature difference between the heat source and heat sink. Power plants discharge the extra heat because it isn't useful.
While there are ways to store power, most of them are dramatically inefficient losing better than 50% of the availible power. While this may help some power plants on the edge of 80%, most will still not be able to make it because the economics no move from 80% active to 90% active to account for the loss in power during conversion.
The $30K car will have the same appointments as a $28K car. Power everything, AC, Cd player, leather seats, navigation system etc. Going to a plugin hybrid is a 2K preimuim (6-7%). The system COULD be put in cheaper cars however there are fixed costs (yes the batteries) that make it less (not un-) economical. Plus the current market for these cars tend to be people who want 25-30K+ cars rather than cheaper cars. It is primarily a marketing decision rather than an economic one.
Now since electrics take 2 cents a mile to operate while gasoline powered cars are up around 50 cents a mile, that 2 grand pays itself off quickly. Even hybrids with the double systems only cost 20-30 cents to operate.
People shifting over to grid connected solar or even disconnecting would allow them to not have to add new capacity and use their existing(cheap) sources as a larger proportion of their power. The only reason they'd have to start raising prices if they started getting so many of them that the losses in revenue exceeded growth of new power users and started cutting into money available for grid maintenance. The major issue with the power industry is the incredibly high fixed costs. This is why power companies grow to be so large. It is essentially uneconomical to be smaller. For instance, Hydro has no fuel costs therefore so long as demand doesn't exceed the input into the lake (which limits the power production availible) it essentially costs the same number of dollars to serve one customer as it does to serve one million. Nuclear power is much the same. The cost of uranium is less than a percent of the total cost of the power making nuclear plants independent of fuel costs and therefore 90+% of the expenses are fixed. Even coal is less than 20% from the cost of the fuel itself. I remember seeing a number from a coal website that stated powerplants are uneconomical if operated below 80% of capacity. This is why load leveling is so huge in the power industry.
If even 10% of residential users produced their own power you would see a huge portion (30-50%) of power companies go bankrupt.
The typical off-grid solar system includes 3 days of power storage. The price quoted alwyas has included this.
You can typically get a 4.5-5 KW system which is sufficient for 100% of most peoples usage given that you have solar water heater and are reasonably conservative with your power consumption (using CFL, turing off lights, not going over board on AC and having a well insulated house etc). This is especially true for me as I have a solar insulation of about 5.5. Therefore a 5 KW system will generate about 850 KWH a month. I use 1000 and have an electric water heater right now. Driving 5000 miles a month between my wife and myself would roughly double the consumption. Therefore a 12 KW system would cover everything. (However I plan on moving in about 2 years to a place where we don't need to drive as much.)
Going above 5KW will typically mean acustom designed system. However the larger you get the better you can optimize it and you typically get better buy for money.
The general rule of thumb for an New off-grid system installed is $8 a watt for systems 4 KW and larger. This includes inverters, power monitors, 3 days of battery backup, specialty wiring, dedicated breaker box and of course the solar panels and mounting.
For me personally, I am probably going to go with used solar panels to start with. The price is significantly less (sometimes 50%) and the efficiency is typically 90% or better of the original rating. I am going to do this for two reasons. First is price. Second is power growth. As my need for power grows I can replace the worst panels with brand new ones at a higher efficiency. This would allow me to slightly increase my power production without doing a major overhaul or expansion of the system. I can cut down the price of the initial system to about $6 a watt or less. This is all assuming that there will not be a major improvement in solar or battery efficiency or cost in the next 5 years. However I will acknowledge that I would make some cencessions. For instance I probably would not buy a system large enough to cover all my needs in the worst part of winter. Therefore I would use a small generator as backup deuring December/January as needed. But we are only talking about maybe 20-30 gallons of gasoline to make up the difference for the year.
As for the batteries in the EV, of course I am not counting thoes. Just like I don't count the cost of the engine block in my current car. An electric car is just a room on wheels without the batteries. The cost of thoes batteries are worked into the price. There are several plugin hybrid models that are coming out in the next year for under $30K.
I don't have the link for prices but they aren't hard to find. I just did a google search.
