The end of energy scarcity

[doodle]

Construction equipment can easily be electrified. They use all-electric heavy machinery in various European cities already. It works fine. And the world's biggest EV is a giant mining dump truck that never needs to be recharged, due to the nature of its work. It's fascinating. See https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ump-

Electrifying everything in construction is the way to go. All those man lifts and gradealls and cranes just sit around in the sun all day anyways...perfect for solar charging...also needs a lot of ballast weight...perfect for batteries. Even if batteries were small could easily plug in overnight on jobsite. Dealing with stinky diesel fumes all day sucks. Worked on some log and timber stuff as well...I wish they would replace the chainsaws with electric too!

[yankees60]

Construction equipment can easily be electrified. They use all-electric heavy machinery in various European cities already. It works fine. And the world's biggest EV is a giant mining dump truck that never needs to be recharged, due to the nature of its work. It's fascinating. See https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ump-

Electrifying everything in construction is the way to go. All those man lifts and gradealls and cranes just sit around in the sun all day anyways...perfect for solar charging...also needs a lot of ballast weight...perfect for batteries. Even if batteries were small could easily plug in overnight on jobsite. Dealing with stinky diesel fumes all day sucks. Worked on some log and timber stuff as well...I wish they would replace the chainsaws with electric too!

Pointedstick has well made the case for solar.

However, batteries seem to be another case. Whether they be for electric cars or for storage of electricity generated by solar.

Those batteries seem to have limited life and are extremely expensive? Thereby adding significant costs when looking at the true cost of own over a five, ten, or fifteen year period for either owning an electric car or as part of a home energy system?

What are thought on these batteries?

Vinny

[Pointedstick]

Large lithium-ion batteries are indeed too expensive and not energy-dense enough to meet all the world's needs at the moment. It is for this reason that I am not particularly sanguine about the prospect of electrified aircraft, at least barring a quantum leap in battery technology. Which is possible because billions of dollars are going into battery R&D right now.

However they are probably better than you're fearing. If a lithium-ion battery is properly heated and cooled to maintain an even temperature, and it is kept from over or under-charging, it will last a very very long time--like over two thousand full charge/discharge cycles before showing any degradation. And speaking of degradation, lithium ion batteries degrade rather than dying. After thousands of full charge/discharge cycles, a poorly-maintained battery will still probably have 80% of its original charge capacity left. Not as good as new, but still usable.

There's a lot of really interesting information available here: https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php ... _batteries

Early EVs got bad press because of the Nissan Leaf, which had (and still has!) no thermal management capabilities for its battery. As a result, it degraded and lost range quickly. But all other EVs have proper liquid cooling and the batteries exhibit very very little degradation. I have a Bolt which has among the lowest rate of degradation due to very conservative engineering choices made with regards to maximum capacity and charging speed. I recommend watching all the videos here for those with engineering interests who want to learn more about the subject: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9uczD2JnTT

As for total cost of ownership, every single study on the subject shows the same thing, EVs have a radically lower TCO compared to a similar gas-powered model. See the many links at https://cleantechnica.com/2020/03/28/ch ... alculator/

[doodle]

I never even considered the idea od using the cars battery to feed house. That's a great idea...wasn't aware that it was even an option on some models.

Construction equipment can easily be electrified. They use all-electric heavy machinery in various European cities already. It works fine. And the world's biggest EV is a giant mining dump truck that never needs to be recharged, due to the nature of its work. It's fascinating. See https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ump-

Electrifying everything in construction is the way to go. All those man lifts and gradealls and cranes just sit around in the sun all day anyways...perfect for solar charging...also needs a lot of ballast weight...perfect for batteries. Even if batteries were small could easily plug in overnight on jobsite. Dealing with stinky diesel fumes all day sucks. Worked on some log and timber stuff as well...I wish they would replace the chainsaws with electric too!

Pointedstick has well made the case for solar.

However, batteries seem to be another case. Whether they be for electric cars or for storage of electricity generated by solar.

Those batteries seem to have limited life and are extremely expensive? Thereby adding significant costs when looking at the true cost of own over a five, ten, or fifteen year period for either owning an electric car or as part of a home energy system?

What are thought on these batteries?

Vinny

Storage seems to be the biggest roadblock. I wonder about larger systems pumping water uphill into resovoir as alternative to battery for storage.

