Author Topic: The future of electric Vehicles.  (Read 60996 times)

AdeV

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #15 on: March 16, 2018, 07:44:36 PM »

Can you imagine the size of the cables going to feed an entire country not to mention the distribution network required to get it into the grid when it got there?

I know how thick the cables need to be just to feed my puny solar setup back to the house mains. Multiply that by a million or so...... Hooee!
You'd be lucky to load 10km worth onto a ship before the weight sank the thing!   


It's not _quite_ as bad as you think... the trick is to use high voltage AC, as most national grids do. The conductors are still quite chunky, but nothing like the sort of chunk you'd need to send big DC voltage around.

The flip side of this, of course, is the losses become significant with long distance. Getting power from Australia to the UK, for example, you'd lose most of it (I hesitate to say 99%, but I bet it'd be around that) in transmission losses - aka heat.

That said, when you look at some of the stuff technology is coming up with these days, I think there are technologies which will knock solar and wind, and possibly even some traditional generation, into a cocked hat. My favourite is the molybdenum disulphide nanopore membrane - partly because it sounds cool, but also because it can generate some pretty spectacular amounts of energy - they reckon around 1 megawatt per square meter of material (!) And all you need (other than this fancy membrane) is a steady supply of salty water, and a steady supply of freshwater. So basically any river delta/estuary then.

Here's a typical article about the stuff: https://futurism.com/new-power-generation-system-membranes-will-only-be-three-atoms-thick/

Biggest problem I've seen mentioned with it, is making the actual nanopores. They can do it; but can they do it on an industrial scale? That remains to be seen... Also, if it's only 3 atoms thick, how big is the smallest fish that will simply swim straight through it...?

Even so. One megawatt per m2 - that means your typical reasonably sized river estuary could potentially provide gigawatts of power, in a relatively compact space/size, continuously day & night. You're not even desalinating the ocean or polluting the river water; you're just mixing them a little more thoroughly a little closer to the delta than would happen naturally.

Of course, some greenist will be along soon to tell us why osmotic power is A Bad Thing For The Environment. They'll probably latch onto "molybdenum", because it sounds a bit funny. Or disulphide (disulfide) because it sounds even more dangerous. Sulphide? Isn't that like Sulphur? Like as in sulphuric acid! Noooo! Run for the hills!
Cheers!
Ade.
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BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #16 on: March 16, 2018, 08:20:20 PM »
Looks interesting but technical content is absent.  Achieving large pressures across a 3 atom membrane seems a tad challenging on a substantial scale- we are talking literally hydro dam pressures AND FLOW RATE created in membrane units; the sun may be in it's expansion phase before this happens.

 

AdeV

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #17 on: March 16, 2018, 08:25:57 PM »
There IS a proper scientific article out there somewhere, I just can't spot it right now.

Actually, cancel that, there's links off this article: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/nanogenerator-helps-turn-the-tide-on-blue-energy/1010066.article
Cheers!
Ade.
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ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #18 on: March 16, 2018, 08:56:50 PM »
I knew there had to be a snag, apparently river water is too dirty and would block up the Nano pores in the membrane. Filtration of an entire river could prove challenging.
What about using all that lovely clean water melting off the icecaps? Finally a positive use for global warming!

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #19 on: March 16, 2018, 10:40:55 PM »
More detail and more interesting.  Thanks AdeV!  The only problem with this sort of gushing journalism on lab results is that most people then think magical technical solutions are nearly here, and thus avoid doing what should be done today.

It reminds me of the technical pitch about methods for nuclear waste disposal present in engineering school in 1975.  They said it was only a political problem, to pick from the many good methods available, and we covered 8 of the top contenders.  Oh boy, did that every turn out to be wildly technically naive.... it's 0/8 after billion$ and43 years later.  The current plan wasn't even in the list- because it is/was so obviously unsafe.  Don't worry, a good solution is right around the corner...and we did in fact count on that, which was dead wrong.

Denial is a  marvelous thing-  I take a big tablespoon every morning as I say to myself that "I'm OK" - when in fact, my health is unstable and declining. 











ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #20 on: March 17, 2018, 04:12:42 AM »
I`m not convinced by the argument that one would loose most of the electrical energy in transit. In the UK they had a national grid system which transmitted power at 450,000 volts through overhead aluminium cables. At that sort of voltage the current is minimal so the heat generated in the cables is also minimal. They also built an undersea link to Europe and generated power is imported/exported at will.

