Lighter Cheaper More Powerful Battery Changes Renewable Economics
Guest essay by Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Marina del Rey, California
It is not often on SLB that I use the phrase “game-changer.” Most things progress, if they progress at all, in small increments. This time, though, is one of those that deserves the phrase game-changer.
The innovation is the low-cost, light-weight but powerful battery developed by Nobel prize-winner Alan Heeger, PhD of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). The company is Biosolar . see link to www.biosolar.com
The battery is suitable for mobile and stationary applications such as cars, trucks, grid stabilization, home power storage, and others. The innovation is the use of the Nobel prize-winning plastic-that-acts-like-a-metal, haologenated polyacetylene.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2000: Conductive Polymers (see link) is lengthy but has this to say about the discovery:
” In 1977, however, Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger discovered that oxidation with chlorine, bromine or iodine vapour made polyacetylene films 10^9 times more conductive than they were originally. Treatment with halogen was called “doping” by analogy with the doping of semiconductors. The “doped” form of polyacetylene had a conductivity of 10^5 Siemens per meter, which was higher than that of any previously known polymer. As a comparison, teflon has a conductivity of 10^–16 S m–1 and silver and copper 10^8 S m–1.”
The battery, which is now patent-pending at the US and other patent offices, is expected to cost less than $100 per kWh (about one-fourth that of the best batteries today), to weigh less and therefore provide longer range to cars, to have a greater power density (power to weight ratio), have a faster charging time and much longer life. Another substantial positive is the material itself, made from common acetylene. There are no rare earths to mine and extract, no toxic residues. The halogen dopants are also common, cheap, and abundant.
This battery, which continues the use of lithium for the anode, is likely a primary contribution to the Tesla company’s announcement this week of a new mid-price all-electric car.
The renewable energy field, especially those technologies that have variable output due to changes in the wind or sunshine, will benefit greatly from a low-cost high-density battery. A wind energy project would not be limited to selling power at low prices, currently 3 cents per kWh, but instead selling the power as would a gas-fired power plant, on demand and reliably at the market price.
Added by Anthony:
From the Bisosolar website:
Breaking the $100/kWh Cost Barrier to Mass Market Adoption
Materials account for more than 70% of the cost of a battery. In particular, the cathode material makes up 20-35% of the total materials costs. Therefore, lowering the cost of the cathode is an effective way to lowering the total battery cost. The estimated raw materials cost of our cathode is similar to that of inexpensive plastics, with a very high possible energy density of 1,000 Wh/kg.
Our Super Cathode can be used to manufacture a super battery that is 2 times higher capacity than the batteries currently used in a Tesla Model S, at 4 times less cost.
Processing materials and time are additional cost drivers. Our cathode can be processed from water and eco-friendly solvents, which (i) eliminates the use of costly and toxic solvents, (ii) eliminates high temperature drying processes, and (iii) speeds up the production throughput.
Many analysts in the electric vehicle and solar industry consider $100 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to be the “holy grail” price threshold. In the case of electric vehicles, $100/kWh will make them undeniably cost-competitive with gas-powered vehicles. And in the case of solar, it will finally be cost effective to store daytime solar electricity for nighttime use and be less reliant on, or completely independent of, the power grid.
Our current estimate of the cost of a full battery using our Super Cathode with a conventional graphite anode is approximately $54/kWh.
Compared to Existing Batteries Based on internal experimental data, other published data, and a calculation model adopted from the Energy Laboratory of Samsung Electronics, we have estimated the energy density and energy costs of a complete super battery that uses our Super Cathode technology.
The BioSolar Super Cathode can be combined with conventional anodes to create different battery configurations to meet specific application or market requirements. Due to the overall low cost, high energy, long life and rapid charge features of our cathode, the resulting battery will be inherently lower cost, higher energy, longer life and faster charging.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I found Sowell’s blog that I have seen before. He is a typical California anti-nuke. He is more interested in renewable energy as replacement for nuclear power than for the merits of renewable energy. Not so interested in reducing ghg.
Here is an example: http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/us-power-generation-capacity-factors.html
“What is frequently, and wrongly, stated by nuclear power proponents (cheerleaders as I refer to them) is nuclear plants run at 100 percent output. Note that no amount of repeating a lie will change the lie from false to true.”
Most of the time, nuke plants do run at 100%. Refueling outages and maintenance is scheduled for periods of low demand. Availability of nuke plant when schedule to operate is about 99%.
“The wind dies down in the Summer, with August having the minimum output and a capacity factor of 22 percent. ”
Sowell does not address that wind is lowest during peak demand.
“Natural gas power plants are ideally suited for load changing, in great contrast to nuclear power plants that refuse to change their output even at night when demand is low and no one needs their power. ”
Nuke plants do load follow in France because of the high mix of nuclear. US plants can load follow but there is always a need for power even at night.
Ok then Sowell has an agenda. What I find amusing is that he is frustrated when the anti-wind agenda uses the anti-nuke playbook. .
