Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 5,670
True, but I do know that Tesla motors had to pass some special safety tests for this with their lithium batteries. I would suppose the goal was to be as safe as fuel, but with the govt involved, who knows?
Those mythbusters guys must not have called on Bruce Willis, he does it about 6 times in every Die Hard movie
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: north of Kansas City
Posts: 6,372
Hmmm - looks like some progress has been made since 1967 when we used factory 440 and the capacitor cart was about the size of a U-Haul trailer - to bang big titanium rivets for the 'never to be built' American SST.
Sooo - we are probably not going back to whale oil and the would be Moby Dick's can swim in peace.
heh heh heh - wonder what will happen to the price of corn for ethanol around here. .
Can you tell me how long 52kwh would last in a 'normal' situation? Also in a hot summer time?
I think that for the winter months I do not use that amount.... but in the summer I can be in the 1200 to 2000 range... air conditioning is a killer....
The interesting part is that if they do actually start to charge based on when you use electricity, then actually having someplace to easily store what you need when it is cheap and not pay the high price would be great.. I would cough up $2100 if I could cut my bills down by a big amount..
I still haven't got all of that figured out since we built the house and solar system, but have not been able to move into it full time (Asian assignment with megacorp). It generates about 18,000kwh per year, about 2100kwh/mo in the summer and a lot less in the winter. We are grid-tied with battery back-up for key applications like the refer and freezer, striker for on demand propane water heaters, striker for propane stove, and a very few outlets for cf lighting. The pool uses a lot in the summer, but we designed the house well to keep it cool in the summer with a 10ft porch around the east, south, and west sides. In our area, it gets cool at night, so we turn on the whole house fan early in the morning until we reach equilibrium temp, then turn it off and shut the windows. It stays under 78F until after 4-5 pm most summer days, and the a/c only comes on then, unless we have a heat spell and it comes on between 230-300pm. We open the windows again after it cools off, around 8-9pm. That keeps the a/c use low. In winter the woodstove does most of the heating.
I'm guessing a bit here, but I think we would use about 50-55kwh/day in the summer, 30-40 spring a fall, and a little less in the winter. Again, this is only from the short 2-3 week winter stays, and 8-10 week summer stays, plus a stopover here and there to check on things.
So, narrowing it down further, if the grid were down for a several days or even several week period, the 52 kwh super cap would work (yes, given the right electronics and peripherals), and most days we could run all applications instead of just the critical loads. With just critical loads, in the summer, we could power ourselves and 2-3 neighbors. The sun charges it up, we draw it down. We would have to be a little careful in the winter as we do have extended periods of fog and cloud...but I think our lowest day of generation was still over11-12kwh.
If I were going to create a freeway capable car, I would not call it the CityZenn. I'd call it the CountryZenn or the FreewayZenn.
City Zen is a 4 star restaurant in DC. Do they get to fight the car name under trademark laws? I guess it would be hard to confuse cars and restaurants.
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Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler. -- Samuel Johnson
Our pool pump and saltwater chlorinator for megapool alone devour more than that in the summer...glad I was able to afford the solar electric, or I never could have afforded the electric bill for McMansion and Megapool.
In our old house in the summer, we rarely used more than 25kwh/day, on the hottest dog days of summer in California's central valley, including A/C and a 1hp pool pump, and most months it was more like 13-14kwh/day.
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 5,670
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walt34
I've seen a gasoline tanker with 8,000 gallons of gasoline go up in flames. You don't want to be anywhere near it.
A propane truck is even more impressive since it burns faster.
From the Chicago Trib today:
A tanker truck rolled over and caught fire Wednesday just off Interstate Highway 55 near Lemont, Ill. (Tribune photo by Benjamin Chernivsky / April 2, 2008 )
Quote:
A man was hospitalized Wednesday after his tanker overturned on an Interstate Highway 55 ramp near Lemont and his load of gasoline ignited and sent flames shooting into the air for hours, state police said.
Fire officials let the fire burn for almost three hours before they finally extinguished it using foam provided by the Chicago Fire Department.
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 6,053
Quote:
Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny
Yeah, but its really, really hard to get a tank of gas to blow up unless the car is a ford.
I must have seen 4 mythbusters episodes where they tried unsuccessfully to get gas tanks to blow up by smashing them, shooting them, and firing massive amounts of sparks into them. On one episode, they were unable to get an enclosed room full of gas and gas fumes to ignite until they exposed it to a huge open flame.
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