The Issue with going all Electric

Discussion in 'Electric Propulsion' started by jehardiman, Sep 5, 2022.

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  1. Milehog
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  2. Will Gilmore
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    Will Gilmore Senior Member

    As a homesteader who has to drive over three hours to get to a big city, I love big cities. They should be bigger, denser, more clearly defined and offer more affordable housing with more jobs so more people move out of the countryside to live packed together to live more efficiently inside them. That what, I will see less and less of the light, noise, and air pollution that others bring with them when they move up here. Hey! It's f'n cold up here, there's no shopping, no night life, no jobs, don't move here, stay in the city where you are content. I'm just trying to be a god neighbor by warning you that the Winters are dangerous and unpleasant. Florida and Southern California, that's the place you want to be, so you should load up that truck and move to Beverly... hills, that is. Swimming pools and movie stars.

    Doesn't that sound a whole lot better than crowding your @$$around my house?

    Maybe, but with electric, distributed sourcing is far more possible and efficient than with fossil fuels. I could put a wind generator on my roof and solar panels and store the energy on the grid that's already installed, no batteries needed. A gas or diesel generator could do the same thing, but not as cleanly. I also would still have to rely upon the oil companies for my fuel.

    -Will
     
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  3. Rumars
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    Rumars Senior Member

    While I mostly agree with @jehardiman above, there are some points that I feel need more attention. The earth is mostly a closed system, we only transform and redistribute existing resources. All of this requires energy, and the problem is that fossil sourced energy and raw materials are much cheaper then anything else. Recycling is extremely expensive and our society is based on access to very cheap resources. To give you an example, some german scientists have gone and collected plastic from the sea, then proceeded to make a useful object out of it. That object was a comb, and the production price was 100€. You can buy the same size comb for 1€ in any shop, and it includes shipping from china and a profit margin for everyone involved. This illustrates the fact that we can (mostly) have a circular resource economy, we can't pay for it right now. There are indeed things we can't recycle right now, and some of those are toxic, but storage until we can do so is available.

    As for the matter at hand, the electric economy, the issue is the same, price. We can generate clean energy, but every conversion step makes the end product more expensive. For example the shipping industry will be going methanol and ammonia in the foreseeable future. The efficiency from generation to propulsion for completely green fuel shipping is comparable to steam engines. All that lost energy has to be paid for, it doesn't just come out of the ground like oil. Keep in mind, methanol and ammonia are just a few steps away from electricity, if you go further like jet fuel or plastics it gets worst. Right now, altough expensive, batteries have the best overall efficiency (and price) because they require the least conversion. There are batteries that use more common materials, like the sodium ones, hot or room temperature, and the tech is advancing.

    Unfortunately nuclear is not an option, it's simply to expensive compared to wind and other renewables. I'm not even talking about the waste problem, I'm talking about initial investment and lifetime operation costs. This has been known for quite some time and it's the real reason you don't see SMR's everywhere and why the soviets developed and deployed the RMBK the way they did.
     
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  4. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

    aaahhh.. that takes me back to student days!
     
  5. DCockey
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    DCockey Senior Member

    Storing energy on the grid. A very common misconception, encouraged by at least one large installer of solar systems in northern New England. No energy is stored on the grid. The power produced by a wind generator or solar panels and sent onto the grid is immediately consumed by another customer on the grid. It is not stored. If a customer uses electricity from the grid then that power is generated (could be using fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, wave energy, etc) as it is used. An exception is if the grid has it's own energy storage system such as electro-chemical batteries or pumped storage and storage capacity is available when power is being sent to the grid and the battery is being discharged when power from the grid is being consumed.
     
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  6. Flotation
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    Flotation Senior Member

    The amount of solar energy hitting the earth in one hour is more than enough to power the world for one year.
     
  7. jehardiman
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    jehardiman Senior Member

    You poor ...person..., you had to read it and write papers on it also.....?
     
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  8. seandepagnier
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    seandepagnier Senior Member

    A lot of people fail to consider the emissions of extracting, transporting, refining, storing fossil fuels, and all the infrastructure involved such as helicopter rides to oil platforms and all the secondary emissions of helicopter production, as well as tertiary high-energy lifestyle of the oil workers, pilots and others involved in facilitating all of this. Imagine if most of those people could be subsistence farmers instead. Wouldn't it be an incredible achievement of human consciousness to willingly make this change and at the same time ensure a stable society rather than chaos and collapse?
    You dont need neodymium magnets to make an electric motor. Using gears, a very small electric motor spinning very fast can develop a lot of power. The efficiency can actually be very similar to a much heavier and more expensive motor, but gears do make noise.
    I will stop right here and say emphatically that the same power availability is _not_ required.