Retired Kit P, what I find amusing is your blatant distortion of the facts to suit your pro-nuclear agenda. Nukes run at 100 percent? They do, do they? Not according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Note to all, this is a favorite trick of those who cannot stand the light of day on the harsh, cold reality, so they invent a new method of calculating to make their dismal numbers look better. The trick is to use “availability” as the base point, meaning days when the plant is NOT offline for planned maintenance nor for refueling.
What is indisputably true about nuclear plants in the US and their average annual capacity factors (based on 365 days per year, not some “availability” nonsense) is that the Nuclear Energy Institute published a chart showing that the US nuclear plants did not break 60 percent capacity factor for their first 30 years of existence. Only in about 1988 was the 60 percent point reached. Then, another decade was required to reach 80 percent on average. In the past few years, the figure is 90 to 92 percent. Not 100 percent. But you could look it up.
And I am especially amused at your jibe at the wind capacity factors — couldn’t bring yourself to admit that wind capacity factor, on average for an entire month in the US, was 43 percent in month of April – meaning that on some days it was more than 43 and some days a bit less. Can’t have that 43 percent floating around out there, it might make wind look respectable.
One last word about wind, of course the power flows when the wind blows. If the grid has demand when the wind is blowing, well and good. Here in California, the grid peaks each evening around 8 to 9 pm. The wind is usually generating quite well at that time.
Next, you are quite wrong about France and nuclear plants following the load. They can follow the load, but many of them don’t for safety and economic reasons. Only those that are specially modified, and with highly trained operators, follow the load. As published papers have stated, there are safety compromises involved, and higher costs involved. You could look it up.
<blockquote
What informed, thinking, people prefer.
re Janice Moore, and “Go, Nuclear Power!”
A nuclear cheerleader, no doubt about it.
No substance, but certainly has the slogan and cheering part down.
No refutation of the 15 anti-nuclear arguments made by Professor Derek Abbot in his 2011 article “Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?” published in Proceedings of the IEEE. Note that only 3 of Dr. Abbot’s 15 arguments appear in my list of more than 30 reasons not to build nuclear.
No refutation, just cheerleading.
Why, dear Roger Sowell,
Didn’t you know? The safety, the effectiveness, the efficiency, and the long-term viability, of nuclear power are (among the level of reader here): common knowledge.
There is, thus, no need to state anything but the conclusion.
Re: your posing as if you are wanting refutation for your supported-only-by-misinformation nuclear power assertions, I’ve come to believe, given your past inability to understand the evidence and reasoning presented you on thread after thread, year after year, by experts and informed-laypersons, that presenting that evidence to you yet again would be a waste of time.
And I think, especially given your smirkingly patronizing, tone, that your question is a dishonest one: you don’t really want to learn, you just want to rave.
I’ll just say this: France.
So, lol, I will say it again, with gusto:
— but the nuclear power industry does not need any cheerleaders. The facts, presented honestly and not in a “fraud on the court” manner, speak quite loudly enough.
Nuclear power is for thinking people.
Apparently, that does not include you. Emotions have completely fogged in your ability to look at this issue rationally.
Janice
For Janice Moore,
You say (as do so very many of the nuclear un-informed): “France.”
As if that is the shining beacon of nuclear power success, which all nations should emulate.
Yet you conveniently overlook the facts that France:
1. Had to subsidize their entire nuclear power industry (they nationalized it, the ultimate form of subsidy)
2. Subsidized the electric power sales prices – so much so that other EU countries alleged wrongdoing, and the EU Commission brought charges against France, forcing them to raise prices.
3. Overbuilt nuclear plants so that only by exporting power at night (to Italy, primarily) are the plants technically viable.
4. Subsidizes foreign nuclear plant sales in vain hopes of sustaining their nuclear reactor sales
5. Hoped (again, in vain) that other countries would also install 70 to 85 percent of their electrical generation assets as nuclear – yet not one country in the world followed France’s lead
6. Has a massively deteriorating electric generation asset base so that nuclear plants provide 70 percent or less of all grid power, down from the low 80 percent range
7. Cannot build on-budget, nor on-time, any of the new nuclear plants that use the French-developed EPR reactor of 1600 MW. Even the one located within France, at Flamanville, and within French control, has massive delays and cost over-runs due to the French way of design, construction, and management.
Have you no ability to absorb actual facts, or do you insist upon repeating the cheer: Go Nuclear Power!
But, we can agree on one thing. It is useless to try to convince you with facts. Your mind is closed.
Therefore, good day, and may you always wonder why so few nuclear power plants are built around the world, if the technology is so very, very good. Approximately 11 percent of the entire world’s electrical production is from nuclear. That puts nuclear in a distant fourth place, after coal, natural gas, and hydroelectric. You could look it up.
If you look at the next to last page, it is an accurate statement to say nuke plants run at 100% power except during periods of maintenance and refueling performed at periods of low demand. http://www.nei.org/CorporateSite/media/filefolder/Policy/EMR/Energy_Markets_Report_Mar_28_Apr_1_2016.pdf?ext=.pdf
“Only in about 1988 was the 60 percent point reached. Then, another decade was required to reach 80 percent on average. In the past few years, the figure is 90 to 92 percent.”
