Bad News For Truckers

[David Anderson]

I wish I was smart enough to have the answer however it is difficult to compete with current modes of transportation such as cars, trucks, and any combustion engine powered device that only has to carry 10% of it's fuel needed to operate. Electric vehicles need to carry 100% of it's fuel to operate. Doing an informal survey let's say there is 120 houses in our development. Pickups and cars make up the most of them and I would say the average is 3 vehicles per household. Each house has 240V/200 Amp service (48 Kilowatts of energy) and is supplied by an underground grid that has 1 stepdown transformer for 2 houses. If all electric, the average vehicle has about a 100KW battery, using the full capacity of your own incoming service it would take close to 3 hours of full power to fully charge the battery. There is no way that the main electrical feed could support 120 households plugging in 1 car a night, that is over 1.2 megawatt of power just to a small development........it would have to be changed to a smart grid, dividing the power in a more judicious way to allow better distribution of the power, which is more $$$. If you look at efficiencies, electrical power in your home experiences on average 50% losses by the time it gets to your outlet, meaning it is quite possible that the power company would have to generate regardless of the source 2.4 megawatts to fully charge 33% of the vehicles in our development each night. That number is probably a worst case scenario however in January in Minnesota battery technology is only good for about 40% of the rated power.......100KW battery will only supply 40KW so will require at least 2.5 more charge cycles. I am all for less pollution, heck my 6.2L GMC 1500 got 25.5 mpg average on a 1000 mile round trio to Canada, impressive. There is a cost for everything, just owning a car or truck, we accept about 50,000 deaths a year because of accidents, and I am sure we all know someone who has died in a car accident, does that stop us from driving? The reason for the rules according to the article is to improve health problems due to smog in the inner city. That is always noble but are there better ways to do this, as the costs to provide the new transportation and infrastructure to support it may be way out of reach for the people they are trying to help the most. Actually train locomotive engines are quite efficient as they generate electricity at the source to power the traction motors resulting in very little loss and significant improvement in pollution vs tonnage transported, of course the only thing the average person sees is the black smoke coming out of the exhaust.

[QUOTE=Hot Runr Guy;6457184]The mods don't see every post. If you want to bring something to their attention, click on the little triangle in the upper-right corner of the post you want reviewed.

HRG[/QUOTE]

It was sarcasm. Nothing really offends me and if it comes close, I just move on and live my life.... :)

[jambi]

Who is going to fix all the wind turbines when the subsidies and kickbacks run out in 5 years? There is a yard in Western Oklahoma that has thousands of blades piled up awaiting installation. The landscape will be full of abandoned turbines in 10 to 20 years...

Talk about bird deaths - We were fined $15,000 for a couple dead meadowlarks in an abandoned tank that had rainwater in it - How come the FWS doesn't blink at the turbines killing thousands!?!

Drill baby Drill

[gbin]

[QUOTE=David Anderson;6457200]... There is a cost for everything, just owning a car or truck, we accept about 50,000 deaths a year because of accidents, and I am sure we all know someone who has died in a car accident, does that stop us from driving? The reason for the rules according to the article is to improve health problems due to smog in the inner city. That is always noble but are there better ways to do this, as the costs to provide the new transportation and infrastructure to support it may be way out of reach for the people they are trying to help the most...[/QUOTE]

I get your point, but I prefer a broader and longer view. It may sound callous, but we can always make more people (and in fact ARE making more than we should). We can't really make more species to replace those we're losing, though, nor more functional ecosystems. We're currently driving a mass extinction event - largely but by no means solely through our persistence in burning fossil fuels - and that's a forever kind of thing. On any time scale that humans can relate to, anyway.

What we've been doing, what we're doing now... with each passing day that doesn't see us making real strides in another direction, we're ensuring that future generations inherit from us a more and more depauperate earth.

Gerry

[Bobby Winds]

[QUOTE=please delete;6457206]It was sarcasm. Nothing really offends me and if it comes close, I just move on and live my life.... :)[/QUOTE]

So here you go........LOL

[grizzley]

Years ago they talked about ocean waves being used in some way to generate electricity.
That didn't last too long after they were proposing to put them offshore in a prime location where people with multi million dollar oceanfront homes got their panties in a bunch over their view being ruined!
Funny, it's always we need to do something different, AS LONG AS IT'S NOT IN MY BACK YARD!!

Just hope that one of those super volcanoes doesn't erupt, or we take a major hit by an asteroid, or a massive solar flare affects life as we know it. The global warming that we are experiencing now will seem pale in comparison if any of those events were to happen.
We're doomed! :laugh:

[3M TA3]

[QUOTE=Bobby Winds;6457042]This is how the RR made their money.
And the second pic is how I made my money...... :)[/QUOTE]

Bobby. Are you suggesting you're a train wreck?:o

[gbin]

[QUOTE=grizzley;6457310]Just hope that one of those super volcanoes doesn't erupt, or we take a major hit by an asteroid, or a massive solar flare affects life as we know it. The global warming that we are experiencing now will seem pale in comparison if any of those events were to happen.
We're doomed! :laugh:[/QUOTE]

Uh-huh. Except that climate-changing pollution is actually happening and it's overwhelmingly of humanity's creation and correctable by humanity's behavior, whereas the things you're fantasizing about happening are all beyond humanity's control.

Gerry

[DW]

[QUOTE=gbin;6457224]I get your point, but I prefer a broader and longer view. It may sound callous, but we can always make more people (and in fact ARE making more than we should). We can't really make more species to replace those we're losing, though, nor more functional ecosystems. We're currently driving a mass extinction event - largely but by no means solely through our persistence in burning fossil fuels - and that's a forever kind of thing. On any time scale that humans can relate to, anyway.

What we've been doing, what we're doing now... with each passing day that doesn't see us making real strides in another direction, we're ensuring that future generations inherit from us a more and more depauperate earth.

Gerry[/QUOTE]

The short version of your sermon is: We have to do something. How many times do we say we have to do something as justification for stupidity. That was the whole premise of the renewable craze. Nevermind that it has to be subsidized; nevermind that it is based on false expectations and overstated promises; and nevermind you dont create a ‘new economy‘ based on fantasy. Nevermind foolish solutions ensure future generations inherit a mess.

I like the idea of renewables but how do you explain 5 decades of heavy subsidies yet no light at the end of the tunnel. I was an early adopter but I am not not a fool.

I agree we need to do something, but lets screw our heads on.

[Custom Eyes]

[QUOTE=DW;6457364]The short version of your sermon is: We have to do something. How many times do we say we have to do something as justification for stupidity. That was the whole premise of the renewable craze. Nevermind that it has to be subsidized; nevermind that it is based on false expectations and overstated promises; and nevermind you dont create a ‘new economy‘ based on fantasy. Nevermind foolish solutions ensure future generations inherit a mess.

I like the idea of renewables but how do you explain 5 decades of heavy subsidies yet no light at the end of the tunnel. I was an early adopter but I am not not a fool.

I agree we need to do something, but lets screw our heads on.[/QUOTE]

You complain about subsidies and want nuclear, but once renewable subsidies expire here shortly, nuclear will once again be the most heavily subsidized form of electricity per megawatt, and renewables probably the least. Makes no sense. And that's not even counting the cost to taxpayers to handle and store the waste.