Electric Cars

[67hat34c]

You know for as much as we hear about alternative energy we dont seem to hear much about electric cars. To me they would make a more logical choice that trying to convert corn to alcohol or water to hydrogen. There is no real negative energy loss with electric cars.

Saw this in Business Week and also looked up the company web site.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2008/id20080616_955452.htm

 

[Pascal]

and where is the electricity goign to come from ? when is the last time a nuclear plant has been built in this country.

imagine a few hundred thousands owners pluging in to recharge every night...

 

[krush]

The CEO of my new employer talked to us newbs yesterday (about 22 new hires). I got to talk to him one on one too...pretty personable and impressive for a company that did 1.1 billion gross last year.

Anyway, he and the other VP's said America has a capacity problem for electricity. I can confirm this as I've worked at a plant before and seen what is going on with the grid. Expect to see black and brown outs within a few years.

30+ coal plants that were LICENSED to be built are on hold now because of the jackass politicians. Some are asking (after the license was granted, mind you) "what are you going to do with the CO2?"

This CO2 bullshit will come to an end when the power starts shutting off around America like it does in third world countries.....

 

[Boatsb]

Electric cars make sens if you charge them from new renewable sources. Put panels on you house or a windmill out back if you want to run them "green". If you tap the power grid to recharge you will not be helping the situation at all.

 

[CHECK 6]

Time for nuks and electric cars and heat that should be our next national get out of the depression project...Cory

 

[67hat34c]

Building the power grid should be priority one, Introduction of electric cars will not be an immediate thing. But they seem to be the most reasonable answer to some problems.

 

[Boatsb]

Especially if we can get some oversize hamster wheels attached to generators and finally have a use for all the cats in the area.

 

[67hat34c]

IDEA #10015693.

Get exercise bikes and fit them with alternators and get all the hot women in the neighbor hood to ride them and charge the car. Possibly charge them a Gym fee to help with costs of the bikes.

 

[Steve Smith]

I think T. Boone Pickens has a sensible idea. Force WHOEVER wins the election to seriously address this problem.

He doesn't want your money. He wants you to stand up and be counted.

Go to http://www.pickensplan.com/ and read what he has to say. If you like it, and you have a website, put a link to his page on yours. If you have signature lines in your emails, put his website in your signature line.

When his name and Plan are just *everywhere*, it won't be possible to ignore the issue any longer. The next President who tried, would face impeachment.

 

[Genesis]

I think T. Boone Pickens has a sensible idea. Force WHOEVER wins the election to seriously address this problem.

He doesn't want your money. He wants you to stand up and be counted.

Riiiight.

Better look at where he's stuck his money in the last few months before coming out with "his plan."

Hint: He ain't do this for free, and while it may benefit us, it is rather cleverly designed to follow what he already did investment-wise, just like Bill Gross of PIMCO bought a bunch of agency debt cheap and then advocated a bailout "for all of us."

 

[Steve Smith]

I assume he invested in wind generators and in Natural-Gas-futures and drilling rights in natural gas fields.

He's not a stupid person.

Does that mean that we should burn only coal and never tap our wind-power, just because someone might profit from it?

I don't care WHAT he invests in. I assume he is putting his money where his mouth is. I respect that.

It does not matter which billionaires invest in natural gas and wind power, or how much. Billionaires are billionaires mostly because they are smarter than you and I. Some of them are outright crooks, which is how they got and kept their money. Half the countries in the world are run by such people. I don't think Pickens is a crook. I think he has taken a good hard look at what is going on in the world, and in this country, and I think he cares about the future of this country, just as do you and I.

I think Pickens has a good plan, and I don't care how many billions of dollars of profit he makes off of it. If he can make this happen, he deserves every one of those billions.

What he is proposing is good for the country, and should have been done long ago.

Now, take another look at the idea of using our wind power on a commercial scale. If it can supply twenty percent of our energy needs for a one-time investment and maintenance costs thereafter, doesn't that make sense? Wind-generator farms have been around for some decades, and are a practical and proven thing.

Who doesn't want you to get your electricity from the wind?

The OIL companies. They certainly don't want competition, unless they own it, and they don't own the wind.

It's nothing personal; it's just business.

http://www.pickensplan.com/

 

[67hat34c]

He is building his own wind farm currently, Going to be the worlds largest. Problem is he is going to have problems getting the power to the consumers, no transmission lines. This is where he needs the feds to step in and get the easments and build the towers and put up the lines. He is also pushing to get the feds to sponsor more sites and get the wind power up an running.

Sure bet he invested in GE who builds the generators. Yes this is a good plan and it needs public support. As far as i can see there are no other plans out there, just a lot of talk.

 

[krush]

His idea to get away from nat gas for power generation is dumb. The amount of combined cycle gas-turbine plants that was built between 1998-2004 is pretty much the reason the price of natural gas sky rocketed.

Using natural gas to make electricity is stupid. It's such a perfect fuel for heating homes and transportation. However, the plants have been built and are there.

We need to burn more coal and build more nukes.

Wind power is not the solution. I'm not sure if I believe is 2000 mW claim in one little city. Last time I checked the largest wind turbines were about 1.5-2 mW at full tilt (which, inconveniently, is about 30% of the time).

A big coal plant or nuke plant is going to be around 1500-2000 mW...just to put it into perspective.

You know, if we started turning off some of the street lights that light up highways like a runway, we could probably save a lot of electricity....but then the same whining lib-tards that bitch about hippie crap would bitch about how the government needs to "do something" because they didn't teach their 16 year old kid to drive properly.

 

[Steve Smith]

There's a choice that can be made.

Which would you rather be downwind of?

Coal is my third choice.

Nukes take a long time to build and permit, and have fuel waste issues, and decommissioning issues.

