The Pickens Plan

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Barring any unforeseen obstacles, Zenn will release a car utilizing the EEStor capacitor in 2009. That's probably the 250mi range car they were talking about.

Supposed to cost <$30k as well. The Volt may be obsolete before it even comes out.

heres an article on it
new capacitor

 

[frostedflakes]

I'm a bit skeptical as well, but Lockheed-Martin seems to be impressed with the technology, which says a lot IMO. If it lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. For the 52kWh EESU, EEStor claims a low-volume production cost of $3200 and high-volume production cost of $2100. Assuming they can meet these targets, I have no doubt Zenn will be able to offer the car for under $30k.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Except for the fact that our cars can't run on natural gas... between retooling our infrastructure for biofuels/electric or retooling for a different fossil fuel, the former makes much more sense.

And cellulosic ethanol is a technology that we already have. It costs like $2/gal (and is getting cheaper), and our cellulosic waste products alone (agricultural wastes, cardboard, paper, etc.) could take care of a good chunk of our transportation fuel needs. Switchgrass grown on land unsuitable for food crops could account for a significant portion (maybe all?) of our needs as well.

o rly?
Honda doesn't think so.

 

[frostedflakes]

I wasn't claiming that cars can't be run on natural gas, just that nearly all of the cars on the road use gasoline and would need to be converted or replaced if we transitioned to natural gas.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
A 4-stage+ compressor is needed to get the required PSI and this requires quite a bit of Electrical power(not to mention 480V 3ph for best efficiency)...or would take a very long time(115/230V) and be considerably less efficient.

Efficiency wouldn't be as much an issue if using wind to power the compressors to begin with (per the plan)!

So you can only "fill up" your car if the wind blew enough to compress enough? And it still lessens the net efficiency as you still are using that energy(wind) to compress the gas. So basically there is still a cost.

It's still less an issue than burning a fuel to make the energy. Couple wind with solar, geothermal, more hydro, etc. and you have a far better system than we have now. At some point, you won't be able to "fill up" your car on oil anyway so we had better be looking at something else to fill it up with.

Yes, but my point is that you are taking an energy ladden fuel and expending more energy on it(no matter what the source) to make it usable as a transportation fuel.

Ah, I see what you are saying now. It's not about the wind power, it's about using the NG to begin with (right?). Well, all I can say is it could be a temporary "stop gap" while we develope other methods as well as a chance to remove ourselves from the ME oil tit.

Exactly. We produce a ton of NG domestically and almost ALL of our NG imports come from Canada. We also have a ton of NG still in the ground. Personally, I would rather keep more of our money here domestically and what we do need to import we buy from our friends to the North versus our enemies in the east.

 

[lupi]

I'll believe we can make that much power from the wind when they have a resonable portion of it ongoing with the rest on schedule.

 

[Genx87]

I have a skepticism of this guy's plan. It sounds like he is fishing for federal dollars from the next administration for his wind projects.

/shrug

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: Genx87
I have a skepticism of this guy's plan. It sounds like he is fishing for federal dollars from the next administration for his wind projects.

/shrug

Not federal dollars just tax breaks and obviously some help with transmission lines to tie into the grids.

I would imagine most people wouldn't have a problem with giving tax breaks to renewable energy to get the industries kick started.

Originally posted by: lupi

I'll believe we can make that much power from the wind when they have a resonable portion of it ongoing with the rest on schedule.

Shrug, he is willing to put billions of his own dollars on the line. He seems to have solved the NIMBY problem and has already started on the first 1K MW (will be 4K MW total when complete) project.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Yes to a point. I just want people to understand that it's not just plug it into your house line and think it's good. It'll take quite a bit of power to compress to those levels so you'll have to pay for the gas and also the electrical power to compress it. Even if you had fill stations, they'd be charging more due to the extra expended energy used to compress it.

