Posted on 01/23/2014 8:24:46 PM PST by ckilmer
These are interesting times in the automotive and electric-utility businesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at autos.yahoo.com ...
They use up lithium twice as fast.
I recall a similar prediction by the associate of presidential science advisor John Holdren, Amory Lovins, who was invited by Holdren to be “University Professor” at Berkeley some time during the late 1970s. Lovins was, as have been most of Marxist Holdren’s associates, as poor a soothsayer as Holdren’s mentor and co-author, Paul Ehrlich, whose “Population Bomb” is a laughable testimonial to the arrogance and scientific irrelevance of Stanford and Berkeley resource prognosticators. They aren’t fools, but are Marxists who believe the earth is plagued by too many people whose consumption of resources may reduce the lifestyles of the Theresa Kerry professor (Heinz), Holdren, now at Harvard, or Dr. Doom Ehrlich, emeritus at Stanford.
The average solar energy flux during days in North America uncluttered by fog, smog, rain, or snow is probably below 500 watts/square meter. Let’s assume a net conversion efficiency of 10%, which is generous considering storage losses. 50 watts for about six hours each day, or 12 Watts average over 24 hours means that about 500 square meters of collector surface must be dedicated to each electric automobile, assuming that it must carry energy during the 16 hours the sun is not providing input. Just to power the 200,000 cars crossing the bridge near my home requires roughly 100 million square meters of collector surface, or a closely spaced field of tracking collectors 10,000 meters, or about 6 miles on each side.
Solar automobiles are utopian nonsense. With improvements in battery technology, probably including fuel cells, there will certainly be more electric cars on the road. The safest and most environmentally benign source of electricity for their engines comes from nuclear powered generators, with no contribution to the usual greenhouse gases, foolish as that requirement is as understood by most. Muclear power generation does release steam into the atmosphere, and water vapor absorbs more solar energy than any other gas, but our justices, governmental agencies, and tax dependent universities are helping with wealth redistribution by designating taxable entities for subjects lacking the scientific or engineering acumen to question the reasoning of our royal class. Solar flux density will certainly change over millions or billions of years, but for our practical purposes, it’s use for generating electricity in quantity a pipedream. If the solar flux increases we are unlikely to need automobiles because we will have been cooked long before meaningful flux increases. For heating swimming pools and preheating bathing water in warm climates solar heating is certainly useful, but its primary application these days is to justify stealing money from taxpayers to benefit investment bankers - Solyndra is just one of hundreds of examples.
Nope. Just too unreliable and expensive as well.
Amen, that’s what I think, too. You beat me to it.
No. Next question.....
Redox Power Systems is a Maryland startup which claims to have a new fuel cell technology that is one tenth the cost and one tenth the size of current fuel cells and runs at 80% efficiency when used for both heat and power. Their first product is a 25kw unit the size of a dish washer.
Fuel cells run on fossil fuels, e.g., natural gas. If Redox's systems work as advertised, the power companies will be in trouble, regardless of the performance of solar and wind.
Right, like it got rid of the Horse and Buggy when they came out with cars. Only in the eyes of the idiots.
Will we see the decline of hydrocarbon-based transportation and the legacy electric-utility industry within your lifetime?”
Fortunately not in mine.
My drive home to Idaho is 912 miles. Some trips include towing my Harley. It takes 15 hours door to door. Can’t do that will electric cars. Winter driving demands a heater. So does sleeping. Solar is useless at night and only marginal in daylight in places with adequate insolation. I’m happy with my Harley and F150 4x4.
Harley Davidson says hell no.
Let’s hope they don’t hurry at all.
I once calculated you’d have to pave half the state of New Mexico with solar panels to replace carbon-based energy in the U.S. If the entire fleet of U.S. autos and trucks were converted to electric, you’d have to pave the other half of the state too.
Such would be required, you know, because of those pesky laws of physics and basic engineering, things that the Progressives/Marxist/Unicorn&Rainbow crowd ignored when they got their BS degrees in Lesbian Dance Theory and such.
How much wattage/sqft does a person, on average, use?
If the got solar power to a 50% efficiency, how would that change things?
I think that all the alternatives will not completely replace oil, but it will go a long way to reducing it.
Another thing that keeps solar power, or wind power, from being more widely adopted is that there is no efficient way to alternate between alternatives and hydrocarbons seamlessly If it were possible for residential or industry to easily make use of renewables when it’s being generated and automatically switch back to hydrocarbons when it’s not, or be able to store the energy created and make use of it during other times, adoption rates of solar panels would probably sky-rocket.
That does look like a game-changer, especially if it can beat the efficiency of thermal systems. If they can reduce the size & weight to get a 75kW or bigger unit into a car, then the ICE would be obsolete.
Solar that is placed on homes will be in addition to large solar farms located in areas with lots of sunshine (the desert)
It will become very cheap to make solar panels...it will be a kind of printer technology... even if they attain only 25% efficiency that will be enough to become cheaper than fossil fuels if the panels are cheap enough.
It is interesting to remember that all power on the Earth is solar. The giant fusion reactor that is our star supplies all our needs. Even the energy in the food we eat is created from that fusion reactor. Solar will merely be a stop on the way to our eventual mastery of fusion energy...someday most power will come from fusion power stations. Nuclear is the best source of power we have now but the greenies have made it too expensive to get a plant up and running. There are new types of fission reactors that are very safe to operate. We now harness solar energy by various inefficient methods, we need to convert it directly from light to dc current... this is what solar panels do.
For solar to become cheaper than fossil fuel all that need be done is to develop lower cost methods for manufacturing the panels. The problem of energy storage is more difficult but there are promising new types of storage cells coming along, they will be created using nano tech. What we need are much better capacitors...very fast to charge and long-lasting. The very large caps will have low voltage ratings but it’s not hard to convert to higher voltages with efficiency of 90% or better.
And Tesla agrees!
the electricity likely comes from burning coal.
which is fine with me,
because OPEC and Exxon are not involved
No, because unless the batteries are based on something like zinc or nickel-iron, there isn’t enough material as proven and probable reserves to electrify more than 2.5-5% tops of the vehicle fleet.
Until the electric can go 350-500 miles on a charge, takes less than 10 min to do same and/or has a photovoltaic “tarp” so you can take it to the sticks and charge it while you’re out doing something they will remain city centric and in meager numbers versus short chain hydrocarbon burners or hybrids...
Read up on graphene super-conductors. Scientists think that they may be able to produce the batteries you seek.
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