creativforce

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

As usual, great info John! All we need for a PEV revolution is a lead acid battery that weighs half as much as current technology like the one PWTC owns the patent on and stopped manufacturing why?? NIMH would work if Cobasys was ever serious about marketing it (Chevron needs to wake up or die). Every family today has 2 cars, only one needs to be electric for commuting to make a fundamental difference. My wife and I both own used Corollas for commuting and the minivan stays in the driveway for weekends. I would gladly turn the Corollas into EVs or Poulsen hybrids If I could get a battery.

By the way, has everybody seen this at Greencarcongress?

Michelin to Commercialize Electric Active Wheel Technology

1 December 2008

Michelin’s Active Wheel integrates brake disk, electric motor and suspension motor.

Michelin’s Active Wheel, an in-wheel system comprising a brake, 30 kW (40 hp) electric traction motor and electric suspension motor system, will be used in the Heuliez-produced WILL electric vehicle (battery or fuel cell), due to be available to fleet owners in 2010. The WILL grew out of a concept developed by Heuliez and Michelin and features networked services innovated by Orange.

Alternative Energy Storage: Why Frequency Regulation Is Important

I don't have any mathematical ability, so I don't know what the long term economics of flywheels versus battery systems are, but it seems logical that a flywheel system like Beacon Power's would beat battery systems hands down. Once you build it and get it started, it runs virtually maintenance free forever because the weight is spinning on a friction free magnetic field. Every battery has a certain number of cycles before it needs to be replaced. The fact the BCON has floundered under $2 for the last five years and is now only .62 amazes me. Is the management inept? Or does it cost too much to make a flywheel? Is there someone smarter than me who can explain it? Why aren't energy companies, factories, and technology centers that need consistent uninterupted power buying these things like hotcakes? Disclosure, I have lost lots of money on BCON and no longer own it.

Black Swans and Greenwashing Solar and Wind

He doesn't mention Blacklight Power (the ultimate Black Swan), which like EEStor, if it works, it changes everything.

The Autos and Mentality That Ruined Detroit

The only people who stick up for american car companies are people who never bought a Japanese car. If you think they are too expensive, then buy one with 100,000 miles on it. It will still go another 200,000 with no problems. My '98 chevy conversion van cost me $16,000 in repairs before I sold it with 100,000 miles on it. It almost bankrupted me. So will I be sad if GM goes bankrupt? Enough said.

Seven Companies Profiting From Obama's 'New' New Deal

Money is a symbol for energy.

Everything we build to create, grow, collect or save energy from an infinite resource (the sun, the moon --wind and tides--, the atom) will enrich this nation.

The paradigm of previous centuries, that we can find energy or buy a dollar's worth for less than a dollar is an unsustanable fallacy in a finite system.

Whether or not we have reached "peak oil", "peak coal" or "peak any other finite resource," global warming should be the wake up call to the fact that we are running on our stores, and that is unsustainable.

Isn't all this discussion on energy policy like asking, "How long can a fat man go without eating?" It's a silly question, time isn't the issue ... the issue is he will die.

It's time to do the right thing and feed from the infinite.

I don't know if the end is near, but now that we most definitely know there is and end, why not be conservative and prepare for it?

My U.S. Infrastructure and Employment Plan

Amen again. And Tomas Martin is right ... electric cars are the only answer that makes sense! The Poulsen hybrid is a better retrofit for older cars than a natural gas conversion. For the same price, you can get clean, 95+% efficient electric motors pushing cars.

Food for Thought: How Green Are Biofuels?

FYI: Here is another interesting study (greencarcongress) in the case against ethanol:

Karsten Hedegaard, Kathrine A. Thyø, and Henrik Wenzel (2008) Life Cycle Assessment of an Advanced Bioethanol Technology in the Perspective of Constrained Biomass Availability. ASAP Environ. Sci. Technol., doi: 10.1021/es800358d

Food for Thought: How Green Are Biofuels?

Great article. When faced with the choice between plug in electric vehicles and biofuels for ICE vehicles, I would thintk the oil industry would be proponents of the latter. Does anyone know what percentage of BP profits come from drilling and refining vs. retail sales? Do they profit from selling E85?

First Solar’s Growth Story

I think the 24/7 criticism of solar and wind is overstated. No one is suggesting that either of these power sources will be the one and only. Also, high capacity storage is becoming more available--look at the news from BCON that they have brought a 1 MW energy storage device online today using their flywheel systems.

