Jochen & Other EV/Hybrid enthusiasts- Do you know where you electricity comes from?
When I got my Volt (Ampera to you) I had to acknowledge to my purist friends that I was driving a "coal fired" vehicle (since my Electric Coop is still mostly coal-fired). Of course, free (or not always so free) markets are driving them to phase out the major coal plant in the 4 Corners area (where I apparently export *my* fossil fuel pollution and cause the extraction of so much groundwater to sluice the coal from mine to plant that the land is literally settling). I shook my tiny fist at my Cooperative only to find that they were constrained by a Public Regulatory Commission form building and operating their own renewable sources (yup, we have a lot of sun and wind) until 2025. MegaCorp regional electricity corp has a monopoly on providing them (and me) power through that date. I had the option of buying salvage panels (originally from Germany!) at $.10/watt ($30 for $300W) which is a *fraction* of the new cost of such things, and at least doesn't drive the extractive market, although it *does* relieve the burden on the primary industry for handling a gigantic waste stream (for operations and maintenance efficiency it seems commercial installations of PV has a refresh cycle closer to 10 years rather than the 20+ quoted to home users)). - Steve On 4/6/21 3:16 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > We have leased a new BMW 330e "plugin hybrid" now which will replace > our old BMW 1 series at the end of the month. There are not enough > charging stations at the moment for a pure electric car like the BMW i3. > > -J. > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> > Date: 4/6/21 00:33 (GMT+01:00) > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The God Equation > > I have just a small Hybrid CMax now that gets about 45mph instead of > my old Hybrid Escape that got about 30mph. But the next will be all > electric! > > > > P.S. QuantumScape is an interesting battery company. They’ve gone > public but they have no product yet! > > > > *From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith > *Sent:* Monday, April 5, 2021 2:29 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The God Equation > > > > > > Marcus wrote: > > Humans might be capable of deciding how to allocate energy. Or we > might just infest the solar system and beyond, paving over > everything. With a HPC/complexity mindset, I tend to prefer big > and direct approaches, myself. I would be happy to drive around > 1000hp electric hummer. More motive to get fusion working! > > I too have always been mildly attracted to Big Iron (why I came to > LANL to work on the Proton Storage Ring and then on the > (Super)Computing Division that became HPC), but in the bottom line I > have always chosen my motorcycles (for example) to be ones I could > stand back up if they fell over. > > Regarding a 1000hp Hummer: My 4000lb Volt already seems excessive > (to me) for most purposes, but I am in the market for hub-drive motor > or two I can swap in under wheels of my 1949 Ford Dump Truck (more big > iron) and run with the (salvaged out) battery from my Volt (16KWh of > Lithium mined from Columbia after Musk stated "we can coup anyone we > want"). Maybe graphene or nanopartical solid-state batteries or > hydrogen fuel-cell technology will overtake Lithium Chemistry fast > enough to make a 1000hp GWh Hummer less egregious than my Volt or the > Gen1 Insight I tooled around in before that one. > > Re: Fusion energy plant proliferation: There is one HUGE fusion > reactor in the sky flooding us with a wide spectrum of radiation > (albeit shielded nicely with an endogenous magnetic field and an > atmosphere suffused with water vapor) which is fairly easy to harness > for *heat* and even the ever-fungible stored electric charge... > > A half-dozen (salvaged) PV panels are enough to fill up my Volt's puny > battery in a day of good sunshine... your Hummer is not going to get > the same range (30-40 miles) from the same KWh input (by half?). In > the 1970s, a mega-giga-hyper solar project in the AZ desert placed > thousands of mirrors in concentric circles with heliostatic controls > to focus on a central heating tower (steam generator?)... *free > energy!* everyone screamed hysterically... but it had to shut down in > just a few years (as I remember it) because heat isn't the quantity > needed to generate power, but rather heat-flow, so they were dumping > scads of low-grade heat into the nearby Colorado River (why they chose > the location I believe, for the cooling) to facilitate the > power-generation... eventually they were shown to be destroying > (disrupting badly?) the existing ecosystem in the river and even Baja > CA with all this "low grade" and "waste" heat. Thermal fusion power > plants are not going to do any more-better on this count I don't expect. > > Maybe direct electric-generation through fusion processes might get > around that problem. More tech is always the most obvious answer to > the failings/exacerbations of the last round of tech. Maybe Iron-Man > class of miniaturization? > > Deliberately misquoting Pogo - "I have met the > enemy and they is the Red Queen" > > > > *From:* Friam <[email protected]> > <mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith > *Sent:* Monday, April 5, 2021 12:31 PM > *To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The God Equation > > > > Marcus wrote: > > That was Glen. (My explanation is just that we have limited > short term memory and can’t tolerate any other representation > than terribly compressed forms. So it is hard to gain > confidence in simulations because we can’t get them entirely > in our heads, nor prove them correct, nor reason very > effectively about how mutations will change their behavior. > The natural world has no such hesitation.) > > <not-snark> I wonder if perhaps that "the natural world" *does* > have such hesitation in the sense you cop to here... and suggest > that when this happens it is exactly what we call "life". We > fat-brained humans with elaborate language are just the (known) > apex of this process that bootstraps itself up some kind of > tower-of-babel style complexity (to increase our ability to hold > more and more and more qualitatively and quantitatively "in our > heads"). Clay tablets unto nanodots (and beyond) and > proto-abacii unto quantum computers (and beyond) represent our > progress toward extending our phenotypes represent our attempts to > expand (transcend?) the reasons for our hesitation. > > Is "life itself" and "consciousness" by extension, somehow the > urge (an inevitable self-organizing trend itself?) toward a > particular type of self-organization? > > </not snark> > > - Steve > > > > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> > > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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