Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
TokyoTom #934 — As Waxman-Markey approaches 1000 pages, it becomes less and less likely that those who will vote on it will have read it. But a detailed examination is probably not necessary before voting NO. The length is enough to prove it is too big to succeed and that it carries too much special interest baggage.
The past experience with cap-and-trade in Europe, where it failed to reduce emissions, must be known to the W-M proponents, so speculation on intent is not unfair. Let’s take a quick look at the Emperor’s new clothes.
It is becoming more and more evident that Waxman-Markey was advertised to the credulous environmentalists as a sincere attempt to address impending climate chaos, when its real motive was to create a profitable junk market in carbon offsets, principally in the form of alleged forests somewhere. Another object was to strip the EPA of jurisdiction to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act, so big emitters like coal-fired power plants can continue business as usual without being hassled by the EPA. Even for the paltry fraction of CO2 emissions not covered by free indulgences, the price per ton is tiny, and liberal (fraudulent?) credits for green offsets are allowed to substitute for actual emission cuts.
Given what we saw in the recent Wall Street crash, where risk packages spun out of fantasy enriched a few and bankrupted America, the green offset market will be another orgy of greed and fraud. I agree with Bill Hansen’s opinion that the guys in alligator shoes wrote this bill. Does anyone seriously believe, given our experience with regulation of Wall Street, that green offsets will be understood and effectively controlled? Round Two of the decline and fall, coming up.
The US Supreme Court recently upheld the jurisdiction of the EPA over CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act. Rulemaking is underway. This major victory for climate protection will be surrendered by Waxman-Markey, which is a legislative end run around regulation. Depending on this new law, instead of the Clean Air Act, means another round of time-consuming challenges by the polluters, resulting in more time with no curtailment of emissions as the appeals drag on. Why does the Obama administration support that??
John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) Says (25 mai 2009 at 8:34 PM):
“Oh and in case you still don’t get it (based on your record, I’m assuming you don’t), Ray Bolger played the straw man in the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man”
And why should I be expected to know that? Even if I had an interest in movies (and I don’t: I’d much rather read the book), why would I care who the actors are?
John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) Says (25 mai 2009 at 8:34 PM):
“The fact that you are using Bambi and butterflies…”
I’m using Bambi & the butterflies? I’m only quoting: go search back through this thread, and find out who used them first :-)
Nor are they in any sense a red herring – and at last we’re getting back to fish! – they’re really at the heart of the matter. Which, if we go back to the start of this thread, is that the fish aren’t in the sea just so humans can catch them.
“Now if you think that thyroid cancer did not increase due to Chernobyl…”
Now when have I ever said that? And explain to me what thyroid cancer rates have to do with the health of an ecosystem.
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says (26 mai 2009 at 11:12 AM):
“As to real data on rolling resistance of wide or narrow tires, that is very hard to find.”
But empirical observation is not, as for instance comparing the effort it takes to pedal a skinny-tired road bike vs a fat-tired (even without a really knobby tread) mountain bike or cruiser along the same stretch of pavement.
“Does anyone remember the gas powered refrigerator by Servel?”
Oh, yes. And I remember how it stunk & didn’t work at all if you didn’t get it exactly level.
“The utility company is obligated to keep costs down, so they will try to fill this new load from the cheapest systems that have available capacity.”
Not entirely true: in this state, at least, they are required to try to use a certain percentage of “renewable” power, so your coal analysis, while correct as far as it goes, is incomplete. Adding electric cars and consequent coal generation will cause the utility to fall short of its renewable target, so it will do something like offer rebates on home solar installations (which in fact it does already: http://www.nvenergy.com/renewablesenvironment/renewablegenerations/ ), and over time the fraction of coal is reduced.
Arch Stanton, thanks for this electricity use calculator reference:
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html
They go into some detail about how the calculations are done.
I hope someone’s evaluating the numbers.
The numbers it gave for our electric bills were spookily reassuring, personally.
According to that our home is using about 20 percent of an average home’s electricity, and the young trees on on my few acres of wildland fire restoration more than offset the CO2 we’re producing (a bit over a ton per year) from just our electric use.
Do you know of a calculator for natural gas use? Gasoline? Might be part of the same site, I’ll start looking around.
ReCaptcha appears skeptical today:
“auto phonies”
#954 James
Sounds like progress.
Did you ever think how the world would be when everyone got rebates? Hm, maybe we would just as well just pay the rebates to ourselves and forget about the paperwork?
Where I live the rebates get charged to the utility customers, that is us. It is called “public programs.” So I get to pay the richest folk in our valley to buy solar panels. I always get a warm feeling to know that someone like Elon Musk is well equipped. Actually, I think he lives in a special valley apart from the general Silicon Valley. The depth of poverty in Portola Valley CA must be indeed terrible since such a lot of subsidy money is needed to keep those poor hovels livable.
Jim, you want feedback on the Miastrada?
1. The thing is huge. Weight is a serious problem.
2. Six wheels means that the middle and rear wheels must scrub badly in turns.
3. All that rigging destroys your aerodynamics. The “airship” is dragging around a trolley.
4. It won’t fit in a garage. (Too tall)
5. It is a complicated bear to get in and out of. What happens when it rains and you want in your car?
6. It is so long that it takes up more space on the road.
7. It is a nightmare for the handicapped.
8. Parking – try turning the wheels when vehicle is stopped. You can’t.
9. That’s enough…. to put it mildly, the airship won’t fly.
10. I await your response and will engage further, if you like.
Captcha says: rundowns Street
Yep, I said James seems to be focusing on the Bambi-and-butterflies view of the Chernobyl (and presumably Hanford, Oak Ridge, and other radioactive areas) — yes, there’s more wildlife visible when humans are excluded.
