The Volt

[matmat]

230 MPG. WOW. and they calculated it in a perfectly legitimate, non-deceitful and understandable way!

[Al_U_Card]

Sadly, the electrical grid is supported by coal-fired plants etc.

 

Once geo-thermal, solar and eolian get into the energy supply (when pigs fly and the oil companies stop buying and suppressing patents) that number will actually be a help.

[matmat]

Sadly, the electrical grid is supported by coal-fired plants etc.

 

Once geo-thermal, solar and eolian get into the energy supply (when pigs fly and the oil companies stop buying and suppressing patents) that number will actually be a help.

The issue I have with the marketing is that it preys on the math-ignorant masses. (as many other things do).

 

As far as cars go, imo, there are two useful metrics. One is money/mile, the other is pollution/mile. Problem is, of course, that neither of these two is very easy to measure.

[Fluffy]

Sadly, the electrical grid is supported by coal-fired plants etc.

 

Once geo-thermal, solar and eolian get into the energy supply (when pigs fly and the oil companies stop buying and suppressing patents) that number will actually be a help.

The issue I have with the marketing is that it preys on the math-ignorant masses. (as many other things do).

 

As far as cars go, imo, there are two useful metrics. One is money/mile, the other is pollution/mile. Problem is, of course, that neither of these two is very easy to measure.

WTF you should say money/km or pollution/km, I would even accept $/km :lol:

[Phil]

Would be more impressed with 230 MPH :lol:

[Al_U_Card]

Based on $ and availability maybe they should consider "revolt"?

[Al_U_Card]

Or how about:

 

"I took my girl out for a ride in my Volt and I got a discharge....."

 

 

Critic's review: "Shocking!" I.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E ! Magazine.

[gwnn]

Hey I just saw 'Who Killed The Electric Car'. Something changed since 2006? Or was the documentary just biased/false?

[PassedOut]

Hey I just saw 'Who Killed The Electric Car'. Something changed since 2006? Or was the documentary just biased/false?

I saw that a couple of years ago and found it fascinating. People liked them so much that the cars had to be confiscated...

[ArtK78]

There are five windmills near the inland waterway as you enter Atlantic City, NJ, by US 30. The windmills provide some of the electricity for the residents of Atlantic City.

 

There is also a project in the planning phase to construct a number of additional windmills about a mile offshore in the ocean.

 

It is a start.

[Gerben42]

    There are five windmills near the inland waterway as you enter Atlantic City, NJ, by US 30. The windmills provide some of the electricity for the residents of Atlantic City.

 

Windmills are great! Just one problem, to make up your electricity supply you need base power and variable power. Base power is the part that needs to be available always. 24 hours per day. Variable power is needed only then when there is higher demand.

 

Problem: Wind power is VERY variable. Sometimes you have lots, sometimes you have none. For this reason, no country can get their % of wind power much higher than 15%. I think Denmark has 13% which is really already too high for comfort.

 

Sadly, the electrical grid is supported by coal-fired plants etc.

 

Yes, in all but 4 countries I think. But those 4 countries show the way forward (the 4 I can think of right now are Sweden, Switzerland, France and Iceland, maybe there are more).

[Fluffy]

I have heard some news on the fact because teh goverment wants to close a nuclear plant before its lifetime expires, and everybody is talking about pros/cons etc.

 

Spain has a big trend of wind energy, not sure of the percentage but I though it was higher than 15%. Couple of years ago on a very windy day we had to drop some energy because we were colapsing the system

 

You cannot stop wind mills, nor nuclear plants, so you've got to stop the coal (and maybe water I supose) plants.

 

 

Surelly best way to handle would be being able to store the energy, but can't think a useful way (if mass = energy then you could create mass then destroy it :) )

 

My house is full of laptops, cell phones, wii handcontrols, and stuff with rechargable batterries, the green guys could argue that you should use the extra energy there.

[helene_t]

An efficient way to store energy is to pump water from downstream a hydropower plant to the reservoir.

[hotShot]

If you can afford a Volt and if you have money to spare, just put some solar cells on your roof and gain the energy you need to drive.

You'll be a poor man, but you'll have a good ecological feeling.

[hotShot]

An efficient way to store energy is to pump water from downstream a hydropower plant to the reservoir.

Are you sure it is "efficient" and not just without an alternative to store large amounts of energy?

[helene_t]

Yeah. According to Wikipedia, efficiency is 70-85% which is much better than hydrogen-based fuel cells, and comparable to batteries.

[hotShot]

Thanks!

So you get 70-80% of the electrical energy that was produced with an efficiency of about 40% from fossil fuel. To me that cycle has an efficency of about 32%. But obviously i understand efficiency a little wider.

[helene_t]

Lol, I didn't claim that any cycle involving pump storage is efficient. Say you produce energy from mouse treadmills and feed your mice with cheese from panda milk from pandas fed with bamboo grown in electricity-heated greenhouses, then you can get overall efficiency close to zero.

