A number of interesting things have occurred at the AAAS meeting in San Jose the last few days, here is one that caught my eye. As many readers know, I have an electric car (seen above), which runs on 12 volt Lead-acid batteries which are so heavy that most of the energy to the motor is used to move that heavy mass of lead around. Electric cars don’t make a lot of sense for an all-around car, but for in-city use, such as errands or delivery, they could be quite viable with better battery technology.
This newer Lithium-sulfur batteries show promise beyond the current favorite lithium-ion batteries due to their energy density and lighter weight:
The current energy density of lead-acid batteries (not depicted on the chart) is around 60-100 Watt-hours per liter, well below all the others.
The lithium–sulphur battery (Li–S battery) is a rechargeable battery, notable for its high energy density.[1] By virtue of the low atomic weight of lithium and moderate weight of sulfur, Li–S batteries are relatively light; about the density of water. They were demonstrated on the longest and highest-altitude solar-powered airplane flight in August, 2008.
Lithium–sulfur batteries may succeed lithium-ion cells because of their higher energy density and reduced cost from the use of sulfur. Currently the best Li-S batteries offer energy densities on the order of 500 W·h/kg, significantly better than most lithium-ion batteries which are in the 150 to 200 range. Li-S batteries with up to 1,500 charge and discharge cycles have been demonstrated, yet are not commercially available (as of early 2014). (Wikipedia)
Let’s hope that they come to the market soon, not just for electric cars, but for many other applications that need high energy density and low weight.
Leading scholar presents advances in research of electric car batteries at AAAS
Lithium-sulphur batteries promise to extend the range of electric cars at least three times over current lithium ion cells and at much lower cost, making electric cars practical and potentially more appealing to a mass market. Linda Nazar, professor of chemistry from the Faculty of Science at the University of Waterloo, will present a perspective on the promise and reality of lithium-sulphur batteries at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in San Jose, California. She will highlight recent innovations in nanomaterial strategies and new electrolytes that can help these future-generation energy storage systems realize their potential in emerging markets.
Professor Nazar and her research group are best known for reigniting interest in the lithium-sulphur battery by proving that such a battery, once considered impossible, could be a reality. Recently, her group resolved a major technical hurdle by developing the first high-performance sulphur cathode with the use of manganese dioxide nanosheets.
Nazar is Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is a member of BASF’s Research Network on Electrochemistry and Batteries, and serves as a lead scientist on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Center for Energy Storage Research.
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New Materials and Approaches for Advanced Batteries (part of the Next-Generation Batteries for Mobile Devices and the Grid symposium
I think that the units on the vertical scale are supposed to be Specific Energy: W*h/kg.
I see you complain of “heavy mass” but graph volume.
That’s what I noticed straight away. I don’t know anything about lithium sulphur batteries but I researched lithium ion batteries for use in the total loss ignition system of a race bike. There’s a lot of obfuscation in the marketing of lithium batteries, mainly in quoting Watt hours rather than the Ah standard for lead/acid types. The ‘equivalent’ lithium battery recommended as a replacement for a 10 Ah lead acid one typically has a capacity of 48 Watt hours, is about 1/3 the weight and costs about 3 times as much. A truly equivalent energy capacity of 120 Watt hours would be prohibitively expensive and not very much lighter than the lead acid one. This is similar to the way solid state amplifiers were marketed in the 60s – ‘Peak Power’ rather than the rms rating quoted for valve amps. Buyer beware?
There is a lot of “obfuscation” (AKA BS) in ALL today’s portable power technology pedlars for use in vehicles.
Until there is a genuine breakthrough in storage technology electric cars and bikes are at best, dreaming in Cinemascope, at worst – typical Oil Can Harry’s.
As an electronics engineer i am outraged at the misuse of Nikola Tesla’s good name in perpetuating the latest myth being pitched in the land of fruit and nuts.
An interesting development regarding the economics of the electric car: I had a ride in a Tesla from Quebec City to Ottawa ~400km. We didn’t start with a full charge, but a network of free charging stations existed all along the way. Some were coffee/pastry shops where you could plug in while eating or taking a coffee. The chargers in these small places were low amperage of course, and chains of hotels have complimentary plug ins that, if you sleep overnight, it gives enough time to get considerably recharged.
One fellow I was told about by my friend, took his family on a week trip to the Maritime provinces and, with his network on the car computer, planned their trip to be free of electricity cost. Apparently one can drive from Montreal to Miami without paying a cent for power. Motels and shopping malls that don’t have such a service had better get one or they will be cut out the loop. Tesla also has some super high amp chargers at intervals that will fill you up in about an hour or so, at least in eastern Canada and the eastern US. This was a commercial development that hadn’t been figured on when projecting viability of electric cars.
Gary,
Please reread your post and replace “free” with “mooch” or “sponge” or “freeloader.” Somebody is paying for the chargers and the electricity (and don’t get me started on the green hypocrites who want “free” electricity but seem to have a cognitive disconnect about where, exactly, electricity comes from). The electricity that you and your friend are getting for “free” is being paid for either by higher costs to the customers of the coffee/pastry shops and hotels or by taxpayer subisidies. They may not cost you anything, but I’ll bet most people have better things to do with their money than provide you with “free” electricity.
Gary Pearse, given the number of electric cars on the road there should be no rush on the part of hotels and malls to provide charging stations. The cost of building and operating the stations is probably more than any profit they would make from the guests. There is a charging station in Gila Bend, AZ, attached to a Carl’s Junior. I have passed there many times on the way to Phoenix from Yuma and have never seen a car using the 8 stations that are available. If you were driving an electric car from Yuma to Phoenix, you would have to “top up” there, or you wouldn’t make it.
Anthony left the units off of the vertical scale in the graph, which is Specific Energy in Watt-hours per Kilogram. In case it isn’t clear, the horizontal scale is Watt-hours per liter. So the graph is weight VS volume.
Original graph is here:
http://www.barnardmicrosystems.com/images/UAV/engines/li-s%20battery.gif
Well spotted Dennis. A largely useless graph in other words.
[Graph added in post above. ~mod.]
This is why I cannot refer my skeptical friends to this web site. It’s not the first time that a graph has been presented here without units on one of its axes. I cannot understand how anyone wanting to be taken seriously can just leave out this information. As someone who has a skeptical outlook, I find this kind of thing disappointing and embarrassing.
Well both watt.hrs or Joules if you wish per kg and per m^3 are of interest.
Whrs per litre implies that it is the electrolyte that is important, and not the plate material which after all is going to undergo the oxidation / reduction chemistry.
The paper makes it sound promising, and hopefully that is so. But just wait until the enviros get up to speed on the accelerated sulfur mining.
I think that current world usage of sulfur can be met, from recovery from coal burning smokestacks, with no sulfur mining needed.
