victorian/edwardian houses or new houses?

[IMM]

A small Stirling engine/generator running on liquid fuel or LPG could be onboard. This could cut in when the charge is low, when either parked or moving. A Stirling is far cleaner burning being external combustion. This is not a real probelm.

You are allowed to move down a public highway, but not stop on it. Parking permits do not guarantee a parking place, they just prevent other people parking.

The streets were dug up to install comms cables, so tat is not a real problem.

The problems can be overcome.

The fantastic power/weight of electric motors and eliminating heavy and power sapping transmission, combined with advances in batteries, make it viable to have an engine/electric hybrid. The current crop have the engine as No.1 power unit with the electric motor as backup. It would be the reverse, with the engine assisting, if necessary, and acting as backup power, if necessary, and generating power for the batteries.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really. A breakdown truck with a big battery can recharge it at about 5 miles range per minute. If you run out of fuel anywhere you are in for a wait of usually an hour or more before the AA gets there.

I don't see it as any different frankly. You don't let your car run out of petrol, and you shouldne'ty let it run out of charge either.

Forget to fill up with petrol? Your stuck.

Petrol strike? Ditto.

Plan it with one hour stops every 300 miles. Forced breaks :-) You shouldn't be driving more than 5 hours without a break anyway.

This IS a more curious and interestimg point, however for most urban drivers, range is not a huge issue. They areusing the thing to go shopping, or on other similar short trips. Actually I fill up every couple of weeks for a 300 mile range tank, and I am in the country...if you can't find somewhere tpo park the car - public car park etc - for an hour or so every couple of weeks, that has a charge point..it might be supermarket, underground car park or whatever. Easy enough to take a pre-paid car and stick it in the slot, ane wire your car up to the charger whilst you do the shopping.OK its not off peak...

..but in the end, in Canada they have on street electric points to plug into to stop the cars freezing anyway. Something akin to a parking meter with a plug is all it takes.

I don;t see these as major problems frankly, as transition would be slow. For example I know of a few places where LPG cars can fuel up now, whereas a few years ago you bought your own gas and stuck it in the boot :-)

Even a ten minute stop at a charge station could net you 50 miles more 'fuel' in the 'tank'

For mne, right now, an electric 'shipping trolley' would be perfect to replace the Punto. We don't use that car for distances.

[Toby]

Which seems to be the reason people get electric vehicles in Los Angeles, nothing to do with environmental reasons, but the fact they are the only thing you can park right outside the door to the shops (and free to boot).

[IMM]

A good way to encourage people to adopt them and clean the air up.

[Jaques d'Alltrades]

The message from "RichardS" contains these words:

"Bother!" Said Pooh, regarding his emissions.

[IMM]

This web site appears out off date. No press release for two years, indicating no progress.

[Franz Heymann]

So with a large area of Thermolux you might get to 200% more easily than with other panels? Please, please understand that there is no such concept as "efficiency per square foot" in either engineering or in physics. Efficiency is usually simply the ratio between the output power and the input power of a system.

[snip]

Franz

[Martin Brown]

In message , IMM writes

CHP has its place in the right environment. But there are lots of nimbys.

Though at the moment the emphasis seems to be entirely on installing windmills and not on commissioning or operating them. The ones visible along the A19 seem to be permanently feathered and non rotating. And even if they were operating the wind doesn't blow continuously so you still need backup conventional power stations for the cold windless days.

But at least wind generation has more prospect of being useful than solar power at our latitude and with the UK's cloudy maritime climate.

Lashings of hot water on the few sunny days in mid summer, and horrid technical problems in mid winter trying to keep the system from freezing.

It is pretty hard to find applications where even the latest PV cells are truly cost effective. You have to be a long way from any mains power before their cost per watt justifies using them.

Solar power works reasonably at latitudes below about 45 degrees, but it is quite frankly a complete non-starter at latitudes 55N and above. Unless you count biomass conversion in forests for indirect fuel generation.

Regards,

[IMM]

I forget the figures, but they are much more efficient and generate hot water at low solar levels.

