Post #32,261
3/14/02 9:54:54 PM
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... and several more
Electric cars are resource-intensive. It takes a lot of steel, copper, lead, cadmium, etc. etc. etc. to build one.
All of those things have to be extracted from the ground, refined, and fabricated into the parts needed to make the car. That's true of any car, of course, but an electric still needs more. For one thing, it's way heavier than a prime-mover car of the same power and utilty, which is a clue to the contents.
All of that takes energy and produces waste. So the electric car begins way behind start from a resource requirements point of view. It never catches up, for the reasons Ben cited.
The same is true for solar collectors and wind turbines. The term is "energy budget". The chance of any of those things paying back the energy it took to make them is nil.
Electric cars, solar collectors, and wind turbines are feelgood tactics to appease people who can't do arithmetic.
Regards,
Ric
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Post #32,293
3/15/02 4:54:28 AM
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Definition of a tragedy: a theory killed with a fact :(
Yeah, 'twas nice for a time, to think you could beat entropy.
I'm not so sure about your last though - 'solar collectors'? I take you to mean just that. But a friend of mine has been hauling PVC pipe, etc. to odd places (like Pacific Islands) for years. Helping local folk heat water and such (not run their electric SUVs or anything). Quite more than merely cost effective. And I mean from chemical vat onwards.
Even electro-solar: it gets cheaper and cheaper to turn out literally 'rolls' of solar conversion cells, as the efficiency creeps ever upwards. Some old dogs need some new tricks, just so long as they keep in mind the real overall accounting, as you say.
Personally, I think it would be a lot if.. the Six-Pack clan could grok simply the Idea of the *Real* overall cost (in all those categories you mentioned) of any car and of - lots of other crap we plan to turn out, with no idea how to recycle last year's model.
Like CRTs, digital ones comin up. (500 channels with nothing on) Each old one going direct to landfill: is burying all that hidden stuff; the solvents and materials used in construction yada yada PLUS the carcass itself + The ENERGY budget spent getting it into the colorful nonrecyclable packaging too.
Only weird folk, like here - ever think about that stuff. So I'd say that just beginning to think about it all over the place (never mind just re 'lectric cars) would be a BIG first step to getting off this treadmill from the store --> home for 3 mos to a couple years --> landfill. [GoTo 'store' and start over].
Ashton
Minor nit - we'd have to find some creative things to pay homo-sap to do - besides create endless energy sumps, like now. So ??
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Post #32,306
3/15/02 8:59:13 AM
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Amplification and question
So the electric car begins way behind start from a resource requirements point of view.
Besides which, let's say you already have a car, which you own outright. It's running OK. You'd like to get a more efficient one. From a personal financial standpoint, the increased efficiency would have to outweigh the cost of the new car. There's nothing nearly that efficient.
From an environmental standpoint, the increased efficiency would have to make up for the impact of producing it and scrapping the old one. Again, nothing is close to that efficient. Yet some people get rid of older cars thinking they are helping the environment.
This is the same thinking that causes people (I've seen these people interviewed on TV) to rip out the hardwood floors in their homes and have them replaced with more-renewable woods. Because they don't want to support the destruction of old-growth forests.
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Now the question.
The same is true for solar collectors and wind turbines. The term is "energy budget". The chance of any of those things paying back the energy it took to make them is nil.
I used to live in California, and drove past the Palm Springs wind farm fairly often. I saw several shows and articles about their return on investment. Are they really that much worse than other sources?
I can't be a Democrat because I like to spend the money I make.
I can't be a Republican because I like to spend the money I make on drugs and whores.
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Post #32,478
3/16/02 9:08:37 PM
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Density
I used to live in California, and drove past the Palm Springs wind farm fairly often. I saw several shows and articles about their return on investment. Are they really that much worse than other sources?
I was around when they started establishing the one in -- growf. Blanking on the name; either side of the Interstate that goes East out of the South Bay in Northern California; Ash?
The real clue is: notice how often they're actually operating. It's also interesting to stop by and talk to the folks in the operating shack -- lots of times they have them spinning without actually generating anything (or dumping the energy in resistors; now there's efficiency for you) just to keep people from asking questions.
You've got a really heavy steel [oil] pole sticking in a big slab of concrete [oil] dug out with a back hoe and excavator [oil oil] supporting a honkin' bearing made of steel [oil] that holds up a generator made of steel [oil] copper [oil] and plastic [oil oil] connecting to a gearbox made of steel [oil] with ball bearings [oil] that's turned by a steel [oil] shaft supporting huge blades made of epoxy composite [oil oil oil]. It runs, even at rated output, maybe six hours a day on the average. How long does it have to run to pay back the two gallons of Diesel it took to dig the hole to plant it in? Oh, and I left out the hinge bearings [oil]...
Ashton is quite correct about solar, especially solar electric, by the way -- so long as there's no power plant nearby. The highway department(s) are starting to use solar electric to run caution signs, instead of portable generators [oil] or honkin' great batteries [oil oil] or running loooong wires [oil]. But there's a fundamental limit, even there. The solar "constant" (it isn't) is somewhere around 1.53 KW/m2, and roughly half of that gets to the surface of the Earth. Now divide by the cosine of latitude.
