OFFTopic from 'KS-16S caused a fire...'

[TomOnWheels]

6 hours ago, eddiemoy said:

I gave him a pass because of what he went through.  He calm down after.  We try to understand what people are going through even though we haven't been through it.  Makes for a better world...

But so far here is what we know....  his wheel was old, 8000km on it when he sent it to ewheels for an overhaul back in nov 2018.  KS is now involved to try to figure out what happen to the wheel.  i'm concerned that it may point back to the overhaul.  

He has confirmed multiple times that the wheel wasn't being charged when it went up in flames.  He said that he had to jump through a fire as tall as him and two firemen were hurt putting out the fire.  

I'm also concerned that this will put the EUC's in a bad light and might get it banned in NYC by type.  Sucks!  Only takes one incident.  

Well then, Tesla cars should be banned too...

[eddiemoy]

6 hours ago, TomOnWheels said:

Well then, Tesla cars should be banned too...

Our wheels don't have sophisticated active battery management and thermal runaway protection that Tesla has built into every car.

If you only knew the steps that Tesla has taken to prevent their cars from going up in smoke.  You are 10X more likely to crash and burn in a gasoline car(ICE) than BEV.  You crash in a ICE, can be instant explosion.  You crash in a Tesla, even if it starts a chain reaction, you have lots of time to get out.  It's more like fire crackers and it is vented away from the cabin.  I've owned three Tesla's now over the last 6 years.  

What should be banned is gasoline cars.  And it will be eventually.

Edited May 10, 2019 by eddiemoy

[Marty Backe]

3 hours ago, eddiemoy said:

Our wheels don't have sophisticated active battery management and thermal runaway protection that Tesla has built into every car.

If you only knew the steps that Tesla has taken to prevent their cars from going up in smoke.  You are 10X more likely to crash and burn in a gasoline car(ICE) than BEV.  You crash in a ICE, can be instant explosion.  You crash in a Tesla, even if it starts a chain reaction, you have lots of time to get out.  It's more like fire crackers and it is vented away from the cabin.  I've owned three Tesla's now over the last 6 years.  

What should be banned is gasoline cars.  And it will be eventually.

I can easily imagine NYC banning gasoline cars. They like to ban all kind of things. California does too 

Gasoline cars won't be banned in our lifetime, thank goodness.

Although electric cars are cool and all that, they are a step down in convenience. If you're going to replace a technology, than the replacement should be at least as good as the original.

Relative to gas, electric cars are:

• More expensive
• Have a shorter lifespan
• Limited range
• Limited capability (where's my 3/4-ton pickup, etc)
• Long refill time
• Arguably worse for the environment

Of course there are advantages, but they don't out-way the disadvantages, IMO.

I'll be the first to buy an electric when it offers me the identical convenience of my gas vehicles. After all, I really don't care what's under my hood (I'm not currently a gear head). Until then they are for the enthusiasts (nothing wrong with that).

Edited May 10, 2019 by Marty Backe

[nickysneids]

17 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

Relative to gas, electric cars are:

• Arguably worse for the environment

 

Can you go into more detail on this for me? I had no idea that this was even up for debate...

Edited May 10, 2019 by nickysneids

[Marty Backe]

16 minutes ago, nickysneids said:

Can you go into more detail on this for me? I had no idea that this was even up for debate...

I say "arguably". There has been serious work evaluating the entire life-cycle of the electric car vs gas car. There are of course no emissions from the non-existent tailpipe, but the power plants the generate the electricity that charges the car emit emissions. But the biggest impact is the manufacturing process that creates the battery packs. This includes the mining of all the minerals and the energy required to process said minerals into the ingredients that go into the battery.

I'm neutral on the subject (I'm not pulling for one technology to win - I'll buy whatever is most convenient and best for my pocketbook), but I find it interesting to view the big picture.

Here's a Wikipedia article that discusses some of this. There are other articles that paint a worse picture for the electric vehicle. That's why I say "arguable". I don't think the final verdict is out yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car

[LanghamP]

22 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

There are of course no emissions from the non-existent tailpipe, but the power plants the generate the electricity that charges the car emit emissions. But the biggest impact is the manufacturing process that creates the battery packs. This includes the mining of all the minerals and the energy required to process said minerals into the ingredients that go into the battery.

