On 10/15/2021 3:50 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 3:17:08 PM UTC-5, John Levine wrote:
>> According to BGB <cr8...@gmail.com>:
>>> However, in contrast, using Zinc-Air batteries or similar is just crazy
>>> IMO. You are either in-range of a battery-swap station, or you are SOL
>>> and the car needs to be towed.
>> This is why I would never use a gasoline powered car. You are either in
>> range of a gas station, or you are SOL.
> <
> I remember when we used to worry that there was going to be a gas station on
> (literally) every corner! If there were a battery-pack swap station on every corner
> much of the EV recharge problem would vanish!
> <
> The only fallacy of this arrangement is what do you do when there is no corner ?
> {"Turn right onto HW xyx and drive for 763 miles"}

Yeah...

This is part of why I was thinking of having a hydrogen fuel-cell or
generator as an auxilary.

During most of a trip, one is mostly fighting air resistance and rolling
resistance. The "raw power" requirements are likely to be a lot lower.

More demanding tasks (such as accelerating) can be provided for by the
battery, provided it has sufficient remaining charge to do so.

Provided the generator can provide enough power for "go forwards in a
straight line at roughly a constant speed, with a little extra to top-up
the battery", it becomes less of an issue. Likely, 500W or 1kW could be
sufficient for this.

This is unlike a pure fuel-cell vehicle, where the fuel-cell also needs
to be able to provide sufficient power to be able to accelerate from a
stop within a reasonable timeframe (because, say, if your car had a 0-60
time of like 10 minutes, that isn't really going to work).

So, smaller fuel-cell (or generator), because it can be lower power;
Smaller battery pack, because range no longer depends on battery capacity;
Granted, now one needs to have access to H2 refueling stations, but
these aren't super rare either AFAIK, and H2 tanks need to be
significantly larger for a similar range compared with gasoline or
diesel, ...

>> --
>> Regards,
>> John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
>> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 4:40:23 PM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
> On 10/15/2021 3:50 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> > On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 3:17:08 PM UTC-5, John Levine wrote:
> >> According to BGB <cr8...@gmail.com>:
> >>> However, in contrast, using Zinc-Air batteries or similar is just crazy
> >>> IMO. You are either in-range of a battery-swap station, or you are SOL
> >>> and the car needs to be towed.
> >> This is why I would never use a gasoline powered car. You are either in
> >> range of a gas station, or you are SOL.
> > <
> > I remember when we used to worry that there was going to be a gas station on
> > (literally) every corner! If there were a battery-pack swap station on every corner
> > much of the EV recharge problem would vanish!
> > <
> > The only fallacy of this arrangement is what do you do when there is no corner ?
> > {"Turn right onto HW xyx and drive for 763 miles"}
> Yeah...
>
> This is part of why I was thinking of having a hydrogen fuel-cell or
> generator as an auxilary.
>
>
> During most of a trip, one is mostly fighting air resistance and rolling
> resistance. The "raw power" requirements are likely to be a lot lower.
>
> More demanding tasks (such as accelerating) can be provided for by the
> battery, provided it has sufficient remaining charge to do so.
>
> Provided the generator can provide enough power for "go forwards in a
> straight line at roughly a constant speed, with a little extra to top-up
> the battery", it becomes less of an issue. Likely, 500W or 1kW could be
> sufficient for this.
<
A Prius at 60 MPH needs something like 5 HP to maintain speed on
flat well paved terrain. My S600 needs something like 10-12 HP........
<
745± Watts = 1 HP.
So you need about 3,750W to maintain 60 MPH in a Prius.
<
I have done MPG "experiments" on my GLS and MY S600. My GLS
gets its best MPG between 63-67 MPH. The S600 gets its best MPG
at 67-70 MPH {Flat and level interstate quality roads.}
<
So, a little engine is of little use in stop-and-go city traffic, as this is
all accelerate-decelerate {although I once got >100MPG over 10 city
blocks using only electricity in my wife's Prius, just inching ahead
without toeing in enough throttle to run the motor.}
>
>
> This is unlike a pure fuel-cell vehicle, where the fuel-cell also needs
> to be able to provide sufficient power to be able to accelerate from a
> stop within a reasonable timeframe (because, say, if your car had a 0-60
> time of like 10 minutes, that isn't really going to work).
>
>
> So, smaller fuel-cell (or generator), because it can be lower power;
> Smaller battery pack, because range no longer depends on battery capacity;
> Granted, now one needs to have access to H2 refueling stations, but
> these aren't super rare either AFAIK, and H2 tanks need to be
> significantly larger for a similar range compared with gasoline or
> diesel, ...
<
My prediction is that the economics of H2 never end up making sense.
<
> >> --
> >> Regards,
> >> John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
> >> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl..ly

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:

> BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> schrieb:
>
>> Though, thinking about it, it is a mystery if one could have an hybrid
>> EV with hydrogen as its backup fuel. If using fuel-cells, this could
>> allow a smaller/cheaper fuel cell (doesn't need to be able to power the
>> car directly).
>
> There is at least one story going around of a charging station
> being hooked up to a Diesel engine :-)

There's a video where they show that if you have a Ford Raptor and a
Tesla, it's more efficient to use the Raptor to tow the Tesla around a
track to charge the Tesla and then drive the Tesla somewhere than it is
to just drive the Raptor the same distance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaGVoB4Zn-Y

On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 4:29:51 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:

> My prediction is that the economics of H2 never end up making sense.

