From Stanford University
Stanford scientists calculate the energy required to store wind and solar power on the grid
Renewable energy holds the promise of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. But there are times when solar and wind farms generate more electricity than is needed by consumers. Storing that surplus energy in batteries for later use seems like an obvious solution, but a new study from Stanford University suggests that might not always be the case.
“We looked at batteries and other promising technologies for storing solar and wind energy on the electrical grid,” said Charles Barnhart, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP).
“Our primary goal was to calculate their overall energetic cost – that is, the total amount of fuel and electricity required to build and operate these storage technologies. We found that when you factor in the energetic costs, grid-scale batteries make sense for storing surplus solar energy, but not for wind.”
The study, which is supported by GCEP, is published in the online edition of the journal Energy and Environmental Science.
Climate change and renewable energy
Most electricity in the United States is generated at power plants that run on coal and natural gas – fossil fuels that contribute significantly to global warming by emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide. Solar and wind power are emissions-free and renewable, but depend on sunlight or wind to operate.
“For the grid to function efficiently, power supply needs to match power demand at all times, but with renewables, that’s not always the case,” Barnhart said. “For example, wind farms sometimes produce too much electricity at night when demand is low. That excess energy has to be stored or used elsewhere. Otherwise it will be lost. However, the U.S. grid has very limited storage capacity.”
A wide variety of technologies are being developed to address the lack of grid-scale storage. The Stanford team looked at several emerging technologies, including five battery types – lead-acid, lithium-ion, sodium-sulfur, vanadium-redox and zinc-bromine.
In a previous study, Barnhart calculated the energetic cost of building and maintaining each of the five battery systems for grid-scale storage. Lead-acid batteries had the highest energetic cost, lithium-ion the lowest, he found.
“We calculated how much energy is used over the full lifecycle of the battery – from the mining of raw materials to the installation of the finished device,” Barnhart said. “Batteries with high energetic cost consume more fossil fuels and therefore release more carbon dioxide over their lifetime. If a battery’s energetic cost is too high, its overall contribution to global warming could negate the environmental benefits of the wind or solar farm it was supposed to support.”
For this study, he and his colleagues calculated the energetic cost of grid-scale photovoltaic solar cells and wind turbines.
“Both wind turbines and photovoltaics deliver more energy than it takes to build and maintain them,” said GCEP postdoctoral scholar Michael Dale, a co-author of the study. “However, our calculations showed that the overall energetic cost of wind turbines is much lower than conventional solar panels, which require lots of energy, primarily from fossil fuels, for processing silicon and fabricating other components.”
To store or curtail?
Next the scientists looked at the energetic cost of curtailment – the practice of shutting down solar panels and wind turbines to reduce the production of surplus electricity on the grid.
“Curtailment of renewable resources seems wasteful,” Barnhart said. “But grid operators routinely curtail wind turbines to avoid a sudden, unexpected surge of excess electricity that could overload transmission lines and cause blackouts. Curtailment rates in the U.S. will likely increase as renewable energy becomes more prevalent.”
Shutting down a clean source of electricity seems counterproductive, but is storing surplus energy in batteries a practical alternative?
To find out, the researchers compared the energetic cost of curtailing solar and wind power, versus the energetic cost of grid-scale storage. Their calculations were based on a formula known as “energy return on investment” – the amount of energy produced by a technology, divided by the amount of energy it takes to build and maintain it.
Using that formula, the researchers found that the amount of energy required to create a solar farm is comparable to the energy used to build each of the five battery technologies. “Using batteries to store solar power during periods of low demand would, therefore, be energetically favorable,” Dale said.
The results were quite different for wind farms. The scientists found that curtailing wind power reduces the energy return on investment by 10 percent. But storing surplus wind-generated electricity in batteries results in even greater reductions – from about 20 percent for lithium-ion batteries to more than 50 percent for lead-acid.
“Ideally, the energetic cost of curtailing a resource should at least equal the amount of energy it cost to store it,” Dale said. “That’s the case for photovoltaics, but for wind farms, the energetic cost of curtailment is much lower than it is for batteries. Therefore, it would actually be more energetically efficient to shut down a wind turbine than to store the surplus electricity it generates.”
