Posted on 06/12/2022 9:32:13 PM PDT by dennisw
JB Straubel has spent the past two years covering a hillside with solar panels and rigging them up to cryptocurrency projects in his Carson City, Nev., mansion. Much of the equipment is essentially junk—the panels were all but worthless when the 46-year-old Tesla co-founder got them from a Texas solar plant, after a hailstorm voided their warranties.
He’ll work on them alone for whole weekend, spooling wire and rigging hardware in the rolling scrubland. Sometimes he thinks through his company’s latest engineering obstacles while he works. Other times he daydreams how best to divert cascades of photons from the sky, convert them, and suddenly there’s sunlight singing through the electrical grid, charging up cars, spinning a complete, beautiful system around and around: unlimited energy, for everyone, forever.
“What are you doing?” an employee said to Straubel once, arriving at the house to find him hauling solar panels outside. “You need to be getting ready for an interview right now.”
Straubel’s day job has attracted attention: he’s trying to head off a looming shortage of materials the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels. Institutional investors last year signed over $775 million for his new venture, Redwood Materials, and in April the U.S. Senate called Straubel to give expert testimony on resources needed for the energy transition. He doesn’t much like the spotlight, though. “The engineering challenges are the fun part,” Straubel says in an interview. “This is more difficult.”
We need massive quantities of batteries to power a global energy transition and avert cataclysmic climate change. To produce them, we will need to mine more metals like lithium and cobalt than have been extracted in all of human history. U.S. companies have started planning huge new battery factories, but Straubel thinks we won’t have enough materials to supply them,
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
But the Maine leftist greenies passed a bill which the leftist governor signed, that outlaws surface mines over 3 acres in size.
I don't believe the technology will ever exist that will allow lithium car batteries to be charged 100% in less than five minutes when fully exhausted.
That would be doable now if it were possible. The reason an EV just won't work for my needs.
Not in my area.
LIPA's Port Jefferson facility is listed as Fuel Oil (No. 6), Natural Gas and Fuel Oil (No. 2) as the primary sources.
LIPA's Northport facility is listed as Natural Gas, and Fuel Oil (No. 2) as the primary sources.
Many other facilities in Long Island, Queens and Brooklyn are the same.
These are 2018 listings.
Gasoline has more energy density then a electric battery. Portable and you can “recharge” your gas car in 5 minutes.
Gasoline has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.
Those who own a electric car think waiting around for at least 15 minutes for a partial charge or hours for full charge every single day for those that are working is something to look forward to. You also have cars ahead of you at the charging station so expect a longer wait time.
The electric bill is going to be more when subsidies stop at the car charging stations.
Electric rates are 3 times cheaper in most states but will zoom way up to pay for these electric cars. California now has rates between 25 cents a kw to over 30 cents a kw to subsidize solar and the very generous state worker pensions.
Most people would not be able to charge at home as they live in apartments or cannot afford to upgrade the wire and have a charging station built at a single home. The electric rate plus the charge for road tax that will be coming plus the huge cost of over $50,000 for starters just to buy a dull looking electric car. The price of a gas car is much cheaper but obama and Biden caused even the cost of used cars to skyrocket. Remember that obama has never driven a car except at a photo op. Never in his life and he is telling us what to drive!
No a/c for you as you have to be rich to afford it in California.
Let’s see a/c in the home or charge my car every day to get to work.
Plus the democrats will one day shut off your car for any reason.
That is why Biden mandated remote shutoff in new vehicles.
Plus you get a flash fire when you have a short in a battery. Car accidents will send batteries flying like missiles as well killing or injuring people.
Tesla Bursts Into Flames at Stoplight, Driver Forced to Kick Out Window to Escape Electric Car Fire
https://www.westernjournal.com/tesla-bursts-flames-stoplight-driver-forced-kick-window-escape-electric-car-fire/
The incident took place Friday when the eight-month-old vehicle suddenly shut down, cutting power to all of its electronic parts, according to CTV News.
“The doors wouldn’t open. The windows wouldn’t go down,” Jutha said.
Smoke began to fill the interior. Although Teslas have a mechanical release for emergencies, Jutha said it was not easy to use, particularly amid the panic of a potentially life-threatening incident.
Natural gas is the main fuel on Long Island. LIPA *can* burn fuel oil, but it doesn’t. It’s generators were changed over to allow burning natural gas TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago. And if you’ve read any LIPS document printed since, they all presume natural-gas operation.
Take the electric bus...
https://imgur.com/uFT7eHN
The first step is under way when I visit Redwood in April 2022. (The second “hydrometallurgical” step hasn’t yet begun at scale, but Redwood says it will start happening in the coming months.) Inside a converted warehouse, workers feed old batteries into a contraption that squats above the floor like a gigantic beetle. Straubel conceived of the machine himself, and he says it can sort different kinds of used batteries a thousand times faster than a human being can. But he deflects my questions about how exactly it works, and declines to go into much detail on two-story-tall industrial contraptions that are pulverizing batteries before chemical processing. He says he doesn’t want competitors to learn about Redwood’s technology. “We’re in a situation where I’m trying to explain things poorly to you on purpose, which I hate doing,” he says. Thanks to the advent of EVs, the battery industry in the U.S. has grown tremendously in recent years, and become fiercely competitive. “There’ll be some blood on the streets when this is over,” says Trent Mell, the CEO of Electra Battery Materials.
