Comments theBike45 has made

  • CMU study blasted by facts, CMU giant errors

    For a change GM has issued a rebuttal to the ill-conceived and rather silly CMU study. A devastating rebuttal. Start off witht eh fact that the CMU study, whose arguments all revolve around battery costs, is absurdly wrong in estimating battery costs. By over 30% just today, and certainly bu over 60% by the time 4 to 5 years hence when the Volt (or Volt-type cars) are out there in force. The study compoounds its errors by claiming that economics drives purchases of cars (Oh, yeah, since when?), and completely misses others in the field right now (like BYD) which is selling Volt type cars (with even MORE electric driving range - 62 miles) at 1/2 the cost of the Volt and a whole lot cheaper than the Prius. The study further distorts reality by claiming people will recharge every 7 miles. The study is so flawed that CMU should issue a public apology. Also in error is CMU's brainless claim of gas avoidance by the Volt. A commuting Volt, even without workplace recharging, can attain 285 MPG, whereas a 7 mile ranged vehicle would be lucky to exceed 75 MPG.
    CMU also mistakenly claims that battery weight will make a significant difference with respect to mileage. Well, electrically propelled cars, dear CMU people, are NOT the same as other cars and the weight of the Volt's battery pack (about 430 pounds) will make very little difference
    when compared to a model with a battery pack supporting a 7 mile range. Wind resistence and tire rollingresistence are the big factors for EV car mileages, not weight, since the car can recapture most weight induced penalties thru regen braking. CMU has produced perhaps the most invalid and brainless study I've come across in quite some time. This really isn't rocket science, CMU. I'm embarrassed that this college in located in our country. On CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid posted 8 months, 4 weeks ago 37 Responses

  • Bombastic claims

    Don't you just love how alternative energy technologies slant and distort reality? Here we have the claim that a solar plant will have a capacity of 1300 megawatts. At high noon on a cloudless summer day it might. At all other times it will be less. Much less. Even zero for large portions of the day. From the claimed output kilowatthours figure we see the real truth : the plant can average less than 420 megawatts of actual power. Compare this to a nuclear plant that can easily produce 3 to 4 times more power that also is reliable power. In other words - nuclear can eliminate three times more carbon than this solar plant can.  And the plant will last but 20 years while a nuclear plant will last 60 years.  Why, oh why, are you wasting money on crappy technology like this? On Biggest California utility contracts for world's biggest solar power deal posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 23 Responses

  • Bombastic claims

    Don't you just love how alternative energy technologies slant and distort reality? Here we have the claim that a solar plant will have a capacity of 1300 megawatts. At high noon on a cloudless summer day it might. At all other times it will be less. Much less. Even zero for large portions of the day. From the claimed output kilowatthours figure we see the real truth : the plant can average less than 420 megawatts of actual power. Compare this to a nuclear plant that can easily produce 3 to 4 times more power that also is reliable power. In other words - nuclear can eliminate three times more carbon than this solar plant can.  And the plant will last but 20 years while a nuclear plant will last 60 years.  Why, oh why, are you wasting money on crappy technology like this? On Biggest California utility contracts for world's biggest solar power deal posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 12 Responses

  • Wrong, wrong, wrong - learn the technology, people

    I'm amazed at how arrogant some greenies are in
    giving opinions about things they know nothing about. First, the Tesla uses first gen obsolete and impractical li ion batteries, while the Volt uses the best out there - from LG and guaranteed to last TWICE as long as those used by Tesla (all 6871 of them!!!). No one knows their exact cost, including you, so shut up already. Cuurent costs don't mean a whole lot anyway, since such large cell batteries (which the silly Tesla does NOT have) have never been mass produced. A123 Systems claims a price drop of over 50%. To demonstrate just how brainless this article is, I point out that the Volt's battery pack does have a capacity of 16 kWhrs, but only 8 of them are available, making your electric mileage calculations 100% incorrect. The Volt achieves exactly 5 miles per kilowatthour. I also note that using a smaller
    pack would reduce the power output (power output nat the moment, of course, equals that from the ENTIRE pack).
    I also note that electric mileage obtained is all about commuting distances and that a Volt with half the driving range would avoid far less than half the gasoline consumption. The math is so simple even our simpleminded President could figure that out. On Chevy Volt could cut costs by using batteries more efficiently and paying less for them posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 17 Responses

  • You're displaying your ignorance about the Volt

    Well, first off, it's obvious that nobody here keeps up with the Volt development. The fact that you would depdend upon an articel written by a britisher who's never set foot on this country's shores tells me you're more than a little confused. In yet another attempt to unconfuse - GM
    has already tossed around several variant ideas, one to offer the Volt as a battery-only (for the benefit of the brainless Californians), and the other to offer th vehicle with a smaller battery pack. But this shows just how little Romm knows about electrically propelled cars. If you cut the battery pack in half,you DO reduce the capacity by half, to 20 miles of range. But you ALSO reduce the amount of power the pack can pump out, making the car unacceptably slow. THAT's why Toyota, while they were fiddling with their silly NiMH design, could only use battery-only power during low power demand situations. The Volt is not overly powerful as it is - in fact, GM is advising battery replacement should it ever be reduced by around 15 to 20%.  YOU ARE ASKING THEM TO REDUCE POWER 50%. Fat chance. Now the Saturn Vue greenline will have enough electrical power to go 10 miles, I believe, if you are looking for a lesser costly battery pack, it is a dual power design, unlike the Volt. Perhaps, however, your biggest blunder is in 1) assuming the car will cost over $40,000. It will NOT. Secondly, you are , for some strange, inexplicable reason, acting as thought that price will not be reduced over time. Fat chance. If you all were even paying half attention , you would remember the words of the A123 Systems exec who predicted a 50% drop in battery prices over the next several years. You would also know, had you been paying attention, that GM Lutz has already
    stated that the car's high initial price will be OK because of the fact that early adopters  will be well-heeled. And the volume of production during the first year and a half can't even meet the demand already expressed - at the upper $30K price range.
    You know, I'm getting tired of listening to ignorant Joes spouting opinions when they obviously don't know enough about the technology to even have an opinion, much less try to "inform" others.  On Is a 40-mile all-electric range too much? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 20 Responses

  • Agassi the foolish would-be monopolist

      I suppose it's an indication of just how ignorant the green folks are when I see Agassi's silly swappable battery scheme taken seriously. he even convinced Israel (well, he convinced them that they don't have to spend any govt dollars from  his scheme - it will all come from the pidgeons who sign up for his service).  Aggasi
    is prone to making totally fallacious arguments,
    which misleadingly pit his scheme against $8 gasoline powered cars, when his true competition is, of course, the plug-in hybrid. And he also implies that his scheme will eliminate crude oil as a fule, another big lie : only a fraction of any country's transport duel is used for the cars that could be replaced by Agassi's scheme (which he didn't invent - swappable batteries is an OLD idea). He also, like many  green souls out there, actually believe that there is a significant
    difference between the two technologies : battery-only electrics versus plug-in hybrids. There isn't. Battery-onlies will, in fact will often require more carbon emission from their owner than plug-ins to get somewhere. Even if the driver
    off a battery-only could use it for ALL of his transportation needs (fat chance), the differences between the technologies are trivial
    in their abilities to avoid either gasoline or emissions. Israel has absolutely no need to spend all that money (and it WILL be their money that pays for it)in order to accomplish nothing and
    pay exorbitant prices per mile. Agassi's scheme requires 4 to 5 batteries in reserve for each traveler on a day long trip (such trips in Israel would seldom exist) - that is multiplying the cost of batteries to support the drivers. Each car owner cannot now afford the $20,000 battery pack that last only 5 years and have a 100 mile driving range - they certainly can't afford a system that requires far more than 1 battery pack per car.  Even a shallow analysis of Agassi's scheme shows how  nutty it really is. And if a realy good battery shows up, most of Agassi's
    system becomes instantly obsolete. Right now it is just dumb. Really dumb. I can't beleieve that greenies are gullible enough to swallow a concept this stupid. But then, they also swallowed the  thousand lies in "Who Killed the Electric car?" On Electric-car visionary would overhaul the way we get around posted 1 year, 3 months ago 12 Responses

