Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Through some mix of public transit, hybrids, electric/battery vehicles, pressurized air cars, we use electricity to run our vehicles as much as possible. Then there's biodiesel (from algae if we ever get it working?) or methanol (from natural gas, coal, hydrogen/CO2 cracking, or unfarmable treeland biomass) as back-up for long trips, boats, and other vehicles that can't afford to recharge or need a more conventional power system. Maybe a little hydrogen for planes.
If you solve the vehicles, that's 2/3s of our oil that we can start to wean ourselves off. I think being able to power our vehciles is the biggest nut to crack; if we can do that quickly enough we'll make it through the peak. We carefully use what oil's left for fertilizers, plastics, drugs, etc. while hopefully bioprocessing picks up the slack. (Try to use fermentations, biomass feedstock, etc. in place of oil). And we'll always have tar or shale oil, or TD plant oil for the last few things we absolutely need petroleum for.
I dont' doubt it will be hard, especially with short-sighted leaders and declining natural gas, but this seems the closest thing to a do-able strategy we can muster. It should be possible to at least get a few cities and farms to do these things as demonstration projects: a city has it's buses plug in at various times during the day, a local construction company tries to use the city's grid, the farmer uses the wind turbine on his property to recharge his thresher, etc. Then we ease in with plug-in hybrids, or FFVs that can run on gas and methanol, or whatever - bridging cars until everyone starts driving this way.
Comments?
Oh, and does anyone know why we use A/C and not D/C to transmit in power lines? Or why we can't use D/C for long distance, and convert back to A/C at sub-stations near the point of use? _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:36 am Post subject: Re: Electricity Economy - the best peak transportation strat
Whitecrab wrote:
Oh, and does anyone know why we use A/C and not D/C to transmit in power lines? Or why we can't use D/C for long distance, and convert back to A/C at sub-stations near the point of use?
Efficiency in the past for the first question, cost for the second, will elaborate later!
Oh, and does anyone know why we use A/C and not D/C to transmit in power lines?
If you're really interested in this, get ahold of a book called Edison and the Electric Chair, by Mark Essig. Among other things, it describes the competition between AC and DC power systems, and how we came to use AC.
Joined: Jun 20, 2004 Posts: 250 Location: California
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 8:18 am Post subject: Re: Electricity Economy - the best peak transportation strat
Whitecrab wrote:
Oh, and does anyone know why we use A/C and not D/C to transmit in power lines? Or why we can't use D/C for long distance, and convert back to A/C at sub-stations near the point of use?
AC was needed to send current long distances without huge energy losses. If we had a way to send DC long distances, we would probably just use DC in our homes rather than convert to AC. In fact, a completely DC home would seem to be possible, and perhaps desireable. Within the distances of a typical home, line losses won't be a huge factor, and DC would have the advantage of being compatible with PV arrays and batteries without the losses inherent in an inverter (an inverter transforms DC into AC - if you have a UPS on your computer, it has an inverter). I believe DC appliances actually exist, although they're not common; I think they make 'em for boats and RVs.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:17 am Post subject: Re: Electricity Economy - the best peak transportation strat
Whitecrab wrote:
Oh, and does anyone know why we use A/C and not D/C to transmit in power lines? Or why we can't use D/C for long distance, and convert back to A/C at sub-stations near the point of use?
That's odd, we all seem to have conflicting info. I asked an electrical engineer at my job today about it, a bit confusing but he tried to explain it.
He said most of the time (for voltages under...500 kV?) it's easier to use A/C because that's how power plants spit it out, and you can usually split the A/C along several wires. With D/C, you have to waste energy converting the powerplant to D/C, and you just have one wire carrying the electricity. At extremely high voltages it becomes more cost effective to use D/C, though, because with A/C reactance and capcitance add to the resistance in the wire (meaning A/C has seconday effects at high voltages that waste energy).
