He probably was a Harvard EE. If he was an MIT EE he would have figured out that this doesn't make much sense and not have bothered.
If he was an MIT EE he would have tapped into the Prius's HUGE generating capabilities and powered his whole freekin house
Gotta remember it's CNG - Compressed. Not a liquid fuel. Refueling is slow and complex. No "self serve" CNG stations.
Fuel density is also low.
Kitchener/Waterloo had a fleet of CNG bussed (converted deisel engines) and operating cost was over double the diesel cost. They just retired the whole fleet.
It's the physics. Sunshine dumps about 735 watts/sq meter on the earth's surface. At noon. On the equator. With no clouds. I haven't figured it for Germany, but, adjusting for latitude, hours of daylight, percentage of clound cover, and the like, and assuming a 50% efficiency rate for whatever solar collector methodology in use, it would take a solar collecting array the size of the Los Angeles basin (~1400 sq miles) to provide enough energy for California (~50GW).
That's after it gets going. 1400 square miles is almost three times greater than the size of the interstate highway system; it'll take a while to get it built.
The only way to increase the 735 watt business is to move the orbit of the earth closer to the sun.
Don't get me wrong - sunbeams can help. Solar water heating is a plus and there are even entire houses that are 'solar powered.' But that's small mice. One Aluminum smelting plant uses more electricity than a million homes. The New York City subway system uses, by itself, almost as much electricity as all the residences in Manhattan!
Right. Oil is fungible - freely replaceable or exchangeable. That's why we will never be "energy independent."
Suppose we drill in ANWAR, offshore, in Yellowstone, and everywhere else, such that we produce, domestically, all the oil we consume. Suppose the ANWAR oil -the most expensive - comes in at, oh, $20/bbl delivered to the refinery.
Somewhere in the world, somebody is going to offer oil at $17/bbl to the same refinery. Which source will the refinery pick?
Right. And we'll be importing oil again.
To help clarify a few things, If you have the car turned on. Actually, to clarify things: if you have the car turned on, the engine is not automatically running. Power is managed by the 201v traction battery. If you place a load on the small startup battery, with the car turned on the traction battery will keep the small startup battery charged. When the traction battery reaches its low point, the engine will charge up the traction battery then quit once the traction battery is full. This cycle will repeat until you're out of gasoline. (Remember, this is a gas car; the only form of energy that's added to the system is gasoline.)
What you read recently isn't news. People have been powering refrigerators and sump pumps for some time now using Priuses.
You've noticed why solar energy will never be practical in a centralized utility generation model. To be of any benefit, solar PV (and solar thermal for heat and HW), have to use existing roof space on every home i.e. the distributed generation model.
Ultimately since most renewable energy sources are intermittent generation and the grid simply can't handle shifting that much distributed generated power to track time zones and whatnot, there will need to be some amount of local storage i.e. batteries at each home to help fill in the generation gaps.
The technology is about at the point where this is workable, but the economics aren't there yet for a variety of reasons. I expect ultimately the solution will need to be utility installed and maintained RE generation systems at customers homes, primarily solar PV, but wind as well in suitable areas. I expect it will be PV panels on the roof and a standardized battery/inverter package the size of a typical A/C condenser or pad mount transformer outside the home so the utility can access it for service when it calls home with a problem.
This distributed generation model won't eliminate the need for utility scale generation, but it could sure put a dent in it as well as reduce some demand on the aging and badly in need of upgrading "grid".
Or we could just screw all that and build nukes now. It's worked for France, where they get 70%+ of their electric power from it. No big Pickens plan. No need to convert cars to NG, or put up economically unviable systems at everyone's homes. Yeah, it ain't perfect, but then it's proven, available, competitive and an easy immediate solution.
It's like during the Carter years: contrary to what people thought, there was no shortage of gasoline - there was a shortage of CHEAP gasoline. It all comes down to cost.
You'll notice that since Bush revoked the executive ban on offshore drilling last June 15th, the price of oil (and gasoline) has dropped by 2/3rds.
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On Dec 28, 2:34 pm, " snipped-for-privacy@aol.com" wrote: ...
which has absolutely no relationship whatsoever to LWR technology.
And that revocation likely contributes about 1/10 of 1% of that decrease. At the very best, on a good day.
PLEASE don't judge atomic energy by Chernobyl, or even 3 mile island.
The Canadian system is the safest in the world - orders of magnitude better than it's closest competitor. The only problem is the "weapons grade exhaust"
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On 12/27/2008 10:39 AM HeyBub spake thus:
With all due respect, "Bub", you're an idiot.
Forget solar for a sec. Take *wind*: article in today's paper says that we (the U.S.) could supply 20% of our electrical energy from wind by
2030. (Article:Covering massive numbers of rooftops with solar systems would *have* to be able to beat that by at least double. So much for your "tiny difference".
But go right on ahead and keep driving your gas-guzzler and denying that we can do anything any way but the way we're doing it now.
