When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?

[Marco]

The only solution to resource depletion (ignoring for a moment whether low CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a valuable resource) is WW3 or a global pandemic.

A pandemic resulting in mass infertility being the best case scenario.

[nctnico]

A pandemic resulting in mass infertility being the best case scenario.

That pandemic is already on it's way. As others wrote before the increase in living standards automatically means people have way less children. It is already predicted that there will be a decline in population at some point. In some countries this is already happening.

[Fungus]

That is the biggest problem, getting used to more/plenty is easy.
Cutting back and getting used to less/shortage is hard.

Any solution that relies on 'educating' people is doomed to failure.

It is already predicted that there will be a decline in population at some point. In some countries this is already happening.

That probably won't reduce the number of plastic containers being discarded though.

[nctnico]

It is already predicted that there will be a decline in population at some point. In some countries this is already happening.

That probably won't reduce the number of plastic containers being discarded though.

No, but it seems there are plans to ban plastic packaging in the EU though. I wonder how that works out because without plastic many types of food cannot be preserved that well.

[Marco]

That pandemic is already on it's way.

Way too slow. By the time Africa empties through replacement migration to Europe we'll have mined everything to exhaustion absent global consumption collapse.

Demographers were wildly wrong about African population growth before. They are much like climate scientists in that regard, the acceleration/deceleration is always a couple years in the future.

[DougSpindler]

Or the bunring of Coal...  The burning of coal has released so much mercury into our enviroment and ocens we can't eat the fish.  And the burning of colar releases tons of radioactive isotopes into our atmosphere every year. 

Yep. This alone should be enough reason to stop using coal.

Unfortunately the climate denial movement has found what to focus on and that never gets mentioned in mainstream thinking.

But there is no doubt about man cuased climate change unless you beleive the propoganda being created by the Koch Brothers.  As was previoulsy posted the graph matches shows the climate chnages is releated to man's activities.

Also this:  https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+denial+funding

Bottom line: Anybody who uses the "it hasn't been proved!" argument is falling for the exact same system as the "smoking hasn't been proved to cause cancer" system. There's a whole bunch of people out there working to seed that argument, put articles on the Internet, etc.

To any intelligent person they sound like the "evolution is only a theory" crowd, ie. like idiots.

What's going is a gross misuse of the definition of words.  Anyone who has taken a science class knows in science you don't prove anything and should have learned something called "Scientific Method".  Most people, press, politicians and those who did not pass a science class are using the legal definition of words and incorrectly using them in a scientific context. 
Gravity has never been proven either, it's still a theory.  That's why today it's still called the "Theory of Gravity".

Sad that people don't seem to learn this in school and that advertisers use prey upon the ignorance of people to trick them.

It's much more than people being seeded to spread fake and false information.  There is an entire industry that’s doing this.  The tobacco companies were famously told, everyday we can cause confusion about our product is one more day we can make another million in profits.

[DougSpindler]

The question remains what can we do about it?
Are you willing to no longer use any form of fossil fuel?
Are you willing to stop using half of your electric equipment?
Are you willing to stop eating more than 25g of meat a day?

The only hope we have is to soon find a clean form of energy that can be used everywhere on the planet.

And you forgot to ask if people would be willing to stop releasing CO2 when they breath. 

[nctnico]

And you forgot to ask if people would be willing to stop releasing CO2 when they breath.

People don't run on oil!

[DougSpindler]

And you forgot to ask if people would be willing to stop releasing CO2 when they breath.

People don't run on oil!
[/quote

There are so many ways to interpet your statement.
They my not run on oil, but I think they can walk with it.  Don't you consume oil as part of your diet?

CO2 is the end prodcut of combustion and resperation.  Don't mater if it's produced as a result of burning fossil fules or respiaration it's still CO2 and both are man made.

[NiHaoMike]

The point is that the CO2 came from the air to begin with, so there's no net increase. That also applies to biofuels, which can replace fossil fuels where electric power is not a viable option.

[DougSpindler]

The point is that the CO2 came from the air to begin with, so there's no net increase. That also applies to biofuels, which can replace fossil fuels where electric power is not a viable option.

Depends on what you mean "to begin with"?  It took quite a while for this planet to be able to support human life.  Last time CO2 levels where this high on Earth humans weren’t around.

