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Thanks. I am trying to de-******* myself a little. Or a lot. Moving up to Laughing Jackass seems like a favorable improvement.
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I have not heard of this grid powered roadway system...would you care to elaborate how it works, in laymen's terms?
We have hit this in bits and pieces across several threads on here -- City-Data, that is. (Business Section and Green Living). I guess I should consolidate them all onto a single webpage?
Basically, the grid already goes almost everywhere commonly used roads exist. The surplus power available can power the roadways. This allow more renewables to come on line, and pull US off Oil. Since various .gov levels already "own" the roadways, as the retailers of the electric power, they would have a stable funding resource to do all the things we love .gov to do without debt or additional taxes.
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What would it mean for, say, me, from the time I go to buy the car to the time I get out of the car after driving about 1000 miles?
I guess I would have to stop to pee before then. But for real, picking up power from a roadway is little different than sipping it from a fuel tank.
In the case of real-time grid power, you just do not have to bear the cost, weight, space, etc., of carrying your fuel with you everywhere you go.
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What would I, the consumer of this grid powered roadway system, be experiencing?
By this I mean, what are your estimates on car prices?
Ah, money. Good point. Dunno how things will finally play out, but I am seeing probably three levels, depending on what you need it for.
1. Solely electric grid powered car or truck -- pretty cheap. Less than a present car as it does not have the motor, transmission, fuel tank, etc., costs. Should cover most metro areas, deep suburbia, all of the highway systems, and down to many small towns, depending on local tastes and interests.
From rough numbers that should cover over 80% of how we really use our cars and trucks. But I am not a transportation engineer, and would defer any real planning numbers, in that regard.
2. Electric grid powered with some sort of storage -- could be Hydrogen fuel cell, battery, and various others. Those should play out about cost equal to a present Oil/Gas burner. This should give you use of the "number 1" choice roads, above, without even using the storage system, but let you go much further when needed.
Switch over to storage and get another 100 to 200 miles and you will cover most of the rest of the US, including most deep rural. That should cover another 10% of usage, getting US up to 90% or more off Oil for our road-based ground transportation.
3. Full powered on-board generation. For truly deep rural, off-road and emergency use vehicles, they also can be full electric drive and make use of the grid when and where it is available, but like the present Chevy Volt can fully run on their own. As this requirement would be for such a reduced overall fuel use -- renewable fuels -- ethanol, bio-diesel, various algae, hydrogen and others can cover this use.
Since these vehicles have a full back-up generator on board, they would likely cost more than a typical present vehicle, but the normal use savings on fuel when they are running on the grid, and the robust feature of a portable generator for emergency situations would likely justify that.
Summary of those three -- along with taking the Railroads to full electric (a real easy trick, btw) -- that Completely Takes US Off Oil for Ground Transportation. In Short -- We Win and We Win Big.
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What are the estimates on "fueling" this car and how many "miles per gallon" would I get?
How much would it cost me to "refuel" the car?
Rough numbers (with retail prices and taxes for the .gov included) it looks like about 1/2 or less for fuel than what we are paying now.
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Would these cars be death traps?
I would think them inherently safer. No flammable fuel on board. Likely far smarter technology on board (preventing collisions, and even one-car-going- off-the-road problems). When you add in the savings from decreased losses in property and medical bills -- that aspect may pay for the system itself.
But I am NOT a safety nor transportation engineer, by any stretch -- only an electrical and systems engineer, and typically a project/program lead, so I defer to those type specialty skills in the real world.
Engineering is usually done with groups of specialty skills, and we re-re-re-work our designs until it meets the requirement in all areas.
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I have never understood the catchiness of those Mini Coopers. Ok, sure, perhaps they save on fuel but you get in to ONE car accident, you're kinda wiped out. Don't look much safer than a sardine tin can, to me.
We have some "trendy" neighbors with a pair of his-and-her Mini Coopers. Sort of cute. We smile and wave. Dunno. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
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What about maintenance?
In general, electrical systems take FAR less maintenance than mechanical.
Typically industrial motors we use go 10,000 hours between replacing the bearings and checking the windings. At 50 mph, 10,000 hours comes out to around 500,000 miles. Beats the snot out of Internal Combustion in this respect, as well.
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And would we have to reteach all the mechanics out there?
Most mechanics have some decent electrical skills. In industry, we sort of keep the mechanics and electrical guys in separate pools, but when I do teaching programs for industrial training, we cross-train both to some degree.
But as in all fields, the times are changing. They say for Electrical Engineering guys -- like me -- 6 years without training updates and we are obsolete. Since I play in R&D, I keep pushing myself along, but most mechanics I know have that same ethos.
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Electric...my first thought was California brown outs...does that even come in to play with grid powered roadway systems? If there is a hurricane or earthquake...do you rely solely on back up generators and if so, what fuels the backup generators?
