How much OIL can be recovered? at what price?

Good story in IEEE Spectrum on the future ability to economically produce oil.
It's important to remember, it's not how much oil in in the ground -- it's how much oil can be extracted at a price we are willing to pay.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/fossil-fuels/how-much-recoverable-oil-do-we-have

An Electric Car With 400 Miles Of Range ?

John Wayland (of White Zombie Datsun fame) is at it again...
Building a combo of the old (recalled) GM EV1 and Honda Insight, with better batteries.
John's expectation is he'll have a 400 mile range!
Read more in this link:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/19/54099/

100,000 EVs -- more info

I mentioned in the 5/23 post that I had heard there were now over 100,000 EVs on the road. 
A little more detail:  That figure is 100,000 "plug-in vehicles" - this includes pure EVs (like Nissan Leaf) and ALSO plug-in hybrids of the various types (parallel operation like the Toyota Prius and serial operation like Chevy Volt)

Here is the story:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/24/us-attains-100000-plug-in-vehicle-milestone/

And here you can see the Plug-in vehicle "counter" (showing 102,662 at this moment!)
http://www.pluginamerica.org/

EV news -- bad, bad, and (maybe) good

Better Place – bad

Fisker – bad

Tesla – good.  Tesla talking yesterday about a cross-country charging network.  I think they have a good product with the “S” that many more would buy… IF they can get the price a little lower.

 

Better place:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/advanced-cars/better-place-turns-out-to-be-not-enough-better/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=053013

 

Fisker:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/28/us-autos-fisker-raylane-idUSBRE94R0V420130528

 

Tesla:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/30/autos/elon-musk-tesla-supercharger/

 

My friend Andre riding in the Tesla Roadster

 

(Also bad:  A123 battery.  http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/sale-of-a123-systems-to-chineseowned-company-points-to-futility-of-nationalistic-technology-investments)

 

 

 

Electric vehicles - EV

I'm hearing today (from a reliable source) that there have now been 100,000 EVs produced!

More as I get details.

-- David

Solar Energy: Man beats Nature!

Even working on seemingly unrelated projects, energy questions come up in the conversation. My son, Nathan, is working on his Eagle Project. It involves some sawing. One of the boys helping is using a hacksaw to cut some PVC pipe and asks, "Where does the energy come from to cut this pipe?"

 

Well, that's quite a question. The boys start spouting their knowledge. One says "from your muscles!" Well, sure, but... Another says "food!" Getting a little better, cellular respiration anyone?   I whisper to one of the dads about a series of energy conversions. He says, "Chemical energy."  I say, "the Sun."

 

Whoa. How did solar energy make it into this worksite conversation?  It seems to happen that way a lot.

 

Especially interesting about bringing up Solar energy is that my son’s project is the construction of raised garden boxes for the Temple Israel garden.  (These should make it easier for some of the older congregants to tend some of the vegetables.)  Of course, solar energy is what makes the plants grow.  How this happens is not a mystery to us, but how efficiently do plants use the sun’s energy?  – well THAT is a good question. 

 

Using the sun to make electricity is, of course, a great idea, and scientists have been working hard to improve the PhotoVoltaic cell to convert more of the solar energy into electrical energy.   Recently, best efforts have PV cell efficiency at about 27.6%.  (see this August 2011 IEEE Spectrum article:   http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-cell-breaks-efficiency-record.)  Then there’s some decrease in efficiency once the cells are packaged into panels, and of course further loss as the electricity is converted to AC and ultimately delivered to a load. 

 

But what about plants?   You might think that they are much better, given that they are Nature’s own design for capturing the sun, and they’ve had billions of years to evolve and improve the process.   Well, it looks like Man has the lead on this one!  The USDA reported on some very interesting research in this article: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2012/120112.htm.  Plants don’t make electricity (not YET, anyway), but rather convert the sun’s energy into chemical energy.   So agricultural scientists put the plant and PV solar conversion processes on a direct comparison (apples-to-apples), and found that plants have a year-round average conversion efficiency of 1%, while solar PV converts 10% on average.  Wow!  That surprised me.  It says we need to apply man’s expertise in crop science – focusing the science to improve efficiency could lead to improved crop yields – and that could be a great benefit to our growing population!

 

--David Byrne

 

Saving energy (and money) can be easy

Nice list of simple ways to save energy and lower the bills -- courtesy of the State of Maryland
http://energy.maryland.gov/Facts/est.html

Personally, I think the water heater can be set lower than 120 degrees --- that's still pretty hot.  If you're worried it's not hot enough for the dishwasher, use the "high temperature wash" setting.  That way, you're only using very hot water (and extra energy) for washing dishes.