attn peak oil fearmongers: fuel cell cars take a leap forward

[Al68]

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Nobody other than a complete nutjob will claim that commercial grade cars can be powered by solar panels on their roof.

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Wow, a strawman debate and an ad hominem attack in the same sentence. Impressive.

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When reading your post it sounded to me like you thought I was saying cars would be powered with a solar panel on the roof of the car. It wasn't meant at an attack at you. It was meant as an attack at anyone that thought that technology was viable.

[/ QUOTE ]You're right, I did misread this. Sorry about that.

[Al68]

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This means that to be competitive in construction alone, given a bulk efficiency of 20%

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Try doubling that:
http://www.energy.gov/news/4503.htm

We are at 40% now and there's plenty of unexplored techs for increasing efficiency left.

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I think the only reasonable thing to do is assume 100% efficiency. Average sunlight is 300 watts per square meter. Assuming we solve the storage problem and can store energy from day to night, and from summer to winter, also with 100% efficiency, we could average 150 watts/sq. meter of solar cell. That's still 76 square meters per person in the U.S., assuming our current usage of 11,400 watts per person.

We still have a significant obstacle here besides the storage problem.

At least if the goal is to replace fossil fuels altogether, which should be our goal, since we will have to eventually.

[pvn]

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pvn, if you can't see the difference between what is going on with the extremely slow natural formation of oil and alternative forms of transportation energy then we have a real problem.

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You're arguing against the points you *think* I'm making. DYSW?

I agree that oil is "unsustainable" - but so is everything that has propelled mankind forward. The point is that oil was selected by the market despite being unsustainable, and there's no reason whatever comes next has to be infinitely sustainable either (or even sustainable for 5 billion years).

[pvn]

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For hydrogen you need to use fossil feuls to do whatever magic trick it is to turn H into an effective energy supply, and if you going to do that, why not just use the fossil feuls themselves for higher return?

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I agree that burning fossil fuels to make hydrogen is dumb. They're both storage media! We're talking about solar here, right? But solar needs a storage medium. Batteries may well be it, or hydrogen, or pumping water up a hill (hard to power a car with water pumped up a hill, though). Right now, hydrogen has advantages over batteries - quicker to refill, lighter, more range in a standard-sized car. Batteries may well end up surpassing hydrogen in all of those, and if it does, so be it.

Wacki wants to have a centralized, all-eggs-in-one-basket manhattan project, and gamble everyone's future on the politically selected fallible humans making the "right" choice.

[pvn]

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As I explained earlier in this thread nobody in their right mind is going to use hydrogen to store energy.

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Great, I feel better about all of my money going to your vaunted government-funded resarch that's being flushed down that toilet as we speak.

True or false: hydrogen is a better energy storage medium than crude oil.

[wacki]

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I think the only reasonable thing to do is assume 100% efficiency. Average sunlight is 300 watts per square meter. Assuming we solve the storage problem and can store energy from day to night, and from summer to winter, also with 100% efficiency, we could average 150 watts/sq. meter of solar cell. That's still 76 square meters per person in the U.S., assuming our current usage of 11,400 watts per person.


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If you want to get into some fancy bean counting exercise then fine. But as I said earlier prices of the Stirling engine is likely to go down to 5 cents/kWh just with the economy of scale.
http://www.trecers.net/downloads/GCREADER.pdf

If you want to try fancy math then fine. But there are a LOT of very smart people that think this is a non issue.

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We still have a significant obstacle here besides the storage problem.

At least if the goal is to replace fossil fuels altogether, which should be our goal, since we will have to eventually.

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There have been studies from University of Deleware, Stanford, National Resources Energy Lab, etc that show we could provide 95% of our power needs with wind and other alternatives if we just created a distributed energy grid. Energy from California would be transported to Texas, MA to SC, etc. Only 36 minutes of nameplate capacity would be required for storage. That's not very much. Lets not forget that supercaps would revolutionize energy storage. Even today Vanadium flow batteries are available at tolerable costs.

In all honesty all of the problems you are highlighting have multiple potential solutions that simply need to be explored. We are becoming redundant and it's starting to become that time where I bow out of this thread. I think all of the important issues have been covered.

[wacki]

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Wacki wants to have a centralized, all-eggs-in-one-basket manhattan project, and gamble everyone's future on the politically selected fallible humans making the "right" choice.

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No, the exact opposite actually. The money should be distributed among major engineering Universities, DOE, NREL, MIT, NSF, NIST, NASA, and DoD. Would some money get wasted? Sure. But I have no doubt that major technological advancements would be developed that would revolutionize our economy and eliminate countless problems from many forms of terrorism to global warming.

[Jamougha]

Poofler,

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What crop?

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I don't recall offhand. I evaluated a range of crops picked one of the highest-performing of them that would grow in a European climate. If you could do better then I'd estimate it's not by more than 15%.

True the crops could be grown in another country but a great portion of the world's arable land is currently in use for food production.

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It's win/win with no downside.

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Its been >5 years and my research then was fairly narrow, but i recall that there was a problem with solar panels in that they used large amounts or arsenic to build (maybe signifigant instead of large) and that disposing of the residues/disposing of the old panels was a problem at the time. Is my memory correct and has this changed much if it is?

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Your memory is correct but only with some types of solar panels. Not all solar panels are based off of silicon. Thin film is one such example and there are several more techs around the corner.

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Yes, but the solar cells based off this tech have poor energy conversion and a short lifespan in outdoor conditions. They are nowhere near ready for use in power production.

Most of the technologies you are referring to in this thread have interesting potential but it's just that - potential. If they work, realising that potential will still take 15-20 years.

The first hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles are being delivered by Honda in 2008 with other manufacturers only 2-3 years behind. Nuclear power is an almost mature technology. Carbon capture and storage has undergone positive preliminary testing and poses no technological barrier. Sadly our current needs are not to 'do it right', they're to do it right now.

[wacki]

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Figures I've seen for running costs per mile given hydrogen from steam methane refoming are similar to those for petrol. The carbon can be sequestered.

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Ok, pretend peak oil has occurred. Where are we going to get enough methane to replace our entire oil infrastructure?

[Al68]

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I think the only reasonable thing to do is assume 100% efficiency. Average sunlight is 300 watts per square meter. Assuming we solve the storage problem and can store energy from day to night, and from summer to winter, also with 100% efficiency, we could average 150 watts/sq. meter of solar cell. That's still 76 square meters per person in the U.S., assuming our current usage of 11,400 watts per person.


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If you want to try fancy math then fine. But there are a LOT of very smart people that think this is a non issue.

[/ QUOTE ]Fancy math? Knowing how much energy sunlight contains per square meter is just basic to the issue. And no smart person thinks it's a non issue. Solvable, maybe. But only if we recognize it as an obstacle to deal with.

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We still have a significant obstacle here besides the storage problem.

At least if the goal is to replace fossil fuels altogether, which should be our goal, since we will have to eventually.

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There have been studies from University of Deleware, Stanford, National Resources Energy Lab, etc that show we could provide 95% of our power needs with wind and other alternatives if we just created a distributed energy grid.

[/ QUOTE ] We don't need the solar panels to collect the energy? OK then.

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In all honesty all of the problems you are highlighting have multiple potential solutions that simply need to be explored.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, they need to be explored, not ignored.

And, although I was joking about solar cells curing global warming, if we are talking about powering the world with solar power, I'd be curious to see an estimate of the effect on our climate of absorbing that much sunlight.