I guess the problem with any system like this is how do you meter it, imagine the chaos if you had to pay your daytime electric bill to a local service provider but your night time bill to the USA or some African business. The yanks are always banging on about the free market economy but I`m pretty sure they would want to own the whole thing and reap the financial benefits. Building globally sensitive infrastructure in under developed countries also has pitfalls, lack of local skilled workers, the threat of military conflict and terrorism spring to mind.

I believe that the best way forward for electricity generation is small localised production using whatever resources are locally available. Keeps the greedy, corrupt and plain stupid out of the equation.

Bob

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #21 on: March 23, 2018, 03:20:22 PM »
If the power station is idled down during the daytime when the power prices are the highest . How does the power station pay it’s bills and mortgage if it isnMt selling power . Power prices do not pay the  power plant’s bills  at night and on weekends when there is a glut of power .
   For utilities with nuclear base load generation . What are you going to due with the surplus power on weekend days and daytime during the spring and fall when demand is reduced as here are neither AC or heating loads on the utility grid .
   For those that don’t know . Nuclear power plants by their nature operate at 100% power 24/7 for months at a time . You just don’t yank the throttle lever back on a nuclear unit to load follow .
  That said some plants try and have to work around flux tilts in the reactor core . The chance
If unit upset and trip due to xenon-135 poisoning if power is run back to fast and too far . The delay in Xenon-135 production makes reactor power control more complex due to the delay and having to maintain enough positive “K” .
   Other nuclear power plants keep reactor power up but blow steam to the condensers which is wasteful and causes wear condenser wear as most condenser heat exchangers were no designed for prolonged impact of high velocity and high temperature steam.
   If you want backup to wind and power , be ready to foot the bill for a fossil power plant to sit idle . And be ready to foot the bill for the high subsidized price of wind or solar power .
   As for Ontario. The rate payer funds the utility getting rid of excess daytime and weekend power by PAYING New York and Michigan to TAKE the excess power . Google how many billion Ontario has paid to do such over the years .

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #22 on: March 23, 2018, 04:05:46 PM »
EVs and green energy ? It has pretty well been covered . The voting public that doesn’t know anything technical and who have been convinced by repetition that CO2 is poison. Their guilt is absolved if they vote for EV’s and green energy .
    Professionally and perpetually irritated social justice warriers  have something to scream about .
   The politicians like EV’s and green energy as it obtains votes and kick backs under the table from contractors .
   Contractors and industry like the $$$ made tearing down fossil plants and building green energy .
    The wealthy ruling class is making $$$ with green energy subsidies . And they have bought coal mines knowing that power demands will cause a demand for coal someday . Plus $$$ made as their companies charge for getting rid of fossil , charge to build green and later again charge as they build fossil in the future .

LowGear

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #23 on: March 23, 2018, 05:50:49 PM »
The big three. 

1)  Poop

2)  Piss

3)  CO2

Goodbye waste.  Ready for the new stuff.

The next step - electric cars.  What could be more rational.

Cheers
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BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #24 on: March 23, 2018, 05:57:29 PM »
Lets all get mad at other people who direct their emotionally driven decisions (the only kind made by humans) towards "saving the planet".   

Oh wait, that might be somewhat based on a global scientific consensus.  Let's just ignore that.

Seriously, my concern about electric cars is the concern for human health from every increasing levels of EMFs.  Home EMF levels have dramatically raised due to cellular/WIFI and general wireless use, plus the insidious increase of poor quality switching power supplies in lighting, appliances and electronics.  This on top of the technical blunder of typical WYE system power grounding practice which puts 25% of the return current in the earth and aquifers and lack of maintenance of power lines with arcing on loose line hardware (from induced voltages near lines). Then lets add home power grid tie inverters with almost no filtration or EMI control to further radiate from the home wiring while the sun shines...while continuing to build homes with unshielded home wiring.  Lets ignore the increasing numbers of scientists and doctors warning that EMFs are a serious health problem. 

It's quite possible that we are ignorant enough to try to solve one serious problem with a solution even more damaging.





« Last Edit: March 23, 2018, 06:14:39 PM by BruceM »

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #25 on: March 24, 2018, 06:21:13 AM »
Increasing the load in a Wye served neighborhood in countries with split phase Wye single phase power does increase magnetic fields.  During peak load periods, ELF magnetic field levels are typically 4x the off peak.  I'm not sure how that will affect things in Australia as I don't know your power distribution and grounding practice there.  If you are transformer isolated, no worries.  If they are hard grounding on conductor in multiple places and jumping it around the transformers, you're screwed.

