Lists? Yeah, electric vehicles get on lists. Hopeful, hopeful lists
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Here are five technologies that "could change everything":
- Advanced car batteries
- Carbon capture and storage
- Space-based solar power
- Utility storage
- Next-generation biofuels
This is the list culled by the Wall Street Journal, and we note that plug-in vehicles benefit/are tied to four of those five items. All five if you include things like the E85-capable range extender in the plug-in Chevy Volt.
Meanwhile, over at the Seattle Times, Tesla was named one of eight companies that are changing the world. Other companies on the list are working on technical, gadget-y advances (laser broadband streaming data at 1.25 gigabytes a second) and eco-advances (green building materials) and more.
What we take away from these lists is that people have a lot of hope that technology will save us. Somehow, someday. Just wait until a better widget comes along, then all will be well.
[Source: Seattle Times, Wall Street Journal]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sasparilla 5:44PM (10/19/2009)
The Journal article was interesting, but I had to laugh at the space based solar power thing.
Besides sending down invisible columns of death through the atmosphere (who would want to accidently fly through those incredibly strong beams of microwaves that you can't see) - the whole process would be horrendously expensive (since its very, very expensive to get things into orbit, let alone Geosynchronous orbit where you can't work on them if something breaks), there's cheaper green solutions available already without the invisible columns of death rays...obviously the author wasn't very discriminating in his selections (nor did he cast is net very broadly).
For a possible game changer I would have included something like the focus fusion research that is going on:
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/lpps_newly_assembled_dpf_achieves_first_shots_and_pinch/
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Jeremy 5:53PM (10/19/2009)
Hahaha. Certainly sounds like death ray ;-)
The article does say they're "considered safe" though:
"Solar panels in orbit about 22,000 miles up beam energy in the form of microwaves to earth, where it's turned into electricity and plugged into the grid. (The low-powered beams are considered safe.)"
KK 7:04PM (10/19/2009)
The microwave beam used by the solar power satellites to beam down power would be many miles across. The power density is low enough that it doesn't cause harm, at least not in the short term. There *may* be a problem if you live inside the beam, and there may be possible effects on wildlife that need to be investigated, but it's not a "death ray" by any stretch of the imagination. It's more like being right next to a radio station.
paulwesterberg 5:46PM (10/19/2009)
What is the mileage of the chevy volt burning e85 in ranged extending mode?
Are next-gen biofuels really a game changer if we continue to waste 75% of the energy in an ice? It would be nice to have economically viable, renewable biofuels that do not displace food crops but I am not sure that it would ever be possible for them to come close to the efficiency of wind/solar combined with electric vehicles or electric rail.
Carbon capture and storage is a pipe dream of the oil companies, you still have problems with hazardous mining operations and toxic ash sludge.
Space-based solar power takes the expense of solar power and multiplies it with the expense of space travel.
Utilities already have pumped water storage that is very efficient.
But we will always have a need for some liquid fuels so improving the viability of all renewables will be necessary in order to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels before reserves dwindle and extraction becomes prohibitively expensive.
The Wall Street Journal is a corporate mouthpiece, they don't like socialism(in healthcare), but are desperately searching for the next-gen energy boondoggle.
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hbonwit 9:32PM (10/19/2009)
"Utilities already have pumped water storage that is very efficient."
Can you give any examples? I had heard the roundtrip was less than 60% efficient storage (not so "very efficient" in my book).
Thanks!
3PeaceSweet 3:50AM (10/20/2009)
Pumped hydro is about 90% each way so closer to 80% on the round trip.
wincros 6:00PM (10/19/2009)
Despite their protestations, solar cells in outer space is science fiction. And logically why have a middle man. Just do solar cells here and tie the power grids around the world together. That is technology that is available now.
The stupidest is their example of pumping CO2 underground. It is still here folks and less ably sequestered than the CO2 and methane that is being released by the currently melting permafrost. It ignores all the other, many problems of burning coal.
These are just as silly as the old Popular Science fly your jet pack to work stories of the last 50 years. They have the added stupidity is that if you want to take them seriously they are so far in the future they will be too late. It is just a distraction to keep anyone from doing the real work of solving the problems now.
Maybe the aliens will save us from ourselves. :-)
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rbtp 6:02PM (10/19/2009)
I worry a little when energy, transportation, and the resulting climate implications are main problems we focus on. Even if we had infinite free clean energy, we'd still face other resource limits due to an expanding population. Sometimes I think that finding a miracle cure to energy/transportation is the worst thing that could happen. We'd all be lulled back to sleep and fall off some other resource cliff like soil depletion or water shortages. Every discussion needs to include sustainability and population control. Finding a way to change the way we think about how we inhabit the planet, that's the game changer.
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Laurens 1:13PM (10/20/2009)
You're the one making sense. It is not pollution sec, but the sheer number of people creating it. We're running out of everything. Maybe space is the solution :-)
Serge 6:05PM (10/19/2009)
I would add fuel cells to the list. Not the hydrogen kind though; those will need 3 additional miracles/breakthroughs to be in position to "change everything." I'm talking about either direct alcohol fuel cells, which run on methanol or ethanol, or solid oxide fuel cells, which run on fossil fuels, but are potentially more efficient than an ICE.
