Frederick Sparber writes: >The 240 volt 100 amp single phase service (25 KW Peak) for residential use >would limit you to >1.0 pound of hydrogen (0.5 gallon gasoline equiv.) production per hour with >a 2.5 volt 10,000 ampere state-of-the-art >electrolysis cell.
That would be plenty for recharging the electric vehicle portion of a plug-in hybrid. Electric cars are 4 times more efficient than conventional gasoline cars, so 0.5 gallons equiv. energy is about the same as 2 gallons per hour (enough to go 40 or 50 miles). At that rate, most people would not need to charge more than an hour or two. >> Synthetic liquid fuel would be useful if the electricity all comes from a >giant thermal farm in Arizona, in the middle of nowhere, but you can build >fission plants reasonably close to population centers, so why not use the >energy directly? >> >That is ludicrous. Why would it be ludicrous? Naturally occuring liquid fuel comes from deserts in Saudi Arabia and Texas. Why would it be any worse to extract synthetic fuel from the deserts and drylands in Arizona, California and Texas? The solar thermal plants would probably be a lot cheaper than any fission plant ever will be, and much safer. Even now, we could supply all the liquid fuel we need with 10,000 to 20,000 square miles (100 x 200 miles) but there is plenty of land out there. >> If you forget, or if you do not have time to recharge, it does not >matter. It just means you use more liquid fuel that day, and pay more for >transportation. >> >Yes synthetic liquid fuel when the bottom of the oil barrel is dry It would not matter. If everyone drove plug in hybrids, consumption of liquid fuel would fall by a factor of 10 immediately, and later 100 as batteries improve. The remaining demand for liquid fuel can easily be met with biofuels or any convenient nonpolluting synthetic fuel. This would take far less than ~10,000 square miles. Five or 10 dedicated nuke plants would do it. >I disagree. If you have 10 hybrids that want to charge 10 KW-Hr in 2 >minutes, the recharging station >has to have electrical service for at least 300 KW demand capability. As someone else already pointed out, the stations would use capacitors. But I doubt there would be any need for or market for recharging stations in a plug-in hybrid world. - Jed
