On 4/27/2022 5:10 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
>
> I was given your direct quote Frank. Why do you insist on lying about your actual statement.

If you were "given" my direct quote, why not post it accurately here,
instead of implying I said something I didn't?

My post was not "given" to you. Who would have done that? Why would
anybody do that? You _read_ my post, despite pretending you didn't.

As with so much nonsense you post, if it were true you could prove it.
Post my exact words with a link for verification. Tell us who "gave" you
my post. And explain how you have blocked me using your news reader.

Or more quickly: Apologize for your continued lies, and stop lying.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 4/27/2022 8:05 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:

<snip>

> I’m California, due to the large amounts of solar power connected to the
> grid, high noon is probably the best time to charge an electric car. See
> “duck curve”.

If you have solar panels on your house in California then you don't want
to charge your car during peak time. The utilities pay you the _retail_
value of KWH you put on the grid. You want to sell them as much
high-value KWH as possible and then buy low-value KWH at night to charge
your EV. You also don't want to charge a Powerwall (or other battery)
with those valuable peak time KWH. Of course the utilities are very
unhappy with the current pricing system and are lobbying heavily to have
it changed.

On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:

<snip>

> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.

That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
can't be stored, from wind and hydro.

There's enough nighttime capacity even if 80% of vehicles are electric,
without any upgrades to the grid. At 100% there will likely have to be
upgrades to the grid.

The average commute daily commute in the U.S. is 32 miles. A Tesla Model
3 gets 4.4 miles/KWH so that would be about 7.3KWH, or $1.82 at 25¢/KWH.
A vehicle getting 35 MPG would use about 0.9 gallons of gasoline. Even
at $3 per gallon that's $2.74 in fuel.

Even with a 120V Level 1 charger, which charges at about 1.4KW, you can
sufficiently charge an electric car, overnight, for about 43 miles
(seven hours of charge is 9.8KWH, enough for about 43 miles of driving
in a Model 3). But of course most EV owners would have a 240V Level 2
charger.

On 4/28/2022 6:38 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:

<snip>

> The ships are going to be tough. Charging facilities on the high seas are
> admittedly few and far between.

<https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/swedish-firm-wind-powered-cargo-ships>.
Wind-powered ships! What will they think of next? What a time to be alive!

On 4/28/2022 6:52 AM, Roger Merriman wrote:

<snip>

> And in some areas such as Japan cars can be used to power the house for a
> few days.

The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning can do this. 98 to 131 KWH battery pack.
The average U.S. residential home uses less than 30 KWH per day. Of
course much of the residential home energy use doesn't come from
electricity in the first place.

On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 7:11:03 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
> On 4/27/2022 5:44 PM, John B. wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 11:05:52 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> > <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On 4/27/2022 10:26 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
> >>> The lies about electric vehicles simply have hidden the fact that they actually contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than modern internal combustion machines.
> >>
> >> Ah, good! Yet another topic on which Tom Kunich knows much more than,
> >> and disagrees with, every competent scientist and engineer working in
> >> that field!
> >
> > (:-)
> > Years and years ago I read an article about electric cars. It
> > specified the smallest electric car that would be acceptable as
> > something about the size of a Volkswagen Bug with a range of about 60
> > miles.
> >
> > The article went on to discuss battery technology, as known then, amps
> > and volts, and a number of other features, but the last sentence in
> > the article stated that: "And at 5 o'clock when everyone in Los
> > Angeles comes home from work and plugs their car into the charger
> > there isn't sufficient electricity being generated in California to
> > charge them."
> >
> So nothing's changed.
>
> --
> Andrew Muzi
> <www.yellowjersey.org/>
> Open every day since 1 April, 1971
There isn't anything at all that Frank doesn't know more of. As a mechanical engineer he is an expert on electric cars. He says that all of the competent engineers agree that electric cars are green. So I wonder why he doesn't therefore have one? He being logical wouldn't he of needs have one himself so that he could judge their rewards rather than reaching a decision based entire on reporting of people who are not scientists or engineers?

The mining and construction of just the batteries is extremely energy intensive but according to Frank that is not possible. They grow on trees and not with materials that are highly reactive and hence are NEVER found pure in nature and so must be mined from hard rocks or reduced in another energy intensive manner from salt mined from salt flats which destroys the area or deep pit salt mines that can be more than a mile across using HUGE mining vehicles to extract enough of the salt to get a useful and commercial amount of lithium. Most of the world's supply of commercial grade lithium from Peru, Chile and Argentina - countries with unstable governments and people with living standards far below that of the US.

