Innovation in EV and Renewable-Energy Technology

For you Republicans: "EV" means "electric vehicle." Those things which you believe are well-meant, but don't work, whose sales are booming worldwide, because they work really well and are rapidly improving. The way that you believe that solar and wind energy are well-meant, but that the time when they will provide electricity more cheaply than coal or natural gas or oil is some time off. And, in a way, you're right about that: that time is some time off and keep getting further away, because it is years ago. That's right: wind and solar have been cheaper than coal and gas for years, and they keep getting cheaper, and coal and gas and oil don't. That's the reason why more and more wind and solar power plants keep being made, and why more and more rooftops have solar panels on them: not because of widespread insanity, as you may have been told, but because it's a better deal. Financially. Even before you start to calculate the value of being able to continue to breathe.

To be fair, some of you Republicans are already with me, but to be real, an awful lot of you are still buying (or selling) a line of BS from big polluters.

Utilities are also not necessarily everybody's friends. They themselves are building big solar and wind plants, and in some cases are even eager to build solar generating systems on people's roofs which they, the utilities, own, not the owner of the building, all because they would rather make the profits of generating electricity by solar panels than see you make those profits by generating a lot of electricity on your roof and selling what you don't use to the grid. In the past four years they have done a very good job of taking those profits out of other people's hands.

On the other hand, off-grid solar and wind are growing fast: people who've decided they don't need the power utilities at all. The word "utility" means the quality of being of some use to someone. When electric power utilities take worse and worse advantage of their customers, they undermine their very reason for existing. A strategy which may seem unsustainable in the long term.

Those of you who are technologically-literate, regardless of political affiliation, know that the biggest current problem with EV's is batteries. And you know that also when it comes to EV batteries, there is an awful lot of disinformation out there. The importance of range, of how far an EV can go without recharging, is exaggerated. The abundance of charging options is hidden from public knowledge as much as possible. And the rate at which EV batteries degrade, lose their power, turns out to be not as great as even EV enthusiasts feared, let alone the stories that circulate in the right wing. 2004 Nissan Leafs are being sold second-hand, why, because they're a great deal, and their batteries, their original batteries, still work pretty well. 

Still, EV batteries are a problem because they're very heavy, and because they take a while to recharge. (Not as long as you might think if you get your news from right-wing sources, but...)

So it occurred to me a while ago that EV's could be recharged from satellites. That's right: besides radio and TV and Internet signals, you can also send electrical charges wirelessly over great distances. The wireless recharging technology is not very advanced right now, or it would be widely used right now, but eventually, unless some other technology I'm not thinking of beats it to the punch, the current aggravation with EV batteries will be overcome, not just by better batteries, but by satellite recharging. This means that EV's will have to carry much smaller battery packs, which in turn means that they will be much lighter, which means that they will be even peppier and more efficient than they currently are.

So that occurred to me a while ago, and I conferred with my brother, who is a mechanical engineer, and he confirmed that this has already occurred to other people and they're working on it. 

But then yesterday, while my mind was up there in space with those satellites, it also occurred to me that electricity can be generated in space -- space, where overcast skies are less of a problem than the problems which Republicans tirelessly exaggerate in their attempts to convince people that solar power will never work.

And of course, solar power has been used in outer space for a long, long time. How long? Since 1958. 

When googling this subject, I came across things which I don't yet understand at all. But people have been working on large-scale solar power generation in space since the 1970's. 

So, to summarize, renewable energy has already been a better deal than coal, gas and oil for some time, and it will continue to improve much more quickly than fossil-fuel technology. How great the benefits will be which the public reaps from the change to wind and solar, and how fast the change will happen, depends on education: education of scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians, but also the education of the public in general about the political and economic forces which are slowing the transition for the sake of the short-term financial interests of a few people, at the cost of everyone's health.

Are We Technologically Prepared For 100% Renewables Right Now?

For any given challenge facing a society, there seem typically to be at least two, diametrically opposed sorts of responses: 1) This challenge can't be overcome; or 2) How exactly will we overcome this challenge? Response type 1 has said: We can't cross this river, we can't cure this disease, we can't fly through the air, etc, etc, and response type 2 has enabled progress to occur.

Of course, there can be dishonest reasons for claiming that something is impossible. Perhaps some slave owners didn't really believe that it was impossible for society to exist without slavery, but claimed that it was impossible, because they were making lots of money as slave holders, and didn't want to face the economic competition which would come along with the abolition of slavery. Perhaps some steamship operators knew as well as anyone that airplanes were technologically feasible, but didn't want the economic competition of airlines.

Today, response type 1 says that we can't generate all of the electricity we need by means of renewable energy, that we will have to use natural gas and nuclear power as well, because we can't make all of the batteries we would need in order to store as much electricity as we would have to in order to make 100% renewable energy work. Do I really even need to mention that some people might intentionally exaggerate the technical challenges associated with 100% renewables because they're financially invested in petrochemicals and nuclear and don't want the competition from renewables, or was that already perfectly obvious to all of you?

