energy stupidity
Topic: Economy, what's left of
The idea goes that somehow, making a small car that can run on electricity will somehow solve CO2 emissions, never mind it will, relatively speaking, MAKE MORE CO2 emissions because it is impossible to make electrical energy and transport it to charging stations more efficiently than local generation, plus, local generation doesn't have transmission line losses, and they are very large, or very expensive to reduce in long distance transmission systems.
"Relatively" means that the only reduction in CO2 will come from making cars SMALLER and LIGHTER (read "death traps on the highway") to reduce total energy input. To do so and maintain any resemblance of safety, ALL the vehicles must be made similarly smalle and lighter.
It IS LESS efficient to burn gasoline, power a generator, make electricity, convert it, put it in a battery bank than to simply burn the gasoline to propel the vehicle. Sure the electric vehicle system has a partial (motor) efficiency of 85% versus a gas engine at 30 on a good day, but the conversion and storage eat the benefit up.
It is impractical to store eletricity short term and IMPOSSIBLE to store it long term, which is why we use LIQUID FUELS. Realize the reason we use liquid hydrocarbon fuels is that these fuels are a result of thousands of years of solar energy being stored in the Earth, and its beneficial to transportation because it provides not only an extremely dense energy source for an individual vehicle, but also is in sufficient quantity to power mass transportation.
It is possible to plug in a couple EVs here and there and use this as hype for passing useless technology on an ignorant Public (investor) that doesnt see the scam, they are attempting to pass off a MASS TRANSPORTATION future on you, and get you to PAY FOR IT IN TAXES, based on a microscopic experiment now, sleight of hand showing one EV here and two there and pretending that vehicles which are ALREADY a failure (they have to have gas engines) has any relation to MASS TRANSPORTATION.
A few vehicles do not, except that some of the COMPONENTS are similar, and those are in the VEHICLE components, not the vehicle as a total.
What stinks about this up front, as anyone with system engineering background had BETTER detect up-front, is that the SYSTEM ENGINEERING is being ignored, and that always leads to disaster.
Instead of focusing on smoke coated mirrors, lets look at the system level design.
The "system" consists of an EV that does NOT carry a gasoline engine to make eletricity, because, DUH, the whole POINT is to eliminate the engine. The system must be Electric Vehicle, batteries and a charging plug in from commercial power mains.
OOPS, there is no commecial powerr, that generates CO2.
It is impossible to power a meaningful number of EVs from the grid now, as in many/most places, its on the edge of collapse already.
Whats required is to analyse the total transportation energy need (thats on the useage side) compared to the GENERATION SIDE, and if using fossil fuels to power cars is not acceptable, it is not acceptable to use fossil fuels at the POWER PLANT either, so the Green Agenda must be satisfied ONLY with locally generated solar or wind power.
And they cannot have wind power, because thats doesnt work without MILLIONS OF GALLONS of PETROLEUM OIL and MCF of NATURAL GAS.
This is the scenario they are attempting to get YOU to PAY FOR and why it can never work except maybe in Outback China.
The US EPA claims 127 MILLION + cars on the road, just for a number to plug into a calculation. THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE HEAVY TRUCKS AND TRAINS THAT BRING YOUR FOOD.
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/climate/420f05004.htm
The second input consideration is energy consumption of one of their death trap scam cars, lets assume the new Lotus Emas, whose motor is rated at 75Kw (100 HP), then consider this:
"Claimed range is 55-60 km (34-37 mi) in pure electric mode. At that point the range extender kicks in to drive a generator that powers the electric motor and also recharges the battery." (quoted from a current Society of Automotive Engineers source)
SORRY, there is nothing besides "pure electric mode" Any other will kill the Planet.
SORRY, cant have a gas engine. The cars range is 30 miles.
In the above "CO2 free scenaro" YOU STARVE TO DEATH because farmers cant grow food and trains and trucks cannot deliver it, and theres no REFRIGERATION because there isnt a prayer that alternative energy can supply THOSE power demands.
But, to prove it can never supply Mickey Mouse cars, do the Math the Greenies are hiding from you --
75Kw is 75,000 watts PER SECOND. That is NOT KiloWatt-hours (KWh) on the electric meter. Electrical energy is used in "per second" units.
75,000W /second x 60 seconds per minute x 60 minutes per hour = 270,000 KWh.
Now, if youre concerned about your present household electric bill, realise the big energy hog is the electric clothes dryer with a 5Kw heating element. This death trap car just blew past that consumption, and runs much more of the time than the clothes dryer.
The critical info missing from this SAE article is SPEED. Borrowing from a recent SAE article on another hybrid which went 12 miles per hour on only electricity, lets assume max speed of 30 mph, practical for in town driving, but worse than useless on the highway. We cant waste energy in mechanical transmissions and on wind load, so your vehicles top speed just went way down.