He compared it to buying a safe. “You wouldn’t spend a $100 on a safe to store a $10 watch,” he said. “Likewise, it’s not sensible to build energetically expensive batteries for an energetically cheap resource like wind, but it does make sense for photovoltaic systems, which require lots of energy to produce.”
Increasing the cycle life of a battery would be the most effective way to improve its energetic performance, Barnhart added. Conventional lithium-ion batteries last about four years, or 6,000 charge-discharge cycles. Lead-acid batteries only last about 700 cycles. To efficiently store energy on the grid, batteries must endure 10,000 to 18,000 cycles, he said.
“Storing energy consumes energy, and curtailing energy wastes it,” Barnhart said. “In either case, the result is a reduction in the overall energy return on investment.”
Other options
In addition to batteries, the researchers considered other technologies for storing renewable energy, such as pumped hydroelectric storage, which uses surplus electricity to pump water to a reservoir behind a dam. Later, when demand for energy is high, the stored water is released through turbines in the dam to generate electricity.
“Pumped hydro is used in 99 percent of grid storage today, ” Barnhart said. “It works fantastically from an energetic perspective for both wind and solar. Its energy return on investment is 10 times better than conventional batteries. But there are geologic and environmental constraints on where pumped hydro can be deployed.”
Storage is not the only way to improve grid reliability. “Energy that would otherwise be lost during times of excess could be used to pump water for irrigation or to charge a fleet of electric vehicles, for example,” Dale said.
It’s important for society to be energy-smart about implementing new technologies, Barnhart added. “Policymakers and investors need to consider the energetic cost as well as the financial cost of new technologies,” he said. “If economics is the sole focus, then less expensive technologies that require significant amounts of energy for their manufacture, maintenance and replacement might win out – even if they ultimately increase greenhouse gas emissions and negate the long-term benefits of implementing wind and solar power.”
“Our goal is to understand what’s needed to build a scalable low-carbon energy system,” said co-author Sally Benson, the director of GCEP and a professor of energy resources engineering. “Energy return on investment is one of those metrics that sheds light on potential roadblocks. Hopefully this study will provide a performance target to guide future research on grid-scale energy storage.”
Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering in Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences, also co-authored the study.
This article was written by Mark Shwartz of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.
Pumped water is potential energy storage. I’ve always wondered about kinetic energy storage. I know we have fancy new flywheels made with exotic high tensile materials. But how about going in the other direction by spinning huge amounts of cheap mass at moderate speeds? Perhaps an iceberg could be spun or a specially shaped disk of pykrete. How about a huge circular platform mounted on concentric circular railroad tracks? After all, liberal progressives seem to love trains! On top could be a city, a garden or a slag pile.
I did some calculations using Wikipedia’s flywheel formulas. I would have a turning disk 1 kilometer in diameter covered with one meter of sand weighing 1500 kilograms per cubic meter. The energy stored could be doubled by adding another meter of sand. My results are a bit discouraging, especially since they do not include any adjustments for conversion losses or friction. I have made a listing of energy values stored for various outside diameter speeds. While I could have made a mistake somewhere, the numbers do seem to make sense. Energy stored increases exponentially with speed. I included a couple g force numbers which also increase exponentially.
(500 m)**2 * 1 m * 3.14 * 1500 kg/m**3 = 1177500000 kg
Moment of inertia is: 1177500000 / 2 * 500**2 = 147187500000000 kg*m**2
Angular velocity is: Outside speed (km/hr) * (2 radians/km) / 3600 sec/hr =
Outside speed / 1800 radians/sec
Kinetic energy = (1/2) * 147187500000000 kg*m**2 * (Outside speed/1800
radians/sec)**2 = Outside speed * 22714120 Joules * .000000278 kilowatt hr/Joules
= Outside speed**2 * 6.314 kilowatt hr
5 km/hr (walking) = 157 kwh
10 km/hr (jogging) = 631 kwh
20 km/hr (running) = 2525.6 kwh
30 km/hr (fast running) = 5682.6 kwh
50 km/hr (city driving) = 15785 kwh
100 km/hr (highway cruising) = 63140 kwh — pulls .16 g’s
150 km/hr (autobahn cruising) = 142065 kwh
200 km/hr (Modest high speed rail) = 252560 kwh
300 km/hr (fast high speed rail) = 568269 kwh — pulls 1.4 g’s!