Lithium being so highly reactive with almost everything is clear and present fire hazard and breaking the seal on a lithium battery on your smartphone can cause an explosive fire in your pocket or purse. Great care and LOTS of energy is expended making these batteries as safe as possible.

Now the return of recharge energy from batteries is 78% efficient when new and a life span of about 3500 recharges when new and charged only to 80% of its maximum capacity and never allowed to fall below 40% of its capacity. Float charges to 100% capacity greatly shortens the life span of the battery. It is about the same cost to replace a Tesla as to replace its battery.

None of this seems to address the fact that the electricity is pretty widely generated via natural gas or even coal. It then has a 90% loss in being generated and then sent via wires to a location where it is outside of the pollution zone of the power plant and in the urban areas where electric vehicles are practical. The total return of energy for an electric vehicle is some 20% vs. the return of an internal combustion car from well head to engine of 28%.

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 6:52:13 AM UTC-7, Roger Merriman wrote:
> Ralph Barone <ra...@invalid.com> wrote:
> > John B. <sloc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 21:10:58 -0500, AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 4/27/2022 5:44 PM, John B. wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 11:05:52 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> >>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 4/27/2022 10:26 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
> >>>>>> The lies about electric vehicles simply have hidden the fact that
> >>>>>> they actually contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than modern
> >>>>>> internal combustion machines.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Ah, good! Yet another topic on which Tom Kunich knows much more than,
> >>>>> and disagrees with, every competent scientist and engineer working in
> >>>>> that field!
> >>>>
> >>>> (:-)
> >>>> Years and years ago I read an article about electric cars. It
> >>>> specified the smallest electric car that would be acceptable as
> >>>> something about the size of a Volkswagen Bug with a range of about 60
> >>>> miles.
> >>>>
> >>>> The article went on to discuss battery technology, as known then, amps
> >>>> and volts, and a number of other features, but the last sentence in
> >>>> the article stated that: "And at 5 o'clock when everyone in Los
> >>>> Angeles comes home from work and plugs their car into the charger
> >>>> there isn't sufficient electricity being generated in California to
> >>>> charge them."
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> So nothing's changed.
> >>
> >> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
> >> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
> >> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
> >
> > It’s not like you have to turn a crank to charge an electric car. You can
> > tell the car when to charge and it can do it while you sleep. Eventually,
> > the car and the local power system may actually negotiate charging.
> >
> >
> And in some areas such as Japan cars can be used to power the house for a
> few days.
>
> I’m far from the target audience since I have no where local to charge, I
> tend to have older cars since it’s not a priority, do low annual miles so
> no financial reward and so on.
>
> My main form of transport is bikes.

I bought my car 5 years ago and it had 52,000 miles on it. It presently has 68,000

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:38:51 AM UTC-4, Ralph Barone wrote:
> . A mine in my area is working to convert their huge dump trucks to
> electric so that they can haul loads out of the mine with less emissions.
> As a bonus, when the empty trucks are descending into the mine, they can
> apply regenerative braking and actually produce electricity and save money.
>

Although I'm all for reduced emissions, it probably has more to do with the fact that a full electric truck (even an 'earth mover') has significantly less maintenance than a diesel/gas vehicle - no transmission, no regular maintenance for fluids or filters.

Although many electric vehicles do have transmissions, example abound. The most obvious are the diesel-electric locomotives. They are driven by independent electric motors on each wheel with no transmission. The power is generated by the diesel engine which _only_ generates electric power. If you've ever been close to one when they accelerate, you'll notice maybe a slight increase in RPM of the diesel, but mostly it just gets louder as the load increases. One advantage is that it's possible for one or two of the motors to fail and still allow the locomotive to move. Since the diesel engine is hyper tuned to run within an extremely tight RPM range, it's also extremely fuel efficient. This method has been in use for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive#/media/File:DieselElectricLocomotiveSchematic.svg

A few weeks ago my wide and I were driving on the highway and saw a pick-up that had an exceptionally distinctive look. It was a Rivian. I looked it up - MSRP of $80K, four independent electric motors (one for each wheel, no transmission), 0-60 in 3.3 seconds (yes, 3.3 seconds). It has has a "tank turn" feature which will contra-rotate the left and right wheels to allow for exceptionally tight turns (I dont know how it works, but that's what the card a driver article said https://www.caranddriver.com/rivian/r1t).

It wouldn't surprise me that a mining company would be interested in something like that on a larger scale, or even on the 'earth mover' vehicles make a diesel electric type of hybrid like the locomotives.

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 1:27:04 PM UTC-4, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:

> There isn't anything at all that Frank doesn't know more of. As a mechanical engineer he is an expert on electric cars. He says that all of the competent engineers agree that electric cars are green.