One of the largest obstacles to wide spread adoption is that most people only ive in a house for 3-5 years. Therefore the 7-15 year payback is a bit more than most people are willing to wait for. Once the payback drops to 3-5 years (about $10,000 at todays power prices) by decreasing cost of solar and increasing cost of conventional power, many people will start shifting over. This of course will strain the electric companies making them raise prices (or shift to cheaper sources like, at that point, solar).
My wife and I commute a total of 220 miles every work day (in opposite directions of course)!
After my last message I ran the numbers again. I would need a 10Kw system to provide 100% of my electricity uses including replacing the mileage currently fueled with gas at a conversion of 0.25 KWH/mile (what most electric sedans get). Assuming roof space is not a limit (actually a reasonable assumption) I could purchase that system for $50,000. If space really isn't a limit I could do it for 25,000 in two years (with nanosolar's solar cells which are availible now but won't be common until then). This is of course assuming no advancement in the state of the art which as this article shows is NOT a reasonable assumption.
Therefore, at 5% it would take about 6.5 years. When I was looking around I noticed that most NJ systems are break even in 7 years and NY systems are break even in 10. NJ and NY are not exactly the best locations for solar but even there these systems have a substantial return on investment.
For instance, a solar system (PV and solar thermal water heater) to completely off-grid replace my power usage would cost about 35,000 and cost a few hundred a year in upkeep (replacing batteries etc.)
I have a septic system and it cost about 3000.
I looked up water wells and it would cost about 10,000 for a 500 foot well plus pump and well-tank.
Therefore to completely disconnect my electric house from external services (except for communication like internet, cable etc) it would cost me about $50,000 (35K electric, 10K water and 5K for septic and miscellaneous). Now if I wanted to power an electric car (when I buy one) it would cost an additional 10-15K in PV.
So for 60,000 and about 500 a year in upkeep, I can avoid a monthly bill of $50 for water + sewer, 100 for electric and 750 (yeah I know) in gas, $900. At a cost of capital of 5% (which I think is a little low) I would completely pay off the whole thing in 78.26 months or 6.5 years. A person who drives a normal distance would pay it off in 10-15 years assuming the price of power and gas stays exactly the same (even with inflation AND resource shortages).
Therefore, building "off-grid" will add about 50% of a very cheap 100K house. A 200K house would cost a little bit more but not double. As I mentioned in a prior message (under a different thread) I plan to move toward off-grid living in about 3 years. I will start with a 5K solar thermal water heater. Than a on-grid solar power system. Then an off-grid system. Somewhere along the line I will purchase a pure electric or (more likely) a plug in hybrid. I will probably keep city water because it is cheap and very reliable. At that point I will be completely off grid/off gas. I anticipate spending about 45k (plus a car when I need one). I will save my investment in under 4 years.
Plus it looks like the price of PV and batteries will be significantly less in 4 years when I buy them.
I think generally we agree. I don't beleive solar is the end all and be all either.
Personally I think solar should be installed on "wasted" space like residential rooves, parking decks etc (Especially since this will help reduce AC usage by absorbing some light heating your roof). Since solar tends to follow usage trends, this provides an excellent peak load production and will likley prevent most brownouts. In addition it allows for better efficiency of power plants since fewer plants can be run at full power and used to supply base-load rather than have extra capacity to spin up/spin down for peak. There is also another plus. Having distributed power generation (even if it is just during the day) will help prevent catastopic loss incase of an accident at one of the plants.
As far as coal goes, it is by far the best fossil fuel for power generation. It is relativly clean (or can be cleaned easily), it is abundant and it is easy to store. However it is not a long term source. Reagan stated that we had 250 years of reserves. We now have 120-133 years of reserves. At the same time, the carbon emissions are a real problem. Even with CO2 sequestering we are still pulling O2 out of the atmosphere.
A real solution is nuclear (beleive it or not Uranium can be considered a renewable resource from ocean water and the nasty nuclear waste can be destroyed with neutron bombardment pretty quickly). Uranium with breeder reactors and fuel re-processing, thorium reactors, an assortment of other alternative power sources (wind, hydro, solar, tidal etc) together can easily replace all fossil fuels. Battery tech is actually getting close to good enough to replace most automotive fuel usage. Since many people use more than 50% of the power just moving around, going to electric vehicles will provide one of the biggest savings we could imagine.