Sowell makes a good point. Nuke plants were designed to have a capacity factor of 80%. My first commercial plant and many other achieved that goal. However, there were many nuke plants that were not managed very well. In 1988 I worked at a nuke that was shut down for several years because the neglected routine maintenance.
The interesting thing about the nuclear industry is that we work together to improve performance of all nuke plants. For the last 20 or so years, nuke plants have performed 10% better than predicted when build and provided 20% of our power.
“was 43 percent in month of April”
Nobody cares. Wind produced 4% of US power. If wind produced 20% of our power and had a 43% CF on cold winter night and hot summer days, we would all care. Of course the reason would be that those wind farms would be an economic asset not a drain on the economy.
“Next, you are quite wrong about France and nuclear plants following the load. They can follow the load, but …”
Sowell does some nifty backpedaling. Lawyers are good at that when caught in a lie. All LWR are designed to load follow. The training is the same. Running at lower power increases design margin (duh). The reason they load follow is for economic reasons. France imports fossil fuels making load following with nukes more economical.
The same is true for California since California imports ⅓ of its power and a lots of natural gas to run in-state gas plants. The reason for the sad state of affairs in California is too many lawyers.
And if the wind speed drops to half the design operating wind speed, you have only lost 87.5% of your generating capacity.
G
Just the diesel numbers for comparison: 8350 Wh/kg @ur momisugly $0.05/kg (US fuel price) 3 minutes recharging. Compare this with the fast battery: 358 Wh/kg @ur momisugly, $85/kg, 12 min recharge.
Synthetic Diesel from nuclear sounds more promising to me.
I’m a waste oil diesel recycler, myself. I get free cooking oil, mostly canola but whatever, from 3 Chinese restaurants who used to pay to have it hauled off. They pour warm oil from the vats through a filter funnel I provided back into the plastic lined box it comes in. I take the box to a warehouse and don’t touch it for 3 months to let the food settle out of it. 3″ off the bottom, we pump out the nearly pure oil and feed it through 2 fuel filter/water separators used in diesel trucks as fuel filters. Filtered oil fills a 55 gallon plastic barrel. I dump in 1 gallon of paint thinner (mineral spirits) I get free from painting contractors which thins the oil for injection. In Winter, in SC, I double the thinner to make sure it’ll start. My unmodified 300TD Mercedes diesel wagon makes less knocking noise and gets about 22-24 mpg out of it….for free. It recharges in 3 minutes for about 300+ miles with a hand pump after a little quick stir with a very scientific oak boat paddle. I smells slightly like a fish fry, not french fry, from Chinese waste oils….(c;]
Try not to sell me a $10,500 electric car battery……no thanks!
Larry you are my kind of guy. So we each need our own three Chinese restaurants. I hope you do like Chinese food (I do).
The high speed around the world racing boat that Green piece used to harass Japanese whale research ships, was supposed to run on liposuction fat.
See the beauty of that, some people, specially in America, could actually run their diesel Mercedes off themselves, and lose weight while they are at it.
g
Going by their minimal information on the website is sounds like a new material for a polarized capacitor, or an electric double layer capacitor. They hint that the usual battery re-dox reaction takes place in a plastic film.
oops: $0.05/kWh and $85/kWh
“BioSolar”.
Just the name throws up red flags. (Why not “BioBreakingWind”?)
Maybe the name is just marketing appealing to the current political climate (Those who have the power to make the taxpayer sign the checks.),
I’d like to hope that it is a genuine advancement, one that can stand on its own merits in the marketplace without props supplied by the taxpayers.
(Hard to get all of the “Solyndras” out of my mind.)
what about AXPW ?
…as we all sit at the dinner table in the cold and dark wondering why we couldn’t recharge 4.2M Tesla Model 3’s when Daddy gets home…..
I can’t keep up with all these “game changers”. Whatever happened to the Tesla PowerWall – wasn’t that a game changer, too?
http://www.designboom.com/technology/tesla-powerwall-2015-index-award-winner-08-29-2015/
Reality is setting in… Tesla has quietly backed out of the higher storage units.
“…Our Super Cathode can be used to manufacture a super battery…”
Everything is always “super” with Biosloar.
(or Biosolar, lol)
Or BoarSoil, close kin to that other type of BS.
Or Liar boso
Great stuff, I am all for it. But there is an associated nagging background problem: It is not yet in production and they just signed an agreement with the University of California to do further research. The patent they actually have is not for a battery but for an organic super-capacitor which they say will be useful with the battery. The project leader is a Nobel Prize winner with fantastic credentials. In addition to the Nobel he has also won half a dozen other awards and has honorary Ph.D.-s from universities in America, Europe, and Asia. Plus, he has also published 900 scientific articles. That last number galls me. If you write a paper every two weeks it will take you 36 years to write 900 of them. And that ignores the ediiting process and delays. It is obvious that to get to 900 he had to have obliging co-workers who wrote stuff that he put his name on. Who else but his graduate students would do such a thing, thinking that the prof will reward them? And if that is the case, a good part of his published work is probably not his but his ghostwriters work. His Nobel is for that organic super-capacitor, about the origin of which I now have my doubts. In view of that, I hope he has somebody in his new research team who knows something about it. I would hate to see the same thing happen to this game changer as happened to the last one (that famous cold fusion thing).
