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We're almost at the end of the first month of the Volkswagen scandal, which now includes 11 million cars and Leonardo DiCaprio. VW's US boss has testified to Congress, blaming a few rogue software engineers. All the while, questions have raged about VW Group's future: which projects are safe, which ones are on the chopping block, and how exactly will the company recover from this?
...
VW's board has finally started to answer some of those swirling questions. For starters, there's going to be much more emphasis on electrification. Electric vehicles and hybrids have played more of a bit part at VW, compared to Toyota, GM, and domestic rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz. That's going to change with a standard electric architecture that can be used across multiple vehicles and brands.VW Group isn't devoid of hybrid and EV know-how. Audi's Le Mans program has taught it a lot about high voltage automotive systems, and Porsche has a wealth of experience from the 918 Spyder, Panamera Hybrid, and even the 919 Hybrid racer. VW would be smart to leverage all these programs.
VW is the largest car company in Europe. This is what sudden, disruptive technological change looks like.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @02:19AM
First, I'm as skeptical as anybody that this will play out as a shift from diesel to electric...but, damn, am I hoping it does!
If Europe makes a rapid transition to electric vehicles...well, that would be an essential ingredient in us avoiding economic collapse in a timely manner as petroleum reserves begin to run dry. First, it frees up petroleum that would have just been burned to make plastics and fertilizer and the like that we've no economical alternatives for today. Second, it drives battery technology development like there's no tomorrow...and those batteries don't have to go in cars. A big battery in a closet paired with enough solar panels on your roof and suddenly you don't need any coal or natural gas to keep the lights going (and the car rolling). At that point, we get lots of luxury to wean ourselves off the remaining fossil fuels, plus we open the potential for insane amounts of energy at our disposal. Just the residential rooftops in America receive enough sunlight for all the entire planet's energy needs -- and that's at today's off-the-shelf-of-your-home-improvement-store's efficiency levels.
I'm actually going to sleep a very little bit better tonight having read this article....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @02:33AM
A balanced back of the envelope [instituteforenergyresearch.org] look at the potential for solar power in America:
Though solar technologies are improving, meeting current US electricity needs with today’s photovoltaic technology would require about 10,000 square miles of solar panels—an area the size of New Hampshire and Rhode Island combined. Moreover, if photovoltaic power is established in those areas of the country like the desert southwest where sunshine is abundant, consideration must be made for transmission lines as well as the “line loss” that accompanies electrical transmission over great distances.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @02:53AM
The IER is not a balanced anything, they are yet another oil industry shill. Just reading the front page of their website ought to have been a clue, googling the name would have confirmed it for you.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday October 16 2015, @03:12AM
OK, mister Balanced, let's assume that your 10,000 square mile figure is correct; the lower 48 states have an area of about 3,000,000 square miles, so we're talking about a third of one percent of the total land area.
Your estimate also ignores all the other non-fossil energy sources, like wind, hydro and nuclear, even those that are already operational. And you assume that solar panel efficiency, which has been steadily improving, is already as high as it'll ever get. And you assume that we can't improve the efficiency of any of our power-using devices.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 16 2015, @03:32AM
Moreover, the efficiency of deployed panels lags behind the efficiency of panels in the lab or in space. Although $/W is probably the more useful metric. We need cheap, wallpaper-like solar panels that can be placed everywhere.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @03:47AM
Don't be a PV efficiency snob. [ucsd.edu]
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @03:52PM
Despite all that, since that article was written, efficiency of commercially available panels has gone from 16% to 22%. [solarcity.com] That's about a 38% increase over 4 years.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday October 18 2015, @12:47PM
That entire argument is attacking a straw man. The problem is not that 15% is too low, it's that it's changing too fast. That article was written in 2011. I considered PV a couple of years before that and the panels were 8%-12% (with a fairly similar cost per Watt over that range). Now, panels are closer to 20-22%. The theoretical maximum is something around 38% (sort of. There are a few tricks that can boost it a bit higher). The gains between 10% and 30% are likely to be made fairly quickly, though I wouldn't be surprised if it slowed down after 30%.
If you're looking at a PV installation as a 20-year investment (most now come with at least a 20 year warranty), then waiting 3-4 years to get a 30% higher annual return seems like a good idea. If you're looking at it for immediate payback at commercial scales, then you probably don't care about efficiency at all, and dirt-cheap 8% panels that you can blanket a large area with would be a better bet than expensive 22% ones.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Friday October 16 2015, @03:38AM
I live in the Netherlands, so I don't know the average roof area on american homes, but I get about 2/3 of my electricity consumption from about half of my south facing roof area.
If I used all of it and maybe a little bit of non-optimal placed roof I can easily produce more electricity than I'll need by quite a margin.
If everybody did this it would still be a huge area, but we probably already own most of it and are not doing anything usefull with it anyway.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @03:45AM
I'm in Arizona, granted, but I live in a very modest suburban home with between a third and half of the total rooftop surface area covered in panels. And I generate half again as much electricity as I use -- enough that I'll be able to power an electric vehicle when I finally get one.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @03:39AM
Let's do the math, shall we?
