Hybrid cars

Of course, that expensive spot market can be supplied by unsold wind
power.

Admittedly, the somewhat unpredictable nature of wind power is a
limitation, but the system already has to deal with uncertainty. How
can you buy power for next July if you don't know whether it will be
record breaking hot or record breaking cold? Yet the only time we
have ever seen it (the power brokering system) fail was when the
crooks at Enron were doing Grandma Millie. If the system survived
that, it shouldn't have any problem figuring out how to deal with a
20% mix of wind power (if that is even achievable.) If the
deregulated private market can't figure it out, there are
alternatives.

The problem with business sense is that it only makes sense when you
consider that profit/personal greed is the only success criteria.
That is why the rules of the game have to be set and enforced so
carefully. The Enron California debacle pointed out what happens when
the rules (or lack thereof) fail. The California players all knew
that Enron was cheating, but they had no choice but to keep playing
the game with a man who had a hundred aces up his sleeve. If someone
had just pulled out a gun and shot Ken Lay after the first cheat,
California would be a few billion dollars richer now.

Sometimes, the only way to set up a game that is fair and efficient is
to let the government play a bigger role.

 

Unfortunately, not to any great extent. The problem is that contracts for
peaking are usually made the previous day, on an hourly basis. The market is
competitive to the point of being cutthroat, and the closer the time gets to
the delivery time the higher the prices are; cheap power has already been
bought. That is the problem with intermittent generation - how much can you
produce between 1400 and 1500 hours tomorrow? How much can you produce in
the coming hour, with much higher penalties if you can't? Allow too much for
the vagaries of nature and there is no point being in business. Allow too
little and the penalties will cost far more than you could ever make. Don't
agree to the penalties and nobody will buy at any price.

The proposed FERC rules are intended to reduce the effect of impending
delivery, so intermittent generators can compete with the peakers as close
as an hour to delivery time. That will necessarily drive the spot market
through the roof as peaking producers try to make a living, but that's the
tradeoff. In exchange, intermittent producers would have to become good
citizens on the grid, doing their part to correct voltage sags and high VARs
(bad phase angles.)

Personally, I don't understand why the intermittent producers don't invest
in water storage. The high up-front cost can be recovered at a more
predictable rate than the cost of the generation equipment can.

Mike

 

I drive with my eyes closed to deal with that part. <8^P

Mike

 

Has anyone attempted to determine the results of windmill farms?
Science tells us that to create energy from the wind, we take that
power out of the wind. If we intercept this force enough, what changes
are we imposing on nature?

Not saying we *shouldn't*, but we've already gone way down the
destructive road with other sources, maybe we need to do some research
before figuring that wind-generated power is "free"....

 

Unfortunately the federally approved stem cell lines are all contaminated.

 

But you can't let a simple thing like facts get in between Bush's ass cheeks
and his worshippers' lips.

 

This is ridiculous.
The useable part of the atmosphere goes up to about 36,000 feet. How
tall is a wind generator again?

Are you changing the earth's climate by putting a few *wind farms*
down on the ground here and there? I don't think so. Your fear is
groundless ( that is a pun ).

It is like saying you're going to change the ocean currents if you put
the Queen Elizabeth or some other Ocean Liner to Sea. Yah, a little
bit. But not enough to detect.

Lg

 

All they can test candidates for is education level, not the ability to
think.

 

Then those who insist on using embryonic/fetal stem cells shall have to
find private funding.

When the facts fail you, get emotional and use ad hominem attacks.

 

And he gave $100,000 tax deductions to small businesses like real
estate agents who buy Hummers.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0121-05.htm

The deduction was later repealed. And the hybrid deduction goes away
as well after a certain model sells more than a specified number of
units.

 

Water storage for intermittent power genertion.

In Virginia, nuclear porwer is used to pump water into Lake Anna. This
level loads the nuclear plant. Nuclear and coal plants are easier to
operate when the load doesn't change very much. When the demand peaks,
water is released and the pumps act as generators. Hydro adapts more
easily to load changes. Just modulate the water valve. Almost
instantaneous when compared to a steam cycle. the voltage sag is less
on hydro than any other generation. Recovery time is also shorter.