The article you linked to seems to as of 2017 that eCars over their entire life cycle emit dramatically less carbon than IC cars.

However, I don't like that wiki entry because it doesn't capture different aspects of the transportation cycle. The eCar can be as dirty, or as clean, as you want it to be, because the production of electrics can be as dirty (coal) or as clean (solar), or somewhere in-between (nuclear, windmills, hydro).

In contrast, try doing figure eights on a pedestrian bridge above an interstate highway with the cars below you screaming their engines at 75 mph; you'll learn quite quickly that IC autos are shockingly dirty.

I feel we in the US are doomed, because we have all these suburbs that require us to get into these vehicles to get anywhere. That isn't going away soon, and since infrastructure usage drives pollution emissions, just the cost of building that infrastructure is a huge polluter.

[winterwheel]

On the CO2 issue only that article has

   gas cars with 29.6 tonnes of all-in lifetime emissions
   electric with 27.8 tonnes

so not much difference but...

...this assumes grid power generators emit CO2 at 500g/kwh, which is out of date. In California today grid CO2 emissions come in at 165g/kwh, or about one third of what that chart assumes. Using this instead,  electric cars drop down to 15.1, or about half of what gas cars do.

The number gets still better as the grid moves away from high CO2 sources of coal, oil, gas. Ontario (Canada) grid power is 43g/kwh due to grid power coming mostly from hydro and nuclear, so lifetime CO2 emissions of a car there would be less than 10 tonnes, or about 1/3 of a gas car, using the calculations from that article.

Of course if everyone used EUCs for their daily commuting none of this would matter.

Edited May 10, 2019 by winterwheel

[eddiemoy]

2 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

I can easily imagine NYC banning gasoline cars. They like to ban all kind of things. California does too 

Gasoline cars won't be banned in our lifetime, thank goodness.

Although electric cars are cool and all that, they are a step down in convenience. If you're going to replace a technology, than the replacement should be at least as good as the original.

Relative to gas, electric cars are:

• More expensive
• Have a shorter lifespan
• Limited range
• Limited capability (where's my 3/4-ton pickup, etc)
• Long refill time
• Arguably worse for the environment

Of course there are advantages, but they don't out-way the disadvantages, IMO.

I'll be the first to buy an electric when it offers me the identical convenience of my gas vehicles. After all, I really don't care what's under my hood (I'm not currently a gear head). Until then they are for the enthusiasts (nothing wrong with that).

Marty, there are lots of things you mention are out of date.  

Gas cars had 100 years to mature, electric just the past 6 years.  It has already surpassed gasoline cars in performance and convenience.  Tesla Model 3 beat out the M3 in head to head.  The model 3 is cheaper.  

Motortrend back in 2017 - https://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-s/2017/2017-tesla-model-s-p100d-first-test-review/

"We all understand acceleration. It's the rate of change of velocity. This 4,891-pound Tesla Model SP100D does it best, reaching 30, 40, 50, and 60 mph from a standstill more quickly than any other production vehicle we've ever tested, full stop. In our testing, no production car has ever cracked 2.3 seconds from 0 to 60 mph. But Tesla has, in 2.275507139 seconds."

There is a electric pickup available for preorder already - https://products.rivian.com/ 

you name any other pick up that can do 0-60 in 3 sec.

the fastest production car on the planet will be the Tesla Roaster.  Cost?  1/15th the price of the comparable gas car.  Gas is dead.  

The irony marty is that you are riding electric unicycles.  Where is the gas unicycle?  Look at all the gas scooters out there.  There are none, they are all electric. 

The fastest car up pikes peak?  electric.  not gas.

You premise that electric car is worse for the environment is flawed.  There is no choice where you get your gas from.  It is limited, the earth took billions of years to make it from dead stuff.  Electric there are many choices where you get your electricity from.  Just because the plants are still using coal doesn't mean it is worst for the environment.  I'll take the plant making electricity and polluting elsewhere rather than the cars making the pollution in the city.  The argument is that you can make the big machine efficient and cleaner than you can make a car.  

