Views: 23
What a joke. Solar battery power that lasts four hours. 118 million of our tax dollars were spent to build a battery storage plant that can supply 65,000 homes with energy for four hours.
The state has 6,617 megawatts of storage capacity.They say the state will need 52,000 megawatts of storage capacity to meet its goal of running entirely on clean energy by 2045. And this storage unit is 68.8 mega watts of power, at a cost of 118 million.
206
Views: 20
Young Voters Flee Biden. Who Turns 81 Today. Happy Birthday Joe. My question is why they have voted for him in the first place?
The list of bad things that he and his administration have caused is so long. The Border, COVID, Crime increasing, Wars around the world, Weaponization of the courts, etc.
Among young voters (18-34 years old) — just 20% of whom view Biden favorably on Israel’s war on Hamas — Biden (42%) trails Trump (46%) by 4 points, which is outside the poll’s margin of error.
“This could be a massive sea change,” according to NBC News poll analyst Steve Kornacki, who noted Biden was plus-26 points on younger voters in 2020.
NBC News Poll: Biden’s standing hits new low amid Israel-Hamas war
250
Views: 27
Imagine if 40 percent of the gas stations you went to had pumps that were dry or out of order. You’d think you’d taken a time-warp back to the gas crisis under President Carter.
Well, welcome to what it’s like owning an electric vehicle. And not somewhere in back-country Montana — but in super-green, super-techy Los Angeles.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday, a test of 30 non-Tesla fast-charging stations in the EV capital of America — stations that had a combined total of more than 120 stalls — revealed at least 40 percent of them had some sort of issue.
“L.A. County has more public DC fast chargers than any other in the country, according to the Atlas Public Policy research group,” wrote columnist Joanna Stern, herself the owner of a Ford Mustang Mach-E EV.
“From the beach in Santa Monica to parking garages under Rodeo Drive, my video producer Adam Falk and I visited 30 different non-Tesla DC fast-charger stations in a Rivian R1T pickup. I ran into problems at 13 of them — that’s over 40%. Oof is right.”
Stern said that “[d]uring my testing expedition, I encountered three problem categories. I pressed the companies on why they happen, and what can be done to fix them. And while it’s good that Tesla will start accepting non-Teslas in 2024, that might not put an end to the issues I’ve encountered.”
(For the record, the experiment was deliberately limited to Level 3 chargers, a cut above the Level 2 chargers that are the norm at most public charging stations. “I ignored the more common chargers known as Level 2 because they’re just too slow for quick fill-ups,” Stern wrote.)
The first problem was simple: The charging station was broken, with “a sign, a dead screen or an error reading ‘Charger unavailable’ or ‘Out of service,’” Stern wrote.
She found that fully 27 percent of the 126 individual Level 3 fast chargers at the EVgo, Electrify America and EVCS stations surveyed weren’t working for one reason or another.
The problem in some cases could be solved simply by a company technician turning a troublesome unit off and on again, Stern wrote, though that’s not much of a help to a motorist who needs the charge immediately.
Electrify America’s vice president of operations, Anthony Lambkin, also said that issues with power generally could force the units out of service.
But the unit could also have a broken part or defective connector, Stern wrote, which requires replacement parts.
Stern wrote that part of the solution is replacing gear that is as new as five years old because EV charging tech is advancing.
Scrapping such new equipment seems like it adds to exactly the kind of waste environmentalists will tell you they’re trying to avoid — but nothing says that you care like owning an EV, no matter what the actual impact is!
The second issue had to do with payment — namely, it being rejected.
“My favorite stop? No. 18, an EVgo in Culver City,” Stern wrote.
“After I repeatedly tried the credit-card reader with several different cards, the system demanded: ‘CASH ONLY,’” she wrote. “As if this was some hot-dog stand in the park — except there’s no money slot!”
This affected nearly 10 percent of the stalls that were otherwise working. Both swipe read and chip read errors were reported.
“Why do these machines hate credit cards? Again, a few reasons. Karim Farhat, the chief commercial officer at EVCS, said the makers of the charging hardware and the credit-card reader machines are often different, so there can be integration problems,” Stern wrote.
