Fun Stuff > CHATTER
The Future has arrived
Loki:
Electric cars are silent, sneaky motherfuckers.
You don't realize how much you rely on your sense of hearing to judge traffic until you are shocked by that car that seemingly came out from nowhere, because you failed to hear it.
Masterpiece:
--- Quote from: Pilchard123 on 21 May 2013, 11:14 ---I like the idea of electric cars, but do question the overall benefit to the environment when you take into account manufacturing and disposal. I have no data either way, unfortunately. There's also the whole thing about producing the electric energy in the first place, though I imagine large power stations are more efficient than small engines.
--- End quote ---
It's not just manufacturing and disposal that's important here. If a sustainable future is our goal, improvements have to be made in EVERY aspect of the energy chain. That means we need more efficient and environmentally sound generators, transportation that does NOT actually loses 20% of energy to the air, a much more advanced distribution system and appliances that use practically no energy in standby and all the energy it needs and nothing more when in use.
Electronic cars are interesting because they could act as a theoretical energy storage when they are in park. Nowadays electricity plants have to continue working in the night, but their output is not used, because it costs more to turn off the plants at night and turn them back on during the day. That is literally 8 hours of energy production that is left unused. If cars would be used to store that energy during the night (as most cars are not used during the day), that would make energy plants a whole lot more efficient.
Pilchard123:
Oh, indeed. They were just the first two things that came to mind. Some surplus energy is used to store water behind dams, though I don't know how much that accounts for.
I once got into a bit of an argument with my Environmental Studies (not a airy-fairy as it sounds as it happens; I took it as a filler subject and ended up loving it) about energy storage and what types of energy could be stored. I said kinetic (e.g. flywheels), thermal (molten salt) and electrical (capacitors) could be stored, but the exam said they couldn't. >:(
Zebediah:
Things that disturb me when they pop up in a Facebook ad: "Minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery". The mental image of Pintsize in a surgical mask makes me doubt how "minimally invasive" it's actually going to be.
But still, it wasn't that long ago that robot-assisted surgery was pure science fiction. Isaac Asimov wrote an interesting story about it called "The Segregationist".
LTK:
--- Quote from: Pilchard123 on 21 May 2013, 14:03 ---I once got into a bit of an argument with my Environmental Studies (not a airy-fairy as it sounds as it happens; I took it as a filler subject and ended up loving it) about energy storage and what types of energy could be stored. I said kinetic (e.g. flywheels), thermal (molten salt) and electrical (capacitors) could be stored, but the exam said they couldn't. >:(
--- End quote ---
Maybe they were asking the wrong question: Can they be stored indefinitely? Friction and heat dissipation aren't really things that gravitational or chemical energy storage have to worry about. Are there any drawbacks that the storage types you mentioned can overcome that compensates for their gradual energy loss?
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