Where is the Electricity going to come to charge EVs ?

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

Now we are getting somewhere.. Nuclear is an excellent option.

My father also helped wire the Nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, I would have to ask him the name of it, all I remember right now is it was in Pennsylvania. A prestigious assignment, for sure.

He worked as an "out of towner" they call it.

 

[OVERKILL]

I'm a strong believer that we should live according to the energy source instead of energy source has to compromise for us. There's a lot of waste just to make sure we have energy when we need it with a flick of a switch, and then we waste a bunch on standby just to make people happy like that.

One way is to store electricity for what must be stored (EV) when there's cheap / excess / "free electricity", if parking a spare car isn't viable, detach the battery so it can be charged when the car drives.

Another way is to store them in another form, like pumping water into a tower, make ice for AC later, It helps to make hydrogen as well but it is even worse than storing the energy in battery IMO.

Finally we should have a lot of work that can be done like smelt aluminum, mine bit coin (personally I believe it is stupid but human is stupid anyways, so might as well be stupid more efficiently), arc furnace, freeze TV dinners in factory scale, dry clothes when electric price is cheap, turn on semi-retired data center for background processing when it is cheap, etc.


Usually if you follow the 3rd world you know what is the most rational solution to most of our problems. A lot of rural off grid 3rd world has solar panel and they just live life around the sun, and make ice for the fridge during the day time for the off grid night time.

Well, nothing is "free", you still have the CAPEX for the solar or the wind turbine, and there's still the carbon footprint. Lifecycle emissions for rooftop solar are about 10x that of CANDU nuclear for example, while wind and PWR/BWR nuclear have about the same lifecycle emissions of ~12-13gCO2/kWh. The only reason we have inexpensive solar panels right now is that most of them are coming out of China, many of which are produced using slave labour, and of course the largest source of power there is still coal by a huge margin.

So, producing PV here, using "clean" power and first world labour costs would drive the panel cost up considerably, it's a complex problem. Storage also has a cost, batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and there is lossiness in that process as well. Batteries also don't scale very well beyond a few hours and are very expensive compared to PHES.

Pumped storage has been explored, and I think is probably the best mode of storage for large volumes of potential energy, but the CAPEX for that is also massive, which introduces a considerable round-trip cost. However, if your source that "charges" the PHES system is suitably cheap, it could still be less expensive than other sources.

I don't think we'd have any luck convincing people to go back to 3rd world dependance on variable availability of electricity or water. We'll have far better luck trying to optimize what we have presently IMHO, or taking advantage of improvements in future technology. There's no "waste" (other than thermal waste) in a nuke dumping steam for example, the problem is that the cost of operating the plant is recouped by the # of kWh the facility is produced, so if you are dumping potential kWh because the demand isn't there, what is paid for the kWh delivered necessarily goes up. If future "mini" nukes have lower OPEX, curtailment would be less of an issue. Some of the novel designs also integrate molten salt storage technology (which we know works), as a battery of sorts, which allows that otherwise wasted heat to become productive.

 

[y_p_w]

There's also flywheels, gravitational energy batteries(lifting lots of weight to store energy, the lowering to release energy), compressed air, compressed air underwater. Even large scale lead-acid batteries are being use now. https://www.convergentep.com/
Part of me thinks that in solar rich areas, a large scale grid won't even be needed with some incremental efficiencies in power production and storage? How many years it takes, who knows... Things can happen fast, or slow.

I remember hearing about using lakes for water storage and then hydro. Seemed like Sisyphus pushing the boulder, but at least the water going down does something.

It kind of made sense in a way, since energy usage tends to be low at night, other than lighting. And these days lighting is considerably more efficient than it ever was. I used to have a house full of 60-100W incandescent bulbs, but now it's LED desk lamps and 8-12W LED bulbs.

 

[PandaBear]

Well, nothing is "free", you still have the CAPEX for the solar or the wind turbine, and there's still the carbon footprint. Lifecycle emissions for rooftop solar are about 10x that of CANDU nuclear for example, while wind and PWR/BWR nuclear have about the same lifecycle emissions of ~12-13gCO2/kWh. The only reason we have inexpensive solar panels right now is that most of them are coming out of China, many of which are produced using slave labour, and of course the largest source of power there is still coal by a huge margin.

So, producing PV here, using "clean" power and first world labour costs would drive the panel cost up considerably, it's a complex problem. Storage also has a cost, batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and there is lossiness in that process as well. Batteries also don't scale very well beyond a few hours and are very expensive compared to PHES.

