frflyer

Smart DOE Battery Manufacturing Grants and Dilution for Dummies

I finally picked up a small interest in AXPW today. Is the spread that I saw typical for this stock? It was bid $1.30 ask $1.48 when I placed the order.

Smart DOE Battery Manufacturing Grants and Dilution for Dummies

I wonder about the grants for electric drive component manufacturing. UQM, RZ and HYGS could be beneficiaries. Anyone have an idea who else to watch in this sector?

Alternative Energy Storage: Cheap Outperforms Cool

The hype or hope article about PHEVS that you cited, also included the following.

"EV advocates are quick to note the Prius wasn't designed to be a plug-in hybrid, and in fact makes a lousy one. The biggest problem is the electric motor is too small, so the car relies more heavily on the gasoline engine. Cars designed from the ground up to be plug-in hybrids, like the plug-in Prius that Toyota is working on or the Saturn Vue plug-in – will almost certainly offer far better fuel efficiency."

On reading the article, I was a little confused about how they were measuring the mpg of the converted Priuses in the study. The claims often heard for PHEVs don't say you will get 100 mpg on a trip. They say that with enough electric only range for people to commute back and forth to work, they will end up doing 60% of their driving on battery power, with a resulting overall annual mpg of 100.
And one has to consider that the 30 miles, or whatever is the electric only range, is fueled by about $1 worth of electricity.

I also noted the anecdotal story in the last paragraph about the man who got 75mpg with his Hymotion conversion kit. And this on what is not the ideal test car, assuming the quoted paragraph above is correct.

Who was driving the cars? Was it typical commuting and less often longer distance trips? No. Since these were city fleet vehicles, they wouldn't be very good examples of the averege driver's experience.
That makes it a flawed study to my mind.

Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation

MichaelH
You say the government did everything in it's power to kill hybrids. I think you are referring to the Bush administration, which had a different agenda than the current one.

Li-ion Batteries and How Cheap Beat Cool in the Chevy Volt

billp37

Having read your post again, I realize I over-reacted in my first comment. I now realize you were remarking not so much on what renewable energy can do, as on how the demand for energy will increase.

The issue, I believe, has to do with the expectation that the whole world will live like Americans do now. This is where the false expectation lies. It is impossible.
We may well find endless sources of energy like nuclear fusion that solve the energy problem, but that won't solve the problem of other resources being depleted.
Fresh water supplies are a huge issue, for one.

As I said before, we are extremely wasteful. We are also too materialistic, IMHO. We have gotten too addicted to consumerism on steroids. We can have a good standard of living without the mania or more and more and bigger and bigger. We don't all have to own three of every product ever conceived of.

There have been several books recently on the topic of limits to growth. The idea is not new. Barry Commoner, who once ran for President, wrote a book 3 decades ago, called "The End of Affluence" that made the same points, that resources are finite and there are limits. Some forward thinkers even recognized this a few hundred years ago. I think this is something we need to think long and hard about. It's instructive to look at the history of America, and how the idea that material wealth can be endlessly expanded has been instilled in the American mind set. It's a complicated topic, that includes a religous belief in a new Eden, to be established on what was seen as basically an empty virgin continent (native Americans would not agree) where there was no limit to growth and progress. We were the chosen people, with a mandate from God for Manifest Destiny. This idea was so powerful that we didn't even stop at the shores of the Pacific, but went on to expand the empire into Asia (the Phillipines for example), the Carribean
and into Mexico, where we only held back from taking the whole country because it would overextend the military reach at the time. Even Canada was seen by some as a rightful God given extension of our expansion.
It's time to question that mind set. We have also exported the idea of endless material growth to the rest of the world.

A couple of books that I've read recently touch on this topic of the American mythos of endless growth.

"The Great Delusion" by Steven Stoll

"What is America?: A Short History of the New World Order" by Ronald Wright

We can reduce our population growth. Thailand did it with education and distribution of contraceptives. The Pope isn't helping with this issue. We may have to rethink the practice of rewarding Americans for having large families through tax breaks etc. Maybe we should be rewarding those who have less children instead. ( Not that America is the center of the population problem, it's more the developing world.)
Draconian measures like China has taken are not the only means of achieving slower population growth.

Li-ion Batteries and How Cheap Beat Cool in the Chevy Volt

conceptwizard

"Very soon if people have not figured out already that when these cars are being plugged they USE ELECTRICITY! these USA currently uses 49% of power from COAL, which emits 10 times what a car does."

By the time EVs or PHEVs have substantial market penetration, the grid will be much cleaner.
And as you say, coal is now about half our energy supply, not all of it. So the overall grid is cleaner than burning gasoline in cars.
The ramp up to new vehicles should proceed apace with the ramp up to clean energy.

