Elon Musk makes the Future Happen

Has the future finally arrived? I hope so:

Tesla's Elon Musk Unveils Solar Batteries for Homes and Small Businesses
The system could easily take a home off the power grid, especially with the use of many solar panels, Musk said

From a man who made his name and charted his career with lofty goals and often unexpected financial decisions, the news came with little surprise: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors Inc., unveiled a product line of electric batteries late last night in Los Angeles.

Musk introduced the Tesla Powerwall, a wall-mounted lithium-ion electric battery for homes and small businesses, and the Tesla Powerpack, a heftier version of the same core product designed for utility-scale use.

He also announced a new wing of the company, Tesla Energy, which will begin shipping the Powerwall systems to domestic customers in three to four months. Deliveries will trickle out slowly, he said, then accelerate next year when the company begins shipping orders out from its so-called Gigafactory in Nevada.

Yet Musk spoke first about rising emissions and climate change solutions, not cars. He used a slide show of power plants and smoggy skies to introduce the problems. “It sucks, exactly,” he said. “I think we, collectively, should do something about this,” he added, “for us and a lot of other creatures.”

The Powerwall battery charging system, which can be stacked up to nine batteries high and mounted on an inner garage wall or outside, costs $3,000 for a 7-kilowatt-hour system and $3,500 for the 10 kWh option. The entire Powerwall system is roughly 3 feet wide and 4 feet long, and would stick out about 7 inches once mounted. It could easily take a home off the power grid, especially with the use of many solar panels, Musk said.

“Tesla is not just an automotive company, it's an energy innovation company,” the firm said in a statement. “Tesla Energy is a critical step in this mission to enable zero emission power generation.”

The utility version comes in 100 kWh blocks that can be grouped together. Musk said one utility company is already interested in a 250-gigawatt installation of Powerpack systems alone.

Shifting cities to 'stored sunlight'
“This entire night has been powered by batteries,” he told the audience in the warehouse in Hawthorne, Calif., pointing to gray, blocky Powerpack systems standing on end and powering the facility. “Everything you're experiencing is stored sunlight.”

Musk's solution is as audacious as it is simple. By harnessing energy from the sun—“this handy fusion reactor in the sky,” he called it last night—getting enough renewable energy on the power grid and smoothing out energy generation and use between peak and off-peak hours, the nation and planet can shift away from fossil fuels' dominance as a power source, he told the crowd.

The new batteries, he said, will help speed that transition worldwide. “These is going to be a great solution for people in remote parts of the world,” he said, noting that it allows homeowners to leave the power grid and ditch electric cables.

“It can scale globally,” he added, likening the battery systems' potential in emerging economies to mobile phones that penetrated markets faster than old technology and leapfrogged landline sales.

Tesla, the first American car company to go public since Ford Motor Co., has been a darling stock to many in recent years, climbing from trading in the $30 range in 2012 to above $200 a share for most of the past year.

In a research note about yesterday's announcement from Deutsche Bank AG, which was reported by Bloomberg, the authors struck a bullish tone, writing: “Based on the preliminary work on the economics of stationary storage, we believe that this has the potential to be more significant” than Wall Street analysts expect. The battery system, they wrote, could add up to $100 a share.

Karl Brauer, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said Tesla's new battery division could be even more successful than its car business. [...]

The German bankers recognize the potential. This is really exciting. I had posted previously about this new type of power grid that such batteries would create. Now it's actually starting to happen.

Hooray!
     

"Wave Power" off of the Oregon Coastline

Oregon wave power project gets green light to go forward

Wave power developers planning a project off the Oregon Coast now have the nation's only federal permit to develop a commercial wave power park.

Ocean Power Technologies Inc., based in Pennington, N.J., said Monday it will deploy the first buoy for testing sometime this year off Reedsport.

Charles Dunleavy, CEO of the publicly held company, said it hopes to have the country's first commercial wave power park online within two or three years of securing full financing.