  • "Energy efficiency" an obsolete concept

    I'm amazed at how time-warped many environmentalists are these days - sounds like the bad old days of the Carter administration,
    when people were urged to not use the air conditioner in the house (this was to reduce oil consumption, which indicates just how dumb we were back then).  Energy greenies are just as dumb today with their beliefs that the future will include small cars, etc. It won't, for two reasons : 1) people like to be comfortable while driving and have plenty o froom for the family and 2) there is no reason to build small cars if the propulsion is primarily electric. That's because a) electricity is cheap and b) electrically propelled cars do not gain very much by reducing weight, and c) the fuel of the future will be either nuclear, which will outlast us all, and certainly outlast any reactors that will be built within the next 40 years, or renewable,
    which will last even longer. When you leave the world of finite fossil fuel (or, more accurately, fuel that everyone wants to avoid) then there are no limits on the energy supply. Now, do you really worry about depleting solar energy when you install your solar roof? Teh idea of conservation is ludicrous. We have more solar energy falling on just a small section of one of the 50 states than we could ever use. Conservationists simply can't escape a century of thinking in the fossil fuel box.  On More ideas for a post-oil society posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses

  • Barton's argument hard to swallow

      The major problem with skeptics such as Charles Barton, who have some knowledge about conventional capacitors, is that they throw out a lot of mumbo jumbo but don't explain why Lockheed-Martin, who employs more electronic brainpower (and more patents) than all the universities on the East Coast would invest in what Barton claims is a transparently faulty technology. Does Barton REALLY believe that both L-M and ZENN Motors' experts (whose people are also quite familiar with battery technology, as well as everything that's ever been published or blogged about the technology : by John Miller, and anyone else)  would be so easily duped?  Now THAT, is somethig that's hard to swallow, and it also doesn't require any knowledge of capacitors. Only simple logic. Barton's case simply doesn't make any logical sense. One might suppose he's out there shorting ZENN Motors, perhaps. That's what someone who really is confident that he was right would most certainly do. They sure wouldn't be blogging here about its impossibility, as Barton is doing. As for the idea that a large number of parts have to work for the whole to function, the obvious response is : So what? Many devices are
    like that. The issue has nothing to do with the number of  parts but with the probability of failure of each one. Neither Barton nor Miller has the slightest idea of what that probability is, but these are not complicated electronic devices, they are simple material pieces. Without
    fairly exact knowledge of those probabilities, it is impossible to make any estimate as to the reliability of the composite - Miller certainly is WAY out of touch if he thinks he can win this argument without any ammunition.
      In fact, LG Chem, which is in competition with A1233 Systems to provide batteries for the Chevy Volt,has a battery pack with exactly the same characteristic of failure as EEStor's capacitors - if one of the thousands of cells in their pack fail, the entire battery pack fails. This certainly hasn't stopped them from providing
    prototype battery packs that have easily passed all of GM's specs, and are the leading contender for the contract. On EEStor founder says things are on track for commercial production in 2009 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 13 Responses

  • Specious argument

       I'm rather amazed at the claims that McCain can direct the utilities' decisions concerning future energy generation. Or that utilities will be looking to maximize the costs of power generation or be unable to judge the relative costs of various technologies.
       I maintain that the utilities are the proper judges of which technology will be the best for its customers.
       The claim that conservation can solve the "energy crisis" (whatever that means) is pretty naiive. The world will always need more and more energy and conservation is an obsolete concept from another age - when fossil fuels were just about the only game in town and were understood as finite. When one moves into renewable energy sources, there are no limits to the amount of energy one can collect and then use.
       The anti-nuclear arguments of this writer are fallacious. He is cherry-picking his facts when he claims that rated capacity costs of nuclear power plants are $7700 per kilowatt, or $7.7
    million per megawatt. I've seen many estimates in the past year and a half of nuclear plant costs estimates (over 34 plants have been proposed - the writer oddly picks one estimate for his argument, the highest estimate I've ever seen). Most estimates range from $2200 to around $4500 per kilowatt of rated capacity. Unfortunately for Mr Hoexter's argument, rated capacity is a meaningless characteristic when comparing
    power generation costs. Rated capacity is simply the max amount of power that a given power generator is capable of producing, not the amount
    that it will in fact produce over its lifespan. A wind farm (or wavefarm or PV farm), for example, can have a rated capacity of 100 Megawatts. Seldom does a windmill (etc.)
    average over 30% of its rated capacity. We don't care about rated capacity - we care about how much electricity the power generator can
    produce over its lifespan. The lifespan of a nuclear plant is typically 60 years, while a windmill or a photovoltaic solar panel will last less than half that long. A nuclear plant typically averages well over 94% of its rated capacity,while a windmill produces roughly a third of that.
        This means that a windmill that costs $2800 per rated kilowatt capacity, requires building 3 generators to produce the same output as
    one single nuclear generator, and must replace each of those those at least once in order to have an equal lifespan. To compare the two
    power generation technologies, one must therefore multiple the windmill's rated capacity by 6, which equals $16,800 per kilowatt for the windmill.
       But that's not all - the windmills will require more transmission line costs than the nuclear plant, which is situated in a single location, while windmills are located over very large geographic areas, usually
    well away from any concentrated customer locales.
      There are also the seldom acknowledge side effect costs of using an unreliable power generator such as wind (or wave or PV solar) It cannot be counted on to meet ANY peak demand. This means that no matter how many windmills you errect, next year when power demand increases (as it will by 2% for each of the next 20 years),  new (reliable and controllable) power generators must be added to the system. Wind (or wave, or PV solar, or any unreliable generator technology) does not have the ability to replace ANY
    of the existing or future dispatchable generation capacity.
       I have read some anti-nuclear arguments that claim that, since nuclear plants must shut down for about a month every two years or so for refueling, that means that they, too, are unreliable. But this is a spurious argument -
    those shutdowns are scheduled to occur during the months of minimal energy demand, such as the Spring and Fall, and have zero effect on the reliability of the grid. Nuclear plants are so reliable that over the past decade, there
    has been only one unscheduled shutdown of a reactor.
      The fuel costs for a nuclear plant are a bit less than one half a cent per kilowatt hour  (the average retail price for 1 kilowatt hour in the
    U.S. is around 10 cents).  I have heard some ant-nuclear folks argue that the price of uranium ore will double or increase 5 fold. Aside from the suspican that estimates this far apart can have any credibility, even a doubling of price would have virtually no effect on retail electricity prices. A fivefold increase would still position nuclear way below other, inferior, technologies.On AEP demands 45 percent rate increase for Ohio posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