In the end, conservation is very smart (solar water heaters are some of the best examples) but production is the real issue.
I was talking about Germany. Our coal reserves are still fairly well stocked. I don't have the link on me but I think I read about the dropping solar subsidies on CNN.
Direct subsidies are fairly low for coal in the US but if you look at the whole extraction, production and distribution system the subsidies add up. Remember there are two types of subsidies...direct financial and legal considerations/protections which also has a financial calculation
The coal mines are subsidized through legal protections and bail outs. Several of these were mentioned in the news recently (last year).
The power plants themselves are protected from the regional environmental damage that directly hurts those around them (for instance acid rain and radiation exposure). Coal power plants also typically get preferential treatment from the government for loans not to mention local communities often bend over backwards to attract them.
Distribution power lines have a right of way over most property. A power company can put up power lines on your property and you can't refuse and you aren't compensated.
Solar cell production does not have a similar level of protections. The mining necessary doesn't have any special protections like coal mining does. Purification of the materials does not necessarily produce pollution and certainly doesn't release radiation. Even if the facility does produce pollution it is subject to EPA laws that coal plants are partially shielded from. Finally, after instillation solar produces no emissions at all and the current battery tech is non-toxic and completely recyclable. There are no ongoing subsidies
Solar has a one time upfront subsidy of $2000 on a $35,000 system. Coal requires ongoing subsidies in the form of legal protections or they will be sued out of existence almost immediately.
Very true, and those subsidies are dropping fast yet the rate of solar production is increasing dramatically.
It is also worthy to note that traditional power sources are also heavily subsidized both directly and indirectly. The coal industry in Germany is almost dead production wise but is maintained almost entierly on government subsidies and legal protections.
Slashdot Mirror
Autoclave it.
I have worked with eColi phages and while they can be pretty hardy, you could get essentially all of them if you cook the biomass first.
Plus as we have mentioned many times, eColi don't do very well outside of the gut therefore you are going to have (relatively) little external eColi contamination.
As I recall, while phages kill off eColi, there is a percentage that become "immune" to the phage.
This will only be a real issue if you decide to reuse your cultures. If instead you do one-use cultures, you will avoid contaminating your pure culture. Since this mutation is unfavorable, the eColi would likely evolve away from it spontaneously unless you did this anyway.
More than phages, there is the question of general contamination. eColi is unlikely to be the strongest competitor in the vat unless you kill everything else off first.
Autoclaving here we come!
Or...
You don't bother to process on the boat. If it were me I would open a processing plant:
Regardless of the quality of the algae output there is going to be SOME processing. So I would build a plant near the water front.
I would prep bottle kits. Say a bottle and a package of Algae with directions.
I would then sell these to whoever wanted them.
The buyer would fill it up with wastestock and leave it in the sun (assuming the sun is necessary which the article didn't specify). This could be floating in the ocean or on rooves or in kitchens for kitchen garbage.
When the buyer was ready I would buy back the bottles based on the quality of the contents.
I then process it at my leisure (the bottles have been filled for months, a few more days won't make a difference).
I store the oil produced in my large (cheap) tanks on land.
Every few weeks a tanker comes by and empties the tank.
I wash out the bottles, add a new packet of algae and resell the bottle.
This system minimizes my risk. It minimizes the investment of the person growing the oil. It provides an alternate income for local residents of fishermen etc. and since the storage and processing is done on land, it is very cheap. Since there isn't a time crunch on the processing I can construct my plant to work 24/7 and optimize the process.
How imperfect is the snooped data?
Just because you COULD get data out doesn't mean it is actually usefull to do so.
A typical human (not infant but does include elderly) can easily stand extended 3G accelerations, breif (a few minutes) 5G acceleration, and very brief (seconds aka your delta a) 7G acceleration.
Say your SUV is 3 times a small car. You will not every get 7 G acceleration under anything approaching normal driving conditions.
This is not to say that you won't have injuries, sprains, wiplash etc, but you won't die.
As far as infants go, in properly installed car seats they can survive about as well as adults (hence the standards).
Head rests, air bags, seat belts crumple zones, roll over bars and many other safety feature make cars reasonably safe. It is really only under extreme circumstances like the saftey device is not used, used incorrectly, not maintained or you meet a Mack truck that serious injury and death occur in car accidents.