Electrical systems can be built to have surplus and a lot of redundancy. For example, when we do Data Centers, we feed them from two different grid level power systems, two different transformers, two separate UPS, all backed up by two different generators. Such a design is often called "No Single Point of Failure." Really takes a serious hit to take one down.
The general grid is designed a little (ok a lot) more "sloppy" than that -- to keep costs down. But any system can be brought up to whatever the determined need of reliability becomes.
For example, along the Hurricane evac routes away from the Gulf of Mexico and in Florida, we are required to provide and install and periodically test back-up generator systems for Gasoline stations along the route.
Things like NOLA/Katrina, the Fukey Nukey in Japan, The Titanic -- those things do not have to happen. Just takes sincere concern and respect for the Risk and Cost of Failure, and building things to prevent those consequences.
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These are real questions because I really do not know what this is you speak of but am interested in hearing more.
Yeah, I suppose that information webpage is due, huh?
Whenever there is a discussion of oil and it's impact on our US economy it seems that the overall understanding of what it means to be living in a petroleum based society is severely lacking. In his book The Long Emergency Jim Kunstler has done a fair job of allowing us to see just what the alternatives to oil really are and the fact that many of those are going to have to be manufactured and maintained with the aid of lots of oil, this is surely one of the major ironies of the views that suggest that alt energies will be our saving grace.
As far as pricing gas to a level that forces American's to use less I'd have to say that such suggestions lack the insight necessary to see the real problem which is the fact of our entire societal infrastructure being designed around the car and it's very personal nature VS the obvious American revulsion of anything public. Also there is the problem of suburban spread not being conducive to changes in transportation logistics that would reduce the present fuel use, oil is now becoming harder to get to, deeper drilling in dangerous waters, shale fracking that could end up as an environmental disaster in America's farming heartland.
The Saudis' are already pumping millions of gallons of water into their wells to encourage the flow of the last of their reserve crude, all the while reporting the gross take as though they weren't needing to do a huge end product reduction through processing that adds to their cost. The media has been relatively silent because they haven't gotten much from the oil producers regarding this change in reserve capacity, they just focus on the price of gas as a thing they can whoop it up about and cause more of the base misunderstanding of our dilemma. We can build some of those alt energy systems now and get some traction with regard to our near future needs but all in all it looks as though we'll need some very different types of technological solutions that don't rely on a heavy use of petroleum.
Well, to start with, we agree that burning Oil for heat probably is not such a bright idea at this point.
But did you notice the dates on those stories?
First was 2008 -- to be done by . . . 2012? Nukes from Japan, of all places . . . considering.
How is that going?
Second was 2000 -- 11 years ago. How is that going?
Since then, and after watching the Fukey Nukey in Japan -- Most of US and a lot of the world have figured out that planning on crapping on "someone else" -- likely our kids or grandchildren -- in the future to clean up our mess aint such a good idea.
Even if just for self-interest, we might want the kids alive and happy to pay our Social Security or wipe our butts in the old age home, yunno.
Besides -- Lewiston? Maine? You could have Wind coming out your ears.
Yunno, it would be cheaper, cleaner and faster for the rest of US to come up and "super insulate" your housing, and put in Wind than it would be put in Nukes and dump the mess on the rest of US.
Argue all you want but America is not going back to horseBuggy's and bicycles this country needs energy and lots of it whether it is from Oil,Coal, Nat gas or nuke.
It's not going to come from wind, a recent study here in Maine said that you could cover every sq. inch of the state with turbines and it still would not supply enough. and just to add insult to injury a new study has proven that your average wind turbine will not even pay for itself before it needs to be replaced. Robert Bryce: The Wind-Energy Myth - Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine
Wind energy is a pipe dream.
And as far as it being cheaper to "super insulate", that might be true if you were just talking about Maine but how about the entire northern half of the United States.
It doesn't matter by the time we stupid Americans stop bickering about what to do it will be to late to fix the problem anyway, our National debt is a fine example of our inability to fix our problems.
Argue all you want but America is not going back to horseBuggy's and bicycles this country needs energy and lots of it whether it is from Oil,Coal, Nat gas or nuke.
Speaking of going back . . . you understand ALL those are LAST Century?
And three of them are in decline? Oil, Coal and Nukes -- all down and going downer. Only NG is climbing in use, but as it will eventually hit production limits, that means painting US straight into a corner again.
Look, I am not saying that America is not stupid enough to do what you are saying, again, but considering that is what we are trying to cure, do you not think we would seek to avoid that condition, again?
But like I say, we may be that stupid, again.
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It's not going to come from wind, a recent study here in Maine said that you could cover every sq. inch of the state with turbines and it still would not supply enough. and just to add insult to injury a new study has proven that your average wind turbine will not even pay for itself before it needs to be replaced.
