Most large mechanical equipment like turbines come with a guarantee that is only good for so many starts and stops. Once the plant hits that number, they are eating all repairs and they can be expensive. The equipment can run far longer but to keep it running reliably in cycling operation requires a lot more maintenance.
Electric cars and CO2 emissions
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We're getting OT, but a lot of the pumped storage was built for Nukes, not other thermal plants.
I think they want to run the nuke plants on a 100% diurnal cycle to help fund their upfront costs, to avoid complexities with the nuclear fuel cycle induced by long-duration throttling (and painful to model/monitor by plant operators) and to stick to a refueling/maintenance schedule that matches periods of low seasonal demand.
I think they want to run the nuke plants on a 100% diurnal cycle to help fund their upfront costs, to avoid complexities with the nuclear fuel cycle induced by long-duration throttling (and painful to model/monitor by plant operators) and to stick to a refueling/maintenance schedule that matches periods of low seasonal demand.
I disagree; I think it is central to the failure of the study to present a realistic picture. Turbines want to spin or sit, they don't like transitioning. Plants are more efficient continuously at throttle, not idling. Electric cars are a good way to balance the grid and eliminate standby situations for some plants.
We're cross-talking Dune. We agree that EVs can be useful for grid balancing by having special charge at night EV rates (as currently in CA) or demand shedding (in the near future). I am more skeptical of their use for future RE energy storage generally, as I think (utility owned) grid batteries will be the cheapest in the end, and most folks won't want to 'waste' their battery cycles in their precious autos and would need to be paid a pretty penny to do so.
The real take-away from the study is that current fleet coal generation (and to a lesser extent large scale agriculture) is so damaging to human health that anything we do to increase either leads to net harm. The conclusions of the study....minimize both....build out RE asap, ditch coal and EtOH biofuel and fund agri-research to improve yields while minimizing impacts.
The real take-away from the study is that current fleet coal generation (and to a lesser extent large scale agriculture) is so damaging to human health that anything we do to increase either leads to net harm. The conclusions of the study....minimize both....build out RE asap, ditch coal and EtOH biofuel and fund agri-research to improve yields while minimizing impacts.
what no one is addressing is the environmental impact of building an EV car and battery disposal. very negative compared to gasoline.
not true. the study I linked above includes that in the analysis, and says the 'cost' associated with mining is not larger than that of gasoline production. the materials, mostly Ni and Co, are highly recyclable. Li and 'rare earths' are produced from brines at alkali flats that are not amenable to life to begin with.
In the end, the 600 lb battery in my EV contains a lot of water and carbon, as well as tens of pounds of Ni, Co and even less Li. The Ni, Co and Li will be recycled at the end of the batteries' life. If the battery lasts 60,000 miles it will avoid the direct release of 20 tons of CO2, as well as a lot of smog producing compounds and hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
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do not care about the cost, look at the environmental damage mining does. nothing grows for miles around the mines from the contamination.
you may feel good about saving co2 but at what cost to the environment? ]
there are fine lines and balances to what needs to be accomplished. Building a 4 door diesel truck and driving it for the same life span does less environmental damage.
that does not line the right pockets though, so it is swept under the rug.
recyclable at what cost? and what are the unwanted by products?
kind of like recycling paper, save a tree use a bunch of extra water. which is more important?
My EV has 100 lbs more Ni and Co and 200 lbs less Fe than your diesel, otherwise very similar raw material usage. Ni, Co and Fe are all recycled. The lifetime fossil energy footprint (including embodied, usage and recycling energy) is more than 10x higher for the diesel vehicle than the EV. Are you claiming that Ni, Co, or Li is so 1000x more damaging to the environment, per pound, than making and burning diesel fuel, but making Fe is not?
Can't do this by fiat or anecdote. I gave you my study that tries to compute all the relative costs in human lives and $$, and it does not appear to support your claim. It does describe how earlier studies significantly overestimated the mining impacts. Where is your study?
And I don't 'feel good' about saving CO2. My family still makes ~50% as much CO2 overall as the average american family of 4. Too much.
Can't do this by fiat or anecdote. I gave you my study that tries to compute all the relative costs in human lives and $$, and it does not appear to support your claim. It does describe how earlier studies significantly overestimated the mining impacts. Where is your study?
And I don't 'feel good' about saving CO2. My family still makes ~50% as much CO2 overall as the average american family of 4. Too much.
Those concerned about the kind of life cycle costs you're describing are distancing themselves from diesel now. https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...ergy-efficiency-upgrades.141505/#post-1906375
I agree totally that the bigger picture should be considered but question your assertion above.
