Electric cars? Has anybody done the math on electric cars? It's still physically impossible to store enough electricity in a light enough batter to get 300 to 400 miles between charges. And you still can't charge that kind of storage battery fast enough to equate the time it takes to fill up at the gas station.

Tesla Roadster. 245 miles per charge. And it is a sports car. Getting close to your 300 to 400 mile range. A full charge takes somewhat less than an hour.

The Tesla Model S (a family sedan) has a 300 mile range (maximum), with a 45 minute empty to full charge cycle.

Now. these two models are somewhat pricy. However, given economies of scale, the price should drop... a LOT.

What is this you said about impossible?

Honda Civic, about 30MPG, less than $20,000 new. After 100,000 miles at $3/gallon of gas--less than $30,000 for the life of the car. (plus oil changes, and maintenance)

Telsa? $101,500 (minus $7,500 tax credit), plus how many miles per kilowatt hour at 8 cents per kilowatt hour? How many miles before you have to replace the batteries? (plus maintenance)

Not the mention the power grid being at max already in places like California.

When gas reaches $24/gallon, these telsas will start to look apealing.

Guy,

Did you see my remark about economy of scale? And the electric grid everywhere, not just California, is going to have to be improved.

Edit: Besides, I was just refuting your statement that such cars did not exist, not seriously advocating everyone specifically get a Tesla (though I myself would love to have one).

You assume I own my home Guy. I do own property, just not a house at the moment.

but http://www.affordable-solar.com/asgpower-5040w-kyocera-solar-home.htm is one sample grid connect kit, including inverter.

Oh yes and prices are volatile. When tax rebates are approved (by state or country) prices go up. That old supply and demand thing.

5 kilowatts. $17,000. Doesn't say how long it can sustain 5KW. I can only assume 5KW-H.

Let's see....
-Space heater or window air conditioner - 1.5KW (a little over 3 hours use per day)
-Clothes dryer - 4.4 KW --- ooops, can't use that, or that's the only thing you can run for the day.
-Dish washer - 3.6KW --- same as clothes dryer, guess you could alternate days
-Electric stove, one element - 2KW, one family meal on the days you don't use the dish washer or clothes dryer....

Get my point?

Plus, not all electric companies will allow you to hook one of these up and allow your meter to run backwards a little bit.

You have no point. You do not run all those things 24/7. Dishwasher does have an energy saver mode. And when you are not running things excess energy gets sold back to the grid (usually at high usage rates). In our state the electric companies are forced to accept approved equipment hookups. This would qualify.
And if you need more, buy more.

For how long? As long as the sun shines.

Sorry but I have done the math for people too many times that have no desire to learn. I feel that is the case here. If I am wrong, do your own math, but bring a sharper pencil.

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Janice

I do not have time to go through all of this, but you are using about 20 year old techniques, and trying to store all the power locally. Large panels themselves run about 1.50 per watt. Batteries are eliminated by grid connection.
Other renewable forms of energy are incorporated. Wind is (I get so tired of saying this and having it dismissed) The cheapest form of power to add to the grid. This is just installing the additional MW of capacity, and the fueling is Zero. None, nada, zilch. Null.

Home solar is a great supplement. The math gets a touch trickier but it can pay off in 7-15 years depending on situation.

Something to ponder until I or someone else a bit less tired can respond further, a 100 mile square area (not 100 square miles, but 100 miles square)
of conventional photo voltaic (at about 5 year ago efficiency, it was about 22% then) would provide enough electricity to satisfy 100% of the USA's needs.

Okay. I will deal with the fallout when I get home.

So tell me, what home solar/wind/geothermal/hydro power system do you run, connected to your grid, at your house? Where'd you buy it? How much did it cost you?

10,000 square miles (100 miles x 100 miles), according to my calculations, and buying solar panels from the chinese at $200/6 square feet works out to about $1.76 billion dollars. Installation not included.

You dropped something, somewhere Guy.

I get about US$9,293,000,000,000. Again, installation and required infrastructure not included. Thats about 9.3 Trillion Dollars.

10,000 square miles * (5280 feet/mile)^2 * $200 / 6 square feet.

