Since (at least for grid connected systems which are 99% of it), system size is known to the utilities, so if the data can be gathered, nameplate distributed solar capacity should be pretty well known. The rest needs to be modeled…

I’m concerned about the BMW car being made of carbon fiber. I’ve seen countless carbon fiber racing bike frames collapse within a few years. Carbon fiber seems like it’s great for a season or two but anything more and you are risking your life. And BMW has the audacity to say their batteries are going to last in a carbon frame for 20.9 years?

Then didn’t we see an article earlier this year with a beautiful graph showing the battery used in the Tesla being cycled repeatedly millions of times over the course of 6 years? The graph gave every indication that a Tesla car could get four million miles at close to 80% of the original capacity. I have my doubts about this but apparently we do have real empirical evidence those Tesla batteries should last decades. Maybe BMW could comment on this? “Why Herr Bauer do you believe the something contrary to the empirical data gathered on the 18650 cells in this article here?”

Finally, if the energy to weight density on the KIA batteries is almost 50% greater than that of the Tesla’s then I’m expecting 150 kWh battery packs from Tesla in the next five years. Then we’ll start seeing Tesla’s that can do road trips that don’t require a 40 minute charge for every two hours of driving.

Thanks. I expect that as the price of modules continues to fall then simplicity will prevail over trackers from a time of more expensive modules. So at 25% then 80 GW for today’s load or 120GW with transport and other items. Point is that today with 10GW of solar only produces 6% of total. Much work yet to do.

Right. As far as I understand things.

Though, the commercial vs utility-scale cutoff point varies by agency/organization/company. Didn’t check what it is for CAISO.

I’d go with 66%. Seems like a good estimate.

You are right. I use about 8KWhr per day, with some coming from my pv. So if an average UK house used 10KWh per day, the figure I gave would cover one house per day per car. Quite a useful percentage of the overall storage that might be required. More could be allocated in poor weather ie, low sun or wind levels.

And why isn’t this more widely discussed? The John Birch Society used to be an embarrassment, an annoying bunch of right-wingers. The Tea Party was/is rude and dangerous. The path from Fred Koch to Donald Trump should be made more explicit. Thanks, Bob.

Denmark managed 42% with just wind last year. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/18/denmark-broke-world-record-for-wind-power-in-2015

Solar farms are reporting CFs close to 30%. The US average CF in 2014 was 25.9% and in 2015 it was 28.6%.

That’s a mix of fixed mount and tracking farms. Tracking farms run higher than the average.

Utility scale solar capacity factor is higher than that. I’ve seen as high as 30 with trackers. The average is around 25. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_6_07_b

You can also look at how much solar s needed to generate 295,000 GWh/ year and divide by the number of hours in a year and divide by 0.2 for the capacity factor.

Alternatively, if 10 GW of solar can generate 6% of California’s power today then how many GW are needed for 60% of California’s power?

Solar panels are pretty tough.

last i heard, still just fleets, and is even slow getting them the vehicles.

Sorry, I misread. I thought you were saying that Germany would need to produce 3x as much electricity if it moved to RE.

Here’s how the recession whacked car sales.

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54aaea42eab8ea43788dcf4d-2680-1780/us%20auto%20sales%20skitch.png

GM and Ford, as I documented earlier, had already begun the process of bringing more efficient cars to the US market.

JUNE 4, 2008

DETROIT — Even General Motors, the steadfast champion of big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, is thinking small now.

With no end in sight for elevated gas prices, G.M. announced drastic cuts in production of sport utility vehicles and pickups on Tuesday and stepped up plans for smaller cars and engines.

G.M.’s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said G.M. will cease production at four North American assembly plants that make S.U.V.’s and pickups by 2010.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/business/04motors.html

September, 2008

“Ford to bring six fuel-efficient European models stateside

Because of the traditionally high fuel prices in Europe, cars there are traditionally more compact and sip less fuel than their American counterparts (the BMW M3 is another story, though). Some of these models belong to American automakers Ford and GM.”

