EV's & Tundra's

I'm very EV tolerant. Heck, I own a nice EV.

it's the other side that is always grossly intolerant.

discussion usually turn uncivil when it gets to the nasty facts of the green industry.

it's exponentially more awful than the O&G industry.

not to mention the free market does very little to support green initiatives for a reason. it's not a good investment & it's bad for the environment.

without Gov mandates, we would not be discussing all this.



@T-Rex266 I'm doing my best to remain non-political...really, I'm trying hard. I even have a grimace on my face.

 

Be strong!

 

I agree on your comment about neighborhood grids...they would not be overtaxed. you comments helped me think thru it. thx.

I guess it would cause more genset activity at night, to meet the increased demand - which is not presently built into the system.


curtail....the only reason I can think of is scheduled maintenance - which can usually be re-scheduled. or simple mechanical failure.

the ERCOT dudes here in TX are mandated to have uptime plans far in advance with near term weather demands augmenting the schedule.
(the recent freeze was comic book bad, not sure what measures could have been taken)


we handle a lot of turbine gensets here at the warehouse....super duper complex machines. think of a jet engine with a generator hooked to it. and a massive transmission to couple the 2.

 

Its not the plant that's going down, it's the customers. Operators of the plants have agreements with businesses out there that for so much $$ per year, they have the ability to shed their load. This happens usually in the summer around here when the heat index is over 110...everybody's ac is chugging power like beer at a frat party. The grid is taxed and the operator needs to have some capacity to absorb something big turning on without tripping the whole thing off. These agreements that I have seen are worth millions in rebates if the customer is large enough. Where something like a factory that has a continuous process wouldn't be a good candidate for it, a group of office buildings or even a big bitcoin mining operation would. That is why I was saying the b.a.a.s.s. could assist with this. Well, it actually already is but I haven't seen to what degree yet. These power companies are putting them in, and the battery doesn't care by what means it's getting charged and when it is getting discharged.

 

No prob.

With CA, WA and MA going all EV by 2035, we need to build more hydro and NG power plants. Sprinkle in a few wind & solar farms too for curb appeal.

 

O&G is a lot better than it used to be. But you are acting like it has always been this clean. With any new technology, it takes time. I agree with the fact that nuclear could be the way out of this…we are just one innovative idea away (figuring out waste) from making it feasible.
But as far as O&G being looked to as saints and the end all do all…meh. They have been adamantly against a lot of the regulations for emissions since the jump. Title V, scrubbers and stack testing were not their idea out of the goodness of their hearts. Also, with the batteries, it’s not a bad idea to have some type of “how is this going to be reclaimed end of life plan”.
We are never going to get away from oil, that’s a dumbass fantasy. What we could do is save more of it for all the other things it goes into…as in pretty much everything.

 

Planned rolling brownouts due to high usage, normally on very hot days...............

 

Gotcha.
That's pretty foreign up here in the PNW.
We have a lot of good hydro plants that generate enough to send excess down to CA.

 

These are not planned in advance.

these are scheduled, on a near term basis, because short term weather patterns changed, a gen-set(s) is down & power demand is up*.

it's not exactly intentional...it's to save the 60hz cycle of the rest of the grid in the short term.

otherwise the whole thing comes down.




*notice I left out the part about hot days being less windy & the wind farms go dead.

 

I mention wind farms because Texas has a beautiful wind farm out west....that is...if you don;t get too close to the cattle processing plant.

that place smells like....well, put your a/c on recirc when you pass it.

 

Well, at least the sun is shining.

 

switching gears back to Tesla.

so we've taken a couple trips to the lake in the Tundra and last weekend, we took the Model S.

the Tundra's suspension is.....lumpy. it's not rough, it lumps over bumps. The TRD exhaust makes noise, etc. The blower whines when you pass.

so on the same roads...we were able to compare the air-ride/comfort setting on the Tesla.

I'll say this...in comfort mode ...it glides on the hwy. the sound canceling kills road noise. it's like a tomb.

passing cars is astonishing. ZERO delay.

it was refreshing to take the 75 minute trip in the Tesla.

simply amazing tech...on a known rough patch of Hardy toll road, the car automatically "raised suspension". because other Tesla's experienced the rough patch. just awesome.

i used cruise control - not ready for FSD yet. too much traffic.