Insolation is roughly a kilowatt per square meter. If we assume an average of the equivalent of 5 hours per day of direct overhead sunlight, that's 5 kWh / day / m^2. With 15% efficient panels, that's about 3/4 kWh / m^2 / day.
There're about 300,000,000 Americans. Pulling a conservative guesstimate out of my nether-bits, let's assume each American gets 1000 square feet of rooftop; round that to 100 square meters to keep the math easy. That's 30 billion square meters of residential rooftops, or a bit over 10,000 square miles -- exactly the figure you provide as somehow being outrageous. That times 3/4 kWh / m^2 is a bit over 20 billion kWh / day, which is about a terawatt.
Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org] that world energy consumption is about 18 terawatts.
So, my off-the-cuff suggestion that American residential rooftops are enough for the entire civilization was a bit off...but not significantly for this discussion. Even without considering anything past American residential rooftops -- none of the commercial rooftops, no parking lots, let alone all the non-American rooftops -- we're already at a significant fraction of the entire global demand.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 16 2015, @08:21AM
There are some generosity in your estimates. Quite a bit actually.
There is roughly half the houses that have their roofs facing east west rather than north south. Now you might think this is an advantage, because you could harvest early morning and late evening sun. But invariably one side is shaded, and evening.morning sun is still no match for half the area of daytime sun. So you lose half the roof tops before you even get started.
Then subtract at least the winter months of all those houses north of some arbitrary latitude where it just wouldn't pay to put in panels at risk of winter snow and ice.
Then you have to subtract the number of families that life in apartment buildings. You could turn around and add all the commercial buildings with big roofs, but those are a small fraction of any metropolitan area.
Still it would probably generate all the power we would need (In the US). Even with those limitations.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 16 2015, @01:49PM
The photovoltaic panels need not conform to the shape of the roof. No matter whether your roof faces N/S, E/W, or some angle in between, you can use the entire surface area of your roof to get sunlight. Putting struts under your panels may be less eye appealing than screwing them down on the roof directly, but you can angle those panels whichever way you need them to face. In fact, you might even put up more square feet of solar panel, than you have roof, if you allow them to overhang the roof some. Not to mention, any east, south, or west facing wall can support yet more panels. And, if that isn't enough, you can always put some free-standing panels over your driveway, part of your yard, or whatever. Erecting the struts and beams to support all of this may make the panels less economically attractive, but I'm pretty sure that they'll still pay off in the long run.
Why restrict yourself to the roof dimensions and contours?
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 16 2015, @05:42PM
Why restrict yourself to the roof dimensions and contours?
Because: WIND.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 16 2015, @05:55PM
That reason is inadequate. Especially since I mentioned walls that face other directions than north. Wind isn't even a factor with those.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 16 2015, @06:22PM
Wind is a factor any time you start mounting panels on struts.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @02:40PM
All of your objections are why the envelope only assumes five hours per day of noon-equivalent insolation. With perfectly-aligned panels on a tracking mount and in a climate with no clouds, you'd get almost twelve hours per day; my assumption is that you'd only get 40% of that with fixed panels in typical US climactic conditions.
And, yes. There're places that won't even do that well. But there're just as many places that'll do better. The worst places in the Lower 48, in the Pacific Northwest, are still no worse than half as good as it is in the best -- and, to boot, better than the average in Germany. As I noted in another post, I've got somewhere between a third and an half of my own modest home covered in panels and it's enough not only for all my current electricity needs but for an EV as well. If I teleported the house to Seattle and covered the entire roof with panels, I'd still meet all my needs, plus those of an EV, plus a surplus. Indeed, I'd have a generous surplus...far and away my biggest usage is in cooling from May through October, including at least a few months where the overnight low hovers around 90°F and the daytime high rounds to 110°F. Seattle isn't going to need anywhere near as much energy to maintain a livable indoors temperature.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday October 16 2015, @09:41PM
Snow is a problem, but it's not a show-stopper. I live in central NY state, and we get plenty of snow, but I still see solar panels all over the place. The panels are tilted, and they're mounted where the sun shines - so the snow melts, sublimates and/or slides off pretty quickly. Also, the snow season doesn't last that long - 4 months at most, usually 2 or 3. And those are the months with the shortest days, so you're not losing that much sun, anyway.
Which brings me to the real problem. On the winter solstice, we only get 9 hours of daylight, so we can't rely too heavily on solar. We'll always need something to supplement it. Unless we store the excess power during the summer, and use it in the winter, but that's not feasible at the moment.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Friday October 16 2015, @03:44AM
Though solar technologies are improving, meeting current US electricity needs with today’s photovoltaic technology would require about 10,000 square miles of solar panels
And what is the area of roofs in America? Let's do a back of the envelope calculation
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/units.html [census.gov]
So, about 80 million regular houses, conservatively taking that number. Let's say that conservatively, average roof size is about 250 sq. meters (about 2700 sq. ft., or about 1500 sq. ft. house). That gets us an area of 20 billion square meters. And since this is metric, I can just chop of 6 zeros to get to square kilometers. 20,000 sq. km. And that is apparently 7700 square miles.
