People seem to lose sight of the fact that there is no "one size fits all" solution. The industrialized (an for that matter the third world nations) have become dependent on but a few energy sources (oil, coal, nuclear) and most of our transportation is driven by oil.

There are some uses for petro that won't be replaceable. Aircraft for instance. Long haul trucking.

An electric car is great for urban scoot and shoot commuting and shopping. You're not going to use it for driving 300-400 mile trips. And I really like to see how an electric car hold up in a good North Country winter with temps in the -20°F region.

Wind and sunshine are fairly dependable, it just take good planning. Small hydro dams can chip away at the equation. Good nuclear policy. Energy efficiency...........

The list goes on and on but in the end it's about bringing all the best to the table and not discounting things "just because"

Forgot the ~7% in power line transmission losses.

Once again you miss the point. You don't have to store electricity as electricity, you can convert it into any number of other potential energy sources.

The purpose of a typical UPS is to both condition the power and provide a temporary carry over in the event of a failure. The typical unit housing also has to have the proper circuitry for converting AC to DC and then DC back to AC.

At work we regularly purchased refrigerator sized UPS units to provide temporary power to large NC grinders. They easily carry 60-80 kVa machines for 10-15 minutes. That's a lot of energy.

People don't have household UPS's because they don't require bumpless power. If the lights go out for a couple minutes while the generator spins up, who cares. Its a matter of matching requirements with needs.

UPS rarley condition the power for home users as their Offline UPSs. Of course they have the circuitry to convert AC-DC and back. Thats part of their design. its just highly inefficent. DC power is a far better power type to use but to even get it to houses is insanely more expensive than AC. if we could solve the delivery problem and convert to DC power, power needs would drop considerably. But sadley thats not gonna happen as its a power loss over long transmission lines thats the problem.



Why would you need a UPS for a grinder?

[QUOTE=SSP;6600726]The amount of energy used to move a vehicle 100 miles is equally related to how efficient the vehicle is. I was looking through CR lately and noticed that a lot - actually most of the higher priced and a couple of the low end cars that are considered medium in size are getting the same average mpg as some larger trucks. Manufacturers can do a lot better and we can buy more fuel efficient vehicles if we wake up realize that we don't really need a "hemi". Electric is a step in the right direction at least.

Regarding whether or not the masses will ever start commuting via bicycle - I'm not hopeful. I ran into a friend that I hadn't seen in years the other day and when I told him I commute 7 or 8 months of the year on my bike he was astonished. My commute ( if you can call it that ) is only 7mi rt but he was sure it would kill him if he tried it! I tried to explain to him that he wouldn't even break a sweat if he took it slow and easy for the first few rides but he wouldn't hear it. People are totally unaware of just how efficient bikes are.

So Bicycles=Hobby?
Actually I dont want the automobile to fail. The automobile has a place for certain specialized uses, I just have a problem with the fact that it is viewed as the only way to get anywhere these days. We have been catering to the automobile for the last 50+yrs. Everything was fine and dandy when we had millions of acres of land to butcher into housing tracts and parking lots. So everyone wants to drive? In our country today, there is no other choice. More money is spent advertising the automobile than this country's entire mass transit system. Complete the streets!

You are correct about that. Not only for energy credits but also for infrastructure costs. One example would be a parking garage at my work. Parking garages typically cost $4000 to build a carspace, whether you use it or not. The Cleveland Clinic is building all these huge parking garages, when instead they could be handing out bonuses to car-free employees such as free bus passes.

That's why most long-distance power lines ARE high-voltage DC. :) The two real reasons AC is widespread are transformers/impulse PSUs as a way to change voltage and simplier motors (esp. 3-phased ones).

Now... Most power hogs in a typical house are either motor-based(Most types of fridges, all washing mashines, all the air conditioners... ) or work the same off AC or DC (various heaters, light bulbs, although DC is a bit better for the latter). "Pure" electronic devices like computers, TV sets, etc. just do not eat that much power.

Yes, that's too, but although I can't calculate it exactly I still think electric cars do make some sense.

I'm still not beliving it. There must be a trick, you can't go that fast using just your own power. (my personal record for average speed is 4 km in 14 mins, and that's CRAWL for a moderately fit cyclist :eek: When I started I didn't belive I could do even that, not after just a few weeks anyway.)

ADD: And why spinning pedals faster is easier? It ought to be other way around! Definitely a trick, invisible perpetual motion machine in the hub or something... ;)

I think that maybe the small size and lack of noise as a result of right foot pressure might lessen the aggression of drivers in electric cars--of course, those who change to electrics might be those with a lower level of testosterone poisoning anyway. I suspect that a mass change might spike the cost of electricity so badly as to make gasoline look reasonably priced even if it gains another $2-$5.

They are? Seems my old memory is failing to remember my college years spent in the wrong major.

lol.. ahhwell.

Energy wise yes bikes are incredibly efficent. If time is immaterial (either it doesn't matter when you get there or you plan ahead) then its good. but when time comes into play their actual efficency drops.

If time is immaterial . . .

I rode to Yosemite one summer (long ago, actually it was a much younger man who did this, not me) and met a guy who had passed me driving his family. He was somewhat a biker and he couldn't believe that it was possible. When you leave out that he and his were coming out of the diner where they'd had lunch and I was just arriving and I pointed out that a 24/34 is a REDUCTION gear. . .well, you get the picture.

