EV Zero emmisions? Is electricity a clean energy source: ARTICLE

[cbaber]

Originally Posted by sheepdog 44

The big question is how little co2 and greenhouse gas emissions is acceptable to stop global warming?

Are clean burning gas, and EV's on the current grid enough? Co2 and pollution for that matter is still being spewed in the atmosphere. What is the break even rate for the Earth to absorb co2 as fast as we emit it? As it stands we're at 400ppm co2 and counting.

Short answer, no. Nothing we have done so far is enough to reverse global warming. Humans have not even managed to stop global co2 emissions from increasing each year.

It doesn't help that the global population will continue to grow, requiring more and more electricity, land, and resources. As deforestation and development of the world continues, the earth has less ability to un-do the changes we have made.

Vehicle emissions are only a small fraction of total global co2 emissions. Energy production is the leader, and forecasts by the EIA show that fossil fuel will remain the same and even grow (natural gas) as an energy source through 2040. Renewable energy is expected to grow, but not replace any other energy forms.

[oil pan 4]

Some places like here individual farms uses megawatt hours per month watering food, enery, textile and feed crops.

[sheepdog 44]

Maybe LED street lights would be better.

There is waste in every part of the stream of consumerism. I mean really, it's cheaper to ship 90% of items from China than make it in America? Some items get shipped from Virginia, to distribution centers in Illinois, and reshipped to the Northeast.

Do you think buying green is enough? Some green items will be wrapped in plastic, double boxed, or placed in over sized boxes with 50% empty space. The carbon emissions along the whole chain is astounding.

What do you think happens when you return a futon, boxed furniture, or lawn and garden canopies, glass tables and furniture? A return credit assessment is made that determines if it gets shipped back to the vendor. Even if the store gets credit for it or not, 80% of those items get hacked to pieces and thrown down the garbage chute. Was the item really defective, or are Americans not smart enough to assemble what the Chinese build?

We had an ordering debacle for two months where every two weeks i would end up throwing away 40 pounds of expired bacon and two dozen cartons of a dozen eggs. It'll make you cry to see such waste.

[UltArc]

My thought ages ago was to make tunnels. Roadways concealed. I would only think Turnpikes, or specific road ways would be this way.

It may seem daft at first, but I was thinking this way:
-Close to no maintenance for winter. No salt needed, no plows needed.
-Close to no rebuild from winter damage, since little salt and no plows.
-No deer accidents.
-Always light- LED for night, glass and LEDs for day.
-Decreased air resistance while traveling.
-No cross winds.
-Solar panel space on the top.
-Pollution could then be filtered.

And my favorite?

VERTICAL wind turbines!

They go in the center. As the cars are going opposite directions, there would be a lot of force on these. Yes, initial cost would be there. BUT, this would be a road worth driving on- with very little upkeep, and much better for the vehicles. Imagine if the commute most people had had far less air resistance, created power, and the fumes could be pulled up through simple fans to be filtered.

I won't waste money to drive on the road that is just like any other. But a road like that, I'd spend money on it lol.

I would think the government would love it, since it would be extremely easy to monitor with cameras or even just sensors to track vehicle speeds.

"Sir, our system clocked you exceeding 9 mph 6 times on your trip. That's 6 citations for you. Have a good day!"

[Astro]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Solar road way?
You are kidding right.
First of all they can't build a regular road that doesn't start to break down after just a few years.Then you are going to integrate solar cells more fragile than a potato chip into the road surface and drive 80,000 pound trucks on them. That sounds like a terrible idea.
Have you ever dont any road work? Its miserable work, I have gone out to do repairs on their machinery and you wouldn't believe all the deep gouges, divits and nicks the road way accumulate from tires falling off, trailer tires blowing out and the driver just keeps going the tire shreads apart and then they ride it on the steel rim to the next exit, items falling off trailers, junk getting ran over hung up under then dragged under vehicles. Then when a tractor trailer tire blows do you have any idea how much force the tread belt swings around with? Hitting the ground with every rotation.
Thats just what we need, a road that suffers millions of dollars in damage and stays closed for who knows how long after a tire blow out or vehicle fire.