Battery and charging will get there.  Before Tesla came along there wasn't even the idea of supercharging.  It isn't a 5 minute fill up yet.  But for the most part people who do the majority of their driving is to and from work.  You take 5-10 minute filling up gas at a gas station inhaling the cancer causing fumes.  it takes me 2 seconds to plug it in at night.  

Long distance or supercharging has already come a long way.  To be mildly inconvenience when going on a road trip?  I need to take a break from 3-4 hours of driving.  That 20-25 minutes pit stop will allow me to charge the car to get to the next pit stop.  It works.  It will get to 5 minutes.  

I wouldn't bet on Gasoline cars.  

[esaj]

As for the electric vs. gasoline cars... I was a "fan" of electric cars for a long time, but there's been another development. Check out biogas cars. Not "gas" as in gasoline, but biogas. There's been a few individuals around these parts who have been riding these for over a decade. There are kits to transform normal gasoline/carburator cars to use biogas, unfortunately only a handful of pre-built models though. Also not to be mixed with cars running on natural gas or liquified natural gas (LNG).

Without huge powerplants, it's not possible to create enough energy for everyone to drive electric cars. The charging also takes a lot of time, and the batteries can't take up an insane amount of current to charge fast. But biogas comes mostly from decomposing organic matter. Most of it around here is made from decomposing farm animal sh*t. Until recently, the nearest "gas" station was something like 30km out of town, but now there's at least a couple of spots nearer, and likely more in the future.

Big oil and nowadays, also big battery will likely triumph through pouring money on lobbying and advertisements, but I think biogas could actually be better. Also, unlike electricity, it's relatively easy to transport and store for longer whiles.

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by esaj

[Rehab1]

Interesting article. Maybe Mr. Fusion from  ‘Back to the Future’ will become a reality soon.

 

[esaj]

15 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

Interesting article. Maybe Mr. Fusion from  ‘Back to the Future’ will become a reality soon.

 

Fusion is always 50 years away in the future, no matter what decade you check  Still, if can be made to work, it's a good option. Personally, I don't think we can get enough renewable sources (wind-, solar-, waterpower) to produce enough electricity all the time, so unless a breakthrough is made in fusion, a very efficient and "cheap enough" way to store vast amounts of electrical energy or superconductors working in normal environmental conditions to transfer power from solar panels near the equator (someone claimed a couple of years back that such technology was about to be made, I remain skeptical), the future is likely a mixture of renewables + nuclear energy (in the form of fission plants). Unfortunately, most plants are light water plants. The US had a working prototype of a breeder reactor capable of not only recycling its own spent uranium and work with recycled uranium from light water plants (there's something like >99% of the energy left, but it cannot be used in light water plants anymore), also safe from total power loss. They actually tested it at some point by turning off all cooling, the heat spiked for a moment, then died off and the reaction stopped by itself, ie. a case like Fukushima. Sometime in the 90's, the public opinion turned against nuclear power, the funding was cut and the project died off. Likely a big part of it is also that making breeder reactors is insanely expensive compared to "traditional" light water reactors, and nobody wants to pay that much for their electricity...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

Breeder reactors could, in principle, extract almost all of the energy contained in uranium or thorium, decreasing fuel requirements by a factor of 100 compared to widely used once-through light water reactors, which extract less than 1% of the energy in the uranium mined from the earth.

...

Nuclear waste became a greater concern by the 1990s. Breeding fuel cycles attracted renewed interest because of their potential to reduce actinide wastes, particularly plutonium and minor actinides.^[12] Since breeder reactors on a closed fuel cycle would use nearly all of the actinides fed into them as fuel, their fuel requirements would be reduced by a factor of about 100. The volume of waste they generate would be reduced by a factor of about 100 as well. While there is a huge reduction in the volume of waste from a breeder reactor, the activity of the waste is about the same as that produced by a light-water reactor.^[40]

Edited May 10, 2019 by esaj
Whoops... light water plants, not heavy

[Esper]

I am personally fine with PHEVs becoming the new mainstay car. If there was a way to have a PHEV with the Biogas that would be even better. But imagine if they improved these vehicles moreso to have a 200 mile battery along with the Biogas generator. We could potentially get cars with ranges of 800-1200 miles on a single tank of Biogas. Of course we are not there yet but in a few years we might be. An electric car will only really be better if we can get super chargers in 5-10 minutes with all of them having 500mi+ range OR if there were wireless charging capabilities for highways. Currently the global average range of electric vehicles currently on the road is less than 150 miles due to the overwhelming number of older Nissan Leafs compared to other long range EVs. This number will go up with time as older EVs are retired.

