Best energy alternatives to stop global warming

[Dodgey]

Strangely the decision to shut down everything is now accepted by everyone in the politics, not just the parties currently elected. While there are lots of arguments in the aftermath i can hardly think of any decision in the last years where so many people agree. Perhaps because everyone sees the benefits...

So, what's you point? The majority of politicians think that climate change is a joke. What's your point?

[manatee321]

How about thorium based nuclear reactors as a nuclear alternative next to uranium?

1. Thorium is more abundant

2. Reactor is in theory much safer

3. meltdowns not as deadly

4. no nuclear weapon material is created from its use like uranium in current reactors

Otherwise, I'm all for geothermal for home use(heating and cooling), solar and wind for business and residential, nuclear reactors for everything

Although, the amount of wild birds killed is relatively high, but then look at the number killed by skyscrapers........

source: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/current-and-future-generation/thorium/

[xcorps]

listen to engineers and scientists.

Eugenics.

Lysenkoism.

Tuskegee.

Aribet Heim.

Nana-san-ichi butai

Leucotomy

Luminiferous Aether

Tabula Rasa

Rigid Earth

Skepticism is healthy.

[AngelLestat]

Electric cars are a great idea for the masses, as they are more cheaper to use and maintain. However, this only solves half the problem;

Half not, becouse you already use them to storage renowable energy. In case you need energy you take it from the parked cars and owners get paid for the service. This make the electric cars more profitable increasing even more the storage capacity to renowables.

the reason a 1300 kg car is usually used to carry 80 kg is because they usually drive alone, which is widespread in developed countries.(Also worth mentioning is that said cars usually spends most of its time being parked.) It's mainly a problem of culture; the 1300 kg car is usually designed to carry 2000 kg or more (people use their car to carry their things around as well). My recommended interim solution? Use a bicycle, motorbike, or public transport.

You type an extra zero there, but I understand, of course public transport or the other mentioned are the way to go. But in some societies this demand a major change.

Electric cars are as great as switching to renewable energies is. Producing good capacity batteries for them is very expensive and bad for the enviroment. Honestly at the moment conventional cars are much greener as electric cars.

Maybe in a few years if we come up with better energy storage solutions they will be better, right now they are only for rich people which want to profile themselves as environmentalist.

I am half agree, is true than buy an electric car to day in some places does not worth too much from the ecologic point of view.

Prices are a good measure to estimate their pollution cost (energy, resources and delivery) to build the car.

But doing this, you are encouraging other people to do the same, meanwhile more electric cars are sold, the prices lower, they can be manufacture in different countries which reduce the cost a lot more.

The lithium batteries had much lower pollution than old batteries. Electric cars made extra km with less money reducing co2 emissions.

One option I did not see mentioned was distributed generation. I would love to be able to put a 5kW natural-gas-fueled fuel cell in my house

I know people who do these things but in certain place where it worth it without using fuel, lets said that someone leaves in a place with high winds, he/she has some money save and invest in a big wind turbine, selling energy to the grid recovers the investment 2 or 4 years, But try to do the same thing using gas at that scale, I dont see much profit.

The only problem with bikes though is the lack of protection from accidents and weather. I've seen a few concept designs for fully-enclosed motorcycles before, which were equipped with autobalancing similar to the Segway (so you don't need to put your feet down to keep it upright when you're not moving). They sort of looked like the old school TRON light cycles. Even if you managed to flip it, you were safely inside a roll cage. Pretty sure sitting in it also fit like a glove, almost like you were "wearing" it as an armor suit. The idea never took off though.

Yeah I had the solutions.

People common said that they dont like small cars-cycles becouse are unsafe (and they had right), so all the small cars that we see, they need to had a lot of things plus extra airbags, structure, etc. When you weight the car (even the small ones) weight 800kg and cost a lot.

With electric motors, you dont need to have a heavy structure to carry the engine.. You can have in-wheels motors 4x4 with torque controlled by software. Instead of having a structure of metal, you can have a cover of a strong kind of fabric with elastic reinforcements of another more rigid material to had shape.

