Shale Production Has Reduced Energy Prices To Levels Where Saudi Arabia Can't Fund Its Welfare State

Townhall.com ^ | August 3, 2016 | Matt Vespa

[fireman15]

So I am not a total kool aid drinker. But I do believe that solar will likely achieve persuasive cost effectiveness, that will significantly impact energy markets (not so bullish on wind).

I am sorry to be hassling you two poor guys. My motive is actually more to get the two of you to look further into the details so you can see where the real advantages and disadvantages are. I myself am inspired to look further into a subject when I am involved in a slightly adversarial conversation than if we are all just cheerleading. Because of what you posted I have looked a little closer at the current pricing of components and have found that the prices actually have come down quite a bit on some items compared to the last time I purchased them.

I have been interested in solar power since I first saw those Bell Labs science pictures in grade school. You will know what I am talking about if you are baby boomers, but here is a link:

https://youtu.be/JBwZ6UT0mMI?list=PL_sjhEFSOGfBcUPywiy5l9jze20wxr7HQ

My favorite display at the Seattle Science Center was the one where you pedaled an exercise bicycle to light up light bulbs. The harder you pedaled the more light bulbs you lit up.

During my youth and into adulthood I built many projects using solar cells and also human powered devices. I have several different types of hand and pedal cranked generators, two built for military use and two completed projects built by hand. I have even been interested in homemade windmill projects for pumping water or powering permanent magnet generators.

My dad owns property near Mount Rainier where he has water rights to a small stream that comes down the hill. The top of his property is hundreds of feet above the lower portion. I have always wanted to place a small hydro powered generator there. Currently, impellors for that type of project are much less expensive than they used to be.

I have built up both electric and gasoline powered bicycles. We also purchased a 1938 Sun tandem bicycle with a 1938 Watsonian Sidecar. It has a very interesting but tragic history related to WWII.

I have a lot of experience riding motorcycles and I grew up with a 1958 Cushman Eagle with a sidecar that is still in the family. So I love all this stuff, I just haven't figured out how to make money using my experience and ingenuity yet.

Your posts did cause me to do more research on current component prices. As a retirement business I still envision custom building adult sized recumbent tricycles with fairings and solar cells to charge batteries for a rear hub motor. The Germans especially build impressive machines, but they are very expensive. I would like to build similar faired trikes built with more comfort, load capacity and safety in mind. I purchased a Rhodes Car 4 wheeled bicycle car which was heavy and slow, but I appreciated greatly its stability and handling.

[PeterPrinciple]

another way of looking at it is the earth quake is going to happen anyway, this makes it smaller and more stable................

[Ben Ficklin]

It doesn't have anything to do with drinking the kool aid. It has nothing to do with me "buying in" or "cheerleading".

It has to do with keeping up with the news and current events around the world.

There are a number of news indexes dealing with renewables plus the stand by of searching google news.

Plus the fact that Texas has a substantial amount of renewables and spent a sizable sum of money on transmission lines to transport that renewable power. Consequently, money from all over the US and the world is flowing into Texas to produce it and consume it. What we need now is the interstate High Voltage DC lines to export it into TVA territory

[fireman15]

The problem is that the news and current events are even more biased about “renewable” energy than they are on politics. While I do enjoy tinkering with this stuff a great deal, the large scale projects subsidized by the government have repeatedly proven to be pie and the sky failures based on false premises. The only thing that they do efficiently is funnel money into the pockets of political donors.

A good example are the claims that you cite that solar power can now be produced for 12 cents per kwh or less. What we are talking about is not comparable to energy produced by power plants or hydroelectric dams. It is just not true, not by a long shot. The only time the production costs approach 12 cents per kwh are on a clear day when the cells are receiving direct sunlight and all of the power can be used directly, and even that is a blatant exaggeration because the upfront costs are spread out over who knows how many decades and most likely assuming an unrealistic amount of sunny days, unrealistic maintenance costs, and the expectation that all of the generating capacity can be utilized. None of the assumptions made are realistic.

