The perfect Surfer - Electric - Car ?

[Peert]

That's a nice test Sergio!
Sono has reached their 50M€ community funding goal for the final prototypes... Would be nice to own one some day.

[jatem]

Electric bike with a custom trailer allows me to travel the 15km return trip to the beach as fast as a car in summer traffic, using about 250whr of renewable electricity (7 cents worth). Gives me some good leg exercise.

The trailer is a Burley flatbed with a 1.1m x .5m x .6m shell made from 4mm aluminum composite panel, which easily fits my pocket foil, 4x peaks/bars, etc. Parking is way easier. Doesn't matter if the wind drops and I head straight home.

[Kamikuza]

That's interesting. All the tariffs and regulations, predictions and assumptions make getting a simple, fixed figure difficult though eh.

$4.4bn seems way over the odds though...what's up with that? Especially when it seems the costs are accumulated in the operating costs...

Still ... if they'd just left them on, they'd have met the CO2 criteria. It's like not flying because of CO2 when the plane's going anyway.

Only eight of these countries (have admitted to) having a nuclear weapons program... EDIT: strike that, Israel has no nuclear power stations but has nuclear weapons...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

[Carlos_C]

Fukishima had some bad design

there were two other reactors hit by the Tsunami on Onagawa was even closer to the epicentre

If we go on mass to electric vehicles and start heating our homes with electric rather than gas .......renewables will not atm be able to cope with that demand and we either have to stay on fossil fuels or ramp up nuclear


The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant (女川原子力発電所, Onagawa (About this soundpronunciation) genshiryoku hatsudensho, Onagawa NPP) is a nuclear power plant located on a 1,730,000 m2 (432 acres) site[1] in Onagawa in the Oshika District and Ishinomaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It is managed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company. It was the most quickly constructed nuclear power plant in the world.[citation needed]

All the reactors were constructed by Toshiba.[2] The Onagawa-3 unit was used as a prototype for the Higashidori Nuclear Power Plant.[3]

The plant was shut down after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The Onagawa nuclear power plant was the closest nuclear power plant to the epicenter, and facing the Pacific Ocean on Japan's north-east coast, experienced very high levels of ground shaking – among the strongest of any plant affected by the earthquake – and some flooding from the tsunami that followed.[4] All three reactors at the power plant successfully withstood the earthquake and tsunami without incident.[5]

Following an IAEA inspection in 2012, the agency stated that "The structural elements of the NPS (nuclear power station) were remarkably undamaged given the magnitude of ground motion experienced and the duration and size of this great earthquake,".[4][6] More recently, Tohoku Electric reported that the third floor of No. 2 reactor building lost about 70% of its structural rigidity and the first floors lost 25%, compared to when they were built, and was planning to reinforce the structures for increased quake resistance.[7] In 2013 the station operators sent an application request to restart unit 2 at Onagawa to the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Agency.[8]

[Kamikuza]

Fukishima had some bad design

there were two other reactors hit by the Tsunami on Onagawa was even closer to the epicentre

If we go on mass to electric vehicles and start heating our homes with electric rather than gas .......renewables will not atm be able to cope with that demand and we either have to stay on fossil fuels or ramp up nuclear


The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant (女川原子力発電所, Onagawa (About this soundpronunciation) genshiryoku hatsudensho, Onagawa NPP) is a nuclear power plant located on a 1,730,000 m2 (432 acres) site[1] in Onagawa in the Oshika District and Ishinomaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It is managed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company. It was the most quickly constructed nuclear power plant in the world.[citation needed]

All the reactors were constructed by Toshiba.[2] The Onagawa-3 unit was used as a prototype for the Higashidori Nuclear Power Plant.[3]

The plant was shut down after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The Onagawa nuclear power plant was the closest nuclear power plant to the epicenter, and facing the Pacific Ocean on Japan's north-east coast, experienced very high levels of ground shaking – among the strongest of any plant affected by the earthquake – and some flooding from the tsunami that followed.[4] All three reactors at the power plant successfully withstood the earthquake and tsunami without incident.[5]

Following an IAEA inspection in 2012, the agency stated that "The structural elements of the NPS (nuclear power station) were remarkably undamaged given the magnitude of ground motion experienced and the duration and size of this great earthquake,".[4][6] More recently, Tohoku Electric reported that the third floor of No. 2 reactor building lost about 70% of its structural rigidity and the first floors lost 25%, compared to when they were built, and was planning to reinforce the structures for increased quake resistance.[7] In 2013 the station operators sent an application request to restart unit 2 at Onagawa to the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Agency.[8]

Japan did a lot for their solar PV market, much like they did for hybrids, with subsidies for the hardware, and contracts with power companies for buy-backs. People are switching away from gas/kerosine heating and water heating, and going to electric. Pretty hard to go anywhere and not see panels on roofs, or little mini-panel farms where rice fields used to be. (Compare that with back home: I can count on one hand the number of houses I see with PV on the roof.)

Now that those agreements are coming to and end, it'll be interesting to see what happens...might explain why the nuclear power stations are starting up again.

[Matteo V]

........or little mini-panel farms where rice fields used to be. (Compare that with back home: I can count on one hand the number of houses I see with PV on the roof.)

Great! Just make sure that the population is falling as food production land is being taken up for solar power generation. That should be the first consideration.

Scratch that, the first consideration should be to create a solar panel that is recyclable, and not a toxic waste issue at the end of its 10-year lifespan as current solar technology is.

No wait, let's first investigate the environmental impact of solar farms being installed on land that was once green vegetation. From what I have seen of solar farms, the ground is covered with crushed rock and then sprayed with soil sterilant chemicals to prevent weeds and trees from growing up in the area. All of this land that is taking up by solar farms is essentially sterile and devoid of life.