Basically, he said we could use D/C, but A/C is usually cheaper/easier unless it's extreme distances or voltages. Also, if you run power from the mainland to an island they usually do it D/C, even though you need to convert back-and-forth from A/C, because the cost of running wire to an island is so high it's worth it accepting the energy loss from D/C. _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 1:33 pm Post subject: Re: Electricity Economy - the best peak transportation strat
Then there's biodiesel
Biodesel is not a net producer of energy the fertilizer and farm machinery used takes as much to grow the quinolla (oil seed rape) as diesel is produced from the grain, with an average yield, and your removing land from producing food, it’s the same taking hydrogen from wheat which makes it all a waste of time (worked this out myself as a farmer, with good land and above average yield a small energy gain can be made)
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 2:43 pm Post subject: Re: Electricity Economy - the best peak transportation strat
Whitecrab wrote:
He said most of the time (for voltages under...500 kV?) it's easier to use A/C because that's how power plants spit it out, and you can usually split the A/C along several wires. With D/C, you have to waste energy converting the powerplant to D/C, and you just have one wire carrying the electricity. At extremely high voltages it becomes more cost effective to use D/C, though, because with A/C reactance and capcitance add to the resistance in the wire (meaning A/C has seconday effects at high voltages that waste energy).
More than one conductor has to be used to use electricity (current flows in a path <to and from>), and the powerplant itself would not be converted to DC, the electricity that the plant would be converted to DC.
Whitecrab wrote:
Basically, he said we could use D/C, but A/C is usually cheaper/easier unless it's extreme distances or voltages. Also, if you run power from the mainland to an island they usually do it D/C, even though you need to convert back-and-forth from A/C, because the cost of running wire to an island is so high it's worth it accepting the energy loss from D/C.
DC is used when grids are not strongly connected to each other, as they can fairly lose synch.
Electrical energy is the product of voltage and current over time. Thus, for a fixed level of power, one can chose any combination of current and voltage, however, resistive losses are proportional to the square of the current. Therefore, for efficient transmission of electrical power, high voltages and low currents are chosen. BUT high voltages are inherently dangerous. Also, the generators output fairly low voltages (3-10kV), and your household voltages are 120-240. In an AC system, transformers readily transform voltage and current, much like a like a gear tranforms low speed and high torque to high speed and low torque.
However, in AC systems, electrical and magnetic fields are proportional to the voltages and currents, respectively, and these fields change at the grid frequency (60Hz US). At high voltages, the electric field becomes problematic, and at high currents, the magnetic field becomes a problem, as these fields consume energy, and alter the voltages that are present on the line. In DC systems, the fields are static (unchanging) and no energy is needed to maintain them, but this itself is a problem (more later). Up to a few decades ago, there was no readily available method to change voltages and currents within a DC system, this changed with the emergence of high current, high voltage electronic switches.
The current situation regards the tradeoffs between the line and converter costs and efficiences between AC and DC systems, converter costs are always falling (slowly) and converter sizes steadily increase.
Also, the power flow in DC systems can be more easily controlled, as converters are controllable (and don't have to deal with the effects of the changing fields in the line)
I tryed to keep this fairly simple, but didn't succeed, crap...
Regarding DC in the home, think about any electronic device, (tv, computer, clock radio, stereo, flourescent lights...) they all use DC, albeit at different voltages. and pumps and fans could be (many new ones are) supplied with DC (many convert AC to DC then into variable voltages and frequencies) [varable frequency drives].
So it could be argued that DC systems would be preferable over AC systems as the very first electric power systems were DC. If PV was used, the conversion losses that are incurred in the invertor and much of the losses in the power supply of the equipment would be eliminated. However, the problem with DC systems is that when a fault occurs, the circuit breaker cannot easily open the line, and a dangerous amount of energy is supplied to the fault (can cause fire, explosion, etc)
With modern power converters, the DC system would be be better (for residential apps) than the AC system that is used today.