Poly-acetylene type ‘organic metals’ still had serious long term stability issues last time I checked. There are also other issues with organo-electronics, not least the interface between the material and the proper metal that conducts bulk-current. Lots of claims are made for materials of all sorts, but they are rarely even close to practical. I doubt anything much has changed.
When they have something in actual production, not just projected, then I will take it seriously.
What am I missing here? I am being charged from 6 cents to 15 cents per kiloWatt (kW) hour for my electricity at home. But this new electricity battery would store it at a cost of $100 per kiloWatt hour or
from 667 to 1,667 times what I buy home power for. A markup of $99.85 to $99.94 per kiloWatt hour. Why store wind and solar power, just keep buying the cheap 6 cent to 15 cent power from my dirty coal power plant or cleaner natural gas power plant. Is the reduction of pollution worth a premium of $99 per hour?
The solution to pollution is dilution. California has the top 10 worst cities for air pollution but only uses coal power imported from Arizona, Nevada or Utah. California has smog because it is a Basin State that traps air emissions in inversion layers. Conversely, Texas has none of its big cities on the worst air pollution list despite they import coal to burn in their local power plants. Why? Because they are a Plains State where the wind dissipates the pollution instead of traps it. Buy a Tesla for status symbol in Beverly Hills (Basin) not in Plano, Texas (Plains).
What does the overall cost for running a hybrid car compared to a battery car with this new technology?
The one-time cost of the battery is what the $100 per kWh means. So, for a battery suitable for the Tesla, which presently has 85 kWh capacity, the price for that battery is $8,500. Compared to the $400 per kWh that the present batteries cost, that is about a $25,000 savings for the same performance.
In a home power situation, one could buy a 24 kWh battery for $2400, that would store up and release 3 kW for 8 hours.
Or for home power I could buy a backup generator to get the same or more kWh for less money. Ten gallons of gas will give more than eight hours of power. And more hours can be acquired with additional tanks of gas rather than buying additional batteries for $2400 apiece. Not to mention that gasoline engines have been around a long time and are quite reliable, as opposed to unproven new technologies.
You got it dave, peiple only go electric because of political motives, not because of financial motives.
“about a $25,000 savings”
The way to save money is not to spend it in the first place.
You can buy a 3kw generator for $300. I charge my motorhome batteries with an $88 800 watt Harbor Freight generator because the batteries will only charge so fast. Also have a 20 year old 7kw Onon generator if I want run both A/C units, microwave, frig, and hot water at the same time while charging batteries.
Battery capacity is often specified at a load that can be sustained for 20 Hrs; ‘ The 20 Hr rate ‘
So a 24 kWh battery would be more suitable for 1.2 kW for 20 hours.
My house has 200 watt total lighting power consumption if I turn everything on. (my wife does).
G
“Is the reduction of pollution worth a premium of $99 per hour?”
Where do you live Wayne? The solution to pollution is controlling pollution with engineered systems. North America has good air quality. https://www.airnow.gov/
It should be noted that we cleaned up our cities without EV.
We’ve conquered nature and Nazi’s, now we swat at the gnats of “terrorism”.
Without another preoccupation things might get really nasty.
As to battery or electro-chemical storage devices in grid service, the link below shows a world-wide database from the US Department of Energy on grid-storage projects. The electro-chemical devices show 893 projects and a bit more than 2,300 MW of capacity worldwide.
The advanced Biosolar battery is simply an improvement on already demonstrated technology.
http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects
And of course there are also batteries in the plug in hybrid, pure hybrid, and pure electric vehicles that are sold in many countries. In the US alone there have been approximately 3 million hybrid vehicles sold since 2005. The trend is increasing with approximately 400,000 such cars sold in each of the past three years. Those sales were with the older, less-dense and more costly batteries. The new battery that this article describes will indeed make the electric car much more competitive.
It is astonishing to me that so many commenters have the buggy-whip mentality. No new technology could possibly be better than a reliable horse and a smooth-running buggy, they said. Everyone knows how that turned out.
And a comment about the time for battery development that some commenters complain is far too long. It is a bit odd that solar cells using the photo-electric effect required decades and decades of research, government (meaning NASA) funding, before commercialization. Einstein published on the photo-electric effect in 1905 and won the Nobel prize for his discovery. Even earlier, in 1839, Edmund Becquerel discovered that light enhances electricity production in some processes. Then in 1954, Bell Labs invented the first PV solar cell – in the lab, of course. In 1958 NASA launched the first satellites using small but working PV solar cells. In total, that is almost 120 years from the Becquerel discovery to NASA’s first use.
Yet, a mere 30-plus years from the Nobel prize-winning initial discovery of halogenated polyacetylen, to the most recent battery development announcements, is criticized as taking too long.
