NIMBY

I already have a power plant (hydro lake) in my back yard and it is awesome! I'd take a windmill in my back yard in a second. Same goes for solar. You can keep your stinking nuke plant in your backyard. Same goes for the coal plants, NIMBY!

 

Hi Lars-ss:

___All I can add is you need to run a 3,000 W charger for ~ 10 hours to charge a 2WD Mitsubishi Colt EV (Li-Ion) we were talking about the other day. For an 11 mile/day commute you might need ~ 1 hour at 3,000 W. This is huge and it would not be that far into the future before our grid would be overwhelmed with EV’ers plugging in. The item most are not saying is that do they only drive 55 miles per week and 2,860 miles per year? Do you only drive your HCH 2,860 miles per year? The answer to that question is definitely not.

___Lakedude, you did not think it was that easy, did you? Lake or not, you get your power off the grid like everybody else does where a load dispatcher is distributing load in real time as demand increases and decreases. Unless you can go off the grid, you are stuck with the same problems and where the power actually comes from that we all are and that means a supply constraint of some sort as demand exceeds said supply with EV’ers plugging in. By all means, build that windmill in your back yard. I don’t know if you have any neighbors that may object or if you have the funds to purchase one of these best in class 1.3 – 2 + MW monsters including tapping it into the grid locally but if you do, have at it! I am sure your local utility will purchase said power for $0.01 - $0.03/kWh just as your local utility purchases and wheels power across its lines today from any other number of utilities around the country. If it were this easy, everybody would be doing it

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

All it will take is some major power outages to wake people up to the need for additional power plants. California fired their governor and put in a movie actor after all their blackouts and polls have shown a massive shift in public sentiment towards nuclear since then.

Fact is, most people only learn the hard way. They won't give up their gas guzzlers until you see a 200% price increase over less than a decade. Well guess what, that's exactly what happened already and folks are finally waking up. When you start getting nationwide monthly or even weekly rolling blackouts people will call for massive investment in any sort of power generation technology we can summon. Nuclear would likely be near the top of the list since plants could be online within 5 years if we put our minds to it.

I think it's an exciting time for the world. We've hit a point where none of our resources can really afford to be wasted anymore. That's the point where innovation and intelligence take over and provide solutions that truly benefit everyone. The transition is often painful, but it's still an exciting time.

 

Let's imagine that an early plug-in hybrid appears on the market, which has a battery only large enough for a 15 mile EV range (3 kilowatt-hours).

The owner plugs-in for a 10 hour overnight charge every night.

The drain to achieve this is only 300 watts, which is the same as leaving two 150 watt light bulbs switched on overnight.

Let's be honest, this isn't going to break the bank (or the grid).

 

Good way to think! It's so unfortunate it takes catastrophe to bring some things around. The greatest periods of technological advance from the dawn of civilization have always been during or prompted by wars. Necessity is the mother of invention.