That website makes a fatal miscalculation. It is assuming that the electricity is used to make hyrdogen. I suspect it is also assuming that the electricity is used during the day.
Hydrogen wastes too much energy during conversion. It is far more likely we will see a plug-in hybrid that recharges it's battery at night and gets 20 to 60 miles from battery each day. That is MUCH more efficient. It also has the added advantge of using the electric power plants at night to recharge vehicles. At night the grid is vastly underutilized. So existing power plants would need to be run more at night. It mostly avoids the need for building an excessive number of power plants. (perhaps more will be needed, but not 3x more)
I would like to see an expert run the math to calculate whether existing infrastructure of power plants and the grid could handle the equivalent of 1 car charging per household each night.
I believe the main challenge we far in the next 10 to 20 years is building the wind power infrastructure, Denmark has demonstrated that wind can provide 20% to 25% of electricity demand before intermitency becomes an issue.
I also anticipate that solar will become part of each house. New cheap solar panels will likely be part of roof tiles, walls, etc. These will be integrated into the grid so that a house/building is using solar first, then pulling from the grid for the balance that solar does not provide. Since solar output is peaking during the day, that helps in the power plant calculation during peak periods of high use.
The electrical grid is stretched as it is. It was built decades ago, and the recent rise of server farms (that enable us to discuss peak oil on the Internet ) and the increased use of air-conditioning are putting a big strain on the system. Many power companies around here are running ads in the paper threatening people with rolling blackouts if they don't conserve. The last few years, I usually get several days off work free, because an "energy alert" is declared, and they send us home so they can shut down the office to save power.
Of course there's a lot of room to conserve. If they banned air-conditioning, I'm sure they'd free up a lot of power for cars.
But electric cars are only good in certain situations. We have some at my office, and their range is about 25 miles. That would be enough for many commuters, who don't live far from their offices. But the people who drive an hour to work would be screwed.
That's the benefit of hydrogen. That's why Dubya and Ahnold are supporting it. You can refuel when you need to, and drive long distances. But it takes so long to recharge an electric battery, that recharging stations really wouldn't make sense. Electric cars are only for short commutes.
Of course, we may be able to improve the technology somehow. But right now, it's not worth it. You'd be better off with a bicycle.
Here was the quote from the Washington Post of June 6:
Quote:
Producing the hydrogen equivalent in energy to the oil now used in U.S. transport would require 10 trillion kilowatt hours of electric energy; we would have to triple our electric generation capacity.
All that my calculations checked was that the 10 trillion kw-hours was equivalent to the intrinsic energy of our yearly oil consumption for all uses. The concept of equivalence usually relates to intrinsic energy between various sources. It doesn't take an expert to compare the numbers, just a bit of dimensional analysis.
Sometimes it doesn't pay to fact check the numbers from mass media sources. In this instance, the WaPo article does not even say that this is a yearly number; I have to make that assumption. And of course, you are never going to get real references to where the numbers came from.
But electric cars are only good in certain situations. We have some at my office, and their range is about 25 miles. That would be enough for many commuters, who don't live far from their offices. But the people who drive an hour to work would be screwed.
That's the benefit of hydrogen. That's why Dubya and Ahnold are supporting it. You can refuel when you need to, and drive long distances. But it takes so long to recharge an electric battery, that recharging stations really wouldn't make sense. Electric cars are only for short commutes.
That is why the PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) is the solution. The plug in recharges the battery for the first 20 to 60 miles of the day. That is sufficient for 80% of drivers each day. But when the battery reaches 10% to 20% of the remaining charge, the vehicle switches over to whatever fuel is to be used. (gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, hydrogen, etc). The fuel source for extended trips does not matter. The concept of the PHEV fits any of them.
And it enjoys the benefit of making the best direct use of electricity. The loss of energy from creating other sources is huge. It is most efficient to just put it in a battery and send that electricity directly to the wheels.
And it is most efficient to use the power plants to recharge at night when they are underutilized.