CNG is already sold around the country. Most of the places its under $2 a gallon. In some places its actually under $1 a gallon. Something else to consider, its cheaper to transfer fuel via pipelines then by trucks. Gas is currently delivered to the retailers (gas stations) by trucks which factors into price. NG would be delivered (for the most part) by existing pipelines. I think the overhead in getting fuel from the ground to the vehicle is actually less then that of gas/diesel.

Its not a silver bullet by any means but I think its a step in the right direction.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Buck Armstrong
I don't know sh@t about T. Boone Pickens or any of the energy alternatives...but I'm ready and willing to try it! Finally somebody has a fvcking plan, so I really don't care if its a short-term band-aid or the end-all, long-term, make-sweet-love-to-Mother-Earth solution so many here seem to be holding out for.

Misguided or not, all I need to hear is no more billions for the Middle East. I'm up for anything that might take the rabid Arab Muslim mob burning flags off the news every night and put it right back in the pages of National Geographic where it belongs.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the US importing most of our oil from outside the middle east?

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Buck Armstrong
I don't know sh@t about T. Boone Pickens or any of the energy alternatives...but I'm ready and willing to try it! Finally somebody has a fvcking plan, so I really don't care if its a short-term band-aid or the end-all, long-term, make-sweet-love-to-Mother-Earth solution so many here seem to be holding out for.

Misguided or not, all I need to hear is no more billions for the Middle East. I'm up for anything that might take the rabid Arab Muslim mob burning flags off the news every night and put it right back in the pages of National Geographic where it belongs.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the US importing most of our oil from outside the middle east?

It's a global market. Just because a particular barrel didn't get pumped out a well in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean our oil use doesn't drive the world market.

 

[frostedflakes]

Yeah I think a good chunk comes from Canada, and they're expected to scale up production significantly now that it's become economical to extract crude from oil sands.

 

[GTKeeper]

Obviously we can agree that this isn't a silver bullet plan.

But I like the plan in that it will generate a whole lot of power by NOT using NG or Oil or Coal. I think its a step in the right direction. Huge windfarm in the midwest/texas area and a huge solar farm in the mojave desert and it looks like we are on our way to start supplying energy for the future.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: ericlp
Solar has come a long way and is ready for prime time now. The only thing that needs to mature is the government and a plan to exploit it.

Still expensive as holy fvck. I don't use any crazy amounts of electricity but I got a quick online quote from a local solar place and they want about $45k for me to replace what I use in electricity with solar and an ROI of 21 years. I wonder if that includes inflation. In any case, it's about 4X more than I'd be willing to start entertaining the thought at.

 

[zephyrprime]

I dunno. If you're going to build and then get people to buy a new car, you might as well just start making electrical cars.

 

[Genx87]

Heh

 

[desy]

I like the urgency of it

Building an electric car can't happen today because there are no storage solutions for said car. Everything is on the drawing board and not scaled up.
Its why Toyota can't meet Prius demand because they can't make enough batteries and those aren't enough to make it an 'all electric vehicile'
It's why we could easily change to NG in the short term for transportation while we scale up production of renewable electricity and perfect storage for all electrical cars.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
I dunno. If you're going to build and then get people to buy a new car, you might as well just start making electrical cars.

CNG works perfectly fine with the internal combustion engines that people currently have. It is not necessary to purchase an entirely new vehicle like it is with an EV.

Edit: Oh, lets not forget two other really small points:

Since its only a change in the fuel storage/delivery system current factories can be retooled to produce them pretty darn quick. Why is their still a waiting list for the Prius?

The majority of the country already has all the major infrastructure (NG pipelines) necessary. The state of California would melt down if 10% of their vehicles suddenly went to the electrical grid for their fuel.


