Destined for failure. The future of electricity.

Here's an article about Shell's plans https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/with-oil-past-peak-shell-sharpens-2050-zero-emissions-goal and in the article is a link to an article about hydrogen paste which is goo that replaces liquid hydrogen.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That's not how I understand it at all. 
 

Power generating facilities have to be designed to handle PEAK demand (maximum at any time). No such thing as average. 

Off-peak usage is essentially wasted capacity. 
 It's less costly, because they are trying to encourage people and businesses to use it.

Power plants are most efficient when they run as close to a steady state as possible. 

Power plants need maintenance, grid needs maintenance, lines, transformers, etc.  

My thought is that currently we have high usage during the day and low at night.  With all-electric cars, it will be high 24/7  I can't estimate HOW high, but as you know the physical transport of electrons at 60Hz is not just a done deal.  Tranformers, conductors, and other components in the grid have a fixed life.  Heck, I've lost count of how many times I had to repair a broken neutral in a J-box because the years of 60Hz buzzing through it finally caused it to fail.

I'm also thinking about bearings in generators, use of water for cooling.... anything mechanical, if you use it more, it will need more maintenance and have more failures.  It's not a matter of peak capacity, it's the physical number electrons you transport.  If you're closer to peak capacity for more hours in the day, things gonna break more frequently.

My point is that the more electrons we put through the grid, conductors, transformers, etc - and the more peak usage of the generation itself, the more maintenance and the more failures we'll experience.

Or, (since you know how I love metaphors) Jet engines are designed to hold together during maximum thrust and that is where they are at their most efficient... but that doesn't mean that is where they receive the least stress and wear on components.

Well, maybe we can put all the people who won't be working in the oil drilling, refining or trucking business to work :) I don't think anyone's expecting the mass adoption of EVs to just be magical, but maintaining the grid? We know how to do that.

Keith Tanner said:

Well, maybe we can put all the people who won't be working in the oil drilling, refining or trucking business to work :) I don't think anyone's expecting the mass adoption of EVs to just be magical, but maintaining the grid? We know how to do that.

can put the same people to work in solar panel factories.  Takes a lot of skilled labor to do that- good pay.

Or installation- that's skilled labor too.

Slippery (Forum Supporter) said:

Electric on at $120 would be impossible for me. 



 

Ho lee E36 M3.  My average bill is $90.  I have electric stove, dryer, a/c, hot water, etc. (gas heat).

Note that the price per KWh varies considerably across the US along with climate, so comparing actual electric bills is kinda pointless. I know my friends in CA pay about 2.5x what I do for the same amount of electricity.

Fair.  He also posted his kwhr numbers earlier which were ~1800/month, which is still nuts.

A little more granular here.  Knowing where Quasi works, I'm interested in what his employer is planning to do with the product mix his plant produces.  Heat exchangers will still be needed for A/C and other automotive heat transfer systems but ICE radiators production will drop over the coming years.   Other systems producers are also of interest to me such as exhaust system suppliers, foundry's making engine blocks and cylinder heads, and fuel system suppliers.  

EVs still need radiators for the battery temperature control systems.

Exhaust systems, well, demand may drop off eventually :) But it's certainly not going to be immediate, especially for the aftermarket replacement market. I imagine demand in that market may follow the new car market by 5-8 years.

Here is my basic issue. EVs to me strike me as something easy like recycling and while they are both good they don't strike at the core of the issue. What would be better is if we had better mass transit, more working from home and better bicycle lanes. If we stopped the massive consumerism that we current engage in now. 

The Three Rs are reduce, reuse and recycle not buy more E36 M3 and pretend it is all saved. 

And I am not arguing that EVs are bad but I just dont know they are the complete solution especially having work in the mining industry before

In reply to wawazat :

I took a new job in maintenance at Hi-Lex, but the global heat exchanger market is still going strong. Cars still need heat. EV Motors need coolers. Denso has already produced coolers for non ICE products through that plant. 

93EXCivic said:

Here is my basic issue. EVs to me strike me as something easy like recycling and while they are both good they don't strike at the core of the issue. What would be better is if we had better mass transit, more working from home and better bicycle lanes. If we stopped the massive consumerism that we current engage in now. 

The Three Rs are reduce, reuse and recycle not buy more E36 M3 and pretend it is all saved. 

 

And I am not arguing that EVs are bad but I just dont know they are the complete solution especially having work in the mining industry before

There is no single complete solution. All sides of the problem have to be addressed. 

The "more working from home" part of the solution got a bit of a kick start over the last year worldwide. I know I'm going to do my best to avoid going back into the office, so there's One Less Car. But we still need a car to get around for other reasons, so why not make that less of a burden?

BFH_Garage said:

The county next to us in SW Virginia just approved a 2,700 acre solar farm, but I didn't see any mention of how much power it will produce. 
 

the farmers say they will make more leasing their land for solar, it will be interesting to see if we hit a point where we are taking too much productive farm land out of production for solar and create food supply issues. 

Nah, we'll start draining dammed areas.

You take the land area covered in water by dams and put solar in and you're up roughly 8x the amount that the dams generated

https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-power-could-replace-all-us-hydro-dams-using-just-13-of-the-space

psteav (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to preach (fs) :

It's there, but have you met the dingus that the NCR put in charge of running it?  It's no wonder it doesn't produce any power.

Hey! He's got a theoretical degree!

In reply to Keith Tanner :

On the WFH thing, my energy bill has doubled since the wife and kids are working from home. No joke. Instead of the house idled at 58° and nothing running I now have the house at 64° and two PCs and no less than 5 laptops on from 5am to 11pm. Food consumption is up. Alcohol consumption is up. Wear and tear is up. WFH has been expensive for us. 