He never said that you little shit bag.

On 4/28/2022 1:27 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
>
> There isn't anything at all that Frank doesn't know more of. As a mechanical engineer he is an expert on electric cars. He says that all of the competent engineers agree that electric cars are green. So I wonder why he doesn't therefore have one?

I do have one, Tom.

When will you stop looking so amazingly foolish?

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 16:22:08 -0700, sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote:

>Fortunately that's no longer true. Well maybe it's true at 5:00 p.m.,
>but not overnight when most people are actually charging their vehicles.
>The electricity is also less expensive at night because there is so much
>excess generating capacity.

See the demand curves for much of the US west at:
<http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#section-demand-trend>
Demand peaks are at about 7AM and 8:30PM.

>The advantages of electric vehicles these days is that the fuel is much
>less expensive than petroleum-based fuels and the amount of CO2 that
>they generate is far less, even when the electricity is being generated
>with fossil fuels.

Maybe. The dollar cost and environmental damage of petroleum powered
vehicles and electric powered vehicles is largely tangled up by how
much one wants to include in the comparison. For example, how far
back into the production of these vehicles does one need to go to
produce a complete analysis? Back to the mining and smelting of the
materials used? Back to the cost of the pipelines and transmission
lines used to deliver the electricity? Back the tax breaks used by
both industries? Back to the cost of restoring the environment in the
event of an ecological mishap? It's a tough problem. I haven't tried
it, but I suspect I could make the comparison favor either petroleum
or electric power by simply selecting how far back in the supply chain
I want to include.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 4/27/2022 8:05 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I’m California, due to the large amounts of solar power connected to the
>> grid, high noon is probably the best time to charge an electric car. See
>> “duck curve”.
>
> If you have solar panels on your house in California then you don't want
> to charge your car during peak time. The utilities pay you the _retail_
> value of KWH you put on the grid. You want to sell them as much
> high-value KWH as possible and then buy low-value KWH at night to charge
> your EV. You also don't want to charge a Powerwall (or other battery)
> with those valuable peak time KWH. Of course the utilities are very
> unhappy with the current pricing system and are lobbying heavily to have
> it changed.
>

We’re starting to see flows on the Pacific Intertie (built to bulk
transport cheap Pacific Northwest electricity to LA nearly reverse during
the day, and wholesale electricity prices in the area are plummeting around
noon. If I was a California utility, I’d be rightfully pissed about having
to pay homeowners peak rates for electricity that I couldn’t sell.

sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>
> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.

You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
problem.

> There's enough nighttime capacity even if 80% of vehicles are electric,
> without any upgrades to the grid. At 100% there will likely have to be
> upgrades to the grid.
>
> The average commute daily commute in the U.S. is 32 miles. A Tesla Model
> 3 gets 4.4 miles/KWH so that would be about 7.3KWH, or $1.82 at 25¢/KWH.
> A vehicle getting 35 MPG would use about 0.9 gallons of gasoline. Even
> at $3 per gallon that's $2.74 in fuel.
>
> Even with a 120V Level 1 charger, which charges at about 1.4KW, you can
> sufficiently charge an electric car, overnight, for about 43 miles
> (seven hours of charge is 9.8KWH, enough for about 43 miles of driving
> in a Model 3). But of course most EV owners would have a 240V Level 2
> charger.
>

On 4/28/2022 12:51 PM, funkma...@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:38:51 AM UTC-4, Ralph Barone wrote:
>> . A mine in my area is working to convert their huge dump trucks to
>> electric so that they can haul loads out of the mine with less emissions.
>> As a bonus, when the empty trucks are descending into the mine, they can
>> apply regenerative braking and actually produce electricity and save money.
>>
>
> Although I'm all for reduced emissions, it probably has more to do with the fact that a full electric truck (even an 'earth mover') has significantly less maintenance than a diesel/gas vehicle - no transmission, no regular maintenance for fluids or filters.
>
> Although many electric vehicles do have transmissions, example abound. The most obvious are the diesel-electric locomotives. They are driven by independent electric motors on each wheel with no transmission. The power is generated by the diesel engine which _only_ generates electric power. If you've ever been close to one when they accelerate, you'll notice maybe a slight increase in RPM of the diesel, but mostly it just gets louder as the load increases. One advantage is that it's possible for one or two of the motors to fail and still allow the locomotive to move. Since the diesel engine is hyper tuned to run within an extremely tight RPM range, it's also extremely fuel efficient. This method has been in use for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive#/media/File:DieselElectricLocomotiveSchematic.svg
>
> A few weeks ago my wide and I were driving on the highway and saw a pick-up that had an exceptionally distinctive look. It was a Rivian. I looked it up - MSRP of $80K, four independent electric motors (one for each wheel, no transmission), 0-60 in 3.3 seconds (yes, 3.3 seconds). It has has a "tank turn" feature which will contra-rotate the left and right wheels to allow for exceptionally tight turns (I dont know how it works, but that's what the card a driver article said https://www.caranddriver.com/rivian/r1t).
>
> It wouldn't surprise me that a mining company would be interested in something like that on a larger scale, or even on the 'earth mover' vehicles make a diesel electric type of hybrid like the locomotives.
>