Sara Rafalson, a senior vice president at EVgo, told Stern the problem could be chip readers mandated by the state.
“The newest standards require more dependable contactless card readers,” Stern wrote.
So, the solution? According to Stern, motorists should go contactless and use online payment systems like Apple Pay — although it’s worth noting that certain EV models can be registered with apps operated by EVgo and Electrify America and payment is handled automatically as soon as you plug in.
Surprise surprise, that’s exactly what the operators posited was the solution to this all.
The third issue? Handshakes.
No, we’re not talking about a sign of friendliness exchanged between two individuals, but rather a software error between the charger and the car.
“The charger and the car are both computers, and they use industry standards to communicate about how much power to transfer,” Stern wrote.
“The Combined Charging System (aka CCS) — the technology integrated in most fast-charging non-Tesla EVs including the Rivian — requires a quick handshake. If there’s a timeout before things align, you have to unplug and start over.”
Stern continued: “These stations from EVgo, Electrify America and EVCS tend to support CCS along with the Tesla charger, known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), and occasional older standards as well. Meaning, unlike with Tesla’s own stations, there could be a dizzying number of combinations of car and charger.”
And, to make things worse, according to EVCS chief commercial officer Karim Farhat, a software update could be enough to throw the handshake balance off and make the car unchargable.
The solution to this? Getting the industry to agree on a standard. This might be problematic, considering that Tesla’s system seems to be viewed most positively by those who own the vehicles. At present, however, those systems only work with Teslas. When Tesla starts allowing models from Ford, GM and Rivian to start using its stations, some will be able to handle the vehicles’ charging system — but in other locations will require motorists to use an adapter between CCS and Tesla’s North American Charging Standard. That could cause a whole new set of headaches, as well.
Los Angeles isn’t the only place in California experiencing these kinds of problems with EV charging stations. A 2022 study by the University of California, Berkeley found that 22.7 of plugs studied in the Bay Area weren’t working properly and 4.9 percent had cords too short to reach their vehicles. (Tesla stations weren’t included here, either.)
And it’s bad enough elsewhere in the country that even on a tour to promote electric vehicles, the entourage of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm couldn’t find places to charge at times.
It’s little wonder, then, that while EV adoption was a hot thing for the last few years, the trend has cooled. The Journal had previously reported that EV prices are being slashed as electric cars go unsold on lots they would have flown off of just a year or two ago.
California, meanwhile, wants to ban the sale of internal-combustion cars by 2035 — and, in its biggest city, 40 percent of the chargers aren’t working now.
I can see the new license plate slogan now. “California: Drive Like It’s the Future, Fill Up Like It’s 1979.” Not exactly the thing to make voters — even Golden State voters — go wild, is it? Well, unless lawmakers in Sacramento change course in a hurry, that could be exactly what drivers will face from San Diego to the Bay Area and beyond.
And don’t think the rest of America isn’t far behind — not if the Democrats have their way, anyhow.
305
Views: 17
How the political establishment sponsor the protests they want, suppress the ones they don’t, and tread carefully when their clients go off-message.
281
Views: 26
What Trump or any other Republican should do day one when they are President January 20, 2025. DE weaponize all departments.
Former President Trump said he would return the favor to the Biden administration when it comes to weaponizing the Federal Government. First be it Trump or any other Republican, here’s my recommendations.
Fire all the top department heads. They need to go. Fire all the lawyers in the DOJ. Set up a commission to look into the department heads to see if any had committed crimes. If so, bring charges. Not as a group, but individually.
Finally remove all the Executive orders and remove the EPA’S ( and any other department ) power to make laws.
611
Views: 13
Toyota Is Right: We Need More Hybrid Cars and Fewer EVs.
Story by James Gilboy 11/02/2023
The Case for Hybrids Over EVs
To illustrate, we’re going to compare the on-road carbon emissions of a few models that are available with internal combustion, hybrid/PHEV, and electric powertrains: the Ford F-150, the 2022 Hyundai Kona and Kia Niro (which use the same chassis) and the BMW 3 Series and i4 (which also share their bones). Again, this is the question we want to answer: What’s the best use of a limited battery supply? Do we spread those materials across a bunch of hybrids, or cram them into a few EVs and leave the remainder with straight gas or diesel engines?
