Posted on 04/03/2021 10:38:50 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
I am writing about energy supply modernization because it is thought more as an article of quasi-religious belief than as an actual process involving engineering.
Electric Car Recharging
Subject to sufficient supplies of lithium for batteries and copper and rare earth metals for electric motors, electric cars have a great technical future. However, changing technology can result in changing job opportunities since vehicle-making jobs might forcibly be relocated by governments to countries that supply the essential raw materials. Vehicle manufacturers should endeavor to build multi-year crucial raw material stockpiles.
An electric car might go about 280 miles on 70kwh of battery charge, for a mileage of four miles per kwh.
Most workers work daylight hours, which is the time the sun shines. This generally means recharging their electric cars at work if solar electricity is to be used for recharging.
According to amazon.com, a Weize "100 Watt" 12-volt monocrystalline solar panel has a maximum power of 100 watts, a maximum power voltage of 18.78 volts and a maximum power current of 5.32 amps. Its size is 36.4x26.8x1.3 inches and its weight is 15.8 pounds. It sells for about $90 each in packages of two.
A typical winter day might give roughly .3 kwh of power over six hours and 50% typical effectiveness per cell. At 20 miles per typical commute, about 5kwh of power would be needed for the commute. This means about 16 "100 Watt" solar panels per employee car, or about 100 square feet of solar panels, on average. The cost for the solar cells would be about $1500 per worker car, which might be tripled for their necessary infrastructure.
Solar cells might be mounted on top of parking lot carports, on solar panel 'leaf' 'trees', or if sufficient land is available, in solar cell hardscaped gardens.
Parking lot/car-based means might be provided so that the most needy cars get first dibs on the available recharging electricity. We would not want a worker with a 30-mile commute to have only 14 miles worth of charge in her car batteries at quitting time.
Retired people would charge their electric cars at home or use the chargers of store parking lots.
As for electric car long-distance travel, recharging probably will take place during meal breaks. An electric car range of 280 miles and an Interstate highway speed limit of 70 miles per hour means a meal break about every four hours. While chowing down, your car would charge up. The highway exit restaurants would have car recharging stations and would probably prominently post their current electric recharge rate, which would vary considerably by time of day, hopefully subject to state laws that base customer costs to the rate 10 seconds before plug-in time. Highway-based recharging places might have battery storage to store electricity during daylight slack demand times for sale at premium prices when sun isn't shining brightly. Recharging establishments might buy solar-generated electricity off a nearby solar panel energy farmer.
Fast chargers are currently expensive, but they are mainly needed at stores and highway recharging stops.
Solar-Powered Houses
The electric demand of my Florida home varies greatly and quite often is substantial even when the Florida sun isn't shining. Furthermore, my electric system is alternating current based and uses both 120 and 240 voltages. Solar cells generate direct current which needs to be converted to alternating current for home motor operation.
As a cheapskate retired engineer, I would very much like to cut off Florida Power & Light from my checking account. Unfortunately for me, I'm not able to give FPL the boot at this time.
In my Florida home I use electricity to power lights, a refrigerator, a stove, a water heater, a well water system, various plug-in devices including a washer and dryer, and an air conditioner/resistance heating system.
The lights[~100 watts steady], the well water system, and excluding the dryer, the plug-in devices [toaster oven:1500 watts for 2 hours max/day; computer:65 watts, often on; microwave:1100 watts, short bursts] use very little power. As a result, any AC/DC conversion losses can readily be tolerated. Their battery back-up operation is quite feasible and probably required because their power usage is mainly in the evenings/early mornings.
A refrigerator uses somewhat more power, about 1kwh to 2kwh on a daily basis by government label estimates. The greatest power usage is around dinner time and breakfast time and is fairly low at night.