So, I don't know, but just putting some solar panels on roofs instead of regular asphalt shingles seems to be somewhere in the ballpark, even when using some outlandish numbers. And this doesn't include commercial roof installations, like ginormous box stores and their infinite parking lots (eg. putting PV on "roofs" of parking lots). Furthermore, this reduces heat island effects.
In reality, we "all" know that there is more to power than PV solar. Wind is kind of advanced along with hydroelectric. Then there is nuclear - another no-CO2 emitting option. Rooftop PV, as used during peak hours, should be sufficient to charge significant portion of electric cars and run air conditioning and other things. And as illustrated above, there is no need to coat Nevada with solar panels - just coating rooftops is a major step in the right direction.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @03:50AM
I'm glad we independently took two different approaches to the estimation and came up with figures that round to the same significant digit....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 16 2015, @05:59AM
Not to diminish your point, but it seems to me that the elephant in the room with regard to "green" energy sources is the task of heating buildings during the winter. Here we are talking about energy consumed in the form of metered electricity and fuel for vehicles. In my case, both of these things combined are less than the energy used to heat my house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @07:36AM
Natural gas is renewable: caused by anaerobic decomposition of plant matter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 16 2015, @11:19AM
Good insulation and a ground source heat pump will get you there. Radiant floor panels instead of forced air or radiators make it even better, and when you first experience them on a winter day you'll think you've died and gone to heaven. People who use GSHP's regularly report trading heating bills of thousands of dollars for an electricity bill of $100 for the entire winter. If you have solar panels, then you wouldn't even have that. Unless your house sits directly on a rock slab, you can use either the column- or trench method to sink your heating loop, depending on how much subsoil you have.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 16 2015, @01:56PM
Insulation, and new windows. Almost any home can be bricked. Any home with an attic can probably take some additional insulation, unless you've already filled it to the rafters.
We really need now construction methods that are inherently more energy efficient. Typical walls in the US are about 6 inches thick. Thicker walls, with more dead air space goes a long way toward insulation. There's little reason that your exterior walls can't be a foot or more thick. Concrete slabs are usually poured on the ground. Digging down a couple feet, then putting styrofoam on the ground, and finally using concrete with air mixed in will reduce energy consumption even more. Concrete roofs capable of supporting sod, and possibly some shrubs and bushes, really reduces your energy needs.
All we need do is thing outside the box, and we can cut energy consumption far more significantly than most people think.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 16 2015, @03:10PM
Exactly. The biggest bang for the buck with energy savings is insulation. Now with blown-in or spray-in insulation it's dead easy. They show up in the afternoon and a couple hours later you are good to go. Then you win in the summer and the winter. I threw in GSHP (ground source heat pump) up-thread because it's such an excellent off-grid replacement for natural gas, oil, or wood. But even if you don't do that you save tons because you simply don't have to burn as much of the stuff to get the temperature you want.
If you're building something new then a Passiv house design will save hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the structure ($5K * 30 years). Consider what that money would turn into if you put it into an index fund instead of handing it to Big Fossil Fuel/Big Power and you've suddenly paid for some kid's college or built a nice retirement nest egg for yourself. It would be a massive shot in the arm for the economy, too. The US spends $365 billion on oil alone every year. If we didn't do that it would be like giving the economy an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ($800 billion)-size stimulus every other year.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @03:09AM
A lying prick outfit says "our future is electric" and you'll sleep better? Ok, whatever.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday October 16 2015, @03:42AM
A shift from diesel and gas to electric is pretty much inevitable. At least for the bulk of the vehicles out there. I'm sure it's going to be a while before electrics are capable of handling the extremely low temperatures of the arctic. It's tough enough on gas or diesel cars, but electrics are still quite sensitive to temperature fluctuations.
The timing of the announcement is a bit fishy though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 16 2015, @11:25AM
Of course the timing is fishy. Of course the President of VW is saying it for PR value. But they had to have been talking about EVs internally at VW already for years--my brother's an engineer at Ford and they are. But when the largest car company in Europe signals they're going all in on EVs, it sends shockwaves throughout the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) world. It means that every other car maker will have to accelerate their transition to EV models. It means that research budgets begin to shift away from the ICE to better batteries and composite materials (for weight savings). It means it starts to rapidly become less of a good idea to invest in oil stocks and to own gas stations. And given how tied huge chunks of the manufacturing economy are to the ICE, its parts suppliers, transportation, etc, that means a massive shift; none of those suppliers and regions are going to want to go slow to adapt lest they be left holding the bag.
Washington DC delenda est.