Posted on 05/23/2021 3:43:09 AM PDT by Libloather
Unintended consequences can be a B-word.
I fondly recall weekends where I could find my father, along with my grandfather, tinkering with the family automobiles. Greasing bearings, checking belt tension, cars needed attention from time to time if you expected them to last. People with more disposable income had the servicing done for them.
I picked up the knack for mechanics from my elders and continue it with my cars today. But I don’t have to tend to my vehicles every single day.
The thought that occurs to me is that we allowed an evolution to take place with our machines that has encouraged benign neglect. Cars are engineered to last a greater amount of time with far less routine maintenance. Grease the steering? Nonsense, we don’t even provide zerk fittings any longer!
And now the left is orchestrating a sea-change event that will reverse all of that. Instead of hopping in the car and simply driving their vehicles (filling the tank once a week) they will, by necessity, be forced to fuss with cables and connections and status checks. God help you if you forget! In a gas-powered vehicle you make a quick side trip to grab a fill-up. In an electric you pray that you can find a hook-up and time to charge.
It should prove amusing watching intrinsically lazy people forced to subordinate themselves to their machines.
Most people charge at home unless they are making a road trip because it costs less and is more convenient. Most of the EV's being produced now have enough range to handle big metro areas without needing a charge to get back home.
I worked for a power company. They realsized the PR potential of EVs and installed charging stations at each of thier office locations - even before they had any EVs.
A few employees recognized the unintended perk and bought EVs thinking they would always have “free” power for their vehicles.
It was amusing to watch when the company started charging to use the charging stations.
Well, a lot less now, when Bidet shut down the largest cooper mine project in AZ!
Oak Flat, AZ has the largest cooper deposit EVER found on the Earth. Mining project all approved under Trump, rescinded under Bidet.
The new Ford truck has a battery bank of 115kWH. Do any of these idiots (I know) pushing electric cars know simple math? Regardless of the battery technology you still have to move a whole lotta electricity in a short amount of time. It will be fun when the ferals start vandalizing unused chargers built in the ‘hood for the sake of equity.
We better make that infrastructure bill 20 trillion.
I saw my first charging stations a couple of months ago in Muskogee, OK. No one was using them.
I agree generally, especially that in the long run safe nuclear is going to be required. However, your chart, on digging into its source data, is somewhat misleading and does not support the claim that there are 65% transmission losses.
The chart was based on data from a government report
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf which
states ( Note 1, p50) “Most of these losses occur at steam‐electric power plants (conventional and nuclear) in the conversion of heat energy into mechanical energy to turn electric generators. The loss is a thermodynamically necessary feature of the steam‐electric cycle.”
In other words industrial generation and transmission is scored as 35 % efficient. For an apples to apples comparison, the internal combustion engine is typically 20% efficient, not even counting distribution energy use, e.g. powering the tanker trucks.
So they show gasoline engine fossil fuel use as a direct line from fossil fuel source to transportation use, and neglect the conversion inefficiency but the line that goes through the grid does include the thermochemical conversion losses of 80%.(20% efficient).
It should also be noted that the battery powered electric car requires an additional conversion of electrical to chemical stored energy and back which also wastes some energy which is also not scored. That step is 80-90% efficient for Li ion batteries.
But thanks for a good point and interesting data!
That’s probably what it will come to by the time they are done.
They low ball us and then go massively over budget and time. Happens all the time in government work. There are countless examples even fairly recently of gross mismanagement in big infrastructure projects.
I would start with charging stations at the wind farms and solar arrays.
So your trip is from one ‘eco source’ to the next one.
Because it is free, right?
That’s the ticket, install a gasoline engine driven Genset in every car so they always have electrical power to recharge their electric car battery!
About a month ago I was at the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, Ca. In the parking garage on the main level there are about 10 charging stations closest to the doors leading to the elevators that take you to the casino. As I walked by there was 1 car at them and 2 guys plugging it in. I’m sure the casino is making big bucks off that. lol Although, it is their perogative to install them or not.
That’s the ticket, install a gasoline engine driven Genset in every car so they always have electrical power to recharge their electric car battery!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Would the surface vehicle have to submerge at night or while the batteries are being charged???
Just for starters, there should be no Urban charging stations. None is required for the short hops of urban driving. Charging should be at home in the garage or not at all for urban use.
Second, with a minimum charge time of FOUR times the duration of time it takes to fill a car with gas the number of cross country charging stations should need to be at least four times what it now takes for gas pumps. More than that even because charging will have to take place more often than filling with gasoline because of the limited EV range.
Never mind the peak loads of charging, the energy concentrations, the amount of just copper needed for such a large power grid and on and on.
Anything is possible for he who has not to do it. Anything is possible if you don’t have high expectations. Good, Fast or Cheap; pick two, only two.
I predict a nine line free fall cluster fluck in this infrastructure design.
> Statist governments don’t resolve questions like that efficiently at all.
But we’ll have “equity”!
The std 110V recharger now used, is a 16 Amp device.
So a dedicated 20 Amp breaker for every car being recharged.
As they are being recharged, say in the evening, it will now become the peak power period with demand charges, so count on say .24cents/kWHr.
So for a std 100Amp panel, 1/5th of available power will go to the car recharger for half the time.
It’s not there. I suppose the could reopen all the closed coal plants.
🤣
Thanks for ‘info’
I was being facetious as I was referring to how pre nuke Submarines, the batteries had to be charged by the built in diesel while surfaced, usually at night..
Remember this electric vehicle is not a new idea, it was tried back in the early 1900s era.
Maybe they can build overhead power lines like they did for trains and street cars..... with a long pole from the roof of the car...
So we would have to more than double the total energy used by the nation to accommodate these EVs?
In essence, yes.
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