| Author | Message | ||
     Blake |
Minnesota is already on it... http://www.kare11.com/news/article/919754/396/MnDO T-to-test-drivers-mileage-tax | ||
| Davegess |
current roof with solar panels. Blake, I'm talking about the roof of your house. You store up the juice while you are way during the day and over night it goes into your vehicle. perhaps you have two batteries and swap them out. Porsche is doing the whole flywheel thing on a race car. Works well. | ||
| Davegess |
Here are some links to the Porsche deal http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-f uel/hybrids/porsche-911-gt3r-hybrid-flywheel http://www.porsche.com/usa/aboutporsche/pressrelea ses/pag/?id=2010-02-11&pool=international-de | ||
| Cityxslicker |
bring the price of the zero mtb bike down, and I would use it for around town.... I dont know that it would get me in any less trouble than the 125cc pit bike that is making me locally infamous. (I never did really grow up) and one of these would be killer too http://www.e-vconcepts.com/ specifically the 550 sypder. | ||
| Blake |
What is cost of a roof full of PV solar panels with heaters to melt snow/ice? | ||
| Davegess |
What is cost of a roof full of PV solar panels with heaters to melt snow/ice? No idea, but you wouldn't need much heat. Up here in Wisconsin most of my roof is clear of snow probably 75% of the winter. Faces east and west so not optimal for sun but the snow falls off it pretty fast as it is steep. Retro fits would be costly with a pretty long payback BUT new construction would be a lot cheaper and could be designed to maximize energy. Passive solar water heaters get some use up here and do cut energy bills even in a climate far from ideal for solar. I think we have to remember that there is no silver bullet, no perfect solution. I doubt that the free market will drive the changeover. It will need a kick start like was applied to many of our modern technologies. We subsidized trains early on, we subsidized airplanes, our highway system was not self supporting in the early part of the last century, we removed taxes from much internet activity to boost that. The trick is to get the technology up to a self sustaining level and then let the subsidy fade. We are not real good at doing that. I do feel strongly that oil and coal need to fade away, they both create lots of problems and we give them both a nice tax incentive with the Depletion Allowance. | ||
| Strokizator |
You store up the juice while you are way during the day and over night it goes into your vehicle. perhaps you have two batteries and swap them out. There's no reason to "store" the energy. During the day you're sending power through the meter and into the grid. During the night they'll send it back to you. The power I can make during "peak" time is too valuable to waste charging a battery pack. Besides, what's a spare battery pack going to cost? Maybe not so much for a scooter but in the thousands for a car. Our utility here, PG&E, even has a rate schedule (E9) solely for people who charge their electric vehicles at home. I assume it's a subsidized rate. | ||
| Sifo |
During the day you're sending power through the meter and into the grid. This is another idea that I just don't see scaling up well. It's fine when the amount of electricity generated is inconsequential, but will create problems on a large scale. Most power is created from steam turbines that can't quickly be fired up from cold so boilers are pretty much hot all the time so that they can produce power for peak times. Unless peak demand coincides with mid-day peak solar potential it really does nothing to lower the overall cost of energy. I believe the government mandates that the power company "purchase" this power from you however. All that will really wind up happening is that the cost of electricity will wind up being adjusted to reflect the cost of meeting peak power demands. If we were all "selling" solar power to the power company during the day we will still expect to come home in the evening, turn on the A/C, TV, microwave, etc. and have all the power we want. If the power company doesn't have the boilers hot to turn the turbines there will be hell to pay. As a nation overall I don't see any benefit. Right now for the few individuals doing this, enjoy it while you can. I don't think it will last forever in any meaningful way. | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Blake, ya beat me to the punch. I'm pretty pissed about the whole thing. The story behind the story is as crappy as the proposal. Since the fuel efficiency of vehicles has gone up tax revenues from gas have gone down. Now that folks are driving less due to fuel costs the state revenue stream is slowing. The government is trying to get and muck things up worse than they already are. The big grand plan is to get everyone out of private vehicles and into public transportation. PT is GREATLY subsidized now. When the bureaucrats get everyone out of their own transportation, they can jack up the PT rates and taxes. It's all about control. Follow the money.. Hmm, wonder who is in line to make all the new PT trains and such... Maybe GE?? Hmm, I need to go find some tinfoil ........ | ||
| Swampy |
We could tar and feather them and run them out of town on a pole......but 99% of us wouldn't know where to score a 5 gallon pail of tar, nor enough feathers to cover a man. | ||
| Spdrxb |
Earth or the global economy might not be ready for it but... What about the "Legend" of an engine that will run on the hydrogen in water? No toxic by-products and a naturally reproducing supply of fuel? My water bill is high now ,I would hate to see it if this would ever happen. Water might cost more than gas now.......  | ||
| Blake |
