NIMBY FUD

[dash]

Lerner wrote: And then 10 years after mass production starts, oil consumption will be way down and the price will be close to the cost of production–that is about $5 a barrel or so.

I’ve always been a fan of the idea that if cheap electrical power were available, why not capture CO2 from the atmosphere and water from the ocean and synthetically produce hydrocarbons? The advantage is we’ve already got the distribution infrastructure in place plus a lot of vehicles that run on oil.

I expect further improvements in big capacitor storage. Lithium batteries and whatever that are currently used for electric vehicles — what a joke. They take a huge amount of energy to make, they’re heavy, and they wear out because they require chemical changes to take place in order to charge and discharge.

Big capacitors, on the other hand, just store charge without any chemical reactions going on. Nothing to wear out. And they’re getting cheaper and denser all the time.

I think there will never be a hydrogen economy. Rather I expect vehicles to shift from oil/gasoline to electric using dense capacitors. Just my opinion though.

Even without oil being used to power transportation, there are endless other uses for it. Plastics, fertilizer, lubricants to name a few. Those applications won’t go away.

Such an exciting future awaits us. I wish it would hurry up and get here!

-Dave

[maihem]

dash wrote: Rather I expect vehicles to shift from oil/gasoline to electric using dense capacitors.

I sometimes wonder about that. Without a practical superconducting cable, this may take a while due to oil being delivered to a vehicle at several MW and electricity being deliverable at only a few hundred kW. I can fill up for a 400 mile journey in 1 minute with next to no personal risk or charge up for a 130 mile journey in 10 minutes with a high risk of electrocution.

[Brian H]

dash wrote:

And then 10 years after mass production starts, oil consumption will be way down and the price will be close to the cost of production–that is about $5 a barrel or so.

I’ve always been a fan of the idea that if cheap electrical power were available, why not capture CO2 from the atmosphere and water from the ocean and synthetically produce hydrocarbons? The advantage is we’ve already got the distribution infrastructure in place plus a lot of vehicles that run on oil.

I expect further improvements in big capacitor storage. Lithium batteries and whatever that are currently used for electric vehicles — what a joke. They take a huge amount of energy to make, they’re heavy, and they wear out because they require chemical changes to take place in order to charge and discharge.

Big capacitors, on the other hand, just store charge without any chemical reactions going on. Nothing to wear out. And they’re getting cheaper and denser all the time.

I think there will never be a hydrogen economy. Rather I expect vehicles to shift from oil/gasoline to electric using dense capacitors. Just my opinion though.

Even without oil being used to power transportation, there are endless other uses for it. Plastics, fertilizer, lubricants to name a few. Those applications won’t go away.

Such an exciting future awaits us. I wish it would hurry up and get here!

-Dave

The downside of dense capacitors is slow or very fast leakage. That charge wants to move! And the new nanowire batteries are much lighter and not subject to most of the current generation risks. And don’t sneer at a 125mph 220mi Roadster! The batteries and housing are about 900/2600 of the car’s weight, and the motor is another 115 lbs, for a total of 1015/2600. What is the engine weight of a petro-vehicle?

ESS and other dense capacitors have a ways to go before they are demonstrated not to be short-circuits waiting to happen. 😉 IMO.

[JimmyT]

Electrical Sub-stations do NOT have any normal staffing. They just have a fence with a gate and a lock. Totally NOT secure location. In fact, current price of copper wiring has led to increase in thefts from these sub-stations. Haven’t heard of a fatality from trying to steal a live wire……yet.

I don’t know of any fatalities either. But I know of 2 cases where thieves were severely burned in the process of trying this. The identity of the one set of thieves is unknown. The only reason we know they were burned is because of the charred flesh they left behind. Might have been a fatality for all we know. Southern Ohio region in case you’re curious.

Seems like a hard way to make money to me.

[dash]

JimmyT wrote: I don’t know of any fatalities either. But I know of 2 cases where thieves were severely burned in the process of trying this. The identity of the one set of thieves is unknown. The only reason we know they were burned is because of the charred flesh they left behind. Might have been a fatality for all we know. Southern Ohio region in case you’re curious.

Seems like a hard way to make money to me.

The way I’d go about stealing wire is take a high powered rifle and shoot through the wire at some point, on both ends, then just roll it up off the ground after it falls down.

The very idea reminds me of the Twilight Zone Episode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge

-Dave

[Brian H]

Side note: air cars are being touted as an ideal non-polluting alternative. But it turns out there are, of course, catches.

1) Compressing the air takes power, which comes from wherever the grid gets it.
2) Compression generates heat, lots of it; the car air tanks would get VERY hot.
3) Absent perfect insulation, the heat would gradually leak into the ambient air, bringing the tanks down to local air temp.
4) On release, the air COOLS, massively. Unless it starts out hot, it would be deep-freezing whatever it touched, and probably cause rapid ice-condensation buildup.
5) So to keep the system functional the air would have to be heated in the tanks or on the way out. Which takes power.
6) Most designs use air injected into pistons, which produces quite a noisy contraption.

But for local and warehouse applications, it may have a (brief) future.

[Dr_Barnowl]

dash wrote:
The way I’d go about stealing wire is take a high powered rifle and shoot through the wire at some point, on both ends, then just roll it up off the ground after it falls down.