James asks for help with the answer to this question:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thyroid+cancer+rates+have+to+do+with+the+health+of+an+ecosystem
Look into it. Don’t rely on some guy on a blog to answer your questions.
Once you make it routine to follow ideas forward in time by reading citing papers, and check sources by reading papers referenced in footnotes, even backing into the literature by starting out trying to support your beliefs will over time lead you to new information.
You want credibility as a defender of wildlands? Read the science.
RichardC Says (26 mai 2009 at 6:51 PM):
“…to put it mildly, the airship won’t fly.”
Well, if it flew, maybe… But in addition to your list, it really seems to take the fun out of driving. Maybe I’m odd (ok, no maybe about it :-)), but I don’t want to sit up high. My idea of an efficient car is a lot more like this: http://www.kineticvehicles.com/
Though I admit its aerodynamics are pretty poor. Maybe something like this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Europa Take the hybrid powertrain from my Insight, do the body in carbon fiber & titanium instead of fiberglass & steel…
freespeech #932 — OK, half of the fishermen catch only 10% of the fish total and barely subsist. The sustainable limit is 20%. So to meet the sustainable limit the other half must become subsistence fishermen. Sustainability means the misery is shared. That’s what the parable implies, alright. I’m amazed that something so obvious was not remarked on sooner.
#957 RichardC
Yup, and thanks.
1. It is tall but thin. I looked at 100 years of failure with very small cars. Many were famously economical. Not only that, my own experience driving a smaller car led me to conclude that people do not like to ride puny. Low seems to be ok for a car if it also has a lot of power and makes a lot of noise. But that high power stuff needs to be avoided. I still find it unpleasant looking into truck wheel wells as I drive on the freeway, and it certainly is annoying to not be able to see anything at an intersection if there is an SUV to the side of me. If puny is ok, we should just build the Messerschmitt of around 1952 which has been said to be the most fuel efficient car ever.
I also want speed, which I think is a goal that values human life. It is better to have a higher viewing vantage point to see well ahead.
2. No, the vehicle is a two axis articulated vehicle which means that it does not scrub at all. The front and middle wheel pairs are on a common frame with the wheels operating like a forklift truck. The turning action is combined stabilizing action, without this the tall and narrow vehicle would fall over when turning. There is still a need to stand up in cross winds. This is dealt with by maximizing the weight in the wheel trains (some call them pontoons) and by preserving the cylinder effect relative to aerodynamic drag, which means that as wind speed (cross wind) increases there comes a point where drag coefficient drops steeply.
3. The rigging is made to minimally affect the aerodynamics. Looking at it head on, you can see that there is very little projected frontal area due to rigging. Yes, it drags around a trolley, but that trolley has a projected frontal area of the two front wheels. The rest is wind shadowed and a continuous tube connects wheels on each side. There are no open wheel wells which are universally required to enable conventional car wheels to pivot to enable turning. The low flat cross structure between the wheel trains also has a low projected frontal area.
The angled tubes that connect the low slung trolley are arranged similarly to sailboat mast and shrowd construction, which is indeed a way to get a configuration having very little wind effect. Because the tubes are angled, they get the aerodynmamic quality of the ellipse, which is fairly good.
The airship shaped body is at a height based on limited aerodynamic analysis but is backed up by results of measurements by Morelli reported in 1982. Morelli managed to get the body much closer to the ground with special shaping–that shape is basically the shape of the Aptera. I do not have to do that since I have the stabilizing machinery that allows the ground clearance needed to approximately maintain free flow conditions. The Morelli shape may not be as ideal as it might appear, since the effects he used could be speed dependent.
I did utilize Morelli’s work as guidance in making very slight modifications to the basic USS Akron form. This helped with forward vision and the effect can be seen as a deviation from a true circle when looking at the car head-on.
My current estimate for the drag coefficient of the whole thing is .07 which is a combination of .05 for the airship and the rest is due to all the stuff underneath. ( The website pictures do not show the underneath stuff quite correctly, though they give a general idea.)
4.and 5. Main access is via a ramp that lowers to make an opening at the rear. This ramp is a cut out section of the airship body form that is hinged about midway. This allows adults to walk into the vehicle almost upright all the way. The canopy lifts to do this. If some bending is tolerable, the canopy can stay closed. Raising the canopy in a garage could be limited, but with the canopy down the car should go into any garage that a big SUV can get into.
Because the car is narrow, the path walking into the car is blocked if the seats are in normal position, but these are held in a way that allows them to swing to the side to clear the pathway. Once past the seat position, the motorist can turn around and reset the seat to a useful position.
So getting into it in the rain should be quite a reasonable experience.
6. Yes it is currently fairly long. I may have overdone this as well as the height, and with some testing experience these dimensions could be adjusted. However, the length is not more than the longest SUVs and pickups. The room on the road due to what might seem to be excess length does not change the space, car to car, by a very large percentage. One reason I made it as long as it is was to maximize crush zone size for safety reasons. In a production form this could change some. Also, the wheel trains could be shorter than they are, since the length is made more than I had intended due to the use of motorcycle hardware for the wheels and their suspension. Wheel motors are intended but these were not available at a reasonable price for me. Used motorcycle rear sections seem ideal for this purpose. (Reminiscent of 1915 cycles cars?)