Hydrogen sounds good to me too, but supply of hydrogen that is cost effective and environmentally sound is the issue. That problem may be solved someday.

billp37

The article, you quote from, misses one important, and maybe the biggest factor, in the energy equation. --- improved efficiency.
An enormous amount of energy is wasted in our current (no pun intended) electrical generating and transmission system.

If the U.S. adopted California's energy policies, energy consumption could be cut by 40% nationwide. And we can probably do better than that. For instance California's example doesn't include much of the following.

Turning power plants into combined heat and power, capturing the wasted heat from smoke stacks for instance, can vastly improve efficiency. More mass transit, more long haul rail freight instead of the far less efficient trucks, high speed rail to reduce driving and airline trips, co-generation, more efficient lighting like LEDs, etc, are all things that can save energy. Parasail assist (look up Skysail) for freight ships, that can save 10-30% of fuel, and they're cheap. Eating more locally grown foods saves money and energy that are used to ship food around the world. Better urban planning to reduce urban sprawl can also help.
More efficient buildings is a cost effective solution. Overall, Efficiency is the biggest bang for the buck.

Conservation is another avenue for cutting consumption. Just plain smarter living.
It's time to wake up to the fact that throw away consumerism is destructive of resources, energy supplies and our pocket books. And it is entirely unsustainable.
By the way, some European countries have standards of living comparable to in the U.S., while using far less energy per capita.
And they produce far less waste per capita.

I repeat what many others have said. Using 1% of the Sahara Desert for solar thermal power, could power the entire world. Using 1% of the U.S southwest desert land could power the entire United States, or at least the lower 48.
These are facts, that are supported by numerous studies.

I think your calculations are missing something.
But then, you never miss a chance to downplay renewable energy. What is your motive?
Is this a clue?
Whenever someone mentions Al Gore in the same conversation with energy or climate change, you can usually be sure their opinions are mostly politically motivated.

You can have your energy density of fossil fuels. I'll opt for a planet to live on for the next 50 generations.

There is a good reason for the energy density of fossil fuels and unfortunately it is also the cause of our undoing. When you burn biomass, you are putting CO2 that was absorbed by plants recently, like in the past year or so, back into the atmosphere. The net difference in the short term carbon cycle is zero. When you burn coal, you are releasing carbon that accumulated for 60 million years, and was locked in the long term carbon cycle and thus out of the short term carbon cycle, back into the short term carbon cycle. Common sense is all it takes to see the problem with this.

I do agree that we need to reduce population growth however. Some countries have shown that it is do-able.

Lead Carbon Batteries: A Game Changer for Alt Energy Storage - Part II

A little off topic, but I'm a sailor like Joeboat, who mentioned deep cycle batteries for boats. I just thought I'd fill in for other readers why boats have battery issues. The problems arise more so in sailboats, which typically don't run their engines that much. They usually have two batteries or two banks of batteries, one for starting the engine and one for the accessories in the boat. The problem is that a bilge pump that may start and stop often, as water level in the bilge activates it, can kill your battery. Same for house lights, navigation electrtonics, autopilot etc. or other small drains on the battery. In a car, you start it everyday, thus keeping it charged. If the battery is too low to turn over the engine, there is usually still an awful lot of power in the battery. You get a jump or charge it and your on your way. It never really gets drained, unless you leave your lights on for a long time or have a short. But in a boat, it'll get drained down to it's last amp, one amp at a time maybe, depending on the draw. That's the reason for saving one battery bank for starting the engine. There's nothing worse than finding out at the end of an all day sale with friends, that someone ran down both battery banks running accesories and you can't start the motor when the sun's going down and there's no wind.

The 3 stage plug in smart chargers that are available today have been a godsend for managing the batteries at the dock, while not cooking your batteries.

Lead Carbon Batteries: A Game Changer for Alt Energy Storage - Part II

Climate Progress had an article on the MIT lithiium phosphate battery innovation yesterday. There is a follow up discussion in the comments to the article. Worth a read.

The article also included a shorter section on a new basic research level technology called spintronics.

"Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the existence of a “spin battery,” a battery that is “charged” by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ).

Futuristic but interesting

climateprogress.org/20.../

Lead-Acid, Lead-Carbon Batteries: The Only Option for Average Consumer

Sorry I misread what you wrote. There have been so many acronyms for hybrids and electric cars, I though I'd missed one.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John

"I've been writing on storage since last July and every time I suggest that PHEVs with electric ranges beyond 20 miles have little or no economic merit,..."


