Eck4Life

I agree that the infrastructure is more in place to support electric vehicles, but they are not as versatile as CNG ones. How am I supposed to drive from coast to coast on electricity? I know it could be done, but it would be a PITA. Even if an electric car had a 300 mile range you have to wait a LOOOOONG time (relatively speaking) to recharge it. That already grueling 5 day trip across the country just got a lot longer. The CNG vehicle could come close to what we are used to today. I know most trips for Joe Public could be well served by an electric car, but what does he/she use when they want to really hit the road? The CNG stations just need to be built. We already did it once for gas. It wouldn't be painless, but it would be easier than the first time around since filling stations already exist and they could just offer both fuels initially until things took off.

Pilotpip

All positive ideas and proof that there are good arguements on both sides. One source will likely not be the total answer.

I just hope that gas prices going back down below $2 won't put this on the table again like it did back in the 90s.

Winged Wheeler

Every energy problem has a solution. The electric cross country trip would work if service stations had industry standard batteries. When you run low, you drive on in and switch out for a new one--just like we do now with propane cylanders for the grill.

No energy idea is a bad one unless it is subsidized by my tax money.

WW

MD10PLT

Assuming the government keeps their hands off of industry, the free market will decide. Generally the better one will win.

Winged Wheeler

Anybody know the answers to these? If possible sources for answers.

Regarding wind turbines:

Roughly, what do they cost to put up initially (including subsidies)?

Once built, does the value of energy produced exceed the value of operations and maintenance costs?

Is the energy produced directly transferred to the power grid, or is it stored on site and exported later?

How much is produced annually, and what assumptions accompany this estimate (eg. 24X7X365 ops, etc)?

If you used the entire electrical output of the wind turbine to perform electrolysis on water to produce H2, how much potential electrical energy would be lost? Or said differently, what is the potential electrical energy contained by the H2 vs. that electrical energy derived directly from the turbine?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

WW

Tweetdrvr

We have more BTUs of coal than OPEC and the other oil producing countries have combined in oil energy. According to Glen Beck on CNN a few months ago, the cost to produce a barrel of oil from coal is about $70. That makes gas at the pump about 2.20ish. The Germans were running their entire war machine on this stuff after we cut them off from the real stuff in WWII.

Both parties were talking about making us energy independent and were talking wind, nuclear (Nuke-U-Lar in the case of Palin) and solar, they were also mentioning clean coal. The question is do we have a shortage of electricity? No we don't.

The question I have for them is why we need to do this, because this really doesn't fix our transportation system's fuel needs. Electric cars are great for what most people do in their daily lives, but we will probably always need internal combustion engines for shipping, long cross country trips and other such things. Increasing fuel efficiency standards to 60MPG won't make us energy independent.

I sorta believe in the Pickens plan's idea to produce more renewable electricity from wind and solar. We have enough wind energy in the U.S. to produce 2-3x what we use in electricity every day. With current photovoltaic technology, we can produce 2-3x the electricity we currently use, if every house had a 500 square foot bank of solar cells on the roof; and the cells are only getting more efficient. This doesn't even take into account the amount of commercial roof space out there we could use for mega solar farms like the FedEx facility in Oakland.

I would take Pikens one step more and say we convert the entire electric grid to wind/solar with a little bit of coal backup for the days when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. I can give up nuclear because that might as well be the N-word of energy when it comes to the environmentalists and the emotions it stirs up. The electric companies still have to collect fees to manage the grid, their profits should be higher because their overhead on coal is a lot lower, they only have to maintain the grid and only burn coal on low wind/low sun days. This eliminates 2/3 of our CO2, if that is an issue with climate changes, since 2/3 of our CO2 comes from the production of electricity for business, industry and residential uses.

We then take our coal and convert it to liquid which yields kerosene/diesel which means we can drop bombs from our fighters, bombers and UAS's, fly people and cargo in our airliners unchanged. We use our domestic oil to produce gasoline to power the cars on the market today until they age off the road, the GA planes out there, and for the classic car people, because I ain't converting my 67 Firebird to diesel. We set a date 10 years off for the car companies to produce all diesels. They use the new diesel technology like VW has to produce ultra clean, high efficiency, low sulfur cars, and our transportation system remains basically unchanged.

People could also then have electric vehicles for their daily commutes if they so desired since they would not be burning coal to produce the electricity to charge the things. Everybody has an outlet in their garage today.

The coal industry will still be mining, the refineries will still be turning something into liquid fuel, and we could be energy independent for the next two centuries. This could be our bridge until Dr E. Brown invents the Mr. Fusion for the back of my flying De Lorean.

Then we could truly be independent and I am sure a lot of our national security issues would change drastically when the Holy Land becomes a lot less important.

AL E NEWMAN

Energy Independence in the USA and the middle east ceases to be a military/political problem? No I don't believe that,here's why
....YouTube - The Naked Gun: Opening