I would not have believed this had I not seen this come from this idiot’s Senator’s mouth. Take the three most inefficient and subsidized things in government today, add them together, and there’s no way that spells SUCCESS. It does spell FAIL though.
From Fox News website (via C-SPAN)
As the potential collapse of the United States Postal Service looms on the horizon, one Senate Democrat has proposed an unusual plan to solve the crisis.
Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) looks to harvest the electricity that windmill farms produce in order to power a new fleet of battery-operated postal delivery vehicles, replacing the previous ’25 to 30 years old’ ‘dilapidated’ vehicles.
The Senator admits the idea is “out there” but concludes that “we need to be thinking boldly, and the postal service needs to do that”
Watch the video:
If you are a constituent you need to sound off. The stupidity of this idea is not only robust, it is unprecedented. Electric vehicles do better on long hauls and commutes, stop/start a thousand times a day at each mailbox, not so much.
They’d be FORD’s (Found On Road Discharged) the first day.
(h/t) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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Please, don’t laugh. The idea of storing ‘spare’ electricity in the batteries of the cars owned by the general public was being mooted a couple of years ago in the UK.
Don’t laugh – smile, feel sorry for them and give generously, for I feel that they can’t help it.
Link to British Pedestrian Electric Delivery Truck (PEDT)
http://catalogue.postalheritage.org.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqServer=localhost&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29=%27Pedestrian%20Electric%20Delivery%20Truck%27%29
They could always put a wind generator on the top of the electric vehicle!
Cue Josh!
EVs along the lines of the British milk floats would probably do the job in densely populated areas, where the PO is close to the delivery round and mailboxes are close together. But, they are indeed very slow, and as mail (unlike milk) is typically delivered when there is a lot of traffic on busy roads they might cause a fair bit of annoyance to other road users. I doubt they’d be much good in sprawling suburban, semi rural or rural areas though. They would take a lot longer to get through their round than conventional vehicles, and time is money. Maybe there is a role for EVs in some circumstances, but I doubt that simple replacement is the answer.
Here in Oz the posties ride little 80cc motorbikes with big boxes and panniers on them along the footpath to deliver letters and small parcels, except in the country. Large parcels are delivered separately by van, usually via contractors. It seems to work OK, and Australia Post makes a profit. They do contract out a lot of their rural deliveries, and use private postal agencies (typically newsagents or general stores) to keep costs down, though. And, they have their own fully funded superannuation scheme to pay pensions to retired employees, which is not showing any signs of sending them broke.
As for the windmills – someone should send this guy a cap with a propellor on top, perhaps with a wire that could be attached to his frontal cortex for stimulation purposes.
The whole is of course not about energy but about price.
A kwh mechanical energy produced from windmill electrical energy is anywhere between 3 and 6 times more expensive than the same kwh mechanical energy produced with a Diesel engine.
So the biggest problem is on the windmill side, the electrical car side may only make it marginally worse than what it already is.
Beyond that it is clear that a start/stop regime (regardless whether one uses electrical or combustion engines) consumes MORE energy than a steady state (e.g highway like) regime at similar speed.
This is because the transitory of getting up to speed has generally a high couple gradient and that consumes a lot of energy.
So it seems obvious to me that the idea is economically stupid and it appears that in UK they are able to maintain economically stupid ideas for decades with nobody noticing.
It is equally obvious that to compensate the economical inefficiency there must be somebody (generally the taxpayer or the customer) who pays the difference.
Anthony, I feel the problem is people are trying to get petrol performance from a battery powered car.
Milk floats in the UK were an excellent solution to delivering milk to every house in every street in an area.
But trying to get ICE acceleration from a battery source, as you found, consumes vast amount of energy.
Even drivers of small powered ICE cars use nearly all of their engines power during acceleration, do that in a battery and it soon goes flat.
Acceleration slowly, either through choice or by control system design, and maximum ranges of electric cars will shoot up, but, no one will buy them!! 🙂
Ah, but if one wanted it to fail…
http://youtu.be/CZ-4gnNz0vc
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/04/long-live-free-speech/
Grey Lensman says:
April 25, 2012 at 10:11 pm
So the 50 odd years of national milk delivery i n the Uk by electric milk float did not work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
Stop start, rain shine, heat cold, they always got through.
=========================================================
Um, nope, GL.
Way back in the mid-60s I spent a year or so as a milk delivery man. In the depths of winter, all the diesel trucks were sent out to tow the electric floats to finish their round after they ran out of juice, and then back to base. (I was a truck-driver, mine was a semi-rural round.) The depot boss could estimate to a good degree of accuracy where the dead floats would be on their round, depending on how low the temperature was (he’d been in the job for many years).
In the UK, he’d be known as a “nutter”, and he is.