'Reduced maintenance' may not mean 'reduced maintenance
expense'.

For one of these:
https://www.teslarati.com/how-much-tesla-semi-truck-battery-pack-weigh/

with four 250kWh battery modules, replacement auto-grade
battery units run roughly $250 per kWh or roughly a quarter
million dollars every few years ($62,000 x 4). Which is
equivalent to a LOT of oil changes.

Avoiding California rates, electricity is relatively cheap
compared to current diesel fuel once you discount driver
payroll expense during charge downtimes and cost of delayed
deliveries/ lost customers. One still needs regular tire
($800 each x 6) changes, alignments etc. I assume reduced
brake maintenance but not zero expense for that either.

Note 'current pricing' assumes some strategically large
amount of lithium, cobalt, neodymium etc will fall to earth.
Soon. Otherwise these materials, a dwindling resource, show
a disturbing price trendline:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1171975/global-monthly-price-of-cobalt/

https://capital.com/lithium-price-forecast

Anything's possible but IMHO these will remain niche
products for a good long while.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 4/28/2022 12:30 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
> sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>>
>> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
>> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.
>
> You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
> big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
> problem.

Yes, that's true, and sometimes they pump water back up into the
reservoir at night so they can use it again the next day.

On 4/28/2022 5:03 PM, AMuzi wrote:
> On 4/28/2022 12:51 PM, funkma...@hotmail.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:38:51 AM UTC-4, Ralph Barone wrote:
>>> . A mine in my area is working to convert their huge dump trucks to
>>> electric so that they can haul loads out of the mine with less
>>> emissions.
>>> As a bonus, when the empty trucks are descending into the mine, they can
>>> apply regenerative braking and actually produce electricity and save
>>> money.
>>>
>>
>> Although I'm all for reduced emissions, it probably has more to do
>> with the fact that a full electric truck (even an 'earth mover') has
>> significantly less maintenance than a diesel/gas vehicle - no
>> transmission, no regular maintenance for fluids or filters.
>>
>> Although many electric vehicles do have transmissions, example abound.
>> The most obvious are the diesel-electric locomotives. They are driven
>> by independent electric motors on each wheel with no transmission. The
>> power is generated by the diesel engine which _only_ generates
>> electric power. If you've ever been close to one when they accelerate,
>> you'll notice maybe a slight increase in RPM of the diesel, but mostly
>> it just gets louder as the load increases. One advantage is that it's
>> possible for one or two of the motors to fail and still allow the
>> locomotive to move. Since the diesel engine is hyper tuned to run
>> within an extremely tight RPM range, it's also extremely fuel
>> efficient. This method has been in use for decades.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive#/media/File:DieselElectricLocomotiveSchematic.svg
>>
>>
>> A few weeks ago my wide and I were driving on the highway and saw a
>> pick-up that had an exceptionally distinctive look. It was a Rivian. I
>> looked it up - MSRP of $80K, four independent electric motors (one for
>> each wheel, no transmission), 0-60 in 3.3 seconds (yes, 3.3 seconds).
>> It has has a "tank turn" feature which will contra-rotate the left and
>> right wheels to allow for exceptionally tight turns (I dont know how
>> it works, but that's what the card a driver article said
>> https://www.caranddriver.com/rivian/r1t).
>>
>> It wouldn't surprise me that a mining company would be interested in
>> something like that on a larger scale, or even on the 'earth mover'
>> vehicles make a diesel electric type of hybrid like the locomotives.
>>
>
> 'Reduced maintenance' may not mean 'reduced maintenance expense'.
>
> For one of these:
> https://www.teslarati.com/how-much-tesla-semi-truck-battery-pack-weigh/
>
> with four 250kWh battery modules, replacement auto-grade battery units
> run roughly $250 per kWh or roughly a quarter million dollars every few
> years ($62,000 x 4). Which is equivalent to a LOT of oil changes.
>
> Avoiding California rates, electricity is relatively cheap compared to
> current diesel fuel once you discount driver payroll expense during
> charge downtimes and cost of delayed deliveries/ lost customers. One
> still needs regular tire ($800 each x 6) changes, alignments etc. I
> assume reduced brake maintenance but not zero expense for that either.
>
> Note 'current pricing' assumes some strategically large amount of
> lithium, cobalt, neodymium etc will fall to earth. Soon. Otherwise these
> materials, a dwindling resource, show a disturbing price trendline:
>
> https://www.statista.com/statistics/1171975/global-monthly-price-of-cobalt/
>
> https://capital.com/lithium-price-forecast
>
> Anything's possible but IMHO these will remain niche products for a good
> long while.