I am pretty sure you can get a bulk discount for installing 100 miles square of solar panels. Honestly, The thermo solar might be a much more cost effective way to go on such an installation. For homes, solar panel are the key.

And since my high end electric rates are over .29/kwh, ... things ccan pay off pretty quick.

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Janice

my math comes up with 1 watt while the sun shines to be over 3KWH per year.

Yes, your math is very much wrong.

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Janice

Wheee...

There's a few apples and oranges being thrown around. I could come in with a push-bike for comparison... One chocolate bar gets you about 20km...


More seriously:

Photovoltaics (solar electric cells) are not the best of the 'alternative' energy sources available at the moment. Using a solar collector for the hot side of a Stirling engine can give better efficiency returns. For direct solar electric generation, there's some good work being done to improve the efficiencies but there's a way to go yet.

There are a multitude of other 'alternative' energy sources that are effective depending on circumstances.


The big 'gotcha' is that for the present oil-gas-coal operations, the raw resource is priced for no cost, and the pollution is permitted at no cost. Add in the total environmental costs and you get a very different overall story.

Please take a look at the David Wasdell presentation. He was himself rather concerned for what he found, and he is certainly no Al Gore!


There's a lot more to the story than just 'CO2'. However, we have to start somewhere. Hopefully, we can save our planet for ourselves before the politics get too desperate...

Strangely, the greatest (medium term) tool to reduce man-made CO2 is (would be) to make good education freely available to all, worldwide, regardless of cultures... I just hope we have time and the political will to do that...


It's our only planet,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

that is to supply all of the electricity in the united states. And then some.

Approx oil import costs per YEAR 620,788,350,000, not including military spending. (source: CIA world fact book, current commodity prices/bbl 91.55)

Plus the labor to maintain all the fossil fuel power plants. Is ANY of this getting through??

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Janice

ML1: For a large installation, especially in a warm climate I would agree with the stirling engine. For a home rooftop to offset expenses, the photo voltaic are the best bet. Also when thought through and not just slapped on they can substitute instead of roof tiles instead of being mounted through them.

Windy areas: Wind turbines remain the cheapest. And over all the cheapest additional energy to add, PLUS no fuel expenses.

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Janice

Electric cars? Has anybody done the math on electric cars? It's still physically impossible to store enough electricity in a light enough batter to get 300 to 400 miles between charges. And you still can't charge that kind of storage battery fast enough to equate the time it takes to fill up at the gas station.

Tesla Roadster. 245 miles per charge. And it is a sports car. Getting close to your 300 to 400 mile range. A full charge takes somewhat less than an hour.

The Tesla Model S (a family sedan) has a 300 mile range (maximum), with a 45 minute empty to full charge cycle.

Now. these two models are somewhat pricy. However, given economies of scale, the price should drop... a LOT.

What is this you said about impossible?

I hate to say this, but if you really want a car that has a tested range of less than half that used by the manufacturers (when it was working), by all means, buy a Tesla Roadster. Personally, I find that a car that does over 400 miles on a full tank, far more useful - step forward, my 1989 Honda Legend 2.7 (since I've had the car for 15 years - my carbon footprint is also somewhat lower than a Tesla owner!). A better bet for the future is surely, something along the lines of the Honda FCX Clarity.

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Don't take life too seriously, as you'll never come out of it alive!

http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/specs

They have it limited in speed(until enthusiasts hack it) but 0-60 in 3.7seconds is not bad for this pocket rocket.

This is not made for an economy car. The luxury sedan should be out in a few months, at about 1/2 the price.

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Janice

ML1: For a large installation, especially in a warm climate I would agree with the stirling engine. For a home rooftop to offset expenses, the photo voltaic are the best bet. Also when thought through and not just slapped on they can substitute instead of roof tiles instead of being mounted through them.

Windy areas: Wind turbines remain the cheapest. And over all the cheapest additional energy to add, PLUS no fuel expenses.

Here in Texas, we had one 'oil man' to have seen reason in a big way. T. Boone Pickins. He proposed and financed a HUGE wind-farm out in west Texas. It would have been one of the world's largest. 4,000 MW. Enough to power 1 million homes.