  • Rather silly diversification

    The idea that multiple technoogies "spreads the risk" is totaly inappropriate when discussing
    the private transportatiob sector. Obviously,
    Mr Hoexter realy doesn't comprehend how technologies become dominent. IF there were suddenly to appear a cheap, quick charging,
    long lasting battry (i.e. a working EEStor),
    then even a caveman would realize that battery-only electrics would be the way to go - no need for the expense of one of them range extender engines, etc. As long as batteries are NOT fast charging, then regardless, PHEV s will dominate. Swappable batteries make zero economc sense, and are totally inconvenient given current battery capacities - their ranges and the numcer of
    expensive reserve batteres required, not to mention their placement in the right locales, make this scheme just plain dumb. PHEVs can easily eliminate 94% of the need for gasoline -
    that far exceeds any goals we might have. Of course, gasoline only accounts for something  over half of our crude - the diesel requirement is half as large as gasoline and fuel oil is also a big player, both of which will not be affected by   electrification of the private transportation fleet. I might add that Obama's cherished goal of 1 million PHEVs on the road by 2015 is nonsensical - that would eliminate at most less than 1/4th of 1 percent of crude demand,
    even if those million PHEVs used no gasoline whatsoever. Obama's math is as bad as his "57 state" geography, apparently.On A three-pronged approach to getting off oil for transportation posted 1 year, 3 months ago 36 Responses

  • Sorry, not emission free

    Sorry, but California doesn't supply any emission free electricity, so the Think obviously can't be either. (No wonder california gets away with caling electric cars emission free vehicles - the citizens don't know the difference).On All-electric car coming to the U.S. next year posted 1 year, 7 months ago 17 Responses

  • Earl the Pearl and utter nonsense. Again.

    We over here at the EV society get a good laugh whenever morons like Earl here continue the fantasy that California ever had the power in its hands to create a viable alternative to the gasoline car. Certainly their definition of "zero emissions" was totally bogus and really, really, braindead. I note that the other day two seperate studies indicated that electric cars can actualy increase pollution. Whether they are technically correct or not, the point is obvious : zero emission cars as defined by California in their law were frauds. They also had the enormously
    damaging effect of devaluing plug-in hybrids, the only technology that is approaching practicality
    as a method of electric propulsion. If mentally challenged folk like Earl here were to actually
    analyze the effect sof a 40 mile plug-in like GM's Chevy VOLT, they would see that the Volt is all that's needed to destroy any more need for gasoline : the liquid fuel requirements for a fleet of Volt-like vehicles would easily be satisfied by ethanol. Earl can keep fantasizing about the magical properties of a zero emissions law and keep up the illusion that if you just get it right, it will produce millions of zero emissions vehicles. What's propelling the plug-in forward are battery technologies that arose, without the least bit of help or impetus from any silly zero emissions "law."  We are all laughing hysterically here at Earl and the logical contortions that are needed for him to continue to cling to his religious belief in zero emission laws. Earl, you're embarassing all of us other humanoids. Zero emission laws suck and have always done so and have damaged progress towards electrical propulsion. On Is CARB up to its old tricks? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

  • Subsidies are braindead mantras

    The problem with environmentalists is that they are so closed minded they can't see the forest for the trees. Anything and everything that produces power without carbon emissions they religiously promote , like some braindead born-again who thinks his is the only way. The problem is that we have encouraged pure garbage technologies that have no place in an advanced civilization - hell, wind power is less advanced than the on-demand wood-burning heating systems used by the cavemen, and more ancient ancestors who didn't even possess a written language. Solar photovoltaic is just as crappy, as are most wave technologies. Until environmentalsts get a brain and quit supporting every non-dispatchable, carbon-free, and useless energy technology, they wil continue to be seen for what they are - dimwitted puritans trying to sell everyone a bill of goods.On A solar grand plan posted 1 year, 9 months ago 29 Responses

  • Conspiracy fools 101

     Lockheed Martin is obligated to use the technology or the contract becomes moot. The idea that a prime contractor would avoid using a technology that would enable it to garner enormous contracts shouln't make any sense to even a Bush hater like amagingdrx.  Lockheed Martin has contracted to use the device for a specific purpose - namely military applications. Those rights DO NOT include exclusive usage, which your silly statement claims.  The fact is that any other automaker can employ EEStor's EESUs as long as they don't infringe on Zenn's exclusivity rights. Lockheed Martin has not obtained an exclusive usage agreement, which should have been obvious to even the braindead , since Zenn will be installing them in their cars.  
     And now it looks like ExxonMobil may save the day with their new advanced lithium ion batteries. Looks like amazingdrx will now have to not only use Exxon's gasoline but also their batteries. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. On Lockheed Martin signs exclusive contract with Eestor for energy storage units posted 1 year, 10 months ago 9 Responses

  • Better Place is mostly a more expensive place

    It's obvious that Agassi's scheme doesn't solve any of the killer problems with batery-only electrics - driving range and cost of batteries.
    He is simply taking advantage of a strange set of circumstances : a tiny country with ultra high gasoline prices and a population desperate to eliminate oil. problem is, all their goals can easily be met with plug-in electrics and they wouldn't need to the horrificallly expensive
    infrastructure of battery swapping stations and manpower requirementrs, not to mention the sharp increase in the cost of batteries that will require far more than 100 batteries for each 100 cars. Agassi's scheme is a money-making scheme, not a practical methof of eliminating oil depdendencies. Plug-in with a 40 mile plus range could eliminate over 96% of Isrel's gasoline needs and could easily be replaced by ethanol locally produced. Israel is making one really stupid move here. They haven't even analyzed the alternatives. Disgraceful.On The electrification of transportation will also help green the grid posted 1 year, 10 months ago 7 Responses

  • Plug-ins can do it all

      Plug-ins fueled by ethanol can replace virtually all gasoline used by private transportation. if you examine the stats for commuter drivers and then hypothesize plug-ins of various electric driving ranges and MPGs using liquid fuel, you'll find that a plug-in like the upcoming Chevy Volt (40 miles electric, 50 MPG) can achieve 275 MPG while commuting (and 395 MPG if 1/3rd of commuters can recharge at the workplace), eliminating 93% and 96%, respectively of gasoline used for commuting. A BYD-like 60 mile range, 50 MPG vehicle, can achieve a startling 950 MPG with no recharges at work, and 1450 if 1/3rd can recharge, reducing gasoline for commuting by 98.2% and 98.8%, respectively. Both
    of these vehicles are within reach within the next few years and are priced below $30,000.
     The ethanol required to replace the smal amounts of gasoline still required by these hypothetical commuters can easily be replaced by ethanol produced in this country. There is NO need for battery-only all-electric vehicles. Period.On Hybrids and biofuels: The road ahead posted 1 year, 10 months ago 44 Responses

  • Gee, I can't wait.