And since she is an investigator at CPS she uses her car for child visits. And since I'm an ass I ain't letting my Jeep go 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

noddaz said:

Slippery (Forum Supporter) said:

BFH_Garage said:

the farmers say they will make more leasing their land for solar, it will be interesting to see if we hit a point where we are taking too much productive farm land out of production for solar and create food supply issues. 

Put the solar farm in the desert. SW. 

Put the solar farm on top of every mall in the country.  Acres of real estate waiting to be used.

*Not where there is snow

 

Otherwise I agree, everyoncould have a solar panel or 2 on their house too

Let's assume we get a 3 foot snowfall overnight. ( never happened in my 72 years but let's say it did)  well every solar panel on stilts 3 feet high wouldn't be affected. Probably want solar panels on stilts anyway rather than mow the grass between rows of panels set on the ground. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm not sure about trucking for long time. Here in Austin and working for company that just yesterday delivered thousands of cases of water out. The amount of moving trucks it's taking right now in our city alone is bonkers. Add in IF you have power, we'd have to have trucks that can handle heavy loads for up to 12-14 hours at a time times 50. 
 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

noddaz said:

Slippery (Forum Supporter) said:

BFH_Garage said:

the farmers say they will make more leasing their land for solar, it will be interesting to see if we hit a point where we are taking too much productive farm land out of production for solar and create food supply issues. 

Put the solar farm in the desert. SW. 

Put the solar farm on top of every mall in the country.  Acres of real estate waiting to be used.

*Not where there is snow

 

Otherwise I agree, everyone could have a solar panel or 2 on their house too

Solar panels work remarkably well in the cold, and based solely on how they work they should be able to melt ice quicker than any other surface in a homestead.  They're typically mounted on an angle so snow doesn't get a great chance to hold onto the panel

If you are somewhere they get enough snow to cover it, well you hook up a system designed to warm the panels as a preventative measure.  Its not like you have to worry about electricity powering the warming system.

Subscriber-unavailabile said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm not sure about trucking for long time. Here in Austin and working for company that just yesterday delivered thousands of cases of water out. The amount of moving trucks it's taking right now in our city alone is bonkers. Add in IF you have power, we'd have to have trucks that can handle heavy loads for up to 12-14 hours at a time times 50. 

There will always be situations where ICE makes more sense. I think local trucking is a good use case for EVs because you get to regenerate a lot of power and it's usually a pretty predictable schedule. But every once in a while, things go sideways and a different solution becomes preferable. If it's not the power grid going down due to a cascade of failures, it's a refinery fire  :)

QuasiMofo (John Brown) Forum Supporter said:

In reply to wawazat :

I took a new job in maintenance at Hi-Lex

Cool John.  You at Battle Creek, Hudson, or Litchfield?

Keith Tanner said:

Subscriber-unavailabile said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm not sure about trucking for long time. Here in Austin and working for company that just yesterday delivered thousands of cases of water out. The amount of moving trucks it's taking right now in our city alone is bonkers. Add in IF you have power, we'd have to have trucks that can handle heavy loads for up to 12-14 hours at a time times 50. 

There will always be situations where ICE makes more sense. I think local trucking is a good use case for EVs because you get to regenerate a lot of power and it's usually a pretty predictable schedule. But every once in a while, things go sideways and a different solution becomes preferable. If it's not the power grid going down due to a cascade of failures, it's a refinery fire  :)

Biggest change for trucking that I've seen advocated for is hydrogen cells.  The trucks are constantly on the move so you don't need to worry about the fuel escaping, and if you can get the infrastructure in place for that then you've got a great start for the possibility of hydrogen cells in cars.

I literally live in snow with solar panels, they do usually self clean but there are circumstances where they don't. I've lived with them for over 2 decades

My comment was to not put them on the roof in snow country because roofs catch snow, especially mostly flat commercial roofs. Shoveling snow off panels is just asking for damage

In reply to Mr_Asa :

If they are warm enough to melt snow , there is sun on them. What happens sometimes is the snow is melting off and leaves a very small almost condensation level of moisture on them. This freezes making the panel not smooth anymore. Snow falls on it and sticks to it and blocks the panel. It happens rarely but it does happen.

If the panel is covered it's not producing electricity so a heater using the electricity it isn't producing won't really work without drawing from the battery bank. You pretty much never ever want to produce heat with a battery bank, it's horrid for them

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Don't get me wrong I have no problem with a electric rig. My biggest hurdle would be getting over the vroom noises. I can't even drive with 2 headphones in, I don't even look at the tach while driving. 
Besides the electric infrastructure. I'm curious how lithium mining will work out. More ICE vehicle more lithium, so prices will go up, then everything follows suit. If lithium on the market has a huge increase then cars will cost more. 
Briefly googling Mexico has the largest deposit(hello cartel). But seems there's a lot in "neutral" countries, mainly Australia. Curious When can they produce electric cargo ships...

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Mr_Asa :

If the panel is covered it's not producing electricity so a heater using the electricity it isn't producing won't really work without drawing from the battery bank. You pretty much never ever want to produce heat with a battery bank, it's horrid for them

I was stationed in DC and working for a week at one of our remote facilities one winter.  We had a blizzard come through and knock out the power lines.  There were generators hooked up to the station, and those generators had trickle chargers on the batteries and block warmers plumbed into the system.

Some damned fool didn't plug either of those into station power, so when the power lines went down I got to sit there in the glow of a backup UPS and listen to the generator try to crank itself over with a frozen battery.  Was a cold night, but someone eventually got out there with enough juice to start the system up.