This is a forum site; have you gone looking for 'proof'?

I'm going to have to rephrase my statements a bit. Tense problems, mostly. We couldn't, and currently can't, produce enough green energy to replace coal&oil economically, IE without making major sacrifices in quality of life elsewhere.

Somehow I dropped the battery part of my post as an additional option. Where the cheaper and more efficient the storage technology is, the more likely you are to store power rather than just build out your renewable energy infrastructure and just 'throw away' power during 'good' power production days.

Still, we appear to be on the cusp of radical changes. 30 years ago solar technology produced less power even at 100 times the cost. Lithium-Ion technology was a gleam in somebody's eye, much less possibly poised to take the market as the cheapest battery technology.
Lead Acid: $.194/wh.
LiIon: $.236/wh.

If ONE of the recent battery technologies that I've read about succeeds, or Musk's factory to cut the cost of his batteries in half, that means that LiIon will actually be cheaper than Lead-Acid. This would be huge.

Meanwhile they keep working to cut the cost of solar panels even as they increase their efficiency.

I'm still irked by the pricing. Now, I don't expect to be able to buy an ebook for the price of a used book, but by golly, I refuse to pay more for the book than I do for a dead-tree version, and given that I'm a halfway 'smart' shopper, 30% under 'list' is the average for me, I can often reach 50% or more, for a book that's not quite a new release. As such, I'm pretty much stuck buying from Baen for now.

They need to hold more sales like Steam. But no, the publishers don't want that. Apple & Amazon don't want that.

If the battery is cheap enough, you could have one of those tesla home batteries which would trickle charge through the day, then 'dump' the accumulated charge into your EV battery.

So when you get home, given enough time to shower, change clothes, apply makeup and have a snack, you have a vehicle back up to 80% charge.

So many 'fun' things would be possible if we could have a battery that stores 1kWh for $1. ;)

Except that EVs are storage devices and smart grids normally involve storage to help make managing them 'smart'.

Preview is your friend, my friend.

That's the problem, you keep arguing that it's not needed now, which I've never actually disputed. You keep arguing against it though when I mention that it would be handy in the future WHEN renewables are the biggest slice of the power production pie.

Nope, 50% would be enough. Minimum power draw is generally around 40% of max.

You're the one using 'desperate', not me. I use things like 'economical'. And yes, it can be 'economical' to be able to spin down some of your plants more or less permanently, while keeping others spinning at their optimal load, while storing power during low demand and releasing it during high. The cheaper and more efficient the storage method, the more practical and economical this is.

Yes, sort of, not really, yes, define 'poorly maintained' and explain why people with an EV will be going over them.

My trailer is single axle.

Also, you ignored my point about the adaptive steering that they can do. You literally can't jackknife them.

I'm sorry, this made me crack up because just yesterday I was arguing with a guy who was saying it's NOT the cost of the battery that's killing EVs. He kept insisting it's 'range anxiety' and that they're 'too slow to refuel'. He couldn't seem to understand that a bigger battery would fix both issues*, and the reason they don't put a bigger battery in is cost.

*You probably already know this, but you wouldn't need to charge a 300-600 mile battery as often and as a bonus you can put more watts into it, translating into more 'miles per minute' of charging.

1. Yes. Note that 'small' would only be relative to the engine you have now.
2. Of course. Probably also do the trick of putting resistive strips somewhere in case you need to resistive brake when the battery is full. Locomotives put them on their roof.
3. Not the use case, but yes. You'd just end up going slower. If you want 'full speed', you don't deliberately run the battery dry before that slope. I'm picturing you either telling the truck's computer that you want that battery charged, or even that you have your route planned on it's GPS and it recognizes that the slope is ahead and prepares the battery accordingly.
4. Hell, as I've mentioned for pure EVs before, put a generator in the trailer so it's providing the extra watts necessary.

Nitpick: It's likely to be more than 14k lbs once you add the battery pack, and given that I was picturing one capable of about 100 miles without a trailer, it probably would be able to take the 20 minutes of 6%, though there wouldn't be much left. You'd charge it again on the down slope. Still, if you're looking at towing through Colorado as a regular thing, you might want to either spring for extra battery or bigger engine(though still not as big as current). Or hell, build the battery and/or supplemental engine into the trailer.