12,000 miles average per vehicle in the US is a current estimate, heres where we attempt to factor in some reality. BUT, its gonna take 2 or 3 times as long to get there because these cars cant do 60 mph.
12,000 miles / 30 mph =400 hours. Thats the same hours as in kilowatt-hours:
400 hours to go 12K miles x 270,000 KWh the electric car use equals
108 BILLION watt hours
The electric meter just exploded.
That figure doesnt include LOSSES in transporting that electricity across power lines and storing it in leaky batteries, the figure is so mind boggling that who cares about another 10%? And it is IMPOSSIBLE to store the electriciy anywhere in any form.
Now, realize thats spread over a year, so it works, right? Yes, for ONE CAR.
Thats for YOUR car. They are selling these smoke coated mirrors based on YOU alone, they are pretending that a car that works for YOU is practical for Nationwide mass transportation.
Multiply that 108 BILLION watt hours by the number of vehicles on the EPA page:
108 GWh x 127M passenger vehicles = (the calculator just melted down)
The numbers are so large that the calculator cannot handle them without scientific notation:
1.37 ^19 KWh. A trillion is to the 12th power, so we just left "trillion" in the dust..
Thats 10 MILLION TRILLION WATT HOURS
Now, pretend they are going to pass this scam off world wide, and look up how many passenger vehicles are in each Country and apply the same math.
It cant be done in this universe.
Now, for this crazy 'alternative energy' stuff.
NREL data shows that solar exposure on the Earth in my area is 4-6 KW /m^2 (4-6 thousand watts per second over a square meter of surface area of the Earth). Thats a high figure, in many areas in the US its much lower.
The efficiency of a certain Sanyo series solar panel is 15%. If it were 100% efficient, it could capture that 4-6KW/m^2 but it isnt, it takes 6-2/3 rd square meters worth of panels to generate the whole 4-6 Kw worth of power. Lets assume 5 KW.
This is a 5000W panel versus 75 THOUSAND watt car and requires 6.66 m^2 surface area and that assumes the steering systems to keep the panels aligned with the Sun and that the sun is shining, and that solar radiation is constant everywhere, and it is not.
The problem these Greenies are hiding from you is the amount of Earths SURFACE AREA needed to generate power for transportation.
Heres where it gets laughable, except these Green liars are SERIOUS about this hype!
How much surface area is required with panels that generate 5 KW over 6.66 square meters to generate 1.37 ^19 KWh?
The short answer is "all of it"
5KW/s x 60 x 60 = 18,000 KWh, thats the same KWh as the vehicles electric motor uses, and the same KWh as the electric company meter indicates.
Now that we have KWh on both sides:
1.37 ^19 / 18,000 KWh per 6.66 m^2 = 7.6 ^14 panels that take 6.66 square meters of the Earths surface.
It becomes kind of pointless to multiply that by 6.6 to get the number of square meters, but:
5^15 SQUARE METERS of sun exposure surface area.
According to Wiki, the total surface area of the United States is 9,629,090 KM^2 which converts to 9.62 ^12 meter-square.
COVERING THE ENTIRE EARTH WITH SOLAR PANELS CAN NOT SUPPLY THESE LITTLE 30 MPH CARS WITH ELECTRICITY.
To generate that much solar power, FIVE HUNDRED NINETEEN United States would be required to place the solar panels on.
IF THE SUN SHINES.
Thats before the, I dont know, 40 percent efficiency losses in the conversion and storage systems, but it becomes pointless to calculate any further.
Try wind power. OOPS, we cant, wind turbines use PETROLEUM OIL by the millions of gallons for lubrication and require Natural Gas generators to make up for the wind not blowing. The Greens didnt tell you that...
A 1-2 Mw turbine at a double conversion efficiency loss of, Im guessing, two units at 45% each, maybe 20% output? Just guessing. A wind turbine has a blade span of 180 feet with 30 feet required between each turbine, use those numbers to calculate square footage area to install one wind turbine.
You do the math, theyll have to cover the seas with wind turbines...
And thats NOT accounting for the semi trucks and trains that deliver your food, those diesel truck engines are on the order of 400Kw/s?
Its irrelavent whether there are math mistakes above, or off a decimal place or two, the entire Green Energy scam is a cluster hump of lies, deceit and crackpot RELIGIOUS philosophy.
Do the math in reverse to calculate how much solar power can be generated and what bounds that places on mass transportation. Result- there is no more mass transportation and the only food you can have is that you can WALK to get.
That generalization shows the limits of green energy solely to un/underdeveloped areas with no petroleum fuel supplies and essentially no existing energy usage such as ultra rural areas in China, India, etc, but with development of those areas, of course depending on ENERGY, they will shortly far exceed the energy demands that these alternative scams offer.
Posted by Dave
at 9:51 AM PDT
Updated: Tuesday, 14 June 2011 1:38 PM PDT