I guess ours are doing above average then.
Off hand do you know what your actual peak demands in Maine are?
Please do not tell me that an article by Bryce is a "study?" I have dealt with this clown out of Austin, first-hand. He works for the Carbon side of the industry, and has no real depth of any knowledge of any side of it. Common answer from him on any detail -- "I will study that and get back to it." Never does. On his nonsense goes.
For example -- look at what he is placing for comparison in this hack article. Something as an Texas based Energy Type Engineer, I have some pretty detailed knowledge about. He is showing the Texas Summer Peak Air Conditioning Load up against -- Wind -- which is primarily a Spring, Fall, and Night-time source. Texas Summer Air Conditioning is a demand that is anything but Spring, Fall, or Night-time.
And he targets this nonsense on folks like you who do not actually know the topic, so as to mislead you.
Real deal, in our case, Texas needs Solar Thermal production as it hits the Summer Time Air Conditioning Peak exactly, and produces no pollution and is faster and cheaper than Coal, NG, or Nukes. Presently NG carries that peak. We just cannot bring in the Solar Thermal at a utility scale, yet, as there is so much surplus Coal plants which drive our base-load into surplus, suppressing the entire market.
And then see how the clown/Bryce ends his piece -- by claiming that Texas needs yet more Baseload power from Nukes, with that Baseload already in surplus -- total idiot if he were sincere -- but he is not, he is just an industry hack spokesman.
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Wind energy is a pipe dream.
Meanwhile back in the real world -- It looks like we will be sold out for wind equipment production for the year ahead. Not a lot of other business can say that . . . if this is a dream, we are living it.
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And as far as it being cheaper to "super insulate", that might be true if you were just talking about Maine but how about the entire northern half of the United States.
Since I am not on the demand reduction side of things -- I tend to be on the power/energy production side of things -- so we do not tend to heavily promote this truth -- but insulation -- which leads to the power/energy never needed and never used -- comes out the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest plan in all cases. No kidding.
Like I say, I do not promote it first as part of my side of the business, but what are called jokingly called Negawatts -- pun of Negative Watts, are the real way to go. So Yes we could/should ideally insulate and reduce energy use of the entire US first, and then there is so much less power needed.
Goes for the South, too. That Summer AC Load down here can pile up as large as the Northern Heating Loads.
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It doesn't matter by the time we stupid Americans stop bickering about what to do it will be to late to fix the problem anyway, our National debt is a fine example of our inability to fix our problems.
bill
There is an awful lot of intentional mis-education -- like the Bryce article you linked -- to intentionally create the confusion.
Argue all you want but America is not going back to horseBuggy's and bicycles this country needs energy and lots of it whether it is from Oil,Coal, Nat gas or nuke.
It's not going to come from wind, a recent study here in Maine said that you could cover every sq. inch of the state with turbines and it still would not supply enough. and just to add insult to injury a new study has proven that your average wind turbine will not even pay for itself before it needs to be replaced. Robert Bryce: The Wind-Energy Myth - Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine
Wind energy is a pipe dream.
And as far as it being cheaper to "super insulate", that might be true if you were just talking about Maine but how about the entire northern half of the United States.
It doesn't matter by the time we stupid Americans stop bickering about what to do it will be to late to fix the problem anyway, our National debt is a fine example of our inability to fix our problems.
bill
The best solution would be a combination of all energy sources. Wave, water, solar, wind, fusion, electric, etc. Did you know India was trying to get the US to jumpstart a theory proposed by a NASA scientist back in the 60's that bascially theorized the possibilityof Space based solar power.
Slight, but significant correction on your thesis?
Trying to stay with the Last Century Technology (Oil, that is) is the "Achillies heel" of our economy. . .
At this point, no one is making more of the stuff -- at least in any useful quantities, we are still burning it like fiends, and we are going broke doing so, while going around the world murdering countries and people to do so.
Had and caused enough pain, yet?
Time to give it up and move on to something Faster, Better, Cheaper, and Cleaner.
But some habits and addictions can be hard to break.
The problem may have to do with the fact that our entire infrastructure has been constructed around oil when it was cheap--our roads, geographic layout, transportation, utility use, and patterns (and expectations) of consumption are all based on this dinosaur of a model. The question is, can any one energy alternative, or effective combination of alternatives, serve the old model while the new one is being reconstructed either by choice or by necessity. The oil industry is ingrained politically and economically to the point where we may never be able to extricate, until, as some have suggested, it's too late (whatever too late means).
The problem may have to do with the fact that our entire infrastructure has been constructed around oil when it was cheap--our roads, geographic layout, transportation, utility use, and patterns (and expectations) of consumption are all based on this dinosaur of a model.