But it's not all doom and gloom! Maybe the birds that are being massacred by the wind turbines could find refuge, at least temporarily, in those sterile solar farms.


A good first step into the right direction for Humanity would be to stop solving problems by creating bigger problems. But then again that would ruin the consistency that exists in human history.

[Carlos_C]

Professor David Mckay addressed a lot of this in his book "sustainable energy without the hot air" his website has a readable version - essentially he looks at the energy need of the UK and looks at what is needed to replace fossil fuels

https://withouthotair.com/

its quite readable and gives an idea of the sizeable task we have in replacing fossil fuels

[Horst Sergio]

Hi Matteo, I see your worries, can't speak for US situation, but a bit in general and about how it works in Europe.

Great! Just make sure that the population is falling as food production land is being taken up for solar power generation. That should be the first consideration.

Even in a 100% solar powered world also with heat, industry and mobility. The area needed for solar power plants is not even 1% so is not in competition with land needed for food production. There are also first plants with combined PV and agriculture and some crops even profit from the partial shading of panels.

Scratch that, the first consideration should be to create a solar panel that is recyclable, and not a toxic waste issue at the end of its 10-year lifespan as current solar technology is.

Actual solar panels and plants are recyclable and it is done in practice, already seen it in big plants as in Europe we start to have a relevant number of return. Dismounting a PV plant gives a slight positive output as the recycling of valuable material as Cu, Al, Ar, Si etc. pays back the effort for removal. In more than 95 % of the panes there are no relevant toxic materials apart from a small part of Pb which can be extracted aswell during recycling. Just the US company "First Solar" uses the toxic cadmium, but in a stable untoxic combination and they have an own recycling process which I would expect to work well, as the have to recycle a lot since more than 10 years with returns around 2%.

No wait, let's first investigate the environmental impact of solar farms being installed on land that was once green vegetation. From what I have seen of solar farms, the ground is covered with crushed rock and then sprayed with soil sterilant chemicals to prevent weeds and trees from growing up in the area. All of this land that is taking up by solar farms is essentially sterile and devoid of life.

As said I don't know the situation in the "Country of Fracking". In the over 10 countries in 2 continents I have seen many 100 of PV plants:
Practically all plants have herbs growing and been cut about 2 times a year, but often with respect to birds breeding season, to avoid crops overgrowth. There are no chemicals used and crushed rocks just extremly rare cases or just for the streets in the installations. Some power plants are like an jungle and I indeed started to think about chemicals (pepper spray) as the risk to meet a wolf starts to be realistic. Already had some close to shepherd dog and ram attacks. PV plants are jungles with small flocks of red deer inside passing you from time to time, you got to see it yourself, full of birds, rabbits ... very nice.

But it's not all doom and gloom! Maybe the birds that are being massacred by the wind turbines could find refuge, at least temporarily, in those sterile solar farms.

Not expert for that, but as far I know wind turbines are often shut of not for single birds but for swarm of birds.

But most important, this is the topic about electric surfer cars, maybe with solar cells on it if you like it, but if you are interested in solar power you better start a new topic.

The elongated https://sonomotors.com campaign is actually at its
45th of 50 days at
47 of 50 Mio € to be collected, so doesn't sound bad at the moment.

[Horst Sergio]

Electric bike with a custom trailer allows me to travel the 15km return trip to the beach as fast as a car in summer traffic, using about 250whr of renewable electricity (7 cents worth). Gives me some good leg exercise.

Yery cool and indeed the best way, have done it myself in the past but now more distant to the lake. But also know guys doing it even with windsurf equipment. Actually tring to go by bike again this year.

[Matteo V]

But most important, this is the topic about electric surfer cars, maybe with solar cells on it if you like it, but if you are interested in solar power you better start a new topic.

It ain't an electric car if I use a gasoline generator to charge it. And that's the whole problem with Renewables and Electric vehicles. And I am right on topic with this one! A percentage of the electricity put into your battery is always going to be from NOT solar or NOT wind-generated power. This leaves nuclear hydroelectric or fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal to produce the electricity you use when driving the vehicle.

But I do like the way you sell the solar farm thing. You make it sound great. But it's still uses up land, and is not always producing electricity but still using up that land. As far as recycling goes with current solar panels, what's the power input to melt those solar panels down? And what chemicals and chemical processes do you have to use to strip those toxic chemicals out and then reuse them?

One of the greatest failures of recycling is plastic bottles. If you have a single-use item, and then send it in for recycling, it takes energy to clean and make that product into a new one.

If it takes one barrel equivalent of oil energy to produce 1000 plastic bottles, and it takes 1 and 1/2 barrels equivalent oil energy to recycle those 1,000 bottles into 1000 new bottles, then you wind up harming the environment more by trying to recycle those bottles, then if you just bury them.

Humanity is starting to rack up a long history of good intentioned Environmental cleanups, that wind up destroying the environment to a greater degree than if that cleanup would have never taken place. This is the electric car, curbside recycling, strict industrial environmental regulations in the West, and many many more failures to come. All of those failures had some slick-talking salesman who had stock in that particular miracle cure who got rich. And on this topic I think you have the potential to really sell things to a degree that could create another environmental disaster. I would ask that you look very hard at the issues, history, and the repercussions of environmental policies sold by someone who is there to just sell.

So don't get me wrong here, I would love to have an electric vehicle if I didn't drive on so many long-distance trips. I just want the Forum members here to realize that's a large percentage of those miles they put on that electric car, have been powered by coal and natural gas. That electricity comes from somewhere, and Renewables are not ever going to be a major source worldwide for the power to run your electric car.