      Nothing like leading the yokels with some
    big discovery.  There ARE no big discoveries
    when it comes to batteries. Everybody knows what's out there and what they can do. I will make it a point to miss this upcoming important news story.On Watch CBS this Saturday for breaking electric-car news posted 1 year, 10 months ago 14 Responses

  • Cui's claims not beleived

    The curent status of Cui's claims is that no one familiar with the nanowire technology he is working with believes that he has achieved anything, but rather is confused and mistaken.
    No one in the industry believes that he has made any sort of breakthru in battery capacity. Sorry.On Battery technology continues to improve posted 1 year, 10 months ago 4 Responses

  • Solar thermal and nuclear the only solution

      While I wouldn't rule out carbon sequestration as a technology, as of now, the only players ready to meet our requirements are nuclear and solar thermal. Period. Wind and solar photovoltaic continues to demonstrate why these non-dispatchable generating technologies are primitive, exorbitantly expensive (wind costs 6 times more than nuclear power when measured by amount of power produced over the lifespan) and
    with undisclosed side effect costs - neither can shutter a sngle fossil fuel plant since neither can meet peak demand requirements - both must be duplicated (wind by nearly 100%). And so-called "dispatchable wind" generates nearly the same carbon emissions as a natural gas generator.
    Both wind and solar photovoltaic together generate
    less than 1 percent of U.S. power and practically none of it when its most needed. Solar thermal looks to cost about 1/4th that of photovoltaic and 1/2 that of wind and can provide 20 times more energy density per square foot than wind.
    Wind and solar photovoltaic are primitive, nearly useless methods of producing small amounts of low quality power , at times when no one wants it.
    They will quickly disappear when solar thermal expands, unless the politicians are getting funded by the global wind industry and continue wasting govt money via subsidies. Non-dispatchable power should be banned from the utility grid.On Jeremy Carl looks at ways to clean up coal posted 2 years ago 13 Responses

  • Pretty good response

      From the latest data I have (2005), the U.S.
    utility grid consists of 49% of coal power electricity - here I'm referring to the actual amount of power produced (kilowatthours), not
    caapcity (kilowatts). Nuclear and hydroelectric are the only significant producers of carbon-free power at 20% and 7% respectively. Most renewable generation produces loads of carbon - biomass, etc. Wind and solar photovoltaic produce negligible amounts of power (less than 1% combined). The only sources of new and plentiful carbon-free power will come from nuclear (32 new
    plants producing about 8% of our power, replacing coal plants almost exclusively as base load generators) and solar thermal. Solar thermal has the capacity to produce dispatchable power (unlike wind and solar photovoltaic and most wave
    technologies) and at a much cheaper cost, and in very large amounts, without despoiling the environment and making vast tracts of land unusable, as wind does. In several years look for solar thermal to cost 1/4 the price of photovoltaic and 1/2 the price of wind and be totally controllable and predictable.  Wind and photovoltaic (and most wave technolgies) are
    basically living on borrowed time and cannot
    possibly compete either economically or environmentally or in terms of quality.  On The debate on plug-ins begins posted 2 years ago 12 Responses

  • Forget government involvement

      I'm amazed at how people look to the Feds and expect legislation to cure any ills. Carbon-free energy is to the point where is actually makes sense - sorry wind and photovoltaic, but your technology is preposterously primitive , exepnsive and impotent with horrible side effect costs (like th eneed for duplication since neither can help meet peak demand). Solar thermal and nuclear is about all that's needed to meet any power goals. The other technologies are basically irrelevant, although efficient geothermal and hydroelectric are always welcomed.
    The desire for carbon free power and the lowered cost of solar thermal and the renaiissance of nuclea is all that's needed, along with the electrification of the automobile, which is
    occurring at GM and Byd via practical plug-ins that can do virtually everything a battery-only electric can. Reducing carbon has become a very simple problem. Unfortunately there are still those pushing horribly obsolete technologies like wind and photovoltaic and non-dispatchable wave
    that are getting in the way. Economics and eventualy some sanity (sorely missing) and logical thinking will do the trick. There are simply too many fools out there who think you need a dozen different technologies that need to be promoted. I will strongly opose any govt funds being wasted on non-dispatchable power and call for such technologies to be forbidden from govt subsidy.On The Lieberman-Warner bill is not strong enough to do the job posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

  • Electric cars still not viable alternative

     All-electric cars are not ready for mass production. They may have improved twofold over the EV-1, but that's still a long way from being a viable alternative to a gasoline vehicle. The good news is that electric cars have no particular advantage over plug-ins that have a greater than 40 mile electric driving range.
    Considering emissions and oil avoidance, the
    battery powered all-electrics are hardly worth bothering with. They certainly aren't worth putting up with. And here's a case where a fleet of plug-ins can have their entire liquid fuel
    needs satisfied by biofuels, making the all-electric advantage essentially zero. The effort should be to make electrical production cleaner,
    not to spend gigantic sums of money on the questionable effort of attempting to invent a super battery, a battery that probably doesn't even exist at our current level of technology.
    We don't need a super battery - the ones we have are satisfactory for a plug-in, which is all that's needed.On Automakers want to delay the transition to electric vehicles posted 2 years ago 21 Responses

  • A practical and improved Tesla

     Where the article gets the 100 MPG figure from si a mystery : plug-in MPG is not a definable
    characteristic - the electric driving range and total driving range and MPG during range extended driving are the relevant fuel facts.
      This Fisker makes the Tesla not only look sick, but overly expensive and impractical to boot.
    According to statisitcs, a 50 mile electric driving range typically avoids 90% of gasoline
    usage. IF, as GM is planning, there will be receptacles available at shopping malls, office buildings, public parking lots, and grocery stores, that 50 mile range can easily extend to
    100 miles per day without needing any gasoline,
    resulting in over 95% avoidance of gasoline.
    50 miles per day is 18,500 miles of gasoline-free driving per year.  
    On Plug-in sports car to hit showrooms in 2010 posted 2 years ago 10 Responses

  • Birdbrained idea

     The overwhelming stupidity of this will-never-fly business plan is that it : 1) doesn't reduce the cost of batteries but does just the oppositie. Leasing offers no financial advantage, either now or down the road, when batteries would be covered by a 5 or 6 year car loan anyway. The other mistake is in assuming that a monopolistic system like this is planning to be, is providing an answer for a problem that's already been solved by GM and BYD, Fisker, etc by using a range extender engine to provide unlimited range (without stopping every couple hundred miles for a battery pack transplant. All-electric versus plug-ins with over 40 miles differ very little in terms of emissions reduction and crude oil avoidance, so one cannot claim much in the way of "planet saving" from this idea. Plug-ins accomplish over 90% of what an all-electric can accomplish.   There are tons of other problems with this scheme - when plug-ins arrive, public receptacles at office buildings, shopping malls, etc, etc, (usually free) will destroy any scheme such as this one from ever making any economic sense. Advancements in battery technolgy (quick recharge batteries) also doom this business plan.
    In fact, just about everything coming down the pike dooms this plan.On CPR for the electric car posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