They certainly don't make sense now.

But it's unclear to me why they would _never_ make sense.

It would seem to me that they would make perfect sense as soon as
these conditions were fulfilled:

1) Fossil fuels are essentially nonexistent; they are completely
unavailable for use in motor vehicles or for just about any other
purpose;

2) Energy in the form of electricity produced by stationary power
plants, on the other hand, does exist and is cheap and plentiful.

John Savard

According to Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>:
>> My prediction is that the economics of H2 never end up making sense. ...

>It would seem to me that they would make perfect sense as soon as
>these conditions were fulfilled:
>
>1) Fossil fuels are essentially nonexistent; they are completely
>unavailable for use in motor vehicles or for just about any other
>purpose;
>
>2) Energy in the form of electricity produced by stationary power
>plants, on the other hand, does exist and is cheap and plentiful.

3) Batteries, flywheels, and other enery storage schemes stop
being cheaper and safer than H2.

I can see some niches like long distance trucks and maybe trains where
you can amortize the cost of the very large very heavy very high
pressure H2 tank over long trips in a large vehicle, but for most
purposes H2 is a problem masquerading as a solution looking for
a problem.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On 10/15/2021 8:48 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 4:29:51 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>
>> My prediction is that the economics of H2 never end up making sense.
>
> They certainly don't make sense now.
>
> But it's unclear to me why they would _never_ make sense.
>
> It would seem to me that they would make perfect sense as soon as
> these conditions were fulfilled:
>
> 1) Fossil fuels are essentially nonexistent; they are completely
> unavailable for use in motor vehicles or for just about any other
> purpose;
>
> 2) Energy in the form of electricity produced by stationary power
> plants, on the other hand, does exist and is cheap and plentiful.
>

If you have a solar plant, and it is mid-day and the plant is cranking
out more power than needed by the grid, cracking H2O into H2 and O2
seems like a possible effective use of all the extra power.

If nightfall hits and there is demand, you can burn the H2 to get back
some of the power. What H2 is left over can be sold for use in H2
powered vehicles and similar.

This also works OK with the idea of combined solar-power and
desalinization plants.

Apparently, there are several such plants that combine power generation
with desalinization off in places like Saudi Arabia and UAE and similar.

So: Solar Power + Desalinization + H2 Production doesn't seem like too
big of a stretch.

Granted, one would need to be in an environment where such a thing makes
sense. If there is no access to ocean water, or there is plentiful
freshwater from rainfall or similar, then desalinization likely does not
make sense.

I guess a possible metric is whether, in a given area, it rains enough
that the ground tends to be covered with natural vegetation, or if it is
mostly bare dirt in pretty much every direction.

....

On 10/15/2021 1:29 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> schrieb:
>
>> Well, also technically it is easier I guess to "go green" with a diesel
>> engine than with a gasoline engine, since it is possible to run it on
>> biodiesel.
>>
>> Granted, one can run gasoline engines on ethanol, but it is usually
>> "blended" rather than pure ethanol.
>
>> Unlike hydrogen, neither of these can be synthesized purely from
>> electricity.
>
> Not directly, but if you have hydrogen and CO2, you can
> generate carbon monoxide via the water shift reaction
>
> CO + H2O <-> CO2 + H2
>
> and you can generate Methane in a similar way (with different
> reaction conditions and catalysts)
>
> CO2 + 4 H2 <-> CH4 + 2 H2O
>
> If you have CO and methane, the next step can then be to make
> liquid hydrocarbons via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis:
>
> n CO + 2n H2 -> (CH2)n + n H2O
>

Had considered this, but I guess the question is if this can be made
fast and efficient enough to be worthwhile (vs burning H2 directly).

It seems like the difficult would be getting and reacting enough CO2
quickly enough to be able to make "useful" amounts of fuel.

One could, in theory, pull CO2 from the atmosphere using amines.

But, then the CO2 would go back into the atmosphere, and at this point
it would be better to pull CO2 from the air and then converted into a
form where it can be sealed away, but I suspect there is little hope of
actually being able to pull enough CO2 from the air to make much of a
difference.

If anything, it would probably make more sense for CO2 removal to
pressurize air to such a degree that, when the air tanks are cooled, the
CO2 turns into a liquid inside of the compressed air tanks.

This would be like a more extreme case of the whole issue where air
compressors tend to turn water vapor in the air into water in the bottom
of the air compressor tank.