” Ford is calling its young dealers to improve operations and prepare for a wave of new small vehicles coming to Ford’s lineup within three years. Those cars most likely will be the new European Focus four-door, five-door and coupé-convertible (pictured); the new Fiesta (old new); and the C-Max minivan and Kuga crossover.”

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/24/ford-to-bring-six-fuel-efficient-european-models-stateside/

The GM Volt started development in 2006 and the first concept version was displayed in 2007. GM was well along the path toward PHEVs. Earlier they joined with Toyota to study the daily driving habits of US drivers in order to determine how much range PHEVs and EV would need to be acceptable.

All of this happened prior to the onset of the 2008 financial panic that drastically slowed car purchases.

I think it was last year that our Govt mandated that Electronic Stability Control for all new cars. Many of the new cars already here that were not sold had to be returned to their country of origin. There were lots of very unhappy vehicle executives. The same will happen with AEB I imagine. See:
http://www.caradvice.com.au/373148/ancap-ama-lobbying-governments-industry-to-make-aeb-standard-in-new-cars/

“Having undergone both learning and unlearning history within the US, I accept your view on petrol engines winning the economic competition because of their military value more than their perfection for domestic markets.”

Accept it based on what?

Do you find any reason to suspect the US military would have reached out to Henry Ford, who was one of about 1,000 small manufacturers, and pushed him toward gasoline engines and away from electric motors?

For that to happen don’t you think there would be a record of the military leaning on hundreds of manufacturers to produce ICEVs. There was no way to know how successful the Model T would be during development. Ford had already built earlier ICEVs which didn’t stand out.

The Model T was hugely successful well before WWI and the military’s push for usable vehicles. Prior to the war our military was still calvary based. During the war cars were converted for military use. (The Rolls was given armor and a machine gun turbine.)

It’s highly unlikely Henry Ford was working to benefit the military. Henry was strongly opposed to the war.

“Ford opposed the United States’ entry into the Great War. One of his most publicized acts was in November 1915. He chartering a ship to take himself and a party of pacifists to Europe in an attempt to end the conflict by means of “continuous mediation.” His so-called Peace Ship was widely ridiculed.”

https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Ford

“Knowing the tactical advantages provided by automotile (sic) use, both Great Britain and France approached the subject of acquiring Model T trucks for various military purposes early on in the war. Henry Ford, very much a proponent of the isolationist movement prevalent in the United States prior to its war entrance in 1917, was not exactly cooperative with the request. While Ford wanted nothing to do with the war effort during this time, he did authorize the sale of a modest number of Model T chassis to the British military strictly for ambulance use.”

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-ford-model-t-in-world-war-i/

Fact is, EVs at the time were significantly speed and range limited. In addition to being expensive. As roads improved people wanted to drive further and faster than was possible with EVs.

Sales for EVs peaked in the early 1910s which would have been before the start of WWI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#Golden_age

Just because the Egyptian government preferred grain over onions does not mean that the US military preferred ICEVs over EVs, especially before anyone had demonstrated their value on the battlefield.

Yep… 1/3 and still some coal in those imports although it will be gone by 2025.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tracking_progress/documents/current_expected_energy_from_coal.pdf

The interesting thing about this new renewable world, is it’s beautiful complexity. Everything depends. How windy is it, or how sunny? With wind it’s even when. In Texas they put some turbines on the coast cause the wind blows on a different schedule. I actually lime the combination of the two best. More solar in the summer, more wind in the winter. Solar lining up with many AC hours.

I don’t understand why you are averaging the generation across 24 hours. Most generation is load following. To some extent, that is true of solar which is online when the demand is greatest. It seems that you are penalizing solar for not being avaiable at night, even when there is no real demand for.