  • Silly, silly anti-nuke claims

      Everyone knows at this point why global warming exists - the excessive carbon produced by coal poweer plants that replaced those unbuilt nuclear power polants blocked by the anti-nukes. Now is the silly idea that water will become so scarce that nuclear plants will have difficulty operating. Sorry, but one of the prime considerations in siting a water cooled nuclear plant is that water be available. Duh!  And why does this bozo think that the miniscule temperature increases that will appear over the next several decades is going to severely impact ambient water's cooling capabilities? The only problems that ever arise do so in the depth of a hot summer spell. An average temp increase of even 30 years worth of global warming would have an almost unmeasurable impact on that water's coolant capabilities.  The anti-nukes better go back to their pathetic fear-mongering campaign, although from the latest polls, nuclear power is favored by a strong majority, who realize how ant-nuke activists have been the cause of global warming for the past 30 years.  On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

  • Environmentalists encouraged coal

     I have to laugh again at the stupidity of the grid-ignorant environmentalists who played the heroes of the 70's by blocking "that nasty nuclear
    power,"  thereby making large base-load coal plants the only alternative. Those ignorant do-gooders, by causing the substitution of coal for nuclear power, are PRIMARILLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ELEVATED LEVELS OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON. Only one guy - one of Greenpeace's original founders, has had the guts to admit he was wrong and become an advocate of the only practical and significant source of energy we have. Those others, time-warped in the 1970's (like unreliable fat Albert)
    keep pushing their silly conservation solutions and oh, yes, useless windmills. On The fight against coal makes for strange bedfellows out West posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

  • Obsolete technologies

     I'm rather amazed that after the news of Ausra's obviously gamechanging solar thermal technology,
    plus the resurgeance of the only significant means we currently possess for producing carbon free electricity (nuclear - 32 new US plants, 304 new plants outside the US in the next 3 to 5 years) anyone is bothering to even discuss such outmoded and doomed technologies as photovoltaic, (non-dispatchable) wave and wind and carbon sequestration. Keep talking, but I won;t be listening anymore - your discussions have been rendered totally irrelevant. Sorry, you misinformed folks. The environmental game is over, along with its multiitude of  nonensical theories, technologies and arguments. Conservation ala fat Al is likewise now just plain dumb. On Why bother criticizing S&N? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 21 Responses

  • Hybrids are valueless, ad so are NiMH batteries

      The traditional non-plug-in hybrid has accomplished practically none of the goals originally claimed by those in government who
    taxed the many to subsidize the few who bought them. GM followed the non-hybrid path and chose fuel cells because of the federal government
    "experts" who were telling everyone that we were inexorably headed for a "hydrogen economy."
    They recently said the reason they didn't pursue a Chevy VOLT type electric car with range extender was because of the stupid way the California Zero Emission law was written - it aimed for the home run when the technology simply wasn't there. California and its hysterical and arrogant arrempt to decarbonize their electricity
    is a perfect example of ignorant government officials spending billions on crappy technology way too soon. Windmills and photovoltaic will be the big losers as alternative energy sources, that's becoming abundently clear from the recent
    events with solar thermal ala Ausra's contrcats with CA and Florida. And nuclear will produce 40 times as much carbon-free electricity as wind and at a build cost  10 times cheaper.  I might also add that California's electricity produces more carbon than South CArolina and costs 60% more.  I note CA generating producers spewing almost 700 pounds of carbon for every megawatt they produce and also observe Vermont producing 5 (!!!!) pounds per megawatt.
    Yeah, right California - keep making loud noises about how low your emissions are.  On What Californians know that Shellenberger & Nordhaus don't posted 2 years, 1 month ago 13 Responses

  • Everyone's waiting for EEStor

    Unfortunately few think it will work. If it does, then the real automakers will have a means of building all-electrics right npow. Otherwise it will be plug-in hybrids for quite some time. There is no good argument for the need for all-elctrics as expressed by the obviously biased ZENN motor company. For now, their vehicles meets the needs of almost no one,and are not viable alternatives to gasoline cars. And ZENN's false claim that electric cars get rid of pollution implies that electrical generation doesn't
    produce any, an absurd notion and convenient lie. The idea of solar panels recharging cars is also nonsense. The cost would be prohibitive for anything except a PR stunt. Photovoltaics is the absolute worst method of producing carbon free electricity, and he knows, or should, know it.
    On A chat with Zenn about NEVs and EEstor posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

  • News not anything new

     I'm amazed at how the recent spate of articles about EESTor (this being one of them, although it is entirely derivative and adds zippo to the state of our knowledge) acts as though this company suddenly appeared from the bowels of an alien spacecraft.  They've been around for 11 years, with at least some participants migrating from auto industry veteran supplier TRW up north. The biggest hurdle they face in terms of credibility has been the fact that their claims so completely exceed the current state of capacitor capabilities. They also claim benign failure characteristics never before seen with capacitors. The article also neglect to mention problems other than energy capacity : capacitors have a high leakage rate that makes their use
    problematic for applications such as autos. Also not mentioned are their  undesirable failure characteristics.
       EESTor is THE big unknown when it comes to handicapping future electrical storage  technology. Let's all pray they succeed. They have claimed commercial production within 10 months and will deliver a test battery pack to ZENN before then. The article claims before year's end, but that is no longer valid - it should occur, obviously, before production begins, most likely early next year. ZENN stock has been volatile, and mostly volatile upwards the past several weeks since new talk of EESTor has emerged. ZENN has made no mention of a bona fide, highway capable electric car, probably because they can't build one - all their current products are low speed, neighborhood death traps that don't meet any Federal safety standards.
    On Ultracapacitor company claims it will revolutionize electric cars posted 2 years, 2 months ago 9 Responses

  • Won't have long to wait

    EEStor is hardly a "startup company" they have been working on their EESU's for 11 years now.
    This article is rather lacking in recent details. For the first time, the CEO of EEStor claims they will begin conmmercial production within 10 months. First up: ZENN Motors, with a $2 mill stake and an exclusive agreement for use of the batteries in their electric cars under specific
    conditions. This is a crappy posting - it says nothing of the new developments. What it does say has been bandied around the EV world for 3 years (at least). Why don't you Grist people get with it? On Startup says new technology will make gasoline obsolete posted 2 years, 2 months ago 1 Response

  • Rather silly article about old time events

     Talking about constriction of nuclear plants 20 year sago is rather absurd - back then there were so many obstacles involved, it's a wonder any ever got built at all. One may also recall how poor windmill technology was back then. Even today, wind power construction makes nuclear power station construction look cheap. There were many reasons for high costs in year spast, and the largest portion of all were delays due to
    governmental reg changes that were foolishly installed after design beut before completion.
    The other large cost inflator was the fact that back then there was a rather foolish tendency to reinvent the nuclear power plant at each new
    installation. Nowadays, there is far more standardization and the same basic design's cost can be amortized over many plants. This can easily cut the price a  plant by more than 70%.
    The actual costs of buying a reactor are relatively controlled and predictable. The TXU
    recently ordered two reactors fromMitsubishi at a cost of between $1.2 and $1.4 million per kilowatt, which is easily 8 times cheaper than the cost of a wind power, and of course, produces controllable and reliable electricity,
    completely unlike the low quality, low valued wind produced power.  Anyone who tries to argue that nuclear is somehow intrisically difficult and prone to cost overruns is making a completely invalid argument. Nuclear plants technology is far more proven and reliable than either wind or wave or any of the other non-dispatchable alternative energies, and far more potent. Just those two reactors from Mitsubishi will produce
    almost as much power as all 7500 wind turbines in the US and do so when needed. Wind in Texas, for example, produced power at an insignificant 2% during peak demand periods during 2006. The implications here are clearly that wind, right now many times more costly than nuclear, is actually far more expensive than first thought, since all wind capacity MUST be duplicated by dispatchable power than can meet peak demand.
    I read where China will be building upwards of 400 nuclear power plants in the years ahead. If the US fails to build nuclear, it will be the most polluting country of the civilized world. France obtains 75% of her power from nuclear.
    I think the US has the technical wherewithall to match France. To claim that nuclear is somehow
    intrinsically expensive is a gigantic lie. And then there's the gas-pebble-bed reactors down the road. When those are commercially available,m only a fool (or Don Quixote) will be out errecting windmills, one of the most heavilly subsidized (and useless) energy sources we have. On Strict safety guidelines cause construction delays at nuclear plants in Finland and Taiwan posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses

  • VOLT will rule

    Honda hybrids and the Prius are pathetic and ineffective attempts to squeeze a few more miles out of a miniscule mini that meets the driving needs of practically no one. Look at the pathetic Camry hybird and the late, not lamented Honda Accord hybrid, another Honda flop. These folks are thinking inside the box. An old box called the non-plug-in hybrid that has been an utter failure - we are using even more gasoline than we ever did. Time for the GM plug-in dual-modes and , the ultimate, the Checy and Opel VOLTs. NOW we will see some crude reduction, and reduction in Honda and Toyota hybrid sales to boot. On Honda fights to regain green car company mantle posted 2 years, 3 months ago 33 Responses

  • Invalid logic

      The fact that the carbon is sequestored when  used to move more oil out of the ground cannot be
    diputed. The fact that oil is what is removed has nothing to do with anything - we use oil if we need it, not just because this particular well provided it. For all you know, the oil may be used for lubrication or making plastics, or medicine, etc. none of which emits carbon, if you want to get technical about it. Your argument is fallacious because it conmtends that the oil produced 1) will produce carbon emisions (something you can't know) and 2) that not getting that oil would cause , what? People to ride their bikes? I'm amazed your logic is so flawed, but then, hysterical environmentalists seldom think very clearly   On Injecting CO2 into oil wells is not real carbon sequestration posted 2 years, 3 months ago 15 Responses

  • Coal sequestration is going to be cheap

      The problem here is that this yoyo is using cost figures today, before the technology is feasible. In fact, there are several sequestration  technologies and the goal is to cost 10%. Coal alone is quite cheap - not as cheap as nuclear, but a whole lot cheaper than wind, which has enormous side costs because of it non-dispatchable nature. On Not your father's Old Coal posted 2 years, 3 months ago 7 Responses

  • Will be far more nuclear

      An additional 64 GW of nuclear is a large underestimation, especially if gas-pebble-bed generation proceeds as expected. Nuclear would completely trump inefficient and overly expensive wind, and doesn't require replication to boot, which boosts the actually costs of wind even more, although never admitted by wind proponents, who live in a dream world. Those West VA mountaintops and the flying wildlife would be better off with coal mines than with useless wind turbines. could    Solar tower looks to be the most efficient solar for quite some time to come, perhaps forever. Wave will eventually exceed
    wind power due to huge advantage in  power density - i.e. water contains 800 times the energy of wind. On Really? posted 2 years, 3 months ago 8 Responses

  • Prius vs VOLT and Toyota PR BS

         While one could argue that the Prius hybrid is an OK  (but hardly state of the art) design, no one would ever design a plug-in hybrid to resemble  the Prius, as Toyota is doing, or I should say, not doing, since they aren't actually designing anything.  The only conceivable reason why Toyota would jerry-rig their Prius into plug-in format is because otherwise GM's VOLT would beat them to market.
         Regardless of which battery type Toyota ultimately selects, Toyota execs recently indicated that the electric driving range of the Prius will be "less than 20 miles" and possibly as little as 10 miles. That unimpressive figure has caused many EV/plug-in proponents to become disillusioned with Toyota once again. Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed the Electric car?" had nothing good to say about Toyota's plug-in, while  praising GM's upcoming VOLT as an ambitious effort that would make a big difference in carbon emissions.
        The General Motors VOLT platform, which will have Chevy, Saturn and Opel versions by late 2009 and 2010, is the plug-in of the  future, with an electric driving range of over 40 miles. Totally electric beyond the battery pack (with a 15 to 40 year lifespan), it is the ultimate in flexible and modern modular architecture, in which major components, or modules,  that are likely to change over time are independent and isolated from modules less likely to change. Thus the VOLT derives all its power solely from the battery pack, while the component that recharges that battery pack  is isolated and independent, and can thus be easily swapped for another energy source, should it prove more efficient and/or environmentally sound.
    The sole power source used to operate the VOLT is electricity,
    making the VOLT truly an electric car, but one whose electricity
    can be supplied by any number of different sources. Therein lies the
    enormous flexibility and modularity of the VOLT design.  
       The Toyota plug-in, on the other hand, will always be what it now is, an inefficient and inadequate plug-in design. There simply is no way to disentangle the electric/ICE interdependencies, or even to eliminate the pointless but expensive automatic transmission.
       Quite simply, the Prius plug-in is an attempt to steal GM's thunder by cobbling together an inappropriate plug-in design. Toyota's distribution of "test cars" to their customer nations have no purpose save garnering widespread publicity, which they did. No automaker needs to"test" the plug-in concept, least of all Toyota, which had a five year history with plug-in electric Rav 4s. Notice that GM did not publicly test a plug-in. Rather than  wasting time and effort  on such a pointless enterprise, they started building one instead.
        Toyota claims that no automaker  can build an affordable plug-in with a 40 mile battery range. Bob Lutz, project manager of the VOLT and No 2 man at GM, says that he can.  Toyota might think about removing useless but expensive components from their plug-in
    (like that needless transmission) before they make any claims about
    costs.  
        The VOLT will cost less than $30,000 and is constructed of lightweight composite materials. It also is a very attractively styled vehicle that even non-treehuggers can love. It will bury the Prius plug-in. I am quite certain of that.
        Those interested in seeing what a modern plug-in car will look like can do so by visiting www.gm-volt.com   The information on THAT (non-GM) website is guaranteed to not misinform.
    On Sure looks that way posted 2 years, 3 months ago 50 Responses

  • VOLT will have the greatest impact

    I read a lot of bunk about the Tesla as if that low volume, high priced car could make the slightest dent in carbon emissions. It won't - there are 800 million gas cars and will be about 600 Teslas next year. Environmentalists have exaggerated the invisible impact of the Tesla
    to such as extent that they have lost all credibility as realistic sorts. The Tesla has not advanced electric propulsion technology one iota. The VOLT and its siblings will be in force in the millions, while Tesla talks in terms of a few thousand cars,  and for every typical driving day, the E-flex cars will avoid gasoline just as effectively as the Tesla. GM learned how not to build an electric car with the EV-1. Tesla has yet to learn the same lesson - without a practical , affordable battery, electric cars will remain the province of the wealthy who are looking to boost their green image. And Toyota's
    patheically range bound plug-in Prius (with its pointless but expensive transmission) will be just as big a flop as the EV-1 and their own Rav4 electric. On Sure looks that way posted 2 years, 3 months ago 50 Responses