Toyota is supposedly coming out with some pretty impressive sounding solid state batteries in the next few years. Lithium long term is a no go...mining is destructive environmentally and there isn't enough lithium to go around for worldwide adoption anyways...besides, the manufacturing in oxygen free environments and sensitivity to cold aren't great features. I'm very confident that we will figure out battery technology in the next decade that will solve a lot of present problems. I'm fascinated by the potential of this tech. I'm not as interested in the hydrogen fuel cell approach.

[Kriegsspiel]

On the other hand, I'm not clear on how you make renewable equipment without fossil fuels for resources extraction and processing. Have there been some developments in that area? As far as I can tell, we could do it sustainably, but not at our current consumption level/population level.

Construction equipment can easily be electrified. They use all-electric heavy machinery in various European cities already. It works fine. And the world's biggest EV is a giant mining dump truck that never needs to be recharged, due to the nature of its work. It's fascinating. See https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ump-truck/

That's a cool truck/system. What about smelting, where you need a lot of heat? Last time I looked at it they were talking about using a ton of mirrors to focus the sun on something, or other methods that were much more expensive than smelting with fossil fuels. Which wouldn't be too bad if there was less demand (behavior/tech efficiency progress).

Note that you can carry unused portions of the solar PV tax credit forward into subsequent tax years. So what you can do is give yourself a bigger tax burden by contributing to a Roth IRA instead of a Traditional IRA or a 401k, and then offset that bigger tax burden with the solar PV tax credit for multiple years. So you are basically paying no taxes on your Roth contributions during this time.

It looks like buying a 3k system would work out pretty nice, tax-wise.

* Though I admit that with an EV, I feel like the drive-through window is guilt free now since there's no more idling, and I'm using it more than I did before. But that might also be COVID.

I turn my car off instead of idling in a drive-thru, red lights, etc. Most likely my next car will be an EV.

EDIT: Oh hey, you have a Bolt! That's the one I'm thinking of.

[Pointedstick]

Storage seems to be the biggest roadblock. I wonder about larger systems pumping water uphill into resovoir as alternative to battery for storage.

Toyota is supposedly coming out with some pretty impressive sounding solid state batteries in the next few years. Lithium long term is a no go...mining is destructive environmentally and there isn't enough lithium to go around for worldwide adoption anyways...besides, the manufacturing in oxygen free environments and sensitivity to cold aren't great features. I'm very confident that we will figure out battery technology in the next decade that will solve a lot of present problems. I'm fascinated by the potential of this tech. I'm not as interested in the hydrogen fuel cell approach.

I agree. Li-ion batteries are not going to work for the whole world, and it's not just the lithium. The cobalt cathode is super bad to mine too. That's why cobalt-free Lithium-iron-polymer batteries are so promising. They're already in a lot of Chinese EVs. We're behind. There are other battery chemistries which are very interesting. Nickel-Iron batteries have existed for over a hundred years and have essentially unlimited longevity. Their power-to-weight ratio is terrible, but this presents no real problems for stationary storage.

I really have faith that we'll innovate our way out of this crisis. Austerity, reduced consumption, more responsible individual behavior, not so much. Sucks, but it is what it is.

What about smelting, where you need a lot of heat?

Lots of iron smelting and recycling already uses something called an electric arc furnace. They are actually over 150 years old. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace. So for this, you just need to supply the electricity using renewables rather than fossil fuels and you're golden. Same thing for huge rotary kilns used in cement production. It's already a solved problem. This is the power of electrification. Once everything uses electricity instead of gas, you can switch out how you're producing the electricity according to whatever means is most ecologically, economically, or strategically important. This is a flexibility you don't have with fossil fuels. Imagine how many wars over coal and oil could have been avoided over the 20th century if energy-hungry countries had the capacity for energy self-sufficiency even without any fossil fuel reserves.

Last time I looked at it they were talking about using a ton of mirrors to focus the sun on something, or other methods that were much more expensive than smelting with fossil fuels. Which wouldn't be too bad if there was less demand (behavior/tech efficiency progress).

Something that's flown under a lot of people's radar is the total economic destruction of non-PV solar systems. They just can't compete with PV. It turns out to be much cheaper to use solar panels to generate electricity than it is to use mirrors or thermal collectors to produce heat to vaporize a liquid and then transfer that heat elsewhere. PV is also much more mechanically simple and versatile. You can do a lot more things with electricity than you can with heat--including simply turning it into heat.