Electric vehicles

[Walking W]

Solar and electric vehicles because you like the idea is fine but, if you really put a pencil to it, it doesn't pay out yet.
Either the price of gasoline needs to be higher or the cost of solar installations and electric vehicles needs to come down.
BTW- I don't think the government should be in the business of subsidizing either of these.

 

[Otha]

Thanks Otha. It sounds like they are looking at it as an extra expense. I would think that while driving it would only add a few extra km's to the range but with most use of cars being commuting to work and the car sitting out in the sun all day it could very well put back in what was used during the commute saving some of the load on the grid each evening when you plug in at home. It would not take much to incorporate panels in the manufacture of roof and bonnet to be very streamlined. I think they are thinking very narrowly. Just my opinion.

Ken

I agree with you. However people just love to have sun roofs in there fancy cars so for now solar panels are pushed to the side.

 

[Mrcopier]

The regs and the financial cost of safety protocols are what's holding the US back in nuclear energy. Well, that and (as is somewhat evidenced by comments in this thread) .... NIMBY.

What is NIMBY?

 

[hurleyjd]

Not

What is NIMBY?

not in my back yard

 

[birdog]

I

I really hope electric vehicles are the way of the future. I'm just not convinced we are there yet. They are fast quiet and can be efficient depending on where the electricity comes from. I just think we need way better batteries and much more electricity. The grid can hardly handle a heat or cold front much less more electric cars right now. I think we need more nuclear power. I know it sounds scary to some but it seems in may be the cleanest way to produce huge amounts of power going forward.
What do y'all think about the nuclear power plants?

I'm all for nuclear power. I hate seeing all these solar & wind farms that take thousands of acres and you can't rely on them when you need them. Here in Texas, we have almost 36,000 mw of wind generation on the grid. Last week when ERCOT was scrambling to keep the grid up there was only 700 mw of wind power available due to the lack of wind. All the solar goes away around 8:00 pm when the sun goes down. Well at 9:30 pm it was still 100 degrees. There is a place for renewable power but not as a replacement for more traditional sources. You could take a 300 acre tract of land and build a nuclear power plant that would power half the state. That's just my 2 cents.

 

[Brute 23]

I

I'm all for nuclear power. I hate seeing all these solar & wind farms that take thousands of acres and you can't rely on them when you need them. Here in Texas, we have almost 36,000 mw of wind generation on the grid. Last week when ERCOT was scrambling to keep the grid up there was only 700 mw of wind power available due to the lack of wind. All the solar goes away around 8:00 pm when the sun goes down. Well at 9:30 pm it was still 100 degrees. There is a place for renewable power but not as a replacement for more traditional sources. You could take a 300 acre tract of land and build a nuclear power plant that would power half the state. That's just my 2 cents.

Every rancher with a windmill knew how that would go. Windmills are becoming extinct for water around here.

 

[hurleyjd]

I

I'm all for nuclear power. I hate seeing all these solar & wind farms that take thousands of acres and you can't rely on them when you need them. Here in Texas, we have almost 36,000 mw of wind generation on the grid. Last week when ERCOT was scrambling to keep the grid up there was only 700 mw of wind power available due to the lack of wind. All the solar goes away around 8:00 pm when the sun goes down. Well at 9:30 pm it was still 100 degrees. There is a place for renewable power but not as a replacement for more traditional sources. You could take a 300 acre tract of land and build a nuclear power plant that would power half the state. That's just my 2 cents.

I was at tire shop a week ago and began a conversation with a person helping install a solar farm between Comerce and Sulphur Springs Texas. I asked about the power that would be needed after dark. He stated that there would also be a battery farm installed along with the solar part.

 

[Walking W]

I was at tire shop a week ago and began a conversation with a person helping install a solar farm between Comerce and Sulphur Springs Texas. I asked about the power that would be needed after dark. He stated that there would also be a battery farm installed along with the solar part.

Battery farms are really just in the test phase now. I didn't know any were commercial. Can you imagine the size of a battery bank it would take for a 100 Megawatt/hr solar installation to cover the 12 hours of darkness?

 

[hurleyjd]

Battery farms are really just in the test phase now. I didn't know any were commercial. Can you imagine the size of a battery bank it would take for a 100 Megawatt/hr solar installation to cover the 12 hours of darkness?

Battery technology is much further along than you may think. Puerto Rico, Tesla has installed a solar system with batteries that will keep the hospital running for several weeks on storage alone.

 

[Walking W]

Battery technology is much further along than you may think. Puerto Rico, Tesla has installed a solar system with batteries that will keep the hospital running for several weeks on storage alone.