Just as a matter of curiosity, long ago (1974) I found a 1970 Statistical Abstract of the United States. One of the figures there was the electrical use of the Los Angeles Standard Metropolitan Statistical District (the boundaries have changed since then) and figured the total area required to obtain that much energy, assuming 15% efficiency in the solar cells and 100% efficiency in energy storage overnight [you wish]. It came out to a little under 112 square miles. And remember, you going to build a roof over that; care to fill in the Environmental Impact Statement?
Energy density, energy density. You're trying to collect a very diffuse energy, whether it's wind or sunlight, and that calls for a very large object. Very large objects take a lot of materials [oil] and a lot of fabrication [oil] and take up space. The solar house-heaters that were so popular in the Whole Earth Catalog days were daydreams; the only way they could be regarded as even partially worthwhile was if they were made of recycled materials, where the cost to make the steel and aluminum and glass and and and... had already been amortized by society.
Wind, solar, tidal, Ocean Thermal, geothermal, all the "alternative energy" sources have the same problem -- lots of energy, but really, really divided up. You're trying to force entropy uphill, and that takes a lot of capital up front.
Regards,
Ric
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Post #32,491
3/16/02 11:19:38 PM
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Altamont Pass, I think you mean.
I haven't done enough homework on some of the fringe uses, nor enough number checking on the 'decentralization' of power sources consequences. But for that miniscule bunch who wish to be somewhat removed from shopping malls and convoys of single-driver cars and concomitant noise - clearly there's been progress and refinement in such things as inverters (or DC powered tools / gadgets) and all the rest in the chain.
You may not match the artificial daily rate charged by a local centralised utility, but by not wasting the power you do use, your bill for amortization may be close enough for govt. work. And you can then live with reasonable comfort - off the grid. You have to know stuff though.
When I attended a few meetings of a local electric vehicle group, a few years ago - found the usual suspects. Folks who like to know how most things work, and usually do know. Surprisingly I found that among the ones I spoke with, there was no Pollyanna overlooking of entropy and the 'subsidy' of reusing artificially cheap materials for which the energy overhead had already been paid. I think they just settled for, 'OK it's good enough to be worth the effort and to gain experience of the trade-offs'.
Though I decided not to play (got enough projects for time sumps) I deem such work and workmanship - one means by which we keep alive the lore of self-sufficiency ergo: it's 'Good'. Recall the chestnut that, at turn of last century the 'avge. man on the street' [we didn't let women even vote then, let alone wind motors] -- had at least a useful metaphor for how most machines in his life worked. (Even to the Carnot cycle!)
Today we have creeping dumbth. Few know how even a tiny fraction of the stuff works, and don't want to find out. As subtlety and complexity of the machines grow -- lore dies, especially in the dreary mindset which office work ever promotes: Brain the size of a planet and they have me opening doors yada. So most brains are numbed for the duration in any basic mercantile environment.
If building e- cars does no more than keep a few minds occasionally flushed-out from programming the daily marketing lie: can they be all bad?
Ashton
Yeah.. anti-bizness per se. All it ever teaches at root, is how to become comfortable with small lies, then progressively larger ones. Wiring a contactor gets you melted stuff if the diagram was a lie. (Would that the cumulative consequences of an actual lying society (?) were manifested as starkly!)
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Post #32,563
3/18/02 10:25:33 AM
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Even geothermal?
I've seen pro/con comparisons of home geothermal + heatpump and, especially in extreme environments that require round-the-clock heating or cooling, it always seems to pay for itself in a couple of years. Cost-wise anyway. Is this just another case of moving the environmental impact out of my field of view?
I can't be a Democrat because I like to spend the money I make.
I can't be a Republican because I like to spend the money I make on drugs and whores.
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Post #32,749
3/19/02 2:17:27 PM
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Not necessarily
The main problem with geothermal is that you have to be lucky to find the right conditions for it, and where you do you also have to put up with associated risks (like volcanic activity).
Also don't knock all alternative ideas on energy. For instance house designs which involve partly burying the house really do save energy. Dirt is good insulation.
OTOH, even though it isn't as cool, you also save substantial energy with larger buildings. I saw figures once for one of those large grocery stores where it turned out that they needed more energy for lighting than they did for heating and cooling. (Yes, that counted the open-air refrigerated sections.) Basic scaling principles. The heating cost scaled according to area, they needed to light the whole volume of the aisles.
Cheers,
Ben
"... I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything."
--Richard Feynman
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Post #32,783
3/19/02 6:07:02 PM
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Most often: OVER-light.. that volume. Insane lumens.
Particularly obnoxious when one enters such a consumer cathedral *at night*. No sense whatsoever of adequacy, at any time - let alone NOTICING the actual natural outside environment one has momentarily left to head towards ---> THE GLARE.
(Those leaving the parking lot after that six-pack purchase.. must be 6.32X more liable to run down a pedestrian - or anything smaller than a semi, because their night-vision.. Hell, both rods AND cones - have just been fried by the noon-day SUN)
Did I forget to add: &^$#* MBA-Marketing ASSHOLES!
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