Roger Sowell says: @ur momisugly September 10, 2013 at 7:09 pm
….If you want to argue that renewable energy is like Broken Windows, I’m afraid that argument has no merit. Renewable energy is an adjunct to the existing power plant infrastructure. It is like adding a smaller window to a house that already has windows…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Missed it again.
Destroying perfectly good coal power plants and replacing with less useful renewable energy is breaking the window.
NOTE: Everything I am trying to say is in the context of replacing fossil fuel energy with renewables as mandated by a 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050 as I already stated above. It is also using the earlier House of Representatives 25X25 resolution (U.S. Senate unanimous consent on 25×25 in July 2007) Which I forgot to mention earlier.
Grey Lensman:
I am answering your post at September 10, 2013 at 11:01 pm which is sufficiently short for me to copy it and not link to it here. It says
Sorry, but I “forgot” nothing. I also did not mention the connector with France which imports nuclear power to the UK. I was discussing indigenous electricity in the UK as can be seen from the Introduction which explains that the paper is about fulfillment of the objectives specified by UK legislation. The connector to Iceland is not relevant to the subject I was considering unless you wish to claim that 20% of UK electricity demand can be met by import from Iceland of geothermally produced electricity.
And your suggestion of tidal turbines would avoid the dredging and coastal degradation of a barrage. However, they would be an expensive and pointless addition to power supply for the same reason as windfarms: i.e. they provide intermittent power and variable. This requires back-up from thermal power stations which need to run all the time whether or not the tidal turbines exist. The better option is to not waste money on the turbines and to use the electricity from the thermal power stations which operate – so consume their fuel – all the time whether or not the tidal turbines exist. The same is true for wind turbines.
As I explained the best option is tidal coffer dams. And paulinuk summarised my argument of why they are preferable to a tidal barrage (or tidal turbines) in his post to me at September 10, 2013 at 1:02 pm where he wrote
I remind that the “.pdf” is at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
Gail Combs:
I write to ask a serious – n.b. not rhetorical – question.
In your post at September 11, 2013 at 4:23 am you quote “U.S. Senate unanimous consent on 25×25 in July 2007” as saying
OK. Any country is entitled to decide whatever energy policy it wants, and I am not questioning that.
However, a stated (in the quote) objective is “strengthens local, state and national economies”.
Energy policy can only strengthen “local, state and national economies” by providing cheap, reliable and continuous energy supply. Electricity suppliers maximise their competitiveness by providing cheap, reliable and continuous energy supply. And electricity consumers want cheap, reliable and continuous energy supply.
But renewables provide expensive, unreliable, and intermittent energy supply.
So, my question is
What reasons does the government state for mandating expensive, unreliable, and intermittent energy supply from renewables when government, electricity suppliers and electricity consumers all want cheap, reliable and continuous energy supply?
I know the reasons stated by UK government and the EU but I am asking about the US situation that you are reporting.
With thanks in anticipation
Richard
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, even if coal-fired power plants are shut down by green mandates, they will not be replaced by renewable power. They will be replaced with natural gas-fired power. Renewables may be built also, but they will trade off with the natural gas on almost a one-for-one basis.
The net effect is positive, because the natural gas-fired power plants are more efficient, less polluting, and use less cooling water. Ask any engineer, all of us can confirm this.
Even in crazy California, where green laws are very strong, natural gas-fired power is what we build.
You could look it up.
Canman 11:25 pm
an Interesting mental visual.
“200 mph = 252560 kwh”
When dealing with home storage of electrical energy, kwh is an appropriate unit.
But in discussions of grid scale energy storage, you must use gigawatt-day (GW-Day)
1 GW-Day = 24,000,000 kwh.
This does not help much until you equate in your mind that
1 GW-Day = one 100-car coal unit train converted to electricity. We see those every day.
So that 1 km diameter by 1 meter thick disk spinning with an edge speed of 200 km/hr will store the energy of about 0.01 GW-day or 1 coal car.
@george e. smith at 10:07 pm
My comment about Tesla was just to establish the point that the battery alone is enough to provide the desired acceleration of an all-electric vehicle.
So I return to my root question. If the battery is enough, why does Prius and other hybrids use the gasoline engine through a gear-box for direct drive instead of simply using it solely as a constant speed elecrical generator?