One thing to consider on this issue is that a vehicle powered by fossil fuel tends to burn dirtier with age. EVs, on the other hand, will operate more cleanly as RE contributes more to our grid.
What kind of age are we talking about here? If the average new car is bought and kept for 6 or 7 years, is either vehicle going to have degraded to the point of being "dirtier"? Diesel engines are known for running long after the body has oxidized back into the earth. Battery technology is still improving. I'm hoping that someday we will be able to see a 20 or 30 year old electric car on its original battery. I can tell you they aren't putting that good of a battery in cordless drills yet...
Some good points, but also beware of some intense disinformation on the topic. EV batteries are recycled, not disposed. Because they are so conservatively rated many battery packs go into secondary service after being pulled from the car. Agreed that the building an EV can be less environmentally friendly, mostly due to the battery. However, building transmissions and ICEs and filling them with fossil oils is not exactly nice to the planet. As soon as the vehicle hits the road the equation changes, especially where the power is renewable. One fact that has been ignored is that EVs emit much less waste heat. Something to think about when there are millions of vehicles on the road.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/25...sly-thought-research-uncovers-hidden-benefit/
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q...at-a-disadvantage-towards-one-wit/15013#15013
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22001356
Car batteries are very conservatively rated at about 8 years. I can say that our Prius battery showed no signs of aging at 7 years. Taxi cabs locally love them even though they are running 24/7 year after year.
FWIW, my Makita Li-Ion drill batteries have been fantastic. I have built a couple small buildings with them and really given them a workout. They still have great life, recharge in 45 minutes and I can drill out locksets in solid doors with my 1/2" drill.
I vote for lots of nuke plants running at 100% capacity and electric cars charging at night and used as a buffer during peak periods. I've got a big ol' diesel truck and unless you're towing it's not worth the expense. WVO is awesome as long as no one else gets the idea, and that's not happening anymore.
Numbers are like people: They will tell you anything you want if you torture them long enough. No way electric cars are worse overall than gas/diesel. I have yet to see a study that takes into account the environmental impact of two wars and an army to support our need ensure petroleum for our "allies".
Numbers are like people: They will tell you anything you want if you torture them long enough. No way electric cars are worse overall than gas/diesel. I have yet to see a study that takes into account the environmental impact of two wars and an army to support our need ensure petroleum for our "allies".
I have seen this claim many times. I don't blame people for repeating it, because the source presented itself as a scientific paper comparing the environmental effects of a Toyota Prius and and a GM Hummer, and quite a few media outlets have repeated its claims even long after it was thoroughly debunked. The claim has taken on a life of its own, and even gets falsely generalized to the form you just repeated.
It's also complete BS. Without diving into every claim the paper made, the battery mining nonsense was the worst of it. It was as close as you can come to a blatant lie without actually lying. The paper discussed the mess of nickel production (in reference to the nickel-based batteries of the Prius, not the lithium-based batteries of most full-electric cars) by describing a specific smelter in Canada, so badly polluted that that "nothing grew for miles around it," and it was so desolate that supposedly NASA used it to train astronauts for the moon. Some articles include with that discussion a picture like this one:
(broken link removed to https://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/52251733.jpg)
That last claim should raise a few question marks. When did NASA go to the moon? In 1969. When were most of the major environmental protection laws passed? In the 1970's and beyond. When did the Prius enter production? 1997. Your warning bells should be sounding when somebody tries to blame a mess from the 1960's on something that didn't happen until 1997.
The fact is, the authors of the paper that started this myth circulating around the internet picked one of the dirtiest (possibly the dirtiest) smelting operations in the western world, described it's condition decades before the Prius entered production, and insinuated all of the damage that resulted from its careless operation was a result of the Prius. In fact, the area around that smelter is still a mess, but it is recovering.
If you care to, you can look up recent imagery of the smelter from Google Maps, although I noticed there's a couple image sets used taken at different times of year. The area immediately around the plant, even outside the areas they use for coal and ore storage, are a mess. But you also don't have to go far to find areas far along in their recovery:
http://goo.gl/maps/1Ix5H
Here's more info on their recovery:
(broken link removed to http://activehistory.ca/2013/06/11360/)
http://www3.laurentian.ca/livingwithlakes/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Gunn-et-al-1995-WASP.pdf
Plus a decent article on the Prius-vs-Hummer paper:
http://www.thecarconnection.com/tips-article/1010861_prius-versus-hummer-exploding-the-myth
And lastly, an actual life cycle analysis of hybrid vehicles:
http://web.mit.edu/energylab/www/pubs/el00-003.pdf
Might be China but they own most our USA rare earths. Mining is a messy business and most have to restore the areas in the USA these days. I guess not so much in China.http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/toxic-lake-black-sludge-result-mining-create-tech/story?id=30122911 just another reminder of who we are dealing with.