Output per squ foot then. A sq foot of Thermomax is ratio between input and output, which is much more than the input output ratio of a squ foot of flat panel. This means in a given area the Thermoxmax gives me more hot water per square foot, which mean per square foot of area the Thermomax is more efficient. This is a moot point.

[IMM]

??? What have Nimbies to do with it? see:

is a boiler that generates electricity from waste heat.

Not so. Solar in the UK is very feasible. In fact because they have a long heating season, solar in Scotland has great advantages.

The idea is to reduce energy consumption at source and then power generation is not so important.

What are you on about?

Superinsulation, passive solar house design, DHW solar panels on the roof, CHP boilers (nearly here), all reduce power consumption greatly. You can forget PV cells. Even so, if the take up of PV cell was all over then the manufacturing costs would tumble, making them highly cost effective.

Nonsense!!! Absolute Nonsense!!! St, George's School in Wallasey was built in 1961 and was full solar and worked wonderfully. With modern materials and controls, a school built to solar would be even better and far more comfortable.

Have the whole south facing roof of a house an integrated solar panel and it generates masses of heat. In winter it will not be too hot, so it is best to use low temperature under floor heating in the house. The heated water can be in a very large thermal store to cope with 3 cloudy days. The DHW section may need topping up with backup heating in deep winter. All feasible.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Eh? Last report was september 2003?

"AC PROPULSION INC. Dedicated to Creating Electric Vehicles that People Want to Drive September 29, 2003 San Francisco FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE tzero Earns Highest Grade at 2003 Michelin Challenge Bibendum...."

[IMM]

Pity the background does people's eyes in, which makes it difficult to read. I'll give one a miss.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually that is not totally so. Efficency is a term that can be applied to more things than power.

For example, one could define the efficiency of a roof in terms of the amount of water that runs off versus the total amount that falls on it.

One can define an efficient business as one that has the highest sales value, or margin value, per employee.

Efficiency is a measure of the efficacy against a theoretically perfect system, of something doing the job it is designed to do. As normally measured by how much it produces of the desired output versus how much input it needs.

If we for example take solar energy, it is not menaingful to say that e.g. civering every roof in lonbdon with a .3% efficient solar panel is inefficient, if the cost of so doing would actually be less than building and running an equivalent power station over the same . timescales.

One could argue that in terms of various resources one or the other is more efficient.

The power station takes up less space, but uses more fossil fuel. The electric panel is inefficient in overall thermodynamic terms, but maybe more efficient in the actual use of sunlight, since we don't have to wait a couple of million years for the trees to turn back into oil...The power station has far less labour content involved, but perhaps uses more materials.

uppose fo an instant that we cracked fusion power. Who cares about efficiency, since the actual waste products - helium and heat - are totally insignificant in a global context. At that point electcity would become the cheapest form of energy, subject to no taxes at all probably, and we would all be driving electric cars, and heating our houses electrically, immediately :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Agreed. Horses for courses.

However tide power is not impossible either. Not an easy one tho.

If only we could get fusion power working...

[IMM]

This is balls. Look at the power and the fuel consumption and compare. The Mazda is at least as good in fuel consumption.

[RichardS]

quite.

but Efficiency _per square foot_????

if

efficiency = power of panel out per square metre / power put into panel per square metre

then the area terms disappear.

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

[IMM]

How about heating the car in winter? This would be a traditional electric element, which consumes a lot of power from batteries. The car would probably need a layer of insulation to keep heat in and heat out in summer. Do the batteries produce enough heat to heat the cars cabin?

[IMM]

So, electric cars are "equal" to petrol right now in range and performance. Apart from the zero emissions at point of use (brilliant as cities are cleaned right up), what else is there to tip the balance? Generating more electricity (very dirty procedure at present) at power stations is going to produce more emissions. Cleaning this up is an expensive nightmare, not to mention the electrical distribution system for re-charging vehicles.

[IMM]

They don't. They are clearly there. Look above, you wrote it..."per square metre", make that per square foot.

[Franz Heymann]

Last time you had a different reason for not reading it. Here it is:

"This web site appears out off date. No press release for two years, indicating no progress."

Franz