A refrigerator has the advantage that its electric power needs don't ordinarily have to be satisfied instantly. With a solar power-friendly "smart" thermostat, which I have not seen marketed, a refrigerator could wait until solar panels can generate electricity in the morning to compensate for a breakfast time temperature rise and in the afternoon a refrigerator could be run to a somewhat colder than usual temperature to compensate for expected dinnertime use.
A typical oven bake element[~3000 watts, intermittent after multi-minute warm up], range top burner[up to 1500/2400/3000 watts, short-term], water heater[4500 watts typical, intermittent to 40 minutes continuous], clothes dryer[~4000 watts, up to 60 minutes], air conditioner/heat pump[3200-7000 watts, intermittent] and resistance heating system[5000-15000 watts, intermittent] all require lots of power when in operation. These all typically run on 240-volt alternating current electricity.
To avoid having to rely on "the grid" and its electricity, which can be expected to be made unduly expensive by ill-thought out meddling by some really dumb politicians, the house's thermostats ought to be made smarter, giving descending priority to the range burners, oven, water heater, clothes dryer and home-based car recharging. The thermostats could also allow the water heater/air conditioner/heat pump to overheat/overcool/overheat the house's hot water and inside air to thereby store excess solar power. Australia is proposing a change to typically make exporting energy to its electricity grids economically pointless for homeowner solar energy fans.
A load of wash might typically be done early in the morning and thrown into a dryer, which could be designed to run when the sun becomes bright enough later in the morning.
Each shower, bathtub and the washer might be provided with an adjacent hot water availability display device. Israel effectively uses non-solar cell means to heat hot water using solar energy.
It probably is desirable to use a larger capacity water heater with a self-contained home solar panel installation.
For times when the sun is not shining bright, the batteries of an electric car parked in the garage might be (upon thermostat prompting) might be switched into the house's solar energy to provide additional energy. An electric car that has a 280-mile and a 40-mile commute, might be able to spare most of its battery energy to make up a house's solar energy shortfall. These times include evening, nights, early mornings, cloudy periods and cold days. A car with 50kwh to spare might be able to run a 5kwh air conditioner for 10 hours of run time. Most couples own two cars.
The house might also use zoned heating and air conditioning. As long as my bedroom is 78 degrees with low humidity at night, having the rest of the house at 81 degrees is fine.
Possible Heat Exchanger Usage
The high power demands of resistance heating make heat pump-only usage highly desirable. Instead of exhausting to outside air, air conditioners/heat pumps might exhaust to a water-based heat exchange system to effectively create a lower-cost ground source heat pump system. I lived in a townhouse in Reston, Virginia built over 50 years ago that had an air conditioning system that used the water of Lake Anne for cooling. My landlady got utility bills in the air conditioning season for chilled water.
In the air conditioning season, the air conditioner & its heat exchanger would heat up cold water supply line water. To prevent heat exchanger overheating, a valve near a distant toilet would release water, possibly to a landscape irrigation system or to a well-insulated tank of the toilet.
In the heat pump season, the heat exchanger would have a valve releasing the heat-pump chilled water, either to a drain pipe, or where water is in short supply, to a well-insulated toilet tank or a landscape irrigation system.
Air conditioner/heat pump water-based heat exchangers would allow the typical split system(AC/heat pump condenser and evaporator coil linked by professionally installed copper lines) to be replaced by one-piece units suitable for do-it-yourself installation. As a retired person whose retirement income has been near zeroed by the Federal Reserve, I have no desire to pay people $120/hour, having personally always been paid far less even after adjusting for inflation.
A properly located water heater could use a bathroom shower heat exchange system to recycle drain water heat to the water heater cold water supply line to stretch out the supply of hot water.
Solar-Powered Attic Fans
Solar-powered attic fans would significantly reduce the need for and cost of electricity for air conditioning. They would reduce CO2 emissions prior to the time of the year Arctic ice is most likely to melt. Solar-powered attic fans might be probably the best value in home CO2 reduction technology, excluding setting home thermostats to 'off'.