The same air inside the car is your air-bag, in a crash you release some of the air inside to absorb the energy in safe way.

Of course it needs a paradigm shift, new components to make it sealed and new design for windows and doors.

But then you have a very light car and safe. More light it is, lighter the structure is, lighter the engines would be. This mean less batteries and materials --> equals a cheap car.

Wow, master of trolling right there.

Yeah, thats why I ignore him.

Let's try an analogy. Let's say our nuclear power plant is a car.

Yeah, that is the Michio Kaku analogy

If you look back at my arguments, I haven't made a claim that a nuclear reactor left to its own devices is safe. These power systems require both intrinsic (things inherent in the design) and extrinsic (policy) safety measures to be used safely.

if managed properly, they are remarkably low-maintenance and low-cost devices. As they can run for decades, this balances out in the long-term.

Ok, lets said that you can build a "safe" nuclear plant. This mean you need to make it sure against all kind of possible accidents that may have, you also need to take into account the cost to manage the wastes with the same safe.

If you said to me that after so hard work keeping this thing safe, you get the ultimate prize (a lot of energy), then I would said.. Ok. Do it.

But is not like that. The investment cost is higher, also the operation cost, the maintenance cost. Is the only technologic which if has a fail, the company owner it does not paid the damages. Then all waste issues and risk that it takes.

Why for? Just to solve the load from renowable?

Ah, see this is the problem. I'm talking about a timescale starting at the present day. Why? For one because that's what's most relevant. How long it took for a technology to finally be developed to a level ready for practical use is immaterial to its practical applications. Let's take the history of the battery. If you go back to the very first battery, one could say that the battery has been in development for over a thousand years! Why on earth should we expect anything more to come out of battery technology in a mere decade, when it took over a thousand years just to get from the most basic voltaic cell to the rechargeable batteries we use today? I hope you can see the problem with this reasoning.

But is not the same!

Batteries are used in comercial way since those times! So they give their money back.

The same with wind turbines.. It would not be Holland if it were not for the windmills.

But fusion never was used in a comercial way, so all the money was introduce since those dates. Who made the contribution? Many countries.

Now when they finish after so many years, you think that an external country which do not cooperate with the development can ask:

-Hey! I want a fusion reactor too, can I have it just for the build cost??

The answer would be a nuclear bomb in its ass.

The tokamak design, as I've said before on these forums numerous times lately, is something of a giant drain we're throwing money into. There's little to no reason to expect that the tokamak will ever produce a net energy output. Why have we been slaving over this doomed design for so long? Bad policy. The US DoE decided, against the advice of many, many experts in the field of plasma physics (including proponents of the tokamak design) to pursue the tokamak design exclusively. It was a very stupid, very narrow-minded decision that prevented other far more promising fusion designs from ever being funded to anywhere near the levels that JET and ITER now enjoy.

No, they would never could build the ITER without the data collected from the low scale tokamaks.

THey used the low scale tokamaks to understand different approachs to improve the efficiency (it does not matter if it was only a second or less) the important was the method used and the magnetic field values. Once you have all the data, then you know what is the most efficient way to build a big scale tokamak to try acomplish larg period fusion. But the ITER is still a experiment reactor, with variable magnetic fields, and instruments to discover the ideal recipe to get fusion.

My point was that if you want to reduce the half-life of that waste significantly, you need to transmute it. To do that, you need a reactor. Decommission all the nuclear fission reactors in the world and stop developing it entirely, and we really will be stuck with waste that will last for thousands of years.

Ok, if you said that new nuclear reactors can use old wastes helping to deal with the tons that we already had.

Tell me how.. Is similar to the Bill gates approach? There is a site where I can study this approach? How safe they would be? It will generate new wastes?

I think Vitrified radioactive waste can be stored underground without having to wory about any radioactive elements leaking into the water, in the case of water breaking into the storage facilities.

They last so much time that anything can happen, we use Fission since few years and we already had montains of waste, now imagine that we increase the reactors number and we use this for 100 years more.. We are exchanging co2 by radioaction. The radiation would kill us more slowly. That is the danger.