People don’t restrict themselves to high-tension cables. Here in the UK, our trains are becoming delayed more and more often by the theft of signal cables, to the degree that the rail companies are now starting to post anti-cable-theft propaganda posters in their stations.

[Rematog]

All of the recent discussion has left the original topic NIMBY vs Decentralized Generation.

I’ve not been convenienced by any of the arguements made that FF deployment would be Decentralized in the near to middle term. Yes, I agree that in theory it would be more effienct and safe enought to use in urban areas.

BUT…. if the cost of power generation has dropped 10 fold, what would be the huge push to site them in urban areas (the added cost savings for tranmission would be insignificant compared to the savings in generation costs due to FF). Certainly the technology would be RELATIVELY quickly sited near urban areas (roughly 20-50 miles from down town). I define relatively as after most fossil fuel and fission central stations have been re-powered with FF modules. The second phase of deployment would be smaller (100 to 1000 MW) new FF “complexes” located at transmission access points just outside of urban areas. This would supply the rapid load growth caused by cheaper power (Edison’s revenge, the compact floresent bulb would go the way of the Dodo).

Note, land use alone would push this. A FF complex of from 20-200 FF modules (100 to 1000MW @ 5 MW/Module) would require from 10 to 100 acres @2 mod/ acre avg. density. Remember, that land requirement includes maintenance/office buidlings, cooling tower (316b will prevent open cycle cooling), roads, power and piping chases, etc. If containment is still required, the land use goes up. There would be some economy of scale in land use, bigger complexes would likely have a little greater average density (mods/acre).

No, I think the NIMBY’s will control the game for the first and second phases of deployment. 30 years or so after initial deployment, FF modules may become accepted enough to site at a shopping mall, but not right away.

REMATOG

[Breakable]

Rematog wrote: … 30 years or so after initial deployment, FF modules may become accepted enough to site at a shopping mall, but not right away.
REMATOG

An how do you think people are gonna pay for oxigen, nano-defence and war on the moon if all the money is wasted on grid decentralization? 😉

[Rematog]

Breakable wrote:

… 30 years or so after initial deployment, FF modules may become accepted enough to site at a shopping mall, but not right away.
REMATOG

An how do you think people are gonna pay for oxigen, nano-defence and war on the moon if all the money is wasted on grid decentralization? 😉

The Nano Tax increase will pay for nano-defence, and the war on the moon will be funded by the drug taxes put in place at the end of the war on drugs.

Oxigen??? Free as the air we breathe…..

Rematog

[Brian H]

Rematog wrote:

… 30 years or so after initial deployment, FF modules may become accepted enough to site at a shopping mall, but not right away.
REMATOG

An how do you think people are gonna pay for oxigen, nano-defence and war on the moon if all the money is wasted on grid decentralization? 😉

The Nano Tax increase will pay for nano-defence, and the war on the moon will be funded by the drug taxes put in place at the end of the war on drugs.

Oxigen??? Free as the air we breathe…..

Rematog
Actually, money would be saved by decentralization. Imagine a small rural community that has had to pay thru the nose for expensive transmission and hookup. Lots of real-life examples exist. A half-dozen FF generators, for about $1.5M capital cost, would be enough to tell the power co. to roll up its copper wire and stick it where it’s needed.

As for shopping malls, who’d really care if it was out of sight, out of mind? A couple of generators could sit in the basement offering merchants huge savings on power costs. Imagine the huge neon displays, and spotlights piercing the sky all night, and loud Musak, and …. Hm. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all…

BTW, I like the idea above of Edison’s Revenge. I myself have tried $50-$100 worth of CFBs, of which two are still operating. No more. I stock up on incandescents. Also less danger of a major Hazmat event if one should actually break (mercury vapour and particles, y’know!) (I have seen some reports (240 lumens and climbing fast) of very eye-compatible white LEDs, with costs following the Moore Law.)

The bind moggles. :bug:

[Breakable]

Rematog wrote:
The Nano Tax increase will pay for nano-defence, and the war on the moon will be funded by the drug taxes put in place at the end of the war on drugs.
Oxigen??? Free as the air we breathe…..
Rematog

What I meant that there will always be short-term problems that might seem more important than investing into long term solutions.

An about Oxigen, remember “bottled water”. It might even make sense someday if pollution keeps up.

[Breakable]

Btw about the CFB, you need to buy the expensive branded ones from Philips if you want them operating for long time. The no-named ones burn out pretty quickly.

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: Btw about the CFB, you need to buy the expensive branded ones from Philips if you want them operating for long time. The no-named ones burn out pretty quickly.

I’ve tried both, including Philips and GE. I also don’t like the light; they’re mercury-vapor florescents, after all. That’s why I mentioned the eye-compatible new LED developments. They center in the green-yellow area, not blue-green. and are not red-challenged.

I like the idea of good white LEDs for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with subsidizing the AGW-mitigation scam.

[Brian H]

maihem wrote:

Rather I expect vehicles to shift from oil/gasoline to electric using dense capacitors.

I sometimes wonder about that. Without a practical superconducting cable, this may take a while due to oil being delivered to a vehicle at several MW and electricity being deliverable at only a few hundred kW. I can fill up for a 400 mile journey in 1 minute with next to no personal risk or charge up for a 130 mile journey in 10 minutes with a high risk of electrocution.
Only if you use a DIY or similar hookup. Check out http://www.teslamotors.com/s and http://www.teslamotors.com/design/safety.php , e.g.

[Author]

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