Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
I posed this question already: Cars operating on the trolleybus principle. Consensus was that it would be a bit shocking to pedestrians and animals, as is often the case with third rail, not to mention lunkhead drivers attempting to latch onto the rails - assuming the cars would have to detach occasionally, which would have to be the case if you think about it - are we supposed to run the lines up driveways too? (I see that your article addresses this but leaves the problem up to further development) This was the primary objection mentioned to this idea by Alan Drake at the Oil Drum when I brought up the idea there. The voltage required to push cars around is extremely high and not just any schmuck should be hooking these things up. You might search there for my post and his comments (My user name at TOD is "The Dude")
There's also a newfangled wireless method of power distribution, WiTricity, which we discussed here: Wireless electricity (MIT's successful experiment). gg3 brought up the idea of using this to recharge EVs in parking lots. That would stand a better chance I think, would require a great deal of infrastructure upgrade but might happen in time.
Also Bob Shaw at the Oil Drum came up with the idea of "Spiderwebriding," which is essentially easily built toy trains to shuttle people around on city sidewalks. Not a bad idea, very low tech. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
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We'd better import back all the copper scrap we've been selling to China!
Right on, Roccman! This is just another feel-good pill for the sheeple. It ain't goin' anywhere. Yeah, Popular Science Mag said 50 years ago that we'd all be playing poker in the car while a buried wire guided it to our destination. Shades of the Jetsons. _________________ Local fix-it guy..
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Also Bob Shaw at the Oil Drum came up with the idea of "Spiderwebriding," which is essentially easily built toy trains to shuttle people around on city sidewalks. Not a bad idea, very low tech.
I'm quite sure there will be a whole bunch of clever ideas invented....however (aside from a very small handful of cornucopians on this site who do nothing but copy/paste spam this site with news announcements of techno fixes) there is a universal consensus that life after PO will mean a reduced standard of living. Exactly what will get "reduced" first: is it going to be Starbucks coffee, single car ridership, or vacation cruises who knows? But something has to be cut.
maybe a little off topic but I am a little disappointed (no offense) that so many people have this fetish for keeping their eyeball on the transportation/energy industry. I believe when PO hits it's going to cut like a broadsword. I believe EVERYTHING from DVD movies to conveniently individually packaged jello pudding is going to get cut....oh yeah and I guess transportation too!
Transportation being tied into everything else, it's understandable that we focus on it. You're right to point out how much stuff can be affected, especially if the computer industry takes one on the chin. Might have to keep using the same old machine, horrors. Don't know what goes into making jello...actually who cares, what bizarre junk! Unless you suffer from swallowing difficulties. Or have lost your teeth. Uh...
Quote:
(a very small handful of cornucopians on this site who do nothing but copy/paste spam this site with news announcements of techno fixes)
I don't mind Graeme, he's not pushy and his articles make for interesting reading, even if we're just trying to read the serial number on the bomb that's about to blow us all to hell. I'm betting long odds on a few Ubertechnos too, like Venter's oil pooping bacteria. That'd change the rules of the game. 'Course we'd just top off the tanks on our Tata SUVs until the environment keels over but alas! That's life. Gotta have our panem et circenses. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
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I don't mind Graeme, he's not pushy and his articles make for interesting reading, even if we're just trying to read the serial number on the bomb that's about to blow us all to hell.
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I don't mind Graeme either. Then again I don't bother to read his threads. If I wanted info about techno fixes I can get plenty by doing a google search, so it's not like he's giving me anything I can't get on my own. But if he wants to think that he's doing society a favor by creating links like some internet bot......to each his own.
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Call me paranoid but I have a feeling that 80% of ALL info on the internet is nothing more than a copy/paste of somebody else's work. It doesn't take too much brainpower to copy/paste. I value original content much more......it shows a person has a brain if they can write their own short article. And that's what I'm here for on PO.com but I've been here for awhile. It's getting difficult to find people with new ideas.
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Maybe I need a new hobby!
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:40 am Post subject: Re: Electrified Roads
Ferretlover wrote:
Thinking out loud:
Would those electrified roads have copper in them?
Third rails are either soft iron or aluminum with a steel top to minimize wear. So material supply isn't really a problem. I am assuming that the third-rail within the road would be set down within a narrow slot to minimize electrocution and would be insulated using some sort of plastic sleeve, to prevent earthing out.
In theory, the infrastructure requirements are modest and roads could be prepared with minimum rework. You just cut a narrow slot in the middle of each lane and cement in the plastic sleeved rail. The rail itself would be cheap and installation costs would be modest. I imagine that the transmission infrastructure would cost a fair bit, as the road would need to be fed by regular transformer stations to offset the low voltage and low power of the rail.
A big problem with this concept would appear to be overloading. Because the rail is basically in the road, voltage would need to be held down to low levels to prevent excessive earthing losses. Most third rail railways are around 700 volts. But those rails are elevated above the ground, so can presumably run at higher voltages than a roadway.
A third rail carrying 5000amps at 200 volts would have a total power of 1MW. This is equivalent to the engine power of just 50 medium sized cars running at constant speed of 50mph. So unless you are going to have a transformer every half-mile, very chunky thick rails carrying over 10,000 amps, or light traffic, an electrified road would tend to leave vehicles under-powered.
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 2838 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:41 am Post subject: Re: Electrified Roads
That's a lot of caveats. Caternary wires make a lot more sense for urban environments, third rails would be just as much a hassle to install and a lot more dangerous/inefficient. There's a reason cities use overhead wires by and large. I say trolleybuses initially and gradually move over to trams, if we're not all simply walking around scrabbling in the dirt that is. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
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Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:23 am Post subject: Re: Electrified Roads
TheDude wrote:
That's a lot of caveats. Caternary wires make a lot more sense for urban environments, third rails would be just as much a hassle to install and a lot more dangerous/inefficient. There's a reason cities use overhead wires by and large. I say trolleybuses initially and gradually move over to trams, if we're not all simply walking around scrabbling in the dirt that is.
Yes. Catenary wires are a tried and tested technology that works well. We already have trams and catenary bus systems in Europe that work, so implementing this on a large scale would mean simply expanding an existing successful technology. Catenaries can also provide a lot more power as they work on a higher voltage. For large vehicles that can carry catenary pylons, this obviously makes more sense.
Smaller vehicles such as cars, would need a ground level power supply, as a catenary pylon would be far too cumbersome. I would anticipate that third-rail type systems would only be used on main roads such as highways, with high average speeds. Battery or small IC engines would provide power on smaller roads. Electric highways would probably be fenced off, but generally you wouldn't have a lot of people hanging around on highways anyway and the risk of being hit by a car on a multi-lane highway would be (and is) a far more serious hazard than electrocution. The third rail would be sunk into a slot in the road, so it would tend to be less of a threat than its railway equivalent. Also, the voltage would be much lower, so electrocutions would mostly be survivable.
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