[Elthy]

So, what's you point? The majority of politicians think that climate change is a joke. What's your point?

You said that quiting nuclear power was a bad decision for germany. But nearly everyone in germany agrees that it was a good idea, even the conservative parties. If everyone agrees it has to have advantages for everyone, even if its just that we dont have to pay that much to get rid of never produced waste...

What do you think about a hydrogen/methane powered industry?

Hydrogen can be produced by unused wind/solar energy an then react with atmospheric CO2 to methane (the same gas we currently use) and then power cars or powerplants and heat houses. Its easily storend in the gas grid, the germany gas grid has capacity for months.

Also hydrogen can be used directly, but fuel cells are currently quite expensive. Im not sure which one is better, but they both are completly renewable (which no form of fission will be) it would have the advantage that we never have to switch it again...

[shynung]

You type an extra zero there, but I understand, of course public transport or the other mentioned are the way to go. But in some societies this demand a major change.

Keep in mind that the 2000 kg the car is supposed to carry includes the weight of the car itself. That means about 700 kg payload capacity(assuming gross empty weight of 1300 kg), which is reasonable for a small family car. Larger ones such as SUVs and pickups can carry up to 4 tons (including their own weight).

Again, it's mostly a cultural problem. People prefer to drive their own cars rather than public transport, and generally do not prefer alternative vehicles such as bicycles or motorcycles, for various reasons.

Edited June 16, 2014 by shynung

[Dodgey]

Half not, becouse you already use them to storage renowable energy. In case you need energy you take it from the parked cars and owners get paid for the service. This make the electric cars more profitable increasing even more the storage capacity to renowables.

I am highly doubtful of the use of electric vehicles as batteries. The main time that they will be used would be during the night when solar cannot be used. Meaning that the cars would be drained, in the morning. Not very desirable.

You type an extra zero there, but I understand, of course public transport or the other mentioned are the way to go. But in some societies this demand a major change.

I am half agree, is true than buy an electric car to day in some places does not worth too much from the ecologic point of view.

Prices are a good measure to estimate their pollution cost (energy, resources and delivery) to build the car.

But doing this, you are encouraging other people to do the same, meanwhile more electric cars are sold, the prices lower, they can be manufacture in different countries which reduce the cost a lot more.

The lithium batteries had much lower pollution than old batteries. Electric cars made extra km with less money reducing co2 emissions.

I fail to see how price is a good gauge of ecological impact. Normally it is the opposite. Sure they don't create any emissions while they are driving but they still have to be charged, most probably during the night, when they would be used as batteries. Not the best situation.

I know people who do these things but in certain place where it worth it without using fuel, lets said that someone leaves in a place with high winds, he/she has some money save and invest in a big wind turbine, selling energy to the grid recovers the investment 2 or 4 years, But try to do the same thing using gas at that scale, I dont see much profit.

The biggest difference is that anyone can put a gas generator in their basement if they have the room, so most people in suburban areas. The amount of people that would be able to put a wind generator on their property would be a tiny fraction.

Also could you provide some numbers for that conclusion you made?

Yeah I had the solutions.

People common said that they dont like small cars-cycles becouse are unsafe (and they had right), so all the small cars that we see, they need to had a lot of things plus extra airbags, structure, etc. When you weight the car (even the small ones) weight 800kg and cost a lot.

With electric motors, you dont need to have a heavy structure to carry the engine.. You can have in-wheels motors 4x4 with torque controlled by software. Instead of having a structure of metal, you can have a cover of a strong kind of fabric with elastic reinforcements of another more rigid material to had shape.

The same air inside the car is your air-bag, in a crash you release some of the air inside to absorb the energy in safe way.

Of course it needs a paradigm shift, new components to make it sealed and new design for windows and doors.

But then you have a very light car and safe. More light it is, lighter the structure is, lighter the engines would be. This mean less batteries and materials --> equals a cheap car.

