Analysis: Electric cars and the Permian: Saudi Arabia in Lee County by Dr. Daniel Fine

[ronwagn + 6,290]

17 hours ago, NickW said:

As the the number of EV's on the road expands there will eventually be a big supply of old EV batteries. These have decades of life left in them and will be available for cheap conversion for household / business storage. 

 

I hope that works out. RVs and small houses would be a good start. Also for preppers.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

23 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

If society were serious about reducing or removing carbon-based fuels from transportation, and I don't think it is, then it would be proceeding along the lines of "most bang for the buck."  And that is not happening.  Society's efforts seem to revolve around providing fancy electric (battery) power packs for individual cars, buses and trucks.  that strikes me as both inefficient and a mis-allocation of societal capital.  Admittedly, it allows the unit builders to make some money, where they have successfully priced their product  (both the Chevy Volt and the Tesla 3 do not make the cut), but other than that, it is a poor job, so far.

How could society organize itself to get better returns on invested societal capital?  First. let's remember that the typical IC engine is spending most of its life just loafing along.  Your typical auto requires a mere 25 hp to roll along, if it is not accelerating or climbing a hill. Thus, to exploit that, every place where the road today has to go over the top of some mountain, you build a tunnel, in order to maintain a road gradient of mo more that 0.9%. At that grade, your auto or truck does not have to drop out of top gear, and you are not interrupting the low fuels flow into that engine.  I have calculated that some 40% of fuel on the 194-mile run from Baltimore to Morgantown West Virginia is consumed over only 30,000 feet or roadway.  Why?  That is where the trucks have to grind up the steep grades of the Cumberland with the fuel just gushing through the lines. 

For the USA, if you take the 100 highest-traffic mountain grades and drill tunnels instead, the liquid fuels consumption of the USA should drop down some 30%.  That is huge.  Tunnels today are built with giant tunnel-boring machines, which drill the hole and install the concrete shield in one operation.  Figure one billion dollars for each tunnel: for $100 billion, you are permanently off oil by a drop of 30%. 

The next societal step is to run electrified wire above one lane-way: the designated truck lane  (typically, the right-hand lane).  Each heavy truck has one axle set up with an electric drive motor, and you can keep the diesel hooked up to the other drive axle.  When you are running underneath the wire, the driver engages the trolley pantagraph and the diesel shuts down; that truck now is just as electric as the Tesla Truck, except there is no need for a gigantic battery  (which is the big stumbling block, and expense).  The truck is running off hydropower which is plenty cheap enough.  Your fuel use goes way down, societally speaking. 

Now to get fancy, the USA would electrify the western railroads. The payoff here, setting aside the fuel savings, is that the catenary wires themselves can bring excess electricity to the urban areas from wind farms and whatever out in the plains. But somebody has to pay for those wires, and since in the USA the RRs are private, then it is on their nickel, and the capital needed is placed by management into other parts of the RR instead. 

Do all of the above, and where does your liquid fuels use end up?  Whatever it is, it would be a huge drop. Lots of bang for the bucks, as they say in Yankeeland.

It seems that a hybrid battery could take over on the grades. I would appreciate your opinion on that Jan. The battery could be charged through the brakes which do a lot of work on the downhill stretches and other stopping or an oversized alternator.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

12 hours ago, Rodent said:

America is helping out. The obesity rate is astronomical (thanks, fast food and sugar industries and sedentary lifestyles). There will be many who have significantly shortened lifespans.

The shortened lifespans are affected by diabetes and obesity but the main cause right now is deaths from opiate overdoses. It has a much greater effect because of younger people dying.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 2/27/2019 at 7:43 AM, bluewill said:

 

Some 30,000 children marched in Belgium weeks ago against Climate Change. It is only a matter of two years before a few members of Congress, alone with only cameras today, will march at the head of crowds of 500,000 down Pennsylvania Avenue.

It will have its colors; green  — and yellow for the French — as 2020 arrives. 

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham placed the state in the march which calls for America to join the Paris Agreement on climate change when she joined the U.S. Climate Alliance. But is it all for Green Energy without technology?

So far there is nothing on the road that eliminates carbon. The Green Deal is loaded: it offers “Green Energy” with diversionary political baggage.

Is it around the corner? It is. In six years, Audi-Porsche-VW will have an electric car on I-25 that will be zero-emissions, cost $27,000 (today's dollar) with a range that beats Tesla.  

It will begin the phase-out the Combustion Engine. The Governor would be in her second term along with the Secretary of Energy and Minerals when this bit of history is made.

Too soon to shake heads negatively. The surprise is a mass electric car with a German engineering in a Ford. Indeed, Ford will no doubt bid for the license is this writer’s forecast.

The revolutionary change is green energy and colorless technology. The kids in Belgium would be getting drivers licenses by then. What happens to I-25 or 550?

Perhaps a new state budget along with Washington will build recharge sites or stations.

What happens to oil and associated gas in New Mexico?

Overall, the Permian Delaware retreats from historic production highs (2018) as demand for oil as the transportation fuel declines. Cars currently owned must be serviced with oil-based fuel until traded-in for electrics."  

 

 

 

[markslawson + 1,042]

3 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

I suppose if something is debunked enough times it becomes true. In the meantime...

Power storage is pretty much as old as modern scientific understanding of electricity, since the original sources of electricity were batteries (unless you're Benjamin Franklin flying a kite). Lead acid and lithium ion batteries are real - not particularly cost effective, but households have used them for power storage for years, if not decades. It's not a matter of whether it can be done at all, it's simply a matter of relative cost.

Meredith - sorry but all of this and the rest of your post is old. If you don't want to accept the memo then don't, that's up to you. But then don't lecture us about lithium-ion batteries when we've being living them for years. The problem is that at the moment power grid managers have to arrange their grids in the expectation that, for unknown periods, all but a fraction of the renewable energy on it won't be operating. Either that or (as happens in Australia where I live) demand is balanced with supply by asking major industrial users to stop operations or make their own arrangements (diesel generators). Industrial scale storage by anything short of a dam is not feasible at the moment. Major batteries have their uses in grid management but cannot be used on an industrial scale. Other means of storing energy have been discussed on this site. Anyway, leave it with you.  

[markslawson + 1,042]

6 hours ago, NickW said:

You are probably correct for Northern European type climates with a large disparity between winter and solar output but for Meditteranean type climates the solar / storage scenario Meridith presents is quite likely assuming storage costs fall low enough. In those climates you are basically having to cope with diurnal storage rather than interseasonal. 

Actually Australia has an advantage in wind power, would you believe. In Europe when the wind goes down it does so far days over a very wide area. In Australia, as far as I can judge from the sites that collect wind data, the lows only last a couple of days at most. Our climate is better for those who want to spend big time on a PV-battery combo, but basically those combos remain an extremely inefficient way to do things. The centralised grids with big generators are still the most efficient way to generate and distribute power..    

[NickW + 2,714]

3 hours ago, markslawson said:

Actually Australia has an advantage in wind power, would you believe. In Europe when the wind goes down it does so far days over a very wide area. In Australia, as far as I can judge from the sites that collect wind data, the lows only last a couple of days at most. Our climate is better for those who want to spend big time on a PV-battery combo, but basically those combos remain an extremely inefficient way to do things. The centralised grids with big generators are still the most efficient way to generate and distribute power..    

I'm an Australian Citizen. I lived in Perth for 5 years.

You say centralised plant are the most efficient - remind me what the transmission loss rates are on 100km of HV AC power line? 

[Jim Glendenning + 2]

The argument is NOT about electric cars versus the oil industry; that argument is diversionary and is deliberately done to avoid talking about what the real threat to oil is. The real threat to oil is the CAR-ENGINE EFFICIENCY; this is a huge demand reducer. The other major oil demand reducer is NATURAL GAS. The oil industry has always had a problem with too much oil and yet they continue to pretend that we don't have enough. Oil demand is forecast to peak in 2025 (now extended to 2030 because of intense political initiatives by the current US government to shelter the oil industry and US Big Oil joining with Russia and Saudi Arabia to manage production quotas to maintain oil prices in a region where US oil can produce oil profitably). Recently there are reports of more huge oil fields discovered; the question is whether those oil fields will be developed because why would you invest development money in a declining-demand industry. The US govt has pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty which would have led to less oil demand, thrown out car-engine efficiency standards, sanctioned Iranian oil off the market, curtailed research into alternative energy, Syrian oil is off the market due to civil war (Russia and US heavily involved), Iraq oil is in our control, Saudi Arabia is coordinating production control with the US and Russia in return for huge foreign aid packages from the US govt. So this pointless, chest-beating exercise about oil versus electric cars is diversionary to the main topic of oil demand. Natural Gas is replacing coal as the electric-power generating fuel; oil is NOT a dominant factor in US electricity production.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Jim Glendenning
spelling and clarity of sentence meaning

[Illurion + 894]

8 hours ago, Jim Glendenning said:

The argument is NOT about electric cars versus the oil industry; that argument is diversionary and is deliberately done to avoid talking about what the real threat to oil is. The real threat to oil is the CAR-ENGINE EFFICIENCY; this is a huge demand reducer. The other major oil demand reducer is NATURAL GAS. The oil industry has always had a problem with too much oil and yet they continue to pretend that we don't have enough. Oil demand is forecast to peak in 2025 (now extended to 2030 because of intense political initiatives by the current US government to shelter the oil industry and US Big Oil joining with Russia and Saudi Arabia to manage production quotas to maintain oil prices in a region where US oil can produce oil profitably). Recently there are reports of more huge oil fields discovered; the question is whether those oil fields will be developed because why would you invest development money in a declining-demand industry. The US govt has pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty which would have led to less oil demand, thrown out car-engine efficiency standards, sanctioned Iranian oil off the market, curtailed research into alternative energy, Syrian oil is off the market due to civil war (Russia and US heavily involved), Iraq oil is in our control, Saudi Arabia is coordinating production control with the US and Russia in return for huge foreign aid packages from the US govt. So this pointless, chest-beating exercise about oil versus electric cars is diversionary to the main topic of oil demand. Natural Gas is replacing coal as the electric-power generating fuel; oil is NOT a dominant factor in US electricity production.

Hello Jim:

 

Welcome to the site.

You covered many different points.

But having read what you wrote,   i do not understand what your "point" is...

I think that you are wanting to talk about the THREATS TO THE OIL INDUSTRY...

But i am not sure...  (OIL FOR GASOLINE....  ?    OIL FOR ELECTRICITY GENERATION......?  )

You mention both.......

WHICH OIL INDUSTRY  ?  .......  THERE ARE SEVERAL..........   OIL IS USED ALL OVER THE PLACE..........

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

11 hours ago, Jim Glendenning said:

The argument is NOT about electric cars versus the oil industry; that argument is diversionary and is deliberately done to avoid talking about what the real threat to oil is. The real threat to oil is the CAR-ENGINE EFFICIENCY; this is a huge demand reducer. The other major oil demand reducer is NATURAL GAS. The oil industry has always had a problem with too much oil and yet they continue to pretend that we don't have enough. Oil demand is forecast to peak in 2025 (now extended to 2030 because of intense political initiatives by the current US government to shelter the oil industry and US Big Oil joining with Russia and Saudi Arabia to manage production quotas to maintain oil prices in a region where US oil can produce oil profitably). Recently there are reports of more huge oil fields discovered; the question is whether those oil fields will be developed because why would you invest development money in a declining-demand industry. The US govt has pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty which would have led to less oil demand, thrown out car-engine efficiency standards, sanctioned Iranian oil off the market, curtailed research into alternative energy, Syrian oil is off the market due to civil war (Russia and US heavily involved), Iraq oil is in our control, Saudi Arabia is coordinating production control with the US and Russia in return for huge foreign aid packages from the US govt. So this pointless, chest-beating exercise about oil versus electric cars is diversionary to the main topic of oil demand. Natural Gas is replacing coal as the electric-power generating fuel; oil is NOT a dominant factor in US electricity production.

With many, the true object is eliminating fossil fuels. That is mainly a way of lowering the consumption of energy by the West and allowing the rest of the world to do whatever they want. It is a technique to reduce our production and benefit the rest of the world. We are even supposed to pay them to advance their energy systems. Fortunately, most Americans are not buying the plan. Europe is harming themselves by purchasing natural gas from Russia while refusing to frack due to the Green Movement over there. Meanwhile, their price for energy is nearly three times what we pay. 

If Americans wanted efficient vehicles they would be purchasing small vehicles with small engines. Instead, we buy large SUVs and pickup trucks. A three cylinder Mitsubishi Mirage gets about forty MPG and costs $13,500. That is a third the price of an electric vehicle and has a greater range.

For large trucks, ships, etc. I advocate natural gas. That would greatly reduce the demand for oil and would be far cleaner.

Related article http://www.ngvglobal.com/blog/natural-gas-fuel-in-sweden-is-91-renewable-0302#more-110054

Edited March 3, 2019 by ronwagn
added reference

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

On 3/1/2019 at 8:28 PM, Jan van Eck said:

If society were serious about

SNIP....  I have calculated that some 40% of fuel on the 194-mile run from Baltimore to Morgantown West Virginia is consumed over only 30,000 feet or roadway.  Why?  That is where the trucks have to grind up the steep grades of the Cumberland with the fuel just gushing through the lines. 

For the USA, if you take the 100 highest-traffic mountain grades and drill tunnels instead, the liquid fuels consumption of the USA should drop down some 30%.  That is huge.  Tunnels today are built with giant tunnel-boring machines, which drill the hole and install the concrete shield in one operation.  Figure one billion dollars for each tunnel: for $100 billion, you are permanently off oil by a drop of 30%.

A tunnel for a Billion.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... For craps sake man, look at the distance and the size of tunnel required.  Seattle Just spent $3 Billion for a mere 2 miles of tunnel... 2 lanes wide.... oops my bad, it will actually be $5 Billion. 

Those steep grades you are talking about will need ~10-->20+ miles of tunnel.  The large grades out West, will need 50 mile long tunnels if not 100 mile long tunnels going under several spots.   Want comparable?  Look at the cost of the long RR tunnels under the Alps. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

13 hours ago, NickW said:

You say centralised plant are the most efficient - remind me what the transmission loss rates are on 100km of HV AC power line? 

99%.  For the actual transmission over short distances like that.

Reason long range has lower efficiency is not just due to length(resistance), rather to bypass the resistance problem, higher voltage is required.  The efficiency of BOOSTING to higher voltage is not free and an immense amount of power is turned into heat. 

Why super short distance is wished for.  Can use lower voltages and higher power efficiencies in the transformers. 

So, if anyone can invent a ~240V-->600V, super high density, cheap to manufacture capacitor, the world will bow at your feet.  Would save ~3%-->5% of our total electrical use. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 hour ago, Wastral said:

Those steep grades you are talking about will need ~10-->20+ miles of tunnel.  The large grades out West, will need 50 mile long tunnels if not 100 mile long tunnels going under several spots.   Want comparable?  Look at the cost of the long RR tunnels under the Alps. 

The Appalachians are not the Alps. 

The Appalachians consist of short sharp folds in the top of the earth crust.  The tunnel distances transverse to the folds is short - less than a mile.  A tunnel-boring machine makes swift work of those traverses. 

I remind you that you never received an invitation to be Secretary of Transportation.  That's our difference. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

21 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

It's not a matter of whether it can be done at all, it's simply a matter of relative cost.

----------------------------------------

It takes a certain amount of energy to make a solar cell, and it takes that energy plus a bit more to make a solar panel. If natural gas prices decline, then the cost of gas fired electricity also declines, lowering at least one input cost to cell manufacture. If the natural gas well uses solar panels for it's instrumentation, then the natural gas price cost is reflective of the money saved from not running a power line to the instrumentation unit. If it is too expensive to build a 'base load' power plant in oil country, then wind turbines are installed to meet incremental demand. Therefore, all these prices interact with each other like so many vines wrapped around the same tree trunk.

-----------------------------------------

The question isn't the abstraction of 'well it won't happen in our lifetimes', it's 'where is the cost intersection in time, and what influences the displacement of that intersection?'.

 

Meredith is one very sharp, very smart poster.  You fellows might want to take what she says seriously.  I sure do. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

12 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

The Appalachians are not the Alps. 

The Appalachians consist of short sharp folds in the top of the earth crust.  The tunnel distances transverse to the folds is short - less than a mile.  A tunnel-boring machine makes swift work of those traverses. 

I remind you that you never received an invitation to be Secretary of Transportation.  That's our difference. 

I suggest this odd thing called a Topographic map to be perused at your soonest convenience. 

While tops of ridges are indeed sharp, their bases on the other hand, are decidedly NOT. 

Look no further than the Cumberland tunnel.  Or Eissenhauer tunnel in the Rockies.  Both way up high to dodge the steep top after long climbs and descents.

To do as you propose would require the tunnel to start at the base of valley's and then tunnel through ridges to the opposite base of a valley which generally means the ENTIRE range must be tunneled under to maintain your minimal grade requirement. 

As for your "invitation", I was invited to join the Leprechaun society(doesn't exist).  Strangely there were no pots of gold at the end of rainbows.  Not to mention, the "best" never go for government jobs.  We stay in the real world where reality happens. 

EDIT: Now are there some stretches which could use a tunnel?  Sure.  Make a case for one with an actual map and numbers. 

PS Heck, if we REALLY wanted to save FUEL, then we should be drilling ~200ft wide tunnels at sea level from one side of the country to the other and sending all of that truck based traffic(20-->30%) of real fuel consumption(not your made up numbers), via barge and interconnecting all of this with the greater Mississippi river basin.  The barges, would use 1/5 the fuel of Trains and 1/20th that of trucking. 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Wastral

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

20 hours ago, ronwagn said:

It seems that a hybrid battery could take over on the grades. I would appreciate your opinion on that Jan. The battery could be charged through the brakes which do a lot of work on the downhill stretches and other stopping or an oversized alternator.

Unfortunately, the inrush and outflow currents are vastly higher than when a truck is battery-powered on the flat.  Think of it as having the starter constantly engaged all the way up the hill.  Then having that massive current flowing back into the battery pack while rolling downhill.  Those systems require specially-built batteries, with "high C."   

Drive batteries are rated by their current capacity.  The baseline is 1-C.  For what you want to do, you would likely need 40-C.  That mandates special thick separators inside the cells, that sort of thing.  Aside from short life, the operator is lugging around the heavy batteries for marginal gain just on those 30,000 feet of grades.  That is a lot of money for handling short distances.  Personally, I am pessimistic as to the logic and the efficacy of such a design.  My guess is that better alternatives will present themselves. 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Jan van Eck

[markslawson + 1,042]

14 hours ago, NickW said:

I'm an Australian Citizen. I lived in Perth for 5 years.

You say centralised plant are the most efficient - remind me what the transmission loss rates are on 100km of HV AC power line? 

And centralised transmission is still vastly more efficient, despite those losses. Shows just how grossly inefficient the PV-battery combo is. Remember that essentially the PV-battery approach is turning electricity into a cottage industry - an approach abandoned during the industrial revolution for good reason. Anyway, thanks for the response. Leave it with you.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

32 minutes ago, Wastral said:

 

As for your "invitation", I was invited to join the Leprechaun society(doesn't exist).  Strangely there were no pots of gold at the end of rainbows.  Not to mention, the "best" never go for government jobs.  We stay in the real world where reality happens. 

 

Your comment(s) are insulting and denigrating and shall not be responded to further. 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Jan van Eck

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

15 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Unfortunately, the inrush and outflow currents are vastly higher than when a truck is battery-powered on the flat.  Think of it as having the starter constantly engaged all the way up the hill.  Then having that massive current flowing back into the battery pack while rolling downhill.  Those systems require specially-built batteries, with "high C."   

Drive batteries are rated by their current capacity.  The baseline is 1-C.  For what you want to do, you would likely need 40-C.  That mandates special thick separators inside the cells, that sort of thing.  Aside from short life, the operator is lugging around the heavy batteries for marginal gain just on those 30,000 feet of grades.  That is a lot of money for handling short distances.  Personally, I am pessimistic as to the logic and the efficacy of such a design.  My guess is that better alternatives will present themselves. 

"your knowledge" of batteries is denigrating and any sane individual will not responded further to such blatant ignorance.

No, that is NOT how batteries work.  There is no magic bullet to increase the C rating on batteries. 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

Meredith is one very sharp, very smart poster.  You fellows might want to take what she says seriously.  I sure do. 

Nice, except that I am male.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Just now, Meredith Poor said:

Nice, except that I am male.

Well, well!   You fooled me!  (Teaches me to make assumptions!)

 

 

[Michael Jones + 34]

Worth reflecting on previous concerns with pollution reported in 1894 by The Times newspaper which predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

Just shows how difficult it is to predict the future.  I BEVs will not be successful until they provide the customer with an attribute they want.  Today there are still concerns with being unable to charge, longer 'refuelling' times and a product which is to all intent a copy of the ICE.  Over a lifecycle analysis they are not making a significant difference to the CO2 emissions particularly if a large % of coal power production.  By 2030 there will be still less than 5% of BEVs in the global car pool.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

4 hours ago, Michael Jones said:

Worth reflecting on previous concerns with pollution reported in 1894 by The Times newspaper which predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

Just shows how difficult it is to predict the future.  I BEVs will not be successful until they provide the customer with an attribute they want.  Today there are still concerns with being unable to charge, longer 'refuelling' times and a product which is to all intent a copy of the ICE.  Over a lifecycle analysis they are not making a significant difference to the CO2 emissions particularly if a large % of coal power production.  By 2030 there will be still less than 5% of BEVs in the global car pool.

Well, for commuting, BEV is cheaper..... assuming you could buy one for the same price as a cheap commuter car..... which you can't so, the difference in cost would pay for a lifetime of gasoline and your insurance premiums as well. 

BEV will only work in a world where everyone owns a commuter car(BEV) and a 2nd vehicle(PU/SUV powered by ICE) so they can go and do things when/where they want. Or there is a several times improvement in battery technology energy density. 

[NickW + 2,714]

9 hours ago, markslawson said:

And centralised transmission is still vastly more efficient, despite those losses. Shows just how grossly inefficient the PV-battery combo is. Remember that essentially the PV-battery approach is turning electricity into a cottage industry - an approach abandoned during the industrial revolution for good reason. Anyway, thanks for the response. Leave it with you.

Distributed PV has virtually no transmission losses whatsoever. If its not used on the property itself its used within the local neighbourhood. Also with distributed solar you only need one transformer. From centralised plant you need at least 2 which adds to losses. 

I accept there are some losses on the charge discharge cycle of batteries with a PV system backed up by batteries

This puts the losses from centralised plant at 8-15% 

https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy-efficiency/2013/03/25/how-big-are-power-line-losses/

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by NickW

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 3/3/2019 at 4:24 PM, markslawson said:

And centralised transmission is still vastly more efficient, despite those losses. Shows just how grossly inefficient the PV-battery combo is. Remember that essentially the PV-battery approach is turning electricity into a cottage industry - an approach abandoned during the industrial revolution for good reason. Anyway, thanks for the response. Leave it with you.

I would be happy to have a cottage industry if I could depend on it for my electricity. It costing less would be a big benefit. If it costs more it would be a luxury unless really needed. A luxury because I would have power without relying on the grid. 

Edited March 5, 2019 by ronwagn
addition