On the short tour, Straubel tells me he worries Redwood is getting too much attention before it is ready. “I’m really not a media person; I’d much rather be in the engineering and the data,” he says as we remove our safety vests and goggles afterward. “I get more antsy as the day goes on.” He looks at his communications rep Alexis Georgeson, who’d chaperoned us the whole day, and seems to become aware that mentioning his discomfort had been some kind of slip: “I can see Alexis cringing.”
Something about this is so hopeful... not something I feel very often nowadays...
Yah, all the Tesla FanBoise get riled up and defensive over anyone who does not drink the EV/Tesla cool aid.
Going to laugh pout loud when the whole EV charade collapses.
Too bad about what it will mean for our economy though.
Of course having just gotten an 8.7% rate increase notice, to pay for “Green” energy that goes along with the now daily notices of “Possible power interruption” that collapse may be imminent.
Enjoy your toy, just do not think there is any way on earth you can force me to endure one.
True.
LIPA *can* burn fuel oil, but it doesn’t.
False. LIPA can and does, although every year they use it less and less.
It’s generators were changed over to allow burning natural gas TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago.
Coal burning generators were converted to natural gas and fuel oil.
And if you’ve read any LIPS document printed since, they all presume natural-gas operation.
Of course LIPA doesn't like to talk about fuel oil usage and yes they have been trying to phase out fuel oil usage, but it's still used to supplement natural gas, especially in the winter.
And there are documents.
Survey of National Grid Generation Formerly Owned By LILCO (June 2015)
(excerpts)
Early last week, both Sarah and Assemblyman Brown met with Joseph Warren, director of the Northport Power Station, at the location of an oil tank immediately adjacent to Northport Soccer Park. The smell as they approached the tank, Sarah said, was “like hitting a wall.” Mr. Warren told them the odor residents have been reporting “is an oil odor coming off the oil storage tank next to the fields,” said Sarah. “Apparently if the tank heats up, or if the oil is moved, these odors are released.” Sarah was told operations involving that tank would be halted on the weekends of the soccer season.
Halting operations on the weekend may provide a temporary respite from the smell, but what about people who live there and are exposed to the odor on a daily basis, Sarah asked.
"Natural gas is supplied by a natural gas pipeline routed under the Long Island Sound and fuel oil is delivered to the steam units via ship through an offshore unloading terminal in the Long Island Sound, approximately two miles from the site. Mr. Warren testified in early 2019 that the plant’s units used natural gas about 95 percent of the time. In recent months, however, when natural gas prices rose significantly, residents reported noticing an increase in oil deliveries to the site."
On Monday, November 15, National Grid media representatives confirmed with the Journal that the company “identified a potential source of the odor as being fuel oil vapors from one of the storage tanks.” To address the odor, they said, workers on November 9 – the same day Sarah and Assemblyman Brown visited the tank – began transferring additional fuel oil into the tank to reduce both the vapor space at the top of the tank and the fuel oil’s temperature. “We apologize for the inconvenience the odor has caused the community,”
The above excerpts describe fuel oil operations still going on (to supplement natural gas) even as late as November, 2021.
I called you out on your nonsense statement. If you don’t want an EV, don’t buy one—IDGAF, personally. However, to compare a Tesla to a golf cart is just plain idiotic.
The next couple of years will determine “Nonsense”, those forced mandates verse actual grid capacity cannot be changed by mere diktat.
I am confident that EV’s will be a fail.
Tesla are overpriced.
I can have a job with them any time I’m willing to take it, no thanks, they are so WOKE it’s a joke.
I am opposed to EV mandates. However, Tesla has had a decade to refine their cars and charging network, and both are superb. Nothing else compares.
Yes, I see the ugly charging stations in all sort of inappropriate places.
Pretty jarring to visit an historic town then see the chargers spoiling the scene.
At the least they should be out of sight, or positioned at the gas stations.
Competing systems ALSO be add to the clutter.
Eventually ONE system will have to be adopted across all makes.
There is no guarantee that the Tesla system will win that war.
This piece makes them a lot more comfortable... solving the battery problem was one of the big problems. One down - several more to go...
No guarantees, but Tesla is a decade in and the clear winner so far.
Will Tesla become The Standard everyone else has to comply with, and if so will they nail the other EV’s a fee for using of Tesla chargers?
What effect on innovation by other companies?
My own hope is that they fight to the death and none survive!
Of course the Tesla Supercharger network is only available for Teslas—why should Tesla open it to others? In any event, in the USA alone there are several competing (but inferior) networks of charging infrastructure, and Mercedes-Benz are building their own global charging network.
You can hope all you want for EVs to fail, but they’re the future, whether you like it or not.
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