While you are correct that a lighter car would improve efficency creating it one large balloon is silly. I fail to see how letting air out would achieve anything. Unless you have a solid structure you still get flattened. Again do you have actual designs to back this up?

Yeah, thats why I ignore him.

You would be surprised what people won't believe.

Yeah, that is the Michio Kaku analogy

Why does it matter who said it?

Ok, lets said that you can build a "safe" nuclear plant. This mean you need to make it sure against all kind of possible accidents that may have, you also need to take into account the cost to manage the wastes with the same safe.

If you said to me that after so hard work keeping this thing safe, you get the ultimate prize (a lot of energy), then I would said.. Ok. Do it.

But is not like that. The investment cost is higher, also the operation cost, the maintenance cost. Is the only technologic which if has a fail, the company owner it does not paid the damages. Then all waste issues and risk that it takes.

Why for? Just to solve the load from renowable?

I'm beginning to wonder if any risk is acceptable to you. It's all about acceptable risk. And the probability of said risk. You have yet to explain how renewable energy could be used for base load.

Your talk of faith in the workers in nuclear plants is computable to the engineers that work on airliners. The amount of damage that a single licensed engineer could do is astounding. As in bringing down an airliner.

But is not the same!

Batteries are used in comercial way since those times! So they give their money back.

The same with wind turbines.. It would not be Holland if it were not for the windmills.

But fusion never was used in a comercial way, so all the money was introduce since those dates. Who made the contribution? Many countries.

Now when they finish after so many years, you think that an external country which do not cooperate with the development can ask:

-Hey! I want a fusion reactor too, can I have it just for the build cost??

The answer would be a nuclear bomb in its ass.

To compare a battery to a fusion reactor is akin to comparing a black powder rocket to the space shuttle.

Fusion hasn't been used commercially because it is still being developed. As to the latter part of that statement I'm confused. Are you suggesting that any country which does not contribute to the project would have the technology withheld to the point of war?

-snip-

Not having done enough research I don't have anything to say about those two paragraphs.

They last so much time that anything can happen, we use Fission since few years and we already had montains of waste, now imagine that we increase the reactors number and we use this for 100 years more.. We are exchanging co2 by radioaction. The radiation would kill us more slowly. That is the danger.

Please explain how the methods of radioactive disposal listed in this thread release enough radiation to do any harm.

[shynung]

I am highly doubtful of the use of electric vehicles as batteries. The main time that they will be used would be during the night when solar cannot be used. Meaning that the cars would be drained, in the morning. Not very desirable.

For some unforeseen reasons, I have failed to notice this very important effect. Thanks for pointing it out.

Seems like people would object to have their cars used as the public energy storage system. They have somewhere to go, after all.

[rtxoff]

Using batteries as an way to store power is an bad way to do it, however also during the night on some other places of the world, believe it or not, it is day and the sun may or may not shine as bright as my avatar.

Also using renewable energy forms would not only rely on sunlight. There is wind, tides, rivers and so on. I am very well aware that with the current geopolitical/economical situation switching to renewable energy forms is practically impossible. However in theory in some form of utopia things might look different and very real.

[Dodgey]

You said that quiting nuclear power was a bad decision for germany. But nearly everyone in germany agrees that it was a good idea, even the conservative parties. If everyone agrees it has to have advantages for everyone, even if its just that we dont have to pay that much to get rid of never produced waste...

This is just an argument from popularity. So what if everyone agrees that it is a good idea, there was a time when the majority thought that it was a good idea to have slaves, or that the Earth was flat, ect ect. Simply saying that it's a good idea because everyone thinks it is, or says it is means nothing. What is the actual reason it is a good idea.

What do you think about a hydrogen/methane powered industry?

Hydrogen can be produced by unused wind/solar energy an then react with atmospheric CO2 to methane (the same gas we currently use) and then power cars or powerplants and heat houses. Its easily storend in the gas grid, the germany gas grid has capacity for months.

Also hydrogen can be used directly, but fuel cells are currently quite expensive. Im not sure which one is better, but they both are completly renewable (which no form of fission will be) it would have the advantage that we never have to switch it again...