What happens at the times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing and how much efficiency is wasted trying to convert the DC voltage coming from solar panels into high voltage AC? Also if we are really talking about converting most of our energy production to renewables, how do you take into account the times that there would be excess generating capacity available? How do you figure that into the cost of production? Every article I have read hyping solar or wind power does not take any of this into account.

To get what I am saying think about it on the small scale. If you are like our friends and your batteries are fully charged and the sun is shining; it doesn’t make any difference how much power your solar panels are capable of producing... it is just wasted capacity. That is something that these articles never take into account.

You still have to have the gas or coal fired turbines for times when the sun is not shining and the wind isn’t blowing, because currently the grid has no storage capacity. I don’t care how good new batteries have gotten because there are no realistic plans to supplement the grid with a bunch of batteries. Gas and coal fired plants run most efficiently at full power. It is not as pronounced, but even my little back-up generators run most efficiently at their rated capacity. If you buy a generator that is much larger than you need, you are wasting a lot of gas compared to a smaller machine when you have only a small load connected to them.

So yes you are drinking the Kool-Aid, and you are cheerleading something that you do not seem to understand. It has been proven repeatedly that Google is a biased source of information. I am sure that there is a lot of money flowing into Texas for “renewable energy”, but it has a lot more to do with government subsidies for crony capitalists with friends in high places than actual energy production.

[Ben Ficklin]

You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinions are not facts.

So when I read an article about legislation to provide an income tax credit for home and small business batteries, that is not biased, even though I found the article on Google. Likewise, if a congressional committee appropriates more money for the national labs to research batteries, that is not biased. Or if Solar City gets a substantially larger credit line, that is not biased.

Yes there are subsidies, but there are a lot of different subsidies. It would appear that the nation would like to lower energy intensity and emissions, which seems very desirable.

It is happening all over the world and they are not seeking your approval.

Even Saudi Arabia recognizes that the fossil fuel age will eventually end and has a plan to transition.

[BeauBo]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

China has the biggest electric bike market on Earth, and has some good components at much lower prices than a Bosch for your project.

I have been thinking about strapping a kilowatt Bafang (8Fun) motor onto a bike (http://lunacycle.com/mid-drive-kits/), but I will play with the off the shelf ebike for a while first. You can strap a big 48v or 52v battery on it, and overdrive it way beyond 1,000 watts if you want to hot rod.

No plates, no license, no insurance.

There is an Australian company making expensive ebikes that can do 50 mph! (http://www.stealthelectricbikes.com/stealth-h-52-hurricane/) So much quieter than a BMX bike.

[usconservative]

North America's hydraulic frackers are cutting costs so fast that most can now produce at prices far below levels needed to fund the Saudi welfare state and its military machine, or to cover Opec budget deficits.

I wish I could find the post where I said months and months ago to NEVER bet against American ingenuity.

The battle for energy independence in this country has always been about innovating and wringing out the cost of producing our own energy to the point where we cause the Saudi's to collapse under their own weight.

And here we are.

God Bless America!

[Clay Moore]

” But when leftover drilling fluids and salt water from fracking operations or other types of oil and gas drilling are injected underground, that can trigger earthquakes. “

And we can thank the EPA for that. Why do we not use something along the line of a concrete sanitation plant evaporation pit to just evaporate it and pick up the solids later?

[fireman15]

I have been thinking about strapping a kilowatt Bafang (8Fun) motor onto a bike (http://lunacycle.com/mid-drive-kits/), but I will play with the off the shelf ebike for a while first.

I put a 750 watt “Golden” brand “brushless hub motor front wheel that I purchased through ebay on a “comfort” bike. The advantages over an off the shelf bike is that it used a motorcycle style accelerator grip and would do about 25mph on the flat without pedaling. I am not sure but I believe that most electric bikes that you can purchase are limited to about 15mph. It cost much less than an off the shelf bike.

I still have an electric scooter with a geared hub motor that has brushes. The scooter has a lower wattage motor but has much more torque than the bicycle did.