So, possible process:
Compress air to around 60 psi (tank A);
Cool the tank to around 10C;
Drain any water which separates out of tank A;
10C should keep the water in liquid phase;
60 psi should be low enough to limit water carbonation;
Pipe air from tank A into tank B;
Cool tank B to -40C.
B should be mostly free of water;
Recompress from B into a new tank (C) at around 200 psi;
Cool tank to maintain -40C;
Drain any liquid CO2.

The idea for tank C being to maintain a consistent temperature and
pressure (around 200 psi at -40c), so that CO2 will condense out of the
air in a liquid phase. Possibly, tank C could consist of a number of
baffles, so that there is plenty of area for condensation to occur.

Tanks A and B would also contain baffles to increase water separation
(though, any remaining water vapor would separate out in tank B as a
solid phase). Possibly tanks A and B would periodically change places to
prevent excessive water ice build up in tank B.

Cooling tank B would be so that the B->C compressor does not produce
excessive heat (and could allow feeding the compressed air line back
through B to work as a precooler).

Liquid CO2 would likely need to be kept at around this pressure and
temperature (to avoid it either turning into a gas or freezing into dry
ice). Higher pressures could expand the temperature range somewhat.

....

Potentially, the compressed air could also be used for energy storage.

Amines could be used to remove CO2 at normal atmospheric pressure, but
then one needs amines. One could heat the amines to release the CO2 as a
gas.

At ~ 120 psi, it should be possible to capture CO2 using water (reducing
pressure and vibrating the liquid seems like it should be able to
liberate much of the CO2 back into a gas phase).

It seems like liquid-phase CO2 extraction would likely be the more
efficient strategy.

I guess it all depends...

On 15/10/21 19:54, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Benny Lyne Amorsen <benny+usenet@amorsen.dk> schrieb:
>> anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>>
>>> This will still make it's contribution, but I think that it's probably
>>> not economical to dimension solar and wind (and other sources) for the
>>> average consumption, and do all of the rest with pumped or non-pumped
>>> storage.
>>
>> More likely to dimension solar and wind for twice the average, because
>> that overbuild is cheaper than storage. The resulting "superpower"
>> overflow will surely find some use at least some of the time.
>
> Twenty times - generated power drops down to ~5% fairly regularly.

I looked at a year's UK wind generation output[1], and a there
was a surprisingly simple rule of thumb.

If the peak wind output is P, then for x% of the time the
power output will be less than xP. In other words, for
3 days per year the output will be less than 1% of
peak output.

That ratio will depend on the area included, but is it
sufficient to indicate that (on the scale of a country)
it is false to claim "if the wind isn't blowing here
then it will be blowing there".

[1] http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/download.php

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
> According to BGB <cr88192@gmail.com>:
>>However, in contrast, using Zinc-Air batteries or similar is just crazy
>>IMO. You are either in-range of a battery-swap station, or you are SOL
>>and the car needs to be towed.
>
> This is why I would never use a gasoline powered car. You are either in
> range of a gas station, or you are SOL.

With a full tank, my familie's car has a range of around 700 km
(a bit less for 450 miles). From where I live, you can reach
seven other countries with that, six of which have the Euro.

I'm sure there is a gas station there somewhere.

According to Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>:
>> This is why I would never use a gasoline powered car. You are either in
>> range of a gas station, or you are SOL.
>
>With a full tank, my familie's car has a range of around 700 km
>(a bit less for 450 miles). From where I live, you can reach
>seven other countries with that, six of which have the Euro.
>
>I'm sure there is a gas station there somewhere.

I live in New York, and would like to visit the famous James Bay hydro station in Quebec.
We both use dollars, although ours are green and theirs are pink.

That is a little under 1700 km, of which the last 600 are on the James Bay road, on which
there is one (1) gas station near km 381. The road is well maintained, but it is a
long way from anywhere, and a prudent traveller should be prepared to turn back if the
road is blocked. Plan accordingly.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Saturday, October 16, 2021 at 12:57:23 PM UTC-6, John Levine wrote:

> I live in New York, and would like to visit the famous James Bay hydro station in Quebec.
> We both use dollars, although ours are green and theirs are pink.

> That is a little under 1700 km, of which the last 600 are on the James Bay road, on which
> there is one (1) gas station near km 381. The road is well maintained, but it is a
> long way from anywhere, and a prudent traveller should be prepared to turn back if the
> road is blocked. Plan accordingly.

Would you have better luck if you had an electric car?