I noticed your source:
doesn't factor in miles driven
doesn't factor in occupancy rates
doesn't factor in cars hitting SUV/Trucks, ONLY cars getting hit (it is always true that people in vehicles hit from the side will always fair worse than people in the head on crash)
doesn't factor in modern safety features
doesn't factor in modern testing
The article you sited is from a decade ago and the latest vehicles are from 13+ years ago. In addition it didn't clearly state that they were only comparing vehicles with equivalent safety features.
Your article proves nothing more than that people put more miles on small cars than large cars.
When you standardize occupancy, mileage drive and safety features all the apparent differences drop away.
I maintain, if you drive a vehicle that passes current crash testing than you are essentially safe.
What is really surprising is that despite the common consensus, SUV's are NOT safer than small cars.
Even a tiny car vs. an SUV you are just as likely to walk away in the small car as the SUV.
Now, tiny car vs Mack truck, Mack truck wins everytime...Mack truck vs SUV and guess what, Mack truck wins every time.
It is true that you are more likely to TOTAL a small car but if it is safety you are after than ANYTHING that passes crash testing is more than safe for everyone but professional racers. Wear your seat belt, check your tires and breaks and DON'T cut people off with 36 inches to spare at 80+ MPH!
The SUV safety myth was created by marketing pure and simple.
It's a typo from the source they pulled it from NOT the actual deffinition. Look into the papers describing the deffinition and you will find it is just right.
Getting mad about a journalists typo seems like wasted effort to me.
That is a typo...
It's suppose to be in orbit around IT'S sun.
In other words, an object that has been ejected from a solar system is NOT a planet.
Then please explain exactly how they work.
I am very interested.
Finer integral measurements.
:-)
Since the Fahrenheit degree is smaller than the Celsius degree you actually get more information when you say 32 deg F than 0 deg C.
Saying the temperature outside is 32 deg F means it is over 31.5 and below 32.5. Saying it is 0 deg C means it is over -0.5 and below 0.5. 31.5-32.5 is a smaller than -0.5-0.5 therefore Fahrenheit is more accurate for everyday use.
Personally I don't think that is a good enough reason and we in the US should switch but this is the internet man! What is there but calling people on things and proving it by inconsequentially splitting hairs!
A more important near term result would be a cheap Bussard Polywell fusion system.
A high temperature superconductor that is resistant to high magnetic fields would allow significant efficiency gains and eventually miniaturization.
Who knows in 40 years every new home might have it's own fusion reactor in the basement because of this material.
A Window!
All you did was use the paper towel to wipe away the scent trail the ants were following.
Ant trails are created by scouts doing a random walk. When they find something tasty hey follow their own trail back to the nest and all the other ants follow that same trail and also strengthen it.
Occasionally an ant gets lost, starts a random walk and often run into the line again. If this new path is faster it will tend to displace the original line. Once the food is gone the ants will disperse where the food was and the return path will weaken and eventually go away.
By disrupting the path long enough you removed the scent and the colony reacted as is the food from that source was used up. Eventually another scout randomly found the food and started a new path.
I am very comfortable with computers running simple programs and always reacting the same way to stimuli.
When a computer can analyze itself and reprogram itself based on it's own interpretation THEN I will be worried.
This has been a fun debate.
I think we can both agree that the current electrical system will not cut it for much longer. We are currently a petroleum society and I hope we can move to an electrical one. The EV will probably cause major disruption but in the end will accelerate the trend.
At this point I think we can also agree that for some solar off as well as on-grid systems are not only economical but also practical. However most people would not benifit yet and in the end there will always be a need for centrally generated and distributed power.
See ya in a different thread!
I would like to point out that your strategies for managing power plants are already being used and it just barely make it right now. The hydro plants are what make it really possible since they can change fairly quickly. But the major problem is that the hydro potential of the US is pretty well tapped out. Only non-power plat load balancing will enable the current system to stay intact. The problem with non-power plant load balancing is that they are non-productive. They don't generate power they only add overhead to the system and we already established that the overhead of the whole system is the major problem with the current system.
Remember the whole issue is the disparity between baseline and peak.