Looking at the evidence and data that's been collected the only scenario that explains the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere is man's burning of burnable materials....  specialty trees and fossil fuel.  If one looks at the ice core data and the data Mauna Loa one can see when man changes fuel sources.  From trees, to oil, to coal and other fossil fuels.

It takes millions of years for the excess to sequester the carbon as hydrocarbons to make this planet habitable for humans.  We are releasing those hydrocarbons so quickly our planet doesn’t have enough time to sequester it.  I guess we could wait another millions years but I only expect to live another 50 years or so. 

[Fungus]

In the news: Tesla is working on grid balancing systems. They've just installed an 18.2MW electricity storage plant in Belgium and it really doesn't take up an awful lot of space for what it does, IMHO.



Tesla blurb video:


There's no figures on battery life expectancy or maintenance costs, obviously.

Smoothing out the peaks in demand will be a big part of making renewable energy practical.

I think this can make a big difference even without renewables, the Australians are reporting theirs as a huge success. Expect to see a lot more of them when utility companies start to measure how much difference it can really make to the grids.

(Jeez, I sound like a Tesla salesman)

[Marco]

Was to be expected, the low/negative electricity prizes present an arbitrage opportunity and the pumped hydro is no longer sufficient to gobble up most of the profits.

Shame these market forces don't really incentivize the development of long term storage.

[DougSpindler]

Nice experiment, let's hope it's going to work.  We should be trying more of these things to see what's going to work and what's not.

[paulca]

Shame these market forces don't really incentivize the development of long term storage.

This is also why when you attempt to get a solar system installed at home they push you to grid tie setups.  So while it's sunny and you are out at work all day you sell electricity back to the grid for less than 1/10th of what it's worth.  Then when you come home in the evening you buy electricity at full rate.  Makes perfect business sense although next to useless for the consumer generating the power (even though that's contradiction).  They get the side effect of "being green" and can feel all warm and fuzzy while being milked by the energy companies.

A bit of decent investment and some decent sized batteries and you can capture that energy while you are out at work and run off the stored power through the night.  Of course that makes no money for "the man" and thus it won't be aggressively marketed and I wouldn't be surprised if we found it becoming more difficult to do, through legislation and taxation.

[Fungus]

A bit of decent investment and some decent sized batteries and you can capture that energy while you are out at work and run off the stored power through the night.  Of course that makes no money for "the man" and thus it won't be aggressively marketed and I wouldn't be surprised if we found it becoming more difficult to do, through legislation and taxation.

They already did it here in Spain: http://www.arbo-es.com/2018/05/08/spains-sun-tax/

In Spain the power companies are mostly owned by politicians (so they can hike the prices whenever they need a new palace). They put a law in place that makes it very difficult to install domestic solar (in the sense of recovering the cost of the panels) and actually making some types of installation illegal.

Looks like Europe is finally forcing them to kill it though.

[gildasd]

The situation in Spain is absurd...
They have a virtual dessert at about 800m altitude in the middle of the country where they could do giant solar and undercut anything in the rest of Europe, but no, they actually out laws in place making this impossible!
I love Spain, but the political/ business alliance at the top (PP, Endesa, Repsol etc) a ruining the future of the country.

Meanwhile Morocco is filling the void and putting infrastructure online... Interconnect cables are being prepared as I type this...

[coppice]

The situation in Spain is absurd...
They have a virtual dessert at about 800m altitude in the middle of the country where they could do giant solar and undercut anything in the rest of Europe, but no, they actually out laws in place making this impossible!
I love Spain, but the political/ business alliance at the top (PP, Endesa, Repsol etc) a ruining the future of the country.

Meanwhile Morocco is filling the void and putting infrastructure online... Interconnect cables are being prepared as I type this...

Do they give reasons for outlawing solar in the desert?

[DougSpindler]

This is also why when you attempt to get a solar system installed at home they push you to grid tie setups.  So while it's sunny and you are out at work all day you sell electricity back to the grid for less than 1/10th of what it's worth.  Then when you come home in the evening you buy electricity at full rate.

Not true in California.  Here in California the power company PG&E pays market rate for solar/wind produced electricity form residential customers.  So when rates are high during the day For every one kWhr sold to the power compact during the day the customer can get back 3.5 kWhrs.