So the current system requires complete road replacement or resurfacing every few years. As you say it is horrible work, requiring massive machinery and large costs in terms of man power as well as the inconvenience to motorists as the roadway is closed down or the number of lanes reduced for extended periods.
Compared to a system that reports any damage and one person in a pickup truck could bring out a replacement section. Unbolt the damaged section(s) and take the damaged piece away for repair or recycling. Road users inconvenienced for a few tens of minutes, not days. If the damage affects a large number of sections then they know that by the number of sections reporting damage so they can send an appropriate number of workers and replacement sections to get the job done within a few tens of minutes.
The cost of traditional road repairs, dozens of road workers, large numbers of very heavy machinery, transport and logistics it all adds up. I don't know how much it would cost to resurface 50 meters of roadway but i bet replacing 50 damaged road sections would be quicker and cheaper. Especially as the economy of scale kicked in and the cost of road sections dropped to a handful of dollars each.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Its starting to sound like a bad idea, but wait there's more.
In addition to all that, any where up north that sees deep frost has compression ridges, these compression ridges shatter concrete and asphalt with ease. Also any where up north that sees daily freeze thaw cycles has roads that only last a few years before they start to look like a mosaic. Dont for get most of the roads in the US see a snow plow and road salt most winters.

As the video showed, the sections have integrated heaters that keep them clear of ice and snow. No snow ploughs causing damage, no salting of the roads to cause cars to rust out in a few years. As you say the existing system has compression ridges that shatter the existing roadway requiring yet more maintenance.
And yes those heaters will probably consume most of what is generated but the roadway will remain safe, clear and undamaged by the cold season. The rest of the year the heaters wouldn't be used. Also we are talking of heating to keep the temperature only high enough to prevent ice and snow.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Aside from being an epic waste of money on an unimaginable scale that wont work in most places I see no problem with it.

Almost the same statements were made when it was proposed to put reflectors on the roadway. The inventor eventually had to use his own money to install them on a section of road to prove they were durable and increased safety. Once he did it was obvious to everyone the benefits and boom everyone everywhere wanted them on their major roads.

Maybe the engineers won't be able to make them durable enough, maybe they will. Who knows until they try. Some ideas sound crazy until somebody proves them and then everybody says, of course, why didn't i think of that.


But it is more about the lighting and the benefits it would provide in terms of road safety and reduced need for the millions of street lights lighting unoccupied roadways for the benefit of nobody. That was the focus of my post. The ability of the roadway to sense vehicles and only light sections of roadway that are in use.
Yes, replacing street lights with LEDs would reduce the power consumption but they would still be on all night.

And to bring this back to topic.
The mix of power sources that make up the grid power would benefit from the reallocation of the street lighting power to electric vehicle recharging. No additional demand would be placed on the grid by the electric vehicles. Especially good as any increased demand would normally be made up for by increasing coal consumption rate at the power stations as it is easier to do that in the short term rather than build more hydro, geothermal or solar power stations.

[user removed]

Originally Posted by UltArc

My thought ages ago was to make tunnels. Roadways concealed. I would only think Turnpikes, or specific road ways would be this way.

It may seem daft at first, but I was thinking this way:
-Close to no maintenance for winter. No salt needed, no plows needed.
-Close to no rebuild from winter damage, since little salt and no plows.
-No deer accidents.
-Always light- LED for night, glass and LEDs for day.
-Decreased air resistance while traveling.
-No cross winds.
-Solar panel space on the top.
-Pollution could then be filtered.

And my favorite?

VERTICAL wind turbines!