That would all change if Li-S batteries get rolling.
Not arguing against this; but caution that it is not an open season on sulfur haters.
It will be interesting to see which way Elon Musk goes with his Tesla Battery.
Where do you put the wind-up key that car? ;-p
(Just kidding!)
He just lifted that one out of the boot of his ‘every-day’ car and unfolded it like a baby pram.
Your post reminds me of my college days.
VW Bugs were popular, and one fellow student actually had a big key attached to the rear hood of the car.
Probably got tired of the wind up jokes and comments.
Silicon valley is full of key wind up cars. Some folks never get the message until they see one in the Roman coliseum.
The ultimate irony is that the energy luddites in their quest to “save the planet” are making electricity costs soar.
Perhaps that’s a feature, not a bug.
and makes me wonder how long it will take a Wind Turbine to recharge an electric vehicle?
Are we assuming that the wind is blowing?
I suppose one day, we will each have a windmill on our car. At least as soon as it proves to be better than a sail. Boy oh boy, you gotta love these new technologies.
Reliable electric power is a positional good in the eyes of the elite.
I thought you said you weren’t going to AAAS…… Couldn’t stay away, I guess.
From the data published by the CalEPA on the life cycle GHG emissions of electric vehicles, EV’s only reduce overall GHG emissions in areas where CO2 emissions from electricity production are low. CA uses hydro and nuclear as well as much NG and whatever wind and solar are available. So CA has an average emissions factor of 0.75 lbs/kW-h of power production. Even with this low emissions rate, EV’s in CA still only reduce GHG emissions by 30% from gasoline vehicles. Take those EV’s out of CA to most other states and the emissions will increase to levels well above those of gasoline vehicles.
As far as regulated emissions go, a running car or truck with emissions control devices emit essentially no meaningful amounts of “pollutants”. about 90 to 95% of vehicle emissions occur during starting and warm-up, not during normal operation. So short trips are more “polluting” than long trips. Thus EVs have a place for this use as noted by Anthony.
A better approach to reducing emissions is to use diesel powered vehicles that get 20-30% better fuel efficiency with a fuel that has much lower evaporative emissions than gasoline. Remember that ethanol in a hydrocarbon fuel increased vapor pressure which requires that the gasoline in E10 fuel be of very low volatility. This cuts out 10-20% of the available gasoline produced at a refinery from the blending pool which actually hurts overall refinery efficiency and does nothing for “energy security”, one of the points made by those supporting corn ethanol as a fuel blend component.
EVs are the prefect target for solar panels. If you can charge during the day using solar, you can ride home free. And solar charging all weekend might give you all Monday free too.
All energy is “free” the costs are for collecting and converting it to a useful form, and solar panels are not efficient in this regard. The Earth charges the same for coal or gas as the Sun does for light.
If solar panels were 100% efficient there is not enough room on the roof of a typical automobile to generate enough Kw in the few productive sunlight hours to go the typical distance between job and home…
….until the shorter days of winter , and then … it snows and covers the cell!
[snip -off topic political rant]
????
“You can ride home for free” Except for the days when the sun don’t shine and you have to spend the night at work. Then you find you didn’t sleep well at work and were tired the next day and got into an accident and were taken to the hospital without clean underwear. Mom wouldn’t be too happy with you over that one.
and ethanol eats all the plastic valves and hoses in my small engines – lawn/garden tractor, rototiller – should leave it as food except farmers in Midwest US depend on the subsidies which weren’t needed last summer due to excellent growing conditions from bitty global warming and ~400 ppm CO2 from clean, green fossil fuel burning (and elsewhere of course)
Premium grade is recommended for all small engines – usually in the newer manuals and certainly an informed shop will tell you to avoid the regular and mid grade fuels containing ethanol. Some small engines come with a warning sticker but folks don’t always pay attention.
On another note, I have checked fuel consumption on my Sante Fe crossover in the same 1200 km trip several times using premium versus regular. I get 10 to 20% better fuel economy with premium versus E10, on average about 15%. So on long trips, I almost always buy premium gasoline as the price difference is usually less than 15% so I get better performance with premium.
I NEVER use anything but premium fuel in my small engines.
yup and if in area like I am (mid maine) there is NO non-ethanol blend available.
the other issue is less btu which really bite in -15 F weather, not only in cars where the heat is utilized but tractor for snowblowing has to be run with choke on a lot longer or run a hotter plug which strains coil packs.
Well in the USA, I don’t believe it is legal to market a gasoline engine automobile that won’t operate properly on regular 87 octane rated fuel.
Yes the car manufacturer can “recommend” that you use premium fuel, but they can’t require that you do. So the hot European cars can’t be sold in the USA, and especially not in California.
But high octane fuel doesn’t ping as much as regular, so you can let the engine get all carbonned up for longer, before the pinging starts, so that helps the manufacturer support their phony 50,000 or 100,000 miles between tuneups.
And with the longer carbon chain molecules needed to get higher octane, the carbon / hydrogen ratio is higher, so I don’t see how you get more energy going that way.
Yes I know you can get more power out of a high compression engine that requires higher octane fuel. But that is exactly the direction that causes your engine to start burning the air to make nitrogen oxides, and that is why EPS regs ban very high compression engines in USA. You also get much higher bearing loads with a high compression engine, and American V-8s are already short on crankshaft bearings.
Now I drive a Subaru Impreza, which is rated at 32 mpg on the highway, and 28 around town.
Just yesterday morning (Presidents Holiday) I drove on highway 9 (Cupertino and Sunnyvale) from near Highway 85 in Cupertino, to Highway 101 in Sunnyvale, and I never got a red light the whole way so I was on cruise control at 40.0 miles per hour (the posted limit) My actual MPG was over 50 for the entire distance, and for at least half the distance it was above 65 MPG. I did get a few seconds drop down to 22 MPG going over the peninsular railway overpass. So much for the 28 rating.
And last Sunday, I drove the 380 mile round trip from Sunnyvale to Dinuba in the central valley, at 62 mph on cruise, and di 42.6 mpg for the entire trip.
So who needs better fuel mileage ??
Thanks Bubba and Wayne, that would explain the problems I have occasionally in my 8 hp 400 GPM water pumps. The irony is that I would need a fleet of 400 GPM water pumps in California during what is being proclaimed on the front pages of the local papers about twice a month as a historic drought, the likes of which haven’t been seen in over 1000 years. Methinks they spew a lot of hyperbole around here.
Once one takes Diablo Canyon NP generation out of Cal’s grid then, factor in NG and coal generated replacement electricity imported from Utah and Wyoming , and Cal’s carbon footprint looks no different from other states. Washington state, with its abundant hydropower is the only state that the anti-carbon greens can bold hold as an example. And the irony is all those hydrodams built 70-90 years ago, before environmentlism became a religion, they want to tear down now.