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 2:39 pm Post subject: DC power can be used for transmission
Apparently, there are some advantages of using direct current when extremely high transmisison voltages are used. Quebec uses extreme voltages (735K) due to the long distance it transfers power generated at James Bay dams - 1,200 km to the St. Lawrence Valley.
This is an interesting web page in which they discuss clever use of the capacitance characteristics of the grid and use asynchronous connection to interchange with neghbouring power grids.
The conversion and switching of DC power on the grid is a big investment however. The Radisson swtich yards of Hydro-Quebec occupy the equivalent of 100 football fields of area to handle 6.6 MW of power.
http://www.hydroquebec.com//visit/virtual_visit/poste_radisson.html
Yes, we have some hybrid vehicles, too, and they are much better. But hybrid vehicles aren't going to be the answer. We need something that doesn't use oil at all.
Though some people suggest that hybrid vehicles will serve as a transition, I can't see that happening. They are expensive, and expecting everyone to switch over is not realistic. Even if the government mandated that all new vehicles be hybrids, it would take years and years to get the old-style cars off the road. If we were going to do it, it should have been years ago.
And electricity may well be as much a problem as oil. A lot of our electricity is from natural gas. Which is in short supply in North America these days. Unlike oil, natural gas is not easy to ship. It will be even less economical to ship as oil prices rise.
We've had relatively mild weather in the northeast U.S. the past year or two. Luckily. If we get cold winters and hot summers, we'll have to decide between electricity in the summer and home heating in the winter. The last time we were in this situation, we solved it by forcing industries that use a lot of natural gas to close. Eventually, though, the ordinary consumer is going to have to make some hard choices.
Yes, we have some hybrid vehicles, too, and they are much better. But hybrid vehicles aren't going to be the answer. We need something that doesn't use oil at all.
The PHEV has the potential to not use oil at all. It is all based on electricity which can be from many sources. The fuel source for extended driving can be just about anything. Biodiesel, hydrogen, gasoline, diesel, or whatever.
Leanan wrote:
Though some people suggest that hybrid vehicles will serve as a transition, I can't see that happening. They are expensive, and expecting everyone to switch over is not realistic. Even if the government mandated that all new vehicles be hybrids, it would take years and years to get the old-style cars off the road. If we were going to do it, it should have been years ago.
You are falling into the Matt Savinar trap. You are looking for a perfect silver bullet that provides you EVERYTHING that oil provides. If it does not fit 100%, then you say, "This will not work. We are all going to die and live like cavemen."
The simple fact is that the trend is already in place. Their is huge demand for hybrids. In 2005 and 2006 there are over 12 different vehicle models that will be hybrids. That should be over 1 million vehicles annually and it will likely continue increasing. This will dramatically improve the cost of the batteries since they can be made more efficiently in large volumes and their capacity and reliability will only get better.
The next logical step from the current hybrids is to make it rechargable and include a plug.
Leanan wrote:
And electricity may well be as much a problem as oil. A lot of our electricity is from natural gas.
Only 18% of our electricity (USA) is from natural gas. Less than 2% is from oil. That can be replaced by wind as natural gas supplies decline. Denmark and Germany have proven that 20% to 25% of the grid can be powered by wind. Beyond that is questionable due to issues of intermitency. I suspect they can improve a bit more with bettern wind farm management techniques.
I anticipate that as natural gas becomes too difficult to obtain for electricity, wind farms will be built to fill the gap.
Nuclear, Coal and Hydro provide about 75% of our electricity. None are in short supply in the next 100 years.
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I asked an electrical engineer at my job today about it, a bit confusing but he tried to explain it.
) and the increased use of air-conditioning are putting a big strain on the system. Many power companies around here are running ads in the paper threatening people with rolling blackouts if they don't conserve. The last few years, I usually get several days off work free, because an "energy alert" is declared, and they send us home so they can shut down the office to save power.