The project will include 10 buoys anchored 2 1/2 miles off the coast and covering about 30 acres. They will produce 1.5 megawatts — enough to power about 1,000 homes. An undersea cable will carry the power to a site slated for the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, and connect to the grid at a substation in Gardiner.

Belinda Batten, director of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Facility and a professor of mechanical energy at Oregon State University, said the Ocean Power facility is small by European standards but presents a big step forward in development of alternative energy from the ocean in the U.S.

The Oregon Coast has become a hotspot for wave power research and development. Waves are bigger on the West Coast than the East Coast by virtue of the prevailing westerly winds, and waves get bigger the farther they are from the equator, Batten said.

She noted that Atmocean Inc., in Santa Fe, N.M., plans to test three buoys this year off Coos Bay; the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Facility last weekend towed out to sea near Newport the nation's first publicly available wave power test facility, called Ocean Sentinel; a wave power generator from New Zealand is to be towed out to the test facility this week; and Oregon State is looking for a site to build a larger grid-connected test facility known as the Pacific Marine Energy Center, which would be patterned after the European Marine Energy Center in Scotland.

[...]

The cylindrical buoy harnesses the power of the ocean's waves through a float encircling it. The float goes up and down with the water while the buoy remains relatively stable. That motion is transferred to turning a generator, which produces electricity.

The final cost of the project is not determined, Dunleavy said. The company has a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, $420,000 from the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, and a state business energy tax credit worth $900,000. [...]

"... The final cost of the project is not determined..." Gosh. Ya just hope it doesn't turn out to be another Solyndra, flushing tax dollars down the drain.

Here is a picture of one of the bouys on a dock in Scotland. They are HUGE:

Fossil Fuels: They've only just begun

I posted earlier about Peak Oil/increased-demand theory , causing shortages. But the following article from Salon.com changes all of that. It maintains that solar and wind power are endangered, not fossil fuels, which are in fact poised to really start to kick in:

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
The future of energy is not what you think it is

[...] it appears that the prophets of an age of renewable energy following Peak Oil got things backwards. We may be living in the era of Peak Renewables, which will be followed by a very long Age of Fossil Fuels that has only just begun.

Thanks to shale oil and natural gas, and new technologies that not only make them more easily available world-wide, but make them a cleaner alternative to coal. Read the whole thing, it's very thorough. It explains it's premise in detail, and presents a very compelling case. Gosh and Golly. Whodathunkit?
     

"Peak Oil" and/or "Increased Demand"?

The Peak Production theory:

Peak oil

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nation’s domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. Peak oil is often confused with oil depletion; peak oil is the point of maximum production while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply.

[...]

Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, believe the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural, and industrial systems on the relative low cost and high availability of oil will cause the post-peak production decline and possible severe increases in the price of oil to have negative implications for the global economy. Predictions vary greatly as to what exactly these negative effects would be. If political and economic changes only occur in reaction to high prices and shortages rather than in reaction to the threat of a peak, then the degree of economic damage to importing countries will largely depend on how rapidly oil imports decline post-peak.

Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.[3] Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred,[4][5][6][7] that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly.[8][9] The International Energy Agency (IEA) says production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.[10][11] Throughout the first two quarters of 2008, there were signs that a global recession was being made worse by a series of record oil prices.[12] [...]

A Dark Warning on Global Oil Demand

Many top corporate and political figures gathered in Houston on Tuesday for the annual CeraWeek conference on the outlook for energy, and they got an earful from John B. Hess, chairman and chief executive of the Hess Corporation.

“An energy crisis is coming, likely to be triggered by oil,” he predicted. “Demand is expected to grow on an annual basis by at least one million barrels per day, driven by the developing economies of the world and by a growth in transportation as we go from one billion cars today to two billion cars in 2050.”

The problem, he said, is not that the world is running out of oil. He estimated that while the world has produced one trillion barrels of oil, two trillion more remain in the ground. Meanwhile surplus oil production capacity is three billion to four million barrels a day.