Dave, You've been misled on coal and oil. They are both vital to the long term prosperity, health, and integrity of America. Al Gore and friends are serial liars, proven no less in a court of law. The gov't subsidized trains and planes? Without subsidy they'd not have developed. Huh? The Internet? Highways! Yes! Time to end that and turn it over to the states. It is now nothing but a political sledgehammer for the federal gov't to impose its will upon the states. Maybe you're talking about small grants for research and development, like for what became the Internet? Bottom line is that until PV solar is able to compete on it's own in the marketplace, it will be a very tough sell. I hope that it happens sooner than later. There are some very significant corporate concerns working on the problem, as well as the techies at our top universities. I'd wager that we'll giterdone within two decades. No need for batteries. Store energy at home mechanically. 10 KWH is 27,000,000 FT-LBs. Lifting 50,000 tons 27 feet will do it. Your family has two or three cars in use per day? The thing is, nature's solution is by far the optimum one. Storing solar energy in the form of combustible molecules of hydrogen and carbon. Go figure. If snow or ice hits just one day per year, you need some system to remove or prevent accumulation. The amount of heat is not so meager, but no matter, the system must still exist, be integrated into the PV solar panels, and be controlled, thus have significant cost. (Message edited by blake on April 20, 2011) | ||
| Koz5150 |
'there is no alternative but to deal with China for the fuel cells'. I think you may have that statement backwards! http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/120275814.html "The Johnson Controls lithium-ion battery joint venture with France-based Saft will supply a battery system for two electric vehicles that will be built and sold in China." | ||
| Danger_dave |
>>I think you may have that statement backwards! << Only what I've been told. The guys assembling bikes here say that China is the market. Some of it is to do with the pollution the process creates on a large scale. I also read somewhere that Lithium will eventually be superseded by other elements. (Message edited by danger_dave on April 20, 2011) | ||
| Strokizator |
No need for batteries. Store energy at home mechanically. 10 KWH is 27,000,000 FT-LBs. Lifting 50,000 tons 27 feet will do it. 50,000 tons, are you serious? If you used concrete, it would take about 26,000 cu.yds and close to $2 million not including the hoisting mechanism. It would take 12.5 million gallons of water to equal 50,000 tons. Of course you'd have to put it in some sort of container so even if you got the water free, you're still looking at several million. Not to mention that you have 50,000 tons hanging 27 ft in the air in your backyard and that 10kWh only costs about a buck. | ||
| Sifo |
Not to mention that you have 50,000 tons hanging 27 ft in the air in your backyard and that 10kWh only costs about a buck. And people worry about nuclear plants in earthquake zones. | ||
| Fast1075 |
I LIKE the idea of gravity/potential storage...and the idea of storing compressed air...the is no loss of potential during storage...unlike a battery. There doesn't need to be as much gross weight if your lever is long enough and your generator drive ratio is high enough. | ||
| Sifo |
There doesn't need to be as much gross weight if your lever is long enough and your generator drive ratio is high enough. I think you may have to revisit your engineering on that. | ||
| Billyboy |
Check out United Nuclear Technologies...They sell educational scientific kits and supplies on the retail end of things, have government contracts on the other end. They have been developing a DIY hydrogen kit for most cars, as well as a home hydrogen generator that runs off of solar or wind turbine. The gas is stored inertly in tanks full of a hydride that will only release it when the car triggers heating elements inside the tanks. They currently have a Corvette running on home generated hydrogen. Cost of the kit(including wind turbine, I think, is projected to be $10,000). The kicker is, the hydride in the tanks is illegal to purchase due to its use in nuclear weapons, but there is no restriction on having it if you've made it yourself. Check them out.... | ||
| Aesquire |
Will Electricity infrastructure be tested when a flood of industrial strength plugs enter the household? Yes. We need more electric power to have more than a very very few electric cars. People were freezing this winter in NM during a cold snap. Why? electric heat and poor insulation. Those lovely homes in Architectural Digest you see on the coast of California, or the mountains around Lake Tahoe would eat my entire paycheck if they were in western NY or New England. Electric cars don't work here in winter. just don't work. Not enough juice to heat the car and move it more than 15 miles or so. That's a car with a claimed 100 mile range. figure it this way. We use X power for industry and homes. we use y power to move stuff. we have about x power available in electricity but need x+y+z to use electric cars too. ( z being the inefficiency of making electricity, moving it, and converting it to chemical power in your battery. | ||
| Blake |
Oops! Make that 500 tons. | ||
| Jlnance |
So what's the down side (other than expense) of this sort of motor? Can the achieve the equivalent efficiencies? Even if it's just the expense, that's one more hurdle for electrics. The down side of this motor is that it is loud and it has a high torque ripple. Efficiency is excellent. There are a lot of different ways to build motors. They all have their own advantages and disadvantages. It's a fairly interesting field. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Why cant we just use a flux-capacitor? | ||
| Danger_dave |
What, the flux? A Capacitor? Hmmmmm. | ||