We can answer this by dividing how much each vehicle reduces CO2 emissions over its ICE counterpart by its battery capacity in kilowatt-hours. That’s tricky to imagine, so don’t bother: just look at this equation instead.
Calculating battery use efficiency in electrified vehicles. The Drive
We need more data to fill that out, of course, and obtaining it is simple: The EPA’s FuelEconomy.gov publishes per-mile CO2 estimates, which also estimate the upstream emissions that come from gasoline production.
Things aren’t as straightforward for EVs, though, which the EPA lists as emitting no CO2. While true from an exhaust standpoint, making the electricity needed to charge them does generate CO2: an average of 386 grams of it per kWh in the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration. We can then estimate their hidden CO2 emissions with the equation illustrated below. (It’s the same formula we used to calculate the break-even point for EVs when it comes to charging and production emissions vs their on-road savings last year.)
Calculating the hidden emissions of EVs. The Drive
Armed with this data, we can then calculate how efficiently each electrified vehicle uses its battery. The equation we’ll use for that is shown above—remember, the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible with a limited supply of batteries. And when you do the math, it’s pretty clear what the best option is.
Made with LiveGap Charts
Consider just how much battery your typical mass-market EV uses. Operating an F-150 Lightning may generate less than a third of the CO2 emissions of a gas F-150, but each one hoards 98 kWh of battery, most of which will be used only on the rare prolonged drive. Meanwhile, an F-150 Powerboost hybrid battery is just 1.5 kWh. It doesn’t achieve nearly the emissions reduction the Lightning does, but Ford could make 65 of them with the batteries that go into a single Lightning.
That adds up, because if Ford sells one Lightning and 64 ICE F-150s, it’s cutting the on-road CO2 emissions of those trucks as a group by 370 g/mi. If it sold 65 hybrids—spreading the one Lightning’s battery supply across them all—it’d reduce aggregate emissions by 4,550 g/mi. Remember, this is using the exact same amount of batteries; the distribution is just different.
The pattern holds true for the Hyundai/Kia combo and the BMWs, too—going full hybrid lowers emissions far more than building a handful of EV and a ton of gas cars. Split up an i4’s battery, and you can make seven 330e PHEVs, cutting 560 g/mi to one i4’s 266. Divvy up a Kona EV’s, and you can make seven Niro PHEVs worth 1,085 g/mi in reductions (one EV’s worth 239), or 41 regular Niro hybrids, for 4,797 g/mi eliminated. Like the Ford, they make better use of a fixed battery supply by spreading it across a large number of hybrids, rather than concentrating them all in a single EV.
Of course, EVs’ cases improve when they’re run exclusively on renewable energy. We can zero their per-mile CO2 emissions to simulate that, and it helps them out—but it doesn’t change the fact that their battery use is still inefficient. Powering a handful of EVs with renewables still just doesn’t have the immediate effect that a broader hybridization of new cars would.
It comes down to this: By using its limited battery supply on a small number of (expensive) EVs, the auto industry gets plaudits from investors and the public despite implementing an inefficient decarbonization scheme. It gets to greenwash itself with a handful of flashy products, while in fact not cutting CO2 emissions nearly as much as it could. The numbers strongly suggest that hybridizing as many new cars as possible is more effective, and to increasing degrees as battery technology evolves and supplies hopefully go up. That would allow hybrids to graduate to PHEVs, before being superseded by full EVs where appropriate.
Most of the benefits of a full EV transition, however, would present themselves with widespread PHEV adoption. They offer enough range to make short trips on electric power alone, often at comparable up-front cost to an EV, but also the flexibility and efficiency of a hybrid powertrain for longer journeys. This lets them sidestep most of the obstacles to EV adoption, namely battery supply and poor charging infrastructure.
That said, there are reasons why PHEVs haven’t taken off. They’re less efficient and more complicated to produce and service than EVs or regular hybrids, not to mention heavier and more expensive than regular hybrids. They’re also not helped by their confusing names, never mind the PHEV acronym.