    If you consider the energy consumption of a diesel engine, and how people use them, it is basically a complete waste. The drive train itself is terribly inefficient just because the propeller slip on a typical inboard yields 25% which is unacceptable, but mostly people are using the motor when they could put the sails, and go basically the same speed on the same course: I see this all the time. Sometimes if they just waited a day or two to sail then it would be a better ride anyway... but they motor instead and talk about how they only burn 2 gallons in 6 hours not realizing that is far more energy than almost anyone in the world consumes in a day, especially to move a boat around which doesn't need fuel to accomplish. There is no reason to try to replicate this behavior with electric. This guy "jimmy cornell" tried to, and miserably failed, and its really annoying to have people use that as "evidence" that electric can't work. It is instead evidence that he doesn't tack in and out of harbors and has fundamental misunderstanding of energy after being a diesel junkie his whole life. In any case, this is just an example of what not to do as just about everything on that boat was as inefficient and expensive as possible. You can succeed on 1/100th the budget where he failed.

    Where I am now, I have a few solar panels, electric propulsion on 33ft trimaran. 3 knots at 300 watts. Battery is 10lb lithium battery, about 1kwh (made from repurposed cells). There are some emissions, producing the battery and motor comparable to an ebike.. the motor is actually ebike hub motor from 2005.

    Do I need electric propulsion? obviously not, as I only used it a few times to go in a circle and anchor back in the same spot. I use the sails and sculling oar for actual navigation, and I think both of these are lower emissions than what is possible with electric, but importantly as well: I absolutely do not depend on the electric motor in any way, so the energy (solar) can be completely unreliable and it will never concern me. I also made a tow generator and can recharge under sail.

    No one should be replacing a diesel inboard with an electric and drive the same tiny inefficient propeller unless the plan is to use it as a backup to the main motor (that swings a big propeller with high efficiency), or for maneuvering in bursts or perhaps shallow water where the main prop hits the bottom. It makes no sense from an efficiency standpoint to use the existing bronze propeller and shaft present on most existing sailboats for covering actual distance. Even if you charge with renewables, as mentioned, solar panels take significant emissions, so the amount of solar panels and batteries should be kept minimal. Besides, why wouldn't you want to more than double the propulsive efficiency? The only inconvenience is a propeller more than 4 times the typical diameter, but its not a problem either, just less convenient.
    Batteries were plenty good enough when they were lead acid, and those were recyclable. With lithium its even easier and more efficient to do everything and they are very cheap to buy. My battery cost only $300 including all the electronics and this is not even a good deal. It is a shame that lithium batteries dont cost much more (with a rebate when you turn them back) to ensure proper disposal. Even at twice the price it's incredible to get a battery that can power the boat 20 miles at 2 knots or 12 miles at 3 knots and only weigh 5.5kg.
    I am trying to figure out how to build aluminum-air batteries but I dont think its so simple. Does anyone know? These would be primary cells (non-rechargable) from scrap metal, and used to recharge the main battery in rare instances. The aluminum air battery itself weighing much less than a lithium battery for the energy stored.
    I am trying to make electronics reusable, modular and upgradable by writing free software autopilot pypilot.
     
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  9. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

    Busted.... :(
     
  10. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

  11. Flotation
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    Flotation Senior Member

    The IEA reports have consistently shown a heavy bias against renewable energy. The graph below shows how with every new report their predictions about the share of renewables in the electricity market had to be adjusted towards reality:[​IMG]
    Source: IEA Gets Hilariously Slammed For Obsessively Inaccurate Renewable Energy Forecasts https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/06/iea-gets-hilariously-slammed-continuously-pessimistic-renewable-energy-forecasts/

    In this new report they do not shy from comparing the use of minerals (metals?) such as lithium between ICE en BE vehicles:

    BEV-ICE-coparison.png

    In the report social-economical and geopolitical problems surrounding the use of raw materials needed for the energy transition are described at great length. What is missing is a comparison with the impact fossil fuels have in this regard. There is no mention of the almost continuous wars in the middle east after WW2 which for a large part can be contributed to our need for fossil fuels. Countries destabilized by the fossil fuel industry like Nigeria also are not mentioned. Nor is the huge problem the world is presented with at the moment now the worlds biggest gas supplier has started a war and is using its gas supplies to reach its geopolitical goals.

    When the IEA does not hesitate to present a graph illustrating how battery electric vehicles (very obviously) use more lithium and other metals typically associated with them than ICE cars they should also honestly compare the differences in social, environmental and geopolitical consequences between the two.

    There are other glaring omissions.