There's a couple places in the Ecuadorian rainforest that resemble that mess. Along with a lot of other places.
Yes, and oil is a messy business and often requires extensive restoration, too, as are most other mineral industries.
But no, we don't mine or process in the same way anymore, or as they do in China, which, by the way, accounts for less than 5% of the world's nickel. The story of the Sudbury smelter above is a textbook example of why, and how things have changed in western industry, and are slowly starting to change in industrial use in the developing world.
A further point that I didn't bring up before is that 46% of nickel is used for structural purposes (mostly stainless steels), 14% for corrosion protection, and 34% exotic alloys like those used in jet engine hot sections. That leaves 6% for all other uses, including not just batteries, but also as industrial catalysts, sacrificial anodes, jewelry, and electronics.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/nickel/mcs-2012-nicke.pdf
So we're talking about a small fraction of the worldwide nickel production, itself a very small fraction of all global mining, yet I don't see anyone complaining about how Boeing creates even greater devastation by their demand for nickel.
Likely the biggest contribution of electrified vehicle propulsion is the incredible focus on efficiency of these drivetrains. An internal combustion engine is historically ~20% efficient, whereas an electric drivetrain is 90%+ efficient. The efficiency knowledge gained in developing the electrified drivetrains and ancillary systems is now carrying over into more conventional vehicles.
False choice. No one said we should go back to horse carriages. Instead we can stop making investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and start working on transportation solutions for the 21st century and beyond. We could easily expand public transport, have only electric cars powered by renewable energy, and build bicycle highways like in the Netherlands within the next 20 to 30 years if the public will would be there.
Just take an honest look at the fukushima nuke plant. All melted down....such a shame and a forever mess. Tons of nuke waste stored on site. It's a heck of a way to boil water, some famous scientist once said. There aren't any credible solutions in sight either. Now realize that many of our nuke plants are just as old and decrepit. There aren't any credible plans to phase these facilities out or to build new nuke plants. Now what?
When the sun goes down, the solar panels stop generating electricity. No one is going to charge their car without stacks of nuclear waste somewhere. Somewhere a power plant is kept idling in preparation to replace that solar power. What kind of plant is it? Chances are it is a fossil fuel plant. Thank goodness the lights will stay on.
There aren't enough rare earth elements to produce an electric car for everyone.
Take a closer look at who benefits from the carbon trading scheme the power structure is trying to jam down our throats through executive action and unlimited "research" money.
When the sun goes down, the solar panels stop generating electricity. No one is going to charge their car without stacks of nuclear waste somewhere. Somewhere a power plant is kept idling in preparation to replace that solar power. What kind of plant is it? Chances are it is a fossil fuel plant. Thank goodness the lights will stay on.
There aren't enough rare earth elements to produce an electric car for everyone.
Take a closer look at who benefits from the carbon trading scheme the power structure is trying to jam down our throats through executive action and unlimited "research" money.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
I don't have the time to chase your conspiracy theory. Please spell it out for me.
Solution: grid batteries. Multiple systems in development, costs falling rapidly.
Most rare earth elements are not rare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
The name signifies not that they are rare, but that they are not found in conventional metal ores.
My EV battery does not contain that any REEs that I know of, just Ni, Co, Mn, Li, C and H2O. The motor has some I think, but REE-free AC motors can be designed. I think the Tesla motor is REE-free.
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Who said anything about carriages?
Have you been on public transportation recently? When I worked for the state I took the bus downtown. The mornings were fine as everybody was going to work. I was unusual as I watched and listened to people instead of listening to music. On the way home it was a completely different story and I'd overhear conversations about how they would like to get a job, but don't want to get off meth. For my own sanity I decided to try to find parking downtown and walk a mile to the Dept. Of Env. conservation. No, public transportation is only a solution to those who have no other choice or those who want to torture themselves in the land of gold plated cell phones that we all probably pay for.
Frankly, stopping all investments in fossil fuel infrastructure is unrealistic. It will never happen.
Conservation is the answer before large piles of taxpayer dollars should be dropped on solar. If the tax credits for solar was applied to insulation you would see the amount of energy used to heat and cool homes plummet. Throw something like green roofs into the picture and waste water runoff is controlled, air is cleaned, cities are naturally cooled, and roofs start lasting 50+years.
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