  • Who Killed the Electric Car is pure bunk

    Rarely is a movie so filled with lies as this film,from the crap about what a wonder car the EV-1.  Prime liar Ed Begley stands there making th epreposterous claim that 90% of the folks can be satisfied with a car like the EV-1. Oh, really?  A car that costs $45,000 and can't get to the next country  and back, much less to a vacation spot, has batteries that cost $25,000 and need replacing every  5 years, requires 8 hours to recharge and has a battery pack that weighs a whopping 1200 pounds is NOT a wonder car. It;s exactly what it proved to be - a complete flop. Same for the Rav4 electric and the Honda EV. All
    three failed for the most obvious of reasons. You don't need to manufacture villains to understand why the electric car using NIMH batteries was a disaster. The EV-1 was no more advanced than the Detorit electric car build in 1907 in terms of
    all-important driving range and tiem to recharge. In 90 years, the electric car hadn't improved one iota. Only those who know nothing of the history of the electric car, or the EV-1 in particular
    (which couldn't legally be sold - another small
    point that lying film seems to have strangely
    forgotten to tell its audience). And by the way, that long list of eager customers is a total lie.
    There was no sucj long list - the only list GM ever had was a list of customers who might be interested in learning about the EV-1. On The green cartopia ain't likely to happen posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

  • General Compression the only rational wind

    The problems with conventional wind are enormous - wind almsot universally blows the least during peak power, which akes any installation of windmills totally pointless in a situation like ours or increasing energy demands - those wind turbines would contribute nothing and can not be counted in the power requiremnts of the grid. Turbines are also exorbitantly excessive in terms of installation costs , easily 5 to 7 times more expensive than nuclear (disregard those bogus DOE figures given- they don't measure actual power produced nor lifespan of the facilities or turbines and are totally misleading).  General Compression attached the turbine's blades to air compressors, not generators, allowing it to operate at much greater wind velocities than
    regular turbines, which  must feather or shut down their turbines as the winds become strong (pretty stupid, huh?). Thus dispatchable (sort of)
    power. And subsidies for wind turbines must require that the turbines be dispatchable. What is out there now is almost totally irrelevant - turbines produce only 33% of their claimed capacity, less than 1/2 of 1 percent of capacity.
    Our demand grows as 2% per yesar and will do so for the next 20 years. Wind is a total waste of money that could be spent to make a difference elsewhere. It's a national disgrace.On Economist stuff posted 2 years, 4 months ago 17 Responses

  • Iraq a war for oil?

     The question is incredibly stupid, but Edwards
    apparently thought it plausible. Dumb-de-dumb-dumb. "Terrorism is nothing more than a bumper sticker." Dumb-de-dumb-dumb. And people wonder why he's not a serious factor in a campaign of lightweights. Al Gore his hero? Even Al Gore's son doesn't think Al Gore is a hero.On An interview with John Edwards about his presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

  • No subsidies like wind subsidies

      I find it deplorable that the morons sitting in Congress writing their silly energy bill would alow non-dispatchable wind to qualify for their massive subsidies. Windfarm operators are getting so rich off taxpayers that even Boone Pickens is joining in. States also sould refrain from forcing anybody to buy the junk that is current non-dispatchable wind power. Mix politicians and technology and subsidies together and you've got an ungodly mess. That describes the energy bill. On Random observation of the day posted 2 years, 5 months ago 19 Responses

  • Little bit is the operative word

      I suppose it's a good feeling to feel superior to Google. Their paltry contribution to EVs will go down as the most insignificant effort by a
    fat cat in history. Google truly sucks. On Search Engine Engine Search posted 2 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses

  • Gee, can they spare that?

    Th idea that spending $10millon will be able to "jump start" anything is totally absurd.
    And a vehicle to grid technology is both unneeded and silly. Non-dispatchable power sources like wind can be made controllable via General Compression, Inc., if one is stupid enough to
    want to build wind turbines and desecrate the environment for the sake of insignificant amounts of power. On Google.org funds V2G demonstration projects posted 2 years, 5 months ago 17 Responses

  • I Told You Guys,But you knew it all ....

     I told the writers on this blog who doubted GM's desire to build the VOLT that they were manufacturing doubts, based mostly on the lies
    contained in the most fictitious "documentary" ever filmed ("Who Killed.."). The main absurdity on their argument was that GM would unveil a revolutionary vehicle in the most public forum
    imaginable, promising to build the car by 2010
    (assuming the battery was ready by then), and then not follow thru. This is every bit as silly as the film's claim that GM would spend billions over an 8 year period to develop an electric car, which they would lease for 6 years, so they could then cancel the car (!!!!!). Perry Mason storylines look positively rational and reasonable in comparision. A nation of morons
    without the ability to spot a transparent con. No wonder they sold 100 million conspiracy books on the JFK assassination. Book publishers didn't want the "mystery" to be "solved." That's the last thing they wanted. On Looks like the plug-in might actually happen posted 2 years, 6 months ago 55 Responses

  • GM haters are really, really stupid

      I read one GM-hating moron's comments where he
    portrays all GM vehicles as monster Hummer types roaring down the highway while the Toyota Prius's
    efficiently motor along. What a monster lie. Everyone who knows anything about cars knows that GM has many more 30 MPG plus vehicles than Toyota, which has about 2, as I recall. GM is also premiering a hybrid system for many of its vehicles this year and next that outdoes the rather obsolete Toyota technology. Their "monster
    trucks" (anybody seen a Toyota Titam - note the name "Titan" - that means big, as in titantic, for you illiterate GM haters). Anybody remember the Toyota Land Cruiser?  5 MPG (if that) and 6000 pounds. Yes, Toyota certainly outdoes them all. We need more of them Titans. A lot more.
    And more Land Cruisers. On Looks like the plug-in might actually happen posted 2 years, 6 months ago 55 Responses

  • California has the problem, not the coal plants

      Seems to be a little confusion here. California is the party that needs the power. Carbon sequestration is not technically difficult,
    and the Alstom chilled ammonia technology has sliced the power requirements in half. It is being deployed at two plants in the next 2 to 3 years on a test basis, but that's simply verifying the obvious and looking to fine tune the procedures. In the Southwest there are only
    three viable options to acheive any significant emision redutions - Environmission type solar towers (currently bidding an RFP from El Paso Power for a 200 MW tower), carbon sequestration and nuclear. Nuclear is the best of the three by far, both economically and in terms of the environment. Wind is hopelessly inadequate, unreliable, and way, way to expensive, especially for such a dirty, environmentally obnoxious waste of land; it also costs from 20 to 30 times more to build than nuclear per megawatt per year. Wind is a bad joke that nobody seems to get. The politicians keep pouring the public's money into this economically moribund primitive technology
    that's on life support.
    We can always count on California to make a bad
    situation much worse - as in their disastrous zero
    emissions laws which stymied the development of the plug-in hybrid , the only viable automotive technology out there.
    On Yet another pioneering green move from the state posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