But watch out for the future. “As demand grows in the next decade, we will not have the oil production capacity we will need to meet demand,” Mr. Hess said. “Supply will then have to ration demand, and prices will skyrocket – with the likely outcome of bringing the world’s economy to its knees.”

So where are oil prices going? “The $140-per-barrel oil price of three years ago was not an aberration,” he said. “It was a warning.”

Mr. Hess’s policy prescription was not surprising: he wants more drilling, including in the Gulf of Mexico, and more natural gas used in the generation of electricity, among other proposals. His stark vision of the global energy future stood out nonetheless.

Either way, Peak Oil or Increased Demand, the same end result: rationing? Are the days of abundant cheap energy about to become a thing of the past? At least in the way that we knew it be. As more energy producing sources are developed, and more efficient ways of using energy are implemented... well. I can't say exactly how it's going to turn out. But it's likely going to be different from what we have known. Another unfolding aspect of Our Brave New World.

     

Finally, a Change I can Believe In

At last, President Obama is about to do something I can approve of:

Obama to announce financing for two nuclear reactors

President Barack Obama will announce on Tuesday plans for the government to help finance the construction of two nuclear reactors -- the first in nearly 30 years, a top US official said.

Obama, who has advocated reducing foreign energy dependency and cutting back on greenhouse gases, will use a 2005 law that authorizes the Energy Department to guarantee loans to projects that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama "has long believed that nuclear power should be part of our energy mix," a senior administration told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

[...]

Currently only 20 percent of the country's energy needs are met by nuclear power.

The operation will result in some 3,000 construction jobs, and eventually some 850 permanent jobs, the official said, citing company figures. [...]

Hooray! Nuclear power is safer than it's ever been. 80% of nuclear waste can be recycled and rendered harmless. The rest can be stored safely until technological advances allow us to recycle it as well. It's a genuine "green" answer to the quest for clean energy.

No doubt the Leftist "Watermelons" (green on the outside, red on the inside) will fight this. They may yet sandbag Obama's plans, but on this issue, I'll be firmly rooting for the President.

It was once said that only Nixon could go to China. Well maybe only Obama can build nuclear power plants. We shall see!


Also see:

Small nuclear reactors?

[...] The other day I read (I'm not sure where) that we should build small nuclear reactors instead of big ones. There are real problems with big reactors such earthquakes on the West Coast, the NIMBY syndrome and especially red tape. Whoever wrote that mentioned how we had the Army Corps of Engineers building dams and wondered why we couldn't use the Navy's atomic engineers to run small civilian nuclear reactors such as those which power some of our submarines and other warships. [...]

Read the whole thing. For a variety of reasons, small reactors may be the best answer to the worlds energy needs.
     

Green Energy, Blackouts, California and France

Pat's latest post, Nuke the damn windmills!, has excerpts from William Tucker at the American Spectator. Tucker talks about how California poured huge amounts of money into "green" technologies that did not pay off, and how that lead to California's engery crisis (the brown-outs and rolling-blackout of the '90's), and it's current high energy costs and floundering economy. It was one of the big reasons we left California.

Now, the Democrat's Stimulus plan is taking the entire nation down the same path that California has gone. Aarrgh!

It's worth reading the article just for that, but there was also this tidbit about France, which I found fascinating:

[...] Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that France, unlike the rest of the world, has not yet fallen into a recession. The reporter attributed this to France's high level of government employment, but a much more likely explanation is France's complete conversion to nuclear energy. With 80 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear and the rest from hydro, France pays the lowest electrical rates in Europe -- and has the lowest carbon emissions on top of that. [...]

I can be quite critical of the French sometimes, but when they do something right, it's worth taking notice of it and learning from their worthy example.

Authentic American environmentalists would be advocating following France's example in this. Instead, I fear the leaders of the American Environmental Movement are really just "watermellons": green on the outside, red on the inside. They don't want to see us solve our energy problems, they just want to sabotage our current economy and system of government, making it unworkable, so they can then replace it with something else.

On energy matters, I would take the French way over the California way any day. The French way is demonstrably workable; it has a track record of success. The California way is Pie in the Sky; we've seen the results of that.

