Unless he can prove that he has a valid business plan and some financial support, he won't get that money. Also, he is at the tail end of a long list of requests for loans by several companies that are more established and are further along in their development plans, the loan funds might be gone before he can try to claim any.

Not having an actual working prototype won't help, either.

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Interesting to compare to other stories of Brilliance in the southeast.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/25/6-5-billion-chinese-hybrid-electric-car-plant-for-mississippi-u/

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If global warming doesn't exist surely using domestic coal to power EV's is an even better idea?

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(1) I didn't say it doesn't exist, just that it is overblown. (2) I was intending to point out that practically (because of the greens anti-Nuclear position in the past) that electric cars now, mean instead of running on oil, they run on 50% coal with all the line losses and other things thrown in. (3) if the Unions, Democrats and special interests hadn't destroyed domestic auto-business, we wouldn't need to import this stuff from China. So it's always about looking at the unintended consequences.

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You are the one making personal attacks, calling me a teenager. Thanks for the compliment.

I asked if you were a shill because your arguments are:
1. the same ones made by big oil.
2. ignore the facts that Bulldozer and 3PeaceSweet make.
3. you keep spewing the same misinformation.

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Try to follow this thread.

>>You are the one making personal attacks, calling me a teenager....

a) Personal attacks -- if you look back, you started the personal attacks by calling me a shill working for big oil, then you attacked me with straw-men first (that misrepresented my views), so I REPLID that some people act like perpetual teenagers, attacking people instead of arguments. That's not an attack, but an accurate rebut (for reasons).

>> 1. the same ones made by big oil.

1) It doesn't matter who said what first. Hitler's domestic economic policies (national socialists) look a lot like Obama's, does that Obama is wrong in them because someone you disagreed with used them first?

The science/facts of the arguments need to stand on their own. I presented the facts that Al Gore and others try to hide from. It doesn't matter if I like the oil companies, or work for them (I don't), what matters is the business, science, and facts.

>> 2. ignore the facts that Bulldozer and 3PeaceSweet make.

Name them, and I'll try to answer. Here's what I see:

Dozer -- we throw away excess capacity, so electric cars don't change our carbon footprint
Me -- agreed on having SOME excess capacity at night (but corrected him on misperceptions). Problem is there's probably more cost-effective ways to use it than in cars, and electric cars use daytime/peak capacity as well. So we'd need more power.

Sweet -- we have enough capacity for 60M plug-ins.
Me -- Show me, I don't believe it. We have capacity problems already, and this would be a lot more demand.

Sweet -- 90% of new capacity has been green, cheaper and quicker.
Me - Show me. It's more expensive, less reliable (constant).
Sweet -- Change of subject -- wind power grew a bit in 2005/6 by percentage
Me - 1.5% of world power budget is wind. In the U.S.1.3% (and only that high because of Texas, not idiot greens like California). Whereas 49.8% is coal based. So if you increase demand, you're increasing coal usage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

Sweet did provide new capacity according tot he EIA. It said this year we'll create 19GW more energy in Fossil Fuels and 127Kw solar. 3.6GW more in Wind. (That's a lot better than I thought). But still his/her 90% of power turns out to be 16% of new power (not factoring in old power). Good effort, if he was trying to prove my case.

Sweet -- if you don't figure in the costs to build it, then wind is great....
Me -- welcome to the real world where capital costs have to be amortized, and the cost of money (interest) needs to be factored in.

Then I explained why increasing our cost of energy will drive more money, jobs and opportunities overseas. (It's called business and the real world).

What did I miss?

>> 3. you keep spewing the same misinformation.

Name one. Instead you attack me personally or with vague generalities (like that post, that don't really have a single actionable point). What do you disagree with, that I haven't answered.

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Is there any actual data on how much baseload ends up being "grounded" or thrown away because of the lack of demand?

From what I understand, it's primarily coal/nuclear power plants that don't like to be throttled up/down frequently. And even then, depending on the type of coal/nuclear plant, those can be throttled to some degree.

I can't imagine that any power company would find it in their best interest to simply throw energy away (same as throwing money away) and instead would build their grid so that their baseload plants always meet minimum demand and their intermediate and peak plants are able to meet peak loads.

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A DOE report says that current infrastructure can handle 60 million plug in vehicles. Not having the infrastructure is a straw man, everywhere there is a street light there can be vehicle charging.

I also think the 'green' opinion on nuclear power is changing to be in favour of new nuclear build, and 90% of new capacity over the last few years has been wind and gas as this is the cheapest and fastest new capacity to build.

As for the destruction of the US car industry I think they did a pretty good job themselves by ignoring fuel efficiency and other technologies identified during PNGV and failing to noitce a saturating car market and its vulnerability to a downturn.

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It is sad that our education system has degraded to the point where common sense and critical thinking, is always attacked as "shilling".

People are making stupid extreme statements like something is free. Nothing is free -- the laws of unintended consequences always apply -- you just have to be smart enough to look for them and consider them.

Do you really believe the DOE's estimates that if we had 60M electric cars that energy prices wouldn't skyrocket? California STILL has brown-outs and brown days, without adding cars to that. And if you did have "charging" just because you had a street, that would mean people would be using peak power (charging while working). So we can't meet current peak demand, but you think we can increase it? Really? Explain that math. We also don't have the infrastructure I was talking about -- to use the plugged in cars as batteries; emergency electricity to your home, to be able to sell energy back in peak hours (if you aren't using that car), to be able to micro-bill for the charging, and so on.

