nakedjaybird

Chinese Rare Earth Rationing Shouldn't Sink Wind Power Sector

dAVEMART and engstudent - many types of ROADBLOCKS protect innovative technologies for many selfish, greedy reasons UNTIL THE COMPETITION DRIVEN BY SOME MORE-SELFISH, AGGRESSIVE, ENTRAPANEUR DRIVES AROUND THE ROADBLOCKS - then the catch-up games begin. Just watch......or, of course, I could be wrong. You know, the never-wear-out windshield wiper material never made it to the marketplace - it would have ruined the existing wiper-replacement market. Good business practice? Yup! As long as you can do it. Now when the raw materials become scare.......wallo, the game may change. We found a synthetic replacement for RUBBER tires in the 40's.

Neodymium?? It's already a replacement for the previous scarce motor metal! Does it have a NEXT??? Maybe. Or, is the better alternative to not use Neodumium at all????? Wisdom, suggests the latter. However, greed rules, until it can't; and then of course, it does again. That being when the wiser choice becomes a good business decision again.

Sort of a David and Goliath story. Place your bets accordingly, but with caution: this is just business! So you guys may be right.

Chinese Rare Earth Rationing Shouldn't Sink Wind Power Sector

PS - here's the WheelTug demo video site:

youtube.com/watch?v=0C...

YouTube - WheelTug Demonstration--Taxi without engines
2 min 29 sec - May 20, 2007 -

WheelTug's demo in the Arizona desert. This electric motor fits in the nosegear and lets airplanes move on the runway without turning on ...

youtube.com/watch?v=0C...

Chinese Rare Earth Rationing Shouldn't Sink Wind Power Sector

PS - and if you don't believe the Chorus Motor works, go watch the Hybrid Plane demonstration video of Wheel-Tug moving a fully loaded Boeing 657 both forward and backwards while taxing about the Phoenix tarmac. Boeing was part of the demo team. Delta is the Wheel-Tug implementer partner.

Chinese Rare Earth Rationing Shouldn't Sink Wind Power Sector

Readers - again, I bring to you the solution to short supply of Neodymium - don't design it into your products if you have alternatives such as for all the wind power motors, EV's of any kind, hey, maybe even diesel electric locomotives. Go read

The Story of Neodymium — Motors, Materials and the Search for Supply Security. CHORUS MOTORS. ® choruscars.com. A Chorus® White Paper ...

choruscars.com/Chorus_...

Smart Grid: Powering Us Out of Recession

Mark and Pacman: Mark first: the utility that lost $640,000 of revenue during the 8 hour outage PLUS $64,000 of labor cost is a $700,000 round trip, NOT YOUR $6.4 MILLION. Your aritematic is illogical.

The driver(s) for the smart grid is not only first preventing power plant outages where and whenever the cause is downstream of the power plant; but, secondly preventing user downtime while a generating source is down, which provides a double whammy revenue increase for the utilities that continue to provide elsewhere the lost power AND, of course, to the end user that doesn't experience the shutdown (in your case, some other utility gains $640,000 of revenue; which should be a real driver for utilities to upgrade, while endusers lose nothing with no interruptions, being a good secondary causes to upgrade).

pacman - most nuc plants in operation are forever being upgraded and many are obtaining 60 year extentions to 40 year liacenses.

As for uranium shortages, most "spent" fuel in storage remains to be about 80% "unspent". Commedrcial nuclear fuel is "retired" at about the 20% burnup level. So, all the spent fuel storage throughout the US is a uranium gold mine, so to speak.

I wonder how many lives would have been lost over the years due to severe winters and hot summers had we not had nuclear power? Your arguments suck.

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

As for pumped hydro, take a look at Banks Lake and Grand Coulee Dam; existing for years. Also take a look at Hawk Creek and Lower Crab Creek in WA state as pumped hydor storage possibilites. What lands do you think the BLM have been buying for years?

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

John - right on re. response to Doug with diesel hybrid and the cheapest longest life (lowest life cycle cost) batteries.

I only dream of the biodiesel injected burner with no moving parts and solid state waste heat recovery devices directly powering the Chorus Motor with the only on-board stored energy device being a GRASS TANK. Two manybe three years away.

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

John - with all the other variable and flexible demands during the day one does not need the demand that EV's provide off peak.

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

John - OK, so the rich buy pure EV's; good. The masses will go for normally priced vehicles called hybrids and 200-300% increases in economy with unlimited range which you don't seem to dis as much as expensive pure EV's with better economy but limited ranges; and the rest buy scooters and bikes, or in addition to the others.

But, again, as for storage on the demand side of the equation, which you don't wish to address vis-a-vis generation and inbetwix surge storage capicity, EV's may provide some demand sponge flexibility, but something like commercial and industrial refrigeration using insitu storage permitting significant flexible demand at point of use is being overlooked (not unlike making ice or additional cold salt, etc., when excess power is available, and "melting" the ice when demand power is peaking). Do that all over the US in major ciites and industrial complexes, the same places that create the demand. That's just refrigeration. Now look at other demand loads that can be shuffled accordingly. Try heating. HVAC? Things where we don't even lose the inefficiencies of charging/discharging that batteries, flywheels and other stored enery devices inherently contain (internal resistances, overcharging and unrecoverable disassociation of gases, etc.).

Now, you may say that those or enough of those systems cannot be turned on and off quickly enough (shut down and started up too much), which may be true currently (no pun intended), but with the advent of the applied computer/communication... technologies and ability to monitor and control millions of systems in a variety of ways, utilities will be able to not only reach in and turn off residential refrigerators as well as commercial and industrial loads in a fashion that no one will notice, but not even the refrigerator or the other loads will find it strange.

We have computers controlling the turning off and on of up to 18 harmonic phases of 3-phase motors, and the motor doesn't care. In fact, that control ability makes a 20hp motor deliver the low speed torque of an 80 hp motor. That's good. Point being, the computer controls the number of phases turned on and off for a 60hz motor. Is that fast enough for your repsonse times? Frequency regulation?? Within 60hz? At the final load, the end user.