EV to ICE Transition

Does Bill Slowman even know what we are talking about?

What train?

That array has a far too low tilt at least for New England and other high latitude places. In periods of thick clouds, very little power is available. With such low tilt, you also need to manually remove any snow from the panels.

The claimed 40 kWp is available only for a few hours a day, perhaps less than 8 hours (for a fixed array) so the daily average energy is about 300 kWh/24 h or 12 kW charging power on average.

Thus, that array could fully charge three empty 100 kWh Teslas a day or 10-30 partially depleted ordinary cars. Those cars seen in the picture might be charged in a day with fixed backup batteries. Good for a motel parking lot, but not for a service station.

No, not John L, anything but that!!!

Actually, I'm no Musk fan. I Just think your ideas of the auto world are pretty poor, so it's not hard for Musk to be a better thinker.

Oh, and can you trim a post once in awhile?

He also doesn't understand that 99% of EV charging will be done at home or at work putting zero strain on the distribution and generation networks. They will simply use excess capacity sitting idle.

The solar and batteries at EV charging stations is not about providing all the power to charge cars. It's about reducing the demand charges. Maybe someday all EVs will be charged 100% from solar, but that will take some time and a lot of construction. With the rate of EV introduction continuing to increase, the rate of installation of solar for EV charging will be working double time to catch up.

Since Ed Lee never seems to know much about what he talks about, he does need to ask.

The Cross Channel Tunnel is a railway-only tunnel. A train is the only thing they are likely to be offered to step onto.

"High latitude"? Boston is at the same latitude as Barcelona, Spain, and sunny days/year is on par with the national average at around 200.

It's not Germany! The difference between a 5 degree tilt and a 30 degree tilt is probably under 10%.

Too complicated. A cell call to a mobile service with a charger takes three ounces of hardware that you probably already have.

Boston is at 42 N, thus the sun is on average during noon at 90-42=58 degrees. The maximum at summer noon is 58+23=81 degrees and winter noon 58-23=35 degrees. For maximum output at noon, the panels should be tilted 9 degrees (summer), 42 degrees (spring/fall) and 55 degrees (winter).

With 200 clear days is just 55 % of full power days in a year.

Using panel tilt optimized for summer (100 %), will give 92 % during spring/fall and 69 % during winter. The reverse situation occurs with panels optimized for winter condition.

In practice, the drop is even worse due to the anti-reflective coatings on many panels attenuating further off-axis radiation.

Aiming panels for spring/fall will drop the output to 92 % during summer/winter.

Congratulation, you have (re)invented the series hybrid car :-).

That's not what we are talking about, idiot.

They only work when there is wind, and the overall load factor is depressingly low.

enough storage capacity let cars charge quickly, it has enough to let it charge up that storage capacity overnight - which isn't going to take megawatts.

Well, you can't get more power out than you put in and that's before taking account of inefficiency and power loss in conversion.

You would need a whole load of hv infrastructure in place for mass charging of electric vehicles, which will take years to get together and who will pay for that ?.

Waving arms around won't change basic engineering reality...

No problem going electric and would probably run one now if it wasn't for the expense, but we are being consistently lied to by campaigners and politicians w/regard to how easy and quick it will be.

It will be expensive, disruptive and take decades to get together. Promises that it can be completed by 2030, or even 2035 are pure fantasy, but I guess it's good to get started.

Interesting program on TV recently, "The Dark cost of Green Energy" basically saying that it just shifts the pollution to other parts of the world. How rare earth elements will disrupt the global power balance towards conflict and war. Not sure I accept all of it, but there are limits to such resources, just as there are with fossil fuels.

So what ?.

Perhaps, but that hasn't stopped them from building one or more coal fired power stations per week, and will do so well into the 2030's. They are also steadily and relentlessly cornering the world market in rare earth and other minerals. Only the blind could miss the danger in all that.

You can't isolate the energy revolution from world politics, not to mention human rights violations, but of course, in the world of the heavenly green agenda, the end always justifies the means, right ?...

You are feeding the troll. Running out of charge is like running out of gas. It almost never happens, so talking about it is just spreading FUD. Like everything else the troll talks about, he just wants to have an argument he can win by tossing a few turds in the soup bowl and not actually discuss significant matters.

It might charge all those cars in about 2 weeks in good weather.

That panel might product $20 worth of electricity per day. I wonder what it cost.

Yes. Do the math.

Gas stations have overhead. They want to sell drinks and chips and jerky, and have rest rooms. That doesn't scale in the down direction.

We don't have dozens of tiny 1-pump gas stations in rural areas.

I get so tired of hearing such misinformation from people who should know better. Look at the daily demand curve and explain to me why huge numbers of EVs can't be charged when the demand is not 100% of available capacity? The only reason to build any sort of new infrastructure is if all EVs were charged 24/7. They aren't. Unlike the long lines a gas stations when people want to fill up for a weekend trip EVs can be charged the night before when 50% of the generating and transmission capacity is idle.

Try to understand that before you continue to post meaningless comments about HV infrastructure.

So maybe you should put your arms down now.

AAA had that service for a while, but discontinued. It's just too expensive to pay their driver to wait for customer charging. They have up to 100 miles towing instead.

People check into cheap motels and plug into their room outlets to charge their cars. I can imagine the motel owners buying some smart circuit breakers to limit total energy to cell phone chargers and a few minutes of hair dryer.