A hospital and several cities are much different situations. The solar system you reference is only 200 kilowatts and still took more than half of the parking lot.

 

[hurleyjd]

A hospital and several cities are much different situations. The solar system you reference is only 200 kilowatts and still took more than half of the parking lot.

It is a start. We are on the way to an energy producing revolutions. I am going with it and you nay sayers can stay stuck in the past

 

[callmefence]

A hospital and several cities are much different situations. The solar system you reference is only 200 kilowatts and still took more than half of the parking lot.

A hospital is high demand 24/7 electric needs. While it may have took a few acres it's all contained right there. No wires running cross country or fuel being trucked in with more fuel. A good example of potentials .

 

[Otha]

A hospital is high demand 24/7 electric needs. While it may have took a few acres it's all contained right there. No wires running cross country or fuel being trucked in with more fuel. A good example of potentials .

The way I think about it you are looking at the whole set up in one place with the battery setup. When fuel is hauled in or electric lines built it looks like a small space on the parking lot but if you counted all the transmission lines and everything else involved with getting that electricity or fuel there it would look much bigger.

 

[greybeard]

The way I think about it you are looking at the whole set up in one place with the battery setup. When fuel is hauled in or electric lines built it looks like a small space on the parking lot but if you counted all the transmission lines and everything else involved with getting that electricity or fuel there it would look much bigger.

except the electric transmission lines are providing energy for many (tens/hundreds of) thousands of residential and business customers over a wide area...not just for a few hundred at one location. If one could work from generation station, calculate the total area involved on a main line, plus all the lateral lines, divided by the total number of customers served, the area would look much more realistic.

 

[Otha]

except the electric transmission lines are providing energy for many (tens/hundreds of) thousands of residential and business customers over a wide area...not just for a few hundred at one location. If one could work from generation station, calculate the total area involved on a main line, plus all the lateral lines, divided by the total number of customers served, the area would look much more realistic.

Yep. That would give a true view of the area required. We just don't have that info handy for this discussion.
It would be interesting to see a map showing all the power production and main transmission lines for Texas.

 

[pleasantpasturesbeef]

I personally love the power I have when driving our stick shift 3500 Cummins truck, hauling a trailer full of hay or cows. I've never driven an electric truck, and I rather hope I never have to. Can't exactly see myself driving an electric car all around our property lol, but I'm sure they work great for people with commutes to work etc. I always wondered how they do on a long trip, say from NY down to Texas, like my family has done…would you have to stop and wait for your van to charge? Seems like the choice should be up to the consumer, not a government…

I remember learning about nuclear power plants in Chemistry, and they do seem to be a great source of clean energy, as long as safety procedures are taken seriously.

 

[farmerjan]

Have some friends with a hybrid and they love it. I like the versatility of it rather than being all electric. They get very good mileage and the vehicles do not cost like the all electric vehicles.....
I would like to be more energy self sufficient here... and when I worked at the local grist mill, built in the 1700's... the former miller used to use the water power to supply the electricity to the house during the day, and when it came time to shut down for the evening, the miller would give a signal, and the wife would light the oil or gas lamps in the house so they would have light when the water wheel was shut down for the night. I think that water/hydro would be more consistent and efficient... has to be managed right. The mills that piped water off the stream/river source so that they were not as affected by seasonal flooding, were the most efficient at controlling the water flows and such.

We have almost constant wind here, nothing like the plains states... and I am not interested in the "modern propeller type" wind power systems. Would love to have the "old fashioned" type windmill to make power...

 

[hurleyjd]

Battery farms are really just in the test phase now. I didn't know any were commercial. Can you imagine the size of a battery bank it would take for a 100 Megawatt/hr solar installation to cover the 12 hours of darkness?

Energy Storage: reducing pollution and prices - Energy Magazine

by Louis Brailsford, Energy Advisor, The Climate Council Australia is currently enjoying an energy storage boom. In 2017, Australians installed […]

www.energymagazine.com.au

 

[hurleyjd]

Here is another here in the states

The World's Biggest Battery Farm Is Alive in California

Just in time to handle massive heatwaves.

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[Nesikep]

Anyone that commutes in the city is just fine with an EV, and it makes perfect sense, most of the time sitting around in gridlock is what kills the efficiency of a gasser. I'm sure we would be able to do a lot of our commuting on electric too, but when you have to make a lot of power for a long time, that will just require too much battery. Semi trucks, big pickups, etc probably would do alright with hybrid tech, if you had a 200hp genset on a semi truck or 100hp on a pickup, coupled with regenerative braking, I think it would carry you indefinitely on flat ground at a reasonable speed