Final Notes
Since the "science" of "climate change" is highly dubious, I wish to see solar energy utilization based on economic merit and sound engineering. Solar panels should not be snatched by American dollars from possible use by extremely needy sun-inundated African villagers and squandered in the USA to try to build an American political legacy.
Winds are very sporadic in my part of Florida, so wind power is not likely to meet my energy needs. There are also many parts of the country where renewable energy simply isn't sensible at all. Mike Bloomberg aimed for a 90% renewable energy supply.
It is also important that solar energy product makers and installers pay attention to aesthetics. Ugliness, such as a bank of solar panels unsympathetically placed on a roof, is a form of poverty.
Also, I don't fully understand solar installations, so please don't beat me over the head. This a web page that provides a helpful overview: https://www.cleanenergyreviews.info/blog/best-off-grid-solar-system
Hopefully, while covering a broad range of technical options, I have made it clear that thermostats and several other devices in the home should have modified designs to work as a team to properly support low-cost solar panel off-grid energy use. A system should be modifiable so the needs of cheapskates like me and the desires of spendthrifts, such as those people buying houses in my large lot neighborhood, can both be technically met.
I want to get what I do know out today given the Democrats in DC are happy to waste trillions of dollars at a moment's whim of Nancy Pelosi.
Please feel free to add helpful thoughts and personal experiences.
“Most workers work daylight hours, which is the time the sun shines.”
Except those times in North Texas and other places in winter where you have gray skies for weeks at a time.
And it sure is efficient, strip mining all the rare earths and copper it will take for electric cars and this massive new infrastructure.
Gasoline works fine and we will have it for a thousand years if we want. These useless electric cars are a scam push by those who want them forced on us.
AMEN
Winters (in northern states at least) we drive to work in the dark and then drive back home in the dark. If you work in a factory or someplace with windows it’s possible to miss having daylight for days or even weeks.
My commute was 60 miles each way but more accurately measured was 90 minutes into work and 150 minutes (average) home. Some trips I needed to take into remote areas necessitated carrying a jerry can or two. I have driven with the “needle on empty” and never liked it. I imagine that I would be living with that as a constant companion with the current crop of EV’s.
I own several vehicles and so invested in solar battery tenders for the ones that don’t see regular use. They work great in the spring through late summer but don’t keep up with demand in the fall & winter. So occasional charging is a practical necessity.
I can see the market for electric vehicles but doubt that I will ever be a part of it. I like my gas guzzlers too much!
“Helpful thoughts and personal experiences”
Well, a very helpful thought I have is never try to arm wrestle with a cobra.
They don’t have arms.
As far as personal experiences, there was this one time I was arm wrestling this cobra, only it was a spitting cobra and he hocked up a big one and let it fly at me and it landed on my new Yamaha t-shirt, so I kicked him under the table. I don’t know if you’ve ever been kicked in your under the table, but it hurts like heck and he let go of my hand.
And that’s how I won the Cobra Arm Wrestling Trophy in Paris, France back in 1983.
For Dallas for the rest of April, I see two fully cloudy days forecast:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/dallas/75202/april-weather/351194
Accuweather says that Dallas is now cloudy.
Nice.
“The clearer part of the year in Dallas begins around May 28 and lasts for 5.6 months, ending around November 17. On October 5, the clearest day of the year, the sky is clear, mostly clear, or partly cloudy 74% of the time, and overcast or mostly cloudy 26% of the time.
“The cloudier part of the year begins around November 17 and lasts for 6.4 months, ending around May 28. On February 24, the cloudiest day of the year, the sky is overcast or mostly cloudy 46% of the time, and clear, mostly clear, or partly cloudy 54% of the time.”
https://weatherspark.com/y/8813/Average-Weather-in-Dallas-Texas-United-States-Year-Round
Technological solutions in a world driven by political ideologies and corrupt profit motives is just an academic exercise. The entire ‘green’ movement and the unrealistic push to make everything run on batteries made from chinese lithium that plug into rainbow magic juice receptacles is just but one example of the lunacy. A few profit handsomely by being on the inside track of the political game and everyone else is a slave to that vision.