This I don't have too much of a problem with, the only problem is mass scale adoption, not every country has a gas system. Not to mention the problems with storing hydrogen and the fact that methane is magnitudes worse than CO2.

Edit

Gpisic, I know that there are many other forms of energy production. However many of them cannot compare to nuclear, for base load and versatility. I agree that we should invest in renewable energy however you still need a base load.

Off topic, but I've had an idea floating around for awhile which is basically if and when we get a net gain from fusion, or have an excess amount of energy, what would be the effects of pumping sea water out to the deserts, wheather it be desalinated or not?

Edited June 16, 2014 by Dodgey

[lajoswinkler]

Eugenics.

Lysenkoism.

Tuskegee.

Aribet Heim.

Nana-san-ichi butai

Leucotomy

Luminiferous Aether

Tabula Rasa

Rigid Earth

Skepticism is healthy.

Do you want me to name all the crap politicians made up? I'm sure it's a lot longer list. If you want to blindly follow someone, it's statistically better to listen to scientists instead of politicians, but of course, skepticism and rational thought are always the best.

Using batteries as an way to store power is an bad way to do it, however also during the night on some other places of the world, believe it or not, it is day and the sun may or may not shine as bright as my avatar.

Also using renewable energy forms would not only rely on sunlight. There is wind, tides, rivers and so on. I am very well aware that with the current geopolitical/economical situation switching to renewable energy forms is practically impossible. However in theory in some form of utopia things might look different and very real.

Of course it's possible. What's not possible is to switch to it completely and keep the current lifestyle, and I don't mean the luxury, but the basic modern lifestyle where you can function as an unit of society in which your optimal needs are satisfied.

[AngelLestat]

I would answer this now becouse I see that many of you had the wrong ideas of how this system works.

The use of electric car batteries to storage energy is already in use in some Nordic countries, USA and Canada are very interested in this too.

The system works like this:

First, the amount of energy that cars batteries can storage is a lot. This is becouse a car consume a lot of energy (think in this way, how much energy takes to move a payload of 1300kg, 200km).

Cars owners are paid for this service depeding how much energy from their batteries they sell.

You can set what is the minimun % of charge that your car may had. You also set the hours which is more probably that you would need a full charge (lets said that you go to work all days at 7:30 am and you leave work at 6:00 pm, so in those times your car would have the amount of charge that you want.)

With those settings you can assure that you would have charge always that you needed, and you can increase your profits the most possible making use of your battery.

You can also set to sell energy in the times where is most valuable. You would have a cellphone app to change your charge plan or to get a fast charge in case of emergy (batteries that are comming has not problem with fast charges or exhaustion by hard use)

You can search this by Vehicle-to-grid or Smarter Grid

[theend3r]

Nuclear, obviously.

Advantages:

• Clean (small piece of land required unlike windmills, no emissions - radioactivity way lower than in the vicinity of coal powerplants, production of solar panels is environmentally awful)

• Stable

• Safe (http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html)

• Cheap (long term of course)

• Doesn't depend on geographical location (water power is great in Norway, but hardly anywhere else)

Thorium reactors also look insanely promising with Th being relatively abundant and potent.

Fusion would be great but I doubt it'll reach a practical stage in my lifetime.

Edited June 16, 2014 by theend3r

[78stonewobble]

1. Nuclear is also not due cost, and the fact that you are replacing one risk for another.

2.Right now all storage energy technologies are growing a lot faster than any other. I can show you more than 20 approachs of prototype batteries that already double, triple or four-fold the storage capacity of old lithion batteries. Some of them can be fully charged in 5 to 10 minutes. Once these batteries enter in the market, the electric car production would have a big jump. There is already in many world parts policies to encourage this solution.

That would come in perfect time to manage the storage problem for the growing of renowable options. In fact people get paid to allow their car battery to be used as storage, this reduce a lot more the cost of electric cars.

3. I dont know even when to start to reply this, it does not have any sense. If instead fukushima power plant it would be a new model reactor, the problem it would be the same.