7. I think the ramp can be made to work for the handicapped. Maybe it will be better than the struggle of getting into regular cars.
8. Now that it is clear that the wheels turn, with the front operating like a forklift, you can see that it will zip into a parallel spot just fine. Oops, maybe the rear wheels won’t get in so well and backing up is very difficult — but wait, there is another surprise, the rear wheels pivot under driver control, though this is allowed at low speed only, at least for now. Maybe there will be some operating modes where the rear wheels are fixed at an angle, but this gets into difficult roads and their challenges.
9. Flying would not be a good thing. But I get your point. The most questionable part for me is whether it will fly in the market place. As David Cooke pointed out, tradition counts for a lot. Also, it is not expected to be easy to counter the public taste setting power of motor industry advertising, and even just the taste setting power of being the visible things on the road.
My captcha says, “under shallows.” Does she mean to say the car looks like a submarine to her psychic vision? Are the psychic spirits with us on this?
Next captcha, “apart or” Does this mean she has structural concerns?
10. Thanks for the great leading questions.
#957 RichardC,
I missed the second part of your ( 1) which was about weight.
My current weight budget is 2400 lb. But that is for a steel model with lead acid batteries. It should come down. But weight is something the never comes down in a project like this. So I try to plan around 2400 lb. The big penalty with weight is that it is a fixed force that translates into a fixed drag force through the coefficient of rolling resistance. This is approximately fixed. So the energy for a given distance is proportional to the distance times the weight. Speed effects exist but they are second order. My calculations come out that rolling resistance drag and aerodynamic drag are about equal at 80 MPH and at this speed the power to overcome these is about 6 hp each. We are talking steady speed at 80 mph on a flat road.
To the degree that regenerative braking is inefficient, weight gets into the equation as the energy needed to accelerate and the energy of braking. Similarly for climing and descending hills. Not being too lead footed in acceleration and braking means this is not too bad a problem. I need to get a little better handle on this so as to set the requirement for electrical efficiency. However, just a general feel for things tells me this will not break the system. Certainly it will not for longer, steadier driving. And the regenerative things do not matter for steady high speed steady travel.
Further engaging is most encouraged.
Thanks again, and thanks again to our hosts.
#954 James
Right you are about tire designs. However, after the tire companies have done everything they can, the number for rolling resistance converges to around a little less than .01 for cars and trucks. I understand that sew up bicycle tires are absolutely great and if such can be made to work on my car, I will be there.
My reading has it that truck tires with nearly worn out tread, or even bald, have lower rolling resistance than new tires. In other words, measure to prevent hydroplaning run counter to efficiency. That makes sense in comparison to your points about bike tires.
As to the Servel, in this day of o-rings and Teflon I am betting that the Servel can be made to not stink. I remain an optimist on that sort of thing.
As to choices being made, in the long run, on fundamental economic bases, I sort of expect that to happen, regardless of all the talk about how government will fix things. Thus, the fraction of coal does not seem set to change from what I see. Just the amount of talk about it will go up and down.
Jim Bullin @ 957:
You can forget carrying any mass of lead acid batteries AND fitting into a 2400 pound budget. 20KWH of lead acid is about 1,000 pounds. 12HP — and you’re not going to get away with running the car on 12HP, you can forget that idea — will chew through those batteries in no time flat. High rate of discharge alone will ruin your capacity. You could use AGM instead of FLA, but AGM batteries hate the heat and they aren’t going to weight any less.
Really — go build one and you’ll start uncovering the problems. You might want to start looking into sprung versus unsprung weight and your lack of wheel wells, then look into ground clearance, preventing jackknifing, transverse stability in a cross wind, and a host of other problems. This hasn’t even begun to touch the interconnections for co-generation and getting people to run their car in the garage for hours and hours on end.
#959
None of us have much of an idea how much fun, or not, it will be to drive the Miastrada airship car. You can be sure it will not be like flying.
I am sure that I won’t let any car out (here I am dreaming) unless the buyer has completed a special driving course.
I can tell you that it was quite amazing how remarkably stable the steering system of my coaster, soap bucket model was as it ran down my driveway.
But as the old joke goes, “If he doesn’t want a — cookie, don’t give him one.” (The real joke was not for polite company.) So ride around puny if you like, and have fun. I assume you will take off the muffler so you can rip around real good. But I bet your engine will not be puny– does that mean it will be a low emission engine? Perhaps not.
#959 James
The Hybrid Insight is a remarkably fine machine and it was quite disappointing that it worked so well but sold so poorly.
This was part of my reason for thinking tall and thin might be more appealing.
None of that tall stuff for James, though.
Jim Bullis – “Things sometimes are not as we might think.”
I’m glad to see someone else looking at renewable technology objectively. Some of the politics and suggestions are nothing more then lip service and snake oil.
The proposition of government intervention is a fallacy because public support to get political action is not there and will never be there. I read current politics as political theater being designed to cover ass when the masses begin to have problems. The average person does not believe global warming is alarming, and governments are not going to commit to serious changes without a majority behind them. The weak support has been observed by major corporations, and many corporations are already sinking money into controlling climate science policies.
Solutions to global warming will sell themselves, and I personally expect them to come from the individual level.
Jim Bullis writes:
And for those of us who understand that we should get rid of coal, this should make it clear that electric cars are a good idea.