It is the solar companies who are ripping off the public.

When they sell solar systems to residential customers they don’t factor in this buy sell factor or the customer’s usage patterns and wind up selling a system where customers are giving hundreds if not thousands of dollars of electricty to the power company for free every year.  (At the end of the year, any excess electricity credit dollars are given to the power company for free.)

   

[SiliconWizard]

This is also why when you attempt to get a solar system installed at home they push you to grid tie setups.  So while it's sunny and you are out at work all day you sell electricity back to the grid for less than 1/10th of what it's worth.  Then when you come home in the evening you buy electricity at full rate.  Makes perfect business sense although next to useless for the consumer generating the power (even though that's contradiction).  They get the side effect of "being green" and can feel all warm and fuzzy while being milked by the energy companies.

Yes. This is called being ripped off. It actually gives energy providers free access to the roof of your own property, while giving you back mere crumbles.

A bit of decent investment and some decent sized batteries and you can capture that energy while you are out at work and run off the stored power through the night.  Of course that makes no money for "the man" and thus it won't be aggressively marketed and I wouldn't be surprised if we found it becoming more difficult to do, through legislation and taxation.

Absolutely. It's most likely going to be legally banned in most developed countries in a matter of maybe 10 years or less.

[gildasd]

The situation in Spain is absurd...
They have a virtual dessert at about 800m altitude in the middle of the country where they could do giant solar and undercut anything in the rest of Europe, but no, they actually out laws in place making this impossible!
I love Spain, but the political/ business alliance at the top (PP, Endesa, Repsol etc) a ruining the future of the country.

Meanwhile Morocco is filling the void and putting infrastructure online... Interconnect cables are being prepared as I type this...

Do they give reasons for outlawing solar in the desert?

Not really, apart from stuffing their pockets.

[Fungus]

Do they give reasons for outlawing solar in the desert?

The Spanish government? They don't need no steeenkin' reasons.

[nctnico]

The situation in Spain is absurd...
They have a virtual dessert at about 800m altitude in the middle of the country where they could do giant solar and undercut anything in the rest of Europe, but no, they actually out laws in place making this impossible!

I'm not quite sure if there really is space in Spain for large scale solar. Areas which look like a desert at first glance often have an agricultural purpose or are populated by people. Just zoom in on Spain using Google maps and you'll see that there is farming going on everywhere. You can do the same for north Africa. You have to travel 1000 km or more from the coast before the patches of farm land end.

[Fungus]

The situation in Spain is absurd...
They have a virtual dessert at about 800m altitude in the middle of the country where they could do giant solar and undercut anything in the rest of Europe, but no, they actually out laws in place making this impossible!

I'm not quite sure if there really is space in Spain for large scale solar. Areas which look like a desert at first glance often have an agricultural purpose or are populated by people. Just zoom in on Spain using Google maps and you'll see that there is farming going on everywhere. You can do the same for north Africa. You have to travel 1000 km or more from the coast before the patches of farm land end.

I'm pretty sure they could find a place in Almeria province.

(it's where they filmed a Fistful of Dollars, etc. - very dry there, not much grows)

[paulca]

It is the solar companies who are ripping off the public.

When they sell solar systems to residential customers they don’t factor in this buy sell factor or the customer’s usage patterns and wind up selling a system where customers are giving hundreds if not thousands of dollars of electricty to the power company for free every year.  (At the end of the year, any excess electricity credit dollars are given to the power company for free.)

Yes, I side stepped this aspect.  Although I believe it is in decline as 3k+ home systems are becoming affordable for personal investment now.

The market here was flooded with companies whose model went like this:

You present a small deposit, a thousand pounds or so.
They install several thousand pounds worth of panels and GTI in your home.
You can use what you like.
The excess electricity when you are out all day is sold back to the grid at wholesale price.
The money for the electricity sold goes to the investment company/bank bank rolling the solar installer.

The trouble is the contracts involve horrid clauses meaning you never own the panels, the investment company has a long term 10-20 year lease on your roof.  You can't sell your house without lengthy proceedings to transfer the lease or terminating the lease early with fines AND pay to have the panels removed and returned ... or more fines.

The government was actively supporting these companies and helping to fund them.