4. There is no Nuclear plant who can stand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

5. But well, there is still a lot of old reactors as fukushima still in use in the world. What we need to do with them?

6. Is the endless excuse, "no that happend becouse the design was not safe, now we learn..." few years later you had another disaster, and you hear the same excuse again.

1. No, I'm replacing something with a high risk of many lives (going the wind/solar route and ignoring ie. coal), with something with a small risk to a small amount of people (nuclear).

2. Yeah, because using enough battery power, to be able to backup the western worlds electrical energy supply, is completely without any enviromental sideeffects. Yeah, right.

EDIT: Or the inherent dangers of using ie. enough hydrogen to do the same (gas tanks never blow up right? Certainly not in earthquakes). Or the same thing with creating hundreds, if not thousands of high lying and dammed in reservoirs (dams never break? Certainly not in earthquakes).

3. No, it would be different. As evidenced by the fact that a newer nuclear powerplant was even closer to the earthquake and tsunami and survived it easily. It was actually so safe that people from the nearby town used it as emergency shelter.

4. If, you're gonna have a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, you're probably gonna have bigger problems than the nuclear powerplants. Such as every friggin other building, road, rail and bridge collapsing. In any case 9.0 earthquakes are so rare, that hardly any buildings are designed to withstand them. Presumably it's an engineering problem and it can be done. It would just be exceedingly expensive and impractical.

5. Use them and gradually replace them with newer designs. Unless a serious design fault or oversight crops up. In the Fukushima Daichii disaster a few extra meters of seawall would have pretty negated the entire thing.

6. No, it functions like everything else. It evolves as time passes by. The risk is minimal and as I said we need hundreds or even thousands of giant chernobyl disasters, for nuclear power to be as dangerous as the ignorant choice to go with renewable energy without removing the main polluting sources.

Edited June 17, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[Aghanim]

I don't know why in Fukushima they didn't just put the diesel generators in top of the containment building, or in it, or inside a waterproofed basement with a tall enough stack. So, if there is some megatsunami that we doesn't expect at all, the reactor can still get some power.

[Seret]

I don't know why in Fukushima they didn't just put the diesel generators in top of the containment building, or in it, or inside a waterproofed basement with a tall enough stack. So, if there is some megatsunami that we doesn't expect at all, the reactor can still get some power.

Benefit of hindsight, innit.

[Dodgey]

I would answer this now becouse I see that many of you had the wrong ideas of how this system works.

The use of electric car batteries to storage energy is already in use in some Nordic countries, USA and Canada are very interested in this too.

The system works like this:

First, the amount of energy that cars batteries can storage is a lot. This is becouse a car consume a lot of energy (think in this way, how much energy takes to move a payload of 1300kg, 200km).

Cars owners are paid for this service depeding how much energy from their batteries they sell.

You can set what is the minimun % of charge that your car may had. You also set the hours which is more probably that you would need a full charge (lets said that you go to work all days at 7:30 am and you leave work at 6:00 pm, so in those times your car would have the amount of charge that you want.)

With those settings you can assure that you would have charge always that you needed, and you can increase your profits the most possible making use of your battery.

You can also set to sell energy in the times where is most valuable. You would have a cellphone app to change your charge plan or to get a fast charge in case of emergy (batteries that are comming has not problem with fast charges or exhaustion by hard use)

You can search this by Vehicle-to-grid or Smarter Grid

How quickly do you think mass adoption of electric cars will take? But in any case, lets say that this does happen, in a normal scenario you would need to power a family house on one or two cars worth of battery power for the majority of the night. I do think that you have over estimated the battery capacity of an electric car. Not to mention that utilises of the city that need to be powered.

I think that it is safe to say that the majority of people would be leaving for work at approximately the same time, so you need the majority of your batteries to be fully charged, meaning that they wouldn't be able to be used to power your city at night where power generation would be low. Not the best situation.