Pumped storage has been explored, and I think is probably the best mode of storage for large volumes of potential energy, but the CAPEX for that is also massive, which introduces a considerable round-trip cost. However, if your source that "charges" the PHES system is suitably cheap, it could still be less expensive than other sources.

I don't think we'd have any luck convincing people to go back to 3rd world dependance on variable availability of electricity or water. We'll have far better luck trying to optimize what we have presently IMHO, or taking advantage of improvements in future technology. There's no "waste" (other than thermal waste) in a nuke dumping steam for example, the problem is that the cost of operating the plant is recouped by the # of kWh the facility is produced, so if you are dumping potential kWh because the demand isn't there, what is paid for the kWh delivered necessarily goes up. If future "mini" nukes have lower OPEX, curtailment would be less of an issue. Some of the novel designs also integrate molten salt storage technology (which we know works), as a battery of sorts, which allows that otherwise wasted heat to become productive.

Of course nothing is free. Everything in the world is relative and when you have people controlling resources, even salt can be expensive. What seems to be the problem though is always human controlling resources, so we end up with real estate being super expensive in one place but not worth anything in another for the obvious reason, for example. Having said that, nuke's cost is always in the risk and red tape department, same for wind in wealthy neighborhood, and hydro near endangered species, etc.

What if we have mini-nuke in the basement of cold climate building? So a water heater sized capsule helps warm your house up? Just big enough to warm up but not big enough to melt down? Imagine how much CO2 we can save from the environment?

Of course nobody wants a leaking reactor in their house, so that'll never fly.

 

[Wolf359]

Of course nothing is free. Everything in the world is relative and when you have people controlling resources, even salt can be expensive. What seems to be the problem though is always human controlling resources, so we end up with real estate being super expensive in one place but not worth anything in another for the obvious reason, for example. Having said that, nuke's cost is always in the risk and red tape department, same for wind in wealthy neighborhood, and hydro near endangered species, etc.

What if we have mini-nuke in the basement of cold climate building? So a water heater sized capsule helps warm your house up? Just big enough to warm up but not big enough to melt down? Imagine how much CO2 we can save from the environment?

Of course nobody wants a leaking reactor in their house, so that'll never fly.

The main problem is that you can't build a reactor that small. They do use plutonium for some long range spacecraft missions where it's too far from the sun for solar panels like Voyager, but the source of that is very limited, they don't even have enough to do the missions they want to do.

 

[y_p_w]

The main problem is that you can't build a reactor that small. They do use plutonium for some long range spacecraft missions where it's too far from the sun for solar panels like Voyager, but the source of that is very limited, they don't even have enough to do the missions they want to do.

That's not really a controlled fission reaction, but radioactive decay producing heat, which powers a thermopile. Not terribly efficient, but in space missions they could rely on a long-lasting source of electricity that didn't have issues like solar would.

 

[y_p_w]

A bit over-simplified. Geothermal and nuclear both use the result of what's produced by the earth's core, be it heat, or fissile elements like uranium. Materials like uranium have been around since the big bang. Now, would the earth's core be active in the manner in which it is without the sun? I assume no, but it isn't solar radiation that produces it.

Now, fossil fuels, which are decayed plant and organic matter in the case of coal (there's some debate on the others) and of course wind, are indeed a direct result of the sun's impact on the earth.

On the solar thing, while that number sounds huge, it's the harvesting of that energy, when it's available, that's problematic. Total Solar Irradiance, according to NASA, is 1,366W per square meter; 1.37kW. The ability to harness that energy is limited by two things:
1. Technology
2. Time

This means that with a PERFECT collector, that's 100% efficient in converting irradiance to electricity, it would require 729,927 square meters to produce 1GW of electricity. That's 180 acres. As I showed earlier in the thread, Pickering Nuclear occupies around that same amount of space, and had a nameplate capacity of 4.2GW when constructed. If Bruce A and B were constructed in the same manner as Pickering, they would also cover about the same amount of land and have a nameplate capacity of 7GW. That's not a theoretical limit, that's actual output capacity that we are harnessing right now. The power of the atom is by far the most energy dense source we have access to.

But, alas, a perfect collector does not exist. The earth moves. The largest part of the earth is covered in ocean. Clearly, all significant problems. In terms of technology, solar collectors are around 20% efficient (PV) and only collect full nameplate when in a direct angle with the sun. More efficient CSP (even considering the lossiness of running a steam turbine) has been a boondoggle because of the size of the collector fields and unreliability of the systems and you are still limited by hours of available sunlight.