Off grid house DO have the same issue with storage. The difference is that the inefficiencies come primarily from the inverter and these are already factored into the quoted price. Next the difference between the baseline and peak for residential systems are significantly more favorable. Finally residential systems don[t need to store nearly as much.
You are correct that people who want EV's to act like Gas vehicles they will just buy a gas one...until gas costs $12+ a gallon while an EV will cost an equivalent of $1 a gallon while at the same time EV's cost less because battery tech has improved. Once it becomes blatantly uneconomical for daily commuters to use gas people will expect the same function as their last car.
Now remember battery tech and solar tech has been increasing fast while the price is dropping even faster. Current projects suggest that a full off-grid system will cost 10-15K total in 10 years. or you can spend 8-12K and an extra 2000 a year just for a grid connect. The economics for residentials become very different. A 10% drop in on-grip people is not unreasonable in the next decade.
As for as power plants go I see a dramatic change from large centralized systems to regional systems. So you have a large power plant feeding factories that are very close by and those factories operate 24/365 (with electricity and maybe waste heat). Residential systems will be significantly smaller either on an individual basis or local community. The problem with cogen plants is that everything has to be extremely close to each other for an effective use.
Yes I know that residential is not all power. You also have commercial and municipal. Residential is less than 1/3 of total power consumption. But given that as a fact, if 10% of RESIDENTIAL consumers move to off grid solar (or wind etc) than many power companies will have to go bankrupt.
The reason is the 80% number. Most power plants can't spin up and spin down very easily. It can take 3+ days to spin up a nuclear power plant. Coal plants take 6-12 hours. Hydro is a bit better at about 1 hour. Now during the day most residential consumption is almost nil (you have fridges, a few lights and a little AC/heat). Commercial and municipal take a HUGE portion of the power. This is where the peak power from baseline comes from. However after closing the power used by commercial and municipal drops to almost nothing (yes a few business run 24 hrs a day but those are relatively rare and just add to the baseline number). At the same time residential spins up, people turn on TV's computers, AC/Heat goes on high, laundry gets done, lots of lights, dinner gets cooked etc.
Therefore "Baseline" is actually residential evening use plus a tiny bit of manufacturing. If 10% of the baseline goes away it now becomes uneconomical to run enough power plants to be able to supply peak usage since a lot of power plants will drop below 80%. This will demand a much higher rate (or a LOT of additional subsidies) to make it economical again.
If electric vehicles become standard part of it will be the demand for quick charges. The technology already exists for a 5 minute recharge but it requires essentially a direct high power line hookup or a slow charge. Most houses will have slow chargers but people will expect electrics to act like gasoline powered cars therefore with a 5 minute recharge people will "fuel" up while they are out and about during the day which will just increase the disparity between baseline and peak. The 10% off grid will probably also charge during the day...
Power plants release extra heat because it is useless. Look up Carnot efficiency. The amount of useful work in heat is directly related to the temperature difference between the heat source and heat sink. Power plants discharge the extra heat because it isn't useful.
While there are ways to store power, most of them are dramatically inefficient losing better than 50% of the availible power. While this may help some power plants on the edge of 80%, most will still not be able to make it because the economics no move from 80% active to 90% active to account for the loss in power during conversion.
Now since electrics take 2 cents a mile to operate while gasoline powered cars are up around 50 cents a mile, that 2 grand pays itself off quickly. Even hybrids with the double systems only cost 20-30 cents to operate. People shifting over to grid connected solar or even disconnecting would allow them to not have to add new capacity and use their existing(cheap) sources as a larger proportion of their power. The only reason they'd have to start raising prices if they started getting so many of them that the losses in revenue exceeded growth of new power users and started cutting into money available for grid maintenance. The major issue with the power industry is the incredibly high fixed costs. This is why power companies grow to be so large. It is essentially uneconomical to be smaller. For instance, Hydro has no fuel costs therefore so long as demand doesn't exceed the input into the lake (which limits the power production availible) it essentially costs the same number of dollars to serve one customer as it does to serve one million. Nuclear power is much the same. The cost of uranium is less than a percent of the total cost of the power making nuclear plants independent of fuel costs and therefore 90+% of the expenses are fixed. Even coal is less than 20% from the cost of the fuel itself. I remember seeing a number from a coal website that stated powerplants are uneconomical if operated below 80% of capacity. This is why load leveling is so huge in the power industry.