Anthony is correct about the high current draw at electric-vehicle start-up, but that merely means that the electric motor is applying high torque–as an internal-combustion engine would have to do if it could at low engine speed–and expending energy that a gasoline engine has to do, too, to get the car up to speed. There no doubt is a lot of efficiency lost in stop-and-go driving, but nothing I’ve heard lead me to believe that it’s worse for electric car than a gasoline one, and there’s every reason to believe it’s believe that it’s better, for the reasons previous responders have given.
So, yes, electric cars probably get fewer miles per kWh starting and stopping than they do cruising, but that’s hardly a reason for preferring gasoline vehicles.
CV and Geoff S
You are jesting, but in Sweden we had an MP who suggested exactly that:
That the batteries are charged by small windmills on top of the electric car while driving, to get rid of the nuisance of having to charge them over night.
(in Swedish, with subtitles)
And not only that: In the first you-tube version of this hilarious episode, the MP turned up (as a poorly disguised sock-puppet) and in the comments kept arguing that the idea wasn’t that bad after all. He abandoned the perpetuum mobile version, but defended the technical merits of his idea ..
Astonishing! Need I say that he was a member of the reformed communist party?
We could even run extension chords from our homes out to our mailboxes so they could re-charge at each stop! I mean really, what the Postal Service needs is just to spend more money on another stupid idea!
For those correctly pointing out that the USPS isn’t subsidized by the federal government, it’s just a matter of time …
To reduce the cost of energy needed to move the mail around there are several options other than windmill-electric. Diesel is a mature and proven technology. Gasoline-electric or diesel-electric hybrid is a mature and proven technology. UPS and FedEx are moving in that direction.
UPS Hybrid Electric Vehicle Fleet
FedEx Hybrid Electric Fleet
Hmm, batteries… Oh the humanity!
Well, I guess the current administrations energy policy’s have come home to roost. Gas was $1.87 a gallon when Obama took office and it’s now on ave about $3.80, what do you suppose that has done to the USPS with a huge fleet of antiquated vehicles?
From the USPS website facts:
“Conserving Energy
The Postal Service operates the world’s largest fleet of alternative fuel-capable vehicles — more than 44,000 — most are equipped to use ethanol. There are electric, compressed natural gas, liquid propane gas and bio-diesel vehicles.
Thousands of energy-saving projects have been completed, saving an average of 900 billion BTUs per year. Over 1 trillion BTUs of additional energy reductions have been identified.
The Postal Service continues to use and benefit from solar power with solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.
Detailed energy audits are ongoing at our largest facilities — representing about 150 million square feet of space and roughly 70 percent of the energy consumption in the Postal Service.
The Postal Service is testing 10 Navistar eStar electric step vans. This test is part of the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded through the Department of Energy. The new 2-ton vehicles will be tested in three locations: CA, NY and VA. ”
Tried to determine how long it takes to charge the Navistar, it supposedly gets 100 miles to a charge, but they don’t tell you the charge time.
Nice sentimants, but to save 1 Trillion BTU’s they have to use energy that costs more to produce! Bring back cheap gas and modernize the fleet to more fuel efficient non-flex fuel vehicles and they would save more money!
IMHO
Peter in MD (a state that claims the 2013 “Doomsday” budget is a cut of $500 million, when in fact it’s still 1.9% more than last year! Only in Gov’t can you budget more than last year and still call it a cut!)
crosspatch says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Well, if they just put little windmills on the vehicles they could make the electricity as they drive.
USA hasn’t got a monopoly on idiot politicians. A Swedish member of parlament (leftist of course) actually suggested just that!
Thanks, Tony B. for that link to the exploration of the abandoned Mail Rail system. I was not aware such a thing existed. I’ll send it to my railfan friends here in the USA.
Re postal vehicles, we should be more specific about uses. Here in the suburbs and business districts of Framingham, MA, the mailman uses a small, right-hand-drive truck, which he drives a block or so, gets out and hits a few houses or offices, gets back in and drives another block or so, and so on. (The right-hand drive is to enable him to reach street-side mailboxes without getting out, but on our street at any rate many of the mailboxes are on or close to the houses.) I doubt that these trucks exceed 20 miles a day, and rarely more than 20-30 mph. Number One Son figured the primitive electric car he had could handle that job fine.
In the ‘old days’ (back in the ’50s, say) the mailman mostly walked his route, but the rise of third-class ‘junk’ mail made that impossible; the stuff was too heavy for his bag.
In more rural areas, there are more miles to travel, less stopping and starting, and you might run faster between stops. Here, too, electric vehicles could work, but then you run up against the limitations of battery life, so hybrids might be more useful.
Re the USPS: To do away with it would probably require a Constitutional amendment, as the Congress is given the power in the Constitution “To establish Post Offices and Post roads.” Conceivably the Congress could simply fail to exercise that power, but arguably it is also a responsibility. In the age of email, the postman’s daily rounds may seem archaic, but, believe it or not, there are many who linger by the electronic wayside. And one has to wonder at the efficacy of a government which cannot successfully accomplish the basic function of “delivering the mail.”