When you factor in the CO^2 generated to cook all the portland that went into pouring those dams, plus the diesel to drive the earth movers, haul the materials, etc. you might not be looking at much savings after all.
When you actually analyze the renewable systems from the ground up most aren’t worth it except from a ‘feel good’ standpoint. I have seen several analysis of photo voltaic and wind systems that were hard pressed to show any overall reduction in CO^2. I wouldn’t be surprised if hydro didn’t fall into the same category. Most of the ‘Green’ proposals come from the heart, definitely not from any engineering knowledge, or common sense for that matter.
“When you actually analyze the renewable systems most aren’t worth it ”
You sir must never have heard of passive solar heating.
rodmol,
It’s currently around 3 degrees outside, got down to -1 or -2 last night. The sun is out today and my electric backup for the heat pump has run since about 9:00 this morning. Nope…. haven’t heard about passive solar.
There is one “renewable” system you should look into to save money on that expensive electrical backup for your heat pump system. Firewood. It most definitely is “worth it”
Tree-killer!
John M.
Take a walk in the forest some time.
Look around as you walk.
Take note of all the dead trees lying on the forest floor rotting away.
You can get plenty of firewood without ever “killing a tree”
I guess you don’t buy into the “holistic” approach to forest management, where even dead trees have an ecological niche.
I guess you’re just anti-science.
We’ve got ~75 acres in Timber Management. I can usually collect enough from the dead-fall close to the house to last the winter. On sunny days I don’t need the wood stove until sometime after 10:00 or 12:00 PM when the Trombe walls quit working. The heat pump & electric backup only come in when I get too lazy, or too stove-up to haul wood.
No John M, I believe it is good forest management practice to remove dead trees and underbrush. It has the added benefit of decreasing the chances and the intensity of forest fires.
By pure coincidence, I was surfing through Tom Murphy’s Do The Math Blog this morning and came across his discussion of EVs. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/08/man-bites-ev-will-ev-bite-back/#more-1397 He addresses most of the things folks have mentioned here, plus an additional point that I had only vaguely been aware of. If you plan to charge your Tesla equivalent at home in ten minutes not only will you need 2500 amp electric service (@240 volts), you’re going to need to dump maybe 20 kWh of waste heat somewhere. (Murphy is using 80% charging efficiency — which is what he measures for his plug in Prius — for his calculation
Good rule of thumb is ….an acre of forest produces about a cord of “dead wood” each year.
rodmol,
I’m afraid in some circles that makes you anti-science.
Note that I’m just playing the role of a consensus believer here.
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/sciencef/scifi20.pdf
“When you factor in the CO^2 generated to cook all the portland that went into pouring those dams, plus the diesel to drive the earth movers, haul the materials, etc. you might not be looking at much savings after all.”
In many parts of the world earth dams are more common than concrete dams. And a hydro power station will run 24-7-365 for a century or more with no fuel and a minimum of care and maintenance. What other power generation comes even close to that?
tty:
But the enviro’s don’t want ANYBODY to build ANY dams ANYWHERE, and are demanding the taxpayers pay to remove existing, power-producing dams across the US.
But, more important, most good dam sites in the US are already out-of-limits, or are already built-up by people smarter than today’s political enviro’s. Overseas? There are some good sites left over. But even the Chinese faced huge enviro protests (internationally) over the power plants at their latest big dam.
rodmol, if you burn all of the dead fall, your soil will start running low on nutrients in a few decades.
DonK, most houses have 100 to 200 Amp service. You not only would have to beef up the drop from the pole to your house, you would have to beef up service from your neighborhood, all the way back to the nearest mains.
Rodmol, to keep a healthy forest you need to let it burn once in a while. Some species of pines out west will not germinate unless they are heated by a forest fire. Forest fires also keep down tree-killing pests. Almost all the old Lodgepole pine trees in Colorado have been killed by an infestation. Rather than managing the forests, they need to be allowed to burn so that new plants can germinate. There are a couple of papers available on this subject from Colorado State University.
But, Rod, the EPA is working on banning fireplaces and wood stoves.
@Joe Kirklin . . that may well be the case Joe but I made my living off of designing and building dams and I like them. The harm they do is imaginary and in lots of them the fishing is great. So please, leave those dams alone people they are our friends.
So the natives who live around the base of Mt Kilimanjaro, long ago burned up all of the trees in the area, which is why they now live on a desert, and why there is little snow on Kilimanjaro, because the trees aren’t there.
I know a guy who runs his diesel tractor on old used cooking oil from a donut shop.
Trouble is the donut shop doesn’t use enough fat to keep even one farmer in donut oil for his tractor.
So rodmol has his normal quite impractical solution.
If we all used wood; dead or not for heating, we’d all be living in a denuded desert environment. with no wood to burn.
Dr. Bob: Most of the efficiency advantage of diesel is due to its higher density compared to gasoline. The energy content on a weight/mass basis is about the same. Also, the number you quoted for blending impact of ethanol is incorrect. Not sure where you got the numbers, but if you want me to check them, I will.
There are 3 contributors to Diesel greater efficiency. One of them is, as you pointed out, the fact that fuel is sold by volume rather than mass (kilogram). The other two outweigh that factor though. One is the thermal efficiency of any similar engine varying with the 3/2 power of the compression ratio and Diesels run at ~22 compared to the Otto cycle at ~9. The other reason is the lower pumping losses across the throttle plates. Diesels have no throttle, but Ottos have to pay the loss at P=Vdot X dP where Vdot is m3/sec and dP is Pascals.
Bottom line is Diesels are about 25% more efficient than Otto cycle engines. Big diesels (e.g. marine and stationary) are better than 50% efficient.
the purpose of the vehicle is to transport a body from A to B so it would be quite cool if the body itself could be the battery.
In a few days I’m on my way to Floral City, Fl. in the middle of a fifty mile long rail to bike trail to ride my HPV ICE Trike. I expect to add 5 or 10 miles per day until I’m riding 50 miles per day comfortably, then I’ll do a couple of leisurely centuries.
We’ll get there with our bikes folded into the back of my 12 y.o. VW TDI diesel that still does 50 mpg.
Doing research on electric cars the most interesting fact? I found was that the all electric range of todays latest models does not exceed 100 miles (except for the Tesla), the same as it was a couple of decades ago.
But when I was a kid back in the 50’s , a certain well known dairy used to use electric milk floats… and we lived down the valley and their base was up the top of the other side … a round trip up and down very steep hills loaded with glass bottles in crates along with bread etc …. of around 30 miles! This was stop start delivery as most houses had their milk delivered this way!! That was 65 years ago …. they were quite famous here in Buckinghamshire UK ….. but nothing has changed with all that fantastic technology , I seriously doubt that a modern equivalent would match it!