Getting back to your original premise, no, the sun isn't showering the earth with orders of magnitude more energy than we could produce via fission. As noted, even with a perfect collector that is always in direct line of sight with the sun, 180 acres would be 7x less productive than a nuclear power plant of the same size. In reality, the nuclear power plant will have a capacity factor of north of 90%, while even a perfectly efficient collector would have a capacity factor of less than 50%. The stack of losses due to angle of the sun, conversion efficiency and seasonal variation in irradiance as well as of course nighttime, makes harnessing solar at that scale a non-solution. And that's not even factoring in the limited lifespan of existing collector technology.

The one thing I don't get is science fiction or fantasy where light seems to power something or another, such as some superpower. In WALL-E, the batteries were powered by light, but I really doubt that such a small array could really charge an automaton long enough to operate for a day. And the superpowers, like Cyclops and his optic blasts supposedly created via ambient light, or Kryptonians somehow getting superpowers being exposed to a yellow sun. One average sized humanoid body can't really soak up that much energy from the sun.

 

[PimTac]

The main problem is that you can't build a reactor that small. They do use plutonium for some long range spacecraft missions where it's too far from the sun for solar panels like Voyager, but the source of that is very limited, they don't even have enough to do the missions they want to do.

How big are the reactors on US nuclear submarines?

 

[OVERKILL]

Of course nothing is free. Everything in the world is relative and when you have people controlling resources, even salt can be expensive. What seems to be the problem though is always human controlling resources, so we end up with real estate being super expensive in one place but not worth anything in another for the obvious reason, for example. Having said that, nuke's cost is always in the risk and red tape department, same for wind in wealthy neighborhood, and hydro near endangered species, etc.

What if we have mini-nuke in the basement of cold climate building? So a water heater sized capsule helps warm your house up? Just big enough to warm up but not big enough to melt down? Imagine how much CO2 we can save from the environment?

Of course nobody wants a leaking reactor in their house, so that'll never fly.

Amusingly, China is already rolling out district heating using nuclear waste heat, it's been a success so far!

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

That is super crazy talk. We don't even know what gravity is, just what it does. That's part of the pursuit of the grand unified theory, once you have that, then when you include gravity, you get a theory of everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory

Aliens are just us from another time and/or dimension.. nothing can move that quickly, if it has mass. Now, light has some mass to it, but, if you consider time as the 4th dimension, who is to say they(we?) aren't just cosmically surfing at a frequency that puts them at the time and place that we see them. Like farmers seeing weird vibrating bells in their fields.

May have touched on a few things there, but, their power must be the stars themselves. Aren't they closer to nuclear, particularly a Giant Red star - dying, like our sun, therefore not as hot - in nature? Or are those the white/blue dwarf stars..

 

[Shannow]

There's a gigantic thermonuclear fusion reactor at the center of our solar system that is ultimately the source of ALL energy on this planet anyway including geothermal, nuclear, petroleum products, wind, etc. Seems to me harvesting energy from these intermediary forms is almost always problematic when the star responsible for generating these forms of energy is constantly showering the planet with orders of magnitude more energy every day. The estimated amount of energy showering the earth everyday from the Sun is 9.5x10^21 Joule/day = that's 9.5 with 20 zeros after it every single day.

Yes,
hoewever, it's only in our lives, in extractable form for a limited number of hours a day...we evolved to it by being active when it's there for us, and sleeping when it's not...then we became humans, and decided that there were 24 hours in a day, and we wanted to use them all...plus it's nice being warm and entertained when the sun isn't there for us.

Yes, it, and it's ilk are largely the source of all energy, but it's overly simplistic to state that it could be our sole source, as the storage issues then become massive...

 

[OVERKILL]

The main problem is that you can't build a reactor that small. They do use plutonium for some long range spacecraft missions where it's too far from the sun for solar panels like Voyager, but the source of that is very limited, they don't even have enough to do the missions they want to do.

Yes, and that's just decay heat, not fission in those RTG's

 

[OVERKILL]

How big are the reactors on US nuclear submarines?

Pretty large, comparatively speaking. For example, the S2W used early on was 10MW.

 

[PandaBear]

Amusingly, China is already rolling out district heating using nuclear waste heat, it's been a success so far!

There was an Australian real estate developer once told me, if you have a toxic landfill, and you cannot pay people to get rid of it, repackage it as a "park" or "memorial" and donate it to the public for charitable cause.....