| Iamike |
Sifo- Actually, selling the excess during the day is the ideal situation. Power plants prefer a stable output and are built to provide power to a peak use that usually happens in the summer afternoon. If the solar panels are pumping out the power at that time there doesn't have to be such large generators. That is the problem with wind turbines since a lot of the time when it is really hot there is no wind. I have considered solar panels but they still have a 20yr payback. | ||
| Blake |
The great thing about solar panels is being able to get off the grid. I'd welcome that. If we did all we could to insulate and improve the energy efficiency of our little house, we could probably get by with just 6KW peak and around 1 KW average load, pure wild guesstimating. What would that amount to cost wise in the way of solar panel system with batteries and generator backup, $30K? I am not happy with our power company. Been an excellent customer for 20 years. For the past five years or so, I've made payments to cover a full six months in advance. I hate paying bills; it's worth it to me. I recently switched to email billing. The payment due got by me for two months (being used to not paying bills but twice a year, I failed to catch it. The total outstanding balance due was $79. Plus the power company imposed a mandatory deposit on the account billed for the next three months. Unbelievable. I don't like being at the mercy of tyrannical dictators. We don't have any alternative for electrical service here. If generators weren't so noisy, I'd have a natural gas unit installed and cut the line to the grid. | ||
| Danger_dave |
Needs to copy and paste this link by the looks of it. It's about zero electrics - with a removable power pack. http://translogic.aolautos.com/2011/04/04/translog ic-49-zero-motorcycles/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl7|sec3_lnk3|54372 | ||
| Davegess |
Blake, bit late getting back in, Not say oil and coal are not important just that they get a very nice tax break. The railroads in the west got land grants from the government for every mile they built. And not just a very narrow strip for a right of way but a lot of land. Airplanes, early airlines relied on mail contracts to survive, early large airports all built by the government. Now they are pretty much self sufficient. The Internet has been granted tax and regulation exemptions not granted to brick and mortar stores so that is a subsidy. The automobile get far more than the interstate high way system, which was originally paid for out of general revenues but now uses highway taxes, but all your local roads. The vast majority of pavement in the cities is supported by local property tax dollars not gas taxes. If the road in front of my house was needed for only emergency vehicles and not for private automobile traffic it could be one half the size it is and would cost far less of my property tax dollars to build, maintain, snow plow, etc. I am NOT saying this is wrong, that we should ban cars or any such thing; just recognize that government dollars are and have been used to support activities. As far as snow on my roof, yes if I was totally dependent on solar panels to provide all my power and was off the grid I would have to remove the snow. But I'm not. If I lose a day or two of power from that source the power company is there. And I could always rake the roof to remove snow; folks do that here regularly if they have ice dam issues. Sorry to hear about your utility, sounds like they are poorly run. I have never had any real issues with the folks up here, always helpful and friendly if you need to contact them. They do have a monopoly but they also have a well run regulator agency that defends the consumers. | ||
| Sifo |
Sifo- Actually, selling the excess during the day is the ideal situation. Power plants prefer a stable output and are built to provide power to a peak use that usually happens in the summer afternoon. If the solar panels are pumping out the power at that time there doesn't have to be such large generators. The problem is that solar isn't going to be a consistent quantity from one day to the next. I could be wrong on this point, but it's my understanding that peak demand comes toward evening, not mid-day when solar would provide peak power. I'm not saying that there is zero benefit, but it really isn't that great. The power company still needs to be able to provide very close to 100% of peak demand. In order for them to stay in business, pricing will be set to pay for that capacity, regardless of how much electricity you produce at home. In effect because the law requires the utilities to purchase power that you produce during non-peak demand, but must also produce enough power during peak demand your home system will actually drive the cost of a Kwh up. To change that reality we need a whole new concept in energy production and distribution. | ||
| Sayitaintso |
When (time of day) peak demand hits is very dependent on where in the country and what time of year you are talking about. For Tallahassee it is around 2-4 in the afternoon, in the summer. A/C sucks up the power big time. Most power plants have multiple generators at each plant. Each of those generators has varying levels of efficiency. Power producers will obviously use the most efficient first and the least efficient last. The idea is to reduce the peak demand and eliminate the need to power up those least efficient generators. If solar can knock 10-15% off the peak demand, it could very well prevent the utility from having to power up one of the very inefficient oil powered "peaking units". Thus, saving the utility and its customers money. I don't know how it is in other parts of the country so this scenario may not hold true, but for the south my guess is that it holds fairly well. |