Top speed of 15mph and a humongous battery pack that would crush a Leaf? In fact the motor would.
You know, when my gas tank reads “10%” full, I can stop at a station and fill it to “100%” in minutes.
Now, when one can do that with electric cars, we will really be getting somewhere.
Just making an observation.
My 25 mile^2 Island would be fine E-car country except that we aren’t even supposed to install instant high wattage water heaters for the 30 year old infrastructure. Who is going to pay for new larger cables under the Death’s Door Passage?
Guess!
London to Edinburgh via electric car is, I think, 2 weeks
BBCA Top Gear tested two EVs a while back. Took them three days to travel 250 miles. The attended a lot of historic lectures amd drank a lot of tea during the 13 hour recharge.
A gallon of gasoline is 33kwh of energy. About the same amount of power that an extension cord plugged into your wall socket in your house can supply in 20 hours!
The highest rates appliance in a house is typically a stove which can supply about 10 kwh/h (50A max at 240V). About 1 gallon of gasoline every 3 hours.
So, for all practical purposes an electric car can only replace the equivalent of 3-4 gallons of gasoline per day from existing home wiring, no matter how efficient the battery, which means that electric vehicles must be very much lighter than present day vehicles and/or there will need to be a huge boost in residential electrical supply.
And don’t even consider turning on the heater or air conditioning while disconnected from the charger.
This is really the killer in both directions. To avoid comparing apple and orange units, gasoline is around 12.5 kw-hr/kg. Li-S is around 500 W/kg, and might on a good day and with a tail wind scale to 700 or 800 W/kg, leaving it a very solid order of magnitude short of gasoline. This means that one needs 24 kg (call it 50 pounds) of Li-S battery to replace a single kg (call it a 1/3 of a gallon) of gasoline, or 150 pounds of batteries to replace a single gallon. So in ADDITION to the fact that charging stations have to provide at least 36+ kw-hr of electricity at an average cost at $0.10/kw-hr of around $3.60 in order to charge the battery (assuming 100% efficiency, hah), your car has to carry the weight-equivalent of a human per “gallon” of gasoline displaced. The volume is similarly scaled — 3 kg of gasoline is roughly 4 liters or 1 gallon, so that each “gallon equivalent” of LI-S battery has roughly the volume of an entire tank of gasoline.
I have some friends who have bought all-electric cars, and they are constantly running out of charge just driving to work and back every day. They have to run extension cords out of the physics building to try to recharge during the day so they can drive home by the evening. They don’t dare to run the heat on cold mornings lest they use up energy they’ll need to get home.
Batteries are a technology that is still an easy order of magnitude short of where it needs to be to make electric cars make sense. If one has to replace them every five years (1500 charge cycles) it isn’t clear that they are ready to support standalone PV-solar houses, either — once again one needs a massive pile of batteries to hold enough charge to run a household for several days of possibly cloudy weather or winter/summer demands of a heating or cooling system. Note that it takes an entire rooftop of PV-solar working for an entire day to provide 1 gallon’s worth of equivalent energy for an electric car (just as it does to provide all the energy required for the household in a day).
The computation of energy expenditure and carbon production is all by itself scary. Coal based electricity makes about 1/3 more CO_2 per kw-hr than gasoline does. It is produced at an efficiency that is comparable to that of a gasoline motor. It is shipped long distances at a loss through conducting wires, and charges batteries with an additional loss to resistive heating of the battery itself, especially at high current levels (I^2 R does not favor rapid charges for a given internal resistance). It is then used in the car at a third or fourth efficiency penalty, as the motor itself heats as it runs and the internal resistance of the battery is still there heating it as well. All in all, electric cars make no sense at all as far as carbon is concerned unless you live someplace with nuclear power (I do), don’t mind paying 2-3x as much for transportation over the lifetime of the car, don’t mind having your house rewired to double its electrical service so you can charge your car, don’t mind spending more on a month’s electricity for your car than you would spend running my old Ford Excursion for the same month.
At the same time, one could argue that well-designed hybrids like the Prius do make sense (I may be biased, as I own two). They don’t rely on external charge, they simply regenerate otherwise wasted kinetic energy of your car into recoverable kinetic energy and, by replacing the high-torque needs of a car during startup from stop with an electric motor boost, permit the car to cruise with a significantly smaller gasoline motor than it would otherwise need. Li-S batteries (or any related technology) would most definitely improve their range and efficiency still further. They are STILL borderline inefficient from the pure cost point of view. One is still probably better off spending $10,000 less on a small, fuel efficient all-gasoline car than buying a Prius, because the marginal cost of the gasoline saved by the increased mileage of the Prius over the lifetime of the car may or may not break even depending on what gasoline prices do. But there one can view the extra cost as “insurance” of sorts against a rise in gasoline prices and a tradeoff between cost of car now and operational cost later.
It is in some sense a shame that hybrid and energy regeneration technologies aren’t being widely implemented in all kinds of cars. Even my Excursion (back when I still owned it) could have had its gas mileage stretched by 20-40% (especially in the city) if it had even an extremely simple electronic system that would shut the motor off at full stops, use a medium-sized battery to start the car moving and restart the engine from a full stop, and use an electronic braking system to recover KE while running to keep the battery mostly charged without the need of direct addition from the engine. One could even use gas-gas hybrids and shut the main gasoline engine off and kick over to a lawnmower engine equivalent to do the restarting and save a huge amount of money compared to chugging gasoline through 8 to 10 cylinders while idling in driving that is 10-20% idling at stop signs or stop lights. This makes ever so much more sense than all electric cars.
rgb
Can anyone comment on whether electric cars, or trucks for that matter, make sense in confined industrial complexes such as an aerospace manufacturing facility? There are a lot of vehicles that, since they don’t leave the complex, are not licensed, don’t travel at high speeds or go long distances, and are never far from recharge or battery replacement. Even wind and solar power sources have their niche markets, so what are the niche markets for electric cars?
You forgot that an electric motor and battery is around 90% efficient whereas a tank of diesel is only 30% efficient.
so BEV is 3 times better than your crude maths says it is. It’s still not good enough mind you 😉
Thank you, Fred & rgb@duke!
Prof. Brown (rgb) wrote, “So in ADDITION to the fact that charging stations have to provide at least 36+ kw-hr of electricity at an average cost at $0.10/kw-hr of around $3.60 in order to charge the battery (assuming 100% efficiency, hah), your car has to carry the weight-equivalent of a human per “gallon” of gasoline displaced.”
In case anyone was skimming, and missed it, that’s $3.60 (at an optimistic $0.10/kWh) to buy the electricity needed to charge a battery which stores the amount of energy available from one gallon of gasoline.