Hey All,
I just wanted to make a comment regarding the use of the Smart Grid plan that was mentioned much further back in this thread. The main purpose of the Smart Grid, as was alluded to; but, not pursued, is that there has to be a balance between generation and demand. Given an average daily schedule when industry fires up, residential demand does not decrease. Hence, you have to add capacity to meet the new peak demand plus the additional internal environmental adjustments.
The idea of Solar to meet this additional demand is great as it peaks nearly when the demand peaks, hence, this shortcuts the need for a Smart Grid as the energy generated locally does not have to be distributed nor increases the demand on the grid. (you would have to maintain a little reserve to met the pre-occupation demand in the morning though.) However, you cannot run homes and maintenance demand on solar.
In essence, you would need to provide a steady state background source tied into the average negative peak of demand. Energy storage is not the way, as it involves a loss of efficiency in type of energy change and another loss as it is changed again back into electricity. Fossil fuels today can provide this back ground level. If they are phased out for the supply by nuclear in the future you can achieve both a reduction in peaking demand in the short term and a reduction in fossilized carbon released in the long term.
The problem is the release of additional carbon over the long term. Based on the current level of science knowledge the need for change in technology was about 20 years ago. The state problem appears to have been related to fear and possible design issues; however, there were political issues as well. Though we could move forward with lower carbon sources such as Methyl Hydrate mining the issue would remain that the future needs a long term, renewable, reliable resource that is sufficient to replace the function that fossil fuels provide today.
As to nuclear, if for example the DOE were to define a detailed nuclear failsafe plan (IE: Naval Submarine Nuke Reactor)that could be dropped into almost any location with standard operations and assembly line like precision the time frame for conversion could be shortened to less then 10 years. However, we need to change the technology away from former designs, even if we had to go to a form of Radio Isotope Nuclear Generator that employed a Stirling engine as opposed to the current thermocouple would be an improvement.
As to solar, yes the current expense seems terribly high. Processes are being attempted to reduce the initial costs; however, until a standard is defined cost reductions due to commodity production are a long way off. If the government can convert the expensive Video Teleconferencing systems of yesterday (Prices ranging from 10 million to 300k (USD) down to 300K to 30K (USD)) in ten years they certainly can specify the standard of GSA requirements to drop the price of a simple Silica wafer. The problem given is the technology is changing, someone somewhere has to draw the line in the sand if you have any intent of hitting a target… (Yes, the triple entendre is intentional…)
Now if we want to really make carbon dioxide valuable such that it no longer was a waste product; but, a valuable commodity someone needs to figure out how to create dry ice from atmospheric CO2 cheaply. Figure it this way, if you could capture and cool CO2 you could use this as a fuel in a Pneumatic powered vehicle such as one of the various Air Cars being bandied about. Sorry, that is a conversation for a different thread… The point is in the past we have found ways to convert waste into a commodity why should this be any different…
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
A moment of levity: In England in 1300, King Edward II supposedly banned coal burning in London while Parliament was in session and announced that “whosoever shall be found guilty of burning coal shall suffer the loss of his head.” I am not sure of any subsequent verification studies. :-)
“Energy storage is not the way, as it involves a loss of efficiency in type of energy change and another loss as it is changed again back into electricity.”
L David, This is wrong.
It means it may not be the BEST way, but unless you lose ALL your energy (or more) in those two losses, there is still a gain in energy availability.
If you want to say that storage is not the way, please show that the losses in changing this energy into a storable form and then the losses changing it back to electromotive energy equal or exceed the amount of energy available for storage.
Hank Roberts Says (26 mai 2009 at 7:21 PM):
“I said James seems to be focusing on the Bambi-and-butterflies view of the Chernobyl (and presumably Hanford, Oak Ridge, and other radioactive areas) — yes, there’s more wildlife visible when humans are excluded.”
Though you try to trivialize it, that is exactly my point: that whatever the impact of the Chernobyl accident on the local ecosystem, it’s a net improvement over the impact of the previous human population. Of course that’s not to say that it might not have been even better sans accident and humans, but we don’t have a test case for that.
“http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thyroid+cancer+rates+have+to+do+with+the+health+of+an+ecosystem”
Humm… Do you even bother to look at what comes back from your queries, or do your just stick them in as a way of evading questions? If you’d bothered to look at the results of that search, you’d see that most address purely human health issues. Of the rest (of the first hundred or so), only one http://www.springerlink.com/content/m252l1835817jx26/ seems to even address ECOSYSTEM health. The remainder are the usual Google irrelevancies.
Try removing the implicit filter which says everything in the world is for the exclusive benefit of (urbanized) humans.
RE: 971
Hey Mark,
Hmmm…, well I guess we could try a simple one first. Let us simply try a battery charger. To simplify it, this one will turn off when the charge meets 99% of full charge.
The range for battery charger efficiency is between 12 and 40% So, if you have a 1kw battery bank you would have to use between 2.5 and 8 kw to fully charge the bank. The result is you now have 1kw, run it though a DC/AC Inverter and you get out about 970 watts. Use the electricity to light an incandescent lamp and you get about 340 watts worth. This is for one of the more efficient conversion systems (Electricity to Chemical to Electricity to Light).
If you want to consider electric motor conversion to go from Electricity to Mechanical on average you are looking at between 40-70% (Otherwise you would not need cooling fans….) How about a different Electrical to Chemical conversion say via electrolysis / hydrolysis? Do you have an idea of the efficiency of conversion there?