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Boyprodigy1 6:19PM (10/19/2009)
Its not that electric vehicles "Might" Change everything, but that they "WILL" change everything. I've been watching battery advancements accelerate over the past year and i am in college right now watching people basically dedicate their lives to it. Trust me, its happening.
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paulwesterberg 6:36PM (10/19/2009)
And the technology is viable now. Future improvements that increase efficiency will just be icing on the cake.
Paul 8:53PM (10/19/2009)
Scratch that WSJ list for credibility! Space based power is even less technically feasible than 'clean coal'!! LOL
They say COST is the biggest obstacle, more like PHYSICS. The radio waves they want to transmit the power to earth with suffer from something called the Inverse square law. The only successful test to date has been over 1 mile at 85% efficiency...
The results over 22,000 miles from geostationary orbit will be just 1/500 Millionth or less than 0.0000002% of the energy transmitted will reach the receiver... might set a world record for energy inefficiency!
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KK 10:58PM (10/19/2009)
You're the one who needs to brush up on physics. The inverse square law doesn't apply if you can create a narrow beam, and have a large enough receiving antenna to capture all (or most) of it. The beam width is determined by the size of the transmitter antenna, which is assembled in orbit, so it can be tens of miles across if you want to. But a couple of miles should be enough, with a similar size receiving antenna. (And neither antenna needs to be a solid dish; an array of small antennas would work fine.)
Paul 12:00AM (10/20/2009)
"The inverse square law doesn't apply" LOL That's hilarious!
The inverse square law ALWAYS applies. Even with a directional beam antenna electromagnetic radiation still scatters as it propagates away from the point source. The power density of an electromagnetic wave is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance from the source. Doubling the distance from a transmitter means that the power density of the radiated wave at that new location is reduced to one-quarter of its previous value.
Have a look at Direct Broadcast Satellite footprints, they're the size of continents and that doesn't include side lobe losses. The most successful test to date used a parabolic dish (the highest gain antenna in use today) and achieved 82.5% energy efficiency over just 1 mile. If they had doubled the distance to 2 miles they would've got only 20% energy efficiency, 4 miles = 5%. Keep doubling the distance up to 22,000 miles... it simply doesn't work.
http://www.gizmag.com/pge-sign-up-for-200-mw-of-baseload-space-solar-power/11495/
KK 1:15AM (10/20/2009)
> "The inverse square law doesn't apply" LOL That's hilarious!
We can argue semantics if you like. But imagine pointing a laser pointer at a Letter size paper 1 ft away, then move the paper 10 ft away from the laser. Is the paper now receiving 1/10 of the light? Of course not, it's still receiving almost all the light. The same happens with the highly directional beam from a solar power satellite.
> Have a look at Direct Broadcast Satellite footprints, they're the
> size of continents and that doesn't include side lobe losses.
That's from an antenna a couple of meters in diameter. If you increase the diameter by 3 orders of magnitude, the beam footprint decreasese by 3 orders of magnitude - i.e. it reduces from a few thousand miles to a few miles.
Chris M 2:51AM (10/20/2009)
Um, actually, the plan is to use a "Maser", the microwave equivalent of a laser. It produces a narrow collimated microwave beam that doesn't spread much, nor will it require a huge transmitting antenna. Still, the receiving antennas would still have to cover an area several miles in diameter. When you add up the cost of constructing the spaced based solar collector (including billions for shipping!) and the cost of the huge receiving antenna array, and the energy losses, it cannot be economically competitive, even with abundant sunlight in space. It would be cheaper and more efficient to simply build solar arrays here on earth, even if we had to store energy for nighttime use.
But the worst problem is that the solar power sattelite intercepts sunlight that would normally not strike the earth, and re-directs that energy to earth, increasing global warming.
3n1gma 9:55PM (10/19/2009)
What about water power and super-advanced electric motors? Oh yea they don't like anything "fringe" they can't make money off of.
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Chris M 2:56AM (10/20/2009)
We do have water power, but the best hydroelectric sites have already been tapped, and the remaining potential sites have white-water rafting enthusiasts protecting them. Oh, well, there are still a few tidal and ocean current sites to be tapped.
As for "super advanced electric motors", the average electric motor is over 90% efficient, the best are getting near 98% efficient. So we've already got those, we've had them for years.
lne937s 10:09AM (10/20/2009)
"Only 3 percent of the 80,000 dams in the United States are used to generate power"
If we retrofit existing dams, there is a huge untapped resource for electric power- without any added environmental impact...
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/retrofitting-non-electctric-dams-for-power/
There are also a lot of other opportunities to collect power without damming. Micro hydro projects also offer potential anywhere there is water and a drop in elevation.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/rivers-looking-attractive-for-energy-again/