Pinging Joerg

They haven't even figured out where the power is supposed to come from. Oh, wait, I know, the big wall outlet in the garage! How could I have missed that? ... Oh, wait ...

GM is about to announce the Oak, a wood-burning SUV.

John

--

John Larkin, President Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro. tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

You could easily dodge such stupid legislation. Just set up a "Highland Technology of Cheyenne" subsidiary and have it issue company cars. Gets you the nice Wyoming plates, too. I like those because of the horse and cowboy on it.

They probably considered naming it "Sequioa", but Toyota beat 'em to it - plus the California environmentalists would be all up in arms over a name like that. :) Still, I wonder how far one could travel buring a single sequioa as fuel, assuming you didn't have to haul it with you, of course. ??

-mpm

These guys tested it in a Chevy station wagon:

They claim less one cord worth of wood scraps for a trip of 2500mi from FL to CA. That's not bad at all.

The equivalent of 16-17 miles per gallon[*] doesn't sound all that great to me unless you have a free source of wood. Europe found out what happens when everyone uses wood. [*]

We and the whole rest of the world will some day find out what happens when everyone uses gasoline or Diesel :-)

A lot of people make that mistake. About half the energy that was used to generate electricity reaches the outlet. If you compare fuel consumption you will find out that a car with an efficient diesel engine (like the one in my 12 year old car or in a new VW Golf TDI bluemotion) consumes the same weight of fossile fuel per distance as an electric car like the Chevrelot Volt (aka Opel Ampera) or the Nissan Leaf.

Yes, except that you can't make the fuel for your Diesel engine in a nuclear power station or with a wind turbine.

Here in California we'd need a solar installation on pretty much every roof. With 4c/kWh reimbursement that just ain't gonna happen.

It'll be too expensive. It'll be nukes, sooner or later.

What? the market isn't driving sales of PV solar?

;D Cheers

I don't understand residential PV solar. The economy of scale is crazy.

I admit to being a long-time environmentalist and "progressive", but = making=20 laws to ban certain types of vehicles or light bulbs or whatever in the = name=20 of the environment. Electric vehicles and hybrids and other efficient = means=20 of transportation are only part of the solution to a very real problem = of=20 excessive wasteful consumption and resource depletion. Everyone should = pay=20 the real cost of the resources they purchase, including harm to the=20 environment and peoples' health and welfare, and the costs of the wars = we=20 engage in to protect and procure the oil we have become accustomed to.

The way around this stupid law, and actually be even more = environmentally=20 and economically responsible, is to purchase perfectly good used = vehicles=20 that get excellent fuel economy, such as my 1999 Saturn. It averages = about=20

four years ago, and I've only spent a couple thousand since then on=20 maintenance. All of that money goes to my local auto dealer and = mechanic,=20 rather than the fat cats in Detroit or overseas.

And having plug-in hybrids and EVs connected to the grid at night amount = to=20 a form of load leveling and local energy storage similar to that offered = by=20 solar and wind systems. That big outlet in the garage works both ways.

Paul=20

That is pretty optimistic and would require a lot of hydroelectric plants (efficiency over 90 %) in the production mix. Steam turbine based systems are limited by the Carnot efficiency to 30-40 %, no matter if the primary heat is produced by biomass, coal, oil or nuclear.

However, in a fixed power plant, it is easier to use the waste heat, e.g. for district heating/cooling than in a mobile diesel engine.

In cold climates, the engine waste heat is used to heat the cabin. Electric vehicles, with high local efficiency, do not produce enough waste heat, so some extra heater based on fossil fuels may be needed. Otherwise, the EV range would be severely limited, if the batteries are also used to heat the cabin.

You don't need that. Wind turbines are a dead end. Over here they cannot be made profitable without tax payer's money.

Also a dead end. If there is enough sun, CSP (concentrated solar power) is the way to go.

Back to fuel. In brazil they make half the necessary fuel out of sugar cane by turning it into ethanol. And there are more processes on their way. Algae seem very promising because they grow faster than any other crop. The big advantage of fuel is that you can bring an enormous amount of energy in a relatively small space. Batteries are nowhere near that energy density.

And there is the problem with the electricity distribution network. If a lot of people are going to drive electric cars there need to be lots of large charging stations with 50kV (or bigger) connections to the grid. Run the numbers and you'll see charging at home is a myth. The infrastructure can't handle that much power.

It is not quite as bad. I have calculated the average demand using different methods and reached the same conclusion about 0.5-1,5 kW/car, thus one additional nuclear reactor could support 1-2 million electrical vehicles.

Detached houses in Finland using electric heating have typically a peak demand of 6-9 kW, thus an EV with battery capacity of 24-36 kWh could be charged in 4 hours.

to me

hen

If you read russellecon.com's articles, they say 1lb per mile, and that 5M tons of wood has displaced 250M gallons of fuel oil used for process heating.

At 20mpg, the first translates to ~20lbs per gal.of gasoline. The 2nd translates to 44/lbs =3D 1 gal of fuel oil.

For cars it's going to yield fewer BTU than for heating, since energy's lost in the gasification. That's why the Chevy Oak includes pedal power backup.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

This doesn't add up. An EV needs about 250Wh/km (actual number from EPA for Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt). If you have one million commuters that use an EV to drive 100km each day you'll need 250Wh * 100 * 1 million= 25GWh. If you charge during the night in 10 hours it will take a power plant that can deliver 25GWh/10= 2.5GW. The biggest nuclear reactors deliver about 1GW so you'll need 3 of those. That still leaves major distribution issues.

I think you are wrong. I once rented a small vacation home in Denmark. It had a 3x40A 240V mains supply. Thats over 27kW peak! But in urban areas and other countries the mains supplies are probably much smaller. I have to do with 1x40A 240V (and a city wide heating system for heat and warm water).

On such a charge an EV will travel 120km or 75 miles. Thats not usefull. Besides that the distribution grid has not been designed so that everybody can draw peak power during several hours. Imagine a whole street full of EVs.

Besides an EV should be able to drive about 600km (375 miles) to make it an alternative to cars powered by a combustion engine. That would require a battery capacity of 600X250Wh =150kWh. If you want to charge in 10 hours (or less) then it would load your mains supply with an additional 15kW.

I hope you see that EVs are not going to be the solution. The numbers just don't add up to a viable solution.

It's better than that, right? You guys have net metering, so you can offset your own usage and save at least $0.14/kWh. Plus, Obama'll buy part of the panel with Redistribution(tm), and California will issue IOUs for part of it too. So, effective return on the juice you use is closer to $0.20/kWh.

If you commute burning, say, 12kW x 3/4hr a day--8kWhr--you could power that with ~2.5kW (peak) of panels, investing ~$7-10K (cost) *

Now tack on the extra $220k for a Chevy Volt, less Redistribution(tm), etc., ... you'll wind up paying maybe $12k out of your pocket over a conventional car, to avoid buying 200 gallons of gasoline a year. At current figures the taxpayers will pitch in ~$210K.

It's other people's money, so it's sustainable and FREE!

-- Cheers, James Arthur