Electric Car? How about a Compressed Air Car?

"Newps" wrote in message
. ..


Matt W. Barrow wrote:

"Newps" wrote in message
. ..

The Camry is a great car and I may buy one.


The SE V-6? Ass kicker for under $25K.

Not looking for performance. Only way I buy a new car is the Camry
Hybrid. Otherwise I'll get an 05ish Accord. Another possibility is I
have a friend with a dealer license so I may get an 07 or 08 Chevy Impala
rental car that are normally disposed of at 20K miles. As much as I would
hate to be stuck with a Chevy they're hard to beat when these things can
be had for about $11K.

Try to find a Camry that is a ex-rental unit.

I had a Camry for a rental back several years ago and found it cheap and
tinny. The I had one earlier this year and decided that it would be my next
car.

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:45:24 -0500, "Roger (K8RI)"
wrote in
:

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:39:17 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:50:55 -0500, "Roger (K8RI)"
wrote in
:

As has been publicized, we don't have the grid capacity to support
much in the way of all electric cars. The same is true for Hydrogen.
It's either produced from fossil fuels with a lot of polluting
byproducts or takes a whale of a lot of electrical energy to produce
from water.

When/if worldwide photovoltaic production ever meets consumer demand,
you are going to see an enormous increase in solar power
installations, not only in commercial buildings, but residences as
well. Today, the excess electricity generated by a home's
photovoltaic power generating system is used to turn the electric
utility meter backwards. As electrically powered vehicles become more
mainstream, that excess solar power could be used to directly charge
vehicle batteries or for hydro-electrolysis to generate hydrogen gas
for fuel.

This doesn't change the lack of grid capacity.

If the home's photovoltaic power generating system is used to turn the
electric utility meter backwards, it doesn't require any additional
grid capacity.

We don't have the economically viable technology for all electric
vehicles to have enough range. Generating H2 with the excess energy
sounds good, but how do you generate and store enough if you don't
live in the SW?

Here's how it's being done in New York:


http://www.distributed-energy.com/da...gy-20329-1.pdf
The Solar-Hydrogen Home
The US Merchant Marine Academy and the New York Institute of
Technology joined forces to build a home for the 2005 Department
of Energy Solar Decathlon Competition. The home, which
incorporated a Distributed Energy Systems’ HOGEN RE hydrogen
generator, was in a class of its own. In a typical “off-grid”
scenario, a large battery bank is required to store energy. In the
“solar-hydrogen” home, solar energy is stored in the form of
hydrogen gas generated from the HOGEN RE hydrogen generator.
When it is dark, instead of drawing energy from a battery bank,
hydrogen gas is converted into electricity through a fuel cell.
During the day when there is plenty of energy from the sun, water
is converted into hydrogen gas through the use of a HOGEN RE
hydrogen generator.


Side benefits of residential solar power generation are the peace of
mind inherent in the redundancy of distributed (as opposed to central)
power generation and the resulting robustness against massive power
outages due to a cascade of equipment outages triggered by a
single-source failure, the ability to "thumb the eye" of oil
robber-barons, the reduction in the production of pollutants,
insurance against the inevitable increases in the price of energy, and
virtue of abandoning 19th century technology for a more enlightened
solution.

It comes down to economics and geographic location. My daughter's
husband is a consultant in the business. We sat down and figured a
hybrid system of both active and passive solar would cost me close to
$50,000 up here and unlike California we receive no subsidies for
either active or passive solar panels.

Price photovoltaic panels per KWH. The price without a subside is
enough to scare most any one off.

That's because the demand for photovoltaic panels exceeds the
worldwide manufacturing capacity. As more manufacturing facilities
come on-line, I would expect to see prices decline due to competition.


Alcohol is an interim solution with the hybrid being by far the most
economical and quickest to implement of the interim solutions.

As for grid capacity we are rapidly coming to the point of real time
usage monitoring with remote setback of heating and air conditioning.
Here with peak rates of about 10 cents per KWH we wouldn't see the
savings of those fortunate souls paying 38 cents during peak demand
out in the Republik of Kalafornia.

OTOH solar panels don't do us much good either.

Why? Photovoltaic panels are able to convert infrared isolation even
on cloudy days.

But that ain't much power out. it's only a small fraction of what you
get in direct sunlight and solar panels are not all that efficient at
best.

You can purchase ~40% efficient solar cells today. The technology is
improving.