Energy Storage Opportunities vs. Irrational Expectations

I couldn't agree with you more. Improved lead acid batteries have made sense all along. For about six years, I invested in and followed a bulletin board company that had a lead acid battery which supposedly had double power/weight than traditional batteries stock symbol PWTC, pwtcbattery.com. About a year ago it seemingly fell off the face of the earth ... no more press, no more news. This happened just after they had supposedly started manufacturing. Does anyone know what happened to them?

Cashing In on the Electric Transport Boom

It just goes to show how completely Big Oil can manipulate information. This article is fifty percent wrong. Half the posters have studied enough to know which half is wrong, and half the posters believe what the oil companies are telling them. Yes electric cars may get here eventually, that much is right. But it will only happen because the Japanese are oil customers, not oil merchants. EV1 was a great car, the NIMH battery worked just fine. Chevron controls the NIMH battery and the longer they keep it on a shelf, the more gas they can sell. The Mcain/Palin ticket is accepting gargantuan contributions from oil companies, their employees and their stock holders. Palin comes from a state where citizens don't pay taxes, but instead get kick backs from oil companies each year just for living there. Obama (supposedly) is not an oil puppet. We'll see what happens if he gets elected. Or if he gets assasinated? By the way read Barr McClellans book "Blood, Power and Money" about how Big Oil has manipulated politics in Texas since the 1950's (and how they paid for the Kennedy assasination.) If you think I am paranoid, you must think the Iraq war is about truth, justice and the American way. You must not know about the millions of dollars Cheney and Bush have made in Haliburton stock, and you probably think global warming is a leftwing conspiracy. Those nerdy weather scientists living in Antartica must be acceppting huge amounts of payola to scare us all into voting for Obama.

A Rustbelt Revival: From Doom to Boom

There will be no lack of refueling stations for hydrogen. Big Oil will fund the transistion as soon as their dominance in liquid fuel is challenged. They will also make sure that the hydrogen that goes into the fuel cells is derived from the fossil fuels they pump. What could GM's motivation possibly be for "still refusing to allow volunteer engineers from restoring museum-gutted EV1, and GM is still refusing to resume production of plug-in Electric cars" except that large sums of money have exchanged hands? Ask yourself why Chevron is sitting on the Cobasys battery that drove the EV1 so successfully. Why is Daimler sueing Chevron for delivery of batteries? As the world waits for lithium and ultracapacitor alternatives, Big Oil works behind the scenes to make batteries an undesirable alternative for manufacturers. If they are powerful enough to keep the US embroiled in an unpopular war for six years, do you really think that supressing nascent technology would be hard for them? Any backyard mechanic can make an electric car, but lead acid batteries are just too heavy. As long as lighter batteries are unavailable to the public, we must continue stopping at the local filling station. Every day this transition is delayed, it's another billion bucks for Big Oil, do you really think they wouldn't invest a little to keep the status quo?

U.S. Wind Power Doubles to More Than 20 Gigawatts in Two Years

By the way. How many times does it need to double before wind provides all the power in the US? Only six times. I'll bet the next "double" comes in less than two years.

U.S. Wind Power Doubles to More Than 20 Gigawatts in Two Years

"Presently, there is not an economic solution to storing electricity. " Storing it is just as simple as making it. Don't let the "fossil fuel" PR machine fool you. Giant flywheels made by Beacon Power (BCON) can spin holding stored energy almost indefinitely with almost no loss of energy. Put a giant weight on a circular, zero friction, mag-lev track and send it spinning ...voila, power whenever you need it.

Solar Generation Costs on Track to Achieve Grid Parity

You got it all wrong. Since the price of coal and natural gas is largely controlled (artificially) by giant multi-national companies and energy cartels, the price of gas and coal is rising to meet the price of renewable fuels (because it can). Obviously improving technology has had the same impact on coal and gas extraction as it has had on renewables, it has made it cheaper. And yet the price rises. Once parity is achieved, the price of coal and gas will be lowered dramatically so that the coal and gas companies don't lose customer share to green technologies. Without subsidies and government price controls to protect green technologies, the coal and gas companies will be hard to beat. Many green technology companies will bite the dust when the prices of fossil fuels inevitably drop. In a free market we wouldn't need price controls, but anyone who thinks energy is a free market is delusional.