Response type 2 is busy building better batteries, as well as ways to store energy made by renewable means in other forms than electricity, which can be converted into electricity when needed. Batteries and other energy-storage technologies are rapidly improving, and the potential for further improvement appears to be vast.

In the case of this challenge, there is also a response type 3, which says: we don't need any breakthroughs in energy-storage technology, the technology we have right now can enable us to rely 100% on renewable sources of power. Breakthroughs in energy-storage technology will be nice, of course, and give us still greater flexibility and a still more reliable grid, but renewables plus today's energy-storage technology can already add up to a more reliable grid than the one we have today, still powered mostly by oil, gas, coal and nukes. The lovably geeky Amory Lovins lays out a type 3 scenario in under 5 minutes in this TED talk video:



There are all sorts of people today purporting to be experts in energy technology, contradicting what other supposed experts are saying. I would encourage you to consider conflicting assertions, and think for yourself.

I'm much more inclined to believe the believers in 100% renewables than the nay-sayers, because the nay-sayers have already been proven dead wrong over and over, as renewable energy grows and grows and continues to actually function really well. I agree with those who say that the major obstacle to renewable energy is corrupt politics propping up old, highly-polluting means of generating energy which, in a truly unfettered free market, would no longer be able to compete.

Batteries

Batteries are what I've been thinking about lately.

For one thing: the thing which will make solar power the answer to everything and the source of all the power we need, would be: if batteries got a lot better. And: batteries are getting a lot better, in large part because lots of people are very excited about not burning Earth to a crisp by continuing with fossil fuels. When it comes to large batteries: according to the Washington Post,

Less than a month after Tesla unveiled a new backup power system in South Australia, the world's largest lithium-ion battery is already being put to the test. And it appears to be far exceeding expectations: In the past three weeks alone, the Hornsdale Power Reserve has smoothed out at least two major energy outages, responding even more quickly than the coal-fired backups that were supposed to provide emergency power.

When it comes to somewhat smaller batteries than that: an individual home can combine rooftop solar with batteries to not only be impervious to grid blackouts, but also to help provide power to others during grid blackouts. Between the huge batteries like the one Tesla just installed in Australia, and the ones for individual homes, what we're talking about here is, eventually, and maybe quite soon, and end to grid blackouts. This makes me want solar even much more than I had. I think that imagining an end to blackouts might just make people in general want solar very much. So imagine that, and spread the word.

Speaking of grid blackouts, and smaller batteries than the ones which go with home rooftop solar: earlier today, while I was sitting before this PC, the power went out for about 2 seconds. The PC didn't know why it was now on battery power, and it told me that I might want to think about re-charging my battery because it was at 12%. I'd been worry about blackouts because I'd noticed that my battery was always at around 12%, plugged in and not charging, according to my desktop battery icon. I couldn't figure out why it never seemed to be higher than 12%. Anyhow, after that 2-second blackout, it occurred to me to see whether the problem was that the battery wasn't plugged in all the way. I fumbled around with it for a second, wasn't sure whether or not I pushed it in farther than it was, and now, whether I did anything to it or not, it's at 95% and charging.

Speaking of even smaller batteries: I noticed some pictures of Devon watches:

And I like the way they look. (Yes, my friend, that's a wristwatch.) So I researched them, and found, to my great disappointment, that they run on batteries. Not the kind of batteries which are in most battery-powered watches, which have to be replaced when they run down. The Devon batteries are rechargeable. But still, ewwwww.

That's right: I'm talking about batteries being a large part of our being able to refrain from wiping out our own species, but I still don't want one in my watch. Some watchmakers agree, and manage to combine the waycool styling with a movement that runs because you wind up a spring, manufacturers like Hublot:

and Urwerk:

But maybe I'll keep Devon in mind since their batteries are rechargeable, and since we might be just this far away from running the whole planet on renewable electricity, with the help of modern battery technology.

Does Devon make mechanical timepieces in addition to the battery-powered kind? The first FAQ on their website, and I quote: "How often should I charge my Devon watch?" does not make me hopeful about that. The website gives a list of authorized retailers, which in the US includes an online watch store in addition to some brick-and-mortar locations. The online store carries a whole lot of watch brands I've never heard of. One I had heard of is Shinola (made near where I live, hugely hyped, all-battery). And they don't carry Detroit Watch Company (made near where I live, relatively tiny company compared to Shinola, lots of really nice-looking mechanical watches.)

It seems that once again I've written an essay which was supposed to be about something else but ended up being mostly about mechanical watches. What can I say, I think they're really cool.

So support battery R&D, and just maybe we'll avoid that climate-change apocalypse. In conclusion, France is a land of many contrasts.