Posted on 12/19/2007 5:29:22 PM PST by decimon
At a cost well over a million bucks, or $7,000/month, not many people are going to be buying a nuke reactor for just themselves. Maybe for a small neighborhood, but 200kw is too much for a single home.
A quick charging battery isn’t necessary for those fleet type uses. They have predictable usage and plenty of time to charge at night, as you say.
A quick charging battery is the key to getting EVERYBODY ELSE to buy into electrics. The regular stiff that forgets to turn on the charger at night or wants to take longer trips than his usual routine. That is the guy that wants the comfort of being able to recharge in a few minutes time.
What intrigues me more is what these nano-wire batteries mean in terms of watt-hours per kilogram. Making battery packs smaller and lighter makes putting them in vehicles much easier. It could also lend itself to swapping batteries for an even quicker “recharge” method. Suppose instead of having 600 pounds of li-ion batteries, you had 4 packs weighing only 20 pounds each ? Swapping packs for freshly charged ones would be simple and take seconds.
I certainly hope you're talking about a vacuum cleaner that could do the whole house on one charge!
Otherwise, I officially shake my finger at you. ;)
If they do it will get to market faster- on both sides of the Pacific.
If these technologies do show promise of advancing our economy, making us richer, the greenies will invent a reason why they are the equivalent of slaughtering billions of baby seals.
If these technologies do show promise of advancing our economy, making us richer, the greenies will invent a reason why they are the equivalent of slaughtering billions of baby seals.”
Yes , I agree with your comment and I’d like to add my take on your statement:
If these technologies do show promise of advancing our economy, making us richer, the liberals/Democrats/socialists will invent a reason why they are the equivalent of slaughtering billions of baby seals or creating global warming.
How do you know how much Toshiba will price these small nuclear power plants at in the future since they haven’t produced one for consumers yet?
And haven’t you noticed the price of technology drops every year? Laptops and LCD TV’s were thousands of dollars now they are a few hundred at Wal-mart.
When pricing a power plant in “cents per kwh”, the assumption is always that the plant is running at rated capacity 24/7 and the plant cost is amortized over its lifetime. A 200kw plant will produce 144,000kwh in a month. At 5 cents per kwh, that is $7,200 per month. And the article says it will last 40 years. Those figures are enough to calculate the cost of the plant at roughly $1.5 million.
Nuclear power plants have been around for 50 years. Their cost per watt has not declined that I can tell. Maybe economies of scale could lower the cost, but if Toshiba thought so, they would have quoted a cost of less than 5 cent per kwh.
Keep in mind, 5 cents is a good price. You just need to share the cost of the plant so you keep it busy 100% of the time. A 200kw plant is just way oversized for a single home. An individual home could get by with a 2kw plant running 24/7 on the grid or charging a battery pack, or a 15kw plant if off-grid because it would have to handle peak loads by itself.
Then we think bigger. Neighborhood-level reactors that can provide most of the needs of the neighborhood at peak, but hooked into the grid. Basically, decentralize our power generation system.
OK, cool, I thought it was a public university.
So some rich guy, like Old Man Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, guys one for his property up on the hill and charges everyone below in the valley for the juice to run their homes. That way he gets his neighbors to pay for his electricity and makes a profit off theirs.
Haven’t re-read that one in a couple of years myself. Might be time to break open the boxes o’ books again.
now electric car makers will go full foward because the main draw back of low miles per charge will be gone.
That would be good. In fact, my townhome complex has 102 homes and would be just about a perfect match for a 200kw plant. $15,000 per home and never have to pay for electricity again — including enough to charge electric vehicles for everybody.
$15,000 added to the price of the home would be $100/month amortized at 6%. Cheaper than people’s monthly gasoline cost let alone what they are spending on electric plus gasoline.
That's essentially the system we have now. If the utilities are not protected monopolies, this development would allow George Bailey to get together with his friends to break Potter's monopoly, and bring a little competition to the pricing.
If we could marry this battery with 10 times the charge with a battery that charges 90 percent in 5 minutes things would look really good. Also don’t forget about the Tesla car that is due to be released early next year. It runs off of double AA batteries.
December 13, 2007 Toshiba have stunned the world with their announcement of what’s pretty much the holy grail in Lithium battery technology – the Super Charge ion Battery, which recharges up to 90% of its energy in just five minutes, and has a lifespan of over 10 years. Slow charging has been the key hurdle to public acceptance of battery-electric vehicles as viable distance travelers, so this breakthrough has all sorts of implications for the automotive industry as well as being a very welcome upgrade to a whole host of other portable devices.”
http://www.gizmag.com/toshiba-scib-super-charge-lithium-battery/8506/
That is a great idea to merge those 2 technologies .That would make the electric car feasible. I’m going to steal that invention and make a company and make a fortune lol.
bump
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