Reply To: Focus fusion and transportation

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: In reply to Rematog’s numbers, the standard way to measure the cost of electric power is per kWh, right? As I understand his numbers, he is taking 5 MW and dividing that by 100 and calling it a “household”. That gives 50 kW per household. With TOTAL energy consumtion in the US, not just electricity, around 10kW per capita and a household size of about 3, that is not too bad for peak capacity, but remember this is all power–industrial, commercial, transportation, not just your gas and electric bill.

50kW is 36,000 kWh/month, so Rematog’s estimate of $200 per month works out to 0.55 cents per kWh. That’s high compared with LPP’s estimate of 0.2 cents per kWh, but it looks pretty good compared with anything else. That’s the equivalent of 26 cents per gallon for gasoline, not even counting the difference in efficiency of energy use.

Most of that cost is buried in the goods and services purchased, not appearing in energy bills (you’re including all industrial and transportation costs, etc.) Household energy use is far lower; even including home transportation would only add about $50/mo. to the electric bill if you had BEV transportation. A pure electric lifestyle would not cost more than about $250 for energy at current costs, and perhaps $25 using FF costs.

Speaking of pure electric, some McGill students in Quebec, Canada, have successfully put together electric snowmobile modifications, and are now selling the conversion in low volumes to the public. http://tinyurl.com/ElectricSnowmobile