The point is this is just on the demand side. If you want to go with the total source to work/load efficiencies they drop even further. Hence, storage is not the way forward in my humble opinion…
As to the generation of the energy in the first place I recommend a different measuring stick. Here in, I am not so terribly concerned about efficiency; but, effectiveness. How economically effective is it to generate 1kw via Nuclear over the life of the fuel and facilities, versus the cost to generate 1kw of solar over the life of the facilities? What alternatives can you suggest that are effective as secondary energy systems? (Certainly your battery bank is high on the list. For motor vehicles I would suspect Metal Hydrides batteries due to energy density and weight, (If you remember that inertia and speed are the two main issues with motor vehicles…) How about bio-mas, any ideas as to how efficient/effective is that conversion process?
(Oh, as an aside to Jim, regenerative braking aside, to accelerate to speed over 25 seconds versus 10 seconds removes expressways from the cities, as you could never accelerate to speed with the given on-ramp options as designed today.)
Mark, I think “overshoot” and “primary production” may be what David Cook is referring to above; David may have a better answer of course.
Estimates vary but all are in the same ballpark:
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/14/9266.full.pdf
Background:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5874
http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/over-2.htm
http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/over-11.htm
etc.
This is pretty basic ecology. Taking sunlight that doesn’t reach Earth — space-based collectors — is possibly a way to take more without leaving less available.
James writes:
> that is exactly my point: that whatever the
> impact of the Chernobyl accident
(which you can’t know, but extends well into the future, and the processes of radioactive decay and migration of isotopes are increasingly well described)
> on the local ecosystem,
(it’s not only local, and you’re talking about charismatic fauna, not the ecosystem)
> it’s a net improvement
(this is your opinion, with no cite yet, and ignores the descriptions of reproductive failure in the literature; it’s a sink, not a source, of animals)
> over the impact
(so far, but we can predict the future of radioactive decay and migration of radioactive material fairly well now and the research being done there and at Hanford and Oak Ridge, which you can find if you look, is not encouraging)
> of the previous human population
There are more animals, but they’re not reproducing as well; we’ve created a seemingly friendly area to which animals migrate, with an invisible hazard that most of them can’t detect (although some can, again, you did read about the birds, right?)
By your logic a roach motel is an improvement over an ordinary kitchen floor. After all you find more roaches there and they seem to prefer it.
James, I have no interest in convincing you (it’s dumb to try to learn this stuff by using the old Internet method (“post what you believe and await correction”). Don’t just proclaim what you believe and argue with some guy on a blog — use a library. Read about it. Test what you believe.
#968 Barton Paul Levinson,
Ok, so we get rid of coal altogether, now we have to also get rid of natural gas, since even this fuel causes quite a lot of CO2, especially with the way central power plants work.
When we are entirely on hydro, wind, solar, and, oh yes, nuclear, electric cars will be great.
Making very efficient cars that are electricity driven mitigates the situation a lot, but if we let the plug-in Hummer, Fisker, Bright, as well as the whole GM line-up shift to plug-in operation the whole thing is blown out of the water.
See #957 and #961 among others to see how things might, and maybe might not, be different.
#973 L. David Cooke,
I would not consider putting a car on the road that could not get 0-60 MPH in over 12 seconds. Where did the 25 seconds come from?
My present hardware is sized to get 0-60 in 8 seconds. With some allowance for imperfections, I am fairly confident it will come out under 10.
No, Jim, you can’t equate natural gas and coal as CO2 sources. Different proportion of carbon to hydrogen.
Read some of the information at the site linked above, for the actual numbers:
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html
——-
On the car up in the air — what happens to your vehicle with a T-bone collision?
I once saw a mule hit by a car– as often happens with a moose or an elk or a big deer; its legs get pushed out from under it and the body falls onto the vehicle’s hood and the legs flip over and go through the windshield.
An ordinary car gets its side smashed in. Yours?
Reading this thread I can’t help but wonder why so much effort is being put into ideas like this miastrada car, when it will never have a chance to go to market looking even remotely like that, simply because the whole thing would never make it through any pedestrian safety test. In my view, optimizing the car is not the fastest way to reduce traffic emissions. Much cheaper and almost immediately effective is optimizing the traffic itself like putting some brain into intelligently coordinating traffic lights, using all that GPS equipment to detect and avoid jams, effectively coordinating guidance to parking space and – yes – building some extra streets and lanes where they make sense. We will need the elcetric car at some point but just looking at how long it took a large company like Toyota to build the Prius and how long it took Daimler to build a clean Diesel, how little the effect of all this is up to now and how slowly it drips into the market (simply because most people can’t afford a new car every two years), I’ll have to ask whether anybody seriously believes that the miastrada will save the world or at least contribute to doing so. A man can dream, ok, but when it comes to making a difference, I thing there are better ways.
#969 Cheerful Dave Cooke,
You have some pretty big thinking going there Dave. What happened to the careful scientific analysis? Just kidding, I think it sometimes can be useful to throw out thoughts without a lot of inhibition. And I hope it is ok to point out flaws fairly freely.
Of course we would only be parachuting in the attack submarines. Cost per MW of capacity? HM. (capital letters intended) You know, these only have to drive one electric motor.
Now those radio isotope generators are not only feeble but they come with their own set of nasty problems. Wasn’t there a Soviet era satellite that broke up a few years ago, where there was a concern about that kind of power supply. Once, I looked into these as a way of powering deep ocean instruments. A lot of crazy stuff was tossed around in those cold war days. I tried to do my share.
Dry ice taketh away CO2, dry ice giveth back CO2.
That 340 Watt light bulb puts out that much heat, only a small fraction becomes the power of the electromagnetic waves that are useful light on their way to turning back into heat fairly soon.
