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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday April 27 2017, @11:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the check-the-software-first dept.

China has the world's most aggressive electric car goals. Communist leaders are promoting them to clean up smog-choked cities and in hopes of taking the lead in an emerging technology.

Regulators have jolted the industry with a proposal to require electrics to account for at least 8 percent of each brand's production by next year.

At the auto show, the global industry's biggest marketing event of the year, almost every global and Chinese auto brand is showing at least one electric concept vehicle, if not a market-ready model.

Heizmann said VW, which vies with GM for the title of China's top-selling automaker, expects annual sales of at least 400,000 "new energy vehicles" – the government's term for electric or gasoline-electric hybrids – by 2020 and 1.5 million by 2025.

The vast majority of Chinese get around by smog-free vehicles already. They're called bicycles.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 27 2017, @11:58PM (9 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday April 27 2017, @11:58PM (#500957)

    Well, if any country could unleash the resources required to make clean energy storage real, for a 20M-people city where a significant fraction charges cars at night, it would the Evil Commies of China. They can also arbitrarily level a few houses every other block to create enough parking spots with chargers.

    Realistically though, the nukes are still the short-term stopgap.

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  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday April 28 2017, @12:21AM (8 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday April 28 2017, @12:21AM (#500970) Journal

    I've often wondered, in a country such as China where authority is almost exclusively top-down, why we don't see them implement pumped hydro storage just about everywhere to complement intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind.

    a) msgs to citizen, businesses: "You're moving from here, over there. Pack now."
    b) build.

    Of course there's lots more storage tech being worked on, too. Be thrilling to see something become outright practical, modular, safe, etc. Lithium, IMHO, is a very bad plan. Because of that whole "safe" thing.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday April 28 2017, @12:39AM (1 child)

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday April 28 2017, @12:39AM (#500976)

      "Hey boss! You know how lithium batteries need cooling, and pumped hydro has more capacity? I just decided to co-locate them to save on wiring, and asked the guys to lower the batteries into the storage pond! Genius, right? Why are you turning white, boss? We're not stupid, we covered all the contacts nice and tight to avoid shorts... The next train to Really Far Away? Sure, let me check for you boss... Are you giving me a bonus vacation?"

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VanessaE on Friday April 28 2017, @02:00AM

        by VanessaE (3396) <vanessa.e.dannenberg@gmail.com> on Friday April 28 2017, @02:00AM (#501002) Journal

        You jest, of course, but it's really not such a crazy idea... imagine this:

        Suppose you have a regular hydroelectric dam/reservoir, everything set up and operating normally as HE systems go. Now, cover part of that reservoir with solar panels, with the panels spaced say 1 meter apart and elevated say 20 meters up to keep them safely away from the water. Fill the space between the panels with some kind of minimal diffusing material e.g. etched glass, textured plexi, whatever's cheap. Add enough batteries somewhere to store several days' worth of power for the region served by the dam. They could even store whatever excess is coming off of the dam, if there's a reason to.

        Now, suppose you kept the batteries in a properly-sealed container (as implied in your joke), but with clean coolant circulating through them (as in Tesla's cars). Then, you could keep them high and dry in a service building or something, and put the cold side of that cooling system of at the bottom of the reservoir, with a big-ass heat sink.

        If you locate the heat sink near where the water's actually moving, i.e. the incoming river, with sufficient gratings and such to keep the heat sink clean, that's one less system you have to spend money on to get the heat out (i.e. no pumps/fans).

        There, now you have base and peak load contained in one area, 100% renewable, clean energy, and with no more environmental impact than the creation of the reservoir had in the first place, and still enough light hitting the water to keep the fishermen and marine life happy.

        We have the tech to do it right now, we just lack the political will.

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @08:50AM (5 children)

      by butthurt (6141) on Friday April 28 2017, @08:50AM (#501077) Journal

      > [...] pumped hydro storage just about everywhere [...]

      For pumped storage, one needs two reservoirs at different altitudes, and enough water to fill one of them. I've heard that suitable places are uncommon.

      • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday April 28 2017, @11:41AM (4 children)

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday April 28 2017, @11:41AM (#501117) Journal

        These are solvable problems with construction machinery.

        • (Score: 1) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @12:13PM (3 children)

          by butthurt (6141) on Friday April 28 2017, @12:13PM (#501127) Journal

          Yes, if one is willing to throw practicality out the window.

          • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday April 28 2017, @01:36PM (2 children)

            by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday April 28 2017, @01:36PM (#501150) Journal

            Yes, if one is willing to throw practicality out the window.

            It's practical if you have a top-down, massively authoritarian government. Which China, in fact, has.

            You build the system once. The resulting energy storage lasts a very, very long time. So the return on the investment can be correspondingly high. Especially if not doing it means your citizens suffer massive health impacts, degrading the performance of your economy at large in both an immediate sense, and in the "high CO2 levels are going to have serious follow-on consequences" sense.

            It's not so much a matter of "is it practical" as it is "can anyone see beyond the next few months."

            Again, in the US, the answer is generally "no." But in China, the system works differently. They often operate with long-term planning in mind, something we have almost completely abandoned at the governmental level, which operates in convulsive twitches that tend to expire at midterm-election rates. On its good days.

            • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @04:22PM (1 child)

              by butthurt (6141) on Friday April 28 2017, @04:22PM (#501202) Journal

              Here's an example of what I think we're discussing:

              The lower reservoir has a gross storage capacity of 10,080,000 cubic metres (8,170 acre·ft) of which 6,840,000 cubic metres (5,550 acre·ft) of water is active (or usable for pumping to the upper reservoir). The lower reservoir is at an elevation of 227.5 metres (746 ft) while the upper reservoir is situated at 510.4 metres (1,675 ft). The difference in elevation between the reservoirs affords a maximum hydraulic head of 291.3 metres (956 ft) and minimum of 266.5 metres (874 ft).

              -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vianden_Pumped_Storage_Plant [wikipedia.org]

              Note the last sentence. In the most pessimistic case, when one begins with a flat landscape, creating a mound nearly 300 m high in which to put a reservoir is a major undertaking. Moving so much material will generate lots of air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions up front; that should make us hesitate. These facilities aren't just placed arbitrarily; they're put where they make sense, like on a mountain or perhaps an escarpment. There are, however, ideas for hydraulic energy storage that could work with different topography.

              http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/doshay1/ [stanford.edu]
              http://www.thegreenage.co.uk/tech/pumped-storage/ [thegreenage.co.uk]

              • (Score: 3, Funny) by fyngyrz on Friday April 28 2017, @04:31PM

                by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday April 28 2017, @04:31PM (#501207) Journal

                Moving so much material will generate lots of air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions up front;

                Doesn't mean it has to, though. Solar powered electric constuction FTW. :)

                Perhaps China will be the first to create a sustainable, non-polluting construction system for this. We surely won't be first. We'll probably be last.