Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Discuss life, the universe, and everything with other members of this site. Get to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

NotAPhysicist
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:51 am

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by NotAPhysicist »

Yes, well, maybe hey.
That doesn't mean their criticism is wrong in this case.
For instance the extremely low CO2 output they've used for the gasoline car is unreasonable (either the car is extremely efficient or is only being driven a very short distance each year).
Or failing to take in to account that the Tesla batteries are, or will be, produced principally using renewable energy sources - instead assuming that a high percentage of energy use is from various fossil fuels.

I've also seen people questioning the whole "Where does the fuel for the gasoline car come from?" thing. I think that is a little unfair, I mean the electricity for the battery also has to come from somewhere... But is part of a life time analysis it certainly is reasonable. If you take a battery powered Tesla and a similar traditional ICE car what is the approximate CO2 and other production costs. If you were to drive both for 8 years a reasonable distance how does that change the analysis? If we want to get funky we could talk about recycling costs and so on at end of life. Assuming reasonable equivalence in initial production (is that fair??) then the Tesla pretty much has to come out on top during use, unless you are producing electricity in the most awful way you can find. End of life? No idea, I know they are reusing the batteries for other things. So perhaps similar again?

TDPerk
Posts: 976
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2007 12:55 pm
Location: Northern Shen. Valley, VA
Contact:

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by TDPerk »

hanelyp wrote:Popular Mechanics comes from a publisher known for pushing FAKE science.
Prove it. Popular Mechanics has pretty much avoided the Fellatio Left which has destroyed SciAm, for example.

What is your factual refutation of the obviously true things being said in the article--that the claim that Teslas require as much carbon emission as a gas vehicle is abject bullshit?
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria

paperburn1
Posts: 2484
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:53 am
Location: Third rock from the sun.

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by paperburn1 »

.I keep promising myself that it will not get drawn into this conversation but I can't help but say my points. Solar has reached a turning point in the design and utilization word is actually no longer a "scam". As far as I can see there were only two major obstacles to solar the first was efficiency. When solar cells were first made they convert about 5 to 10% of light energy into electricity in a very narrow spectrum. The second problem was a prohibitively high cost of manufacture. Back in the 70s installed solar was going between 25 and $45 a watt installed. The were cost of electricity was two or three cents a kilo watt from a coal-fired plant to a consumer's house. The cost of storage for your solar generated electricity again was astronomical and had to be replaced every 3 to 5 years.

But this is no longer the case solar has jumped from his infancy to young adults. The cost of panels is dropped down to one dollar per watt and would probably be lower if it weren't for the tariffs that we put on to protect outmoded solar cell manufacturers in the United States. Installation costs run about $2-$3 per watt for a grid tied system in $5-$8 a watt for a battery tied system like the one developed by Tesla. Efficiency is running 15 to 25% for different panels now. This price point and energy generation point all the sudden make solar a viable option for taking phantom/light loads out of your bill. Also solar thermal has revolutionized the industry and is starting to make gains that are just now being seen by the public. My house is heated by solar thermal ...warm, dry reliable, and costs less than what it did to heat my house propane did.

The second problem with solar energy right now is there is no turnkey solution for everyone. You have to be smart and intelligent and take time to research and design a solution for your environment. What works for me in North Carolina will not work for my father in Illinois or my cousin in Arkansas. This is the greatest deterrent for solar becoming mainstream. Modifying your abode to be acceptable to solar is also very expensive but has a progressive payback of under 10 years. There is a website that I go to that's poorly constructed that made by a friend of mine who is an engineer the has retired from Boeing. We all try different solar innovations and actually instrument meter and test for efficiency and published the results. There is a lot of crap out there that claims to be useful solar that doesn't do at tinkers darn at producing any usable energy and any reasonable return on investment. But if you're willing to take the time in six months to teach yourself what you need to know you can reduce your dependency on commercial energy by 60% easily. Most of the designs have an ROI of 5 to 7 years in the life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. It just makes good financial sense to integrate some of these designs whenever possible into your house, home or place of work. So I urge you to surf the website BuildItSolar.com and see if anything there might be useful to you to help reduce your dependence on foreign oil, foreign products and keep your USA dollars in the USA http://builditsolar.com/GettingStarted/ ... tarted.htm look at the half program
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

choff
Posts: 2447
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:02 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by choff »

One thing to keep in mind, even if you use solar panels to create your Tesla car batteries, you also have CO2 issues creating your solar panels, along with other gases.

https://www.seeker.com/a-potent-greenho ... 34288.html
CHoff

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by Skipjack »

hanelyp wrote:Popular Mechanics comes from a publisher known for pushing FAKE science.
Well, their counter arguments make perfect sense, though.