If you only want to reply to a select few points I understand, but please reply to this;

Is any risk acceptable to you, from what you have said it seems that if there is any risk (no matter how extremely unlikely) than we shouldn't do it. As evident by you stating that no nuclear reactor can withstand a 9.0 earthquake.

[phoenix_ca]

Benefit of hindsight, innit.

More like lack of foresight. They would've been absolutely fine had TEPCO actually followed the advisories of regulators. They didn't, and this is the result. You can't have room in these systems for people to just say "Naaaaaah, that safety feature is too expensive, and I want a fifteenth resort home to choose from."

[Seret]

in a normal scenario you would need to power a family house on one or two cars worth of battery power for the majority of the night. I do think that you have over estimated the battery capacity of an electric car. Not to mention that utilises of the city that need to be powered.

I think that it is safe to say that the majority of people would be leaving for work at approximately the same time, so you need the majority of your batteries to be fully charged, meaning that they wouldn't be able to be used to power your city at night where power generation would be low. Not the best situation.

The batteries would generally only be discharged for spikes in demand, which generally occur in the evening. You wouldn't be drawing from them in the wee hours, in fact it'd be more likely to be dumping excess power to make up what it has taken a few hours earlier. The idea is to do two things:

• Allow stable base load plants to handle pickup loads by decoupling production and supply.
  
• Provide a mechanism to smooth output from variable sources if required.
  

Personally I'm sceptical how popular such schemes would be with consumers. Big industrial users are quite receptive to demand management, but individuals are funny about their cars.

More like lack of foresight.

Same thing. It's trivial to assess risk when the unlikely event has already happened. Doing it beforehand is a bit more fraught.

[78stonewobble]

Personally I'm sceptical how popular such schemes would be with consumers. Big industrial users are quite receptive to demand management, but individuals are funny about their cars.

Perhaps akin to projects like seti@home.

Atleast, I don't think it will work without legislation requiring it, unless there is a clear economic benefit from doing so, that clearly offsets any wear and tear on your private vehicle.

[Dodgey]

More like lack of foresight. They would've been absolutely fine had TEPCO actually followed the advisories of regulators. They didn't, and this is the result. You can't have room in these systems for people to just say "Naaaaaah, that safety feature is too expensive, and I want a fifteenth resort home to choose from."

It reminds me the Space Shuttle accidents more than anything, the people in charge ignoring the engineers and scientists.

With regards to the cars being used as batteries, I think that the better question is how much power will be generated by solar. Because you still have the problem with weather and the efficiency of dropping off outside a certain range of the equator. I don't know enough about power consumption over the day to comment on what would happen during the afternoons, when solar becomes less effective and people are still at work, which I think would be a problem.

[Seret]

I don't know enough about power consumption over the day to comment on what would happen during the afternoons, when solar becomes less effective and people are still at work, which I think would be a problem.

Electricity demand is pretty steady over the working day. Output from any one particular solar array is basically a sine wave, but is also affected by the direction array the points. Those facing more easterly generate more in the morning and less later, and vice versa. Obviously real output is quite messy and not a nice curve.

It's not a big problem as most solar is embedded and just shows up as a reduction in demand.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Seret

[rtxoff]

Just a few concept's regarding solar cells and possible set up's. If we want we can do it, there are no excuses only lying to yourself.

You can mount them almost anywhere.

[rtxoff]

Decentralized energy production is the key for a bright future. You grately reduce a countries vulnerability with it. Power plants are amongst primary targets in wars. You sure don't want to see them blast into a big poisonous mushroom into the sky.

[shynung]

Decentralized energy production is the key for a bright future. You grately reduce a countries vulnerability with it. Power plants are amongst primary targets in wars. You sure don't want to see them blast into a big poisonous mushroom into the sky.

Not necessarily. A small number of large, well maintained power plants is usually more efficient than dozens of smaller ones, for the same energy source (there are exceptions). Not only that, having more power plants means more machinery to repair, and it would strain the logistics.

Of course, having only one power plant across the entire nation is like putting all one's eggs in one basket. There's a sweet spot between not enough power plants and too much power plants.