Edit: This is a range only debate, not emissions.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Esper

[eddiemoy]

32 minutes ago, esaj said:

As for the electric vs. gasoline cars... I was a "fan" of electric cars for a long time, but there's been another development. Check out biogas cars. Not "gas" as in gasoline, but biogas. There's been a few individuals around these parts who have been riding these for over a decade. There are kits to transform normal gasoline/carburator cars to use biogas, unfortunately only a handful of pre-built models though. Also not to be mixed with cars running on natural gas or liquified natural gas (LNG).

Without huge powerplants, it's not possible to create enough energy for everyone to drive electric cars. The charging also takes a lot of time, and the batteries can't take up an insane amount of current to charge fast. But biogas comes mostly from decomposing organic matter. Most of it around here is made from decomposing farm animal sh*t. Until recently, the nearest "gas" station was something like 30km out of town, but now there's at least a couple of spots nearer, and likely more in the future.

Big oil and nowadays, also big battery will likely triumph through pouring money on lobbying and advertisements, but I think biogas could actually be better. Also, unlike electricity, it's relatively easy to transport and store for longer whiles.

 

 

Today, batteries can take a lot of current.  Tesla started supercharging at 90kw, now it is up to 250kw. We only need it to get up to ~1 megawatt to charge in 5 minutes a 85kwh battery pack.  

As for cannot create enough energy?  We only need very little space on earth to create enough energy for the whole world.  Solar has become so cheap and the more folks that put solar on their roof top, the more less energy the powerplants have to generate.  In Hawaii, they generate too much power from solar.

Biogas has been around for a while.  Nothing has come of it because it stinks.  LOL.  Can't generate enough of it.  Or no one is willing to generate enough.  Battery electric is the way to go solar and batteries for storage.  I like Elon's idea.  Need to get more renewable energy sources.  The oil will run out, so will coal.

 

[eddiemoy]

6 minutes ago, Esper said:

I am personally fine with PHEVs becoming the new mainstay car. If there was a way to have a PHEV with the Biogas that would be even better. But imagine if they improved these vehicles moreso to have a 200 mile battery along with the Biogas generator. We could potentially get cars with ranges of 800-1200 miles on a single tank of Biogas. Of course we are not there yet but in a few years we might be. An electric car will only really be better if we can get super chargers in 5-10 minutes with all of them having 500mi+ range OR if there were wireless charging capabilities for highways. Currently the global average range of electric vehicles currently on the road is less than 150 miles due to the overwhelming number of older Nissan Leafs compared to other long range EVs. This number will go up with time as older EVs are retired.

Edit: This is a range only debate, not emissions.

problem with the engine that burns is efficiency.  think the gasoline engine is only 25% efficient in the summer and maybe gets up to 50% efficiency during winter when you can reuse the heat generated.

[esaj]

7 minutes ago, eddiemoy said:

Today, batteries can take a lot of current.  Tesla started supercharging at 90kw, now it is up to 250kw. We only need it to get up to ~1 megawatt to charge in 5 minutes a 85kwh battery pack.  

The largest nuclear power plants in the world are something like around 8000MW. So the largest plants could charge around 8000 such cars at once. How many people will be riding these? 8000 cars at once, 5 minutes each, there are 1440 minutes per day, so around 2.3 million cars charged per day, assuming all of the power of such plant is used to charge those. Most plants are much smaller.

 

Quote

As for cannot create enough energy?  We only need very little space on earth to create enough energy for the whole world.  Solar has become so cheap and the more folks that put solar on their roof top, the more less energy the powerplants have to generate.  In Hawaii, they generate too much power from solar.