  • Perhaps you ought to learn something CS

      I'd hate to think that opinions about a technology are being formed on the basis of
    whether one og the 25 organizations involved happens to cancel some project somehwere, for some reason. I's suggest that the writer actually
    make th esupreme effort and Google carbonn sequestration. When he learns what the Altom chilled ammonia proces is and who is currently planning testst beginning this year at two coal plants in the US, etc. etc etc. Anyone who can't see the obvious advantages of carbon sequestration simply doesn't comprehend the problem nor the inadequate proposed solutions (windmills, for one, a really stupid and expensive way to not only produce small amounts of practically valueless electricity, and also ruin our visual environment at the same time).
     Carbon sequestration development is in the process of fine tuning technologies that have the capability to, all by themselves, solve any carbon emission problems, now and forever. On BP pulls out of its one actual carbon sequestration project posted 2 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

  • Disappointing lack of details

    As a fan of electrics and plug-ins, I was glad to read their  PR about the new cells. This company has ben working hand and glove with GM's Chevy VOLT and Saturn plug-in development teams. GM's bogey for lifespan of 10 years is obviously
    accomplished by the new battery , as is the weight limit. Price I'm not sure about, and was sorry they didn't mention anything except to say it was priced below every other battery. The snippet published here contains less than half the original text.  This battery MAY, repeat MAY
    meets the GM specs for their VOLT. If so, then
    we can say POSITIVELY (rather than 90% chance given by Lutz) that the VOLT will get built. On A123 introduces new battery posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

  • Coal is plentiful

      Coal is plentiful, and with clean coal coming more and more online, the chances of any longterm
    significant price infations are unlikely. How anyone can have doubts about a natural resource whose reserves have been estimated in terms of multiple CENTURIES is quite a mystery. I think there's more politics than reality in that phoney
    concern.  A lot of the coal inflation had nothing to do with coal inflation and a lot to do with lack of rairoad transport. Regardless, only nuclear is cheaper than coal, and coal is a lot cheaper than everything else. Oil is out of sight and natural gas is being stretched as well. Reduction of 90%+ of coal carbon, coupled with more nuclear power, is the only conceivable and  feasible method of reducing carbon emissions in any significant (and cost effective) fashion. Alternative energies are hopelessly inefficent, except things lie Enviromission type solar towers and possibly geothermal hot rock, and Seadog type wave energy technology, those among the few  reliable and controllable alternatives.  Wind power is a big joke that only the true believers and truly gullible can take seriously. On Yeah, that's running out too posted 2 years, 6 months ago 9 Responses

  • Carbon sequestration is THE answer

      I find it amazing that those who support insignificant and crappy alternative energies can possibly object to clean colal power, which accounts for over 50% of our electricity and costs the elast of all generation methods. Funny, but I thought the object was to show substantial reductions of emissions. "Renewable" is an irrelevant adjective. The advent of startling new technologies like Alstom's chilled ammonia post-combusion techniques which blow away earlier attempts by upwards of 100% greater efficiencies SHOULD elicit cheers. But to those who think technologies as totally insignificant, and inefficient as wind (which is fast becoming a
    major source of CO2 emissions via compressed air
    strategies to achieve reliability) probably aren't
    affected by emission facts. But the facts are clear - coal has become a very clean, cheap technology. Anyone serious about reducing emissions who doesn't embrace clean coal shouldn't
    be paid attention to - they are living in some alternate energy universe. Let's start ripping down wind turbines and get into advanced energy
    technologies that can actually make a difference.
    Alternative energies will now have to prove themselves worthy of their often exorbitant price tags (which, in the case of wind, are preposterously underestimated and bogus). The
    free ride is over for technologies that don't deliver. Note that the emissions reduced by just the first two test Alstom test plants will
    run towards 2000 MW of clean power. Compare that with the trivial output of the existing 7500 wind turbines - about 2700 MW of average output (less than 1/2 of 1 percent). Anyone who sees those stats and does cost comparisons will never choose wind  over clean coal, at least not without facing the prospect of being laughed out of the room. Coal and other fossil fuels will be the only means possible for achieving significant CO2 reductions. Once acheived, any alternative energy technologies that hold real promise of having a
    capability of producing RELIABLE power at a competitive price wil be examined and adopted as
    needed. We need to create a new energy system based on logic, not emotional hysteria, which is virtually the only reason anyone would ever errect a wind turbine, perhaps the stupidest method ever conceived for generating energy. On Shenanigans everywhere posted 2 years, 7 months ago 23 Responses

  • It's the battery, stupid!

      I've been an electric car proponent for years, but without much prospect of seeing a practical car in my lifetime. Electric cars built by GM and Toyota and Honda and Nissan all had the very same problems faced by the Detroit Eelectric car that was first produced (with a range of 80+ miles) in 1917 - the lack of a practical battery that could be quickly recharged. The film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" set a new standard in terms of the number of silly transparent lies it contained. There are simply too many to cover, but the salient ones are that : Ed Begley foolishly claims that an electric car can satisfy the needs of 90% of the public. First : 90% of the public doesn't even have a way to recharge an electric car; 2) 90% of the public cannot afford to spend $45,000 (the cost of GM's EV1), plus $20,000+ every five years on batteries for what can only be a second car that can serve only as short commuter and grocery-getter; 3) the EV1 was judged as no cleaner environmentally than the Honda Insight, obvious when one realizes that the electricity powering the car was produced mostly by coal and gas fired power plants. In truth, the EV1 actually met the driving needs of about 0% of the population.
      With respect to the goal of emission reduction, a "zero emission" car doesn't do a whole lot more than reduce the total amount of emissions and shift it from the tailpipe mostly to the coal powerplant smokestack. However is does localize all emissions in one place for attack. The biggest effect will be the avoidance of foreign oil and the economic benefit.
      An economically viable electric car (or PHEV) will only be possible when a practical battery is available. Right now the Altair battery is the closest thing for an all-electric, since it is the only battery that can be recharged quick enough (less than 9 minutes) to  make public charging stations possible.  The batteries cost about the same as li ion, which means they will run about $20,000 for 50 kilowatt hour capacity (200 to 250 mile range). For a PHEV, Triangle Research's new plastic/carbon infinite lifespan and low cost (around $100 per kilowatt hour) batteries would provide what's needed to make an economically efficient PHEV vehicle. Unfortunately, these batteries cannot be recharged quickly and thus cannot make possible a practical all-electric car.
    The nickel metal-hydrides hybrids are now using are no better than those used in GM's EV1, and cost almost as much as li ion batteries. GM's new "electric car" is a series hybrid, which is only a short step away from all electric - find batteries that are practical and you have an all electric car. It is their fuel cell vehicle with the fuel cell and hydrogen storage tank removed and replaced by batteries for power source (and PHEV) and a small diesel/gasoline generator motor.
    Bob Lutz quoted a 25 to 30 mile plug-in range.
    Plug -in hybrids, even the architecturally cleaner
    series type, are inferior in design to a pure battery powered electric, but are a good second choice. Non-PHEV hybrids I consider a very poor choice - they make such a small reduction in total emissions in the real world that they cannot be considered anything other than minor players. Those who don't spend a lot of driving in stop and go situations are better off avoiding non-PHEV hybrids altogether. On How to transform personal transportation with existing tools posted 3 years ago 29 Responses