It failed. Why? The danged Government wouldn't give him the required permits to build the transmission line to get the power from the farm to a city where it could be used. He has since fallen back to projects using natural gas.

While natural gas has a better carbon emission profile than oil or coal, it is still far from ideal. Wind would have been super.

And yes, solar-thermal power driving a heat engine is way more efficient than solar-photovoltaic cells. The thermal scheme is much better for larger generation plants. But the PV cells have their uses in the small scale.

But, under most circumstances, wind is better in windy areas. The wind frequently blows all day and night. Solar, obviously, only functions during daylight hours, and even then only for part of the day at maximum output.

so.. Several hundred wind turbines?

There are a lot of turbines across the country now. Of course in windy areas.

If someone has a few acres, they make some nice 5-40KW turbines. I did see a 15KW at a ranger station in fact.

They have a strange beauty to them. But personally I think they are designed wrong. I hope to play with that idea someday. I will need some room and to learn how to work with metal.

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Janice

Near us to the South there's a ton of Windmills---also in Salt Lake City headed out of the valley there's a line of them that is an awesome site.

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This thread has gone in about 500 different directions. I can't respond to it all.

Wind and solar will never meet baseload. Not to mention, wind and solar are built in China and wind requires the use of rare earth metals, something China is about to cut the rest of the world off from, unless you want to start mining it here which will drive the envirowhackos bats**t.

http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2009/08/wind-world-faces-hi-tech-crunch-as.html

http://seekingalpha.com/article/159155-chinese-rare-earth-rationing-shouldn-t-sink-wind-power-sector

Plus, you would need an area the size of California to power us fully on solar panels and wind. Not gonna happen. Not a chance. Burning sh*t from farm or Mcdonalds vegetable oil? Again, not a chance.

Focus on natural gas or coal which at least we have plenty of, or nuclear. France has reprocessed uranium and plutonium successfully for four decades and all of its waste from nuclear fits inside the space of 3 large high school gymnasiums. About 70% of their power comes from nuclear with very low co2 emissions if "that's your thing". But the tree huggers don't want nuclear, thanks to a piss-poor decision by Carter almost 40 years ago. What to do?

http://theweek.com/article/index/98230/Frances_nuclear_solution

Yea, let's just keep jumping on the "oil is bad" because it promotes terrorism bandwagon. A little clue. There's not enough oil in the world to satisfy all needs today because of lack of exploration and drilling and if we gave it all up, the rest of the world would suck it all up and continue to use it. Would you rather have it burned in a modern U.S. emissions controlled vehicle here or a 50 year old Russian LADA plowing through the streets of Cairo? Yes, Cairo, Egypt, where the locals replace brake pads every two months because local labor is less than cheap brake pads and where they drive at night without lights on to save the car's electrical system (facepalm). Would you rather have us run on a low priced fuel for our everyday needs and manufacturing or have the rest of the world run on it while we pick the most expensive way we possibly can to power ourselves, just so the Sierra Clubbers can feel good about themselves? We don't even have the distribution system to put a significant percentage of the population in electric vehicles today if we wanted, not to mention all the nasty chemicals created in manufacturing of batteries. It's gonna take a while folks. In the meantime, there's OIL, it's plentiful and we can get at it right here at home.

Seriously, get this fact through your heads:

We already can't compete in the global economy because of our expense.
There's no need to make us look worse on the balance sheet with more regulation, corporate taxes and job killing feel good gubment policy.

What more would you like to do to unilaterally hobble us economically whilst whining that more jobs are going overseas and the rest of the world looks out for itself? Have you heard about China locking up oil contracts around the world left and right while the EPA bureaucrats wear their tinfoil hats? How do you expect that to affect us 20 years from now when resources REALLY get scarce? You haven't seen anything yet.

Start getting a clue of the multitude of economic challenges we face and not just your idealogical "green is awesome at all cost" thought. Just look at the BRIC countries (our future competition) and get real. Start reading something a little more diverse than just Mother Jones, the Nation and High Times.

I get absolutely incensed at the cluelessness of the modern left.