Anything's possible, indeed.

Your worries remind me of articles from the mid-1970s about the rare
metals necessary for catalytic converters, and how the auto industry
would be doomed or the metals market would explode if converters were
mandated.

The metals are indeed uncommon and valuable, enough so that thieves are
now sawing converters out of vehicles at night. It's a problem! But
somehow, the auto industry has managed to survive.

So regarding EVs? We'll see. Anything's possible.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 4/28/2022 11:44 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

<snip>

> It's a tough problem. I haven't tried
> it, but I suspect I could make the comparison favor either petroleum
> or electric power by simply selecting how far back in the supply chain
> I want to include.

Unlikely. Those numbers have all been run many times. See
<https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021_02_Battery_raw_materials_report_final.pdf>.

Internal combustion gasoline engines have a thermal efficiency of
20-25%. Electric vehicles have a typical thermal efficiency of around
60%. If all electricity were produced with oil-fired generators
generating steam for steam turbines then there would be a case that EVs
are not doing much (though by the time you take into account refining
crude oil into gasoline they would still be a little better). But the
reality is that less and less electricity is being generated with oil.
Wind, solar, nuclear, and natural gas are all more thermally efficient
ways of generating electricity.

The oil industry used to attack electric cars by claiming that they were
just as dirty because they are powered by electricity that is generated
with fossil fuels. After that was disproved, they moved on to claiming
that the mining resources to extract materials for batteries is as bad
as burning fossil fuels. If you subscribe to the same faux news sources
as Tom and Andrew you will have seen both of these claims.

sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 4/28/2022 12:30 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
>> sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>>>
>>> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
>>> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.
>>
>> You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
>> big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
>> problem.
>
> Yes, that's true, and sometimes they pump water back up into the
> reservoir at night so they can use it again the next day.
>
Is a one in a mountain in wales, it’s generally used for peak loads, ie
such as when every one is likely to have a cup of tea at half time, and
then it pumps the water back up at night when it’s cheap etc.

Though I believe some big battery farms are being built ie to store and
even out wind/solar etc.

Roger Merriman.

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 3:03:59 PM UTC-7, Roger Merriman wrote:
> sms <scharf...@geemail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/28/2022 12:30 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
> >> sms <scharf...@geemail.com> wrote:
> >>> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
> >>>
> >>> <snip>
> >>>
> >>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
> >>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
> >>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
> >>>
> >>> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
> >>> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.
> >>
> >> You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
> >> big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
> >> problem.
> >
> > Yes, that's true, and sometimes they pump water back up into the
> > reservoir at night so they can use it again the next day.
> >
> Is a one in a mountain in wales, it’s generally used for peak loads, ie
> such as when every one is likely to have a cup of tea at half time, and
> then it pumps the water back up at night when it’s cheap etc.
>
> Though I believe some big battery farms are being built ie to store and
> even out wind/solar etc.
>
> Roger Merriman.

Battery farms are not a particularly good idea totally aside from their habit of catching fire and even exploding, "LITHIUM HYDROXIDE MONOHYDRATE HAZARD SUMMARY
Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate is on the Hazardous Substance List because it is cited by DOT. This chemical is on the Special Health Hazard Substance List because it is CORROSIVE."

It would be nice if the bullshit surrounding electric cars had any truth to them, but aside from all of the electricity almost entirely coming from fossil fuels and consequently with large losses in transmission and costs in infra-structure they are really only a good idea in heavy urban areas where other forms of pollution must be mitigated for human health purposes.

At one time you could see the layer of smog over LA from 100 miles away. It is still smoggy but nothing like it was in the 80's

On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:27:02 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
<cyclintom@gmail.com> wrote:

>Lithium being so highly reactive with almost everything is clear and present fire hazard and breaking the seal on a lithium battery on your smartphone can cause an explosive fire in your pocket or purse. Great care and LOTS of energy is expended making these batteries as safe as possible.

Maybe, depending on how you break the seal.