How long will it be before our government in Washington D.C. gets a clue?
     

High Tech "Green" city being built in Abu Dhabi

I read this in CNNmoney.com this morning, it's facinating:


A green city blooms in the desert
Abu Dhabi, which reckons the world will wean itself from fossil fuels, is building a city that runs on solar power, recycles all waste, and bans cars. How will it work?

The leaders of Abu Dhabi have declared that petroleum belongs to the 20th century, so they are making an investment in the 21st century by building Masdar, the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city, powered almost entirely by the desert's plentiful sun. Ground was broken last winter for the $22 billion project, financed by the government of Abu Dhabi and outside investors and slated for completion in 2016. While more expensive to build than a traditional city, Masdar will use 75% less electricity and 60% less water.

Within the walls will be a green-tech research institute, developed with help from MIT. The city itself will act as a laboratory to test carbon-free products and prove that alternative energy can be deployed on a massive scale. "We want Abu Dhabi to be an energy player, not just an exporter," says Khaled Awad, Masdar's director of property development. [...]

It makes good sense to build such a city in a place where there is such an abundance of sunlight and heat. The article is divided up into ten short segments, each focusing on a different aspect of the New City and how it works.


It's a quick read and there are plenty of graphics and diagrams throughout, I found it very interesting. And to think it could be finished by 2016. The future is practically here already!
     

Obama/Biden plan for the coal industry

Why are we only hearing about this now?

Obama Threatens to Bankrupt Coal Industry



The Democrats are against us developing our own energy resources, because they want to weaken America, so they can then offer themselves and bigger government as the solution, and exert more control over US.

Be careful what you vote for. You just might get it.

The Ford 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic gets 65 mpg!

I want one! But you can't buy them in America, only in Europe:



The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can't Have

If ever there was a car made for the times, this would seem to be it: a sporty subcompact that seats five, offers a navigation system, and gets a whopping 65 miles to the gallon.

[...]

"We know it's an awesome vehicle," says Ford America President Mark Fields. "But there are business reasons why we can't sell it in the U.S." The main one: The Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel.

[...]

Diesel vehicles now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient.

Yet while half of all cars sold in Europe last year ran on diesel, the U.S. market remains relatively unfriendly to the fuel. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline. Add to this the success of the Toyota Prius, and you can see why only 3% of cars in the U.S. use diesel. "Americans see hybrids as the darling," says Global Insight auto analyst Philip Gott, "and diesel as old-tech."

[...]

The question, of course, is whether the U.S. ever will embrace diesel fuel and allow automakers to achieve sufficient scale to make money on such vehicles. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) When we lived in San Francisco, some neighbors on our street, a lesbian couple who were very Green, bought a diesel car. We were shocked; wasn't diesel a smelly, high pollution fuel? We were surprised when they told us "no". They explained that they had done a lot of research, and ultimately decided that a car running on "clean diesel" was the best way to be both Green and economical.

When we moved here to Oregon, we began thinking about getting a diesel car. But as gas prices rose, we were horrified to see the price of diesel go even higher still. That pretty much nixed the idea.

So I have to ask: Why are we adding extra taxes to a fuel that's more efficient than regular gas? Why are we turning corn into fuel, when we already have a more efficient fuel right under our noses? Why aren't we making clean diesel, something we already know how to do, instead of regular gasoline, and promoting it's use?

Read the whole article to see all the details of why we can't have this car here in the US. Ford can't afford to do it the way things are now. But if we stop adding extra taxes to clean diesel, and start promoting it (instead of the ethanol boondoggle, which is wasteful and inefficient) we can create friendlier conditions that make clean diesel viable and practical.

It's time we start doing things that make sense. 65 mpg! I really do want one. It's within our reach, if we promote clean diesel. What are we waiting for?


Related Links:

McCain, Corn and Ethanol Mandates

Ford Motor Company changes production plans

Ethanol and high food prices: the warnings were there years ago, but very few listened