Tough crowd.
Very tough crowd.
Have they built a working battery, or not?
Just to be clear Roger Sowell, that question was directed to you.
Just to be clear, Davidmhoffer, this answer is directed at you.
Go do your research and find out for yourself.
Roger Sowell April 8, 2016 at 10:44 pm
Go do your research and find out for yourself.
Just as I expected, Roger Sowell won’t answer the question with a straight forward yes or no. Typical Roger Sowell. Unfounded hype of renewables in support of his anti-nuclear rhetoric. Then he complains that it is a tough crowd.
For Davidmhoffer, and just where is it required that I answer any questions, especially yours?
Do you say the same to everyone who tells others to do their own research?
Having had nothing but negative interactions with you, it would not matter if I did do your research for you (and yes I know if there is a battery or not). Any answer I give would receive your usually snarling, angry response.
(and yes I know if there is a battery or not)
And yet Roger Sowell won’t answer the question. He chooses an evasive response, not because be fears my snarling reply, but because he knows the answer is “no”. By answering the point blank question, he reveals that his entire article is nothing butt a puff piece hyping a game changing technology which, upon examination, doesn’t exist.
The reason, Roger, that you frequently get a snarling response from me is that just as you have experience with me, so I do with you. My experience is with a purveyor of half truths and misinformation cleverly bound together by careful wording as only a lawyer can. Mixed in with a healthy dollop of evasiveness when backed into a corner on an issue.
I’m one of those people that thinks the electric car will ultimately prevail. But it won’t get there by hyping break through batteries that it turns out don’t exist.
Yes, very tough crowd. Prove it or pack it out. E-Cat, remember that? Very few bought into it while most hoped. Disappointment! These batteries are likely to be the same.
Hmm, http://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10301
It looks like the trend is already heading down in hybrid and electric vehicles. I expect hybrids to go away. Electric will eventually dominate, but we need batteries much better than the promised ones here, or we need street-installed supply. Neither seems likely any time soon.
http://evobsession.com/electric-car-sales-increased-228-88-2013/
The predictions of anti-hybrid tech wowsers have not panned-out in 15 years, the market growth is exponential. A flattening of uptake in the US is not what occurs in the much larger Asian and European markets.
The main issue is not the technology, or its alleged inadequacy or limitation, it’s a function of fuel being a lot cheaper once again, as demand fell as production was rising, commensurate with falling demand due to debt-driven economic malaise globally, and the fact that all car manufacturers are having a great deal of problems clearing the resulting over-production inventories and selling as cheaply as possible to move stock and make their own loan repayments, that just aren’t selling well, for most of the past 9 months.
As high-end hybrids are generally more expensive to buy in a period where fuel is cheaper and conventional cars also cheaper, in lean economic times, then the sales of hybrid fell away first is all. But all vehicle types and sales are now struggling to clear over produced inventory. Which along with falling commodities and energy price is another classic sign of approaching recession conditions, and falling trade volumes and sales.
Reading into this that hybrids are going to ‘go away’ is fanciful though, their sales flattened (in the US market). US market’s conditions and preference does not determine such things any longer.
“… It is astonishing to me that so many commenters have the buggy-whip mentality. No new technology could possibly be better than a reliable horse and a smooth-running buggy, they said. Everyone knows how that turned out. …”
Not all Roger, don’t be put off by the lug nuts.
Unmentionable; In general I have no objection to R and D, and none to privately funded R&D. However I object to government implementation in markets of what is not ready or needed through purchase subsidies.
Remove those and your electric vehicle sales will collapse.
@David A April 9, 2016 at 4:49 am
“… However I object to government implementation in markets of what is not ready or needed through purchase subsidies. Remove those and your electric vehicle sales will collapse.”
____
Government R&D? What? Is this your objection to hybrid vehicle sales? You can’t really be that oblivious to the facts, can you?
The Toyota Hybrid Drive Train technology and its battery technology were not developed or sold via government subsidy, they were developed by a private Japanese corporation doing private corporate R&D and they decided to make a commercial product with it.
And you’re claiming what instead? That Toyota’s production and their hybrid car development and sales were subsidized by your government? You can’t actually believe that, do you?
Toyota developed, produced, certified and shipped these hybrids to their private dealer networks, globally, on their own coin, and sold it to private buyers of hybrid vehicles, so they could make a PROFIT.
That’s called capitalism in a market economies, not government meddling within markets.
Toyota now can’t make them fast enough, they sell like hot cakes, they are making the company profits.
So what on earth are you talking about? I can see no connection between your stated or implied objection, and the reality of the situation.
Every other car producer is now trying to ape what Toyota did, they have basically tried to copy and reinvent their versions of Hybrid drive-train concepts, to compete with Toyota, because it’s a very successful private breakthrough in affordable auto fuel efficiency and existing battery tech applications. The private non-subsidized sales of them are growing exponentially on their own merits.
You seem to be ideologically reading things into this, that are not said or even implied by me.
