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There is no gas shortage

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shardian:
Coal power runs this country - plain and simple. What is really crappy is that the Fed is spending next to zero dollars on clean coal technology, all the while that "plug-in-electrics" are being pushed for.

Hello people, the extra load to power electric or air cars isn't gonna magically appear from outer space. Our electric grid is already strained at the outer limits of California and New York. We will need to build our infrastructure big time in coal fired plants, and also nuclear plants.

danny_galaga:

solar is getting a bad deal in r & d at the moment. even now, you can generate enough power from the top of your roof to supply your whole house. the trick is to make it cheaper to make the cells. if many more people have solar houses- no extra drain on power grid...

patrickl:

--- Quote from: shardian on April 06, 2008, 05:15:12 am ---Coal power runs this country - plain and simple. What is really crappy is that the Fed is spending next to zero dollars on clean coal technology, all the while that "plug-in-electrics" are being pushed for.

Hello people, the extra load to power electric or air cars isn't gonna magically appear from outer space. Our electric grid is already strained at the outer limits of California and New York. We will need to build our infrastructure big time in coal fired plants, and also nuclear plants.

--- End quote ---
Well the cool thing is that they use a coal plant to feed the algae (the CO2 that is) I thought that was pretty clever. Obviously eventually the CO2 will end up in the atmosphere anyway (when you burn the biofuel/ethanol), but at least it gets used twice.

Electric cars would mostly charge at night, so then they wouldn't add so much to the maximum strain on the grid (which occurs during the day). In fact it would mean that the plants could keep running at a more steady power level all day.

More importantly, a car engine is incredibly inefficient. IIRC it only converts about 30% of the energy into motion (and then the Gasoline needs to be refined first too which costs a lot of energy and pollution as well). A proper energy plant gets closer to 90%. So that means it would use only a third of the resources. Then the emissions of a power plant are a lot easier (more economical) to clean too. So the total pollution coming from the same energy used by an electric car is a lot less than with a gasoline powered car.

An electric car really is a lot better for the environment. It uses less resources and creates less pollution. A lot less.

At least up to the point where the batteries need to be replaced. Somehow I always have the feeling that it can never be good for the environment to have tons of broken batteries left over. They are full of harmful chemicals. Did they figure out something to fix that problem already?

patrickl:

--- Quote from: danny_galaga on April 06, 2008, 07:27:27 am ---
solar is getting a bad deal in r & d at the moment. even now, you can generate enough power from the top of your roof to supply your whole house. the trick is to make it cheaper to make the cells. if many more people have solar houses- no extra drain on power grid...

--- End quote ---
Yeah, the research seems more interested in increasing efficiency of the cells rather than on increasing production and lowering prices. They really are only seem to be looking at military (and space) applications rather than for clean energy on earth. If we would all just cover our roof in cheap low efficiency cells then it would save a huge amount of oil/coal etc.

patrickl:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on April 06, 2008, 12:41:55 pm ---
--- Quote from: patrickl on April 06, 2008, 11:22:07 am ---yeah, the research seems more interested in increasing efficiency of the cells rather than on increasing production and lowering prices. They really are only seem to be looking at military (and space) applications rather than for clean energy on earth. If we would all just cover our roof in cheap low efficiency cells then it would save a huge amount of oil/coal etc.

--- End quote ---

Because there's a break even point on solar cell efficiency before it becomes economically feasible.  And it hasn't been reached.  Once we get there, we can figure out the manufacturing.
--- End quote ---
The point is that they are mostly ( irtually exclusively) researching high efficiency cells. Those will be very hard to make cheap. There are much cheaper and simpler alternatives possible, but the space/military researchers obviously don't care, because they don't need that. Yield per weight and volume are much more important to them.

It's not so much, first we get them refined and then we make it cheaper. You need to research in a completely different direction to make them cheaper. You need to use cheaper materials.

It's like using gold for heat insulation (as they do in space applications). You can research how to improve that to the maximum and then start researching how to make it cheaper. Reality is that that will never yield a product for domestic use.

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