Biogas has been around for a while.  Nothing has come of it because it stinks.  LOL.  Can't generate enough of it.  Or no one is willing to generate enough.  Battery electric is the way to go solar and batteries for storage.  I like Elon's idea.  Need to get more renewable energy sources.  The oil will run out, so will coal.

 

I hear you, but there are problems with generating enough electricity. Solar power works when you're closer to equator. What about up north from here, where the sun doesn't rise at all for almost 2 months during winter? No geothermal or waterpower available either, and there's not enough wind all the time.

Edited May 10, 2019 by esaj

[eddiemoy]

10 minutes ago, esaj said:

The largest nuclear power plants in the world are something like around 8000MW. So the largest plants could charge around 8000 such cars at once. How many people will be riding these?

 

I hear you, but there are problems with generating enough electricity. Solar power works when you're closer to equator. What about up north from here, where the sun doesn't rise at all for almost 2 months during winter? No geothermal or waterpower available either, and there's not enough wind all the time.

What is your driving habit like?  to and from work, groceries?  how often do you take a road trip?  for me, in the 6 years of owning 3 Tesla's, I've only went on 3 road trips that required me to use a Supercharger.  Not everyone is going to need to use superchargers.  Today they are only capable of short 250kw charging durations.  At home we charge using a standard EV charger, 240v 50A, or 10KW.  This worked for me and for 99% of the people out there.  

As far as energy generation, here is Elon's plan to use solar and the space is smaller than you think.  Plus the land is useless today anyway

https://www.inverse.com/article/34239-how-many-solar-panels-to-power-the-usa

I'm sure if you wanted you can calculate the size of the area needed.  I have 17KW covering my roof.  I wanted 25KW but couldn't fit it all.  Normally the panels are about 40"x66" ~300w  But there are commercial ones that are larger.  

With renewable, you need a way to store it.  Batteries...

I'm sure we can figure out a transmission for the power.  It has to be done, it isn't a choice.  The coal and gasoline is running out.

Edited May 10, 2019 by eddiemoy

[esaj]

31 minutes ago, eddiemoy said:

What is your driving habit like?  to and from work, groceries?  how often do you take a road trip?  for me, in the 6 years of owning 3 Tesla's, I've only went on 3 road trips that required me to use a Supercharger.  Not everyone is going to need to use superchargers.  Today they are only capable of short 250kw charging durations.  At home we charge using a standard EV charger, 240v 50A, or 10KW.  This worked for me and for 99% of the people out there.  

I personally haven't had a car since 2002, but my GF does... I think we clock in about 1000-2000km per year (that's about 600-1200 miles). At least that's what I think, she's had the car for over 10 years, it had way more than 200000km on it when we got it, and nowadays has about 240000km. Most of the time I travel by walking, bicycle, bus or by EUC. Train or bus for longer distances. Ship or airplane going from country to country, but I've only flown about as many times as I have fingers in one hand in my life  

 

Quote

As far as energy generation, here is Elon's plan to use solar and the space is smaller than you think.  Plus the land is useless today anyway

https://www.inverse.com/article/34239-how-many-solar-panels-to-power-the-usa

I'm sure if you wanted you can calculate the size of the area needed.  I have 17KW covering my roof.  I wanted 25KW but couldn't fit it all.  Normally the panels are about 40"x66" ~300w  But there are commercial ones that are larger.  

With renewable, you need a way to store it.  Batteries...

The suns radiation power at sea level is something like 1kW per square meter. The current good (and expensive) panels have something like 20-25% efficiency. If you have a tracker turning all the panels to face the sun, you can make about 250W (0.25kW) per square meter on high efficiency panels (at best). To produce 1MW, you need closer to 4000m^2 of tracking panels (about 43000 square feet). After that come all the other losses in the system. And that's where the sun shines all year around.

Powering a house is one thing, the highest power we use during winter (-30C / -22F) is probably less than 5kW on average. Powering a grid that charges umpteen cars charging along with everything else all around is another thing... Especially farther away from the equator.

 

Quote

I'm sure we can figure out a transmission for the power.  It has to be done, it isn't a choice.  The coal and gasoline is running out.