John Savard

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
>>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>>>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
>>>>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>>>>>and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
>>>>>>is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).
>>>>>
>>>>> Citation needed. Looking at
>>>>><https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressekonferenzen/DE/2018/PK_06_03_2018/pressemitteilung_20180306.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4>,
>>>>> it says that there are 0.2 cases per year with low (<10% rated power)
>>>>> over 48hours across the whole of EU; but that relates to the PV and
>>>>> Wind installations of 2018; with better distribution of such
>>>>> installations, I expect the number of such cases to become smaller.
>>>>
>>>>Look at
>>>>
>>>>https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&interval=month&year=2017&month=01
>>>>
>>>>between the 16th and the 25th of 2017, for the energy production
>>>>in Germany. Existing wind turbines were at around 5% of their
>>>>nominal capacity.
>>>
>>> I see that this is data about Germany, not the EU, and that there was
>>> much more solar power production in that time span than in the weeks
>>> before 2017-01-16, and that the time span you picked is more than four
>>> years ago, which does not speak for a high frequency of such events.
>>
>>Not sure if you would minda total crash of the electricity supply
>>every five years or so, with industry going down. No heating,
>>because modern heaters depend on electricity. Water pipes freezing,
>>all that sort of stuff. And for a looong time, because there will
>>not be much power before or after, either.
>
> Nice alarmist scenario. Total crash?

Yes. That is the way that electricity grids work - if the demand
exceeds the input, then frequency goes too low, and it is shut down.

> You want to turn off
> run-of-the-river hydro power, biomass power, waste incineration, and
> the significantly less than usual, but still existing amount that the
> wind and solar power sources deliver, without taking any
> countermeasures, in order to make your scenario come true?

I certaily do not want this to happen. If we go too much towards
wind/solar and shut off enough other power plants, there is a
real possibility that this happens.

The next question then is how to bring it up again, with a lack
of available power.

This can, in principle, solved by some sort of storage technology.
However, we are currently bringing up wind and solar power at a huge
rate without a corresponding increase in long-term storage capacity.
There is vague talk and research projects, but if there are any
long-term storage actually being implemented, I have missed them
(and they would be huge). Usually, it's just the short-term ones
(which are technically feasible) which you read about.

But maybe you tell me what the long-term plan is. How much energy
will be stored, by whom, by which principle, and where? What is
the plan?

It is my contention that there is no such plan, a contention shared
by the German Federal Accouting Office, or Bundesrechnungshof.
They recently issued a report saying that the current policies
endanger Germany's electricity supply, both from availability and
from price.

>>>>>>I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
>>>>>>bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
>>>>>>you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
>>>>>>has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
>>>>>>amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
>>>>>>a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you add up the various reserviors of hydro dams, you will find that
>>>>> we have made a lot of geo-engineering in the last century.
>>>>
>>>>Simply not on that scale, off by a factor of several orders
>>>>of magnitude.
>>>
>>> Here's Lake Constance compared to some artificial reservoirs:
>>>
>>> Volume Lake/
>>> m^3 Reservoir
>>> 48,000M Lake Constance
>>> 132,000M Lake Nasser (Aswan Dam)
>>
>>Last time I looked at a map, that was in Egypt. The have this
>>convenient thing called "Nile valley" there. Not sure where
>>you want to put this in Europe. Do you have a suggestion?
>>Maybe you don't like Innsbruck, we can flood that valley?
>
> You are apparently intent on suggesting a variant that produces
> maximum damage with minimal benefit. The usual enginieering approach
> is to produce the maximum benefit at minimum cost. E.g., not far from
> Innsbruck there is the Sellrain-Silz group of dams and power stations.
> It consists (will consist) of three reservoirs with a total of 94M m^3
> of water. If you empty them all for such an emergency situation and
> they are full at the start, their water goes into the Inn river at the
> 643m level. The reservoirs have the following heads (computed from
> the low level of the reservoirs):
>
> water head reservoir
> 60M m^3 1577m Finstertal
> 3M m^3 1228m Laengental
> 31M m^3 1384m Kuehtai (under construction)
>
> This results in a total potential energy of 1385TJ. If you deliver
> that in 14 days, you get 1145MW (the current power stations in this
> installation have a lower rating (it takes 22 days to empty the
> reservoirs if they are all full, if you run the generators at 48m^3/s
> (which is what the final power station in the chain is rated for)), so
> they would need to be upgraded). You need about 61 such installations
> to power all of Germany for 14 days, if you turn off all other sources
> of electricity. Currently you don't have that much and we don't have
> that much.

Thanks for the figures, but... Germany is a rather flat country
compared to Austria. If we manage 200 m of head somewhere in the
middle of Germany, we need around 5000 of such installations.

Major geoengineering, as I wrote.

> But once you look at the whole of EU, such events become much less
> frequent. The fixed costs of such installations are quite high, so I
> doubt that it is economical to build such installations to cover all
> of the demand for such rare cases. I expect that there are
> installations with lower fixed cost (and higher marginal cost), maybe
> gas turbines using methanol from biomass as fuel.

That would be a possiblity, but it is of course hideously expensive,
basically building up a second round of power station which will
sit around idly most of the time - basically replicating the
existing infrastructure.

However, there is no plan to do so that I'm aware of. A plan would
come with a price tag (even if there is a later cost overrun by
a factor of 10) and people would balk at that. Better to leave
them with the illusion that sun and wind do not send a bill
until the next election, and the next, and the next...