They've made them before. But the hybrids have either been weak with minimal fuel savings or not have the towing capacity.

Another example would be McDonald's restaurant(USA, Arches) suing MacDonald's family restaurant(UK). They lost, because there had been a MacDonald family restaurant(reincarnated on a regular basis, but always with 'MacDonald' in the name) there since before the USA was a country...

As Lost Race mentioned, there's a HUGE difference between a boat trailer and the little dinky generator trailer I'm specifying. Also frequency? Not all that often. It'd only be the road warriors who are too determined to drive straight through that they can't even make usage of things like supercharger stations.

For example, the big trucks hauling those boats you're talking about? Could probably hold the whole generator system on their hitch.

Now yes, once you add fairings I figure that you might as well add the ability to toss a couple bags of luggage into the trailer with the generator(suitably shielded from the heat&emissions), because if you're using one you're obviously going on a long trip, and that's associated with carrying more stuff.

Also, parallel park, 'get through traffic'? The specified use for the trailer is extended range, IE zipping down the highway.

Hell, with a trailer this small they have adaptive steering packages that make the darn thing pretty much invisible - it'll steer itself to keep itself out of trouble.

Actually, peak solar precedes peak demand by about 2-4 hours. Though I'll admit, this doesn't matter, like I've already said, until renewable penetration, including solar, reaches 'ridiculous' levels.

No. It's about 2 years away from it if the electric company hadn't slammed on the regulatory brakes, outright banning the additional installation of solar photovoltiac power on roofs for periods of time.

As I stated earlier, it's not needed until penetration is a lot higher, but penetration is heading that way in at least limited markets for now.

facepalming doesn't give your argument any more validity. The wind blows when it blows. Now, yes, a mix of wind and solar can *usually* give you all the power you need, but again, it's non-dispatchable power, where fossil fuel is dispatchable and nuclear is generally always present(though you can have it load-follow as well). So as long as the wind and solar is low enough, you don't need storage because the various reserves are enough. But when it gets to be high enough, you still have that you don't want to install any more solar or wind than you have to, because the power they produce is fairly expensive from a capital standpoint, but not a marginal standpoint, so you want to use all of it you can. If the wind is blowing well on a sunny day during a holiday, you can see power usage drop to the point that you have excess power even after shutting the fossil fuel plants down to their minimum.

As such, in order to even all this out you have storage solutions. Speaking of which, you know what blows your whole argument out of the water? Pumped storage, which already exists around the world for evening power production, long predating renewables.

I get what you're saying. I don't see it as 'simple', I see it as 'incorrect'. I'm not sure where the breakage in your understanding is.

Power DEMAND fluctuates through the day. Renewable power SUPPLY also fluctuates. The goal is to EXACTLY match supply and demand. So what you can do is that when power demand is at 60% of peak(for example), you turn down the various spinning generators. But, assuming you have 'extensive' penetration by green power, and I'm talking 'eliminate all fossil fuel usage, especially coal' here, you might not have enough generators to turn down, or it might be cheaper to keep them spinning, etc... So you store the power to use later.

It's not anything as clean as 'x hours more'. It's 'you store X MWh for use later'. Then, when you're approaching that peak usage period(or an emergency happens), you release that power from the storage system.

So, for example, your systems are producing 100% power during the hours of 10am to 2 pm. Demand is only 80% of peak, so you end up storing 20MWh. 6 pm rolls around, people are getting home, the sun's going down, so you're now producing 60% of peak power, but demand is 100%. You spin up some generators to supply that and use your storage to provide the 20% until 10pm rolls around and people start going to bed, dropping power usage again.

As for power demand in the USA, reserve, and what not, of course the Electric companies are regulated, but we haven't felt the need to get that nit-picky with the law. The power companies have standards to meet, and as long as they meet them we don't care how they do it.

Good point. I thought I had battery tech in there. It's in other posts of mine here, but somehow I forgot it.

