When people talk about fossil fuels they only discuss the negatives. When people talk about renewables they only discuss the positives.
I'm under the impression that lithium ion batteries can be recycled. Now if we're talking environmental impact on mining the lithium, then I don't know anything on that. FWIW, Musk says the end of life car batteries can be re-used in less demanding storage applications, such as storing energy from solar generation. That said, R&D into battery tech is probably the key for continuing adoption of EVs.
My dad's career has been in power, and while he may not say that the grid need's replacement, he say's its overall condition is weakening. Public Utility Commissions and other forces favor low power rates over preemptive maintenance projects and such. To complicate things, many on those commissions don't have tech backgrounds. The lights come on, so what's the problem?
And there will never be a way to charge an electric car in 5 minutes like refueling a gasoline car. There is a place for electric vehicles but there is no way they overtake the combustion engine. I think only 1-2% of vehicles are electric and I think the ceiling is 10%.
www.pocket-lint.com
There will never be a way to charge an electric car in 5 minutes?
Future batteries, coming soon: Charge in seconds, last months and power over the air
Energy capture, storage and generation remains a vibrant area of research. Here we examine show of the research breakthrough in future battery tech
I think that we are probably about 5 years from seeing the benefits of this technology. EC will definitely exceed 10%.
LeBron and other like minded liberals do not care about kids/adults being abused and treated as modern day slaves. They only care about money and power
They don’t need natural gas. Although, one wonders how they cook food on an electric wok?
If that's true, I suppose you could use a propane tank - unless they're trying to block the burning of any gas for any purpose?
You could, but you can’t pick propane off a tree like you can batteries for a Tesla, so I doubt it would be allowed.
That electricity for Teslas and other EV is one day going to be produced from unicorn farts.
It's been a long time since I've read up on this, so things may have evolved a bit. That said, I believe the challenge lies in a safe way to store the hydrogen while on the vehicle. H2 gas is incredibly explosive, and requires a heavy/strong/expensive tank for safety. This added weight, complexity, and issues with overall safety counters a lot of the benefits. A method for storing/saturating hydrogen into a solid state medium has been developed, and is presumably much safer than hauling around dangerous H2 gas. However, the catch here is that it takes some crazy high temperature (~900 degF) to release the hydrogen from the media for consumption. There are also reformers that can split H2 gas out of natural gas, but that still kinda puts you back where you started with the need to consume a fossil fuel. However, the reformer to fuel cell would be a pretty clean way to utilize natural gas, vs burning it in a combustion engine.
The other major issue with hydrogen (as I understand it) is that it takes a significant amount of energy to produce as compared to how much energy the end product will provide.
You could be right. If the safe storage problem could get solved, you could let those wind generators spin around the clock and generate/store H2. As it stands now, the wind generators only spin if there is a demand for their power. There's no storage on the grid.
Agreed, if both gas and wind units are owned by the same utility, then wind would be utilized to its fullest extent. If independent producers are involved, they may operate under some form of price or sale agreement, as no investor would build a gas fired plant that wouldn't sell power on a windy day.
Right. And one of those constraints on the grid can be a contractual one, as opposed to a physical one.
I guess. Currently all gen at least in the Midwest (most of it) is in a marketplace. So they balance all the generation based on economics and physical constraints. Wind will get cut if there’s a loaded element but besides that it doesn’t usually get touched. There have been days that wind is around 75 or 80% of the load.
