anywebsite Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 If it only takes 10KWh to make a litre of petrol, that's fairly cheap - average domestic price is £1.50, they'll be getting the electricity much cheaper than that. They can use excess capacity on the grid at night Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 Excess generation capacity doesnt mean free electricity - you still have to put the fuel into the gneration sets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteMorris Posted October 19, 2012 Author Share Posted October 19, 2012 At the very least in this thread I'd have expected Cyclone, truman, T42 and metalman to have understood it. The elitist dream team eh?...You just don't 'get' it do you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truman Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 If it only takes 10KWh to make a litre of petrol, that's fairly cheap - average domestic price is £1.50, they'll be getting the electricity much cheaper than that. They can use excess capacity on the grid at night Nope you've read it wrong..there's 10kw of energy in a litre of petrol..it takes about 40 kw to produce using the system and info above... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truman Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 The elitist dream team eh?...You just don't 'get' it do you? I'm not elitist.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 The elitist dream team eh?...You just don't 'get' it do you? Neither do you it seems. Those I knew whom would get it - and those whom I was replying to are the ones listed. They are the people who have demonstrated a background in science and I responded appropriately to Truman, who quite clearly did get what I was say. If I'd been replying to you, it would have been different. The simple fact though is that you don't have the background in science for whatever reason and for equally unfathomable reasons you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about that which seems to be the size of a small car. That's your problem, not mine. Deal with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 If we could store energy as compactly as possible, at the efficiency of or greater than pump storage systems or modern flywheels, we could make do with much, much less of our generating capacity for all our domestic, industrial and transport needs. Energy doesn't take up much space after all. I envisage something the size of a housebrick with a couple of bus bars sticking out that could power a 3 bedroom house for a year before requiring a recharge. Heinlein called them "Shipstones" after their inventor, a Mr Shipstone, who if memory serves never patented them so he could keep their workings a secret. Energy can be very compact if you want - a housebrick of plutonium after all will run a decent size city for a year or so... It's all the rest of the stuff that takes up the space :-) I presume that was a Robert Heinlein book you refer to but I don't remember it - which one was it? It's been a long time since I read any of his stuff - I've working through Niven at the moment... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 20% isn't entirely terrible. But it's not awesome. It's not that far removed from the delivered electric power from a power station TBH - they are only about 35% efficient and once you've tossed in distribution losses... For a pilot stage plant it's good enough I guess. It still feels like an answer looking for a question though except in very niche markets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truman Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 It's not that far removed from the delivered electric power from a power station TBH - s The you use that and lose even more of the energy..you've put 100 units into the start..lost 65 at the power station then lost about another 28 with this process..you end up with 7% of the original energy..possibly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 Energy can be very compact if you want - a housebrick of plutonium after all will run a decent size city for a year or so... It's all the rest of the stuff that takes up the space :-) I presume that was a Robert Heinlein book you refer to but I don't remember it - which one was it? It's been a long time since I read any of his stuff - I've working through Niven at the moment... Niven at his best is compelling, but some of his books "footfall" and "lucifers hammer" for example, are the worst kind of survivalist, crypto-fascist literary wish fulfillment. Anyway, the book was Friday. Yeah, this housebrick sized thing wasn't a power source, it was an energy repository. I know someone who builds composite flywheels that spin in vacuum on magnetic frictionless bearings. Now those things have incredible efficiency for storage (70%+ of energy in retrieved usefully), but they're not terrifically portable unless you want to go very slowly in a straight line, aligned with the earths rotation. It turns out that storing the energy isn't actually that hard, it's releasing it in a controlled and useful manner that's the tricky part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.