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69 comments on Urban Survival: The GOM Situation

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CmdrPhil on October 2, 2005 - 7:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Your estimates for power requirements for national electric transportation needs sound about right to me.  Unfortunately people want to drive wherever they want, whenever they want.  One of the reasons cited by GM and Ford for dropping electric car support is that their customers wouldn't accept long recharge times.  The challenge to develop batteries for plug-in hybrids (or electric cars) is not only to increase cycle lifetime and charge capacity but also to increase charging rates, so that the end user has can get home from the work, plug in, and recharge for a night on the town.  And yes, that is why there is a gas engine in the car, but people will still want to have their cake and eat it too.  I agree with you that the sensible way to make mass adoption of hybrids for personal transportation work is to have everyone recharge overnight, but even with financial incentives (lower overnight rates) not everyone will choose to do so.

Also as fuel oil and natural gas prices go up many homeowners will choose to switch to electric heat.  And it's not just heat for homes - a number industrial energy needs will switch over as well.  Peak oil and peak natural gas will tend place a lot of increased demand on our electric grid independent of our transportation needs.

My point is that we already know how to increase grid capacity.  Public utilities plan for growth as a normal part of business.  It's just a matter of making sure investment dollars are available and estimates for future demand are realistic.

Hydrogen distribution for fuel cells is an entirely different story.  Then we still have to address on-board storage issues, H2 production issues and fuel cell cost issues.

Maybe biodiesel works for Brazil, but I doubt it will work for nations far off the equator like the US and Canada.

So go hybrids.  Go Toyota.  Support gov R&D support for better batteries, more efficient electric drive trains, continued solar, wind, coal gasification and CO2 sequestration technology, and subsidized loans for electric grid infrastructure enhancements (both efficiency and capacity).

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step back on October 2, 2005 - 8:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There is no need for recharging only overnight if we use swappable battery packs. You pull into an "energy" station and they swap out the depleted battery pack while swapping in a newly charged pack. The whole operation should take less than 3 minutes.

The internet could be used to broadcast to everyone in real time, when and how much recharge load the grid can handle. Electricity prices vary based on this info.

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Engineer-Poet on October 2, 2005 - 11:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Swappable battery packs mean not just a radical redesign of vehicles, but an infrastructure investment on the order of hydrogen-fuel stations.  This isn't going to happen fast enough to help, if it happens at all.
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step back on October 3, 2005 - 6:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Swappable fuel-cells or other such energy-storage modules is going to have to happen with hydrogen anyway. No one is going to be pumping liquified hydrogen through a hose and nozzle. Imagine the cryogenic burn you get if you spill some on your hand. Ouch.
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Magnus Redin on October 3, 2005 - 7:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Why use hydrogen as fuel with a completely new infrastructure when it easily can be uses in the current refineries to upgrade crude and thus distribute the energy content within the current infrastructure?

I guess that the best hydrogen distribution method when oil get realy expensive is as synthetic methane. And then you reuse the natural gas infrastructure for distribution.

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Engineer-Poet on October 3, 2005 - 10:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The problems with synthetic methane are two:  efficiency of use and the carbon.  Methane is no easier to use efficiently than gasoline (compared to e.g. zinc, which is usable at about 62% efficiency in Zn-air fuel cells) and you've got to obtain the carbon somewhere.  Fossil carbon will eventually run short, and renewable carbon isn't available from conventional sources isn't available in the quantities required.
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Anonymoose on October 3, 2005 - 11:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If battery manufacturers formed a consortium to define an ISO standardized form factor and operating specs for these swappable batteries then auto makers could make receptacles built in for them. Existing autos could have the receptacles retrofitted into the trunk. The receptacles would probably have to be tailored to each vehicles power requirements and would convert (if neccessary) the battery output into whatever format the car needs. New cars of course could be made to run directly off the batteries. As far as infrastructure goes, you only need as many gas-station-battery-swap-booths as required for the number of swappable-battery-cars in the area.
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step back on October 3, 2005 - 12:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I was thinking more in terms of a swappable battery pack that is part of a GM-like, modular under-carriage structure. You want the batteries to be low-hanging so as to keep the center of gravity close to the ground. This reduces chance of roll over.

You would drive into an open-trench service station similar to those fast lube job shops. They swap the battery from underneath without having to jack the car up. Maybe they can lube your hybrid car's gas engine at the same time if the car has a fossil fuel burning, booster engine.

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mw on October 3, 2005 - 1:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Why all the talk about batteries, fuel, etc... and no talk about human powered vehicles?

That's the biggest bang for your buck of all... there must be, all over North America, a huge - massive - number of people that could trade some, or all, of their fossile-fueled transportation for human powered transport.

Too little mind-effort is spent on high tech solutions. Three wheeled bikes with comfy seats, high tech generators (for lights) and cargo carrying capability (on board or via trailers) could easily be mass produced at much lower cost... and given away... and would be far more effective in reducing overall fossil fuel energy use than any other initiative I can think of, other than a mass die off thanks to some new flu virus.