“My commute was 60 miles each way but more accurately measured was 90 minutes into work and 150 minutes (average) home....I can see the market for electric vehicles but doubt that I will ever be a part of it.”
You are one reason among millions why Mike Bloomberg aimed for 90%.
If electric vehicle propulsion was so great they would have continued it within the cities over a hundred years ago.
Yes that is correct, they had electric vehicles back then.
Take the longest range Tesla and deduct 40% off the range. Thats how far you can travel. Never go below 40% on the remaining charge for reasons others can explain.
“Technological solutions in a world driven by political ideologies and corrupt profit motives is just an academic exercise.”
The capitalistic streetcar business once much reviled by leftists was pretty much put out of business by market forces (and gasoline tax-funded government road paving efforts).
“If electric vehicle propulsion was so great they would have continued it within the cities over a hundred years ago.”
It was easy to drive to a place and say fill ‘er up.
You pretty much had to have a wired-up garage on your own property for your electric car.
Farmers didn’t have the practical option of electric cars since farms almost always lacked electricity and farmers were the people most in need of having a car.
China has the lithium market cornered in forethought of what was going to happen to batteries...another black eye for China Joe, and Pelosi & Squad.
“If electric vehicle propulsion was so great they would have continued it within the cities over a hundred years ago.”
Do you mean the city buses? If so, very good point.
But actually the old-time electric buses use overhead wires. They’re still around, aren’t they, like in San Francisco?
“China has the lithium market cornered in forethought of what was going to happen to batteries”
It’s the rare earth market that they have cornered, which is actually a bigger problem.
Given the tremendous Chinese dominance in rare earths, Biden’s desire to sign up to the Paris accord marks him as demented.
“China...market cornered”
I suggested that:
Vehicle manufacturers should endeavor to build multi-year crucial raw material stockpiles.
Fuel cell technology would be a much better alternative than trying to make some kind of battery array that would charge as quickly as putting gasoline or Diesel fuel in a tank, and the supply chain would have swap-out tanks on “trade and go” means of dispensing the power supply.
Works for propane tanks.
Now, if people want a reliable power grid to plug into, the very means of generation of that electricity would have to be rethought. Atomic energy, at one time, was supposed to provide electricity so cheaply it would not even be necessary to meter it, just a flat fee for every residence. But the Luddites and troglodytes resisted, and fought tooth and nail to PREVENT, by any means necessary, to keep uranium fueled light water reactors from gaining universal adoption. They were sort of right, as regards Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, where some really disastrous and catastrophic events drew some very bad press for ALL nuclear power plants.
But there is a way to use nuclear power in a much safer manner than demonstrated by those events. Use of thorium fueled molten salt plants removes virtually every objection to a uranium-fueled nuclear reactor. Molten salt reactors CANNOT have catastrophic meltdown, or a “runaway reaction”, they do not generate long-lived radioactive isotopes as part of their atomic “ash”, and they can even use “spent” uranium fuel rods (in which some 95% of the energy is still IN the rod), to initiate the fission reaction in the thorium fuel mixture. Widespread adoption of this technology would assure plentiful electrical energy production, with a more available fuel, and the plant, because of its inherent safety factor, could be located within highly populated centers, reducing the need for extended grids.
These plants can be run 24/7/365 at near maximum output, providing baseline power at all times, and with the addition of auxiliary peak power demand generation capability, provide a degree of reliability equal to or better than ever enjoyed in the modern industrial world.
Is it feasible? Yes. Do we have the will to put this technology to use? That is much more iffy. But it is still much more attainable than rainbow sparks or unicorn farts.
Recycled our engine oil today.
RENEWABLE ENERGY.
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