This is the problem, almost 20% of all electricity generated in the entire world is lost in transfer these days, and the plants are close the where the power's being used, not in a middle of desert in the other side of the country. I'm not that "sure we can figure it out"... but of course (hopefully) could be proved wrong.

Edited May 10, 2019 by esaj

[Esper]

59 minutes ago, eddiemoy said:

With renewable, you need a way to store it.  Batteries...

34 minutes ago, esaj said:

This is the problem, almost 20% of all electricity generated in the entire world is lost in transfer these days

Is there a source for this statistic for this, because I thought it was much less than that? I can't remember the video I watched and would search for it if I had the time. But I recall seeing that energy storage isn't that bad. There are plenty of ways to store it. Flywheels, chemicals, heat, water reservoirs, batteries, etc. There will always be a need for these types of storage and generating large copious amounts of extra energy just lets you store it as potential energy to be used later. Even if there is a loss of power generation, there are times when people use electricity and don't. Generally times when people are working or sleeping, power plants are still gathering energy to supply when it's needed. There are even TED Talks about energy storage and how people think it's a bigger problem than it actually is. 

37 minutes ago, Michael Vu said:

Are there any pictures of the KS-16S afterwards? It might be completely unrecognizable but sometimes in fires specific things can survive that might give further clues on the fires origin and spread.

No pictures so far. I don't believe anyone had it in their mind to take pictures of the fire while evacuating a burning building. But there might be some pictures released sometime in the next week.

[esaj]

20 minutes ago, Esper said:

Is there a source for this statistic for this, because I thought it was much less than that? I can't remember the video I watched and would search for it if I had the time. But I recall seeing that energy storage isn't that bad. There are plenty of ways to store it. Flywheels, chemicals, heat, water reservoirs, batteries, etc. There will always be a need for these types of storage and generating large copious amounts of extra energy just lets you store it as potential energy to be used later. Even if there is a loss of power generation, there are times when people use electricity and don't. Generally times when people are working or sleeping, power plants are still gathering energy to supply when it's needed. There are even TED Talks about energy storage and how people think it's a bigger problem than it actually is. 

 

I don't remember where the 20% figure originally came from, the only source I could find right now was this:

The world's electricity consumption was 18,608 TWh^{[citation needed]} in 2012. This figure is about 18% smaller than the generated electricity, due to grid losses, storage losses, and self-consumption from power plants (gross generation). Cogeneration (CHP) power stations use some of the heat that is otherwise wasted for use in buildings or in industrial processes.

In 2016 while total world energy came from 80% fossil fuels, 10% biofuels, 5% nuclear and 5% renewable (hydro, wind, solar, geothermal), only 18% of that total world energy was in the form of electricity.^[16] Most of the other 82% was used for heat and transportation.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption )

But that contains other than just transfer losses, so probably the actual losses in transfer are smaller. But, currently power isn't being transferred that much over very long distances, so building up a very large solar array in somewhere like the Mediterranean won't help that much in Northern Europe, and trying to transfer it (as electricity) over thousands of kilometers is likely a no-go with current technology, because of the losses in the transfer. Of course, if it could be used to produce some (clean) form of energy that was more easily transferable (gases, liquids...), then it would work much better.

[eddiemoy]

1 hour ago, esaj said:

I personally haven't had a car since 2002, but my GF does... I think we clock in about 1000-2000km per year (that's about 600-1200 miles). At least that's what I think, she's had the car for over 10 years, it had way more than 200000km on it when we got it, and nowadays has about 240000km. Most of the time I travel by walking, bicycle, bus or by EUC. Train or bus for longer distances. Ship or airplane going from country to country, but I've only flown about as many times as I have fingers in one hand in my life  

 

The suns radiation power at sea level is something like 1kW per square meter. The current good (and expensive) panels have something like 20-25% efficiency. If you have a tracker turning all the panels to face the sun, you can make about 250W (0.25kW) per square meter on high efficiency panels (at best). To produce 1MW, you need closer to 4000m^2 of tracking panels (about 43000 square feet). After that come all the other losses in the system. And that's where the sun shines all year around.