Stephen Rasey says:
September 11, 2013 at 8:26 am (replying to)
Canman 11:25 pm
A second comparison: A 1200 Megawatt power plant spins a 250 ton high-pressure turbine and rotor + a intermediate pressure turbine and rotor + 2 or more low pressure turbines and rotors + generator rotor at 3600 rpm to generate 60 Hz power to the grid. If steam power is lost, that total inertia of all of those spinning parts can continue to generate power for …. about 2 or 3 seconds. After that, it is spinning too slow to continue to link to the grid frequency, and must be shut down. But to keep that mass of very carefully balanced steel and blading and rotors cool and to keep the system from being destroyed, it must be kept turning with cooling oil and condensor vacuum for another 2 days before the oil can be turned off.
That spinning mass of fiberglass and steel in a gyro generator storage device will need to be 3600 TIMES the capacity of our largest current power plant turbines and generators just to maintain power for one hour (3600 seconds in an hour). And don’t evenTHINKaboutwhat will happen to that carefully balanced ultra-high speed spinning mass of plastic if the operators …
Lose vacuum for a minute.
Lose lube oil to the bearings.
Have an earthquake which shakes the whole county (much less the building!)
Get flooded out.
Have an ice fall on the building roof or turbine support piping.
It would be like ten Saturn 5 rockets blowing up. Not much left to salvage – including the operators.
Sure. It’s not “radioactive” and eventually all of the parts will stop moving and hit the ground. Somewhere.
Gail is right about energy return. Her point is if you find two barrels of oil and you can burn those two and pull 5 more out of the ground then you can run your society with three of every 5 barrels you pump. These can be used for charging batteries, electrification, asphalt production, or whatever else you need. However, if you would only be able to pump 1 barrel then it is game over for everything else since you cannot run your society.
Roger, you are talking about uses of the oil after it has been pumped. Gail is not saying that energy stored in oil will never be converted to other types, she is saying that if for every therm you dig up you can only extract 0.5 therms then society is in big big trouble.
However, there is also the issue of economics. The fact is that if extra energy cannot be extracted and sold into the market then nobody would finance such an operation since there could never be any profit. The endeavor is limited by both energy return and capital return.
Also for everyone talking about flywheels, they are used for frequency regulation on the grid. They are indeed useful, but for very specific purposes. Batteries would only be used to load balance until bigger reserves (hydro) could turn on. The batteries needed would be on the orders of minutes, not weeks.
Roger Sowell says:
September 11, 2013 at 6:57 am
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, even if coal-fired power plants are shut down by green mandates, they will not be replaced by renewable power. They will be replaced with natural gas-fired power….
Even in crazy California, where green laws are very strong, natural gas-fired power is what we build.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Roger, I am well aware of the fact the Natural gas advocates jumped in bed with the greenies. But that does not mean they will not eventually be a target if the suicidal Greenies get their way.
(This answers the actual ‘Why’ for Richard)
The problem comes in when you look at the mix.
The EU pledged “80% reduction from 1990 levels for all greenhouse gases” and so did Obama. The USA Congressional Resolution is 25 % renewable from farms and forests by 2025, 12 years from now.
So what do the numbers from the US government show us?
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy in 1990 were 5.039 billion metric tons CO2 and in 2011 = 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. Reducing US emission by 80% gives 1.0078 billion metric tons CO2 allowed in 2050. Since in 2011 Natural Gas is ALREADY 24% of that 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. You will not be able to substitute Natural Gas for Petroleum or Coal. In fact to meet the political target you will have to CLOSE DOWN some of the natural gas usage.
RANDOM INFORMATION SUPPORTING THE ABOVE:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2011
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf
That source gives for domestic use in the USA in 2011:
Petroleum 35.28
Nat’l gas 24.84
Coal 19.64
Nuclear 8.26
Renewable 9.14
TOTAL 97.16
The EIA graph: Share of Generation by Major Fossil Fuels for selected years (19990 – 20101) in the middle of the page gives: (For electric generation)
YEAR……….1990………2011
Coal…………54.2%…..43.4%
Petroleum…..4.1%…….0.7%
Natural Gas…10.7%…..23.5%
A last set of charts on the page gives Energy-related CO2 emissions, share by fuel”
…….Energy Consumption… CO2 Emissions
Coal……………………20%…………34%
Petroleum……………36%…………42%
Natural Gas…………26%…………24%
Other…………………..18%…………N/A
I am sorry Roger, natural gas is not going to get us out of the political dilemma except in the short term. Do I think we will stay on this suicidal course? Of course not. We will only stay on it until the hidden objectives of the powerful are achieved. But whatever those objectives are they are NOT favorable for the likes of you and me because otherwise they would not have to be hidden now would they?