>Electricity from
> such installations will still be very expensive (the installations
> have to be amortized over the relatively few days of their operation).
> At some price, some consumers (e.g., Aluminium smelters) may decide
> that it is indeed more economical to consume less electricity in such
> situations, which will also help to alleviate it.

That is already happening right now. Some industry in Germany is shutting
down because of the high price of gas and electricity, for example
steel smelters and ammonia plants. Lack of ammonia affects the price
of fertilizer, which farmers can no longer afford (which will also
affect the availablilty of biofuel, of course).

We are currently at the start of an energy crisis. Let's see how
much worse it gets before it gets better.

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:

> Lake Constance is filled mostly with rainfall from Switzerland, a
> little bit from Austria, and even less from Germany.
>
>>but of course the overall gap during the winter
>>is much larger.
>
> The overall gap between what and what? It looks to me like you are
> trying to change goalposts, from bridging a two-week "Dunkelflaute" to
> something else.

There is more than one aspect which concerns me in this respect,
yes. One is the "Dunkelflaute", the other one is the general
issue of less solar/wind power in winter.

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:

> The main limiter is the DC interconnect cables which can only handle a
> few GW, but the early september experience of a week with very high
> local power bills have made it politically difficult to develop new
> cables, in fact the new Labor/Farmers party coalition cabinet which
> started yesterday promised to stop any new interconnect plans, even if
> any engineer can see that it would obviously benefit Norway as a country.

You have to wonder why the same argument doesn't apply to oil products.

--
Mvh./Regards, Niels Jørgen Kruse, Vanløse, Denmark

According to Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>:
>On Saturday, October 16, 2021 at 12:57:23 PM UTC-6, John Levine wrote:
>
>> I live in New York, and would like to visit the famous James Bay hydro station in Quebec.
>> We both use dollars, although ours are green and theirs are pink.
>
>> That is a little under 1700 km, of which the last 600 are on the James Bay road, on which
>> there is one (1) gas station near km 381. The road is well maintained, but it is a
>> long way from anywhere, and a prudent traveller should be prepared to turn back if the
>> road is blocked. Plan accordingly.
>
>Would you have better luck if you had an electric car?

Not yet.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 12:06:07 PM UTC-6, Terje Mathisen wrote:

> The main limiter is the DC interconnect cables which can only handle a
> few GW, but the early september experience of a week with very high
> local power bills have made it politically difficult to develop new
> cables, in fact the new Labor/Farmers party coalition cabinet which
> started yesterday promised to stop any new interconnect plans, even if
> any engineer can see that it would obviously benefit Norway as a country.

In order for me to comment on this, I would have to know *why* the
local power bills were so high in early September.

However, I can recount some experience in my native Canada.

In Ontario, for some reason, despite the province getting most of its
electricity from hydroelectric dams, people were recieving very high
electric bills. This resulted in public outrage, leading to a democratic
socialist party being ousted and being replaced by a conservative one.

*Apparently* the reason this happened was that the electrical bills
were high because of the costs of adding "green" energy like wind and
solar to the grid. This is why voters chose a party that had no particular
attachment to that kind of energy policy.

So if the costs of new interconnect cables are adding to the price of
electricity in Norway, but such cables are a rational thing to build,
drawing from the experience of Ontario, I would suggest funding those
cables from elsewhere than the price of electricity. General tax revenues
would be my suggestion - and, if the tax rate needs to be increased,
make sure to make the taxes more steeply progressive, so that less of
the increase is borne by ordinary people who struggle to make ends
meet.

Of course, that means that the government and not the electricity companies
own the interconnects - and even if the electricity companies are state-owned,
this might somehow be a problem.

But here again there is an obvious solution. If the utility companies buy the
interconnects from the government over a _long period of time_, then the
amount of the payment is much smaller than the costs to them of building
the interconnects themselves. Why, the government could even make a
profit on the interest charges, to the further benefit of the taxpayer!

John Savard

John Levine wrote:
> According to Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>:
>> On Saturday, October 16, 2021 at 12:57:23 PM UTC-6, John Levine wrote:
>>
>>> I live in New York, and would like to visit the famous James Bay hydro station in Quebec.
>>> We both use dollars, although ours are green and theirs are pink.
>>
>>> That is a little under 1700 km, of which the last 600 are on the James Bay road, on which
>>> there is one (1) gas station near km 381. The road is well maintained, but it is a
>>> long way from anywhere, and a prudent traveller should be prepared to turn back if the
>>> road is blocked. Plan accordingly.
>>
>> Would you have better luck if you had an electric car?
>
> Not yet.
>
It used to be extremely hard to drive an EV to Nordkapp, i.e. no high
speed chargers so you had to call ahead and arrange access to industrial
400V 3-phase outlets to at least get 11-22 KW.

Now you can drive your EV both to Nordkapp and around in Lofoten, so
things are rapidly improving.