As an old circuit designer in some of my previous lives, I know we can do a lot better in charger efficiency than 12 to 40%. On my first real job, I designed switch mode power converters when silicon transistors were first available. I had known power conversion from before. In my ham radio days (9th grade) I burned a hole in my finger accidentally discharging a capacitor on my home made, tube type 300 volt power supply. I was still winding down my days of (unbelievably dangerous) chemistry, and resurrector of old Maytag gasoline engines from the local junk yard–now I am wandering off subject, just to color things up a bit.
I might be enjoying the chat too much. Get back to work Jim.
Back to charging. It is amazing how difficult it is to get a battery promoter to tell what the charging efficiency of their battery actually is. A few years ago at a solar power trade show, I was talking to a VP marketing guy from one such company that was touting how their battery could be very rapidly charged, without getting it really hot. Sounded good, so I asked, “Do you have any data on the in-and-out electric power efficiency?” He looked at me like I was a crazy trouble maker and said, “Why would that be important?” To be fair, it is not that simple since it is somewhat dependent on rate of charge and discharge. Still, some kind of an idea seems fundamental. Does anyone have sources on this?
#973 Cheerful Dave Cooke, #957 RichardC
I have measured efficiency data on my desk for cheap, 18 hp DC motors. Yes they are from China, and yes they are copies with improvements of Lynch type motors from the UK. That data shows 80% to around 90% conversion efficiency. Perm Motors in Germany makes a better motor, it seems though also a copy of the Lynch design, with slightly better efficiency, but with restrictions on operating in reverse which I find awkward in my design. Briggs and Stratton also marketed the Lynch design, though it was made in China, as the Etek motor, which was used in golf carts and floor scrubbers. For me these are fine for demonstration, but brushes do wear out and they are hard to change in these motors. Perm says their motors are designed in Germany but manufactured in China.
Perm motors also offer a synchronous “AC” motor that they claim gets about 92% efficiency, and this is said to be the same whether working as a motor or a generator, which is a requirement for regenerative operation. These are more expensive and require a more expensive controller, but once things are going these could be a better choice, again, mass production would be a big factor. However, my real preference is to shift to wheel motors which are not quite there yet as far as development goes, but may be. There is an issue of unsprung versus sprung weight, which might be overblown, especially for a car that is not in the traditional mold, but it still has to be taken into account.
For development testing my DC motors are going to be driving motorcycle wheels with a chain drive 92% to 98% efficient depending on a lot of things, how well they are oiled being the usual thing mentioned. Aptera uses a fancy “poly” belt that has notches so it acts much like a chain, though Gates claims 98% efficiency, but also puts tight tolerance on tension. I am designing in Kawasaki Police motorcycle parts, since there are a lot of these around, but for now, that keeps me limited to chain drive.
For power converters, inverters and such, the ultimate efficiency gets better and better depending on cost that can be tolerated. 90% is reasonable to expect for planning purposes. It also is a function of the breakdown voltages in the switching semiconductors, which seem to be still getting better and better. And then mass production can set in and bring the cost down almost miraculously, as can simply sending the job off to China. Sorry, but that is the truth. Something has to change with our industry if there is to be purchase money to make a market for anything.
Captcha now says, $33,800,000 compost: Hey Captcha, that is just not nice!
Whenever you hear about battery powered and big cars:
Sing (California here I come is the tune)
.
Title: “Zero Emission Hymn of America”
.
Carbon dioxide, here it come,
Coal is where you started from,
Crank up railroads, crank up mines,
We are headed for real good times.
Man the lifeboats, preservers on,
Build the batteries, run the con,
Making money is all that counts,
Carbon dioxide, here it come.
—Trail off humming the tune.
Any more verses anyone?
Thanks Hank, but I have no idea why they make storage not a solution. Those links and the vague idea from your post seems to think that the losses make the use of solar so inefficient compared to useful utility by biological systems that would otherwise be starved of the resource by solar panels.
How much sunlight is being “usefully” used by biological systems in the dessert?
How much in carparks? On rooftops?
How many biological systems usefully use the wind taken by the turbines in a windfarm?
Now these are good reasons to *sensibly* use these technologies when they have to have storage systems added to them to make them work to OUR schedule, rather than their own, but that doesn’t make them not a solution.
And even if it were used to the detriment of other biologicals, that still doesn’t make it not a solution. Especially if you compare it to the other disimprovements that human life gives to the biologicals.
I mean, that’s why life is (compared to elsewhere where humans live) abundant near chernobyl: not because the fallout is safe, but that humans are a worse short-term problem than mutated genomes.
So it still doesn’t answer my request. It merely makes the available places we can utilise these avenues of power collection less than would be the case if we considered only our own benefits.
re 976: “When we are entirely on hydro, wind, solar, and, oh yes, nuclear, electric cars will be great.”
And when we’re 50% on hydro, wind, solar, etc, electric cars will be 50% less bad than they are at the moment. And at the moment, they’re 20% less bad than ICE with fossil fuels.
Or are you the sort of person who can’t make it 100% right, 100% NOW, you don’t bother even improving your process?
973: that still leaves more energy to work with than without.
And if you want to go “total end to end” each and every journey ends with you right back home. 100% inefficient.
The other forms of power require just as many losses so those other losses are not unique and therefore cannot be used to say that one solution is not an option unless you are willing to say that the current system is also not an option. Storage power is used right now, right this minute somewhere on the planet.