The controller for the brushless hub motor creates a rotating magnetic field that drags a bunch of permanent magnets mounted in the hub around with it. Unlike a motorcycle or car if you give it full throttle it actually does not give you as much torque and acceleration as when you advance the throttle so that the magnetic field is rotating just slightly faster than you are traveling. It takes a little getting used to. But the motors are efficient, and have a good top speed.

I am one of these people who take almost everything apart and the brushless motor is a simpler design than the geared hub motors. All it has in it are bearings stationary coils and rotating permanent magnets. I appreciate greatly the simplicity of the device. They can also be easily used as generators and controllers are available that use the hub motors for regenerative braking.

One has to be a little skeptical of the specifications on eBay, but you can still put together a bike that is much faster and more powerful than one you can buy, and cheaper also. It I not very difficult and complete kits are available. I would encourage you to put something together yourself... depending on how mechanically inclined you are.
Looking at the Golden Motors website, I can see that the motors looked refined since I purchased the kit that I installed. The hub motor kit that I purchased was a good quality item. If you look toward the bottom at the ebike DIY section you will see that they have an incredible amount of options for a reasonable price.

http://goldenmotor.com/

I don't know about the lunacycle kits you linked to. A hub motor based kit is much easier to install can be found to fit almost any bicycle. I also have put together a gasoline power bicycle which is what the lunacycle kits remind me of. It was more difficult to put together, and I had to find just the right bicycle to put it in. They simply will not work in any bike. But it was a kick in the pants. Mine was an 80cc two stroke bolted to inside of the frame and it was amazing to have impressive power on what was a basically a motorcycle that weighed only about 70 pounds. It had very little torque when starting out, but it would do about 40mph and when you hit the “power band” it was almost scary.

They used to have a bunch of forums devoted to both electric and gasoline powered bikes. There are lots of pictures and people willing to share what they have learned.

[fireman15]

You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinions are not facts.

What I have shared with you is largely based on personal experience. I have gotten my hands dirty and found out through experience that the reality does not match the hype. I have had a life long interest in alternative energy. My favorite book as a child was The Boy Electrician by Alfred P. Morgan. It had sections on building homemade electric motors and generators. It was originally published in 1913. Alfred P. Morgan was a pioneer in several areas and still one of my greatest heroes. He wrote an entire series of books that sparked the imagination of several generations of engineers and scientists. The book is now in the public domain. I am biased, but I still love looking through it.

http://www.tayloredge.com/museum/museum/TheBoyElectrician.pdf

It is true that at some point the world will transition away from fossil fuels. The problem is that nothing good comes from government manipulation by crony capitalists. There is too much hype out there based on faulty assumptions and wishful thinking. And that is my own opinion based on my own experience.

[BeauBo]

States vary on the max motor for an ebike (750W or 1,000W), but the max street speed is widely 20 mph.

With an LCD display, it is common that you can very easily reprogram the controller for “off-road” use - typically producing 24-28 mph (just change one setting). Almost nowhere in the States are speed limits enforced on ebikes like that operating on the street.

I have weak experience mechanically, but it was always something that I would have liked to get better at - because my father valued it, and had me tag along when he fixed things.

You point out that these simple electric motors have some advantages in efficiency and reliability (and almost no maintenance), but the gasoline engines pack the big punch (energy density in the fuel, total horsepower). As the batteries get better, electric will be competitive in more niches.

You might get around some of the recharging issues with electric vehicles, by using modular powerpacks that can be swapped out in a minute for a fully charged one. They are still not competitive with gasoline engines for range or cost though.

Battery technology is the long pole in the tent for electric vehicles - and they would change the equation for solar power systems as well. Many new battery technologies are coming out of the labs now, with a variety of improvements.

Graphene batteries will be a big jump in performance, and they are just starting to hit the market. They can make it possible for electric cars to have 500 mile ranges before recharging, and to recharge in minutes rather than hours. Also, you can get five times the power per pound of battery. They will be working their way into products over the next few years, but starting now.

Graphene cells for laptops have been unveiled this May. They will soon be bundled for ebikes (lots of current ebike batteries are bundles of standard laptop 18650 size LI-ion cells). I am actually planning to hold off until next summer to get a back up battery for my ebike, hoping for graphene options by then.

Lots of other new battery technologies have been demonstrated, that will be providing big cost/function improvements over the next 5-10 years.

[fireman15]

I hadn’t been looking lately; I took a look at one of the local ebike dealers in the Seattle area.

http://www.electricbikeseattle.com/collections/e-bikes

I am shocked by the prices. I am certain you could do it yourself, but if you live somewhere in the Northwest I would be glad to give you a hand installing a hub motor kit on a normal bicycle. It probably would save you a lot of expense.

I used the gas powered bike on local roads, but I knew that if the police saw me it would be a large ticket. They most likely never would have noticed the bike with the electric motor even if I had been traveling at a quick pace on the flat.

We also had a solar panel on our trailer which helped keep the two golf cart deep cycle batteries on it charged. It made more sense than on the camper van. The people here who probably have the most experience with alternative power and living off the grid are probably people who are RV’ers.

My interest is still in manufacturing faired trikes on a small scale with electric motor assist. Checking component prices and seeing the prices being charged for normal ebikes makes me feel more confident that this might actually be getting closer to being feasible.

[fireman15]

I just noticed that Seattle eBIkes is selling an electric assisted recumbent trike for $5595.

http://www.electricbikeseattle.com/products/ti-trike-t250-recumbent-ebike

I would like to produce a variant with a fairing that would provide additional visibility to other vehicles, shelter from the weather, streamlining and have some cargo carrying capability, a solar panel that would appeal to potential customers but keep the price in this same range. I think that it is getting close to being doable.

[exit82]

You need an Elio:

http://eliogenuine.eliomotors.com/?sctp=ppc&scvn=google&scsrc=google_search&sckw=elio%20motors&gclid=CjwKEAjwlZa9BRCw7cS66eTxlCkSJAC-ddmwLhX6vGgZ7jo0eo5KSOhXSKVGOJ5Fxmr50OCw3j9V8RoC1gHw_wcB

[King Moonracer]

They can eat thier damn oil.

[BeauBo]

I am afraid that I am far out of range for an assist on installation.

The best selling ebike in the US is Sondors - which delivers a nice 36v option for $500 (plus $193 shipping). That price point has been a winner so far. gosondors.com

E-bikes are very quiet, and you are visibly pedaling, so they fly under the radar pretty easy.

Good luck on your projects. Better stuff is coming out every year.

[RetiredArmy]

Mr. Skull and Bones was not a conservative. Just look up what the Skull and Bones is and what they do. One World Government. Daddy and Son Bush were both members of the Bones.

[RetiredArmy]

And if Obama gets his way, they will kill another 300,000 or 3 million. Whichever.

[fireman15]

The Elio reminds me of the three wheeled vehicles that were especially popular in Great Britain and elsewhere for decades after WWII. But it is probably more like a Goldwing Trike which is more comfortable and gets you out of the elements. By almost any measure it has more value than the electric trike that I posted. It is just that it is built with different goals and purposes. We are talking different animals with some crossover appeal. One is a high powered motorcycle/trike and the other is a bicycle/trike with supplemental electric power.

The Elio weighs 1200 pounds while a European faired trike such as the Dutch built Alleweder KV4 weighs less than 70 pounds, add 20 lbs for an electric motor and batteries, Then add 10 pounds of solar panels and you have a vehicle that weighs around 100 pounds that will take you 30 miles in an hour and then recharge itself while it is sitting in sunshine, or you can plug it in to recharge the batteries for a few pennies.

Is a small faired electric trike a good value? Probably not. Is it safe? About the same as a bicycle. Is it practical? Maybe in some situations. Is it fun? Depends on what you consider is fun. Is it marketable? How many global warmist Eco-Freaks are willing to pay good money for extreme bragging rights?