If even 10% of residential users produced their own power you would see a huge portion (30-50%) of power companies go bankrupt.
The typical off-grid solar system includes 3 days of power storage. The price quoted alwyas has included this.
You can typically get a 4.5-5 KW system which is sufficient for 100% of most peoples usage given that you have solar water heater and are reasonably conservative with your power consumption (using CFL, turing off lights, not going over board on AC and having a well insulated house etc). This is especially true for me as I have a solar insulation of about 5.5. Therefore a 5 KW system will generate about 850 KWH a month. I use 1000 and have an electric water heater right now. Driving 5000 miles a month between my wife and myself would roughly double the consumption. Therefore a 12 KW system would cover everything. (However I plan on moving in about 2 years to a place where we don't need to drive as much.)
Going above 5KW will typically mean acustom designed system. However the larger you get the better you can optimize it and you typically get better buy for money.
The general rule of thumb for an New off-grid system installed is $8 a watt for systems 4 KW and larger. This includes inverters, power monitors, 3 days of battery backup, specialty wiring, dedicated breaker box and of course the solar panels and mounting.
For me personally, I am probably going to go with used solar panels to start with. The price is significantly less (sometimes 50%) and the efficiency is typically 90% or better of the original rating. I am going to do this for two reasons. First is price. Second is power growth. As my need for power grows I can replace the worst panels with brand new ones at a higher efficiency. This would allow me to slightly increase my power production without doing a major overhaul or expansion of the system. I can cut down the price of the initial system to about $6 a watt or less. This is all assuming that there will not be a major improvement in solar or battery efficiency or cost in the next 5 years. However I will acknowledge that I would make some cencessions. For instance I probably would not buy a system large enough to cover all my needs in the worst part of winter. Therefore I would use a small generator as backup deuring December/January as needed. But we are only talking about maybe 20-30 gallons of gasoline to make up the difference for the year.
As for the batteries in the EV, of course I am not counting thoes. Just like I don't count the cost of the engine block in my current car. An electric car is just a room on wheels without the batteries. The cost of thoes batteries are worked into the price. There are several plugin hybrid models that are coming out in the next year for under $30K.
I don't have the link for prices but they aren't hard to find. I just did a google search.
One of the largest obstacles to wide spread adoption is that most people only ive in a house for 3-5 years. Therefore the 7-15 year payback is a bit more than most people are willing to wait for. Once the payback drops to 3-5 years (about $10,000 at todays power prices) by decreasing cost of solar and increasing cost of conventional power, many people will start shifting over. This of course will strain the electric companies making them raise prices (or shift to cheaper sources like, at that point, solar).
My wife and I commute a total of 220 miles every work day (in opposite directions of course)!
After my last message I ran the numbers again. I would need a 10Kw system to provide 100% of my electricity uses including replacing the mileage currently fueled with gas at a conversion of 0.25 KWH/mile (what most electric sedans get). Assuming roof space is not a limit (actually a reasonable assumption) I could purchase that system for $50,000. If space really isn't a limit I could do it for 25,000 in two years (with nanosolar's solar cells which are availible now but won't be common until then). This is of course assuming no advancement in the state of the art which as this article shows is NOT a reasonable assumption.
Therefore, at 5% it would take about 6.5 years. When I was looking around I noticed that most NJ systems are break even in 7 years and NY systems are break even in 10. NJ and NY are not exactly the best locations for solar but even there these systems have a substantial return on investment.
Can you please site your source for the $ value?
For instance, a solar system (PV and solar thermal water heater) to completely off-grid replace my power usage would cost about 35,000 and cost a few hundred a year in upkeep (replacing batteries etc.)
I have a septic system and it cost about 3000.
I looked up water wells and it would cost about 10,000 for a 500 foot well plus pump and well-tank.
Therefore to completely disconnect my electric house from external services (except for communication like internet, cable etc) it would cost me about $50,000 (35K electric, 10K water and 5K for septic and miscellaneous). Now if I wanted to power an electric car (when I buy one) it would cost an additional 10-15K in PV.