NotAPhysicist
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:51 am

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by NotAPhysicist »

choff wrote:One thing to keep in mind, even if you use solar panels to create your Tesla car batteries, you also have CO2 issues creating your solar panels, along with other gases.

https://www.seeker.com/a-potent-greenho ... 34288.html
Yes, sounds like that is something to keep an eye on and minimize.
Hopefully continued solar development will eliminate or contain it.
Regulation? :D

williatw
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:15 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by williatw »

NotAPhysicist wrote:Yes, sounds like that is something to keep an eye on and minimize.
Hopefully continued solar development will eliminate or contain it.
Regulation? :D
I understand you can now buy solar panel type roof shingles; don't know the cost or how long it would take for them (the shingles) to pay for their cost of installation from the free electricity it would give you. Then all you need is either/or some kind of good storage battery for your home (li-ion maybe) or some kind of "smart meter" to sell your surplus power from the installed shingle/photovoltaics back to the power company. As an irrelevant aside I just this month paid off my mortgage for my house; they (the bank) took the surplus in my escrow account used it to payoff my loan balance then sent what was left to me in a check. Didn't actually know they could do that on their own initiative; but not complaining so far.

paperburn1
Posts: 2484
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:53 am
Location: Third rock from the sun.

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by paperburn1 »

Bravo, on the house. I am still about 4 years away. If your insurance was by the bank make sure they did not cancel it.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

williatw
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:15 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by williatw »

paperburn1 wrote:Bravo, on the house. I am still about 4 years away. If your insurance was by the bank make sure they did not cancel it.
Thanks...I checked up on that (the house insurance); the escrow account did make the payments for the house insurance as well as the property taxes. I paid my auto insurance recently on line so I checked on my home owner's insurance when I did so (the same insurance company); paid up as of January of this year, when it is due.

NotAPhysicist
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:51 am

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by NotAPhysicist »

Congratulations on the house :)

I'm afraid my place is significantly sub-optimal for solar, still, if it gets super super cheap I guess it would still make sense. Fingers crossed.
If we get to a point where it becomes the standard (economically & environmentally sensible) option on new builds that would be great - not there yet but getting closer.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by KitemanSA »

So if he tries to use solar, does the business stop at night or does he use a lot of his batteries to store (and lose energy from) the solar panels. And how much embedded CO2 will be in that whole sequence of steps?

NotAPhysicist
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:51 am

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by NotAPhysicist »

Assuming you are talking about the Gigafactory rather than a general statement of solar use in business.

I think the idea was to also use wind.
And yes, also lots of batteries. It is a battery factory.
To be slightly less snarky about that there are a few things there. Yes they will use a lot of battery storage to maintain power, my understand is that this will partly be used as a way of testing battery packs and will also figure in with reuse of old packs - you can use for static storage old batteries that are no longer good for automative use, they aren't short of space. The plant will be helping recycle old packs as well as making new ones.
Should work.
Worst case I guess it can draw from the grid but given the whole point of the exercise I imagine that would pretty much never, if ever, happen.
Providing you have a good lifetime on the panels and decent lifetime on the batteries this should be fine. You aren't generating CO2 once they are constructed and set in place and the whole thing is helping to create new batteries in a low carbon way.

NotAPhysicist
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:51 am

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by NotAPhysicist »

As a note on business in general, I'd say the use of solar in most cases isn't intended to complete remove you from the grid but to supplement your power and reduce you reliance (and bills).
If the panels are produced, installed, etc using less CO2 than the amount created in the power they offset then you have a win carbon wise. If you can do this and actually save money on that power too then win win.
You can add batteries in to the mix to help reduce you bills by storing energy at low cost time and releasing at high costs times or as a way of saving up your solar energy for later use. The first might be good for your bank balance (this is very context dependent) but probably doesn't do much for your carbon footprint (depending on grid sources), the latter may help with both (again very context dependent).
If you want to talk about going completely off grid for a business that is a whole different thing - can you do that with solar and batteries? Yeah, probably. Do I think that is advisable? No, probably not at the moment for most people.

williatw
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:15 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by williatw »

NotAPhysicist wrote:As a note on business in general, I'd say the use of solar in most cases isn't intended to complete remove you from the grid but to supplement your power and reduce you reliance (and bills).
How feasible is some kind of "smart meter" that sells your excess solar power your not using back to the grid? Let's say especially during peak sun hours 11-4pm in some place like Southern Cal or Arizona or the Southern US during the Summer. Could be the case that your installed solar panels are actually producing much more juice than you are using. Instead of just storing in your house battery which at some point it (the battery) might be fully charged; you at that point just send the excess power being generating back to the grid, your electricity usage meter running "backwards" so to speak.

paperburn1
Posts: 2484
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:53 am
Location: Third rock from the sun.

Re: Elon Musk Is In Bed With Crooks

Post by paperburn1 »

The technology already exists including the integration of load banks and recharging and every other little doodads can think of, but the fly in the ointment actually electric company wants to be able to control your power input for reasons of safety and they don't even really want to pay you wholesale for your excess power generation. And the other big thing is permitting and getting approval from your local building inspector who generally has no freaking idea what this gizmo is or does or how it should be wired in to your system. So he just denies the permit as he doesn't understand how everything works.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

Post Reply