Roger Sowell says:
September 11, 2013 at 6:57 am
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, even if coal-fired power plants are shut down by green mandates, they will not be replaced by renewable power. They will be replaced with natural gas-fired power….
Even in crazy California, where green laws are very strong, natural gas-fired power is what we build.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Roger, I am well aware of the fact the Natural gas advocates jumped in bed with the greenies. But that does not mean they will not eventually be a target if the suicidal Greenies get their way.
(This answers the actual ‘Why’ for Richard)
The problem comes in when you look at the mix.
The EU pledged “80% reduction from 1990 levels for all greenhouse gases” and so did Obama. The USA Congressional Resolution is 25 % renewable from farms and forests by 2025, 12 years from now.
So what do the numbers from the US government show us?
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy in 1990 were 5.039 billion metric tons CO2 and in 2011 = 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. Reducing US emission by 80% gives 1.0078 billion metric tons CO2 allowed in 2050. Since in 2011 Natural Gas is ALREADY 24% of that 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. You will not be able to substitute Natural Gas for Petroleum or Coal. In fact to meet the political target you will have to CLOSE DOWN some of the natural gas usage.
RANDOM INFORMATION SUPPORTING THE ABOVE:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2011
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf
That source gives for domestic use in the USA in 2011:
Petroleum 35.28
Nat’l gas 24.84
Coal 19.64
Nuclear 8.26
Renewable 9.14
TOTAL 97.16
The EIA graph: Share of Generation by Major Fossil Fuels for selected years (19990 – 20101) in the middle of the page gives: (For electric generation)
YEAR……….1990………2011
Coal…………54.2%…..43.4%
Petroleum…..4.1%…….0.7%
Natural Gas…10.7%…..23.5%
A last set of charts on the page gives Energy-related CO2 emissions, share by fuel”
…….Energy Consumption… CO2 Emissions
Coal……………………20%…………34%
Petroleum……………36%…………42%
Natural Gas…………26%…………24%
Other…………………..18%…………N/A
I am sorry Roger, natural gas is not going to get us out of the political dilemma except in the short term. Do I think we will stay on this suicidal course? Of course not. We will only stay on it until the hidden objectives of the powerful are achieved. But whatever those objectives are they are NOT favorable for the likes of you and me because otherwise they would not have to be hidden now would they?
Roger Sowell says:
September 11, 2013 at 6:57 am
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, even if coal-fired power plants are shut down by green mandates, they will not be replaced by renewable power. They will be replaced with natural gas-fired power….
Even in crazy California, where green laws are very strong, natural gas-fired power is what we build.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Roger, I am well aware of the fact the Natural gas advocates jumped in bed with the greenies. But that does not mean they will not eventually be a target if the suicidal Greenies get their way.
(This answers the actual ‘Why’ for Richard)
The problem comes in when you look at the mix.
The EU pledged “80% reduction from 1990 levels for all greenhouse gases” and so did Obama. The USA Congressional Resolution is 25 % renewable from farms and forests by 2025, 12 years from now.
So what do the numbers from the US government show us?
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy in 1990 were 5.039 billion metric tons CO2 and in 2011 = 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. Reducing US emission by 80% gives 1.0078 billion metric tons CO2 allowed in 2050. Since in 2011 Natural Gas is ALREADY 24% of that 5.471 billion metric tons CO2. You will not be able to substitute Natural Gas for Petroleum or Coal. In fact to meet the political target you will have to CLOSE DOWN some of the natural gas usage.
