Anybody interested in electrically powered transportation

[Worker 11811]

When I say that electric vehicles may be inefficient, I am talking about the entire chain from the power plant, along transmission lines, substations and transformers through to charging the car's batteries, and sending that power to drive the wheels. Only about 10% of the energy derived from burning fuel at the power plant makes it to your car's wheels.

 

Yes, the car, itself is more efficient. Yes, gasoline engines are more inefficient.

What I was referring to is the fact that, for every unit of energy used to power an electric car, nine units worth of energy are wasted and all of the pollution is spewed out in the vicinity of the power plant which is hundreds of miles away from where we drive our cars. People who live near those plants may suffer for the sake of our convenience.

 

I do not believe we should use wind power for more than 30% of our electricity generation needs. This is because wind power is not constant. The fluctuations in wind can cause large swings in the power grid.

 

No matter how much wind power we have, there will always need to be traditional electric generators. People need electricity 24/7/365 but the wind does not blow all the time. When the wind dies down, we need to switch-in the generators. When the wind comes back up, we need to switch them out.

 

If you have too much of your supply from wind power, you will have brownouts when the wind dies down or you will have to dump that power to ground when the wind blows too hard. You will need electric generation plants to smooth out the hills and valleys.

 

If you get too much of your electricity from wind power, you will be constantly switching your generation plants on-line and off-line. That's a big hassle. It's excess wear and tear on the generators, starting and stopping them all the time. If the wind fluctuates too wildly, you will never be able to switch the generation plants on-line or off-line fast enough to keep the supply steady. Not even computerized transfer switches can keep up with the kinds of demands that we would put on them. Hundreds of megawatts or even gigawatts would have to be switched in or out on a moment's notice. I'm sure you understand what kind of switch gear is involved in that process. It doesn't happen in a matter of seconds. Yet, a few seconds of brownout or a few seconds of surge could throw the electrical grid into chaos.

 

Let me be clear. I'm ALL FOR wind and solar power, etc. It's just not reliable enough to supply all our needs. Not even if we use Pumped Storage Hydroelectric facilities.

 

I think it will be a good adjunct to our power generation needs but I don't believe it will ever replace electric power plants.

 

Now, for atomic power. There are two, intertwined problems: Fear and lack of research.

 

Fear occurs because 90% of our population knows little to nothing about atomic power beyond atomic bombs.

 

Lack of research occurred because, after The Manhattan Project ended in 1946, we essentially stopped major research on atomic energy. Virtually all our resources went into building bombs and nuclear fission plants.

 

This lack of research goes back to feeding public fear and creating a vicious cycle of fear and ignorance.

 

We should have been researching nuclear FUSION for all this time.

 

We have known about fusion since the 1920's.

 

Pinch devices (the heart of a nuclear fusion reactor) have been proposed since the 1930's but that work was curtailed because the powers-that-be wanted fission bombs instead.

 

In the 1940's, Enrico Fermi (one of the fathers of the atomic bomb) proposed the use of fusion to generate power but, again, he was too busy building bombs for The Manhattan Project.

 

The Manhattan Project ended in 1946, essentially stopping most, if not all, atomic research in the US. (However, we did continue to build atomic bombs!)

 

The tokamak reactor was proposed in the 1950's but never developed until the 1960's... In the U.K. (Project ZETA.) The U.S.S.R. actually built a working tokamak reactor in the 1960's, too. They just couldn't make it stable enough to sustain a reaction for more than a few milliseconds.

 

Research has continued, on and off for decades, in countries all over the world but it wasn't until 2007 that the Chinese built a tokamak reactor that remained stable for five seconds. They kept it running for 102 seconds in 2015 and generated 1 mega-amp of current.

 

If we had kept The Manhattan Project or something like it going after the war and continued to perform research on FUSION instead of making fission bombs, we would be decades ahead of where we are, now, and we might have even developed a workable, safe and clean source of atomic power.

 

By the way? Did you read where I said that the Chinese used a fusion device to generate one hundred million amps of electricity?

 

Why didn't we do this twenty years ago?

 

Why was it the Chinese who did it instead of Americans?

 

I'll tell you why. It's because most Americans' eyes glaze over and people begin to piss their collective pants and shiver in fear at the mere mention of the words "atomic" or "nuclear."

 

It shouldn't be that way!

 

Our collective world governments have been little more than a bunch of bumbling, fumbling retards when it comes to energy policy. If they had gotten ahead of the ball after WW-II ended, we probably wouldn't even be having a discussion like this.

[AKcoyote]

Worker,

What you apparently missed in my prior post is that there is a critical need for energy storage (batteries, super capacitors, or similar) in the use of renewable sources of energy generation to even out the spikes and dips in load & generation. Currently the only renewable energy source that is not intermittent is geothermal. There are a few projects being built that will use large arrays of lithium-ion battery packs to store electricity for use as needed.

http://www.teslarati.com/netherlands-utility-use-tesla-powerwall-make-virtual-power-plant/

https://www.tesla.com/blog/addressing-peak-energy-demand-tesla-powerpack

 

Yes, nuclear fusion does hold enormous potential for a clean power source, but the research is many years away from creating a sustained, safe, and reliable reaction. Current nuclear fission power generation is a disaster that is only possible because the government insures the operators. No sane insurer would ever consider insuring a fission plant.

 

As you stated, government stupidity and the lack of a properly thought out energy policy is to blame for much of the mess that is our current energy situation.

[Worker 11811]

Well... It is an election year. Isn't it?

 

Somebody should go to one of Donald Trump's press conferences and ask him why China has a megawatt fusion reactor and a 22 gigawatt hydroelectric complex but the United States doesn't have either of those things.

 

I bet that would rattle a few cages!

 

Yes, I understand about storing electricity. Unfortunately, batteries and supercapacitors just aren't robust and reliable enough. To be honest, the amounts of power that our electrical grid needs to supply are too great. I don't think we'll ever have a battery that can survive under those conditions.

 

If you've ever seen an electrical substation explode, you'll know it's a truly frightening experience. (I have seen one and it almost made me pee my pants! And it wasn't even a particularly large one!) I have a hard time believing that any kind of capacitor or battery could have that kind of capacity and be safe from explosion.

 

The only kind of storage system that is even close to viable would be pumped storage.

Even pumped storage isn't really viable for the kinds of demands we would place on them. Besides, they are a net consumer of power. Check the link I put in my post above.

 

I like solar and wind power and things like that but I just don't believe that they will be able to work under the conditions that people expect from them. Unless we come up with something new, we're going to be screwed.

 

I know that what I am proposing is a tall order but I truly don't see any other solution that even comes close.

 

If our collective governments, world wide, hadn't acted like a bunch of idiots for the last seventy years, we wouldn't be in such a predicament!

[AKcoyote]

For those who think an electric car is no better than an upgraded golf cart, I provide the following link:

http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-p100d-1-4-record-portable-hpwc/

 

A Tesla Model S P100D set a record for the 1/4 mile of 10.76 seconds and 122.36 mph.