In California, the dams all produce peaking power. Most California dams
have a forebay in addition to the main reservoir. Nuclear power is run
level load and the dams provide peaking power. The forebay, or
sometimes after bay is used to level out water flow for ecology. On
cool days, or at night the nuclear plants still run at the same output,
but the load that was shed by the cities is diverted to pumping water.

Operation of the California Aqueduct requires manipulation of water
release to produce electrical generation as well as water release.
Eventually, the electricity is used to pump the water over the
Tehachapi mountains.

New York City is promoting load management by users to avoid building
new generating plants.

What does this have to do with hybrid cars?

 

well.. it's not really about cheap or even better gas mileage to a
certain
extent for many folks.

It's about cleaner exhaust emissions - mainly in city-type driving AND
at least in the No Va area - getting on the HOV lanes.

For those folks.. it's about TIME saved by using HOV and the extra
cost is a no-brainer.... AND they get to claim "green" credentials
even though their motivations are purely selfish....

re: energy - ALL energy has extraction costs. You can't extract even
green energy like wind and solar without the captial costs for the
infrastructure. And, all energy also has operational costs to convert
it from
it's native form into something that can be... used.

Each kind of energy has different costs. Just because they all have to
be extracted and converted does NOT mean the costs for doing so
are the same.

I doubt very seriously that corn can be grown and harvested to,
in effect, produce more energy than it took to create it - which
then can be sold.... something about this concept seems suspect.

What would be useful would be a chart showing where the energy came
from - and what it cost to generate it.

Finally - I didn't hear anyone mention tides - which are predictable
and
continuous on a 24hr basis. Hydro power derived from tides certainly
ought to be recognized at least as one of the options.

 

But it isn't just the burning of alcohol that generates CO2. The
fermentation of grain alcohol liberates lots of it too. I can see where
the burning and photosynthesis could balance out. But what about the
emissions from the fermentation.

 

But there ARE ways to store electricity or even to store the energy in
some other form and reconvert it to electricity later. One simple
scheme is to use turbines to pump water up a hill to a reservoir, let it
flow down through the turbines to generate electricity when you need it.

You can hydrolize water with it, burn the hydrogen when you need it.

You can compress gases with it.

Lots of ways to store the energy.

 

Drive through northern Iowa or southwestern Minnesota. Farm land is
being used for very large wind turbine farms, and the land can continue
to be farmed. We are generating large amounts of wind power out here.

Now, I don't have any quarrel with nuclear power- I think it is a good
answer, but there ARE regions of the country where people are okay with
wind power. In those regions that are not, when they find themselves
paying far more for energy than regions that use wind power, their
attitudes may change.

 

Yep. We could look at two kinds of horsepower requirement for a car-
average hp required, and peak hp required. A proper hybrid should size
the IC engine to the AVERAGE hp required, and the electric motor for the
difference between peak required and average required.

 

Have you read that article about bettering the Prius fuel economy by adding
an additional battery pack,and IIRC,allowing for recharge from home
electric power? It was in the news 4-5 months ago.

 

Wind is merely one of nature's way of equalizing the variations in solar
thermal input across land and sea.(Hurricanes are another!)
I seriously doubt we humans could interfere enough with winds to cause
climatic changes.

The environmentals are now against windfarms;they kill too many birds.

Sen.Ted Kennedy (an environmentalist-supporter)is against them now,seeing
as they want to put one off-shore from his Hyannisport compound.(FAR,far
off-shore!) B-)

 

Environmentalists are against dams;they harm fisheries.
Dams BAD,BAD,BAD ;-)

Hybrids run on fossil fuels,and we're trying to reduce usage of fossil
fuels,for enviro and political reasons.Electric power is the alternative.

 

IF you have the water(or can spare it),and if you have a reservoir.(or a
place to build one)
Also water evaporates,or freezes(bummer,that one).

Lots of very inefficient ways.

Then there's nuclear;clean,efficient,safe,and ready when you are.