2023 Toyota Prius. Peter Nelson
Hybrids as a whole have taken a long time to capture market share, accounting for just 5.5 percent of the light vehicle market in 2021, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That’s over a period of 24 years since the pioneering Toyota Prius entered production. EVs meanwhile achieved a similar market share in less than half that time, attaining 5.8 percent of the U.S. market in 2022 according to The Wall Street Journal. That’s only a decade since the paradigm-shifting Tesla Model S entered production.
But EV buyers benefited from more generous tax incentives than hybrid customers ever did, with the previous federal EV tax credit effectively conjuring the market out of thin air. Like it dictates the sizes and kinds of cars we buy, both directly via the Chicken Tax and indirectly a la CAFE regulations, government policy strongly influences which powertrains we choose.
So far, the government has favored the shiny, hype-driven solution of fast-tracking EV adoption, when the math suggests that’s suboptimal—at least for the short and medium term. If anything, it’s probably fair to say the over-emphasis on EVs is slowing the decarbonization of the auto industry for the time being. We can’t afford to overlook the role hybrids have to play here and now in favor of a far-flung future where every car on the road is pure electric.
Besides, when the 2023 Toyota Prius is one of the best-looking cars on sale today, it makes the pragmatic solution that much easier to choose.
Toyota Is Right: We Need More Hybrid Cars and Fewer EVs. Here’s Why (msn.com)
284
Views: 29
Bad vibes are rippling through the electric car market. Short term some states have seen growth in Electric cars. California uses a phony number because they include hybrids and hydrogen cars. We are seeing warnings from Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz , and even Tesla.
What will the recent new UAW contracts do sale and pricing? Ford has announced that they’re holding back on 12 billion in new investments. GM is delaying the addition of three new brands and Honda cancelled it’s joint venture with GM.
483
Views: 39
Yes Virginia, Emissions in California are getting worse not better. I did an article at breaking news where I sugar coated it so Progressive cultist could understand. Well they just wanted to pretend that facts don’t matter. When ever you give them facts, they go to the 12th paragraph and line 27 and say but it says this. So here in the reality world(not progressives’ wet dreams) are the facts.
Now even a fanatic on the left points out that the state is lying about the real emission numbers in California.
“Governor Newsom has taken unprecedented action to get there — investing tens of billions of dollars to transition to clean energy, taking action to cut pollution, and moving us away from fossil fuels.” What gets counted in these estimates?
Research by Leehi Yona, a PhD candidate at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, showed that California omits key emission sources from its greenhouse accounting numbers — from aviation to shipping and wildfires.
“An increase in emissions is concerning in and of itself, but it’s also important to know that those emissions are underestimates to begin with,” she said. “So the fact that they’re increasing is doubly worrying, if we’re thinking about our progress as a state addressing climate change.”
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article280992543.html#storylink=cpy
Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase globally and in California. In California is the key word here.
The graph shows monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations measured in parts per million at four locations: (1) Mauna Loa, Hawaii (1958-2021); (2) La Jolla (1957-2021); (3) Point Arena (1999-2011); (4) Trinidad Head (2002-2017).
In the last five years, the yearly increase in carbon dioxide levels accelerated to about 2.4 ppm per year from an average rate of 1.6 ppm per year over the past 6 decades.
Here’s the bottom line. The earth is not in great danger the way the left claims. But California with it’s strict rules and guidelines still can’t control nature.
211
Views: 20
Winning. Germany Brings Back Mothballed Coal Plants to Help Keep Lights On. Like other countries we’ve seen where the leap to Green has been a disaster. Despite gas bottlenecks easing since last winter with new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal deliveries, coal-fired power plans will be reactivated.
Bloomberg is reporting that Germany will bring several mothballed coal plants back to the market this winter to ensure that Europe’s largest economy can keep the lights on when demand peaks.
In 2022 coal use globally hit a record as the world burnt over 8 billion tons in a single year for the first time, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
230
Views: 62
Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas.
Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.
Every year since 1958, the West Texas town of Sweetwater has hosted the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of the venomous ophidians are rooted out of their dens and brought to the Nolan County Coliseum to be gawked at, “milked,” and often beheaded and skinned. It started as a way for the region to rid itself of some of its least-welcome residents. Now community leaders wish they could do the same with several giant piles of scrap that have for too long been left to bake in the sun. But that’s proving to be much trickier than wrangling reptiles.
About forty miles west of Abilene on Interstate 20, Sweetwater has unwittingly become home to what is possibly the world’s largest collection of unwanted wind turbine blades. When forklifts deposited the first of these in a field behind the apartment complex where Pamala Meyer lives, on the west side of town, in 2017, she wasn’t initially bothered. But then the blades—between 150 and 200 feet in length and mostly made of composite materials such as fiberglass with a binding resin—kept coming. Each was cut into thirds, with each segment longer than a school bus. Thousands arrived over several years, eventually blanketing more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards. Every few dozen feet, a break among the stacks leads into an industrial hedge maze.
“It’s just a hazard all the way around,” Meyer said. She worries about neighborhood children exploring the unfenced piles and says that stagnant pools of water inside the blades breed swarms of mosquitos. Matt Jackson, who works in a nearby warehouse, has other concerns. The piles create shaded nooks and crannies, perfect for Sweetwater’s unofficial mascot. “It’s just a big rattlesnake farm,” he said.
The blades were brought here by Global Fiberglass Solutions, a company based in Washington State that announced in 2017 its intention to recycle blades from wind farms across the region. Instead of ending up in landfills, they would be ground up into a reusable material that could be turned into pallets, railroad ties, or flooring panels. Global Fiberglass is one of a few companies attempting to develop a viable business from recycling blades.
Besides the main boneyard—behind Meyer’s apartment—stacks of blades also occupy ten acres a couple miles south of town, and the company is storing blades in other locations in the county. “They have, in my view, abandoned them there,” said Samantha Morrow, the Nolan County attorney. “The county doesn’t have and cannot find millions of dollars to clean this up.”
The Sweetwater piles are also at least partly the indirect result of a rule clarification the Internal Revenue Service issued in 2016. Before then, a wind farm could collect valuable federal tax credits for only its first ten years of operation. But the IRS determined that it would restart the clock on the credits if a wind farm “repowered” its turbines—replacing most of their equipment with newer parts. So, despite the expected two-decade lifespan for turbine blades, wind farms across Texas and other states began replacing many that remained in good shape years early.
Some paid Global Fiberglass to remove the older blades and haul them away. The company set up shop in an empty industrial facility in Sweetwater that was once an aluminum recycling plant, but Don Lilly, the managing director of Global Fiberglass, told me that only a handful of blades have ever been ground up there. He said the company was close to ramping up and would soon mill the blades into pieces the size of coarse sand. “The blade material is sold,” he said, “but I can’t go into that part yet.”
Sweetwater has heard such pledges before. The county declared the stockpile a public nuisance a year ago. City attorney Jeff Allen said Sweetwater’s local ordinances are aimed at overgrown lots, not turbine blades, leaving the city with limited legal options. He said he believes Global Fiberglass “intended to be a viable business” but at some point “it just came off the rails.” (Lilly disputes this and says the delays have come from ensuring “all systems were engineered.”)
Sweetwater benefits from the wind-energy industry, including two large wind farms nearby. Drivers arriving on I-20 from either direction are welcomed by a giant wind turbine blade painted with the town’s name. But even the community’s biggest boosters of renewable energy long ago ran out of patience with Global Fiberglass’s mess. “We’d like to see them gone,” said Karen Hunt, director of the local chamber of commerce. “The sooner the better.”
Update, September 25: General Electric filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to fulfill its promise to recycle thousands of blades. GE says it paid the company $16.9 million to recycle about five thousand wind turbine blades, but that GFS instead stockpiled them at facilities in Sweetwater and Iowa. “Only after GFS took millions of dollars from GE, did GFS all but shut down its operations without recycling the Blades,” reads the complaint, filed in U.S. district court in New York.
GE says it later contracted with another company to recycle its blades and is seeking damages to cover these costs as well as reputational damage. Global Fiberglass has not responded to the lawsuit. GE removing its blades from Sweetwater wouldn’t clean up the giant dump; blades manufactured by other companies would still remain.
277
