Resonosity

I guess it comes down to whether we want to primarily communicate battery size in terms of charge (Coulombs = Amps * Time) or energy (Joules = Watts * Time).

The first metric you multiply by your operating voltage to get the second metric, whereas the second metric you have to divide by your voltage to get the first. Depends on what comes easier to most people.

That's an amazing idea. I had no clue this was a thing. I would imagine openvpn is free?

Yeah I was about to suggest F-Droid as a FOSS alternative to Google Play.

~~Just looked it up though and Organic Maps is not coming up~~

Edit: Just kidding, guess it's coming up now. Make sure to select the right anti-feature settings!

Hey nice to have ya!

Friendly reminder that the Fediverse is awesome, and you have the power to control the content in your feed not only by which subs you subscribe to or instances you make an account on, but also which you can block - including specific users if it comes to that. Of course, instance admins can do the same, and if that happens to content you want to see, you can always make a new account on a different instance and see everything.

It takes a little to understand the Fediverse structure, but imo it's one of the best ways social media can be structured.

There have been steady and iterative advancements.

Steady imo is a synonym for constant, and revolutionary breakthroughs can be subjective if referring to industry or academia.

When was OP involved in this conversation?

Apologies. I sometimes refer to an OP as the Original Poster of a thread in a given post, but perhaps a better use of language would be OC for Original Commentator.

Depends on how you define "constant". Battery prices have been falling year over year, no thanks to technological improvements.

If we're referring explicitly to Academia and R&D, then OP is correct. You're main point is that these huge breakthroughs haven't affected the market, but OP isn't arguing that.

You're both talking past each other.

Michael Thackeray filed a patent under Argonne National Laboratory for the leading EV battery chemistry worldwide today, Lithium Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt Oxide (NMC), sometime around 2007-2008.

The first cars with that specific technology started coming out in the US market in 2013/2014 IIRC, with EVs coming out before then basing their battery chemistry on NCA (Tesla) or LMO (Nissan Leaf & Chevy Volt).

That's a 5-7 year timeframe from laboratory to mass production.

If you consider new technologies today like Samsung's battery in this article, and make the not so unrealistic leap that we're better at battery production today than in 2013/2014, it's very possible that we see this technology hit the market in 5 years or less.

Technology always improves. It's CAPEX that hinders it, and I'm willing to bet that there are financial interests out there to keep the main battery chemistry NMC and secure steady profits.

EE here. Chargers put out power in units of kW, while batteries store energy in units of kWh or MJ or what have you. Otherwise, you're absolutely correct.

Typically Distributed Generation (DG) scale solar PV and battery storage sites are sized anywhere from 1 to 10 MW.

At 1 MW, you could run (1) charger at a speed of 1 MW, or (2) at 500 kW, etc. Usually need just (1) transformer for that size installation too.

At 10 MW, you can run each charger at 1 MW or so, but you're also talking about probably (4-10) transformers @ $250k USD a pop. Installation prices go up the more you demand in power transfer.

Then you need to consider that most DG projects need to pay for the upgrades to their downstream grid architecture, meaning reconducting or upsizing cable, breakers, switches, transformers, reactors, sensors, relays, etc.

Not saying it's impossible. You could co-locate and DC-couple solar PV or Wind parks next to charging points to get around some of the grid upgrades, but most people live in areas that require homes and grocery stores and other buildings than flat land meant for solar PV or Wind.

When it comes down to it, it's so much easier to just trickle charge your EV at night via arbitrage and when you're sleeping so all of this infrastructure doesn't have to been upgraded - and I'd argue upgraded needlessly because we need to save that copper and iron and materials for upgrades to the parts of the grid meant to interconnect renewables.

But there is no silver bullet to these things so we'll likely see more, larger chargers come through unless regulators stop it from happening.

Unfortunately I think casting away Kamala as the pick would do more harm than good. She is the likely candidate. Joe can even make the transition smooth by entrusting the rest of his legacy with her, which is the reason he chose her as a VP in the first place.

People also know the name Kamala Harris, and they've known it for years now. It'll be a huge turn to bring in a new candidate on top and do all of the rallying needed to get votes.

I think Kamala's success will spend on the VP choice, her administration, and her campaign team more than her herself.

Mark Kelly as Kamala's VP? Having that balance of ethnicity would help her get the votes. It's exactly why Obama picked Biden

I mean, if anything, the fact that the Oil & Gas industry uses hydrogen for refining means that there is a possible, robust market for green hydrogen to get into (don't like this because it means oil is still the focus, when we need to consider green chemistry and stop with oil).

The O&G industry also helped usher in solar PV at an early stage because of the needs of remote power in hazardous environments such as offshore rigs and near potential sources of release like oil tanks (I used to work as an engineer in O&G myself).

There's actually a lot of work by GE and Mitsubishi to start shipping new gas turbines to be capable of firing a non-zero amount of hydrogen in addition to natural gas. I think some plants are even capable of doing 50/50 hydrogen/natural gas, with that former number increasing year over year.

Hydrogen could outstrip conventional fuels someday. The bottleneck has always been supply though.

If renewables are so abundant and cheap, then we'll finally have a reason to deploy hydrogen infrastructure on a massive scale (at least in the US). Hell, you look at the major inverter manufacturers for utility PV like Sungrow, and they have containerized electrolyzers ready for implementation. I haven't done a market survey, but if they're in the game, then so are other players.

If you want to be convinced of the progress of hydrogen, I would look into the project that Sargent & Lundy is working on in Utah. They're planning on using a salt cavern for hydrogen storage, and I believe there is a CCGT onsite as well to make use of the generation.

Hydrogen is even on the minds of offshore wind developers like Siemens.

The substance isn't doomed like others in this thread make it out. There is active interest in the market to develop a supply chain and economy.

Edit: The one thing I don't see a lot of people talk about though is where the raw materials for this hydrogen will come from... Likely groundwater unfortunately. Since groundwater is already a highly sought after resource for consumption and agriculture, I'm not sure if hydrogen in this way will take off. This is why offshore hydrogen seems to be more promising, but as we see with wave and tidal power, the ocean environment just sucks for any commercialization.

It's an uphill battle, but the same can be said for the climate crisis in general. Hope we make enough progress before it's too late.

Locking hydrogen up in ammonia is what the industry looks to be moving to to avoid the problem you describe.

Also, look up the 7 Hydrogen Hubs in the US as an example of this market getting started. There are no downsides to developing a hydrogen market if we're going to have oodles of excess renewable energy.