Got to thinking about the irony involved. The OP lives nearby to where the country’s first major hydro-electric generating plant was constructed at Niagra Falls. After it opened, many businesses moved to western NY state to take advantage of the inexpensive electricity. But apparently doesn’t apply to owners of modern day electric cars … lol …
Well George, just off the top of my head without thinking about it much, the price of electricity can be a major factor to industry, depending on how electrified they are. For a consumer though, the price per kilowatt or per gallon, is only part of the equation. You buy a piece of equipment to meet your anticipated needs and initial cost and operating costs may be part of it, but primarily it needs to meet your needs. People do move south though to save money on housing and taxes, but a car is different. Where is that Florida guy anyway?
I toured the Niagara power project many times as a school bus driver. They manufacture electricity for one cent a kilowatt hour. I can see the transmission lines carrying the cheap electricity at 2 or 3 cents an hour downstate while I am being charged about 16 cents a KWH. I asked the engineer at the project why that was and he said he wished he knew because he lives in Lewiston, close by the plant and he pays the same rate I do.
AC was great for long distance transmission mostly because it could easily be stepped up to thousands of volts for low current high voltage transmission, and then stepped back down again for distribution.
The charging current of a long power line due to capacitance and the voltage drop due to inductance does not consume power, the current is 90 degrees out of phase with the voltage.
A transmission line has a certain current to voltage ratio where the inductive current cancels out the charging current due to capacitance, because inductive current lags the voltage by 90 degrees and charging current due to capacitance leads the voltage by 90 degrees. This is known as the line’s characteristic impedance, or think of it as the line’s “sweet spot”.
Why from one of your prior posts in this thread Mike! You were addressing a prior comment and I replied to you. See-
We get into these circular arguments on occasion because I think you’re not really reading what I wrote. You’re hung up on COMMUTE where as I am pointing out that driving directly back and forth to work is, for many people, not the end of their day.
And, as I pointed out in my last post, the range of 100 miles is not within comfort level for most people either. Do you routinely run your gas engine vehicle to empty? No, you fill up with some reserve left. Nobody wants to run out and be stranded. You think electric car driving will change how people perceive comfort margins on fuel/electricity? So now that 100 mile range is maybe 80. Then, as I also pointed out, the range is specified for when the car is NEW. What happens to batteries as they are used and age? Hint- the range goes DOWN. A dirty little fact no car company or salesperson is going to point out. Let’s say 10% reduction in capacity later in life which I think is reasonable assumption based on what I know about them. Now you’re down to 70 miles. We’re getting closer to the tripping point aren’t we? Using perfect scenarios and numbers is what the marketing hype guys do. The real world isn’t so perfect…
Talk about completely not understanding what was posted. WOW. The 100 miles was talking about was the typical range of electric vehicles you can buy NOW. It has NOTHING to do with what the average commute is.
I don’t know how accurate this is. But it seems to suggest that we are already using the lightes metal to build batteries. Also, there’s the matter of how much lithium there is to mine.
I wonder where we are at with hydrogen technology. Production of hydrogen is not the problem; storage is. The energy used to cool and compress hydrogen is not returned to do useful work and that makes hydrogen inefficient compared to battery powered cars. But hydrogen powered cars as they exists today can be refilled just as quickly as petroleum powered cars
Producing the hydrogen volumes needed for any significant impact in transportation is a HUGE problem - where’s it all going to come from, at a reasonable cost, without releasing CO2 (like making it from methane does)?
Of course one can use electricity. Not at all obvious why it’s better to do that than just run that electricity into an EV.
And making the hydrogen is step one. Like @chunkyazian said, compressing it, transporting it, and storing it are all major additional problems. Infrastructure costs will be immense, compared to the existing electrical network.
I agree there’s obstacles . But that doesn’t mean they can’t be solved. It has such great potential that this technology should not be abandoned.
Please reference the ‘Push for a Carbon Tax’ thread for my comment concerning Oregon’s hare brained scheme for road taxing EVs and fuel efficient Hybrid/ ICE vehicles.
If we are talking about electric cars, then let’s assume we are producing hydrogen from electricity, preferably from a renewable source, instead of breaking down hydrocarbon
I mentioned hydrogen because you can fill it up in five minutes instead of five hours. If we can make it more efficient…
A large portion of electricity generated here in the Pacific Northwest is still hydroelectric. My parents told me that when the dams were built in the 1930s the government was saying electricity generated would be “To cheap to meter”! LOL
“Too cheap to meter” was used after WW 2 to describe the costs of electricity produced by nuclear reactions…maybe it was being repeated from earlier dreams of hydroelectric. The quest to get something from nothing is never ending!
I worked in the nuclear power industry for 8 years and what those leaders did not tell you was the high maintenance and security costs, as well as the eventual cost of dismantling a reactor.
In spite of all that, nuclear power was still relatively cheap, and at least in France and Canada, very reliable.
Hydroelectric power is relatively simple and has very low maintenance per Kilowatt-hour.
Wind and solar power will be a lot more expensive than advertised once all costs are rolled in and subsidies are rolled OUT! . Just because the wind is free does not mean that anything else is.
France also has some of the lowest nuclear costs. They only build a nuclear plants from 2 or 3 designs. Where as in the US each plant is custom made.
For many years, NYC did not use water meters in homes. Later, after a couple of severe water shortages, they saw the error of their ways, and now those who consume more water pay more.
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I’m thinking the “Too cheap to meter” hydroelectric power was at face value. The multi millions spent by the U.S. Government building the Columbia river and other dams created jobs during the great depression. The eventual cost of creating a way of distributing this enormous source of electrical power was of course… Enormous! Very close to where grew up in Oregon there was an abandoned WW2 Kaiser aluminum producing plant. Bauxite ore was shipped by rail from Wyoming! Why? There was no bauxite ore in Oregon but the huge amount of electricity required to produce aluminum (essential for the aircraft industry which was a huge factor in winning the war) was available from hydroelectric generation. Post WW2 the value of aluminum plummeted. Beer cans were still made of steel! Later the cost of maintaining these hydroelectric dams has been increasing. They have been supplemented by wind generated electric power as the Columbia Gorge is normally windy. Unfortunately wind power will never come close to hydroelectric.
Right on! Their basic designs have ben refined over the years and today 80%+ of their power comes from nuclear. Elctricite de France (EDF) runs the show and is held responsible for the lights staying on and those fast trains running on time.