 

[PWMDMD]

Yes,
hoewever, it's only in our lives, in extractable form for a limited number of hours a day...we evolved to it by being active when it's there for us, and sleeping when it's not...then we became humans, and decided that there were 24 hours in a day, and we wanted to use them all...plus it's nice being warm and entertained when the sun isn't there for us.

Yes, it, and it's ilk are largely the source of all energy, but it's overly simplistic to state that it could be our sole source, as the storage issues then become massive...

Look...I'm not being "simplistic" - I'm being 100% factual. I never said it would be easy to harness and store the power of the sun directly but then again look at the considerable resources it takes to extract oil from the ground, process it, and build an entire society around it. Trillions of dollars spent in the last 120 years to develop and fund that endeavor but solar is just too hard? No, there are just too many influential people who would be affected by that paradigm shift but sooner or later it IS coming. I also never claimed anything about it being the sole source of energy. The OP's question was where will we get energy for EVs - my answer is the sun but other **** will continue to run on other sources too. I have a huge sqft of SW-facing roof and if I had an EV it would make sense to harness as much solar power as possible to charge the vehicle.

 

[Pew]

There was an Australian real estate developer once told me, if you have a toxic landfill, and you cannot pay people to get rid of it, repackage it as a "park" or "memorial" and donate it to the public for charitable cause.....

It's true. There's a few landfills around me that were converted into a forest preserve/park, plus an old buried nuclear reactor.

 

[y_p_w]

How big are the reactors on US nuclear submarines?

I heard that the actual reactor core is about the size of a basketball. But it's all the stuff around it. Kind of like how I remember seeing images of old mainframe computers that were about the size of a refrigerator, but all the tape/punchcard storage around it filled a large room.

 

[Wolf359]

Aliens are just us from another time and/or dimension.. nothing can move that quickly, if it has mass. Now, light has some mass to it, but, if you consider time as the 4th dimension, who is to say they(we?) aren't just cosmically surfing at a frequency that puts them at the time and place that we see them. Like farmers seeing weird vibrating bells in their fields.

May have touched on a few things there, but, their power must be the stars themselves. Aren't they closer to nuclear, particularly a Giant Red star - dying, like our sun, therefore not as hot - in nature? Or are those the white/blue dwarf stars..

First, while there may be aliens in the universe, no actual evidence that they've ever been here. And if you follow string theory, they talk about lots of dimensions depending on which flavor you tend to favor, 10, 11, 26 etc. The main problem with string theory is that it's hard to actually test to see if it's real or not. As for your aliens, ah... no. Who's to say? No one, but when you throw out a theory, let's have some way you can test it or offer some kind of proof, at least string theory has some math which makes it seem like it might make sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

First, while there may be aliens in the universe, no actual evidence that they've ever been here. And if you follow string theory, they talk about lots of dimensions depending on which flavor you tend to favor, 10, 11, 26 etc. The main problem with string theory is that it's hard to actually test to see if it's real or not. As for your aliens, ah... no. Who's to say? No one, but when you throw out a theory, let's have some way you can test it or offer some kind of proof, at least string theory has some math which makes it seem like it might make sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

I've just always been contemplating how these things we see can be explained. I don't claim to know what I am talking about. Just that, if ETs are real, they may be using energy from stars, maybe whatever air is in space, they may be more like light than what you and Isee as an actual form, can identify human, animal, grey, reptilian.. I see intelligent control in the phenomenon. Some think everything is random and with infinite possibility, that only makes sense because Infinity is without end, cannot be measured. What made me think of this is that I thought dying stars were enacting fission ?

 

[Wolf359]

I've just always been contemplating how these things we see can be explained. I don't claim to know what I am talking about. Just that, if ETs are real, they may be using energy from stars, maybe whatever air is in space, they may be more like light than what you and Isee as an actual form, can identify human, animal, grey, reptilian.. I see intelligent control in the phenomenon. Some think everything is random and with infinite possibility, that only makes sense because Infinity is without end, cannot be measured. What made me think of this is that I thought dying stars were enacting fission ?

There is no actual evidence that ETs really exist, could be wishful thinking just like religion.

The whole random thing is from Bell's inequality. Basically says that quantum entanglement is random. It was Einstein who was quoted as saying along the lines that god doesn't play dice with the universe which when you're from the classic world of physics, if you have enough data, you can work backwards and figure things out, not that something is completely random (black hole information paradox). But quantum entanglement is basically random. So the universe is inherently random. Infinite possibility is another one of those theories that is popular now, the Everett interpretation but you don't have to buy into that to accept Bell's theorem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation