Ralph Nader must be a solar panel. He acts like he's been out in the sun too long.

Rebel Farmer February 25th, 2008 8:59 pm

" ... we are going to need that oil to produce these alternative products like batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. If we wait until the oil runs out it will be way too late to outfit the world for independent energy production."

Yes, although we could, in fact, get the energy to make these things from solar-based sources, oil is just about essential as a feedstock to produce many of the materials that are used in their fabrication. This fact, which is not generally appreciated, only goes to reinforce what a tragedy it is to burn such a useful raw material in inefficient internal combustion engines.

Rebel Farmer,decentralised power supplies formed one of my ideas for a proper defense force. One of the first things that happen in an invasion is the targeting of power stations (bombs, graphite strands etc). Put defense money to good use and protect from a standard invasion tactic by making too many targets.

"The remainder is handled by light series diesel electric vehicles, with small lead-acid battery reserve for stop/start and hillclimbing."

Ordinary hybrid diesel-electric buses, as are already running in a a lot of cities, get three times the per-passenger fuel efficiency of such a vehicle.

People need to be more imaginative. Cars aren't needed in cities. Besides the pollution, they are enormously detrimental to quality of life in the city.

There are Vehicle To Grid (V2G) ideas as well. Your plug hybrid becomes part of the distributed storage network. Transmission losses are reduced and the need for new power plants can be avoided.

The sensible transport policy which planet earth will converge toward, dragging the USA along kicking and screaming: Train should provide most transport, offering five times the value of cars and planes. The remainder is handled by light series diesel electric vehicles, with small lead-acid battery reserve for stop/start and hillclimbing. The diesel engines are fueled with biofuel produced with permaculture methods by small independent land-owning farmers. The median individual consumption for personal transport is 15 gal/year or 2200 miles/year or a total of 4 million acres of cropland, or 1/5th of 1% of the land area of the lower 48 US states. This compares to 23% casually devoted to meat production and 7% intensely devoted to meat production today. Extra miles through solar cells charging. The hybrid approach minimizes materials devoted to batteries to ease the cost.

Think decentralized. Think energy independence. Hydrogen fuel, like oil, can't be delivered on a community basis. I will require BIG industry to make and distribute. That is the real drawback to hydrogen fuel.

True energy freedom means we gotta get off the industrial grid one way or another. At least to the point that we can watch our meters run backwards. And of course conservation is a big part of that independence.

Like I said before: one roof top, one vehicle, one wind turbine, one community at a time. There are entire cities in Germany and in Scandenavia that have become entirely energy independent through solar. So I KNOW this can be done even with our current technology. It just takes enough like minded individuals to get together in their communities and commit to grassroots action. We can do this!

I Am Myself: Good info. And you're right. It is a cultural thing. It's called the American Car Culture. I would add that that culture is going to come to a screeching halt with increased fuel costs and/or a fuel shortage. For me a solar powered plug in car is a whole lot sexier that hitching a horse to the damn thing when I can no longer afford fuel. Although I kinda like the horse powered car idea in a way, horses are a heck of a lot of work. Been there, done that. But it is another option....

"Pumped hydroelectric can be 80% efficient. This is one way to store large amounts of energy."

The problem is that suitable pumped storage sites are relatively rare, and are typically in ecologically valuable mountain areas - often national forest land. Like all large dams and reservoirs, you are going to have big local opposition to every site considered.

I think a lot of people need to consider that there is no technical fix that will allow people to maintain an exurban/suburban lifestyle. For most people, the most dramatic way to reduce their carbon footprint is to move and find employment in an traditional urban area where that can use walk, bike, scooter, or use public transportation. Townhouses, duplexes or apartments are also much less energy consuming to heat. It is often even easier to eat locally as farmers markets, old fashioned central markets, and food co-ops are more common in cities.

"At any rate, I think it is up to us to make this happen. The news about newer battery technology is really exciting. I KNOW that we in our individual communities and States will make this happen. One vehicle; one roof top; one wind turbine at a time."

Rebel Farmer,

I remember watching a YouTube video some months back about a club in Japan whose goal is to rejigger their Prius' (Pria?) so that they get over 100 mpg. Of course, this means driving in a different manner, not going fast, etc., but it can be done. It's a cultural thing. We're still on the spend and waste treadmill.

I think you're right, tho, change will happen one person and one community at a time. Hopefully, a new administration will help that along, but real change always comes from the grassroots.

I wish the author had referred to Hydrogen as a "flammable" gas rather than an "explosive" gas.

There's a famous 2001 test where two cars (one gas, one hydrogen) were subject to a simulated fuel tank fire. Neither one exploded like they do in Hollywood.

The gas-powered car became engulfed in flames and burned to the ground, but the fuel in the hydrogen-powered car shot twenty feet straight up in a dramatic blue jet of flame. The H2 was gone in 90 seconds. Any passengers would have walked away unharmed and the car could have been fitted with a new fuel tank and driven away.

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=482

But don't forget... Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's just another kind of storage medium.

Let's stop with the blame game. The PEOPLE, Boomer or otherwise, didn't stop alternative energy technology. Big oil, the auto industry, coal & nuclear energy firms in collusion with our corporate owned government did.

That said, it's time to move on. Big Brother is not going to solve our energy crisis. It's going to be some whiz kids in some garage in Podunk, America that has the answers that we will collectively share for our own survival. Work on this stuff has been going on in garages all over America for years. There has never been, and doesn't look to likely to be, the national political will to actually throw some real money behind this.

One of the things that we have to keep in mind is that with peak oil approaching, we are going to need that oil to produce these alternative products like batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. If we wait until the oil runs out it will be way too late to outfit the world for independent energy production.

That means that we have to get our asses in gear NOW! We don't need to buy a new plug in Prius car. We need to retrofit older cars that already exist. I know this is already possible and being done in small pockets of America and Europe. There are already ready made, off the shelf kits that you can buy. They're spendy, but would be a whole lot cheaper than buying a new car at today's prices. I know that there are conversion kits for the old Rabbits and the Porche 911. I think there are a couple of other models that can be converted but I can't remember which ones.

At any rate, I think it is up to us to make this happen. The news about newer battery technology is really exciting. I KNOW that we in our individual communities and States will make this happen. One vehicle; one roof top; one wind turbine at a time.

Pumped hydroelectric can be 80% efficient. This is one way to store large amounts of energy. You could even have wind power pump sea water up to elevation and let it back down when power was needed.

This is good news.

Every step toward improving renewable energy is a step toward distributed/independent electric energy production. While it may be cheaper now to configure large arrays and wind farms for economies of scale, the end goal will hopefully be distributed energy where more individual homes will be able to produce and possibly sell back their own electricity.

Energy production and generation by big biz will always keep us as serfs - dependent on their product and fighting for the resources that go into it.

The energy to power a car would require a much, much larger area of solar panels than would fit on the outer surfaces of a car - even if they were used for charging a battery pack while parked.

Here's one partial sulution for a low-speed electric motor scooter - but it still requires 18 hours of sun to charge a completely depleted battery pack which itself is good for no more than 30 miles range at 25 mph:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/don_dunkees_diy.php

War is more noble. The generals love it.

"The weight is around 340 pounds and it will store around 50,000 watts of power."

Do you mean watt-hours? Watts are not a unit of energy that are a unit of the rate of energy expenditure (volt-ampere, or newton-meter per second), so you can't store watts.

Most of the exciting new battery technology such as LiFePO4 chemistry, is coming out of China - where they are doing end-runs around a number of patent licences which have been bought up by big oil and General Motors - just to sit on them. No kidding.

If memory serves me, Babylonian batteries that were made inside clay jars were used to electroplate metal objects.

There's any number of reasons to be upset and ticked at the baby boomer generation... Failure to stop and/or learn from Vietnam, bringing us dependance on for-profit health insurance to name a few.

But the issue of solar energy is where you've truly dropped the ball and failed miserably. Especially considering it's soon going to be less expensive then petroleum and nuclear energy. You've had since the 60's since you've known "hey that giant ball in the sky produces endless FREE ammounts of nuclear fusion energy," that's 40+ years and still no solar energy.

Meanwhile the modern combustion engine is about as inefficient as it was 100 years ago to the year, 1908.

At least realize that we have the technology and the means, and have had for several decades. At least be aware that this innovation has been squelched by the energy and automotive industries.

What were in the batteries that were found in the ocean from some sunken civilization? The batteries still held a charge after thousands of years and were made of clay. I don't remember what part of the world they were found in, all I remember is that the archaeologists still don't have a clue as to what was being powered.

If some sunken civilization can find a clean battery why cant we?

I think solar panels would look so sexy on my car! Replacing the engine and transmission with a electric motor and a battery sounds easy to me if one could get the right motor. I don't think it would need a crap load of over engineering, you would just need a clutch, brakes, distribution to the wheels of some kind like a rear diff, motor, battery, and solar roof panel. If the motor and battery become available, I'm buying a old Justy or a Datsun just to try. It cant be that hard. Just think, out of power? Just wait! In the worst weather you could have to wait a day or two if you couldn't plug in, otherwise it would be free, FREE, FREE, FREE! You might go slow but who cares its FREE! I admit it might not be as easy to jury rig as the Supreme Court, but I'd give it a firm third place outside of our administration! IT wouldn't make money for the big corps. though, what a shame!

Yes, technology will save us from the problems that technology gave us... Forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Faux sustainability isn't really that helpful.

a product called EESU Electrical Enegry Storage Unit has great promice. The weight is around 340 pounds and it will store around 50,000 watts of power.

Demerara, I sense some cognitive dissonance in your posting. I like your opening -- "reduce... reliance on energy," but then you go into "regulation of oil prices," which only encourages consumption!

Sure, we need to drastically reduce energy use. But energy is way too cheap. Perhaps oil companies are taking more than a fair share, but the solution is not to regulate oil prices!

First, eliminate the petroleum subsidies. There exists a pipeline from the US Treasury directly to the oil companies at this time. Without such subsidies, the price of gas would approximately double, approaching that paid in much of the rest of the world.

Second, tax the hell out of fossil energy, reserving the proceeds for investment in renewable (preferably non-liquid) energy.

Back on topic, we should be looking at boron for energy storage -- it's much more efficient a carrier than hydrogen.

War is more profitable.

Reduce your reliance on energy. Use public transportation or walk as much as possible. Recycle. Buy food grown close to your home. In general use things that are mechanical and do not require electricity from fossil burning sources. Bike to work or supermarket if you can.

Vote for federal regulation of oil prices...why should higher prices translate into profit because wall street is speculating? sound like a rip off to me...eat less meat because more energy is required to get it to your dinner table...

Locally, vote out repugs and dems...elect 3rd party candidates who run on a green platform....

Just imagine where we would be if we had taken all the money wasted on brutalizing Afghanistan and Iraq and had invested it into these future technologies. Thanks to backwards red stater's [who supported Bush and company] and rigged election's we went way off course and will have to pay dearly well into the future to get back to where we were.
Progress is happening in spite of our demented leader's not because of them.
Ultra capacitors, better batteries, wind power, photo cells, solar power through many different approaches. Our leaders are way behind the curve and instead of helping are getting in the way of progress. Makes you wonder what this place would be capable of if we somehow managed to get an intelligent and honest person to be our President. Last time we had one of those they assassinated him.
The viscous have risen to the top and don't seem to want to relenquish power.