So for 60,000 and about 500 a year in upkeep, I can avoid a monthly bill of $50 for water + sewer, 100 for electric and 750 (yeah I know) in gas, $900. At a cost of capital of 5% (which I think is a little low) I would completely pay off the whole thing in 78.26 months or 6.5 years. A person who drives a normal distance would pay it off in 10-15 years assuming the price of power and gas stays exactly the same (even with inflation AND resource shortages).
Therefore, building "off-grid" will add about 50% of a very cheap 100K house. A 200K house would cost a little bit more but not double. As I mentioned in a prior message (under a different thread) I plan to move toward off-grid living in about 3 years. I will start with a 5K solar thermal water heater. Than a on-grid solar power system. Then an off-grid system. Somewhere along the line I will purchase a pure electric or (more likely) a plug in hybrid. I will probably keep city water because it is cheap and very reliable. At that point I will be completely off grid/off gas. I anticipate spending about 45k (plus a car when I need one). I will save my investment in under 4 years.
Plus it looks like the price of PV and batteries will be significantly less in 4 years when I buy them.
btw, the .42 cents is only in Germany. I was talking about US subsidies. Every contry is different.
I think generally we agree. I don't beleive solar is the end all and be all either.
Personally I think solar should be installed on "wasted" space like residential rooves, parking decks etc (Especially since this will help reduce AC usage by absorbing some light heating your roof). Since solar tends to follow usage trends, this provides an excellent peak load production and will likley prevent most brownouts. In addition it allows for better efficiency of power plants since fewer plants can be run at full power and used to supply base-load rather than have extra capacity to spin up/spin down for peak. There is also another plus. Having distributed power generation (even if it is just during the day) will help prevent catastopic loss incase of an accident at one of the plants.
As far as coal goes, it is by far the best fossil fuel for power generation. It is relativly clean (or can be cleaned easily), it is abundant and it is easy to store. However it is not a long term source. Reagan stated that we had 250 years of reserves. We now have 120-133 years of reserves. At the same time, the carbon emissions are a real problem. Even with CO2 sequestering we are still pulling O2 out of the atmosphere.
A real solution is nuclear (beleive it or not Uranium can be considered a renewable resource from ocean water and the nasty nuclear waste can be destroyed with neutron bombardment pretty quickly). Uranium with breeder reactors and fuel re-processing, thorium reactors, an assortment of other alternative power sources (wind, hydro, solar, tidal etc) together can easily replace all fossil fuels. Battery tech is actually getting close to good enough to replace most automotive fuel usage. Since many people use more than 50% of the power just moving around, going to electric vehicles will provide one of the biggest savings we could imagine.
In the end, conservation is very smart (solar water heaters are some of the best examples) but production is the real issue.
If they have a big pristine snow bank for keeping the high scores...
I was talking about Germany. Our coal reserves are still fairly well stocked. I don't have the link on me but I think I read about the dropping solar subsidies on CNN.
Direct subsidies are fairly low for coal in the US but if you look at the whole extraction, production and distribution system the subsidies add up. Remember there are two types of subsidies...direct financial and legal considerations/protections which also has a financial calculation
The coal mines are subsidized through legal protections and bail outs. Several of these were mentioned in the news recently (last year).
The power plants themselves are protected from the regional environmental damage that directly hurts those around them (for instance acid rain and radiation exposure). Coal power plants also typically get preferential treatment from the government for loans not to mention local communities often bend over backwards to attract them.
Distribution power lines have a right of way over most property. A power company can put up power lines on your property and you can't refuse and you aren't compensated.
Solar cell production does not have a similar level of protections. The mining necessary doesn't have any special protections like coal mining does. Purification of the materials does not necessarily produce pollution and certainly doesn't release radiation. Even if the facility does produce pollution it is subject to EPA laws that coal plants are partially shielded from. Finally, after instillation solar produces no emissions at all and the current battery tech is non-toxic and completely recyclable. There are no ongoing subsidies
Solar has a one time upfront subsidy of $2000 on a $35,000 system. Coal requires ongoing subsidies in the form of legal protections or they will be sued out of existence almost immediately.
Very true, and those subsidies are dropping fast yet the rate of solar production is increasing dramatically.
It is also worthy to note that traditional power sources are also heavily subsidized both directly and indirectly. The coal industry in Germany is almost dead production wise but is maintained almost entierly on government subsidies and legal protections.