Lithium is reactive, but nothing compared to the other alkali metals:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Properties>
"... lithium has a single valence electron that is easily given up to
form a cation. Because of this, lithium is a good conductor of heat
and electricity as well as a highly reactive element, though it is the
least reactive of the alkali metals. Lithium's low reactivity is due
to the proximity of its valence electron to its nucleus (the remaining
two electrons are in the 1s orbital, much lower in energy, and do not
participate in chemical bonds)."

What makes lithium highly reactive is heat. Get metallic lithium hot
enough and it will rapidly oxidize. It's much like rust. Iron oxide
at room temperature just sits there and does nothing impressive. The
same iron oxide, mixed with powdered metals to make thermite, will
burst into a spectacular oxidation-reduction reaction.

Back to lithium batteries. Opening a LiIon battery or breaking the
seal, exposing the lithium to atmospheric air will cause the white
lithium to oxidize from white to gray and little else. I've done it
many times disassembling coin cells, LIPO bags, and prismatic cells.
It's fun to watch the lithium turn from white to gray. For a 2035
coin cell, it takes about 3 minutes.

However, there's a catch. Don't puncture the cell with a pin, nail,
staple, or other sharp object. This will short the plates in the
cell, causing excessive heating in a small area, which raises the
temperature of the lithium, causing the cell contents to eventually
ignite. Lots of impressive cell phone battery fire videos on YouTube.
A dangerous short could also be caused by conductive metal flakes in
the dielectric spacers in the cell, which is the common cause for cell
phone and laptop fires.
"Sony battery recall to hit 9.6 million"
<https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15327669>

There are safety issues with LiIon batteries, but those are mostly due
to problems with cobalt cathode LCO cells, which have inherent thermal
runaway problems:
"Safety of Lithium-Ion batteries"
<https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/safety-of-lithium-ion-batteries/>

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 14:07:44 -0700, sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote:

>On 4/28/2022 12:30 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
>> sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>>>
>>> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
>>> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.
>>
>> You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
>> big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
>> problem.
>
>Yes, that's true, and sometimes they pump water back up into the
>reservoir at night so they can use it again the next day.

Or use the incoming tide to fill the catch basin and it lasts till the
next tide :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 4/28/2022 3:34 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:27:02 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
> <cyclintom@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Lithium being so highly reactive with almost everything is clear and present fire hazard and breaking the seal on a lithium battery on your smartphone can cause an explosive fire in your pocket or purse. Great care and LOTS of energy is expended making these batteries as safe as possible.
>
> Maybe, depending on how you break the seal.
>
> Lithium is reactive, but nothing compared to the other alkali metals:
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Properties>
> "... lithium has a single valence electron that is easily given up to
> form a cation. Because of this, lithium is a good conductor of heat
> and electricity as well as a highly reactive element, though it is the
> least reactive of the alkali metals. Lithium's low reactivity is due
> to the proximity of its valence electron to its nucleus (the remaining
> two electrons are in the 1s orbital, much lower in energy, and do not
> participate in chemical bonds)."
>
> What makes lithium highly reactive is heat. Get metallic lithium hot
> enough and it will rapidly oxidize. It's much like rust. Iron oxide
> at room temperature just sits there and does nothing impressive. The
> same iron oxide, mixed with powdered metals to make thermite, will
> burst into a spectacular oxidation-reduction reaction.
>
> Back to lithium batteries. Opening a LiIon battery or breaking the
> seal, exposing the lithium to atmospheric air will cause the white
> lithium to oxidize from white to gray and little else. I've done it
> many times disassembling coin cells, LIPO bags, and prismatic cells.
> It's fun to watch the lithium turn from white to gray. For a 2035
> coin cell, it takes about 3 minutes.

Never seen a 2035 coin cell before. Where did you find such a battery?

> However, there's a catch. Don't puncture the cell with a pin, nail,
> staple, or other sharp object. This will short the plates in the
> cell, causing excessive heating in a small area, which raises the
> temperature of the lithium, causing the cell contents to eventually
> ignite.

True, it's the shorting of the plates that's the issue. Also charging at
more than 4.2 volts per cell. We had been charging unprotected 8.4V
battery packs with a power supply set to 8.4V. One software engineer
then decided to charge a single-cell pack at 8.4V. The explosion on
flames were quite impressive.