Powering a house is one thing, the highest power we use during winter (-30C / -22F) is probably less than 5kW on average. Powering a grid that charges umpteen cars charging along with everything else all around is another thing... Especially farther away from the equator.

 

This is the problem, almost 20% of all electricity generated in the entire world is lost in transfer these days, and the plants are close the where the power's being used, not in a middle of desert in the other side of the country. I'm not that "sure we can figure it out"... but of course (hopefully) could be proved wrong.

again, not everyone needs to supercharge.  99% of the people charge at home with 10kw over night.  most house holds in the us has 200a to their house.  but they don't use anywhere close to that.  It's actually the business that use a lot of electricity and peak hours is during the day.  

I'm in the north east and I could have gotten off grid with 25kw solar.  i produce more than i need during the summer and need some help during the winter with my 17kw system.  with rooftop solar, will require less and less electricity from other sources.  Also with some battery storage at home should be able to go off grid.  Even if I need to charge my car.  

Solar panels last 30+ years.  Yes they are not 100% efficient but don't think they need to be for them to work today.  With less efficiency just cost more and take up more space for the given watt output.  Doesn't mean it doesn't work.  We have transmission loss today.  No different.  Only difference is that we where the electricity comes from.  Can't come from coal, natual gas, or gasoline for ever.  These are finite.  next 20-30 years will be really interesting.

[Marty Backe]

The reason that renewables will never work at scale is that they are unreliable. Therefore we need reliable backup (fossil and nuclear) power. Battery technology does not exist at the levels that can power the planet. Battery technology appears to be following the Fusion path; always 50-years away.

The famously propagandized Tesla Powerpack based "backup" recently installed in Australia can generate 30 mega-watts for 1-hour at a cost of $50-million dollars.

California alone requires ~13GW of power per day. So it would cost ~$21 billion dollars to provide one hour of backup and ~1/2 a trillion dollars for one day. Believe it or not sometime it rains in much of the state for more than one day. And of course there is night time.

This is one state. The world consumes about 15 terawatts of power per day. You can do the math. So if the world is going to run off of electricity there will need to be some kind of reliable backup for all that power, and right now that is Fossil and Nuclear (and sure, some hydro and geothermal).

That makes solar and wind extremely expensive because for every megawatt of installed generation capability you need to install a megawatt of reliable backup power.

I just can't see anything changing in my lifetime that will eliminate fossil fuels. Maybe nuclear, but that's deemed evil now.

[eddiemoy]

45 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

The reason that renewables will never work at scale is that they are unreliable. Therefore we need reliable backup (fossil and nuclear) power. Battery technology does not exist at the levels that can power the planet. Battery technology appears to be following the Fusion path; always 50-years away.

The famously propagandized Tesla Powerpack based "backup" recently installed in Australia can generate 30 mega-watts for 1-hour at a cost of $50-million dollars.

California alone requires ~13GW of power per day. So it would cost ~$21 billion dollars to provide one hour of backup and ~1/2 a trillion dollars for one day. Believe it or not sometime it rains in much of the state for more than one day. And of course there is night time.

This is one state. The world consumes about 15 terawatts of power per day. You can do the math. So if the world is going to run off of electricity there will need to be some kind of reliable backup for all that power, and right now that is Fossil and Nuclear (and sure, some hydro and geothermal).

That makes solar and wind extremely expensive because for every megawatt of installed generation capability you need to install a megawatt of reliable backup power.

I just can't see anything changing in my lifetime that will eliminate fossil fuels. Maybe nuclear, but that's deemed evil now.

They said the same about electric cars 6 years ago.  They thought electric cars were crazy.  Look at what is happening now, every car manufacturer is committed to going full electric in the next 5 years.  

Now Tesla is the best selling car in the luxury class.  Eating BMW/AUDI/Mercedes lunch.  Those guys now playing catch up.

When you think about the numbers they are crazy.  To go full electric we would need about 200 gigabattery factories about 5 bil each.  

You are right, there is a lot to figure out.  If they figured it out already we wouldn't be having this discussion.  You also may be right about the timing.  But you may very see a shortage of gasoline in your lifetime.  Hopefully the car manufactures start making more electric cars so that we won't run out of gasoline so soon.  