And where is the mythical government support that you say must end? Which will then allegedly lead to the downfall of the millions of sales of hybrid vehicles?
Got some news for you, it’s not merely the Prius, the Toyota hybrid-electric drive-train models coming out of factories in Asia are now literally too numerous to count. Different hybrid models, not merely cars.
They keep churning them out as fast as they possibly can. Why? Because people want them. People are buying them, customers think they are great vehicles, and they are right.
So where’s this pending collapse in Government support that is going to wipe out Hybrid electric drive train vehicles?
Wake up – there isn’t any. These cars are selling, because they’re in demand with the public, because they’re brilliant for cheap reliable personal transportation.
And clearly you didn’t read this, my first comment, up the page:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/08/this-new-battery-is-a-game-changer/#comment-2185656
Don’t give me ideology or politics slop, look at the facts in context, you’ve got everything bassackwards and missed the point, plus had no point and provided no facts or insights, but you did spread more red-herring, while doing it.
Well I agree with you that Toyota developed their Prius themselves which is how it is supposed to work, in a free society.
But to argue that Prius and other Hybrids aren’t subsidized is hardly correct.
In California at least Hybrids like Prius and others get preferential treatment on the allocation of freeway lanes. They can drive alone in the HOV lanes that were designated for car pools and buses, and from which are excluded regular autos that pay for those lanes to exist, but aren’t allowed to use them.
Forcing the bulk of the cars to get squeezed into a few lanes, while HOV lanes are almost empty until the occasional Prius or car pool comes along.
There is nothing about a Prius that reduces traffic congestion on the freeways. The freeways would run more smoothly, and more efficiently with lower gasoline consumption; all of the green goodie, if ALL vehicles were allowed to use ALL lanes, at ALL times, so they could all run at the same speed, and stop all the sideways lane switching BS that creates traffic jams, as well as accidents.
It’s not about efficiency; it’s about socialist control of otherwise free people’s behavior.
G
Roger Sowell,
“It is astonishing to me that so many commenters have the buggy-whip mentality. No new technology could possibly be better than a reliable horse and a smooth-running buggy, they said.”
I doubt you can appreciate how silly a comment this is. The same people you suggest have ‘buggy-whip’ mentality would for sure support practical fusion power were it to become available; would that also be buggy whip technology? The real issue here is the cost of non-GHG emitting power sources, and nuclear power is far and away the cheapest non-GHG emitting source. (Economic justification for the added cost of reducing GHG emissions, by any technoplogy, including nuclear, is a completely different question.) An anti-nuclear advocate like you seems to me as incapable of perceiving his own bias as he is incapable of evaluating bias in others.
BTW, you have been duped by little more than a press release which seems designed to get a bounce in market interest in the company. Even Nobel Prize winners want to make lots money via IPO’s you know.
“In the US alone there have been approximately 3 million hybrid vehicles sold since 2005.”
Which means approximately 3 million bought cars to feel good about about protecting the protecting the environment without any evidence to support the claim.
“It is astonishing to me that so many commenters have the buggy-whip mentality.”
Here is what Sowell does not understand. Not everybody is a gullible as him. Enough information has provided that these batteries are not a proven product, Yet Sowell continues repeating marketing claims.
A battery technology improvement that really helps solar also help every other power source to be cheaper. All need some maintenance and redundancy- with an awesome battery system, you can use at 100% capacity of less units and have it be the sole supplier of energy cutting out competing energy sources so it is cheaper.
Assume in 2020 a tesla with game changer battery is on the road.
The planning of the needed Infrastruktur can beginn – to reach every location in california with loading stations along the streets allowing reloading where needed from southern to north California.
Planning is done – 2040, 2050 ?
Infrastruktur stands – 2060, 2070 ?
____________
Now repeat that for a travel LA to NY.
And don’t forget the trucks – we started with tesla !
____________
California dreaming.
Excellent point. The private economy developed the infrastructure for gasoline and diesel and it has easily adapted to rural areas, there is hardly a road in US where you cannot find a gas station. Of course the fossil fuel haters who use the benefits every day expect the taxpayer (or the fossil fuel companies) to foot the bill for a new grid, back up batteries for unreliable generation, and charging stations for their limited use cars. Who will pay for this nonsense when the fossil fuel companies are broke due to law suits from GORE.
This is NOT Sustainable after the wealth is spent.
You can currently drive your Tesla from Montreal to Miami with adequate quick recharge stations along the route – the charge is free – it has been paid for in the car price. Hotels that want to stay in business offer overnight slow charging for guests. It’s easier than you think.
How do you bring the energy to the loading stations – earth cables along the roads, batterys in containers?
A fantastic world the greens live in – dream along !
And who pays that – shareholders in Singapore and China?
– mass hysteria !
Can anyone find statistics on tons of batteries produced for given applications or market sectors?
I ask because it sure seems to me that if I had a new, better battery, the first place to aim is consumer electronics. Cell phone, tablet, and laptop batteries are small. They will be much easier to produce than large batteries for industrial storage.
There is also that problem that Willis has brought up of having so much energy stored in a compact location, like a bomb. Liability issues have killed many companies.