RANDOM INFORMATION SUPPORTING THE ABOVE:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2011
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf
That source gives for domestic use in the USA in 2011:
Petroleum 35.28
Nat’l gas 24.84
Coal 19.64
Nuclear 8.26
Renewable 9.14
TOTAL 97.16
The EIA graph: Share of Generation by Major Fossil Fuels for selected years (19990 – 20101) in the middle of the page gives: (For electric generation)
YEAR……….1990………2011
Coal…………54.2%…..43.4%
Petroleum…..4.1%…….0.7%
Natural Gas…10.7%…..23.5%
A last set of charts on the page gives Energy-related CO2 emissions, share by fuel”
…….Energy Consumption… CO2 Emissions
Coal……………………20%…………34%
Petroleum……………36%…………42%
Natural Gas…………26%…………24%
Other…………………..18%…………N/A
I am sorry Roger, natural gas is not going to get us out of the political dilemma except in the short term. Do I think we will stay on this suicidal course? Of course not. We will only stay on it until the hidden objectives of the powerful are achieved. But whatever those objectives are they are NOT favorable for the likes of you and me because otherwise they would not have to be hidden now would they?
[Gail: Duplicate paragraphs in the above? Mod]
Sorry I got duplicates above please cut. (Copy and paste was kroggled)
Richard: The 25X25 press release is at:
http://www.25×25.org/storage/25×25/documents/PartnerContactDocuments/houseadoptsresolution10-15-07-final.pdf
Congressional Endorsements: http://www.25×25.org/storage/25×25/documents/Endorsements/congressional_endorsements.pdf
That is from: http://www.25×25.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=349&Itemid=57
The Propaganda blurb says:
@RACookPE1978 at 8:50 am +1 GW-day.
As an engineer, I would answer your question with another: What happens to the motorist if the battery goes south suddenly for any reason under a) direct gas drive available and b) direct gas drive not available? To most engineers the correct design solution is immediately obvious.
Gail Combs:
Thankyou for the answers you provide to my question in your posts at September 11, 2013 at 9:41 am and September 11, 2013 at 9:53 am.
As you say in the former of those posts
I understand those are the decisions. And the links in your latter post inform how strongly those decisions are politically endorsed in your country. Thankyou for that information.
Possibly the answer to my question is not known or I failed to state it adequately.
I remind that I wrote
The EU is mandating adoption of renewables in hope of fulfilling ‘green’ desires.
The UK is mandating adoption of renewables in hope of fulfilling EU dictates.
But the US does not have significant ‘green’ representation in its legislature, and I am not aware of any ‘green’ political activity in the US with sufficient public support to influence US government policy. Therefore, it seems the reason for mandating adoption of renewables in the US cannot be the same as it is in the EU.
Hence, I am trying to understand why adoption of renewables is being adopted in the US when the US does not have the influence of ‘green’ political parties to encourage that adoption.
My interest is more than mere curiosity. If ‘greens’ fail in the EU then whatever is affecting US energy policy may remain. So, I am interested in determining what is affecting US energy policy.
And I feel sure that some American readers of WUWT must know the answer to my question.
Richard
@richardscourtney at 10:33 am
when the US does not have the influence of ‘green’ political parties to encourage that adoption.
The Green’s are in bed with the Big Government Democrat Party and mistress to crony capitalists of the Republican Party who like Big Government when it suits them.
@D.J. Hawkins at10:13 am
As an engineer, I would answer your question with another: What happens to the motorist if the battery goes south suddenly for any reason under a) direct gas drive available and b) direct gas drive not available? To most engineers the correct design solution is immediately obvious.
Maybe I’m think, but it is not obvious. There are always cost/benefits to be considered in every design choice, with Cost and Benefit intersecting probability distributions.
I take it you come at it from a redundancy argument. I could counter that a simpler and cheaper approach would be to make the Batteries physically redundant, so that a failure of one doesn’t cascade into the failure of others. Separate motors could be used for front and back wheels, too. How many spare engines do you have in your gasoline car? (“That is not the trunk. That is the auxiliary motor!”)
It just occurred to me that I might be mis-understanding the gearbox. Maybe it is a pure direct electrical drive, but using the gearbox to optimize electrical torque. Anyone know?