 

What many seem to forget is generally speaking....no grid also means no gas. You have to have power to pump gas. I hear this argument so much from friends...."What if the power grid goes out for a while and you can't charge your car?"....I usually say, "Great question and that would be terrible but on the same note, how do you think you're going to pump gas at the station without power?".....crickets

 

I get anywhere from a week to two weeks out of a tank of fuel. I also store fuel on my property. Nothing special, just 5gal jugs. (I have lots of yard to mow). A power outage, even if its a few days, isn’t going to hit me in the same way as the EV owner who needs to charge every night or every other night.

Can a full charge last an EV more than a couple days? Can EV owners store a “full tank” in their garage on the cheap?

If the grid goes down, we’ve got bigger problems. Grocery stores only keep a couple days worth of food. But I don’t think the concern is that the grid just shuts off; I think people are more concerned with brown-outs and rationing from too much demand.

 

All great points but point still stands, eventually most people would run out of gas even with rationing, especially considering the average American doesn't store extra gasoline very long if at all. Although it would be very slow, having a solar panel would last much longer....granted not in the Alaskan winters.

But you are right....driving around in whatever vehicle would be the least of our concerns.

 

Imagine if EBT* cards were shut off for 1-2 weeks.

the power going out is the least of our worries.

there would be instant riots & pilferage at local stores.


*EBT card = Electronic Benefit Transfer card.

 

If the grid were to go down....like what happened up north (2003?)

once a genset gets knocked off line, it causes the 60hz sine have to flutter*. not good.

so, the grid knocks off the vast sections that the shuttered genset powers or enough houses to prevent a large fluctuation of the 60hz sine wave.

then comes the trouble...it takes about a week to get the genset back on line...and in harmony with the other gensets.

it's in this week of zombie darkness that society will become what is being hidden by the welfare/entitlement state. not good.


so, be thankful for rolling brownouts (I'm looking at you California)....they prevent the whole system from crashing.





*this is normal flutter.
*

 

Sad.

Gov is not taking care of the CA population.

who'da thunk it?

what are all those solar panels doing? or the wind farms?

this is when energy traders scalp the CA population....they have to buy power from other grids.

money will be made. and I wonder what politicians are connected to the $ flow of traded elec?

 

There have been multiple attempts and proposals for CA to produce it's own energy, but it is always voted down because they don't want to see it. Classic N.I.M.B.Y. attitudes of the holier than thou planet savers "Let somebody else deal with the square mileage of solar panels and let them stare at wind turbines so that we can have power. We are privileged and don't have to look at that stuff. That's what fly over country is for."

There's nothing wrong with those of us that have to lose the land and sightlines to these "green" energy sources making them pay a premium for it.

https://svinews.com/antelope-migration-hindered-by-solar-farm/

 

and speaking of outages...

let's watch Europe to see what happens.

and when you have a quiet moment...remember...there is no shortage of O&G.

how are we at this place?


https://www.offshore-mag.com/region...5856E8S&rdx.ident[pull]=omeda|8876I3225856E8S

 

I'll lather on another thought to this splendid post.

our society is essentially cash-less.
we rely on electronic transactions.
so, even the cash based bartering system has been usurped.

heck - I don't even have to present any form of payment at a Tesla supercharger...I just plug in....it's all electronic.

 

Yeah, solar panels would work. You’d need six 360-watt panels getting 4.5hr of sun per day to charge a Tesla Model Y that travels 37 miles per day according to solar.com.

 

Is this regarding NG plants?

In the case of a total blackout at our hydro plant, we have a diesel blackstart genset with auto synchroscope capabilities. We also have a DC UPS system to provide the field flash on the first generator. A little switching here and there and the whole plant could be back online in probably 12 hours.

 

As an amateur prepper, this is a long term goal.
Enough battery power to get to work and the grocery store.

 

yes...NG plants. some of the newer ones are much like what you are talking about. the older ones....well.

the newer modular turbofan based units can cycle in a day or so. (Solar Titan 350)

 

Very cool, I would love to check out a NG powerplant some time.

What rpm do your turbines spin?

 

1500 or 1800rpms

depending on the freq needed.

we ship these units all over world. 1/2 compression - 1/2 power gen

I'm not an operator...more of a logistics dude.


things in the world must be picking up as we are shipping a LOT of units out.

quite the conundrum - as we are led to believe energy is scarce.

 

That's wild! Ours are like 90rpm, big and slow! Roughly 3' wide turbine shaft and the rotor is roughly 25-30' across.

Not an operator either but I'm on shift with one, journeyman wireman here.