It just seems that if I really have a better battery, I am going to aim at the small applications before for large.
Thoughts?
Why go big? Is that the only place there is profit potential? I suspect it is where the government grants and Federally backed loans are available. That, to me, speaks of hypocrisy at least. Financially it implies stupidity or something bordering on fraud.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
–
Skeptical. Hardly room for hope.
I see nothing changing here. If the basics of it started in 1977, and Nobel saw it as established enough to award in 2000, 2016 does seem a long time coming. Especially since a quick internet search reveals nothing promising, especially nothing concrete.
Besides, a battery twice as good and half as expensive (which seems overly optimistic in this case), won’t change the game. It will make the procedures rich, but phones that last two days instead of one and weigh a few grams less is changing nothing. Same for computers. A ten-hour laptop will sell, but nothing has changed.
Cars? I just don’t see a new, unproven battery technology starting in cars, unless maybe Elon is betting the farm on it. If so, he and the battery folks will lose. It is a bad bet.
And stationary industrial applications? Heck, that is hard with proven technology. And weight is not a factor. If cost is truly cheaper, eventually it will take hold, but Edison couldn’t improve on lead-acid significantly, and no one has done it yet. For transportation and industrial energy storage, lead-acid rules. It doesn’t seem likely to change until a better, cheaper battery is proved for many years, in many applications.
Starting a new-technology battery in transportation and grid-scale applications seems impossible, truly insurmountable.
Start small, prove it, and then grow.
This battery promise may prove beneficial, but it is far from game changing.
Game changing batteries will be 100 times better at comparable costs.
Until then, we burn carbon-based fuels in vehicles and power plants, with nuclear fission taking over within a few decades.
I’ll close commenting on wind power: Industrial fans are a fad. They won’t work if batteries prove trivial in cost and simple in engineering with currently unimaginable advances. Windmills just do not work. They are too hard to deal with just as a rotating mechanism, and complicate that with constantly varying winds. They will never work. Wind will never supply a significant portion of society’s energy needs. Never.
Winds blow, but windmills suck.
Over and over for over 3,000 years, we have abandoned windmills. We will this time too, and who do we think will clean up the mess?
Approximately the same volume of buried gasoline tanks would be stored in the loading stations as exchange batteries – loaded on trucks, unloaded and stored.
Changing with cranes at the car. Madness.
Geez, a whole post on a hyped up press release for a mythical battery that is nowhere near production.
Aren’t there more interesting things to post about?
As for wind – call me when you solve the bird kill problem and visual pollution of the eco-crucifixes.
Sowell is an anti nuke whacko.
Seconded.
There seem to be some pretty knowledgeable brains following this discussion/refutation of a battery “break-through”. So along the same line of thinking have any of you seen and looked into this fellow’s “break-through” in generators, motors, and higher efficiency power supplies:
Seems to me like he might be on to something, but I wish I could see a thermal image of some of his inventions while they are at work, to see if they really are eliminating eddy current losses by reflecting them back towards the source when at resonance. He does have a patents on his concepts so he at least convince a patent examiner something was there:
https://www.google.com/patents/US4780632
https://www.google.com/patents/US8482181
Patent examiners have no obligation to establish that the invention has any realistic utility or even basic functionality. There have been numerous patents granted to quite absurd “free energy” ho@xes over the decades. Although, it is possible that openly claiming over unity efficiency now raises a red flag.
But, it is really not the business of the patents office to establish whether the design will be useful or marketable. All that they have to establish is that the idea is novel – as far as I am aware.
I got a few minutes into the video and broke out laughing. I didn’t bother watching the rest.
Maybe out of phase … maybe correcting phase to get “extra stuff” out.
A better battery is marvellous news. But … haologenated polyacetylene. Hmm. Are CFCs involved in the manufacture or released in the destruction of this material? Just wondering.
Hey, let’s be optimistic people. If the battery could be made to work, it could be used at grid scale to peak shave with nuclear base load generation. Right, Roger?
For Analitik, actually, that grid-scale peak shaving is what motivated utilities to build large pumped storage hydroelectric plants when it became obvious that base load nuclear plants were about to crash the grid each night. Thus we have Ludington on Lake Michigan, rated at 1,800 MW. There are several others of similar size that enable nuclear plants to exist without crashing the grid. The pumped storage plants then perform the peak shaving function when needed. There is a loss of approxmately 20 percent of power due to efficiency losses, so the end result is 2,250 MW of nuclear power is absorbed, 1,800 MW goes out into the grid, and 450 MW heats up the water in the Ludington storage reservoir. That’s a very expensive way to heat water.
Roger, you keep trying to perpetuate the myth that nuclear power plants have a fixed output. If that were the case, the US, French, UK, Russian navies would have one hell of a time docking and maneuvering their nuclear powered submarines and surface vessels.
Nuclear power plants are operated at full power in the US to maximise their capacity factor (and hence profit) and the pumped hydro plants you mentioned were built on this basis. Ontario has enough hydro storage to operate their fleet of CANDU reactors in the same way but the French (lacking the geography for either of these storage systems) do load follow with their reactor fleet.