No, my country doesn't require 'undisrupted power supply' because that's a standard they can't meet. That being said, they do a very good job of it most of the time, as they don't get paid when they're not distributing power. As such, keeping a steady supply is an engineering problem, not a legal one. There's no legal requirement for them to keep a spinning reserve of any specific amount. They determine that themselves on the basis of historical trends and such.

One subcategory of which is spinning reserve. The wiki mentions it in at least 4 sentences.

Hint: I live there. I found out about the battery system in the little magazine all electric subscribers here get. We're not connected to the national grid, but we have an intertie with Anchorage.

Well now, how do you determine this? You're just declaring it like it's truth, with nothing to back it up. When would there be a surplus? Let's look at current examples: Hawaii, on the weekend, moderate weather. A good amount of sun, a lot of businesses are closed and people are out doing outside things. Result: All their roof panels are over-producing.

So we're looking at a potential overproduction period of 10 am to 2 pm.

When would we then discharge the batteries, outside of emergencies and such? 6pm to 11pm, by the looks of that chart.

How are you defining '100% production'? Because I'd be considering demand as well. The optimal point to store is when production is high and demand is low.

1. No, I do NOT mean more 'pumped storage', I mean storage, period. You're acting like you believe there's only 'ONE TRUE SOLUTION!!!'. Personally, I believe that there are multiple solutions, each with it's own costs and benefits.
2. Yes, you need more storage as undispatchable power sources come online.
3. I'm very well aware of the difference between GW and GWh. See where I use the term 'power' for GW, and 'energy' for GWh. With renewables you want to install enough generation to cover the energy needed, and enough storage to cover not just the peak power needs, because you still need enough energy to cover the whole peak that exceeds the power coming from renewables.
4. That being said, you can avoid some of the storage issues by installing enough baseload capability, such as nuclear, to cover things like night-time use.

So mine wouldn't be up to code because it lacks the logo. Made it custom, but that's not exactly hard.

Wahhhh! A technology still in the deployment phase isn't yet deployed enough to cover everything! 45 minutes is quick enough if you're taking the recommended breaks, IE go have a sit-down meal in between.

Or get a generator-trailer for those highway trips. Because remember, you can charge at home with an EV, as opposed to having to go to a gas station. Often at work.

Finally, 100% solution fallacy. EVs don't need to be 100% of the market. You make them cheap enough, primarily by reducing the cost of the battery, while maintaining or improving range, and people will switch and just 'put up' with renting a different vehicle if they need to travel a long ways because it's just plain cheaper to do it that way.

Increasing range is straight forward. Making charging faster, without increasing range, is complicated because it's chemistry limited, not to mention the fun of getting all that wattage to the car. To get the speeds you're looking for you pretty much need a battery swap, not a charge. Tesla has designed such, but found the actual demand not enough to put the swap into it's supercharger locations.

Double the size of the battery pack and you double the potential charge rate. Which is why Tesla vehicles can charge at wattages that would cause other EV battery packs to burst into flames(if protective measures weren't taken to limit flow).

Given that, I can't help but think that you're not the target audience for an EV (yet), or that you're clinging to any hope you have for EVs 'not making it'.

Tesla uses 18650 cells. There's no lithium ion cell so common. They're already built in huge quantities. Despite this Tesla is building another factory, hoping to cut the cost approximately in half. I wish them luck. They're selling so many cars they're straining the capability to make that cell.

Have you seen how the battery is placed for the Tesla and Leaf? There's plenty of 'room' for more battery if you're designing it to take that much battery in the first place. Worst case they'd have to sit the passengers up a couple inches if they want to keep the same wheel-base. The car is basically a skateboard with the battery serving as the 'board' with the car shell and occupants sitting on top of it. So it doesn't impact cargo capacity. And Tesla has demonstrated that 300 miles is perfectly practical for an EV.

The size of the battery in a Leaf is small because they're trying to make the car affordable, not because the battery 'takes up too much room', or even weighs too much.

I use it as an example of how to do EVs 'right'. I know they're too expensive right now. Still, $75k is a better figure, not $100k unless you buy the most expensive car they have, and their cheapest is like $60k.

As for superchargers, they're still installing more of them.