Absolute worst case you just need to hang around for a day with n
extension cord and a regular outlet, not like being without a gas station.

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

On 10/8/2021 9:19 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 17:22, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>> <
>>>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>>>
>>>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>>>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>>>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>>>
>>> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA".  Most of the west is happy to
>>> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
>>> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>>>
>>> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
>>> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them.  The
>>> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
>>> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.

Perhaps. But in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the
growth of much of eastern Europe, and even signs of changes in China,
the US didn't really push too much of international threats. So much so
that we underplayed the threat of Islamic extremism, with disastrous
results in 2001.

>>
>> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
>> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out".  See
>> Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
>> Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.
>>
>
> These can be looked at in /many/ ways.

Of course.

> Perhaps it is best not to go
> there in this thread

I understand. I posted this mainly to agree with much of what you are
saying about different perspectives.

- suffice to say that the views held by Americans
> who were brought up on American history lessons are not the same as the
> views held by Europeans brought up on European history lessons.

I am sure that is true.

> It
> doesn't matter what you have learned about history - if you think you
> have learned the whole objective truth, you are wrong.

Also true.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>>
>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>>
>>>
>>> It is not just storage.  There is transport, distribution, updates to
>>> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
>>> materials and production of replacements, etc.
>> Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
>> update the grid, etc.  Storage is still the big technolgical problem.
>>
>
> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars. We can
> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
> because it costs too much to fix battery packs. (The statistics on dead
> electric cars are depressing.)

OK, but that may be teething pains. Theoretically, an electric car
should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient battery
life), as they have far fewer moving parts.

> We don't know how to make electric car batteries that are efficient,
> light, safe, and quick to charge.

Mostly true, but it is clearly an active research area, so there may be
progress. And, except for long trips, quick to charge isn't an issue,
assuming mostly home charging at night. Also, things like buses and
even local delivery trucks (e.g. Post office and local delivery service
trucks) can easily be recharged over night.

> In particular, we don't know how to
> make usable car batteries that are remotely sustainable or
> environmentally friendly to produce.

Agreed.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

On 10/19/2021 2:57 PM, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It is not just storage.  There is transport, distribution, updates to
>>>> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
>>>> materials and production of replacements, etc.
>>> Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
>>> update the grid, etc.  Storage is still the big technolgical problem.
>>>
>>
>> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars.  We can
>> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
>> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
>> because it costs too much to fix battery packs.  (The statistics on dead
>> electric cars are depressing.)
>
> OK, but that may be teething pains.  Theoretically, an electric car
> should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient battery
> life), as they have far fewer moving parts.
>

Main weak points I think:

Batteries: LiON has a limited lifespan and some other issues.

There is a possibility that Sodium-Ion chemistries could provide a
cheaper and more stable (less explosion prone) alternative. There are
some people who are working on lithium-metal batteries, but these would
likely have lower energy density and even higher lithium requirements.

Other possible failure modes may become more of an issue if EVs try to
compete in terms of "affordability".

Motor: If ran too hard or too hot, then the motor may burn up the
windings. This is more likely to be a factor for if/when "cheap" EVs
become more popular and they start trying to cost-optimize the motors.

Namely a combination of aluminum windings (cheaper than copper), and
using undersized motors (at the upper end of their operating range). A
lot of consumer appliances have already switched over to aluminum-wound
motors.

I suspect it is likely one would see physically small motors being
driven at very high RPM with a significant levels of gear reduction,
since it is generally cheaper to make a small motor that spins fast than
a big motor with lots of torque (mostly subject to material constraints,
like whether or not the motor spins so fast that it tears itself apart).

Would be funny though if people started using Aramid reinforced rotors
because, say, it is cheaper to have a small rotor spinning at 100k RPM
or so, than to use a physically larger rotor. Though, the strength/cost
tradeoffs of any gears and/or belts would also need to be considered
(so, one needs to use a slower motor because otherwise it would require
using more expensive V-belts, ...).

MOSFETs: There are failure prone, particularly if undersized for the
application, and given their relative cost are a likely target for
cost-optimization.

There is also a potential risk if someone decides to use magnesium-alloy
wires; these are reasonably cheap (comparable to CCA) and also
lightweight, but with a much higher "metal fire" risk.

....

However, traditional mechanical failures should be less of an issue.

>
>> We don't know how to make electric car batteries that are efficient,
>> light, safe, and quick to charge.
>
> Mostly true, but it is clearly an active research area, so there may be
> progress.  And, except for long trips, quick to charge isn't an issue,
> assuming mostly home charging at night.  Also, things like buses and
> even local delivery trucks (e.g. Post office and local delivery service
> trucks) can easily be recharged over night.
>

Personally, I figure longer-term, electric cars will probably win.

But, they wont all be Teslas (or, high-priced luxury vehicles).

All the current options are fairly expensive, not at all competitive
with the gas-fueled "pre-owned vehicles" market.