It may be some consolation that you are not alone
in this opinion. Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has written an article essentially saying the same thing you are. He is definitely pro renewable energy and has been a big supporter of PHEVs, so it was interesting to see his sobering take on this.

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

creativeforce

"Can't even get my gas furnace to light without electricity."

That problem can be solved by using what I believe are thermocouple? bimetalic strips or peizo electric starters. I remember that my father installed this on our gas fired furnace in Massachusetts years ago. Got sick of losing heat when the inevitable power loss from downed power lines happens in winter.

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

“. . . the distributed grid might look like this: intermittent wind and solar power generation would be complemented by load-supplementing fuel cell plants, in much the same way that peak power and base load power plants interact today"

I like FCEL for this reason. Their utility scale fuel cells can use methane or NG and can work in conjunction with NG fired plants.
They are also CHP (combined heat and power)


"Better long-distance electricity transmission systems and cost-effective energy storage methods are needed before we can rely on such a source to supply roughly 25 percent or more of base-load electricity generation (the minimum amount of electrical power that must be made available)."

Does this mean 25% of power needs to be base load at minimum? It's more like 70% now isn't it? - 50% from coal and 20% from nuclear

As far as rights of way and siting issues for new transmission lines, there is an alternative idea in the proposal for large scale CSP that was featured in Scientific American last year. They had the idea of using existing rights of way and even siting new HVDC lines along highway and railway rights of way, eliminating the problems mentioned. I wonder if anyone is seriously considering this and what the pros and cons are.
Seems like it would have less impact on land for one thing. It wouldn't be possible to do this everywhere, like in the desert where there may be no existing roads or rights of way near potential new CSP plants, but could still account for much of the miles of transmission lines from these sources to the end user in less remote areas.

Lead acid battery companies like Exide would only need a turnaround in the auto sector to lift their stocks from their current low valuations. New applications like grid and EVs would be like icing on the cake for them.

Lead-Acid, Lead-Carbon Batteries: The Only Option for Average Consumer

tireman63

Pardon my ignorance, but I'm not keeping up with all the acronyms.
What is NVH?

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

Renzo

But what are the real costs of those legacy power sources? I believe that if you added the hidden or externalized costs of fossil fuels to the price of gasoline and coal etc., it would completely change the equation. Gasoline would likely be at least a few dollars/gallon higher. Even adjusting for carbon, with a carbon tax or cap and trade, doesn't begin to account for the total cost, because CO2 is just one of several costly impacts from their use.

Or maybe we should do as Colbert joked about on his TV show, and just let the "free market" decide which species to let go extinct. I hope you are smart enough to realize that the welfare of the ecosystem IS our welfare. Too many anti environmentalists fail to understand this basic truth. It's not humans OR the environment.

SetAmericafree.org estimates the hidden costs (including subsidies) of fossil fuels at $800 billion annually in the U.S. I take that with a grain of salt, as it's probably high, but who knows for sure? Even half that would likely double the price of gasoline from where it is now. And chopping off the energy sources we have now is not what's being advocated. That's an exaggeration. Phase them out as new sources come online, yes. coal first

Global subsidies to fossil fuels are $200 billion a year. $49 billion a year in the U.S. Why?

I repeat my suggestion made elsewhere to read "The Carbon Age" by Eric Roston. - global warming aside, it's a fascinating book.

The worst case scenarios may be too pessimistic, but should we only prepare for the best case scenario? It's the speed of the change that is so dangerous . And all current observations show that change is happening faster than thought just a few years ago. The IPCC's 4th Assessment report is already proving to be way too conservative. And it's only two years old.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

Renzo

"We commonly use religious terminology--believer, denier, agnostic-- when we are talking about AGW. It’s an easy shorthand that exposes the blind faith needed for a belief in imminent, catastrophic AGW. It’s not enough that I simply believe (as I really do) that increasing CO2 can warm the environment. I have to believe not only that the environment will be harmed, but also that it’s going to be an immediate, Gadarene decline that requires us to institute cap-and-trade this minute to save the planet. If I question the magnitude of AGW, its timing, or the efficacy of proposed draconian cures, then I am a “denier”. (This is a particularly cynical and stupid epithet considering its implicit allusion to the Holocaust). "

Far from being alarmist, the IPCC has been overly conservative. In fact it is the somewhat political nature of the IPCC that makes it so, contrary to skeptic arguments that it's proof of exaggeration. It's reports got watered down if anything, as a result.