Look, I agree that we need to move to an all electric system of transportation. EVs ARE where its at but unfortunately the technology just isn't there yet. Even if it was there at this moment in time we don't have the ability to seriously mass produce it. Even worse, our grid isn't currently capable of taking on the added load of even a fraction of drivers switching to EV right now. Right now we need to be perfecting EV technology, improving the electrical grid and increasing clean electrical generation. The Pickens plan is the best idea I have seen yet that gets us from here to there.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

He was proving a point. That we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 21%. And natural Gas is already widely used for public transportation.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
21% of our energy from wind: Thumbs up
Natural gas as our transportation fuel: Thumbs down

Got a better idea? We already produce a ton of natural gas right here in the US and it burns MUCH cleaner than gas. Its the perfect stop gap measure until a real alternative can be brought online. Cheaper, cleaner and domestically made but your still not happy?

Biofuels (not produced from food crops) or electric. The technology is basically there, about half a dozen commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants are currently being built in the US, and the technology will only get cheaper. If the EEStor supercapacitor lives up to expectations, it will revolutionize the EV market. Research is being done on producing biodiesel from algae, which have per acre yields orders of magnitude greater than traditional crops. I just think natural gas is a step backward.

Is this traditional capacitor tech, but with higher energy density? If so, have they resolved the exploding capacitors issue?

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: Fern
Adapting some gasoline cars to use natural gas seems a good idea to help transition to electrical vehicles. We can't just all ditch our internal combustion vehicles at once.

Can the natural gas power plants be converted to coal?

If, not I would like to see cost estimates for mothballing the NG plants and switching over to wind.

I would also like to see how the flucuation of wind generated power is handled. What happens on days when it is not windy? I've also recently seen where very windy days caused problems by overloading the grid beyond that which they could handle.

Fern

We ditched steam locomotives overnight when diesel engines came online.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Buck Armstrong
I don't know sh@t about T. Boone Pickens or any of the energy alternatives...but I'm ready and willing to try it! Finally somebody has a fvcking plan, so I really don't care if its a short-term band-aid or the end-all, long-term, make-sweet-love-to-Mother-Earth solution so many here seem to be holding out for.

Misguided or not, all I need to hear is no more billions for the Middle East. I'm up for anything that might take the rabid Arab Muslim mob burning flags off the news every night and put it right back in the pages of National Geographic where it belongs.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the US importing most of our oil from outside the middle east?

It's a global market. Just because a particular barrel didn't get pumped out a well in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean our oil use doesn't drive the world market.

I alnmost blureted out Canada as the primary import source, but here are the actual 207 numbers:


1. Canada 680.533 million barrels
2. Saudi Arabia 530.245
3. Mexico 514.48
4. Venezuela 419.841
5. Nigeria 394.856
6. Angola 181.215
7. Iraq 177.009
8. Algeria 161.755
9. Ecuador 72.138
10. Kuwait 64.306

source

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: ericlp
Solar has come a long way and is ready for prime time now. The only thing that needs to mature is the government and a plan to exploit it.

Still expensive as holy fvck. I don't use any crazy amounts of electricity but I got a quick online quote from a local solar place and they want about $45k for me to replace what I use in electricity with solar and an ROI of 21 years. I wonder if that includes inflation. In any case, it's about 4X more than I'd be willing to start entertaining the thought at.

What that doesn't figure in is what happens 10 years from now when the same install will cost $5K due to technological advances. And hat this would do to the supply/demand curve regarding traditional electrical power sources.

I'd rather just wait 10 years.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

With electric cars, I always wonder about people that live in places like Maine. These cars are going to have electric heaters? And these cars will be thermally insulated just as well as they are today? I simply do not see electric cars as feasible everywhere. In some areas, you will need to run AC in your cars in the summer. Hell, Connecticut fits that.

I guess I simply see hybrids as a requirement in some areas of the country.

 

[jackace]

They have already started putting tons of these windmills up where I'm from. They line canyon rims and sit on top of hills out in the valleys.

This is not a new idea he has come up with, but he is someone with enough money to actually get things going. Thats a lot of what we need. We need people with the financial resources to step up and do something.