Also we're 43'37" N and the days are several hours shorter up
here than in say Georgia or even California. Also you can see the
power drop due to clouds, or just due to dust and dirt collecting if
you don't clean them every couple of weeks. They also age so it's not
a one time cost. Efficiency is going up, but electricity from solar
panels is still about 3 to 5 times the cost of that from the power
grid in areas where sunlight is plentiful and the atmosphere is seldom
cloudy. Here with 10 cents per KWH and we have about 3 days a month
without some clouds it's probably more like 5 to 7 times.

In that case, you'd have to increase the solar generating area to
compensate for the reduction in isolation.

And even when they do get the cost down and I expect they will, the
power grid is still limited as to the amount they can buy back (or
handle) When that point is reached the payback for power into the grid
will drop and at times they may not even accept power. As I mentioned
the wind farm in Wisconsin and their problems.

I believe it's a matter of the utility reducing their output during
periods of excess locally (solar) generated power.

There is a Silicon plant near here that is multiplying their capacity
several times over and they just finished doubling the size of the
plant. The amount of pure Silicon coming out of there is staggering.
Wafer size has gone from 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch when I started in the
industry to a current of 14 inches or there abouts. Still the waste
of making wafers from silicon rods is over 50%. Considering it used to
be on the order of 80 to 90% that's pretty good. Many years ago when
loss was much greater they developed some new sawing techniques that
cut the waste in half. it was still tremendous, but the increase in
yield almost caused several of the suppliers to go out of business.
One did.

We still have a long way to go before solar cells become economically
viable except in some select areas.

Roger (K8RI)

Perhaps, but there seems to be a definite increase in their use out
here.

As with any energy conversion scheme, a viable storage medium is the
key. Perhaps the hydrogen generator is what is needed.

As for the source of this energy, how about photovoltaic roof
shingles? Look at this: http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17129/

David Johnson

"Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea Hawk at wow way d0t com wrote in message
news:sOOdnfvCNLWpO9nanZ2dnUVZ_remnZ2d@wideopenwest .com...
...
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but in urban driving a
significant portion of the gasoline energy is expended by the brakes
(10-15%? - I used to have a chart on the wall at my desk, but I don't
remember the numbers - sorry)


Ok, I looked it up - the "typical" car puts about 6% of the gasoline energy
into the brakes on the US EPA urban cycle.

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

On 2007-11-23 16:14, Dave wrote:
On Nov 23, 9:55 am, Dave wrote:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4

Wil- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This video certainly lends some credibility to the idea of a
compressed air car. As I said, we'll see - and I would make a special
trip to see one of these.

If nothing else, this thread has produced a lively discussion, and
has, for the most part, avoided ****ing contests.

Elsewhere I stated that one cannot buy a practical electric car today.
That is not strictly true. For example, one of these would
certainly meet my requirements for a commuting vehicle:http://www.myersmotors.com.
It's even made in the suburbs of my hometown (and not China or India
etc). But omigod - the price!
It's really just an enclosed motorcycle. Howzcum none of the bigname
motorcycle manufacturers make anything like this (regardless of the
powerplant)? Probably wouldn't sell (anybody remember the
Messerschmitt in the 1950s? [yes - the same company that made aircraft
in WWII]). Nobody wanted it.

There are "promising" battery technologies "in the works" - but that
has been the case for years. I hear that some of the folks planning to
introduce "viable" batteries for EVs are talking about leasing rather
than selling their products. No doubt they forsee "Sticker Shock"
problems.

In spite of all the disappointments, there is research and
experimentation going on everywhere, and I, for one, am confident that
there are better (and hopefully revolutionary) developments ahead. For
a collection of links on this subject look at this:http://
freeenergynews.com/Directory/EV/index.html

Thanks to all who responded.

David Johnson


P.S.: If you are interested in seeing what the Messerschmitt car
looked like, go he http://www.microcarmuseum.com/ This would be a
great place to visit (East of Atlanta). It's on my list!


My father had a three-wheeler when I grew up, a 'Heinkel Kabin'.
Pretty good at parking, but you were well below the sight-line of larger
car drivers, which could be risky then, and I'd imagine even more so
nowadays what with all SUV's etc.

Major disadvantage was in wintertime, when the centred rear-wheel would
tend to slip into either right or left track in heavy snows, and driving
sideways in traffic was no fun.

Advantage back then was a three-wheeler classed it as a motorbike, which
was cheaper tax-wise; now this isn't the case any more.

/Rolf