If you increase the demand for electric power, then where do you get that power? I love the idea of electric cars, and like the idea of the Chevy Volt in the short term even more (range extended). Once battery technology advances a few more generations, electric cars will be great. But there's realities -- we need to grow at a rate that we can handle. We also have to remember all the tradeoffs.

Wind power has been more expensive and less reliable. Solar is even more expensive than wind, and less reliable. So while these are nice "cute" augmentation energies, if you look at the business of it, they are the least efficient. I'm hoping the equations will change, but right now they just don't have close the ability (economically or technically) to provide us with the energy a growing economy demands -- especially if we have a massive changeover from Petroleum to Electric cars. Fortunately the inconveniences and economics of high price electrics (lack of economies of scale) should keep prices high enough, for long enough, for us to adapt our infrastructure. But it's not clear. If it start growing too fast, we'll need more fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) -- in which case you didn't fix the problem at all, you just moved it a little bit.

Please provide any links that the majority of new power generation in the U.S. is coming from wind or solar, otherwise, I'm thinking you've been hitting the hash-pipe a little much lately. Our desires are not the same as reality. Yes, we're starting some new solar programs in Cali, Nev, Az -- and huge efforts will produce the same as small fossil fuel based power (for far more costs, but they come with less reliability, higher risks, and so on). Again, I wish it wasn't so -- but I favor the realities over pipe-dreams.

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@suzy.denim

Right, and who is it again that you are representing?

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Got it. I see clearly now that represent BIG OIL yourself, nice.

I like the way your points support:

1. Using OIL.
2. Wasting base load electricity already being generated.
3. Ignoring that parts of the country generate electricity using Hydro.
4. Ignoring the ever increasing movement to Hydro, Wind, Solar, and probably Nuclear.

Thank you for trying to shoot down the worlds viable solution paths to our energy problems and convincing us to keep the status quo.

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It's so cute when perpetual teenagers can't respond intellectually so lash out at people personally. Hmmm, he's thinking of the whole system or the bigger issues; he must be a shill and attacked. My actual points (not your amazingly daft strawmen) was:

1) Everything has costs and unintended consequences -- if you're smart, you try to look for them. If you're not, you attack anyone that does.

2) The DOE made some statements that are clueless. In theory, if they did say we could handle 60M electric cars, when we're already having many local power issues, they were thinking if we had perfect distribution and usage. And then we could cure world hunger, etc. In this nation, we have peak power problems, especially in some areas, and we don't yet have the systems in place (regulations and technology) to use that off-peak power in the best way. But people I know with electric cars, all plug them in during the day too -- which is peak. A friend with a Tesla and a short commute keeps it plugged in all day and night because they haven't got the 220v converter working, and even then, he's feeling limited in juice/driving. I wish there were magic bullets, but there aren't.

3) Supply and demand. If you increase demand, that supply is coming from somewhere. In the U.S. we can do unreliable peak power plants like Solar and Wind, but for real capacity we tend to go to things like oil, coal, gas. I'm not saying I like that, I'm saying that's the reality.

4) Actually, I was for Nuclear and against the moronic greens that pushed us to more coal plants (by protesting Nuclear). It's the best option -- if you ignore the politics. But with the politics, it's very hard/expensive in the U.S. Hydro has been impeded by greens because it makes evil lakes and impacts the environment. Name a new Dam being built. I like Geothermal as well. Solar and Wind are still the most expensive and least reliable options. So what are we left with? Tidal is cute and promising for coastal areas, just hasn't been successful. So where are we? Back to where we were.

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That's nice. It isn't what you said the first time. But whoever wrote that copy is a zealot.

"and once the capital costs of a wind turbine are paid off it will produce electricity at a cheaper spot price than any other source"... umm, assuming that the turbine is still functional, doesn't require maintenance and so on. Sure, if I factor out the capitalization costs of solar it's pretty damn good too. Other sources require fuel, so their operating costs are always going to be higher -- but they're also more reliable, and produce more power per acre (less impact to the local environment), and so on. I love when people throw out key variables like that. Geothermal and Hydroelectic are also great.

The good news is that Obama-nomics has turned a downturn into a catastrophe. So the U.S. won't need a lot of new power for quite some time. That means we'll be able to replace cheaper reliable power with cleaner and much more expensive and less reliable methods like Solar or WInd. But those costs increases mean that if you're opening new businesses, trying to grow, etc, that this is not the best place to do it. It drives jobs overseas (through higher taxes, more regulation, changing the rules, less investment, etc), and thus we drove more of the world to dirtier power (Chinese and Indian coal, etc.).

Think like a business-person; if you have to pay $5.00/KWh in the U.S. thanks to cap and trade (cap supply, tax trade), or you can pay $.25 in China, where are you going to build that new plant? We'll get cleaner, but the world will get dirtier. (Our $.40/KWh plants were cleaner than their $.25 ones, and we don't have to ship as far, etc.). So it is a net loss, to everyone who understands systems and economics. It SEEMS better because we'll see less local pollution. But it's not really a win.

It's like when California made it hard/impossible to build new power plants -- then claimed they were cleaner, because they had to import power from other dirtier states. Now they pay so much more, that 400,000 jobs have left California for neighboring states, and they have one of the highest unemployment, budget deficits and worst managed economies in the nation. Woot!

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