The Future Is Here
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61 responses to “The Future Is Here”
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If it is so inevitable, why is the power of government being used to kill off the competitors? Why do EV sales drop when the subsidies dry up? Why did the ICE vehicles crush the EVs of a century ago?
I think that’s the store on Parham at Starling. Maybe I’ll go see what a tankful of that electricity costs.
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Because EVs go about 225 miles before requiring a multi-hour recharging.
When you can go 500 miles on a 5 minute charge, I’m in.
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Agreed. I am ready and willing to purchase an all-electric motorcycle as soon as:
1) Range is greatly improved.
2) Initial cost is more aligned with fossil fuel-powered vehicles of similar performance.Also, I did a lot of research on the electric Ford pick-up truck when it was first released. I was [potentially] interested in replacing my old DuraMax diesel. However, I dropped any thought of buying one when I saw real-world testing of exactly how limited the range becomes when carrying any kind of load. A truck with a +/-100 mile range when towing a trailer is worse than useless. It’d take a week to travel from my house to Daytona, Florida.
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No. It is the one at the intersection of Parham and Brook Rd.
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It’s especially horrific when you consider that the ICE, the entire network of refining, pipelines, and transportation of gasoline, and all the roads, bridges, and freeways were built entirely with private equity and not one dollar of government subsidies.
Robert E. Lee was a great humanitarian, and all of TJ’s slaves innately understood he was a God.
Did I forget anything?
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“and all of TJ’s slaves innately understood he was a God.” and several knew him as “Daddy”.
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A friend bought his new EV Audi in Orlando and drove it back to SWVA on a 17 hour trip…..charging time nearly doubled the normal 10-hour trip. That’s a lot of WingDings consumed waiting…
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We’re at the very beginning of EV technology, similar to what cell phones looked like in their first edition or what happened to desktops and cables when we went to laptops and wi-fi.
Few of the car-makers have any qualms about it. They’re all in billions of dollars worth , betting the proverbial farm on it.
None of them seem to see this as something that is risky or might go belly up.
It’s possible they’re all wrong especially if we listen to the ‘deniers” but my money is on the EVs becoming mainstream perhaps in a decade or shorter.
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“Have you ever driven from Southwest VA to Northern VA in an EV, and only had to stop 5 minutes to charge?
You will, and the company that will bring it to you is Dominion Energy”.
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It’s gonna get much better. It’s getting better right now. i’m expecting EVs with 1000
mile ranges. Guess what is gonna happen if that turns out to be true. -
Strangely enough, the ONLY grid upgrading activity I’ve seen around the area is here is by NOVEC, who upgraded the 60-year-old poles and put in more transformers in some older neighborhoods.
Dominion seems to be operating with the same standards as Norfolk Southern—don’t spend a dime on upgrades or maintenance.
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and PG&E. Some of California’s fires were started by 100+ year old lines.
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I’ve seen quite a bit more “spacer cable” in NOVEC territory than I have in Dominion territory.
Spacer cable costs more but allows putting more circuits in the same space plus it theoretically reduces the risk of a fire if a tree touched it.
Spacer cable definitely did not exist 100 years ago.
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We’re at the very beginning of EV technology, similar to what cell phones looked like in their first edition or what happened to desktops and cables when we went to laptops and wi-fi.
Few of the car-makers have any qualms about it. They’re all in billions of dollars worth , betting the proverbial farm on it.
None of them seem to see this as something that is risky or might go belly up.
It’s possible they’re all wrong especially if we listen to the ‘deniers” but my money is on the EVs becoming mainstream perhaps in a decade or shorter.
Yeah, they still marvel at digital watches in Henrico.
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Color TV and air conditioning are also local marvels down there.
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I heard an ad on the radio coming into work this morning. Altria is now a “tobacco harm reduction company”. That ad goes along with other ads hailing misrepresentations by Dominion that the bills Steve Haner has described in the General Assembly will reduce electricity costs.
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You seriously don’t think deceptive advertising is a recent thing do you?
Remember when the cigarette companies impugned the “science” by having TV “doctors” and sports figures smoking ?
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Seems like big Richmond-based companies are on a deceptive advertising uptick at the moment.
People are gullible. Why would Dominion advertise in support of a bill that lowers electricity rates? Why would a cigarette manufacturer claim to be a smoking harm reduction company.
Both of those ads are striking.