They go in the center. As the cars are going opposite directions, there would be a lot of force on these. Yes, initial cost would be there. BUT, this would be a road worth driving on- with very little upkeep, and much better for the vehicles. Imagine if the commute most people had had far less air resistance, created power, and the fumes could be pulled up through simple fans to be filtered.

I won't waste money to drive on the road that is just like any other. But a road like that, I'd spend money on it lol.

I would think the government would love it, since it would be extremely easy to monitor with cameras or even just sensors to track vehicle speeds.

"Sir, our system clocked you exceeding 9 mph 6 times on your trip. That's 6 citations for you. Have a good day!"

Actually there are several more advantages to underground roadways.

No property purchase.
No construction on existing highways.
You could blow the cars through the tubes
You only need about a1 psi difference in air pressure to do that and then the cars would not need to carry long range fuel supplies.

Giffard tubes were the original subway concept. Impossible for two cars to hit each other since they would be compressing the air between themselves.

regards
Mech

[UltArc]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Actually there are several more advantages to underground roadways.

No property purchase.
No construction on existing highways.
You could blow the cars through the tubes
You only need about a1 psi difference in air pressure to do that and then the cars would not need to carry long range fuel supplies.

Giffard tubes were the original subway concept. Impossible for two cars to hit each other since they would be compressing the air between themselves.

regards
Mech

I was thinking it would be cheaper to build the tunnel around certain current roads.

The psi change, and blowing cars through the tubes sounds a bit Jacque Fresco. Not that it is bad, but his mental process is too advanced. People today aren't interested in such a long term break even point. Putting roofing over tunnels in certain bad areas (above sea level, with snow/ice) would have a good payoff. Especially on a BS system like the turnpike. Government funding, tolls to drive on it, and LE making a tidy profit.

I do like your idea for a more distant future- building a system the best way we can in the future. I would think it would be easier to get people on board if we showed success from another venue.

Oh, and if one believes the 1 out 5 rule, I didn't read the entire act, but this was interesting: One Mile in Five: Debunking the Myth - Vol. 63· No. 6 - Public Roads
I blindly believe it because it comes from .gov, and would think it would have been taken down if it was shenanigans.

[Xist]

Want to forgo roads?

Flying cars!

Which would directly cause the end of humanity...

[oil pan 4]

If the intergrated road heaters work so well why dont they use them now?
This is the problem with green energy, no one tries to prove things in steps. They want to go all in, spend other peoples money on a massive scale, throw all this unproven technology to the wolves, and pray for it to all work (or take the money, file for bankruptcy after it fails catastrophicly and run since that was the plan all along).
If they wanted this to work and not swindle the government out of millions of dollars like all those solar panel manufacturer start ups and electric vehicle start up did over the last 6 years they would make it work in steps.
They would use the funnel approach. They would build the foundation. Start with a nearly indestructible foundation for their solar road way. A nearly indestructible road by its self would get a lot of peoples attention.
Then prove the deicing system works. Then do a cheaper self lighting only option.
If they only offer the single most expensive option I doubt their motives and product.
If they made all these things work independently they might do a lot better. Say the solar road way doent work so great with vehicles on it all the time, so make a solar brake down lane, then make the actual part that gets driven on self lit road way with a single self deicing lane as your standard divided 4 lane interstate highway package. Make a whole system that is scaleable and can be mixed and matched and built to fit customers needs. You know the kind of stuff self supporting real for profit companies do when they really want and care about making a product that works and can be sold to as many customers as possible.

LED street lighting is a no brainer. Sodium and Mercury vapor lamps are at most 25% efficient and LEDs at there worst are 90% efficient.

I really like the road tunnel thing only problem I see is it makes adding additional lanes really fun and expensive.

[UltArc]

Agreed on the expense of adding lanes and all. I would think the size would accommodate more space to begin with, say room for four additional lanes, but it seems like most turnpikes have maxed out what they want. And lets be real, the government doesn't mind building in the short sight and not worrying about later on...which is the reason this wouldn't really take off.