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mw on October 3, 2005 - 1:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I sure wish I used the preview feature more. I meant of course "too little effort is spent on LOW TECH solutions"...
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Anonymoose on October 3, 2005 - 4:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
While i really like the idea of people powered transport, i can only see it being viable for short range, or flat land trips, in weather that is warm enough.
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mw on October 2, 2005 - 8:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Also as fuel oil and natural gas prices go up many homeowners will choose to switch to electric heat.  And it's not just heat for homes - a number industrial energy needs will switch over as well.

Bingo.

We'll be reading about homes that burn down this winter from poorly utilized electric space heaters, unfortunately. Winter electricity usage is likely to hit new highs, reducing spare capacity and the ability to take equipment off-line for maintenance.

I wonder if its possible that growing reliance on electricity due to high fossil fuel costs might ever (this year, next or ?) bring summer time conditions of near-peak capacity utilization to the winter, where failure would be dangerous, not just an inconvenience, in many locales.

I've not researched this but assume its possible.

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Everett on October 3, 2005 - 12:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There is probably going to be a tough situation this winter if electrical demand is high and NG distribution is perturbed.  Since NG powered turbines provide most of the peaking capacity for the electrical grid, a shortage of NG could go two ways:

- Electricity is prioritized and NG for home heating is reduced.  Many people will learn about pilot lights.

- Home heating is prioritized and some peaking capacity is given up.  People with oil or electric heat learn how well their houses are insulated during brownout or rolling blackout periods. These people also realize that building so many NG-dependent power plants was a rather bad idea.

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Engineer-Poet on October 2, 2005 - 11:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hey, don't take my word for it.  Feel free to check my numbers.
One of the reasons cited by GM and Ford for dropping electric car support is that their customers wouldn't accept long recharge times.
Plug-in hybrids don't make people wait.  Of course, their savings will be determined by how often they plug in... but people have a pretty good incentive to do so even at current prices, and the reduced number of trips to the gas station is all the inducement some people would need.
Also as fuel oil and natural gas prices go up many homeowners will choose to switch to electric heat.
In areas where generation is gas-fired, electric rates will follow gas prices.  At this point, cogenerating furnaces are the "killer app"; a car engine may be only 20% efficient, but if you can use the other 80% that winds up as waste heat your budget looks a lot better.  Unfortunately, doing this takes time.

Envelope time:  typical gas-heated home uses 50 million BTU/year for heat.  Average vehicle drives what, 14K miles/year and gets ~24 MPG?  Call it 580 gallons/year at 126,000 BTU/gallon:  73 million BTU.  If 35% of driving (4900 miles) is done during the heating season, that's 26 million BTU.  Combined cold-season consumption:  76 million BTU of fuel.

Burn this fuel in a cogenerating furnace at 25% electrical efficiency and 90% overall efficiency.  You get 49 million BTU of heat (close enough) and 18.9 million BTU (5540 kWh) of electricity.  If the vehicle uses 350 Wh/mile at the charger, you get enough electricity to drive 15800 miles; if you only drive 4900 miles you'd only use 1715 kWh and have 3820 kWh left over.  That's enough to use 1 kW continuous for 159 days of the year, replacing the gas or coal that would be used to power the grid.

The improvements get much, much better if you use the surplus electricity to run heat pumps; how much better depends on the efficiency you allow.

Yes, it sounds nutty but the numbers all work out.  We could be getting so much more out of what we use than we are; we just haven't implemented the (relatively simple) technologies to do it.  Well, it's time.

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mw on October 3, 2005 - 1:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The fuel conversion numbers may work out, but do the economics? A cogeneration plant in every home is going to be considerably more costly than your average current forced air or water fed heating system.
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Engineer-Poet on October 3, 2005 - 4:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, that depends...

Climate Energy LLC has a venture going with Honda to make a cogenerating furnace (which would burn fuel conventionally when heat demands outran the cogenerator output).  The cogenerator section produces 1 kW at about 21% electric efficiency, 85% overall (it does not appear to recover latent heat in the engine exhaust).  The cost premium over a conventional furnace is about $4000.

It would take you quite a few years to pay this off.  (My personal opinion is that it's too small for the expense, and we should throw it back until it grows up. ;-)

That's the high-cost option.  At the other end are a whole family of engine designs cloned from a venerable English make, the Lister (sometimes called Listeroids).  They're widely manufactured in India, are rated at 6 HP (4.5 kW) in the single-cylinder version, have a thermal efficiency I calculate at about 30%, and run for about $1000 FOB Oregon.

You'd need a few tweaks to press this into domestic use in most places:  co-fuelling with natural gas or LPG, heat recovery system in the exhaust, noise suppression, vibration isolating mount, direct-drive alternator built into a modified flywheel.  Add a coolant pump and a heat exchanger for the furnace air, and you've got a complete cogenerating heating system.  I would be extremely surprised if this could not be built for $4000 complete, the same as a conventional furnace (automobile drivetrains cost about the same, and this thing is simpler).

How do you calculate payback?  On the relative cost for  a new installation, of course, but what for replacements?  The economics look a lot better for the Listeroid than the Honda, and more I don't know yet.

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69 comments on Urban Survival: The GOM Situation

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