    For example, new generations of lithium batteries reaching the market at this moment have eliminated the need for cobalt:
    Tesla is already using cobalt-free LFP batteries in half of its new cars produced https://electrek.co/2022/04/22/tesla-using-cobalt-free-lfp-batteries-in-half-new-cars-produced/

    Projects in Germany and the US are starting up to extract lithium and other minerals from briny waters the likes of which can be found in deep a aquifers all over the world:
    Zero Carbon Lithium Project, Upper Rhine Valley, Germany https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/zero-carbon-lithium-project-upper-rhine-valley-germany/
    Brine left over from sea water desalination plants can also be used in processes like these. Fresh water production from seawater is almost guaranteed to increase in the (near)future because of global warming.

    Anyone interested in the topic of renewable energy should take note of these studies:

    This 2017 Stanford study shows how a transition to renewable energy is possible:
    Roadmaps for an All-Renewable Energy World https://woods.stanford.edu/news/roadmaps-all-renewable-energy-world

    "a new study led by Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Jacobson and 26 coauthors have produced roadmaps for 139 countries, representing 99 percent of worldwide emissions, to transition to all clean, renewable energy by 2050."


    The same team produced a study in 2018 that proved it can be done so without blackouts:
    Avoiding blackouts with 100% renewable energy | Stanford News https://news.stanford.edu/2018/02/08/avoiding-blackouts-100-renewable-energy/

    "In their paper, published as a manuscript this week in Renewable Energy, the researchers propose three different methods of providing consistent power among all energy sectors – transportation; heating and cooling; industry; and agriculture, forestry and fishing – in 20 world regions encompassing 139 countries after all sectors have been converted to 100 percent clean, renewable energy."


    A 2022 Stanford study details how these goals are financially affordable:
    https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145Country/22-145Countries.pdf

    Summery:

    Study finds 100% renewables would pay off within 6 years https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/08/study-finds-100-renewables-would-pay-off-within-six-years/

    "New research from Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson outlines how 145 countries could meet 100% of their business-as-usual energy needs with wind, water, solar and energy storage. The study finds that in all the countries considered, lower-cost energy and other benefits mean the required investment for transition is paid off within six years. The study also estimates that worldwide, such a transition would create 28 million more jobs than it lost."
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2022
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  12. Alan Cattelliot
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    Alan Cattelliot Senior Member

    Personnaly, I would rather see the world go round like this :

    Than a world,whose lands are covered with solar panels ( which rise up the earth albedo, by the way), pierced with extractions holes endangering ground waters of pollutions , and seas over exploited to their depths, seeking metals from polymetallic nodules.
    Wouldn't it be falling from Charybdis into Scylla ?

    Please ! Let the oceans be ! Don't let "renewable energies" means increasing our pressure on mother earth !
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2022
  13. Flotation
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    Flotation Senior Member

    Brine mining - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining#Deep_brines_in_sedimentary_basins


    If you had read the article you just quoted it would have been clear these brines have nothing to do with oceans.


    Zero Carbon Lithium project mineralisation and reserves
    The lithium mineralisation at Taro is hosted within confined, subsurface aquifers associated with the Permo-Triassic strata sandstone at depths ranging between 2,165m and 4,004m below the surface. Mineralisation at the Ortenau licence occurs within confined, subsurface aquifers of the Lower Triassic Buntsandstein Group sandstone at depths between 2,165m and 4,004m below the surface.

    Probable reserves were estimated at 1.12 million tonnes (Mt) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) grading 181ppm of lithium, as of January 2021. Indicated and inferred mineral resources were estimated at 15.85Mt of LCE grading 181mg/l of lithium.

    Mining and processing at Zero Carbon Lithium project
    The lithium extraction from underground aquifers at the Zero Carbon Lithium project is proposed to utilise deep geothermal wells drilled to depths ranging between 2km and 5km to pump hot, mineralised brine to the surface. Cones of depression developed around the wells will allow the brine to flow into the well.

    The project will use direct lithium extraction (DLE) methods to extract lithium from the brine solution. The brine will be pre-treated and purified to extract lithium using a sorbent to produce lithium chloride concentrate.

    The concentrated lithium chloride eluate will be transported to the CLP where the solution will be purified and converted into lithium hydroxide solution using electrolysis. The solution will undergo crystallisation and purification processes to produce the final lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LHM) product.


    A pilot plant to demonstrate DLE from the project became operational in April 2021 while the first battery-quality lithium hydroxide was produced from the pilot operations in September 2021.

    Geothermal power plants at the mine site
    The Zero Carbon Lithium project will co-produce geothermal energy and lithium hydroxide. The same renewable energy will power the lithium extraction process.

    The project is expected to have five geothermal plants, including three at Ortenau and two at Taro, to produce 74MW of renewable energy in total using heat from the deposit.
     
  14. portacruise
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    portacruise Senior Member


  15. Kayakmarathon
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    Kayakmarathon Senior Member

    I'll strike while the irony is hot. California recently announced its plans eliminate ALL gas powered vehicles in the future. A couple days later the governor asked people not to recharge their electric vehicles because the grid was already over loaded from running air conditioners during hot weather.
     
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