ELF magnetic fields penetrate almost anything.  The magnetic flux can be redirected through mild steel to a small degree (50% reduction inside a car, 60-70% in a heavy walled water pressure tank.  Grain oriented silicon steel (GOES) or mu-metals (specially annealed high nickel alloys) are much more effective, but it takes multiple isolated layers, each worth about 50% reduction.
You can't practically shield a home from these, nor can you practically actively cancel it, as that introduces higher frequencies which are even more problematic. 

Electric fields from home wiring are readily shielded by EMT conduit with compression fittings which is sold in every electrical supply store, but is never used in homes.  Foil or conductive paint can be used with far less effectiveness.

A general principal in EMC, the engineering field addressing EMI, shielding, etc. is that solving EMI problems is best and most cheaply done by mitigating it during design and development, at the source.  Trying to bandaid the problem after the fact by add on filtering and shielding is far less effective and far more expensive.  In the home, the worst sources of magnetic fields, and EMI are most commonly ALL YOUR OWN FAULT, controlled entirely by you.  Just looking at one component, radio/microwaves, applying some basic knowledge of all radio wave propagation helps immensely.  All radio waves propagate with signal strength falling off with square of the distance.  So complaining about cell towers within a mile of the home (shown over and over to cause problems with depression, anxiety, insomnia, in part from elevated cortisol levels, a marker of stress shown to be affected by radio waves)  is rather foolish when holding a cell phone or using wireless phones and WIFI in the home, often less than 10 feet away.  Yes, the 1/4 watt transmitter at 10 feet is much worse than the 500 watt transmitter two miles away.

A broadband RF meter such as those sold by Cornet is about $170 US, and will quickly help educate yourself in how you are damaging your health.  They have one which will also measure lower frequency electric and magnetic fields in the same meter.  When we all read the studies that have shown brain wave changes that last for hours, after using a cell phone for 15-20 minutes, and affects quality of sleep in sleep studies, what these independent researchers are saying in plain english is, you are screwing up your brain and your health by using these things, no matter how convenient you may think them.

It's relatively easy to make 10 fold improvements in the typical home EMF situation, and often 100 fold.  That's across the board, ELF magnetic fields, VLF-HF electric fields from home wiring, and radio/microwave levels.  Usually it's a matter of eliminating or moving things, correcting minor wiring errors and grounding issues.  (No, more hard grounding is NOT the solution.)  Shielding is only used rarely and mostly just for bedrooms, as for retrofits, it's quite costly. 


buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #26 on: March 27, 2018, 03:05:29 PM »
It's quite possible that we are ignorant enough to try to solve one serious problem with a solution even more damaging.

Possible??
It's clearly demonstrable! Over and over and over again! Endlessly!
I'll give the example I just mentioned, Nuclear Power generation and leave it at that.

You, as usual, raise excellent and not often if ever thought of points.
I know beans about EMF but I can tell you, when we were looking at new homes last year, the ones anywhere near HV power lines we drove straight past.  Also passed one up that would have been perfect bar the fact it was right next to a water resivour tank  that had a huge Mobile phone tower also in the reserve. Water tank didn't worry in the slightest but the phone tower was a complete deal breaker.

I probably expose myself to more than my fair share of EMF in my ignorance about it but I'm not so stupid to ignore the glaringingly obvious.
People refute the existence of EMF but I have seen people standing under towers with Fluro light tubes that glow and that tells me there is something there and it's significant.

As for your comment on shielded wiring, could you link to something that one could use to sheild wiring in the home?
I can't ever remember seeing it listed for sale at any eelectrical place and don't have any idea what it would actually look like.  I remember as a kid the wiring in my grandparents place was all cloth covered in steel conduit.  An obvious hazzard in one way but perhaps with positive outcomes in another. Of course back then you could count the electrical appliances on one hand in the entire home that were permanent fixtures as against an electric frypan or drill that was used when required then put away.

Also with shielding, in a basic form, If one were to enclose everything in a steel box as fasr as say GTI',s breakers etc or appliance like computers, does a steel box essential ( apart from power cords) stop EMF? When my daughter was younger I made a " bed" fpr her phone to go in out of an old metal Biscuit tin with a lid.  Stopped the bastard going off all the time when the other kids sent some world stopping message about who said what to who at school today. Worked for a while till she worked out when she pulled the thing out of a morning there were no notifications and then the thing went nuts with messages sent hours ago.

I can well imagine that EMF shielding on electric cars would not be given a thought other than to dismiss it. I can also imagine being in that faraday cage
mobile steel box with the EMF would be essentially like being in a microwave with lots of the radiation bouncing around. Put a metal film tint on the windows and you could help keep it all in and concentrated even more!