 

[LanghamP]

1 hour ago, Marty Backe said:

California alone requires ~13GW of power per day. So it would cost ~$21 billion dollars to provide one hour of backup and ~1/2 a trillion dollars for one day. Believe it or not sometime it rains in much of the state for more than one day. And of course there is night time.

This is one state. The world consumes about 15 terawatts of power per day. You can do the math. So if the world is going to run off of electricity there will need to be some kind of reliable backup for all that power, and right now that is Fossil and Nuclear (and sure, some hydro and geothermal).

Nonesense. You should read more and actually do the very straightforward math. Solar beats all other forms of energy, and not by a little either but by a lot.

It irritates me that we haven't gone to solar; even a cursory survey of the various energies shows solar is far and away the best option. However, I do understand solar has a large up-front cost, but as @eddiemoy probably already calculated, you buy the solar panels once, install them, have minor power banks for nights, and then rather quickly recoup your costs. If you include the lack of tailpipe deaths and injuries, assuming we can get the while neighborhood to do so, then the cost recouped occurs very quickly.

With a minor up front cost utilizing a minor geographical area and assuming not very efficient solar panels, with energy stored in rather expensive but plentiful batteries (or a water column), you can entirely meet all the needs of the world.

[Marty Backe]

36 minutes ago, eddiemoy said:

They said the same about electric cars 6 years ago.  They thought electric cars were crazy.  Look at what is happening now, every car manufacturer is committed to going full electric in the next 5 years.  

Now Tesla is the best selling car in the luxury class.  Eating BMW/AUDI/Mercedes lunch.  Those guys now playing catch up.

When you think about the numbers they are crazy.  To go full electric we would need about 200 gigabattery factories about 5 bil each.  

You are right, there is a lot to figure out.  If they figured it out already we wouldn't be having this discussion.  You also may be right about the timing.  But you may very see a shortage of gasoline in your lifetime.  Hopefully the car manufactures start making more electric cars so that we won't run out of gasoline so soon.  

Peak Oil has been predicted for decades. I'm no longer holding my breath.

Certainly a thousand years from now our economy won't be based on fossil fuels, and it would be cool to see. But I'm afraid in my lifetime it's going to remain a fossil fuel world.

The older you get the more you realize how long real change takes to occur. You really think that every car manufacturer will be full electric in 5-years? Maybe in the high-end luxury market, but at my local Chevy dealer?

We recently bought a new Lexus. No electric car offered the features that we have at a competitive price. And although no doubt fun, I think most people really don't care how fast they can get to 60mph.

Maybe in the $100,000 Germane luxury market, Tesla is eating their lunch, but that's above my pay grade 

[Marty Backe]

2 minutes ago, LanghamP said:

Nonesense. You should read more and actually do the very straightforward math. Solar beats all other forms of energy, and not by a little either but by a lot.

It irritates me that we haven't gone to solar; even a cursory survey of the various energies shows solar is far and away the best option. However, I do understand solar has a large up-front cost, but as @eddiemoy probably already calculated, you buy the solar panels once, install them, have minor power banks for nights, and then rather quickly recoup your costs. If you include the lack of tailpipe deaths and injuries, assuming we can get the while neighborhood to do so, then the cost recouped occurs very quickly.

With a minor up front cost utilizing a minor geographical area and assuming not very efficient solar panels, with energy stored in rather expensive but plentiful batteries (or a water column), you can entirely meet all the needs of the world.

All I can say is you're living in a dream world. Fossil fuels have much high energy densities that solar or wind. You've made a bunch a sweeping statements that are meaningless. What does "Solar beats all other forms of energy" mean? It's feel good verbiage.

Minor power banks for nights? When I turn on my tablesaw the minor power banks will be drained in about 5-minutes. But I suppose I'll just have to alter my lifestyle so we can feel good about going solar.

And when it's raining? It's been cloudy in Southern California the last couple of days. But no problems, just spend a couple of trillion dollars building battery backups.

If solar and wind could be a drop-in replacement at the same cost, count me in. But it hasn't. Solar has just become a new religion for many people.