Wind generators have no hazardous waste, and when they wear out we can send them back to made-in-the-USA-General Electric for repair/rebuild/recycle.

We have HUGE coal reserves. If we burn that to provide for future needs, we can have cities or farms that look like Beijing, where you can hardly see one city block...

The other downside of that is whatever you choose to believe about global warming, and how far atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can be pushed before it becomes real enough to put our costal lands thirty feet underwater.

So, wind has some attractive features. If some wind locations only blow a third of the time, in the course of a year they still generate some total amount of energy, and that's what counts.

The power grid can average that out.

In the long run we will not be burning fossil fuel for energy...it will all be solar and fusion.

 

[67hat34c]

Krush, not sure I follow part of your response. I think he wants to get away from Natural gas in power plants and use that fuel to power cars, CNG cars.

I also am amazed with how many street lights there are and how close togeter they are. Why so many? Turn them off, or at least ever other one. Why so many lights turned on in office buildings, Would think corporations would cut back on this expense.

Coal plants are getting bad press because they emitt CO2 , CO etc. But they are a must for a country as hungry as this one. Nukes? How much uranium is actually out there. Saw that Australia has 25% of the world supply and us is around 10%. Glad to see Middle east was not on the list.

 

[Boatsb]

Not to be a tree hugging Veg head because I am a Dino burning carnivore but the idea of wind, geothermal, hydro and solar as additions to the grid makes sense. The wind blows with or with out windmills. The sun shines weather we have panels or not so take advantage of the free energy and add it to the grid. Every gallon of oil not needed in a power plant can go to my boat.

 

[krush]

Krush, not sure I follow part of your response. I think he wants to get away from Natural gas in power plants and use that fuel to power cars, CNG cars.

Coal plants are getting bad press because they emitt CO2 , CO etc. But they are a must for a country as hungry as this one. Nukes? How much uranium is actually out there. Saw that Australia has 25% of the world supply and us is around 10%. Glad to see Middle east was not on the list.

My point is that thousands of megawatts in capacity was built in the last 5-10 years in the form of natural gas burning power plants. Unless the price of natural gas skyrockets even more, these plants are going to be used and are going to burn natural gas. The capital costs must be recouped. Additionally, we are running out of generating capacity in the USA and no new coal plants are being built--so the natural gas plants WILL keep burning natural gas.

Wind power won't even put a dent in America's electricity demand. A 2nd grader can figure that out.

The problem with all the hippy power is the huge capital costs. The stuff wouldn't even be considered if there weren't HUGE subsidies invovled.

Want to know what is even better than wind power? Burning trash. I just on a tour today of the Wheelabrator Millbury trash burning plant. It can burn 1500 tons of garbage a day and delivers ~41 mW to the grid. So it solves two problems, burns trash and gets rid of it and makes electricity.

The emissions are pretty damn clean too. Oh and for ever 10 trucks of trash that come in, only 1 truck in ash goes out. And about 35% of that truck is metal which is recycled.

Japan has these plants in the center of many of its cities. It reduces transportation of trash and makes electricity!

More info: http://www.wheelabratortechnologies.com/WTI/CEP/millbury.asp

Also, ALL PLANT THAT INVOLVE COMBUSTION PUT OUT CO2. Natural gas puts out CO2 also....it doesn't freakn' matter what you burn, CO2 is the product of complete efficient combustion.

Every gallon of oil not needed in a power plant can go to my boat.

Compared to other fuel sources, very little oil is burned in power plants in this country.

 

[67hat34c]

Ok got your point. But one thing about gov. subs. They have been there since the beginning of time and will always be there. Would rather see them spend tax dollars on something that will have an actual return that what they currently subsidize. Building our countries infra structure is a must. It will create actual jobs as long as they dont hire illegals to do the work and of course make components in freaking china. The infrastructure projects of the 1930's were all sound and did actual good, TVA, Hoover Dam, etc etc. Possibly the wind and solar farms that T Boone Pickens wants to build could be the modern equivilent.

I would have to guess there can be actual studies of the worlds wind farms that can prove what they can actualy do so I would like to see this data.

For immediate fix, we do need to cut back on the ridiculous amounts of waste power such as street lights etc.

 

[Norm Mayer]

The real problem is, so much is hidden from us, the US taxpayer. There is over 300 years of natural gas supply IN THIS COUNTRY that is being denied to us do to bans on drilling, etc. My grandfather's farm had an oil well drilled on it, and produced oil, but also so much natural gas that it took TWO regulators to get the pressure down to where it could be entered into the "grid". Do you know what they did with it? They capped it off, so it couldn't be used, then later pulled the wellpipe and recycled the well casing. That was over 30 years ago. Lots of people know that that natural gas is there, and easy to get to. But it still remains untapped.
To make matters worse, the Germans, in WWII, discovered how to turn natural gas into synthetic diesel fuel (which, by the way, is how virtually all vehicles are powered in Africa) which is actually superior in quality to petroleum based diesel fuel!!!
In Europe last year, diesel powered cars actually passed gas powered cars in total production. Not TRUCKS, CARS! What is wrong with us! The Democrats are leading us to this terrible energy crisis. They don't want a natural gas well in THIER back yard, even tho we have the technology to drill without doing damage to the environment. People, we need to let technology help us out of this delemna. Technology isn't just for a better cell phone, it can lead us out of this energy crisis. Synthetic diesel fuel isn't the only answer; as other posts have mentioned, there are many other technologies that can help, like wind power, nuclear energy, etc. Our BIG problem is that we are doing Nothing! Let,s push the Government to get off their (our) buts and get busy solving the problem before the middle east OWNS us, which isn't far away. IMHO

 

[67hat34c]

My cousin and his wife are both engineers who work for Progress Energy in the power plant development division. Going to ask him his take on the Pickens plan.