Renewable energy ...important ...personal action

[KC2IXE]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

ikendu said:
So...if the characteristics of electric power isn't it...how come we don't just couple the diesel engine directly to the wheels (like we do in over-the-road trucks)?


They have done mechanical drives and the like. The problem is that you rally have to drive 6 axles (sometimes 4, but 6 is more common) with a HUGE tractive effort. Electric drive DOES work well, and it WILL work well in a car/truck. The big problem is the fixed weight in a DE. The overhead problems when you are trying to move 2000 hp (lugging a generator around with you) are less in relation to the problems when you are trying to move 85hp. Have you ever noticed how slowly a train accelerates? That said, I think electric drive is going to be the wave of the future, but NOT from batteries! Exx (and not necessarily 85) will probably work well. It gives you a HUGE advantage - you get to run your gas engine at a constant speed, which means the point of greatest efficiency.

Bio fuel is OK, until everyone starts using it, and then there isn't enough. I've looked into things like diesel, but it just isn't in the cards for me, at this time, as what I need isn't offered.



I will start believing the scientist that says new oil is continuing to be made all the time when I see the old, "depleted" oil fields of the U.S. suddenly springing back wit ...snip (posted too fast0...

There is some evidence that they are refilling - I'm looking for the info now.

 

[ikendu]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

KC2IXE said: Bio fuel is OK, until everyone starts using it, and then there isn't enough.

In 2001 there were 20 million gallons of surplus soy oil turned into biodiesel. That leaves:

180 million gallons of surplus soy oil per year.
3 billion gallons of used restaurant fryer oil (presently goes into landfills or pet food).

...before we have to do anything about getting more feedstock for biodiesel. Plenty of room left for short term growth in the fuel.

The University of New Hampshire BioDiesel Group has calculated that you could create enough biodiesel from algae to completely replace all of the U.S. petroleum use for transportation with an investment of $169 billion. Hmmm.... at $2 billion dollars a day for imported oil, that would be about 3 months of the cost of imported oil...and we'd be off all petroleum use entirely!

And...since the fuel is renewable (and recycles carbon) we wouldn't be adding any additional CO2 to our atmosphere!
Fuels of the future?

KC2IXE said: ...diesel...just isn't in the cards for me, at this time, as what I need isn't offered.

Well...in 2004 there will be VW Beetle, Golf, Jetta (sedan & wagon), Passat, Jeep Liberty SUV in diesel and a Mercedes Benz diesel sedan plus many full size pick up trucks already. Do any of those meet your needs?

 

[KC2IXE]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

[ QUOTE ]
ikendu said:
KC2IXE said: Bio fuel is OK, until everyone starts using it, and then there isn't enough.

In 2001 there were 20 million gallons of surplus soy oil turned into biodiesel. That leaves:

180 million gallons of surplus soy oil per year.
3 billion gallons of used restaurant fryer oil (presently goes into landfills or pet food).

...before we have to do anything about getting more feedstock for biodiesel. Plenty of room left for short term growth in the fuel.

The University of New Hampshire BioDiesel Group has calculated that you could create enough biodiesel from algae to completely replace all of the U.S. petroleum use for transportation with an investment of $169 billion. Hmmm.... at $2 billion dollars a day for imported oil, that would be about 3 months of the cost of imported oil...and we'd be off all petroleum use entirely!

And...since the fuel is renewable (and recycles carbon) we wouldn't be adding any additional CO2 to our atmosphere!
Fuels of the future?

[/ QUOTE ]


There is some room for growth. Of course, we could also build some nukes, and stop buring oild for electricity

BTW The "Lots fo deep oil" guy is Thomas Gold.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.html

 

[ikendu]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

KC2IXE said: ...BTW The "Lots of deep oil" guy is Thomas Gold.

I see this quote from his article:

"Many fields have produced several times as much as the initial testing of their magnitude would have indicated. Some geologists frankly agree that fields are refilling themselves - Robert Mahfoud and James Beck, who say fields in the Middle East are refilling, and Jean Whelan, who has observed a site refilling in the Gulf of Mexico - though they won't concede my theory is correct."

If the refilling is working on a practical basis...then we shouldn't have to drill additional wells, just wait for the existing ones to refill. If the refilling rate is so slow that it would take hundreds of years to actually re-fill...then it may not really matter to us if it is refilling so slowly that we basically run out anyway.

I'm very interested in this fellow's ideas! I had heard about him previously but did not know his name and never could find any material on his theory.

Thanks for posting this link!

Although /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ...I'm still for pushing for biodiesel as a way to get us off of imported oil soon (in 10 years?). That's not based on theory...but on processes we already understand and are using. We could be off of imported oil well before the Hydrogen car is even out of the lab... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif.

Plus...recycling carbon with plant photosynthesis will not load up our atmosphere with more CO2. Burning fuel that is slowly oozing up from the Earth's core would do that.

 

[Stefan]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

I'm probably going to take a stab at this. Wouldn't the oil rich companies, that rely on the income of oil, spend whatever it is necessary to buy out the competition, to make sure that technology is not available? Something that either Darrell or Brock can fill me in on, is didn't they want to roll out fully with electric vehicles, but the oil companies screamed so loud that it didn't go through, and anyone with an electric vehicle now is lucky? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif Another challenge would be unless there are certain areas that have year round tempuratures with little to no change (California rings a bell) that not all electric vehicles (whether BEV or hybrid) will operate in envornments of extreme ranges?

 

[ikendu]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Stefan said: Wouldn't the oil rich companies...buy out the competition, to make sure that technology is not available?

Well...in the case of biodiesel, they can't really "buy out" diesel engine technology and the technology to convert organic oils like soy to biodiesel is so simple that it can't really be "bought out" either, IMHO. They could certainly lobby to prevent large scale algae production. Maybe they are already doing that. As far as E85...seems like the big push for that is coming from Minnesota?

Stefan said: ...areas that have year round tempuratures with little to no change (California rings a bell) that not all electric vehicles (whether BEV or hybrid) will operate in envornments of extreme ranges?

Cold weather is more of a challenge for BEVs. I'm not sure of how drastic the effect is. I know that lithium ion batteries perform well in the cold. Also, I imagine that people are already operating Hybrids in cold areas with success. I know there are plenty of Hybrids running around here in Iowa (and it gets plenty cold).

 

[Bill.H]

[ QUOTE ]
ikendu said:
it hasn't been a key issue ever since Saudi Arabia turned the oil tap back on after the Saudi Royal family used oil as a weapon against us with the "Arab Oil Embargo". Since those days, we've gone from 25% imported oil to 50% imported oil. And...since those days, we've fought two wars in the Persian Gulf; costing many lives and billions of dollars... with no end in sight regarding the current conflict.

As far as the economy...imported oil costs our economy $2 billion a day...every day. That has to be hurting us.

As far as security...all that money that goes for imported oil forms a vast pool of wealth in the middle east. How do you think that Iran and Iraq were able to afford to develop their own nuclear programs? And... oil was used as a weapon before (at 25% imported)...why not again at 50% imported?

As far as jobs... we could take that $2 billion/day that we currently spend on imported oil and creat a LOT of jobs right here in our own economy for renewable energy facilities in the U.S.

The Saudi's have been playing us for suckers for years. They help ramp up production to force the price of imported oil to stay just low enough to keep people from totally freaking out about the price...so we won't start thinking about alternatives.


[/ QUOTE ]
Well, it's a bit difficult to blame Arabs when we (the US) import more oil each year from Canada and the UK than we do from Saudi Arabia and Iraq! (Source: DOE 2002) In fact, we get more oil from Canada than any other single foreign source. If current trends hold, we will buy more oil from Mexico this year than from Saudi Arabia. US net imports of oil are ~12 million barrels/day (domestic oil usage is ~9 million barrels/day, about 47%) and the middle east counts for less than 2.4 million barrels/day. (Source: DOE 2002)

Assuming we want to keep US dollars in the US...
since many of us spend an order (sometimes orders) of magnitude more per year on purchasing vehicles than on the fuel we put into them, wouldn't we be better off on prioritizing purchasing vehicles only from US owned companies? That would do more to keep the jobs and money in the US than reducing the amount of oil we purchase from our closest allies.

The current thinking of the DOE and USCAR (Ford, GM, DaimlerChrysler) is that the best near-future alternative is hydrogen fuel cells. FreedomCar That is also a renewable energy solution, with potentially the lowest pollution of all the alternatives.

 

[highlandsun]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

I think **** Gephardt's Apollo project makes a lot of sense.
http://www.****gephardt2004.com/issues/energy1.html

 

[DieselDave]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

BillH.,
Very good points and thanks for the info.

Interesting how depending on the source of the information the "facts" are so wildly different.

Example: Ikendu says: imported oil costs our economy $2 billion a day...every day.

BillH. says: US net imports of oil are ~12 million barrels/day

One or both of those figures are WAY off. At 12,000,000 barrels a day it would equal $360 million not $2 billion ($30 a barrel) a day. I wouldn't try and argue $360 million isn't a bunch of money but just how interesting the spin can get. Also, a big portion of this oil is used for others things besides automobile fuel.

To get to $2 billion a day you would have to import 66.66 million barrels a day, which is almost the entire worlds usage.

Maybe I don't understand what goes into the equation and someone can clear it up for me.

 

[Kirk]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Check out http://www.ott.doe.gov/facts/archives/fotw191.shtml for "official" U.S. consumption figures.
Kirk

 

[ikendu]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

DieselDave said: One or both of those figures are WAY off. At 12,000,000 barrels a day it would equal $360 million not $2 billion ($30 a barrel) a day.

Well... that looks right /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif

The figure I've been quoting came from (I believe) a D.O.E. site as well that discussed the impact of imported oil on our military security...although, I can't re-find the link. So...look's like my number is not defensible.

At $360 million a day, the $169 billion for algae production would take 1.3 years of equivalent cost for imported oil. So...although it is highly embarrasing to have been quoting a number that looks really wrong...the switch to renewable fuels still looks like a good bet.

BTW...I edited the earlier post so as not to mis-lead people.

 

[Bill.H]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

I hope my figures are accurate, they are 2002 numbers calculated over the first 8 months and estimated for the last 4 months. It was the latest info I could locate. Also, those are net imports. The US also exports oil, and the amount we export is subtracted from gross imports.
Perhaps the larger numbers are gross imports? (edit: I just checked and that's not enough to make up the difference, there must be something else added in in that $2B to make up the rest of it)
The figures are on the US DOE site, as was pointed out by Kirk.

 

[DieselDave]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Oh yea, $360 mil. a day is chump change. Hardly over a dollar a day for every person in the U.S. I round my income taxes to the nearest $400 mil. to save time.

Actually it is a staggering amount of money. If all 4432 CPF members donated $500,000.00 each and everyone that registered twice or more /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif pays $500,000.00 for each registration and if Darell made up the difference for all the members that we couldn't find or that didn't have .5 million dollars laying around we still wouldn't have enough money to pay for one week of oil imports. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[Darell]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

OK, Darell is in the building. You guys would have to start one of this while I'm on vacation /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif

Interesting read so far. Couple of points I'm compelled to make, and they'll come in no particular order since I'm just going from what stuck in my mind after reading this whole thread to this point.

1. I can't believe that you're talking about reduced performance in an EV, Dave! Where have you been? My EV1 can smoke most of the Corvettes ever produced from zero to 60. The Tzero can smoke them all.

2. Electric power will stomp any sort of ICE power if major torque is required. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, electric will win. Switching engines have had great success with *battery* stored electricity (charged from diesel) because of the awesome torque characteristics of electric motors. It *is* all about the power... and pollution. Check out the Green Goat. More Green Goat... there are many more if you're interested. There are many reasons beyond "clean air" that many buses, trains, subways, etc are electric powered. The reasons are high performance, low cost, minimal maintenance, high reliability). Electricity has it. Ice doesn't. These vehicles typically don't run on batteries, so nobody really questions their viability for some reason. But hey - anbody who rides an electric mass-transportation vehicle is an alt-fuel user in my book!

3. Battery isn't the way to store electricity? *Chemical* storage is? Hmmm. Battery IS chemical storage. I must have missed something, because now I'm confused.

4. Do we keep having to harp on BEV range and temperature issues? The BEVs that you've all heard about (like the ones I'm driving) are using way old battery technology. The newest Tzero is being built today, and will have approximately 300 mile range, will hustle from zero to 60 in just under four seconds (what was that about BEV performance?) and will have the ability to be recharged from ANY outlet in America. Zero to 60 in four seconds, 300 miles range. Tap, tap, tap. Hello? Is this thing on? Plus it will have fast-recharge capability that will enable an 80% charge in 10-15 minutes. The batteries are Lithium Ion, and will work great in cold or hot weather. Still won't fit into your lifestyle? Yeah, it'll be hell of expensive. Can't help it - it is a one-off since thre is ZERO industry/goverment support. We have cheap gas, why would we want better cars?

5. Oil reserves. Yes, we keep finding more. Yes it keeps looking like we'll never run out. But so what? Do we really want to keep sucking it out of the ground and burning it just because we have it? I sure don't. I have some of it parked right here in my garage, and it pains me every time I'm required to burn it. I don't like the smell, I don't like the pollution, I don't like the crappy performance, I don't like stopping at filling stations, and I don't like having to beg foreign governments for it, or rape beautiful lands to extract it.

6. Oil drilling. Dave pointed out that many of the same people who are pushing for alt fuels are the same ones who are preventing coastal drilling and such. I have a HUGE problem with folks who protest drilling (logging too!) in this lovely state - and who continue to demand the product anyway. The problem is just shoved into somebody else's back yard. We get most of our oil by raping the Amazon, and we get our wood by clear-cutting Canada - all for the sake of making our state look, feel and smell better. California's insatiable appetite for these products is at odds with the "political" actions of many. You'll get nothing but agreement from me on that. BUT - if folks are truly pushing for alt fuels (and using them!) then campaigning against oil drilling makes quite a bit of sense. I just wish it would happen less EVERYWHERE, not just in CA.

7. The need for multiple cars. At this point, there is no silver bullet. Biodiesel is a really great way to have one car that "does it all" today. And we aren't going to solve this problem for every family in every situation (Tom, you listening?). BUT - here in America, how many millions and millions of two-car housholds do we have? One of those cars is typically used exclusively for single-occupant commuting. Can't we at least replace that one with something that isn't capable of hauling 12 people, a boat, two dogs and a bunch of buckshot? Correct tool for the job, folks. You don't use a Surefire M6 with HOLA for reading a bed-time story to your child, do you?


Note:
Be warned: Bitter EV freak on the loose.
My freaking EV1 is being taken away from me in less than four months. TAKEN AWAY. I get it no more. That, my friends, sucks. Makes me a wee bit bitter toward the "gas rules" crowd. Also makes me a bit ticked at the "we don't want alt-fuel legislation because it'll limit my choice of vehcles!" crowd. Well, looky here. MY choice is sure limited, isn't it?

Ok, I just returned tonight from four days away - this is all I can handle right now... I'll deal with the lumps as they come.

 

[Saaby]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

[ QUOTE ]
Stefan said:
I'm probably going to take a stab at this. Wouldn't the oil rich companies, that rely on the income of oil, spend whatever it is necessary to buy out the competition, to make sure that technology is not available? Something that either Darrell or Brock can fill me in on, is didn't they want to roll out fully with electric vehicles, but the oil companies screamed so loud that it didn't go through, and anyone with an electric vehicle now is lucky? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif Another challenge would be unless there are certain areas that have year round tempuratures with little to no change (California rings a bell) that not all electric vehicles (whether BEV or hybrid) will operate in envornments of extreme ranges?


[/ QUOTE ]

Precisely.

I know none of you want to believe Darell cuz he's just one guy and it'd be so easy for him to exagerate things a bit. He isn't. Everything (Well, about electrics) the guy says is true. I've read a lot of the same stuff Darell's read and there are some crazy, far out ideas out there. He doesn't repeat that stuff.

There's a company in California that only needs 5 investors willing to each invest $180,000 and then they'll start chuurning out T-Zero (0-60 in 4 second, 300 mile range, Quick charge in 8 minutes, charge from any outlet in the world overnight...) based modified Mini Coopers.

Whose willing to put their money where their mouth is? I know at least one guy that is and already has...

 

[Darell]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Shucks, Ryan. That's awefully nice of you....

I do feel like a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest soemtimes. Every now and again it is nice to hear somebody mention that I'm not quite the wacko that I typically make myself out to be...

The Tzero is not a pipe dream like it may sound. And I bring it up as an example often. NOT because it is something imagined, or theoretical. I've seen it, touched it, gone *scoot* in it. Been in a military jet on afterburner? This is that experience in two dimensions. I know the guy who who designed it, and is CEO of the company. This stuff is for REAL. But this great vehicle will never be in the public's hands until the need is realized.

Guys like ikendu, Brock, myself - and I know many others - are *living* this alt-fuel thing. And we're really, really liking it! We don't do this to limit ourselves. We actually do it to *expand* ourselves. As long as the personal automobile is part of our lives, we need to figure out a healthy way to live with it. Sadly, there are few people who realize that we haven't gotten there yet.

 

[ikendu]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Darell said: ...*living* this alt-fuel thing.

For over 40 years, I've been interested in alternative fuels and energy. But, it was always just dreaming about it or reading articles in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, etc. In the last year, I was inspired by a guy that had bought a Toyota Prius Hybrid. He didn't do it to save himself money (they cost enough extra that you are lucky if you breakeven over the life of the car). He did it because it was something he could do personally, for our world. He could take action . Then later I met Darell on this forum who had also acted instead of just thinking or talking.

I bought my '03 VW Golf TDI (couldn't find an American made car that would burn our American made biodiesel) and got myself an Iowa license plate of "SOYFUEL". Now, when I travel around, at least once a week someone asks me about the license plate. They are usually quite interested and surprised to find out that you can run a "normal" car on soybeans or used restaurant fryer oil. Such an idea was completely unknown to them.

So...the license plate is working! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Now my passion is to awaken Americans to the possibilities thru personal example; biodiesel, E85 (ethanol from plant starches) and wind generated electric power for vehicles. None of these technologies are "perfect" but they are all workable and provide alternatives to meet the variety of needs that we have as Americans.

I am quite convinced that importing so much oil is a danger to our economy, our jobs and our national security. Just a lesson from history... when Japan invaded China, we tried to get them reverse their foreign policy. How? They were buying oil from us (Texas crude). We called an "oil embargo" against Japan. That made Japan feel that we were cutting off their life blood...so, they attacked us. We had used the "oil weapon" against another country. Just like the Saudis used it against us in the 70's.

I'd like our country to not be so vulnerable.

BTW...when I visited the Department Of Energy (DOE) site to try to find my links on imported oil, I found interesting new content how they have launched a program to support President Bush's hydrogen program.

They are trying to more efficiently generate hydrogen from petroleum.

That's right. The hydrogen car ("Freedom Car") is about another way to keep selling us petroleum. That's great. We'll spend millions (billions?) of dollars on the Hydrogen program so that we can source the energy from the same place we already get it... the oil companies.

Heck, man, if I wanted to just keep using petroleum, I could just buy a mid-sized 2004 Prius, get 55 mpg and super low emissions and in the meantime I wouldn't have to spend millions or billions developing hydrogen technology and then huge infrastructure investments in hydrogen "filling stations"...all so that we could just continue to use petroleum.

I'll go back and find the exact link so you can read it for yourselves.

 

[Darell]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

[ QUOTE ]
ikendu said:
That's right. The hydrogen car ("Freedom Car") is about another way to keep selling us petroleum. That's great. We'll spend millions (billions?) of dollars on the Hydrogen program so that we can source the energy from the same place we already get it... the oil companies.


[/ QUOTE ]
Indeed. I trust nobody is surprised by this? If we have fuel cell cars in the hands of the public - they'll be powered by gasoline. Probably from onboard reformers is my guess. That way, they can be fueled at the gas station, and nobody has to be scared of the unknown. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

 

[DieselDave]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

I hope yall didn't take my devils advocate side the wrong way because I am for alternatives.

Darell, 0-60 time is great but as you stated, "Correct tool for the job." The correct tool for my family carries more than 2 bags of groceries and a "I Love EV Power" bumper sticker, just kidding but you get my point. It can tow 8,000 pounds when required and uses this same power when carrying 5 people and 1,000 pounds of gear or 8 people and 500 pounds of gear. It has a range in of 700 miles and dual AC.

An R6 blows away all the EV's and probable gets 40+ MPG but it's not the right tool for the job either. I am willing to sacrifice a little but you haven't shown me the EV that will carry my daughter's volleyball team or tow heavy weight. I am impressed with the power and durability of electric trains, subways and the similar but we don't have a way (yet) to carry the massive power these big boys do. I do believe and hope the country will begin to embrace Hybrids, diesel hybrids of course.

I looked at the specs on the RAV4. 130 mile rated range unless you use headlights, AC then it will be less actual reports indicate less. Top rated speed 78 mph, 0-60 in 18 seconds and a whopping 140 lb/ft of torque. Batteries reportedly cost $30,000. Cost after all the rebates and incentives are about $30,000. Toyota claims they lose about $50,000 a copy to build them. This is the reality of EV. What's possible sounds like and must be far, far more impressive. However, it seems obvious why this wouldn't be embraced at this time. You can buy a comparable gas version without rebates, get better performance and save $10,000, which is about 200,000 miles worth of gasoline at $1.50 a gallon.

Another consideration, Weight
How much would a powerful FULL size EV weigh that's capable of towing 5k+ pounds or 8 people and having a range of 600 miles? Wouldn't it be extremely heavy? How would that effect stopping distances, road wear, tires wear, accident damage. Would it in fact cause more serious accidents and use more oil using resources like rubber and asphalt as well as kill more people and how much would it cost?

The T-Zero sounds really cool but I have to ask myself why one of the mega rich tree huggers hasn't anteed up the sub $1,000,000. Seriously, why hasn't one of the Hollywood elite bought up the options? Be a car company owner for $1,000,000 and no takers, something is wrong with this picture.

Before you rip into me remember I'm on your side but the actual production vehicles do not impress me all that much.

 

[Saaby]

Re: Renewable energy ...important ...personal acti

Probably because nobody knows how to contact the Hollywood movie stars. They hear about this stuff from positive PR and obviously EVs don't get a whole lot of it.


The Rav4 is slow by EV standards.

Do you have 2 cars Diesel? Do you need them both to simultaniously haul your family, the whole Volleyball team, etc. etc?

The EV problem is one of chickens and eggs. They cost a lot but that's because they're only building 1000 at a time. Toyota says there is no demand when the 700 the built to last 3 years were sold out in 9 months. They say there's no demand but the only sold them in California and only to people who were willing (Sorry Diesel, but you know it's the truth) to deal with car salesmen and 4+ visits to the dealer just to buy one car. Every visit the salesmen probably tried to convince them they would rather have a Prius over a Rav4 EV but, even with all these trials all 700 were gone in 9 months. If they'd made them easier to get (Let me remind you one more time, you had to find out which dealer actually sold them which could seem like classified information at the time and then make not a trip to order and another to pick up the car but several trips. You also had to make them when the EV certified salesperson was at work) they would have sold faster.

We don't have to go all to pure EV though, a plug in hybrid is a great second vehicle for a 2 car household where car 1 is an EV. Darell...bring out the plug in hybrid Suburban please...