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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • 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.







  • I will say that their sentiment was borne in bad faith from the get-go so that didn’t harness any charity from Lemmy, but I do see what they’re saying. Politicians can be multi-faceted, as can the bills they draft, the laws they write, and the people who elect them.

    Kamala Harris is a good example of this for me. She supports doing something about the greedflation in the economy, restoring health care for women (i.e. reproductive health care), and fighting against supposed fascism in favor of freedom.

    Where I don’t agree with her is her stance on Gaza and the Palestinian Genocide, notably that she is not willing to place an arms embargo on a state that is literally committing war crimes and breaking the Geneva Convention on a continual basis. Also her tendency to gravitate to the middle as she’s tended to do across her entire career, and the overall message of her campaign as “freedom” when the US’ actions directly lead to the destruction of freedom for Palestinians at the same time (the message is essentially conservative: freedom for me (an American), but not for thee (non-American)).

    People participate in the political life for all sorts of reasons. From my point of view, Republicans do so out of selfish reasons more than altruistic ones, and ones that stymy diversity in favor of uniformity. Democrats do so to provide safety nets for those who can’t do so themselves, and generally have a greater capacity not only for compassion and empathy but for acknowledging and believing in science as a tool for directing policy. There are still special interests in both parties that actually occupy said offices, but I want to say that the general population follows those sorts of trends (from my PoV).

    Given that, people of course read politicians and issues and bills and laws from a certain perspective that places priority of some things over others. I think it is unfair to call people out on things that they didn’t necessarily intend on coming true, but sometimes things happen nonetheless. It’s the difference between virtue ethics and consequentialism, essentially. To wrap it up, most people don’t vote once and didn’t just start voting, so my rule of thumb is to still hold people accountable for, like this thread says, voting in restrictions to school lunches or books or whatever. You can’t really claim self-immunity because reality doesn’t exist in a vacuum.






  • I agree: transportation will probably favor hydrogen over batteries.

    That being said, to pile on hydrogen, I’m not sure if I like the water demand part of it either. Coastal hydrogen production might make sense if sea water is the feedstock and corrosion/discharge can be released to the source in a manner that doesn’t lead to biodiversity death.

    Then again, fossil fuel and mineral based (thermal) energy sources like coal, nat gas, oil, and nuclear all require cold water for cooling purposes. If we transition those sources to hydrogen production (and maybe use in the case of 100% hydrogen fired CCGTs that GE, Siemens, andbMitsubishi are making), there might actually be increased water demand since you have hydrogen + cooling.

    It’ll have it’s niche, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t count it out.

    And on the topic of better solutions, I’d love to see vertical underground pumped hydro storage pick up steam (buh dum tss). I don’t see how underground pumped hydro isn’t feasible since we already do geothermal in the same way.




  • 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.




  • 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.