You’re OK if you’re going to say that solar isn’t a sole replacement and that making it work when WE want it not when the sun gives it will make it less than the headline efficiency figures is OK, but not if you’re going to say it isn’t an option.
After all, most of the gas power stations are not situated where the gas is, are they. Nor are coal fired stations right next to coal seams only. Are you going to add the energetic cost cradle-to-grave of all that hardware, all that infrastructure, all that time and loss to banditry and international tensions to the current systems? If you do, you may find yourself using power that is also not a solution and have been using it for fifty years.
David Cooke @ 973:
You need to get a new charger — the three I own are a hell of a lot more efficient than that. The least efficient charger I own is an MPPT charge controller, and it’s efficient enough that end-to-end efficiency for straight solar-to-grid is 75%. Put batteries in the mix and efficiency drops, though I haven’t the slightest idea. I just know it’s a lot more than any numbers you gave.
Jim Bullis @ 977:
Uh, I ran the number for 0 to 88 f/s in 8 seconds and horsepower needed for acceleration alone for a 2,400 pound vehicle was more than the 12HP you are sizing it for.
Care to show your work?
I think some of David Cooke’s numbers are misleading. Battery charger efficiency is not 12-40%, it is more like 80-90%
http://oee.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/industrial/equipment/chargers/savings.cfm?attr=20
And regarding using dry ice to power your car pneumatically, well I think that violates some laws of thermodynamics. Your car will be emitting a lot of CO2! If you can afford to make dry ice out of it then you might as well bury it and remove it and then burn more coal to produce the energy needed to run your electric cars instead, and then sequester that CO2 again and sink it underground.
With most future economic growth to be occurring in warm places like India I think solar energy could play a large part of the increased transportation energy demand. Solar powered cars could go over 30 km, even 50 km a day for free, the only cost is in the initial installation of the panels on the car. I can’t say when that will be cost effective but in a tropical place like India probably not too far into the future.
energy shining down: 800 W / m2
area of panels on car: 4 m2 = 3200 W
sun shining for 8 hours a day = 25 kW-hr
23% reduction for horizontal panels = 20 kW-hr
25% efficient panels = 5 kW-hr
plug to wheel efficiency of Tesla Roadster: 170 W-hr / km
therefore, daily driving range in sunshine all day = 30 km
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/energyflow/energyflow.html
“… What can we conclude from the above analysis of the fate of net primary production in our world?
… Homo sapiens, commands about 40% of the total terrestrial NPP. …”
Details of this can’t be described briefly to any useful extent or answered in blog debate terms.
> How much sunlight is being “usefully” used
> by biological systems in the dessert?
About all that can be. Nature works that way.
http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/MojaveGrnSq.html
Hey All,
Based on the response, I figure it best to post the following links to a 2003 paper regarding Total Battery Charging System Efficiency. Also if you are interested, the second link talks further about the actual efficiency of Charger Types themselves and the approximate efficiency. Notice that the most efficient Charger is about 60%, add in the battery and you reduce the total efficiency by between 20 and 50 percent more…(X * Y=Z). (The issue of efficiency depends on to whom you listen and how you measure…)
General Battery Charging Efficiency Presentation: Here
http://www.efficientproducts.org/reports/bchargers/NRDC-Ecos_Battery_Charger_Efficiency.pdf
(5-27-09)
Technical Paper Regarding Battery Charger Efficiency: Here
http://www.efficientproducts.org/reports/bchargers/1270_BatteryChargerTechincalPrimer_FINAL_29Sep2006.pdf
(5-27-09)
Hank,
Thanks for the supporting links to what I had alluded to before, regarding the population and resource balance on the Earth. It was clear this concept was way beyond this crowd. When we look at trying to maintain the Earth with a maximum of “Common” resources so that there is enough room for all life, as it exists today, we had indeed passed the capacity of the planet. However, if we were to define that the planet had to be dedicated to only one species and to provide all the resources for bare existence we have a long way to go. If we were to convert most every surface for the purpose of supporting human life, the planet might support up to 24 Billion; however, I for one would not want to live in that world…
Jim,
Regarding the 25 seconds of time to accelerate, that was a offshoot of the original discussion as to why SbS versus Tandem was an issue. (With low (QRP) power Tandem placement is a requirement; however, ever since man developed the first animal pulled vehicle, they generally included SbS operation. (This was prevalent way before automobiles.) However, Tandem placement with higher or longer proportion are not devoid of aerodynamic drag, only that it is not direct “face” displacement anymore, you still have the low pressure that forms along the side and the turbulence this develops. As to efficient SbS designs look to recent aircraft designs which turn the fuselage into a lifting surface. (The new Honda Insight or the Smart type vehicle designs were developed with over 80 years of research by greater minds then ours.) To use the transportation systems as currently designed, the amount of energy required to operate on the roads as designed and maintain passenger safety are in direct opposition, unless you place everyone in a egg carton with form fitting cushioning. Point being, in order to reduce the energy by half, to accelerate to highway speeds, you would need to either reduce the weight by half or double the time to accelerate.
Mark,
The use of storage systems as opposed to secondary resources such as bio-mass or high hydrogen fossil fuels was the issue I was trying to address. Storage versus alternative fueled systems (similar to a hybrid system) is the issue. If the desire is to reduce fossil carbon usage then use the sun and a nuclear base line to remove 70% of the current demand. Then use coal or natural gas to supplement the nuclear base line for night or low sun conditions. Storage would actually demand more of the limited available energy that could go to reducing the emissions of fossil fuels.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
Jim B, thanks for the response. So your trolly is essentially a regular car frame pulling a trailer and the car body is supported between the two?