“The recent [Arctic] sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the IPCC climate models” — and that was a Norwegian expert in 2005. The retreat has accelerated in the past two years.
The ice sheets appear to be shrinking “100 years ahead of schedule.” That was Penn State climatologist Richard Alley in March 2006. In 2001, the IPCC thought that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.
Sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 — 3.3 millimetres per year as measured by satellites — was higher than the IPCC climate models predicted.
The ocean carbon sink is saturating sooner than expected.

The subtropics are expanding faster than the models project."

climateprogress.org/20.../


The short answer is that if the scientists are right we don't have time to argue about it.
Yes, it could be that bad. If we exceed certain tipping points it will be beyond our control.
Worried about big government and draconian measures? If we do nothing now and it's as bad as scientists fear, those will be the only solutions later. Much much more draconian than anything being discussed now.
Now it's an oppurtunity. Later it could be far more expensive, and about survival, no matter the cost.

I don't believe it's an allusion to the Holocaust to use the term denier. I think you are imagining that. John Holdren, the new energy secretary comments on deniers verses skeptics.

"The few climate-change 'skeptics' with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. The attention and credence they receive are a menace, of course, insofar as this delays the development of the political consensus that will be needed before society embraces remedies that are commensurate with the magnitude of the climate-change challenge."

"Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by this vocal fringe should ask themselves how it could be, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that the leaderships of the national academies of sciences, of every country in the world that has one, are repeatedly on record saying that global climate change is real, dangerous, caused mainly by humans, and reason for early and concerted action to reduce those causes; that this is also the overwhelming consensus view among the faculty members of the earth sciences departments at every major university in the world; and that all three of holders of the one Nobel prize in science that has been awarded for environmental science, are all leaders in the climate-change scientific mainstream."

"The fact is that anybody who could believe that the cream of the part of the world scientific community that has actually studied this phenomenon could be co-opted by hoaxers or suffering from mass hysteria is just not thinking clearly."

"We should really call them 'deniers' rather than 'skeptics', because they are giving the venerable tradition of skepticism a bad name."

"As my original reference to 'the venerable tradition of skepticism' indicates, I am in fact well aware of its valuable and indeed fundamental role in the practice of science. Skeptical views, clearly stated and soundly based, tend to promote healthy re-examination of premises, additional ways to test hypotheses and theories, and refinement of explanations and arguments. And it does happen from time to time — although less often than most casual observers suppose — that views initially held only by skeptics end up overturning and replacing what had been the 'mainstream' view."

"Appreciation for this positive role of scientific skepticism, however, should not lead to uncritical embrace of the deplorable practices characterizing much of what has been masquerading as appropriate skepticism in the climate-science domain. These practices include refusal to acknowledge the existence of large bodies of relevant evidence (such as the proposition that there is no basis for implicating carbon dioxide in the global-average temperature increases observed over the past century); the relentless recycling of arguments in public forums that have long since been persuasively discredited in the scientific literature (such as the attribution of the observed global temperature trends to urban-heat island effects or artifacts of statistical method); the pernicious suggestion that not knowing everything about a phenomenon (such as the role of cloudiness in a warming world) is the same as knowing nothing about it; and the attribution of the views of thousands of members of the mainstream climate-science community to 'mass hysteria' or deliberate propagation of a 'hoax'."

"The purveying of propositions like these by a few scientists who do or should know better –and their parroting by amateur skeptics who lack the scientific background or the motivation to figure out what’s wrong with them — are what I was inveighing against in the op-ed and will continue to inveigh against. The activities of these folks, whether witting in the case of the scientists or unwitting in the case of their gullible adherents, have nothing to do with respectable scientific skepticism."

You might find this interesting also.

climateprogress.org/20.../

Clearing Al Gore's name part 1

What is wrong with me giving references? Is that worse than shouting that Al Gore is the devil and global warming is a hoax with nothing to back it up?

And you seem to not understand the difference between the harm being immediate and the fact that there is a time lag associated with emmissions we create now. You are ignoring the cummulative nature of it. All signs show that the 1.4 F change so far is changing the planet. 3 degrees? 5 degrees? maybe 10 F increase by the end of the century? That's what the latest models suggest with business as usual. Many skeptics doubt the models accuracy, but the models keep getting better.

Now that the fossil fuel PR campaign knows they can't win the argument, they are selling the idea that it will cost too much. Or haven't you noticed that change in strategy?

As far as consensus? In reality there is no comparison.
Not unless you believe the phony lists of skeptics from the Oregon Petition with it's 19,000 (actually about 200 climate scientists)
Or Senator Inhofe's list of 650 skeptics.- about 2 dozen of these belong to the AGU, which has 14,000 members in the US. and 20,000 in the EGU. Or the fact that every major scientific organization in the worldl agrees with the IPCC. Both sides may claim consensus. One is lying.