More anti-ev gibberish

[Eberhard]

US we have our own "peaceful" sources of natural gas, coal, and hydro power.

even there, most of these resource were been taken from the native people. instead for the benefit of everyone, just feed the wealth of a few, like rockefeller?

 

[zack]

At present, afaik, we are not at war with anyone over natural gas, coal, uranium, or any of the alternative electrical generation methods. I'm sure your argument could go all the way back to original sin, but the fact is, nobody today is dying for America's electricity. Only for America's foreign oil.

 

[vfx]

No one has died fighting for electricity from sunlight.

 

[qwk]

No one has died fighting for electricity from sunlight.

I agree, but since sunlight is free, you can rest assured that power corps have and will continue lobbying against mass solar power.

 

[rolosrevenge]

We have to move the production from a few people profit to the welcare of everyone - with everyone having his own energy plant on his roof. thats real democracy.

The problem with this statement is that the reasoning for centralized power is not because there is some greedy Robber Barron crushing all opposition, but rather larger electricity plants have higher thermal efficiency than smaller ones. Higher fuel efficiency means cheaper prices. In a market where people compete, he who can offer cheaper prices wins. We want cheap energy as it increases our standard of living. The problem with electric utilities is that because of the increased efficiency at larger sizes, it tended to a natural monopoly which isn't good for consumers. This is why the the utility industry was regulated so heavily. Currently, efficiency gains from plants greater than 2 GW are negated by the outage impact factor so the natural monopoly no longer occurs. That is why we are seeing waves of deregulation. However, centralized generation is still significantly cheaper than distributed generation due to economies of scale. If everyone has their own energy plant on their roof as you advocate, the standard of living would decrease because energy would be more expensive. Better standard of living for everyone is what I call real democracy.

 

[qwk]

If everyone has their own energy plant on their roof as you advocate, the standard of living would decrease because energy would be more expensive.

If everyone had wind and/or solar power with V2G capable vehicles, I don't see how the above statement could be true.

 

[Eberhard]

even, with higher efficiency of centralized power plant (around 56%) are getting worse, if the electricity has to be transfer over long distances, it will loose 10-30% until he will reach the endusers household socket at 110Volt. Alt least all heat at the plant is lost and will be added to the global warming. Coproduction of power and heat from natural gas has the highest efficiency, when its been produced direct in your house.

 

[Doug_G]

most of us have to pay for the profit.

Economics have very clearly demonstrated that the profit motive reduces cost over time. Competitors squeeze profits, company gets clever and reduces costs and therefore price, squeezes competition back, and around it goes. If someone gets greedy and tries to gouge customers, someone else comes in an competes with him. Net result is everyone has marginal profits, public benefits from cheaper and better products. It only breaks down if companies collude to fix the prices, which is illegal and hopefully they get prosecuted.

Democracy does not equal socialism.

 

[Eberhard]

thats theorie. in fact monopolies are pushing prices higher. with your idea, american banks had to develop a very high efficient money transfer system with very low cost. it didn't happen, you still stick with your payment checks.

 

[Doug_G]

thats theorie. in fact monopolies are pushing prices higher.

Citation required.

with your idea, american banks had to develop a very high efficient money transfer system with very low cost. it didn't happen, you still stick with your payment checks.

I'm not American, and I'm not sure what you're referring to.

 

[JRP3]

even, with higher efficiency of centralized power plant (around 56%) are getting worse, if the electricity has to be transfer over long distances, it will loose 10-30% until he will reach the endusers household socket at 110Volt.

Transmission losses are not usually that high.

 

[Eberhard]

Competitors squeeze profits, company gets clever and reduces costs and therefore price, squeezes competition back, and around it goes

if there is a cow, it will be milked to the maximum profit.

 

[Doug_G]

if there is a cow, it will be milked to the maximum profit.

Great! Maximize efficiency. Lower costs. Make a decent profit.