Hello Bart_R,

Having undergone both learning and unlearning history within the US, I accept your view on petrol engines winning the economic competition because of their military value more than their perfection for domestic markets. I can’t cite chapter-and-verse for any published academic work on this thesis (maybe someone in the “world systems” school of thought has already made these points), but this is the general sense of history I’ve come to understand after independent reading — it’s a view of history and economics that seems to make better heuristic sense.

Countries engage in massive technological development for weapons and other military-support, since that ensures the survival of the state (and the elites that live on top of it). It’s probably the historically dominant form of capital development throughout the history of civilization: Sumeria and Egypt developed the ability of their peasants to specifically grow cereal grains because grain keeps better than, say, leeks — which makes it much easier to use as a tax in kind for feeding soldiers, state-supported priests, the royal court, as well as keeping some in stock as famine insurance. Empires favor developing food supplies, record-keeping, transportation utilities, navigation and mapping, logistics, medicine, as well as weaponry. Then, as it happens, what got you through the last war (and hopefully will through the next) often increases (the victor’s) postwar peacetime economic prospects as well. I think that’s a fair reading of postwar economic expansions in the US after WW2 and the Civil War, at least; I’m willing to bet others more knowledgeable can apply to other countries and eras as well.

We’re all probably familiar with the quip that history is always written by the victors; peace, including growth in a peacetime (nearly always a postwar, one way or another) economy is always defined and shaped by the victors as well. This almost inherently falls in between economics and political science, which probably works against its academic development, not to mention promoting some uncomfortable thoughts among those not experienced in having uncomfortable thoughts. Most US high schools’ history lessons are meant to be indoctrination, not education.

The market Trump so much reveres will prevent reopening the coal mines. They are kaput.

The thing you and Zach have which McKibben et al. don’t is knowledge of costs of the latest renewable energy technologies and the real costs of fossil fuel use.

McKibben and Hansen are climate experts. Gore is a politician. I doubt they know what you know.

Actually YTD thru June Renewables(not including large hydro) are at 23% of CAISO total.

May was 27%.

Looks like there are about 250 bio-digesters running on livestock farms/feedlots with a few more under construction.

https://www.epa.gov/agstar/livestock-anaerobic-digester-database

Right. They don’t mind driving hours to get to a lake. The closest ones are drying up.

John, Yep. Record total for day is 10x peak. Next year peak will pass 10K.

One other interesting item – total daily renewables went over 200k MWh in a day for first time on June 6th. Since then we have 9 more days above 200K MWh. Next year 200K MWh will become a solid day vs. a record day. All good.

You left out “totally”. As in “not totally to blame”.

Hydrogen Sulphide produced naturally from seaweed too

http://www.azula.com/beach-smell-toxic-seaweed/

Using automatic translation is NOT a good idea here, I think. In our political and technical discussion precision is vital.
Anyhow, probably unnecessary. Most people in Europe understand English well enough

It would work. But the problem might be the amount of water that could be used in the system.

It would be a lot cheaper to build an “open air” PuHS system than to build skyscraper space for the two reservoirs.

Idiots can also hit your car too and cause injury to you or your passengers, can’t they? Many safety improvements are still possible without significant mass increase.

China is attempting to catch up in emissions tech, but they aren’t quite all the way there. Having spent some time at the Buick factory in Shanghai, I do have some experience with this – I don’t just make up facts. At the link below, Forbes also cited strict emissions controls as a barrier to entry, among other things. There’s ample analysis to back up my assertions. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanhalliday/2013/01/20/why-havent-chinese-cars-come-to-usa/#4a30f3d33d2b

I agree that blaming the sugar industry is too easy. Years of neglect have resulted in the crisis-level accumulation of nutrient pollution and bacteria in Lake Okeechobee. After several years of drought, the recent water releases have flushed out the pollutants into the estuaries east and west of the lake. Certainly there are many sources for the pollution, but to put all the blame on sugar cane farmers isn’t realistic nor is it productive for finding solutions. The sugar cane farmers are south of the lake and tons of crap enter Lake Okeechobee from the developed north.