Re windmills along the entire eastern coast of the US, as the Senator prophesied, let us hope it does not come to fruition. Here in Taxachusetts, customers of National Grid (a power company) will likely have their electric rates skyrocket when (and if) the controversial Cape Wind project comes on line. What we need up and down the coast are oil rigs, not windmills!
Re Sen. Carper’s idea of storing the power from windmills in postal vehicle batteries, if the idea is to use it for anything but running the trucks, it’s ridiculous. I expect there’s a reason why I have never heard of Sen. Carper before.
Re the competition between Maryland and Delaware (above) for the most idiotic Congressmen, I’ve got you all beat: I live in Ed Malarkey’s district.
/Mr Lynn
A little more on Postal Service finances from NPR …
atheok says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:27 pm
I’ve mailed a small newsletter for a couple decades and from the USPS workers I deal with (and others I socialize with), they’re pretty much all looking forward to the first early retirement package they qualify for. Morale? They’ve heard of that.
OTOH, they say the pension problem is due to congressional meddling, I don’t know enough about it all to weigh in, and if I did, it wouldn’t be helpful. Life in a shrinking business that has defined benefit pension plans is stressful.
I’ve been through chapter 11 with one company, and pretty much directly into chapter 7 at another. If it weren’t for the occasional Great Recession, 401ks and IRAs would be the better alternative for the semi-clueful employee.
They tried – they started out with a service where you could send Email to the USPS, they’d print it out near the destination and deliver it the next day. It was more like a next-day telegram than Email and was nowhere close to a sweet spot. Email works because you can exchange several over the course of a day.
As for modern Email, given the amount of junk mail delivered here on paper, I’d hate to see what the USPS could do electronically. 🙂
“email as it birthed”? I was among the first people to send Email between dissimilar operating systems (Tops-10 and TENEX, both on PDP-10s) around 1972 back in ARPAnet days. That would have been a bit early for the USPS to get involved!
I really love the part about storing the excess electricity in the EV batteries. Are those vehicles for delivering mail or storing excess juice? Because if you drive them, they will need to be recharged every day.
And to think this whole scheme makes sense to this man, and no doubt to many other people as well. With this type of understanding of technology, energy and economics, is it no wonder this country is in the shape it’s in?
I finally watched what he said and it’s even more loony. He’s pushing off shore wind farms (a maintenance and corrosion nightmare). One Hurricane and there goes the East Coast power grid (gee, doesn’t he believe in CAGW generated storms?) He talks about storing the excess energy that can’t be used on the grid in the mail trucks batteries! So if we have some windless days we don’t get our mail delivered since we’ve got to use that “stored” energy for the grid? As Bug Bunny would say: “What a maroon!”
How about natural gas-powered vehicles? We have plenty of natural gas (at least until Obama and the EPA get going) and we could easily install refueling stations at the post offices. This probably won’t work well for rural areas, but given the way government works, it’s probably what somebody will endorse.
Seriously, the way to fix the Post Office starts with pension reform and a change to the union work rules. Next, lease a counter at the local supermarket or general store for rural areas that don’t need a stand-alone post office.
I don’t know why so many people assume the PO drives to every house. In all the places I’ve lived, they walk a radius of 6 city blocks around the parked car, then move the car. The car moves about twice an hour.
Getting rid of processing centers means that the processing centers in Wallowa County would have to send local mail 100 miles away, and then Pendleton would send it right back on the same road, just to deliver it next door to the Post Office it was dropped off at. If the one in Pendleton goes away, it would mean 400 miles to Portland, and then back to deliver mail to the entire NE corner of Oregon.
Privatize it? Okay. Some areas of cities, towns, and rural locations will not have mail delivery. Why? The private company may not like them. It also means that mail fraud will skyrocket and private mail delivery will be an open road for terrorism. Packages will explode or leave toxic dust on your hands.
But if we are willing to live with that risks and the costs, then okay. We already have quick delivery bikes and mom and pop delivery services here. It costs a lot more to deliver a birthday card to a family across town. But unsubsidized physical delivery will cost more. If that is what we want, we will have to live with it.
Again, we have two choices. A government funded infrastructure similar to our roads, or privatized entities. Which is the lesser of two evils?
BarryW says:
April 26, 2012 at 6:01 am
I finally watched what he said and it’s even more loony. He’s pushing off shore wind farms (a maintenance and corrosion nightmare). One Hurricane and there goes the East Coast power grid (gee, doesn’t he believe in CAGW generated storms?)
Barry, Barry, Barry, if we build them, they won’t come, or we’ll just turn the windmills towards the storms and blow them back out to sea! The first hurricane defense system! /sarc
Polistra,
That’s fine in cities, but I’ve live in parts of New England where there are less then 25 houses in a mile, so the carrier drives up to each mailbox which is road side. I think there are many more rural areas’s like that then cities and towns. So the answer is probably a mixed fleet, especially in hilly/mountainous areas.