The standard rule of thumb for battery efficiency is 75%. You can find the figures in literature from off-grid power systems for houses. Real Goods is one place to start. You also lose an equivalent amount of value in the battery itself through degradation. That makes deep cycle lead acid batteries about 50% efficient from cradle to grave.
Dave Cooke @ 990:
You might want to look at the kinds of chargers they are studying. Two of my chargers are 97% efficient into lead acid batteries with a 94% charge factor. Multiplying the numbers yields 91.2%.
So, for every 1000Wh I put into the batteries from the electric grid, I can take 912Wh back out.
And yes, I’m absolutely sure those numbers are correct — my house depends on those numbers being correct …
#997 Hi Furry,
That is where electric motors are really useful.
As things stand now, the weight budget is 2400 lb. (it crept up due to enhancing structure to give a strong side safety barrier)
A really simple no-gearing strategy means getting 0 to 27 meter/sec in 10 seconds requires a constant force on each wheel of 2943 nt. or 661 lb. This translates to a motor torque requirement (each of 4) for 27 inch wheels and 15/41 (Kawasaki KA1000 hardware) sprockets, to 817 lb-inch. The four motors are rated for 300 amps or 474 lb inch of torque for one minute. For 10 seconds they can exceed this by a lot. (I can not find the momentary peak current number but it is huge.) The needed 817 lb in of torque corresponds to 517 amps. That is ok, though it can not be done continuously up and down without some cruising time to ease out the average heat load. The peak horsepower at 60 mph in this scheme is 37.2 hp for each motor or a total for all four of 145 hp. Sounds overpowered, and with gearing it could be less, but who cares at this point. This scheme is very crude and I expect some refinement, but at this point getting in the right ballpark is ok.
I plan to use a 16 hp engine since cruising at 80 mph will need 12 hp and that leaves 4 hp to catch up for the heavy acceleration drain, though that regenerative braking currents will help do that when coming back to 0 mph. Thus 16 hp gives some margin. I think there is some margin in the 12 hp as well since the real hp needed to go 80 looks more like about 9 or 10 hp. However, margin is appropriate here.
Thanks for the good question. Please let me know if I am missing something.
#990 Hi Dave Cooke,
That NRDC study was about low power systems, not automotive type systems. The designers of those were not worrying much about efficiency. Their handlers (herders) were probably holding them to parts count limits.
When they stuffed engines in carriages and sold off the horses,they were not working their imaginations very hard since they were just continuing carriage seating arrangements. Of course who cared? But before that time and for a while after, if anyone wanted to get somewhere fast they saddled up the horse.
But back to the car. The symmetry of the body of revolution mostly stops the turbulence. Look at the Freeman paper at http://www.miastrada.com/references to get a sense of how it can work. Morelli took things a lot further in an attempt to make a body of revolution (he started with the teardrop) work as it was brought lower to the ground. See “Impact of Aerodynamics on Vehicle Design,” ISBN 0 907776 01 9 , editor: Dorgham, 1983 for the main Morelli paper. He used the theory of wing tip vortices to work out a method that successfully made a low clearance body work. It seems to have all got messed up when he put in the wheel wells. This could explain why the Aptera designers put the wheels way out to the side when they adapted the Morelli shape to their vehicle.
I put a lot of hard design time into making the tandem body very strong, especially on the sides. As much as I could I tried to emulate the famous stock car racing cages that keep drivers amazingly well protected through horrible crashes, though not always. That was a lot of the motivation for the rear entry ramp system, such that there are no side doors to weaken the structure.
I need to put up a good picture of the present tubular steel frame design.
Another point: The wheel trains act somewhat like a highway guard rail to hold off impacts from the side. In the end, nothing’s perfect, but my intention is to make this the safest of cars.
#984 Mark
Where did that 20% less bad number come from.
Look at the EPRI/NRDC study, Fig. 5-1 for a study done by folks desperately trying to prove your point. Get it at http://www.miastrada.com/references
This chart makes it abundantly clear that getting a hybrid, a good one, is a good thing. Then forget about making it a plug-in as long as coal fired capacity exists and is the cheapest way to fill each increment of demand due to each electric plug-in load.
Even NRDC gagging all the way admitted that there might be some wisdom in hesitating with the plug-in.
> as coal fired capacity exists and is the cheapest way
“cheapest” only if you’re counting only money, and ignoring the externalized costs. But that’s the whole issue here, isn’t it?
Remember this from a few topics back?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2fgn3xZDtkI/SfMMkf8OftI/AAAAAAAACkc/O352yM9lenY/s1600/ArtSTRIP(MINI)(web).jpg
Yes it would make sense to first just get a bunch of serial hybrids out on the roads then take the next step of charging them with renewable energy sources. I don’t understand why Toyota can make this unnecessarily complex parallel drive Prius when a serial hybrid is simpler, easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
Jim Bullis @ 995:
Did you read this part of the referenced document?
It’s on page 17 of the PDF file.
Those chargers use the classic inefficient transformer whereas these new types don’t and are much more efficient, like 80-95%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_converter#Types
> “but my intention is to make this the safest of cars”
I don’t know what an experinced engineer from Ford or GM or Renault or Mercedes of Volvo would think about a bold claim like this, when tens of thousands of them competed for a hundred years and killed thousands of crashtest dummies in order to achieve just that over and over again – but I guess they’d feel amused rather than insulted.