ZAPPP EV E30!
Posted by JUMPNYC
I have plenty of room at home, price is what concerns me! 
|
I am pretty sure, considering current technology. Energy is not created or destroyed, just transformed. Electricity must be produced from other energy sources, and that process has more or less losses, considering that from the total energy input only so much energy comes out as electricity to the grid. After that, from the plant to the consumer, some energy is lost in heat produced at the wires, transformers, etc (Power plants are often far from the consumers). Just like the total energy produced by burning gasoline can't be completely transformed in mechanical energy to move the car. Thermal engines usually have relatively low efficiency, due to heat and pumping losses. Now if one multiply the successive efficiency ratios, an EV has always LOWER efficiency than the power source it is charged from. Even if there was an ideal EV, that could use all the electricity charged on it, some energy and resources would be needed to build it in the first place, and energy had to be produced somewhere to charge it. Note i am not saying EV are a bad solution, considering electricity comes from many sources, some of them are renewable! Same for hydrogen cars, the car itself is very clean and only produces H2O, but most hydrogen is made out of natural gas at some plant, so the bad emissions are concentrated there.  Why not use regular cars powered from that same gas?!
There is no "free" or "green" energy, just compromise solutions. 
|
|
What about wind power, wave power, geothermal power, solar power, tide power, hydro-electric power?
There are lots of 'not so polluting' sources for electricity 
|
|
The thing that the fuel cell companies completely fail to disclose; is that apart from the fuel cell producing only water; is that the fuels that are cracked for the hydrogen are waste products just as hazardous as other technologies.
For example; GM uses gasoline to power it's version of the fuel cell. What they don't tell you is what to do with the gasoline once the hydrogen has been removed form it! Same applies to methyl hydrate or any of the other hydrogen rich fuels. Might be that Mercedes has one of the cleanest fuel cell systems...it runs on Borax(sodium borate). After the hydrogen is removed, you are left with Boraxo...soap 
|
Wind power require huge wind towers, erected on windy spots, usually mountain tops. those places are often environment sensitive areas, plus the consumers are far away from there, requiring long transmission lines, with respective losses. The towers+generator themselves are big and bulky, need losts of steel and concrete plus major work to place them at the final location. Plus the wind is unpredictable, and seldom coincides with consumption peaks, requiring other plants on the network to fill in the gaps. On top of that, if there is too much or too little wind they don't work at all. Over here we have considerable power of wind turbines working, the deal is ALL power they generate is bought by the network at a fixed (high) price and that expense is paid by all the consumers. Wave power: there is no economically viable technology yet. Geothermal power: good resource for HVAC systems on buildings or houses, if there is a possible source nearby. The equipment is very expensive, and seldom economically viable, is definitely a path to develop further. Solar power (photo-voltaic?): Very expensive equipment, again we have lots of m2 of it. Power is ALL sold to the grid, consumers pay it. Hydro electric: renewable and clean in operation, except it needs a huge dam to work. It takes space, and destroys valleys that had other use before, so not all rivers are suitable to be damed. Dams can be equipped to operate reversed, to pump water from below to above and use that water latter on the turbine. This can compensate the wind power "fluctuation" at expense of the transmission losses on the power lines, plus efficiency losses of the pumping ant turbinate hydraulic process, about 0.75. Also the "artificial" lake, with still and deep water is a source of methane and CO2 gases, from decomposing mater under water, equivalent to emissions from a gas plant of similar power. Nuclear: it would be good, except for the radioactive waste and danger of catastrophic failure...
Nuclear fission: How much longer we must wait?! They are working on it for decades now! 
|
|
Sorry Jose,
I only see the same old tired excuses why we don't get off our behinds and make these things 'financially' viable 
I have visited one of the 'wind turbine farms' in the Southern California mountains and there is little to no evidence of ecological disaster other than the few metres of ground around the bases of the towers...and of course the dirt tracks that service vehicles use to access the towers. Other than a few displaced scrub brush bushes and cactuses, the ecology is pretty much undisturbed. The other sources I mentioned also have equally viable and non-intrusive possibilities. Tide power is currently being use very successfully in the mouth of the Thames river in England. Geothermal power runs a lot of Iceland; heating for sure and also steam turbines that produce electricity. These technologies are not in the far future; they are here now but being delayed by the big oil concerns. Oil is still relatively plentiful and cheap but it won't last forever and we need to be ready with alternatives. CEO/accountant bonuses based on the price of oil are probably the worst enemy of development of alternative technologies. If the oil companies spent even a fraction of the money they do fighting alternate energy, we would be a lot closer to becoming oil independent. I don't care who controls the alternate energy sources, just so long as we have them! |
I didn't meant to say alternative energies shouldn't be exploited or developed, just there to point that any source of energy has an impact on the environment. When you visited the wind turbine farm, you saw the disturbs, and qualified it as pretty much undisturbed, some wildlife may think the opposite. The only free energy is the one you save, every kWh saved is one less to be produced somewhere and transported to you, and less you have to pay. The alternative energies are not necessarily NEW. There have been windmills since forever. There are old tide mills in Portugal, those were abandoned because it was so much more convenient to make flour at a factory near the city than to carry the cereal to the mill and the flour back. In the 1950, the Benguela railway (Angola) operated steam engines that used eucalyptus wood for fuel. The trees were planted to grow along the line, and chopped in bits adequate for firnig the locomotives. That is completely renewable energy, despite the low-tech involved. Those trains were repllaced by new diesel locomotives, burning oil. 
Same with cars, people no longer walks, and most moved to the suburbs far away from work and services, so we depend on the automobile now! Hence the need for massive amount of energy, let it be oil, electricity or whatever we choose to power our cars from. What we need is to go back to basics, use less energy. |
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.