> Lots of impressive cell phone battery fire videos on YouTube.
> A dangerous short could also be caused by conductive metal flakes in
> the dielectric spacers in the cell, which is the common cause for cell
> phone and laptop fires.
> "Sony battery recall to hit 9.6 million"
> <https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15327669>

eBikes catching fire are even more impressive
<https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=941926209505582>, though many fires
that have been characterized as eBike fires are not actually eBikes,
they're electric scooters and electric motorcycles
<https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=941926209505582>

sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 4/28/2022 12:30 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:
>> sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 4/27/2022 8:27 PM, John B. wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>>>
>>> That's the time when the utilities have a lot of unused capacity that
>>> can't be stored, from wind and hydro.
>>
>> You might want to put a caveat next to “and hydro”. If your reservoir is
>> big enough, storing hydroelectricity for months and even years is no
>> problem.
>
> Yes, that's true, and sometimes they pump water back up into the
> reservoir at night so they can use it again the next day.
>

Turning off your turbines and letting the reservoir fill while supplying
your load with wind or solar energy is pretty much the same thing, but
easier.

Note that when you can see the reservoir from space, storage can be assumed
to be “adequate”. Lake Mead is a bad example, but look for Kinbasket Lake,
Nechako Reservoir, or Williston Lake.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 16:32:59 -0700, sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote:

>On 4/28/2022 3:34 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:27:02 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
>> <cyclintom@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Lithium being so highly reactive with almost everything is clear and present fire hazard and breaking the seal on a lithium battery on your smartphone can cause an explosive fire in your pocket or purse. Great care and LOTS of energy is expended making these batteries as safe as possible.
>>
>> Maybe, depending on how you break the seal.
>>
>> Lithium is reactive, but nothing compared to the other alkali metals:
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Properties>
>> "... lithium has a single valence electron that is easily given up to
>> form a cation. Because of this, lithium is a good conductor of heat
>> and electricity as well as a highly reactive element, though it is the
>> least reactive of the alkali metals. Lithium's low reactivity is due
>> to the proximity of its valence electron to its nucleus (the remaining
>> two electrons are in the 1s orbital, much lower in energy, and do not
>> participate in chemical bonds)."
>>
>> What makes lithium highly reactive is heat. Get metallic lithium hot
>> enough and it will rapidly oxidize. It's much like rust. Iron oxide
>> at room temperature just sits there and does nothing impressive. The
>> same iron oxide, mixed with powdered metals to make thermite, will
>> burst into a spectacular oxidation-reduction reaction.
>>
>> Back to lithium batteries. Opening a LiIon battery or breaking the
>> seal, exposing the lithium to atmospheric air will cause the white
>> lithium to oxidize from white to gray and little else. I've done it
>> many times disassembling coin cells, LIPO bags, and prismatic cells.
>> It's fun to watch the lithium turn from white to gray. For a 2035
>> coin cell, it takes about 3 minutes.
>
>Never seen a 2035 coin cell before. Where did you find such a battery?

Sorry. 2032 coin cell. This video shows how to tear it apart and
ignite the lithium, but doesn't show the color change:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc-kRTb4Dcw>
Note that there are many variations on internal construction of a coin
cell.

>> However, there's a catch. Don't puncture the cell with a pin, nail,
>> staple, or other sharp object. This will short the plates in the
>> cell, causing excessive heating in a small area, which raises the
>> temperature of the lithium, causing the cell contents to eventually
>> ignite.
>
>True, it's the shorting of the plates that's the issue. Also charging at
>more than 4.2 volts per cell. We had been charging unprotected 8.4V
>battery packs with a power supply set to 8.4V. One software engineer
>then decided to charge a single-cell pack at 8.4V. The explosion on
>flames were quite impressive.

Overcharging blows a hole in the insulating separator which shorts the
plates:
<https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coiled-layered-structure-of-cylindrical-Li-ion-battery-This-picture-is-from-reference_fig1_274445444>

Anyway, my point about "breaking the seal" on a LiIon battery does NOT
start a fire.

>> Lots of impressive cell phone battery fire videos on YouTube.
>> A dangerous short could also be caused by conductive metal flakes in
>> the dielectric spacers in the cell, which is the common cause for cell
>> phone and laptop fires.
>> "Sony battery recall to hit 9.6 million"
>> <https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15327669>

>eBikes catching fire are even more impressive
><https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=941926209505582>, though many fires
>that have been characterized as eBike fires are not actually eBikes,
>they're electric scooters and electric motorcycles
><https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=941926209505582>

Nice fire. One cell catches fire, heats the next cell, which in turn
catches fire, etc until every cell is burning. Using water to put out
the fire makes things worse. Water reacts with lithium to produce
hydrogen gas.
"Reaction of Lithium and Water"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqe_ZOwsHs>

I don't want to go into Tesla battery fires (mostly because I don't
know much about the technology). They use ethylene glycol coolant to
keep the cells cool enough to prevent ignition. However, ethylene
glycol is flammable and sometimes leaks:

Tesla May Adopt New Battery Tech To Prevent Vehicle Fires
<https://screenrant.com/tesla-new-battery-type-fire-risk/>

Tesla Megapack fire in Australia blamed on undetected coolant leak
<https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-megapack-fire-australia-blamed-undetected-coolant-leak-2021-09-28/>
"... the fire in the Megapack, a shipping container-sized battery
unit, was triggered by short circuits in two locations likely caused
by a coolant leak outside the battery compartment. The short circuits
occurred when the Megapack had been switched off after initial
testing, which removed fault protections. That meant the fault went
undetected and the fire spread to an adjacent battery compartment."

Oops.

I wonder if ejecting a burning cell with explosives might work?

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 13:38:43 -0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
<ralph@invalid.com> wrote:

>John B. <slocombjb@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 20:53:19 -0700 (PDT), "russellseaton1@yahoo.com"
>> <ritzannaseaton@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 10:27:25 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 21:10:58 -0500, AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 4/27/2022 5:44 PM, John B. wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 11:05:52 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>>>>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 4/27/2022 10:26 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
>>>>>>>> The lies about electric vehicles simply have hidden the fact that
>>>>>>>> they actually contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than modern
>>>>>>>> internal combustion machines.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ah, good! Yet another topic on which Tom Kunich knows much more than,
>>>>>>> and disagrees with, every competent scientist and engineer working in
>>>>>>> that field!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (:-)
>>>>>> Years and years ago I read an article about electric cars. It
>>>>>> specified the smallest electric car that would be acceptable as
>>>>>> something about the size of a Volkswagen Bug with a range of about 60
>>>>>> miles.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The article went on to discuss battery technology, as known then, amps
>>>>>> and volts, and a number of other features, but the last sentence in
>>>>>> the article stated that: "And at 5 o'clock when everyone in Los
>>>>>> Angeles comes home from work and plugs their car into the charger
>>>>>> there isn't sufficient electricity being generated in California to
>>>>>> charge them."
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So nothing's changed.
>>>> I don't know. Has it? SMA tells us that the best time to charge is 12
>>>> a.m. to 7 a.m. I'm a long time gone from AM/PM but isn't that from
>>>> about midnight till early morning? I'm usually asleep at that time.
>>>> --
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> John B.
>>>
>>> I doubt the electric car plugged into the electric car charger cares too
>>> much whether you are sleeping or not. Kind of like my refrigerator. It
>>> turns itself on or off all day long. I assume it has an internal
>>> thermometer to tell it whether to run or not.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing, just guessing, that electric car chargers installed in
>>> houses have some clock on them so you can program when the charger runs
>>> and draws power. So you just plug it in when you pull into the garage
>>> and it charges itself based on the program and clock. No need for you
>>> to go into the garage at midnight to plug it in.
>>
>> Good Lord! You mean I've got to buy one of them there expensive
>> electric cars AND then I've got to buy a battery charger too :-(
>>
>> But a slightly different slant on essentially the same subject.
>>
>> What about those heavy trucks laboring up hills with black smoke
>> pouring out of the stacks moving something like 12 billion tons of
>> cargo a year? Or the multitude of ships moving cargo across oceans?
>
>The ships are going to be tough. Charging facilities on the high seas are
>admittedly few and far between. However, they are working on designs for
>electric transport trucks. Some need recharging at “truck stops” while
>other envision an overhead catenary line to power the trucks along their
>way. A mine in my area is working to convert their huge dump trucks to
>electric so that they can haul loads out of the mine with less emissions.
>As a bonus, when the empty trucks are descending into the mine, they can
>apply regenerative braking and actually produce electricity and save money.
>
The copper mine I worked at in Indonesia was talking about electrical
powered heavy equipment in the open pit mine, so it apparently isn't
exactly a new scheme.

>
>However, don’t apply the thinking that “if we can’t displace every internal
>combustion vehicle with an electric one, then it makes no sense to displace
>ANY of them.” Similar to those that decry the efforts of those trying to
>reduce the use of fossil fuels by saying “Oh yeah, but your shoes are made
>out of plastic.”, it makes a false assumption that if you can’t do
>something completely, it’s not worth even starting. Hydrocarbons are too
>useful for other purposes to just extract them from the earth and burn
>them.

No my question was "what'cha gonna do?" The Madrid Maersk. I think the
current largest Container Ship has twin engines totaling 70,604 hp.

Big Batteries? Reduced cargo capacity? More voyages? Net results?
--
Cheers,

John B.