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On Saturday, I got a piece of mail from Dominion addressed to my dad, who passed away 2 years ago. Inside was a check. The letter along with the check says that the check is a refund for electricity overpayments from 2017 through 2022 because Dominion was charging too much for electricity.
The check is for $3 and change.
Pretty sure my dad’s average electric bill was north of $150 a month. So on (at least) $10,800 of electricity used they refunded $3.
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$150 a YEAR?
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Even that sounds a bit low, he must have been pretty frugal without a ton of other people in the house.
I know folks who have heat pumps can their winter electric bills are NOT $150.
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His house was heated with gas, so the $150 a month average is actually pretty high, I think. But his house was one of those slapped up real quick in the late 80s so it wasn’t exactly built with the utmost of care. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that because I don’t want to go on a multi-paragraph rant about it.
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My house the average bills are $150 and I heat with a heat pump. I also have a well, electric water heater, and a septic system with pumps. And a Chevy Volt that I charge at home. But my house was built in 2017 so that right there is a major improvement over 1988 junk and furthermore I went through with the caulk and great stuff foam before the drywall went in, and after it went in I went up in the attic and sealed all the top plates to the drywall edge with foam. So my house is not drafty at all unlike my dad’s house.
Would be very curious what the blower door test results on my dad’s house would be. I know that when my house was built they did a blower door test (required by code) and there was a maximum air changes per hour it could have, otherwise the builder was on the hook to find the air leaks and fix them..
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so even in cold weather , your heat pump does not generate high electric bills?
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The highest bill I’ve had in the last 36 months was $214.92
My house is 3300sq ft not including the basement.
I typically have the heat at 68 to 70F during the day, and 60F at night.
I added a switch in the “W” wire from the thermostats so it cannot turn the aux heat on. The thermostats I have (it’s a zoned system, one unit with dampers for upstairs and downstairs) seem to turn on aux heat when it isn’t needed. I’m sure there are better thermostats that are smarter about using aux heat, but the cheap solution was just to add a switch, the idea being that I can turn the switch on if the heat pump isn’t keeping up. I haven’t needed to yet…
(Aux heat is electric resistance heat–a big space heater basically–added to the air handler in case the heat pump isn’t able to keep the house warm enough).
When we had that 6F overnight low..my heat pump was still able to keep the house at 64F, though it was running continuously to do so.
Also, my heat pump has demand defrost. It only goes into a defrost cycle when it needs to. Older heat pumps just went into defrost every 60 or 90 minutes of compressor run time and it’s a big waste of energy if the defrost cycle isn’t needed.
So…
Smart control of aux heat
Tight house (including sealed ductwork)
Demand defrost
and
setting the unit back to 60F during the night (I like it colder at night so that works for me)all combine for reasonable electric bills in the winter.
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Sounds like an awesome heat pump. Typical or special?
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Just a Trane XB15. Nothing special.
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way better than my 20yr old trane that just died
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What powers the EV charging stations? Solar? Wind? The engines of the private jets that fly to Davos every year?
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Even if you powered it from a coal plant, it would pollute less than a conventional internal combustion.
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Let’s meet halfway. EV stations powered by nuclear power plants. Seems to work for the French.
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Just watched a parade of enviro fanatic lobbyists testifying against a nuclear bill in Richmond, complaining it isn’t “renewable” and produces all that toxic waste! They won’t put up with it, Donald.
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Substitute “spend tax dollars to…” and the poll changes. Seriously. This is simple, easy to spot bias. Likewise an honest question on proposed bans for gas and diesel — unpopular.
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find that poll! This was a one year old Pew Poll. I’m open to other polls. I suspect most
people KNOW it will take tax dollars for nukes and fossil fuels are also subsidized. You think
it’s all about money and that when push comes to shove, people’s concern for pollution and climate change will dissipate.But my central question remains. Would you support nukes even if they ended up costing more’than all the other choices – wind, solar, gas and coal? Because that’s actually congruent with your point
about spending tax dollars. So do you support nukes even if most expensive option? -
The issue with nuclear is that the very specialized and expensive machinery that goes into these plants can not be manufactured quickly enough to come on board in a truly meaningful way. That is the real thing holding it back.
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they may at some point…. but not now…
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But it’s really just boiling water to drive steam generators. Once you get beyond the heat source it’s all plumbing.
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Yes but that heat source is one challenging thing to get beyond.
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Yes but that heat source is one challenging thing to get beyond.