On 12/26/2008 2:00 PM HeyBub spake thus:
What I took away from this article and the ensuing discussion here:
o Yes, marginally interesting & useful. o But really only practical for getting through a power outage. o Not really useful or efficient for otherwise powering one's house. o Only technical error I could see is that odd description of regular car batteries as "AC Delco". What, everyone in the world buys that brand of batteries??!? o Agree with those who suggested the guy would have been better off putting his food outside in the snow rather than running any kind of refrigerator. Snow is, like, cold, dude.
The real interesting story here is on the site which one of the commenters to the article posted a link to:
ahh nuke was sold as safe and would produce electricity so cheap meters wouldnt be necessary.
well nuke isnt that safe and certinally isnt cheap.
worse despite reassurances the long term waste problem still hasnt been solved!
its not common knowledge but near every existing plant and some closed ones have waste pools full to the brim with old fuel cores.
packed way more closely than originally designed and non hardened they are the ideal terrorist target. just plain steel buildings.
guess what happens if even a small private plane is flown into one of those buildings? a disaster far worse than chernobyl
hey they were going to entoom all the waste in yucca mountain till they found its a active volcanic region.
since the waste is dangerous for a million years, yucca might one day erupt and kill life on our planet.
Giggle.
You reference both a San Francisco newspaper article (that barely mentions wind power) and a DOE report (that doesn't mention wind power at all), then, from out of nowhere, assert that solar power has to be even better than that which isn't mentioned! By double!
Wow!
Admittedly, the SF Chronicle article says wind power COULD account for as much as 20% of our needs, but the article was about the power distribution network and how unsuited the existing infrastructure is. That is, power generated by wind in the great plains states has no way to GET to Chicago or wherever else it's needed.
I don't drive a gas guzzler and I haven't denied there are better ways to do things.
One last point: You say that covering massive numbers of rooftops with solar collectors has to make a substantial difference. Let's see.
(Try to follow along. I know maths is hard, but it might be worth it.)
Assume:
So, 500 x .5 x .5 x .25 x 20 = 625 Watts / California roof
(This seems kinda low, so let's fudge it by a factor of ten.)
According to the US Census, there are 11.5 million households in California. Assuming 70% of them have a roof (excluding people who live in apartments or under bridges), if EVERY house in California had some sort of solar collector on the roof, there would be a generating capacity of:...
1625 W x 11,500,000 x .7 = ~ 13 Gigawatts, or about 25% of California's peak demand (50 GW).So, I guess you're correct. Equipping massive numbers of houses with solar collectors will make a significant difference. 'Course it won't be cheap:
11.5 million households x .7 x $8,000 each = $644 billion. Then there are the consequential costs. For example, the number one cause of accidents in the U.S. is "falls." How many more will we have as seven million California homeowners get up on the roof each year to remove snow and leaves and dirt?Oh well.
But, hey, it's a significant difference!
On 12/28/2008 6:11 PM HeyBub spake thus:
I assume by that that you mean to impugn the article, emanating as it does from that refuge of kooks and dreamers. A little perspective here: for a liberal (OK, let's say "ultraliberal") town, San Francisco has a surprisingly conservative daily (well, at least on practically everything except gay rights). The Chron always comes down on the side of the local utility company, PG&E (said to stand for "Pure Greed & Corruption" by some) in the many battles progressives have fought over the decades in attempts to institute public power for the city; the latest episode was Proposition F on the November ballot, which lost--again--probably having nothing to do with the relentless campaigning against it by the likes of the Chronicle.
My bad about that report, which I thought was the right one but discovered wasn't after posting it. There is one somewhere on DOE's site that you're welcome to find that does mention the 2030 estimate of 20% from wind. You see, despite being from the town of nutcakes and fairies, the Chron, like most big dailies, does actually check facts before publishing, and presumably someone over there looked at the right DOE report.
Good point, and one that deserves addressing (maybe not right here right now in the interest of limiting thread/message size); one obvious answer is, how about distributed sources of power, like lots of solar systems on people's roofs, rather than a few giga-plants requiring gigantic power lines?
Thank you for demonstrating my point (and showing your work to boot; nice). So maybe you aren't a total idiot after all.
So on top of solar, there's:
o Geothermal (lots here in California, at least); o Hydro (including the low-head variety that enviros like better); o Wind o Biomass (including biodiesel) o etc., etc.
There are several (many?) solutions for radioactive waste. None have been implemented because a solution is not needed. The longer we (safely) wait before selecting one or more, the greater the chance that an even better solution will be found.
Suppose you decide you're going to a new restaurant that you've never visited before. You might have a notion of what you'd like to eat, but, in most cases, you don't make a selection until you actually see the menu, you don't actually order until the waiter stands with pencil poised.
There are many proposals for dealing with nuclear waste: Putting it on a rocket and shooting it into the sun, entombing it in molten glass and dumping the ingots in the middle of the Pacific, injecting it into underground caverns, etc. Each has its advantages and pitfalls.
The point is, we don't HAVE to choose now and demanding a premature solution is not a good idea.
And the Yucca Mountain facility is not a solution - it is a STORAGE facility until a solution is decided upon.
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