Dadamotive: Life after cheap oil: June 2009 Archives

The Cost of Clean Energy

Posted by Herman | June 18 | 2009 9:45 AM | permalink

The proverb "where the rubber meets the road" points to the reality check one has to do with any concept: what will be the cost?

Altenergystocks has an interesting post on this subject: the available numbers (USA), the sensitivity for interest and depreciation, and a graphical comparison of the integral cost per MWh. Food for thought.

Lumeneo

Posted by Herman | June 18 | 2009 9:22 AM | permalink

Is it a car, is it a motorcycle? Nowadays you see more and more hybrid designs, with 3 and 4 wheels. Like the Piaggio MP3, the Carver, the T-rex, the Aptera and many others (see a list of 3 wheelers over here).

You have to hand it to the French to come up with yet another variation.

A 4 wheeled, 1 person (electric) vehicle which tilts in corners.

Nice design, very small which is great for commuting in cities. It will keep you safe and dry which is another advantage.

Range up to 150 km with a 10 KWh battery, speed up to 130 kph. Not bad.

Only the price: 24,500 euros is way too much. The lower fuel bill (approx 1200 euro per year) will not compensate for the higher investment. Too bad.

Electric car sharing

Posted by Willem | June 17 | 2009 6:31 PM | permalink

Streetcar, the UK's largest pay-as-you-go-car-sharing-club, has announced that it will offer members a specially adapted Toyota Prius. It can be expected that this is a success, since members of a car-sharing-club in general care about the environment. While a trial at first, Streetcar has announced to increas the number of electric cars if demand will rise. The idea of a car-sharing-club going electric for small distances in the city seems so simple to me that in my opinion it is bound to be a success. Because this way you can have the best of both worlds: an electric car for small distances and a conventionally powered car for larger distances. And at rates from 5,95 pounds per hour you can't call it expensive...

Source: Gas2.0

" A plane can (almost never) be worse for climate than train"

Posted by Herman | June 09 | 2009 12:46 PM | permalink

A recent article in The New Scientist touts a catchy header: "A plane can be worse for the climate than a train". The header will most likely be found very soon in many newspapers and blogs, because hardly anyone will bother to read the original, thorough and comprehensive study.

The conclusion of the study, if you read carefully and study the graphs, is the opposite. Trains are almost always better than airplanes and have a lot of room for improvement (renewable electricity, less concrete while constructing railways and stations).

This is not journalism, it is manipulation.

Photo voltaics: the state of affairs

Posted by Herman | June 04 | 2009 9:57 PM | permalink

An excellent presentation of the state of affairs in PV technology (solar cells) and the road ahead by MIT's Tonio Buonassisi.

(Its a long video but a good overview).

DIY Hybrid

Posted by Herman | June 04 | 2009 9:48 PM | permalink

It's kind of ugly, but still.....A build-it-yourself plug-in hybrid vehicle, capable of doing (claimed) 100 km on 2 litre of diesel. You can purchase all the plans and CAD designs for a few hundred dollars and build it in your garage.

Could anyone interest a European designer in creating a more continental and sophisticated body? Please?

Negative emissions

Posted by Herman | June 03 | 2009 6:18 PM | permalink

One of the taskforces of the IEA (International Energy Agency) is taskforce 33: Thermal Gasification of Biomass, sharing the knowhow on how to build large scale biomass gasification factories. Gasification has the potential to generate Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) from biomass: it even makes sense to import biomass.

Recently it has become clear to me that there is another big advantage to this process.

Thermal gasification produces enough heat to keep the gasification running and some more. At the end of the process you have invested 30 % of the raw energy input (wood) in the gasification and the transformation of syngas to 2 seperated streams of gases: SNG and pure CO2. When you store the CO2 underground the nett result is NEGATIVE CO2 emissions: a CO2 sink! As far as I know the only process with a negative CO2 impact.

Even more reason to invest money and energy in this process.

Pressure

Posted by Herman | June 03 | 2009 12:17 PM | permalink

One obvious method to reduce the fuel consumption of internal combustion engines is to reduce the energy losses.

Losses like moving large pistons, pumping a minimal amount of air inside the cilinder: which is just the average status if a large engine is delevering a low amount of power (idling, city use, low speeds).

The trend in all cars is to reduce the cilinder size and increase the amount of air you can push inside the engine with a turbo so you can get the same amount of maximum power. It reduces the fuel consumption, but with a price: the bigger the turbo the bigger the delay in response. The dreaded "turbo-lag" translates to a negative driving experience and potentially unsafe situations.

Researchers in Switzerland experiment with a novel solution to the problem. If the engine can function as an air pump when you are braking you can store air in a pressure tank. If you want to accelerate again and the turbo is lagging, pressurized air is used to fill the gap.

Smart engineering.

However: you wonder if this added complexity will ever be able to compete with serial hybrids where combustion engines mainly function as generators: fundamentally no problem with a turbo-lag.

Source : Greencarcongress