Let me run that past again with the perspective of maybe 100 years ago?
At that time the beginning of our prior Ground Transportation shift was well under way.
"The problem may have to do with the fact that our entire infrastructure has been constructed around [Horses] when it was cheap--our roads, geographic layout, transportation, utility use, and patterns (and expectations) of consumption are all based on this [Horse and Buggy] of a model."
It was just 100 years that most of described above was based on horses. Now, horses have pretty much just become Pets or Meat.
You can still see artifacts of the Horse Era in some areas. In the East Texas town Mrs. Phil is from, the walkways around the town square are elevated about 2 feet -- so that you could get easily out of your horse drawn carriage, and there are still original hitching / tie points for the Horses.
And looking back further, the roads the horses, buggies and wagons traveled were in many cases prior Native foot trails. Which before that may have been deer trails.
Change is hardly something new. And not usually something to be afraid of.
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The question is, can any one energy alternative, or effective combination of alternatives, serve the old model while the new one is being reconstructed either by choice or by necessity. The oil industry is ingrained politically and economically to the point where we may never be able to extricate, until, as some have suggested, it's too late (whatever too late means).
We always serve the old model(s) while replacing them with the new. This is not a high drama or novel situation.
While Cells Phones have expanded, land lines still exist and function, although use is down. Same with the internet slowly replacing printed newspapers. Same digital cameras replacing film. Horses and cars shared the road and transportation load all along from 1900 to 1940. Amish still use them.
The Oil industry is easy to make go away -- stop buying and burning their stuff. Oil industry done and over.
Speaking of going back . . . you understand ALL those are LAST Century?
And three of them are in decline? Oil, Coal and Nukes -- all down and going downer. Only NG is climbing in use, but as it will eventually hit production limits, that means painting US straight into a corner again.
Look, I am not saying that America is not stupid enough to do what you are saying, again, but considering that is what we are trying to cure, do you not think we would seek to avoid that condition, again?
But like I say, we may be that stupid, again.
I guess ours are doing above average then.
Off hand do you know what your actual peak demands in Maine are?
Since there are "studies" and all . . .
Please do not tell me that an article by Bryce is a "study?" I have dealt with this clown out of Austin, first-hand. He works for the Carbon side of the industry, and has no real depth of any knowledge of any side of it. Common answer from him on any detail -- "I will study that and get back to it." Never does. On his nonsense goes.
For example -- look at what he is placing for comparison in this hack article. Something as an Texas based Energy Type Engineer, I have some pretty detailed knowledge about. He is showing the Texas Summer Peak Air Conditioning Load up against -- Wind -- which is primarily a Spring, Fall, and Night-time source. Texas Summer Air Conditioning is a demand that is anything but Spring, Fall, or Night-time.
And he targets this nonsense on folks like you who do not actually know the topic, so as to mislead you.
Real deal, in our case, Texas needs Solar Thermal production as it hits the Summer Time Air Conditioning Peak exactly, and produces no pollution and is faster and cheaper than Coal, NG, or Nukes. Presently NG carries that peak. We just cannot bring in the Solar Thermal at a utility scale, yet, as there is so much surplus Coal plants which drive our base-load into surplus, suppressing the entire market.
And then see how the clown/Bryce ends his piece -- by claiming that Texas needs yet more Baseload power from Nukes, with that Baseload already in surplus -- total idiot if he were sincere -- but he is not, he is just an industry hack spokesman.
Meanwhile back in the real world -- It looks like we will be sold out for wind equipment production for the year ahead. Not a lot of other business can say that . . . if this is a dream, we are living it.
Since I am not on the demand reduction side of things -- I tend to be on the power/energy production side of things -- so we do not tend to heavily promote this truth -- but insulation -- which leads to the power/energy never needed and never used -- comes out the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest plan in all cases. No kidding.
Like I say, I do not promote it first as part of my side of the business, but what are called jokingly called Negawatts -- pun of Negative Watts, are the real way to go. So Yes we could/should ideally insulate and reduce energy use of the entire US first, and then there is so much less power needed.
Goes for the South, too. That Summer AC Load down here can pile up as large as the Northern Heating Loads.
There is an awful lot of intentional mis-education -- like the Bryce article you linked -- to intentionally create the confusion.
Why do you think Nuclear energy is on the decline?
The only reasons I see at least here in America is fear and ignorance.
Wind power is just not practical without huge government incentives.
How many hundreds of sq. miles of wind farms would it take to power 1 auto plant or the strip in Las Vegas or one shopping mall?
a single nuke plant could power all 3 with plenty to spare.
but like I said it doesn't matter, fear and ignorance will keep us from doing what should be done.
bill
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But for real, picking up power from a roadway is little different than sipping it from a fuel tank. 