How do you feel about curtailed wind turbine operation and spilling from solar plants? Aren’t they monumentally expensive and wasteful ways to utilise infrastructure spending?
For Analitik, re nuclear power plants and variable output. Of course a nuclear submarine or an aircraft carrier can have variable power output. And it is also true that the military nuclear power plants are not financially constrained as are land-based commercial electric power plants. The military Nimitz-class carriers presently have two reactors, each the small Westinghouse A4W design that have only 550 MWt output. For those not familiar with the terminology, that is 550 MW thermal, or heat output before any steam turbine splits the output into useful work and waste heat to a condenser. For comparison, a 1,100 MWe Westinghouse AP-1000 commercial nuclear power plant is approximately 6 times larger, at 3,400 MWt output.
You might wonder, then, why electric utilities don’t just order up a few thousand of the A4W nuclear plants, hook them up to generators, and vary the output as they follow the load. Great question. The answer is, of course, that the tiny A4W plants are far too expensive due to reverse economy of scale. They produce at maximum 200 MW of electricity. Utilities would have paid a premium for load-following ability, then must spread out the huge capital costs over a small electricity sales volume due to not running in baseload mode. Their customers would scream in outrage when the electricity bills arrive.
Commercial nuclear plant operators realized early on that a 60 percent capacity factor was death to their industry. They had to run at much higher average output to have any hope of competing with natural gas or coal, and they had to forget about ever competing with hydroelectric. They were stunned when the Japanese built a pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant on the coast, using an artificial lake on the cliff and the ocean itself as the lower reservoir. That opens up the entire coastline world-wide, wherever a suitable elevation difference exists not too far from the shore, meaning only about 300 feet above sealevel. Now, all those natural-gas fired power plants that the baseload nuclear plants had forced to shut down or be throttled back each night could keep on running, pumping the seawater into the upper reservoir.
So, then you ask about curtailing windturbine operation and spilling from solar plants. Two responses to those. First, excess power to a grid drives the prices down. Why anyone that buys electricity sees this as a problem is certainly curious. The market forces take advantage of low prices, and suitable demands for power occur. Just one example is off-peak power at low price, sometimes zero or even negative price, that is used to chill water or freeze the water into ice for use the next day as building cooling.
Another use, as this article on a better battery discussed, is storage into a grid-scale battery for release later into the grid.
The second, and even better result of zero or negative power prices is that commercial nuclear power plants cannot compete, and elect to shut down. There are several nuclear plants in the US today that have this problem. FitzPatrick in New York has this problem, and Quad Cities nuclear plant could not win a bid to supply electricity to the grid. There are quite a few others that cannot compete and are screaming for government subsidy to keep the nuclear plants running.
So, there is one of the truths about nuclear power. Yes, they can follow the load with sufficient added costs, but they dare not in the US because they already cannot compete in the electricity market. Even running flat-out when they can, many of the older (and paid-for) plants cannot compete and sell their power. If they ran as load-following, their output must necessarily be less than maximum. That makes them even less competitive, and they know this.
Roger, yet again, you choose to ignore that fact that the French nuclear reactors run at around 75% capacity factor largely due to load following. There are various inefficiencies introduced with this practice but it has not stopped French electricity being the lowest priced in Europe (in stark contrast to those nations that have chosen to implement renewable generation on large scale).
As for “First, excess power to a grid drives the prices down. Why anyone that buys electricity sees this as a problem is certainly curious”, that statement shows you have no clue on the real economics of power generation.
In support of Analitik: please look up “prices for electricity per country” you will notice that the countries with abundant wind turbines and solar used for grid scale power have the highest prices. If anyone sees this as good for business, poor people or any country in general, I would like to hear their justifications.
To Analitik, re France and power prices. As I wrote above to Janice Moore, France has subsidized electricity prices. France’s subsidized power prices were investigated by the EU Commission in 2007 and found to violate EU rules. It’s just not that hard to see the games the nuclear power people play to dupe the gullible nuclear cheerleaders.
As to your laughable statement about economics of power generation, I spent more than 40 years thus far as an engineer in the oil refining, petrochemicals, and power generation industries. My employers and industrial clients seemed sufficiently impressed to keep me around and pay me for what I could tell them. I’ll take their repeated votes of confidence over your assessment, thank you very much.
And you are quite wrong about load-following as the reason for low capacity factors. Per an article by EurActive,com, dated 8/18/2014, as the French nuclear plants grow older, their time off-line for maintenance and inspection increases. ” French fleet in 2013 had a series of “problematic unit outages”, and scheduled outages were extended by an average of more than 26 days. Regular maintenance and major equipment replacement jobs had increased by 60 percent in the last six years.”
But you can join in the cheering and believe whatever you like.
Yep, and you can keep pumping the subsidies angle, just so you can be the last poster in this thread segment. But don’t mention subsidies around wind turbines, PV, CSP or utility batteries/flywheels/compressed air and other gimcrack schemes.