[hrothgar]

An efficient way to store energy is to pump water from downstream a hydropower plant to the reservoir.

Are you sure it is "efficient" and not just without an alternative to store large amounts of energy?

Pump storage systems are extremely efficient

 

Here's a relevant quote from wikipedia

 

Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained.[1] The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.

[Al_U_Card]

Seems to me that the US power grid needs a $trillion$ or so to be able to handle (equalize and transmit) all input sources. With the proper infrastructure, the size of the system is such that wind/solar/geothermal somewhere would be able to fill the demand, no matter what the timing. So, eventual replacement of the coal-fired plants could be done without spending $trillions$ to refurbish or otherwise encourage "dirty" energy.

[Apollo81]

Hey I just saw 'Who Killed The Electric Car'. Something changed since 2006? Or was the documentary just biased/false?

In 2007-8, gasoline went to $4.50 a gallon in the U.S., up from the $2-$3 range. Then the public/industry got all interested in fuel economy again.

[vuroth]

Pump storage systems are extremely efficient

Interesting. Beyond the fact that it's enormously difficult to build a hydroelectric plant (due to non-greenhouse environmental impact), I would have thought that most plants run with a nearly full reservoir anyways. Aren't you creating an inefficiency in the first place by running the reservoir a bit lower, to allow for pumpback?

 

The long term outlook, I think, is that we are going to see electricity prices skyrocket in a way that will make us long for the gentle increases in gas/oil prices. It's really the only way bring alternatives to the forefront.

 

When that happens, people will be less excited about the Volt.

[hrothgar]

Pump storage systems are extremely efficient

Interesting. Beyond the fact that it's enormously difficult to build a hydroelectric plant (due to non-greenhouse environmental impact), I would have thought that most plants run with a nearly full reservoir anyways. Aren't you creating an inefficiency in the first place by running the reservoir a bit lower, to allow for pumpback?

I don't think you quite understand how these systems work

 

Here's a classic example of a pump stoarge system.

 

Find a find a river that runs past a mountain

Cut the top off the mountain

Build a very large catch basin on top of the mountain

Build a second catch basin at river level

Build a set of pipes that connect the two catch basins

Fill the river level catch basin with water from the river

 

Each night, you draw power in from the grid and use this to pump water from the low catch basin to the high catch basin

 

Each day, you let the water from the high catch basin flow back down into the low catch basin and use this to generate electricity

 

The only reason that these types of systems make sense is that many electrical generation systems are quite inflexible. (My nuke plant is either running full blast OR it's not running at all). Worse yet, power consumption varies dramatically by time of day.

 

Adding a pump storage system means that we not longer need to waste the excess power that the nuke plant generates in the evening. We also get to build a smaller nuke plant than we'd need to meet peak demand during daylight hours.

 

(For what its worth, a second order Fourier series does a really good job describing Power Demand as a function of Time of Day though the difference between weekday versus weekends is rather annoying)

[Al_U_Card]

Pump storage systems are extremely efficient

Interesting. Beyond the fact that it's enormously difficult to build a hydroelectric plant (due to non-greenhouse environmental impact), I would have thought that most plants run with a nearly full reservoir anyways. Aren't you creating an inefficiency in the first place by running the reservoir a bit lower, to allow for pumpback?

I don't think you quite understand how these systems work

 

Here's a classic example of a pump stoarge system.

 

Find a find a river that runs past a mountain

Cut the top off the mountain

Build a very large catch basin on top of the mountain

Build a second catch basin at river level

Build a set of pipes that connect the two catch basins

Fill the river level catch basin with water from the river

 

Each night, you draw power in from the grid and use this to pump water from the low catch basin to the high catch basin

 

Each day, you let the water from the high catch basin flow back down into the low catch basin and use this to generate electricity

 

The only reason that these types of systems make sense is that many electrical generation systems are quite inflexible. (My nuke plant is either running full blast OR it's not running at all). Worse yet, power consumption varies dramatically by time of day.

 

Adding a pump storage system means that we not longer need to waste the excess power that the nuke plant generates in the evening. We also get to build a smaller nuke plant than we'd need to meet peak demand during daylight hours.

 

(For what its worth, a second order Fourier series does a really good job describing Power Demand as a function of Time of Day though the difference between weekday versus weekends is rather annoying)

The way the economy is going, the 7 day (two job) work week is making a comeback. :(

[vuroth]

I don't think you quite understand how these systems work

No, I understood it well enough. First of all, I don't know that many existing hydroelectric generators are designed to take advantage of this system. Secondly, a very large driver is peak power - by playing with the levels of the upper reservoir, you're really playing with the peak power that the station can put out. Specifically, in this case, you're reducing it. This may well pay off in the long run, or maybe the difference is negligeable. Probably depends on the surface area of the upper reservoir.

 

Thing is, environmentalists (at least up here) go completely insane when you even suggest building a hyrdoelectric dam somewhere specific. Having two reservoirs would probably net you twice the opposition.