??

 

You drive a Porsche and you think a less responsive car is better because it proves your driving skill. If that is not biased I don't what is.

 

I have great torque available in my modified 996 Turbo, but I don't have it so I can "instantaneously position" the car, as I don't drive in a manner that requires that.

 

I'm having a lot of trouble taking you seriously.

 

It's a problem for cars too, as they are a part of the push to an all-renewable resource power grid.



It's not economic forces that are pushing us. And that's the problem.

Affordable? With batteries, it costs roughly $200 to store the energy equivalent to one barrel of oil, while it take less than $1/barrel to store the oil.

 

the batteries are reusable and store the energy overnight or for the week -t hey are infrastructure, and not consumable like a barrel of oil - it's a reusable piece of infrastructure - the minute you use it 200 times it becomes cheaper than the barrel of oil.

you fill the batteries during the day with excess solar power, and then use the batteries at night to provide power while the sun goes down - creating a zero emission zero consumption model - after 200 days you are ahead of the barrel of oil - and the things that are using the battery are more efficient that the things that use a barrel of oil - so less consumption overall.

it's a new model of power management - the barrel of oil is consumed, and then you have to spend way more than $1 to obtain another "fill" for another $1 barrel.

energy density really doesn't matter when your placing batteries or storage on land you're not using for any other purpose - and chemical "batteries" is a very very narrow view of renewable energy storage, water reseviours for example are way less per mega-watt to store vast quantities of on demand power - you pump water into he reservoir during high production times, and tape that water using gravity when you need the extra capacity...

problems will be solved, and the fossil fuel industry is not the path forward - it's the past.

 

Sorry - but there are already space-grade (GaAs, multi-junction, etc) solar cells that have 34% (and higher) conversion efficiency. But the real scaling potential is on peoples rooftops - where only a small fraction of the homes and businesses in the U.S. currently have solar panels. Also there is plenty of room in places like the Mohave Desert and rural Nevada for huge grid-level solar farms.

Solar has gotten really cheap lately. Any of us can buy a pallet of panels from various on-line sources for less than $0.50/watt. When I first started looking at solar, panel prices were more like $5/watt range. The inverter, racking, and installation costs are getting to be way more dominant than the panels themselves. Once installed, they just sit there and generate power for the next few decades.

We have about 6.28 kW of solar panels on our roof. It was offsetting the household needs and our Volt via 'net metering' and Time of Use rates fairly well. However now that I've added the Tesla, and my wife can't charge the Volt at work anymore, I'm looking at installing another 2-3 kW of solar to get annual generation back in line with annual usage. May install some storage too. I figure somewhere between 5-10 kWh of storage would get me through the mid-peak and peak priced times of day - so there is economic incentive via resulting arbitrage, besides just backup during power outages. It is getting to be time to act - as after this year, the tax credits are starting to sunset.

It is a moving target though. PG&E has been shifting TOU rates around such that with so much cheap grid-level solar installed, the higher priced mid-peak and peak times are moving later in the afternoon and evening. This changes the economics around, such that it tends to discourage homeowners from installing solar, but encourages those that do to install storage...

And Dave makes a great point that is often not appreciated. The amount of energy expended to drill oil wells, pump and transport it, refine it into gas, and pump/transport the gas around is pretty significant. Some have estimated that the amount of energy expended to simply make a gallon of gas available to the consumer could power the average EV 25 miles. And that is before you've driven a single mile on that gallon of gas. Some portion of that energy is freed up whenever a EV replaces an ICE car.

 

You don't seem to understand concepts of peak torque and torque curve. And you call yourself a skilled driver? So pathetic.

 

So how many batteries do you think would be needed to store just two days of the nation's electricity, and at what cost?

It is the "now", and it is the path forward for the foreseeable future. Embrace it.

 

Earlier this year, the National Renewable Energy Lab used a six-junction solar cell and a beam 143 times more concentrated than sunlight to achieve a 47.1 percent energy efficiency. However, Marc Baldo, who is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, has said that this technology will never be deployed at scale as these ultra-high-efficiency, multilayer solar cells are far too complex and expensive to produce as solar panels.

 

I’ve laid out a case that suggests the economics of EVs will be compelling. Already compelling with respect to running costs, soon compelling with respect to life cycle costs. Not in all cases, but in many, and that’s before getting to long life/ high miles self-driving cars. If you have data that refutes either of my assertions please share.

If you’re simply complaining about government intervention then that’s your prerogative. I disagree and question why you’d think that, but it’s an opinion you’re entitled to.

 

But such expensive high efficiency isn't needed in the general case. What has already happened over the past couple decades is that 15-20%-ish efficient cells have become so cheap that lots of people can afford to install them. The main metric to look at is $/watt. High efficiency is only relevant when space (rooftop sq footage pointed south and increasingly west) is limited.

Grid-level solar is really cheap. Compared to most homeowners, they also gain some efficiency by tracking the position of the sun as well. (Generally in one axis.)

 

Hahaha .... you got me goin' there. There are sooooo many opportunities to use instantaneous torque in mild mannered multi-lane traffic maneuvers.

Have you ever driven a quick electric car?

Do it and then come back with your advice.

 

I don't know why people are resisting EV's - purest want non-turbo because of the lack of throttle lag - EV's have millisecond throttle lag - and we're arguing that you don't need it - if you're going to argue you don't need low lag throttle response - then you shouldn't have any problems with turbo lag...

please make up your mind and be consistent…otherwise it's just hypocritical - EV's behave better than the BEST NA ICE's and can be a joy to drive - is that really that hard to understand or admit?

 

But there are the hydrocarbons needed to undertake all of the mining activities and to fabricate the batteries themselves.

In “The Environmental Impact of Li-Ion Batteries and the Role of Key Parameters: A Review” Jens F. Peters (et al) states that "...in rough terms it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy."

According to Henry Sanderson et al. in “Electric Cars: China’s Battle for the Battery Market,”, in an all-battery future, global mining would have to expand by more than 200% for copper and by at least 500% for minerals like lithium, graphite, and rare earths, and far more than that for cobalt.

Pieter van Exter (et al) wrote in an article (“Metal Demand for Renewable Electricity Generation in the Netherlands") that a battery-centric future means a world mining gigatons more materials, and this according to Vaclav Smil in his piece titled “To Get Wind Power You Need Oil” says nothing about the gigatons of materials needed to fabricate wind turbines and solar arrays, too.

China, the leading manufacturer of batteries, uses coal to to generate the majority of its power (currently around 70% of their grid is powered by coal-fired plants). They are "projected" to still be using coal for ~47% of their power generation by 2050.

Then there's the issue with limited lithium and cobalt supplies and the increase in price of these minerals because of their limited availability. See the article linked below titled "Electric car dreams may be dashed by 2050 on lack of cobalt, lithium supplies "

Article--> https://www.mining.com/electric-cars...hium-supplies/