Point taken :) Ok, maybe not most, but there are quite a few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...smission_lines (and some more I guess). And (IIRC, YMMV, IANAE (anymore)) for the purposes of high distance/high power transmission both losses and even capital expediture are lower for DC lines. It's distribution/short range transmission where AC is cheaper.

I'd have to question when you first saw each other, vs when you saw each other again. Time and distance. breaks, etc. If you figure all stops to be equal over a long distance. a car will win by a long shot barring accidents that slow it down (which a bike can cruise right on past.) now if its overnight travel, its harder to get a group of people up at one time and ready quick vs a single rider, so you can beat them there. alot of factors can come into play on that to see who really would win.

Like what? I hear you keep saying that, but you don't give examples. Please provide realistic examples and accompany them with energy density calculations, discharge rates, and parasitic loss rates as well. You'll see why something like a reservoir (which you suggested) won't work well. That one is also accompanied by substantial evaporative loss.

http://www.smartusa.com/

State of the art commuter/grocery getter. Less environmental impact than an electric car. Batteries are truly nasty things to make & dispose of.

I'd have to question when you first saw each other

You may have missed some facet. . .he passed me. About an hour and a half later I caught up with them. No question that he was going faster. . .he arrived and had time for lunch before I arrived. . .

Here's a few... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage

You can also do your own web search. BTW all forms of transmission or storage involve some loss... whether through heat, friction or evaporation.

Consider that doing it on a large scale is still vastly more efficient then doing it on a small scale... such as a gas driven motor propelling your car.

It doesn't matter which method I take to work, bicycle or car, they both take about an hour. There's this thing called traffic, the great equalizer of time efficiency.

Az

You're incorrect. To begin with, you don't need to run all those things, so stop trying to present a worst-case senario as the baseline. My house has a handful of 13W-25W lightbulbs that only run a few hours a day. The TV runs a couple hours a day. The microwave and popcorn popper run only a few minutes a day. In-line water heater runs 5-10 minutes every other day. The big draw is the fridge. A couple of other small doo-dads, and that's it. You can easily get a solar system to run all that and far more. It's nothing compared to the energy required to run an electric car. The battery in an electric car would have several times the capacity you'd need to run an efficient home for a day. Heating is the one highly variable power draw you'd have to tap from a larger energy pool such as natural gas.

The point is, solar is quite a good source of power, and some people are making good use of it. I know some of them - apparently you don't.

I have to concur as I do know several folks that generate their own power and even produce their own water and live on their own "islands..." Cruising sailors use both solar and wind power to maintain their lifestyles on boats in remote locations... and yes they use batteries as storage for that power over night...

Heating is often done with either propane or diesel in a very efficient heater, and of course boats are somewhat small compared to most US homes... But then again, the solar collection areas are also small.

I find it stupid too, after all we have a clean, safe, reliable fuel source, but we'd rather have no reactors built, and keep all the aging ones lying around, not to mention digging and burning coal is so much safer. :rolleyes:

Nuclear is generally extremely cheap compared to so petroleum product plants of the same output. The issue you run into is disposal, which actually now with yucca mountain, is practically no issue in cost now that it's built... however scientists are extremely interested in being able to recycle nuclear waste into reusable rods (disposing of only the spent radioactive material, and possibly decomposing it), R&D for this may run a little steep, but it will make nuclear power even more clean. Then again that's a completely different budget that nuclear power plant development, but it's a step we should take if we go nuclear.

To be honest, most of the cost is in safety equipment, and with the advent of way more high-tech computer systems than we had in the 1996, it's cheaper and safer, especially considering the pretty recent coal mine collapses...

Should be more like 6-8 years, and more around 6-8k, however it depends on what turns battery power make, and the savings from fossil fuels should more than make up for it really.

Though really we don't have the public transportation infrastructure to work very well either. :(

Our UPS systems in our server room had the battery about the size of a car battery (though the case it was in was much larger to allow for rack mounting), and could run our servers for a good 20-30 minutes. Stop buying $15 UPS systems and you wont have an issue with them lasting only 5 minutes.


Anyway, kind of surprised at the arrogance displayed in this thread, seriously you know what economic and social backlashes there would be if cars became too expensive to operate? How many of you cyclists are willing to be lined up 50 at a time and tied to a trailer to ride across country? We as a whole depend on keeping motor vehicles operating at economically acceptable costs of operation. Already we're looking at an extreme problem being as lots of trucking companies are hitting a crunch due to gas prices. Where do you think you'll get your food when there isn't someone to drive it from the valley to you?

I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned the bass-ackward component of vehicle to grid electricity. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Get thee to a whinery.

My electric hog is my refrigerator. I don't have a TV...very retro here, it is a BLAST to sit down in a chair with a cup of tea and listen to a baseball game on the radio. I cook in a small toaster oven...make most of my meals on top of the stove.... You can cut refigerator costs by making sure the freezer is full (use plastic jogs of water to freeze and hold the cool if ya need to), and even step down to a mini refrig if ya can.

Between my bicycle, motorcycle, Volvo, and shanks mare, I can get anywhere I want under almost all weather and comfort conditions. I scoff at mass transit because buses are big, ugly, inefficient, lumber in and out of every lane, and antedeluvian.

roughstuff