Such a deal, eh? And for that coolness you will spend just about exactly twice the price of the Hyundai Accent or Ford Fiesta, either of which would give you 3x-4x the driving range, and the ability to “recharge” (refuel) in under ten minutes, instead of overnight.
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/compare/?trims=12677-368177_12869-373556_12786-366618
The reason you can “fill the tank” on a Nissan Leaf so cheaply (for $3 or less) is that it has a very, very tiny “gas tank.” Its battery pack (when new) stores about 24 kWh of energy, which is the equivalent of 2/3 of a gallon of gasoline. The impressive thing about that car is not that it is driven by an electric motor, but that, on a good day, it can go as far as 84 miles on a “full tank” of 2/3 gallon (24 kWh) of fuel.
“You forgot that an electric motor and battery is around 90% efficient whereas a tank of diesel is only 30% efficient.”
Uh, no. Modern diesels are getting near 50% efficient (and may already have reached that point). So efficient that manufacturers are starting to add electric heaters, because there just isn’t enough waste heat to warm the car any more.
rgbatduke:
“They have to run extension cords out of the physics building to try to recharge during the day so they can drive home by the evening. ”
I am very surprised the university doesn’t have charging stations. Even in our slimly populated cities in the Great White North, free charging stations are popping up all over. In the centre of our oil industry, Calgary, Alberta, free charging stations are provided at many stores to promote electric vehicle use. Now, as a person who lives over 100 km from the nearest city, I store several hundred gallons of liquid fuel (diesel and gasoline) on site but for city folk, I have to think a Prius or electric vehicle will be a good choice for short daily commutes.
I recall that Zermatt, Switzerland was all electric back in the 60’s including the train to and from the community. (Well, not all electric – horse drawn vehicles also) From that experience, I have always believed there is a place for EV’s in specific uses.
Wayne, correct me if I am wrong, but when I was in Calgary many many years ago, I distinctly remember that a lot of the parking spaces at the hotel had electrical outlets specifically installed to power the block warmers for cars and trucks. Not much of a stretch to use them to charge vehicles no?
rgb: “One could even use gas-gas hybrids and shut the main gasoline engine off and kick over to a lawnmower engine equivalent to do the restarting and save a huge amount of money compared to chugging gasoline through 8 to 10 cylinders while idling in driving that is 10-20% idling at stop signs or stop lights.”
How about have the car’s computer disable half the cylinders in those situations?
“I distinctly remember that a lot of the parking spaces at the hotel had electrical outlets specifically installed to power the block warmers for cars and trucks. Not much of a stretch to use them to charge vehicles no?”
Ours at work are, I believe, limited to about 400W, and only run for a few hours a day (AFAIR, four hours is where the benefit from a typical block heater maxes out). 1.6kWh probably won’t get you far.
Besides which, why should companies be subsidising some employees’ transport? If they get free electricity, I’d better get free gas.
Ha ha. Yes, a lot of visitors from warmer climes thought we had electric vehicles years ago because of all the block heater cords hanging out of the grills of our vehicles.
But no, some businesses actually have single purpose EV charging stations along with preferential parking near the store door. There are not many, but the numbers are growing.
Eg: http://www.mec.ca/AST/ContentPrimary/Services/Stores/Calgary.jsp
http://metronews.ca/news/calgary/433137/calgary-parking-authority-unveils-electric-charging-stations/
http://ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2013-09-18/electric-car-charging-stations-now-operating-eeel
http://evco.ca/site/node/379
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/867651/go-offers-electric-car-charging-at-train-stations/
ferdberple,
Excellent point, this advice should be on the label and government/ MSM advertising and pushing the “benefits” of EV’s
Had a Prius for about 5 years. Gave up on it after the “brake actuator” died thrice in a year, at $2500 each. (That is the computer controlled equivalent of what is a brake master cylinder in a normal car….at a tenth of the price and more reliable). Sold it and replaced with a VW Jetta diesel, very good trade. Moral…even though the Prius makes a lot of sense in its regeneration algorithms, the infrastructure still sucks. Might get better in 20 years when half the cars on the road are hybrids, but I’m not paying the price now. The Jetta, by the way, gets about the same highway mileage (42-45) as the Prius did.
@MarkG, In re diesel efficiency. My 13 y.o. VW TDI cools below Normal Operating Temperature at idle.
Both the UK power grid and the grid in New England are on the edge of failure during this extreme cold as they can barely supply sufficient power during peak demand. It is not feasible for either the UK or New England to support electric cars as their electric grids and power generation even using interconnectors from neighboring grids, just do not have the capacity. All the CO2 and energy calculations and installations of chargers at gas (petrol) stations are a pipe dream – the electric grids cannot supply sufficient power.. Start listening to system engineers for a change.
Rgb, I recall Prof Med. Thring telling me in the early 70s that improving engine efficiency was fine but bigger savings could be made by using regenerative braking as used in modern hybrids. I agree that hybrid technology should be more widely used to increase fleet efficiency. As well as the advantages mentioned by rgb it allows the engine to run close to its ‘sweet spot’ most of the time. The best would be a diesel hybrid which would combine the higher thermodynamic efficiency of the diesel cycle with the regenerative technology, such systems have been used for some time in hybrid trains.
If you want to go far that day just use your second (petrol-driven) car.
there is an idea. the government can buy us all electric cars using quantitative easing to pay for it, which we can use on those days when we don’t need to go anywhere.
Ferd,
Poi’fect!
One sweet statement of high irony!
Mac
A pox on distance. Will I be able to drive the ten miles home from work stuck in a four-hour Interstate highway traffic jam at night (lights on), snowing (windshield wipers on), in zero-degree (defroster and heater on) weather? Ask the commuters in New England (US) how well an electric car would fare this winter.
Not all of us live in sunny California.
I think that’s the point of the enviro-movement. It is not to get electric cars to have the equivalent convenience and costs of gas powered cars but to change our expectations. In your example, to not expect to re-fuel your car quickly at any time of day or night, but to adjust your life-style to accommodate over-night re-fueling.
In that vein, from the enviro-heads point of view, solar and wind increasing electricity costs is a good thing. It will force people to reduce their electricity usage and eventually find bliss in an environmentally conscious lifestyle.
It is arrogance, hubris and narcissism in other words; my way is the best way and that’s why everyone is going to act the way I want them to. Religious fanatics have a similar perspective.
There are actually vegans who make their dogs become vegetarians and somehow think that is a behaving on a higher plane, or something like that.
actually, it is worse than that –
https://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
Bubba Cow
Thanx for the cartoon. Good to see this kind of stuff in the media. Nothing better for showing up the execrable science of the alarmists for the benefit of the public.
Here you go: Scientists at Nanyang Technology University (NTU) have developed ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes.
The new generation batteries also have a long lifespan of over 20 years, more than 10 times compared to existing lithium-ion batteries. Lichter, charge faster and longer durability. Within2 years on the market. That’s progress. Link here: http://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=809fbb2f-95f0-4995-b5c0-10ae4c50c934
What’s the energy density? It’s conspicuously missing from the press release. Since they aren’t boasting about it, my guess is that it’s nothing to boast about.
Ah yes, the latest revolutionary new battery technology. They usually crop up two or three times a year. Oddly enough they never seem to go into production.
Batteries, be they Pb-H2SO4, LiPo or LiEs, begin corroding upon assembly. Their lifespan is limited by corrosion time to 3 – 5 years and electrolysis to 300 – 500 equivalent full charge-discharge cycles.
Very true, but what most do not realize is if all vehicles were electric, we would need to double the generating capacity of the nation plus greatly upgrade the capacity of the grid to handle the increased load. It wouldn’t matter if you had the perfect battery that could hold enough energy to go 300+ miles and charge in five minutes.
I actually made it near enough 3 times the grid for an all electric ‘carbon free’ society.
No windmuills tho. Just nukes
Sam: ++ Batteries are not the issue. Charging is. Any battery powered car uses energy per mile, which must be replaced. (and then some as the process is not 100% efficient) If you have an 80 kwh battery that needs 60 kwh of charge, to do it in an hour takes … 60 kw. (actually more because of losses). To recharge in 15 minutes takes 240 kw. And so on. The connectors and wires get rather large, If only one person does it, no big deal for the power grid. When 50-100 or more plug in, the grid crashes. “Better” batteries won’t help. I see reports of these breakthrough technology batteries every week, but never any real product. And no mention of the charging issue.
Gasoline is the best battery available, it is stored solar energy, and you can fill your tank in 5 minutes.
The standard 8 gpm gas pump puts energy into a car’s tank at at rate of 5 MW. Can you imagine wiring a home or a gas station for 5-MW lines and letting them be handled by average drivers? How about the “fuel of the future” fantasy of liquid or ultra-high pressure hydrogen? The refueling station of the future must include a concrete bunker at minimum safe distance for the disembarked passengers to shelter while the certified refueling technician in the flameproof, blastproof, anti-static suit performs the operation from a checklist.
Takes me 40 minutes to get to a station. I just click in at home. Done. 🙂
What are the units on the vertical axis? How about a comparison to gasoline and diesel? The last time I looked batteries of any kind were rounding errors in comparison. In rough numbers a Tesla gets 200 miles on a single charge of its 2000 pound battery versus 3 gallons = 50 pounds of gas in a regular car.
3 gallons of gasoline is 100kwh of power. About $10 of electricity at residential rates, depending where you live. About the same as 3 gallons of gasoline. No cost savings to be had from electric, especially as gasoline prices are likely to stay low and electricity prices are set to skyrocket.
A car cannot use anywhere near the actual energy contained in gasoline. A large part of gasoline’s energy
is removed as unwanted heat by the cooling system, which requires energy itself to operate as well.
A Tesla Model S battery requires 100 kWhrs to completely recharge, although only 85 kWhrs gets into the battery for use. Driving range for a fully charged Model S varies from 200 to 250 miles. If those 3 gallons of gasoline (containing 100 kWhrs energy) were to be used in a comparable vehicle, it would likely struggle to get 30 miles per gallon, or 90 miles driving range, and cost 10 cents per mile. The Model S, using avg electricity costs of 12 cents per kWhr, will cost around 5 cents per mile (but that does NOTinclude road taxes which are contained in gasoline prices). If using San Diego peak electric rates, or Hawaii rates, it would cost about the same per mile as a gas powered Model S. But, of course, the very expensive battery must also enter into any cost analysis and in that case the electric car becomes far more expensive to operate at current battery prices.
Also, the Tesla S makes a nice firecracker.
Well the range of a fully charged model S, is more like 80 miles than 250 miles.
That is because, once you leave your charging station, aka house, the only place you can be sure of getting a boost is back at home, so your range is effectively halved by lack of electric gas stations. And then if you want to use your vehicle at that destination, your safe return range is more like a third of the battery capacity.
Where I live, that 100kwh will cost you 18 bucks.
paullinsay
3 gallons gasoline > 25 pounds of fluid; more if you include weight of gas tank infrastructure
ooops – 3 gallons gasoline < 25 pounds
Imperial Gallon 7.3 pounds.
US gallon 6.07 pounds.
Good catch Chip.
3 US gallons at roughly 6 pounds per gallon is 18 pounds
“What are the units on the vertical axis?”
I can’t see where this question was answered.
Do NOT attempt volume-mass conversions in archaic units. 3 US gal is 11.5l. Gasoline density is ~0.72 kg/l. Mass is 8.3kg, less than 18lbs. Battery:fuel weight ratio around 100:1
Here is Linda Nazar’s very interesting youtube video on battery technology.
I find this to be most interesting – the Baghdad Battery – over 2000 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
I lost interest, when her ‘brief comments on global climate disruption’ became an extended personal paean.
How mixed up do you have to be to call carbon ‘pollution’, when it is the basis of all life on this planet?
How mixed up do you have to be to lament lower heating fuel prices for your fellow Canadian citizens during another brutally cold winter? “….Because of course the price of oil is currently down but that’s not what we want to happen.” she eulogizes at approximately 3:40. The unmitigated, arrogant, elitist gall of such an uncaring progressive statement defies belief.
Just unbelievable, uncaring obliviousness to the misery and hardship the AGW scam creates….. Why? Because We have to save the planet, even if it kills You!
I don’t think I would make that hard of a judgement on her based on this video alone. Not everyone examines every issue that comes before them with same vigilance. Everyone decides what they must examine and reject and what they will take and go with the flow. We only have so much time in the day and so much sanity. Her expertise is battery technology and I think we can accept that. There’s a question at the end that someone asks if battery technology ever match that of gasoline energy and she replies never.
Golden,
I hear similar platitudes uttered by progressives in the Seattle area. They are oblivious to the misery and hardship their misguided utopian agenda causes to folks living outside the urban centers. When I have made them aware of the hurtful consequences of their agenda to folks living in the country, their most common response is “Not my problem.” “Why should I care about country rednecks?” is not uncommon either.
Yes – her expertise may be in battery chemistry and technology. It is not AGW. Not fuel costs. Not ‘carbon’ pollution. Not who should live or die in a brutally long and cold winter because she really needs the price of fuels to be high to keep the government funding for battery research secure and plentiful!
Did it occur to you ask why she states “….Because of course the price of oil is currently down but that’s not what we want to happen.”? Now you know why that’s not what she wants to happen. Now you know why she espouses the AGW meme as a prelude to a technical discussion of battery technology.
If energy is inexpensive and plentiful, her well funded research activities (and corresponding pay and perks) will evaporate.
If the world ever really did need an alternative to fossil fuel transport. I’d say use nuclear to make octane. But it’s all moot. There is plenty of fossil fuel and the emitted CO2 is highly beneficial.
How well does this Li-S battery do at 20 below zero?.
cell phone batteries are near useless in the cold. you need to keep the phone inside your coat. sort of hard to do with an electric car.
Current EV battery packs are in fact, maintained at a more or less constant temperature, primarilly to extend battery lifespan. Of course, this requires electricity, normally from the grid while plugged in.
When the EV is operating, the battery pack generates sufficient heat to maintain temps, and a radiator
removes unwanted heat in warmer ambient temps.
George I agree with you, same here in UK where cars need lights on in the middle of winter from 15:00 – 09:00 (or all day if it is cloudy) plus heating the car with AC and cooling it in the summer to stop the windows steaming up due to our humid climate. As part of my job I drive about 18,000 miles a year locally. I do not have the time to sit and wait while the car charges up. On the other hand my wife does less than 5000 miles a year (mostly short journeys so an electric car would be ideal for her. “Horses for Courses” springs to mind
When our gas cylinder is empty, we swap it. Maybe the same could be done with batteries – swap instead of waiting for a recharge?
Mike Jones wrote, “When our gas cylinder is empty, we swap it. Maybe the same could be done with batteries – swap instead of waiting for a recharge?”
It’s been tried.
Your battery costs $10,000, wears out over time, and weighs half a ton. Your gas cylinder… doesn’t. So you buy a new car, take it for a drive, stop at a battery swap station, and they replace it with a knackered old battery from a ten year old car.
That means, at a minimum, it’s really only going to work with battery leasing, not purchase. Then you have to standardize batteries so you don’t get to that battery charging station and discover they don’t have any batteries that fit your car and you’re out of power to drive any further. Then you need machines which can swap those half-ton batteries and are compatible with all cars… if theirs isn’t compatible with yours, you’re still SOL even if the battery is.
Thanks, Anthony.
This Lithium-sulfur battery technology looks very promising, if people can continue to use current petroleum-based cars and trucks to get there.
If not, it is dead before it had a chance because poor people can not afford electric vehicles.
Every time one transforms energy from one kind to another there is a conversion loss.
This planet is loaded with high-density petroleum energy that works independently of winds and clouds. If we get rid of the fear of CO2.
coincidentally came across this in Sunday AM reading (my pictures don’t often post I believe due to substantial packet loss via crap dial-up here in Green and Forward and COLD Vermont)
source –
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/198462-new-aluminum-air-battery-could-blow-past-lithium-ion-be-refilled-with-water
What I don’t like about most of these batteries is the requirement of rare earths – a processing cluster what and true environmental pollutant – not clear on new ones.
battery comparison graph in article and here – (damn manbeardog and his internet)
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/EnergyDensities.jpg
The israelis would be surprised to hear that metal air is in the research stage. They’ve been using it for 20 years now. They have at least one zinc air bus route, zinc and aluminium air military batteries (which even the US army buys). The world record for electric car range was held for several years by another zinc air technology from south east asia.
The obvious obstacles to EVs are 1) cost of batteries, which includes lifespan 2) recharge rates
Weight of batteries is a lesser probem, since the advent of regen braking has mostly eliminated weight
as a mileage penalty. At twice the capacity of current li ions, li-S batteries are bound to be cheaper. The question is : “How much cheaper?” As battery cost decline and larger battery capacities available, longer driving ranges become feasible, recharge rates become of lesser importance, mostly a concern on trips. Lithium sulfer seems to be a big advancement, but whether great enough to usher in mass production of EVs remains to be seen.
What do you mean by “the advent of regen braking” ?
You mean there have actually been total goofballs who built electric cars that didn’t have regenerative braking.
Back when the standard available battery was the Lechlanche cell, or carbon zinc, electric auto dreamers talked about using regenerative recharging, if you could make a rechargeable battery.
Early electric car designers dreamed of individual pancake motors in each wheel, eliminating any kind of transmission. I guess they were not sports car designers, because they apparently never heard of unsprung weight.
Even the fabulous Mercedes Benz W196 Grande Prix car of 1954 / 55 used inboard brakes, to get the weight of the brakes off the wheel.
Elon Musk doesn’t seem to have heard of inboard brakes either.
Your car looks like a European Smart, is that a modification of the same vehicle?
As we are already working with the lightest possible elements to make batteries, the energy density has a limit, which means that it batteries will never match that of gasoline or diesel. As we are not about to run out of petroleum, CO2 is PLANT FOOD, and we need more CO2 to boost food production as the planet cools.
Electric cars will have a niche but, they neglect all kinds of details. Maybe a battery will be good for 1500 cycles, but that’s four years of daily use or six years used only week days. What’s the cost of the battery and replacement cost. Tea’s battery costs a fortune to replace.
Also, a person away from home will need to recharge and cannot afford to sit for hours while it is done normally. Quick charges will thus be desirable, which can easily cut the life of a battery in half. You can gas up a car in five minutes—that’s hard to beat.
And, did they talk about how battery failure behaves. Tesla car make good bonfires when the battery short out.
Electric cars have their place. if you do mainly city driving and can let it recharge (with more than a 20a/120v hookup) all night without getting stranded during the day, it’s a great trade off. If you need to travel more than 60-70 miles every day (long commute) there is just no way they can compete. Especially when you get into the real world comparison of vehicles. Fuel consumption, for instance, dramatically reduces the longer you are able to cruise at a constant speed in a gas or diesel powered vehicle. In an EV you use more electricity to drive the motor(s) in an EV faster, with efficiencies dropping significantly after you hit the design peak of torque load.
But EVs certainly shouldn’t be driven by the government. They are a square peg that can’t fit into a lot of round holes. Each persons’ situation is different and should evaluate what they need to use accordingly.
higley7 wrote, “CO2 is PLANT FOOD…”
Indeed, Scientific American called CO2 the “precious air fertilizer.” (But that was before SciAm got worse.)
The most efficient technology (Excluding battery type) for electric motive power was invented in about the 1950’s. Diesel-Electric. A small, but efficient turbo charged diesel powering a generator, which charges the batteries which drives the motors. It could be setup to startup when being driven when batteries needed charging. Would consume far less fuel than conventional diesel powered vehicles, would not need a new recharging infrastructure (You would simply use what is there, ie, a gas station), would not emit as much CO2 as batteries being re-charged from the grid.
Simple! And the technology is available and, relatively, cheap.
Yes, this modification could be made to the Tesla Model S, remove three-quarters of the 1700-lb battery and replace it with a 15 kw motor-generator set and tank, make the vehicle much lighter, better performing, and much more economical to purchase. I discussed this with Tesla’s engineering manager. Musk insists that Tesla remain a 100% electric vehicle company.
The battery is only a few inches thick, covers the entire bottom surface of the car. Otherwise I would introduce this modification as an after-market option, make the Tesla Model S the world’s greatest hybrid vehicle.
There was a petrol-electric car, sadly went out of productionn in 2012 (Maybe because of a lack of subsidy?). It was called the Fisker Surf. It was featured on the British motoring BBC TV show called “Top Gear”. Looked really good!
“Musk insists that Tesla remain a 100% electric vehicle company. ”
Otherwise he would have to compete with VW for fuel efficiency. Too tough. Rather, sell a hundred luxury cars a year and pump and pump and pump ( and dump ) the stock.
Why not eliminate the battery altogether, along with the superfluous electric motor, and remove the generator from the motor generator set, and then couple the 15 kW motor to the wheels.
Then you would have gasoline from gas tank to motor to wheels. Super compact and efficient, without having to carry all that permanent weight penalty.
I get 40 plus MPG out of my gas/motor/wheel car and I can even carry stuff in it.
There is no compelling need for the weight and complexity of a DE electric drive. Mechanical transmissions are a mature technology and now offer CVT transmissions that provide efficient automatic shifting yet are around 98% efficient. Even the best electric drives will be less efficient. I drive a modern european Ford midsize car with a turbocharged diesel engine that delivers a dependable 52mpg on journeys at Freeway speeds and approaches 60 mpg on country roads. This beats the real life performance of the Prius and Honda hybrids with ease.
Diesel electric transmissions make sense in a marine application where you can increase redundancy by having several engines in separate locations drive the vessel through swivelling azipod thrusters but not for cars.
These sulfur batteries look like an excellent solution for all night spotlighting for coyotes. Electric cars, on the other hand, are a solution looking for a problem.
If you kill all the coyotes in your block/town/county/state, more will come from far away to occupy the newly emptied territory. Why? You can’t kill them all. Leave the coyotes alone…
Yup. Just like Obazombies, they breed faster than you can get rid of them…
I much prefer the coyotes over the electric cars. The electric cars are too often driven by total idiots. I know; I’ve seen them on the roads.
I’ll bet those living in New England are sure as hell glad the electric car, solar and wind power, anti-coal crowd haven’t prevailed yet.
Well, up here in caustic looney-tunes Vermont, they’re making a go of it. Thinking of painting my Tacoma camo.
http://www.nawindpower.com/issues/NAW1301/images/15629.jpg
We’re working on a Carbon Tax too. What could be finer?
And there is another row of bird-killers on the ridge in the background.
Can’t see it clearly (in a still photograph)? Wait until you are condemned to hours of them moving in real life. UGLY!
Yup, that’d be Lowell on the West skyline, Sheffield in the foreground.
They are already spinning – excellent infrasound has driven families from homes – but then we have increased electrical rates, so what’s the problem?
Incidentally, we have an actual debate happening in St. Johnsbury, 7 PM Monday, Comfort Inn( for anyone in the neighborhood). About possible Carbon Tax and between John McClaughry –
http://vtdigger.org/2013/11/24/thing-two-might-know-john-mcclaughry/
and Jon Erickson, Econ Prof at UVM Rubenstein School of Environmental and Natural Resources.
You can look him up if you want, but be advised, this is another post-normal pseudo-science, sociologist, anti-science, IPCC reader, policy writer.
Looking for damning questions please . . .
The irony is that if they dug a few holes filled them with akcali iron batteries, Giant edison cells, and drained off the hydrogen into a tank then most wind farms would be able to do peak load. Charging the batteries and h2 tank and powering the grid via a fuel cell and the batteries.
Beautiful scenery; what is all that green and dead brown junk around those magnificent sculptures ??
It looks like our children won’t know what a picturesque landscape looks like anymore, except maybe in history books or historical photos. Did anyone remember to take a photo before those bird choppers went up?
When I first moved to Vermont from Los Angeles, locals took great pride in explaining there were no oil rigs or refineries in New England.
Not so proud they refused to use the fuels, just proud enough to expect others to do the work for them.
That’s called “sour grapes.”
It may be possible with newer technologies, but when I lived there, New England had NO economically recoverable petroleum deposits. Siting a refinery just about anywhere there would be idiotic, too, just from engineering and logistic standpoints (ignoring the ignorant politicians).
Although the wide use of electric cars regardless of battery configuration will increase the demand for fossil or nuclear generated electrical power(at each conversion stage it is hard to overcome the losses), the reality is that widespread use of electric cars will never become a reality until a delivery system(hot rail) on major highways is built to allow powering the motor & charging the battery while driving. In this fashion the need for massive battery storage is eliminated as there are very few areas for the masses where one gets farther away from a major freeway or interstate than 50 miles. Virtually every mode of advanced mechanical transportation occurred after the roads or rails were built.
What is Elon Musk building in Nevada? The sweetheart deal he negotiated could price competitors out. He is paying no payroll or property taxes for a decade, and even able to sell tax credits to other companies.
“Electric cars don’t make a lot of sense for an all-around car, but for in-city use, such as errands or delivery, they could be quite viable with better battery technology.”
Electric cars are viable today, but their niche is quite narrow.
Electric cars are so expensive, they can be bought only by the affluent. The limiting factor in electric car sales/usage is not battery technology, it is the cost of the cars.
“This newer Lithium-sulfur batteries show promise beyond the current favorite lithium-ion batteries due to their energy density and lighter weight:”
The challenge in the marketplace is cost, not energy density or weight.
No. Energy density gives you effective performance/range limits.
Charge rate governs ‘fill up times’
overall costs govern cost per mile
ALL of these have to be within certain limits
Nissan Leafs cost $30,000. The cost of entry makes all other factors irrelevant except for people not concerned about cost.
Gamecock,
For many years, in much of the UK – before the rise of the hypermarkets using a white fluid as a loss-leader – most urban and sub-urban deliveries were done by the milkman, driving a milk float – an electric [lead-acid, for sure] battery-powered, lightly build ‘sub-truck’, carrying crates of milk bottles, and in due course, cream, juices, bread – even potatoes.
The always-accurate Wikipedia has a few photos here: –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
Limited range needed; charged overnight; even a fairly benign tax regime; deliveries six days a week.
What’s not to like?
Auto
Well the cost is irrelevant if the result is a net available energy loss rather than a gain.
Tesla is profitable, only because they sell carbon credits which they never generated, to people who run real profit making businesses.
I could print my own fiat carbon credits and sell them to other people to make money out of nothing.
Energy Density is an important factor in vehicle design; but the recharge rate and lifetime are critical as well.