 

[zack]

Wow. Okay. There's a lot of factors involved in this decentralization theme. One, if everyone eventually has an EV, the grid will be severely overloaded. That's actually happening in Germany right now, but not due to EVs... it's due to the subsidization of solar power installations, and the fact that dumping that much excess power back into an aging grid can overload it just the same as drawing too much. My belief is that we need on-site storage so the grid isn't stressed by both EVs and solar/wind/whatever being used everywhere. Our biggest breakthroughs are going to have to come in bringing down on-site electrical energy storage and solar costs. The grid will likely have to exist for a long time to come, maybe forever, but I think everyone will eventually be better off if they have the ability to disconnect from the grid and run independently for indefinite periods of time, unless maintenance needs to be done. Perhaps someday the power companies will have the ability to ask your home system to assist in your neighborhood if there's a brownout happening. I see all of this stuff as positive.

My personal belief about climate change is that we aren't going to do enough about it to stop it, so we'll have to come up with a technological solution, whether that's peppering the high atmosphere with some shade-providing material, or installing some gigantic ocean-going systems that suck up excess carbon somehow.

None of this is going to happen quickly.

 

[rolosrevenge]

If everyone had wind and/or solar power with V2G capable vehicles, I don't see how the above statement could be true.

A Skystream wind system can be purchased for $14,400 in Easter Washington State. If it produces 5000 kWh annually and lasts for 20 years then it will produce 100000 kWh. This works out to $0.14/kWh assuming that you have 100% efficiency storage. The most expensive retail rate in WA is around $0.12/kWh with the average being around $0.9/kWh. Eastern WA has a very good wind profile. Tell me how this wind system with perfect storage (V2G) is cheaper than the centralized power plants?

Source for Skystream wind system

 

[zack]

Doesn't that system qualify for the 30% rebate from the feds? Wouldn't that make it $0.098/kWh?

BTW, even operating at peak efficiency every day, that particular model wouldn't fill a Tesla's battery in 4 days. Obviously we have a ways to go to be competitive with centralized power, but keep in mind, the grid is old and we've increased the amount of power we demand for decades pretty much non-stop (there were two years of recession recently) and now that the Japanese nuke plant has had serious problems, American nuke plants will likely be delayed even longer. It's entirely possible that retail rates will climb significantly in an attempt to reduce demand during the coming decades.

I think we'll probably have to rely on falling solar and battery prices. Wind generators will likely fall with demand as well.

 

[rolosrevenge]

Doesn't that system qualify for the 30% rebate from the feds? Wouldn't that make it $0.098/kWh?

Someone has to pay the cost. Whether its you or someone else. It doesn't make it any less expensive.

 

[dpeilow]

Actually Chernobyl caused millions of premature deaths. There were over 500k "liquidators" alone, of which half are now dead before the age of 55. The others have severe health problems and will likely die too soon.

Can you please provide some numbers to back that up?

You're assertion that "half are dead before the age of 55" doesn't match with what's available online, which is that 10% of the liquidators are now dead. However, given that the majority of them were between 20 and 45 at the time of the accident, some of them would have been 70 by now. Average male life expectancy in Ukraine is 63.

To check that this low life expectancy isn't as a result of Chernobyl, I looked at the entire Russian federation and other ex-Soviet states. They are worse. Life expectancy across the entire region nosedived after the collapse of the USSR. Interestingly, only those former states that have joined the EU have higher life expectancy approaching that of western standards - and these were the ones that sent many of the liquidators at the time and they were the ones downwind of the site. Even Belarus, which had 60% of the fallout, has a higher life expectancy.


Professor Gerry Thomas, Chair in Molecular Pathology at the Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial College London and Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank was on BBC News this morning. She said that the only attributable effect to Chernobyl that has been observed is an increase in thyroid cancer in those who were children at the time, because the Soviet authorities were reluctant to admit there was a problem and distribute iodine tablets. Interestingly, the guy sitting next to me at work is from just across the border in Slovakia. He says they were not told about the accident and not told to take any precautions during the May Day parades a few days later, and as it was warm most people were out in T-shirts.

I have no reason to believe that Professor Thomas is anything but a bona fide and independent academic.

 

[Eberhard]

the question is: do you want to pay for someone else profit or to put the saved profit in your own pocket? by employing wind turbines and PV-panels you avoid electricity to pass through the grid or/and make it local available. and use the battery of the tesla to charge, when there a surplus of electricity.

 

[JRP3]

Unless you create your own solar panels or wind turbines you're still putting profits in someones pocket.