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, we finally agree, at least in part, on something. I wrote in 2010 of the folly of 80 percent reductions in carbon emissions. From my blog,
“Now for the grim part. (referencing Figure 1) The last pair of bars, above “2050,” shows what California must do to meet the “80 by 50” portion of the regulations. “80 by 50″ means that by 2050, emissions must be reduced to 80 percent below the 1990 level. The Business as Usual case (the dark red bar) for 2050 is just over 1200, yet the regulations require emissions of only 87, as shown by the pale bar. That is a 93 percent reduction. Californians will be allowed only 7 percent of the emissions compared to what would ordinarily occur without such regulations. And that, my friends and readers, is a problem. It is a problem because no society, ever, not in all of history, has accomplished such a thing. Not even California with all its Silicon Valley innovators and green startup companies knows how to do this. How can I say this with confidence? Because I am an engineer, and not only studied physics and engineering, but practiced in the field for decades before learning the law and becoming an attorney. As I wrote here, there are certain physical limits to the amount of energy that must be applied and supplied to accomplish any given task. To believe that today’s techniques waste 93 percent of that energy is naive.”
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/80-by-50-under-california-ab-32.html?m=0
richardscourtney says: @ur momisugly September 11, 2013 at 10:33 am
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry I did not make the connections obvious. Enron and a bunch of other corporations/elite saw CAGW as a great mechanism for transferring wealth via tax dollars from the general population to their pockets.
So you get as Chris Horner said “what is known as a Baptist and bootlegger coalition.” This was in the office of the Republican President Bush by the way.
What no one ever connects is how these fringe groups ever got so much power in the first place. It take money, political pull and the ear of the ‘Press’
The Rockefeller/Maurice Strong connection
Maurice Strong, “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology,” (his words) worked in Saudi Arabia for a Rockefeller company, Caltex, in 1953 He left Caltex in 1954 and worked at high levels in banking and oil. By 1971, he served as a trustee for the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1972 was Secretary-General of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment,. He was Co-founder of the WWF and Senior Advisor to the World Bank and the UN.
The whole Rockefeller/Strong/Saudi/Khashoggi/CIA/Bush/oil/banking interconnections are worth pursuing considering the 1973 Oil Crisis bankrupted third World Countries so they had to get World bank/IMF loans with SAPs strings controlling their governments.
SEE: (http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html )
Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.” (sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html )
The ‘Innocents’ Clubs’
(http://www.heretical.com/miscella/munzen.html )
And what is left out of that quote is they are now funded and controlled by elite foundations.
Notice how the 25X25 organizations invokes the name of “US FARMERS” as part of the justification.
And this was before we got stuck with the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010.
It is a nasty tangle of power, money and politics and the losers are always the little guy.
Roger Sowell says:
September 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm
@ur momisugly Gail Combs, we finally agree, at least in part, on something…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AHhhh, so we are finally on the same page. :>)
I am not an engineer so I may have been using the incorrect words to try and get across my concept. (Would not be the first time.)
I am just hoping people wake up to the fact that humans only exist outside the tropics because we have been able to harness energy and use it. Cut off a cheap plentiful USEFUL supply of energy and you sentence us to death/riots/war.
Stephen Rasey and Gail Combs:
Sincere thanks for the answers to my question which you provide at September 11, 2013 at 10:58 am and September 11, 2013 at 12:11 pm, respectively.
The issue seems to be summarised by these two comments of Gail
and
OK. I get that. And although – because I am not an American – I can never fully understand American culture, I do understand how in America influence can be so great that it amounts to power: hence, the common American phrase, “Follow the money”.
Clearly, the American situation is not likely to be transferable across the pond, at least not in its American form. But our present problems are similar in effect because ‘greens’ have direct political power over here.
Your answers have been very helpful. Thankyou.
Richard
Reblogged this on Mothers Against Wind Turbines and commented:
Batteries for Wind doesn’t make sense!!
It’s much worse than that. Ramping up and down is very costly, compared to steady baseload operation, and very hard on the hardware. And the sweetheart pricing and prioritizing means the conventional plants get fractions of the revenue for output that the “clean” sources do, and are swiftly driven into bankruptcy.
Stupidity on stilts.
A “bypass” solution [is] in the works, which I like to direct attention to periodically.
Dispatchable 24/7/365 (= easy to ramp instantly)
5¢/W capital cost.
0.3¢/kWh output
Unlimited fuel sources.
No waste.
No radioactivity.
Distributed.
Very compact (about 1-2 shipping containers/5 MW generator w. housing)
LPPhysics.com
Additional funding required, $2M short-term (1 yr.), $50M long-term (4 yrs) Thereafter wildly profitable.