Like, there needs to be something that is more of an option for someone
shopping around with a budget of like $3k or so (nevermind if vehicles
in this price-range tend to have significant maintenance and reliability
issues).

But, I guess it is comparable to the whole issue of finding a house for
like $25k, but then having to dump a lot of money into fixing the roof,
with most of the floors/etc being rotted, lots of mildew, ...

....

>> In particular, we don't know how to
>> make usable car batteries that are remotely sustainable or
>> environmentally friendly to produce.
>
> Agreed.
>

On 19/10/2021 23:11, BGB wrote:
> On 10/19/2021 2:57 PM, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>> On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>>> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It is not just storage.  There is transport, distribution, updates to
>>>>> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
>>>>> materials and production of replacements, etc.
>>>> Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
>>>> update the grid, etc.  Storage is still the big technolgical problem.
>>>>
>>>
>>> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars.  We can
>>> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
>>> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
>>> because it costs too much to fix battery packs.  (The statistics on dead
>>> electric cars are depressing.)
>>
>> OK, but that may be teething pains.  Theoretically, an electric car
>> should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient battery
>> life), as they have far fewer moving parts.
>>
>
> Main weak points I think:
>
> Batteries: LiON has a limited lifespan and some other issues.
>
> There is a possibility that Sodium-Ion chemistries could provide a
> cheaper and more stable (less explosion prone) alternative. There are
> some people who are working on lithium-metal batteries, but these would
> likely have lower energy density and even higher lithium requirements.
>
>

A big problem with all Lithium batteries is the major environmental
costs in producing the lithium. Other disadvantages are their poor
physical stability and fire risk when damaged (cars crash sometimes),
their economic cost, and the difficulty and cost of recycling or safely
disposing of them.

Sodium-ion or sodium air looks like a good contender for stationary
batteries (for power storage), but they can't compete on power or energy
density for electric vehicles. I've also read some nice things about
new experimental aluminium ion batteries, which sounds like a more
environmental and economic option for cars.

> Other possible failure modes may become more of an issue if EVs try to
> compete in terms of "affordability".
>
> Motor: If ran too hard or too hot, then the motor may burn up the
> windings. This is more likely to be a factor for if/when "cheap" EVs
> become more popular and they start trying to cost-optimize the motors.
>

I've never heard of this happening, and it doesn't seem likely -
temperature measurement is cheap and simple, and highly unlikely to be
skipped.

BGB wrote:
> On 10/19/2021 2:57 PM, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>
>>> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars. We can
>>> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
>>> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
>>> because it costs too much to fix battery packs. (The statistics on dead
>>> electric cars are depressing.)
>>
>> OK, but that may be teething pains. Theoretically, an electric car
>> should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient battery
>> life), as they have far fewer moving parts.
>
> Main weak points I think:
>
> Batteries: LiON has a limited lifespan and some other issues.
>
> There is a possibility that Sodium-Ion chemistries could provide a
> cheaper and more stable (less explosion prone) alternative. There are
> some people who are working on lithium-metal batteries, but these would
> likely have lower energy density and even higher lithium requirements.

We can't recycle battery components economically.
Very soon we are about to have a mountain of dead EV batteries.

For what period of time does each EV car manufacturer
guarantee to produce replacement battery packs?
When new packs are no longer available do I have to throw out my car?

And how difficult is the pack to replace?
In the tv shows I've seen of EV's being manufactured,
the battery pack attaches to the frame then the body above it.
Do you have to un-weld and detach the body to replace the pack?

On 10/20/2021 2:16 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 19/10/2021 23:11, BGB wrote:
>> On 10/19/2021 2:57 PM, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>>> On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>>>> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is not just storage.  There is transport, distribution, updates to
>>>>>> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
>>>>>> materials and production of replacements, etc.
>>>>> Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
>>>>> update the grid, etc.  Storage is still the big technolgical problem.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars.  We can
>>>> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
>>>> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
>>>> because it costs too much to fix battery packs.  (The statistics on dead
>>>> electric cars are depressing.)
>>>
>>> OK, but that may be teething pains.  Theoretically, an electric car
>>> should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient battery
>>> life), as they have far fewer moving parts.
>>>
>>
>> Main weak points I think:
>>
>> Batteries: LiON has a limited lifespan and some other issues.
>>
>> There is a possibility that Sodium-Ion chemistries could provide a
>> cheaper and more stable (less explosion prone) alternative. There are
>> some people who are working on lithium-metal batteries, but these would
>> likely have lower energy density and even higher lithium requirements.
>>
>>
>
> A big problem with all Lithium batteries is the major environmental
> costs in producing the lithium. Other disadvantages are their poor
> physical stability and fire risk when damaged (cars crash sometimes),
> their economic cost, and the difficulty and cost of recycling or safely
> disposing of them.
>

Yeah.

The claim was that lithium metal batteries (with solid electrolytes)
could be more stable / less explosion prone than their lithium-ion
counterparts, but have the big/obvious drawback of needing significantly
more lithium for a given capacity.