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But it’s really just boiling water to drive steam generators. Once you get beyond the heat source it’s all plumbing.
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Nuclear waste is actually toxic and all that concrete is not very carbon neutral. Do they not have a point? Do you support the development of more nuclear energy? If so, why? Seeing as how you see no need to decarbonize?
Yep. My question also. If one does not believe in Climate Change to start with then why support nukes that cost more?
No need to meet anywhere. Nuclear is already part of most decarbonization plans and rightly so. Most environmentalists already agree with that position. Nuclear waste and other safety considerations do not go away because of that shift (and yes it does appear to be a shift in sentiment). All it would take is another Three Mile Island to strip away all support (on all sides).
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When we say “nukes”, do we mean the 60+ year old designs that can melt down like 3 mile island and Fukushima?
Haner says the polls don’t ask the right questions, especially about costs and subsidies but what would happen if we poll people to see if they support the 60+ year old designs ?
My bet is if you put the question that way, you’d get large numbers opposed to nukes.
To this point, as far as I know, there are no modern operational commercial nukes that are safer and won’t melt down.
And the ones that are in development and said to be near commercial status – cost out the wazoo.
The newer smaller modular designs – not a single one proposed for any island in the world where they currently burn diesel fuel for electricity at a cost of 30 cents per KWH – 3 times what folks on the mainland pay.
So, would you support nukes even if they cost more than coal, gas and renewables?
Not True. Carnegie Mellon has looked at that and found that powering an electric vehicle with coal produced electricity is not good for the environment. However, building more nuclear power plants could produce the electricity to power the vehicles, especially in the middle of the night. But nuclear power in no economical without a carbon tax.
Lemme see. We live on a huge rotating body with a magnetic core. Oh wherever can we get the energy we need?
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And there’s that other thing swinging around it that makes the oceans go up and down. If we were bright we’d figure out how to harness some of that too.
Seems like we’ve got the elements of a generator, its on 24/7 and has infinite renewability.,,
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In the last 100 years we have advanced technologies beyond any Boomer’s abilities to comprehend. In the next 100, our children aided by AI will have engineering wonders even beyond theirs. Yeah, I know I sound like a 1950s Popular Mechanic magazine but the best thing that could happen is for we 50+ year olds to just get out of the way.
The Earth radiates energy in the infrared band at 300 Watts per square yard. This past year, scientists have created a thermovoltaic diode, the equivalent of a photovoltaic diode, for infrared. At the moment, it’s not very efficient, 1/10,000 of a percent, but if the could capture 10% then the crawl space beneath a typical double-wide could produce all the power necessary to power it. Talk about affordable housing.
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Gotta love engineers, they just keep beavering away and solving problems. They may save us despite our best efforts to be terminally stupid.
My first hard drive was a 2.5MB 14″ platter. It sounded like a jet engine when it spun up. The cabinet was about 2.5ft square and desk height. It did not much resemble the multiple TB M2 SSDs I’m using today. They look like a stick of gum. That may be a 10,000:1 change, or more.
AI scares me. I have no illusions it will be “good” or that Asimov’s guiding rules for robots will prevail. Us meat products could become barriers to progress and discarded. It also seems to be arriving at an exponential rate. That learning curve is beginning to point straight up. What happens when it hits critical mass like fission?
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our main outdoor shopping center has 3 or 4, one of the neighboring libraries has 1 so they are popping up here and there. in Hampton VA
Technological innovation – Dominion’s excellent execution of nuclear at N. Anna and Surry and relatively new and efficient combined cycle generation from fracked natural gas, AEP’s almost 100-year experience with now much cleaner coal fired generation from similar production plants – built this country and today keeps a lid on electric prices. But for those developments, the pitchforks would be out. Instead of environmental interests lining up eight deep to speak against this or that bill, regular folks would be up there complaining about high electric bills. If the GA continues to take policy advice from the environmental folks, the future likely will have both types of commenters lining up to sound off.
Two brief comments. Walmart loves this because it takes so long to charge the owners spend more. And, if EVs are the future why does the government to take my money and give it to the well off who buy them?
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It’s also why Walmart offers cheap oil changes.
“While the oil’s dropping you’re shopping!”
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Their “auto service” is the same business model.
Not a new thing. -
way cheaper than the Jiffy Lube places, they’re predatory.
When the power grid collapses, gas power will still work.
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