Combining your concerns with electrics and my own, I wonder how much the elvesl of EMF would increase with the amount of power required to increase in the grid and in power lines running through the streets etc to power the vehicle fleet if it were all or majorly running of electricity?
My guess would be that increasing the power supply by 4 to 5 Times what it is now would not increase the EMF at the same rate but rather quite exponentially.

Have you priced nuclear per Kwhr vs subsidized wind,subsidized  solar and the subsidized shall generate NG turbines ? Are you aware of how much the rate payer spends to pay the US to take surplus wind and solar power ? Do you not see the greed and  corruption in that?  With cheaper hydraulic and nuclear power being rejected and paying for more expensive wind, solar and gas .
   How would you be qualified to speak to anything regarding nuclear ?

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #27 on: March 27, 2018, 03:13:20 PM »
Where is this terrible smokestack on EPA approved fossil plants ? With clean soft coal, improved burners , fast reaction CEMs , scrubbers, precipitors and injection systems . The only thing thing going up the stack is moisture, nitrogen and plant food .

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #28 on: March 27, 2018, 05:01:39 PM »
Pretending nuclear isn't subsidized, and that coal is appropriate for new development is foolish but is right out the power industry propaganda.  The real cost of nuclear is being pushed onto your grandkids and great grandkids; there is no viable plan for the radioactive waste and the real downstream cost of decommissioning of old plants is still unknown.   Nor will any insurance company in the world insure a nuclear power plant.  No plant was ever built without gigantic overruns on cost and schedule. The rate and taxpayers foot the bill.  Right now we need our existing nuclear to keep us afloat but we ought to be pursuing solar with thermal storage and other renewables.

 As for coal- it is the perfect, stable, sequestered form of CO2.  What is the cost of relocating hundreds of millions of people from coastlines, and disruption of farming from climate change?  Most of the experts in the field around the world think it's way beyond serious, and military planners are assuming chaos will ensue as a result of disruption of food and water resources. "Clean coal" is a propaganda campaign just like the ones in the 60's for nuclear power- "too cheap to meter".

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/02/clean-coal-america-kemper-power-plant

But hey, let's believe power company propaganda instead.  Just because all of their previous predictions where utterly wrong, costing rate payers a fortune, doesn't mean we can't cling to their fantasy. 












buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #29 on: March 28, 2018, 02:31:51 PM »
Pretending nuclear isn't subsidized, and that coal is appropriate for new development is foolish but is right out the power industry propaganda.  The real cost of nuclear is being pushed onto your grandkids and great grandkids; there is no viable plan for the radioactive waste and the real downstream cost of decommissioning of old plants is still unknown.   Nor will any insurance company in the world insure a nuclear power plant.  No plant was ever built without gigantic overruns on cost and schedule. The rate and taxpayers foot the bill.  Right now we need our existing nuclear to keep us afloat but we ought to be pursuing solar with thermal storage and other renewables.

 As for coal- it is the perfect, stable, sequestered form of CO2.  What is the cost of relocating hundreds of millions of people from coastlines, and disruption of farming from climate change?  Most of the experts in the field around the world think it's way beyond serious, and military planners are assuming chaos will ensue as a result of disruption of food and water resources. "Clean coal" is a propaganda campaign just like the ones in the 60's for nuclear power- "too cheap to meter".

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/02/clean-coal-america-kemper-power-plant

But hey, let's believe power company propaganda instead.  Just because all of their previous predictions where utterly wrong, costing rate payers a fortune, doesn't mean we can't cling to their fantasy.

I don’t know what anti nuclear group s have been scaring money out of  the public with . The anti nuclear groups have bills too for wages airfare for trips , hotel rooms , meals out , entertainment etc
   Decommissioning coats and  fuel storage costs  are already in ear marked escrow accounts paid out of the nuclear units operating budget .
   Our units are covered by insurance as they are low risk.
   Then again if nuclear is mentioned and the conversation is not negative . You have chosen not to believe otherwise no matter what evidence is presented .
   Why would you believe some liberal arts paid protestor instead of those who are familiar with nuclear power .
   Do you see any suffering in Nagasaki or Hiroshima? Cancer rates there lower than the national average .
    If you want something toxic to worry about . Check out all the poisons in landfills, abandoned industrial sites and active industrial sites . What will get you is lead, mercury, cadmium, PCB’s , dioxins and assorted organic chemicals . Benzene, MEK just to list a couple .