> Sodium-ion or sodium air looks like a good contender for stationary
> batteries (for power storage), but they can't compete on power or energy
> density for electric vehicles. I've also read some nice things about
> new experimental aluminium ion batteries, which sounds like a more
> environmental and economic option for cars.
>

From what I have seen, both Sodium-Ion and Aluminum-Ion could be promising.

Aluminum-Ion is still a lot more in the research phase though.

>> Other possible failure modes may become more of an issue if EVs try to
>> compete in terms of "affordability".
>>
>> Motor: If ran too hard or too hot, then the motor may burn up the
>> windings. This is more likely to be a factor for if/when "cheap" EVs
>> become more popular and they start trying to cost-optimize the motors.
>>
>
> I've never heard of this happening, and it doesn't seem likely -
> temperature measurement is cheap and simple, and highly unlikely to be
> skipped.
>

Except for cost cutting.

Say they use a motor which needs to be run on the edge of burning up
just to be able to accelerate within a reasonable time-frame; and safer
thermal margins would eat too much into the user-experienced performance
characteristics (say, for example, they tune things such that the motor
operates up to 200C, with the coating on the windings decomposing at
250C; but say the internal temperature of the windings during
acceleration reaches 250C before it hits 200C on the sensor, ...).

If it is a common failure mode for things like blenders and vacuum
cleaners, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch for EVs if the
companies start trying to cut costs by using cheaper parts.

Compare, for example, the whole recent fiasco with Gigabyte and the
exploding PSUs...

On 10/20/2021 8:07 AM, EricP wrote:
> BGB wrote:
>> On 10/19/2021 2:57 PM, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> On 10/8/2021 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>>
>>>> We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars.  We
>>>> can
>>>> make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
>>>> suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
>>>> because it costs too much to fix battery packs.  (The statistics on
>>>> dead
>>>> electric cars are depressing.)
>>>
>>> OK, but that may be teething pains.  Theoretically, an electric car
>>> should be more reliable than a petrol one (assuming sufficient
>>> battery life), as they have far fewer moving parts.
>>
>> Main weak points I think:
>>
>> Batteries: LiON has a limited lifespan and some other issues.
>>
>> There is a possibility that Sodium-Ion chemistries could provide a
>> cheaper and more stable (less explosion prone) alternative. There are
>> some people who are working on lithium-metal batteries, but these
>> would likely have lower energy density and even higher lithium
>> requirements.
>
> We can't recycle battery components economically.
> Very soon we are about to have a mountain of dead EV batteries.
>

Yes, probably.

Though, if areas that can be mined cheaply for lithium and cobalt get
sparse (say, if it becomes no longer cost-effective to strip mine parts
of Africa for cobalt), it may become more cost effective to recycle the
batteries.

Then again, at the moment, they will probably pile up in landfills or
similar, because otherwise it is like a similar situation to trying to
ask people to "Maybe stop burning coal, OK?...".

Then US goes and "leads the way" to a greener future by going and
approving the construction of a bunch of new coal plants and expanding
coal-mining operations, and one can just look at it and suspect that
prospects at long-term survival are probably fairly bleak. While "peak
oil" would effectively put a limit on total long-term CO2 emissions,
there is no real such limit on coal...

> For what period of time does each EV car manufacturer
> guarantee to produce replacement battery packs?
> When new packs are no longer available do I have to throw out my car?
>

Probably. The claim is that the lifespan of the packs is supposed to be
longer than the lifespan of the car, but I suspect manufactures also
expect people to throw out their old car and get a new one every 5-10
years, rather than trying to keep it going until it is irreparable.

> And how difficult is the pack to replace?
> In the tv shows I've seen of EV's being manufactured,
> the battery pack attaches to the frame then the body above it.
> Do you have to un-weld and detach the body to replace the pack?
>

On the plus side at least, I think the packs are often attached to the
rest the car with bolts.

On the minus side, in some amount of cars, the battery pack *is* the
frame...

On Monday, October 18, 2021 at 4:29:21 AM UTC-6, Stephen Fuld wrote:

> Perhaps. But in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the
> growth of much of eastern Europe, and even signs of changes in China,
> the US didn't really push too much of international threats. So much so
> that we underplayed the threat of Islamic extremism, with disastrous
> results in 2001.

Indeed, under Clinton, they missed their chance to fix the world.

For a while under the Clinton administration, China had only one nuclear
sub - which was in dock for repairs. So they could have launched a pre-emptive
strike against China. After regime change there, Russia would have no further
legitimate reason to have a nuclear arsenal, so presumably it could have been
persuaded to give theirs up in return for economic aid from the U.S..

In that way: no threat from China, and no opportunity for someone like Putin
to come along and turn Russia into a threat. This would be a return to the
pre-1914 world order, a real "end to history" in the sense of there being no
further threat of a major war ever.

John Savard