alt.energy.renewable

>On Feb 19, 11:29 pm, Anthony Matonak
> wrote:
>> Roland Mösl wrote:
>> > "Anthony Matonak" schrieb im
>> > Newsbeitragnews:47bb303d$0$30702$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>> >> calderh...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> >> So it's the evil Americans and not the high oil prices,
>>
>> > And what causes the high oil price?
>>
>> The Arabs and Chinese of course. The one for selling at such a high
>> price and the other for buying so much of it. :)
>>
>> >> hurricanes,
>> > And what cauese more often and more powerfull hurricans?
>>
>> Who says there are more often and more powerful hurricanes?
>> Global warming alarmists said this would happen but, to the
>> best of my knowledge, it hasn't.
>>
>> Even if hurricanes did happen more often and more powerfully,
>> it's the sun that causes it all. Should we stop the sun?
>>
>> > Oil has to be replaced, here a first overview how much
>> > electric power is necessary to replace one litre of an oil product
>>
>> I've been told that a great deal of gasoline (an oil product)
>> is used to power cars. I've also been told that the GM EV1 got
>> at least 3 miles/kWh and some of the newer model electric cars
>> that are soon to be on the market get over 4 miles/kWh.
>>
>> If you replace a typical car getting 25 mpg with an electric
>> car that gets 4 miles/kWh then you need 6.25 kWh to replace
>> one gallon of gasoline.
>>
>> If we used a really efficient electric powered mass transit
>> system, such as a PRT (personal rapid transit) then it's quite
>> likely we would need even less electricity to do the same job.
>>
>> Anthony
>
>Anthony, I spent 10 years working in the rail transportation
>industry. So, being an engineer (no, I don't drive a train), here are
>a few thoughts for your consideration.
>
>First, the most efficient transportation systems achieve their
>efficiency by having steel wheeled trains operate on steel rail in
>dedicate tunnels.
>
>Second, I know of NO PRT system that runs steel wheels on steel rail,
>although there may be a few rare exceptions to that. Most PRT systems
>run on rubber tires on concrete within a guidway of some sort. Becasue
>of this, they don't share the same level of energy efficiency as rail
>transportation. I did work on the Airtrans system at DFW airport and
>the PRT system in Denver. Both operate rubber tire vehicles, with the
>associated energy inefficiency.
>While I've ridden the PRT system at Atlanta's airport and not worked
>on its design, I'm not familiar with its traction design.
>
>That said, it is my opionion that no car can achieve anything close to
>3-miles/KWH on public surface roads, simply because of the energy
>disipated in the rubber wheels and the frictional retardation when
>running on concrete or asphalt surfaces. That's not even taking into
>account the retardation experienced by air resistance when traveling
>at even a moderate speed. This figure is not even close to the actual
>electrical consumption that would be experienced even under the most
>theoretically ideal conditions. This figure is actually lower than
>that experienced by rail vechicles under ideal tunnel conditions with
>regenerative braking.
>
>Finally, consider what constitues the cost of 1-KWH of electricity.
>When fossil or nuclear fuel prices increase, the price of electricity
>increases (hopefully only proportionally). I've seen the cost of 1-KWH
>grow from $0.04 (in Fairport, NY around 1978 to $0.27 (here in the
>Boston area, today). Deregulation and fuel charges have driven the
>cost of electricity sky high, and are likely to continue. Here in the
>Boston area, due to deregulation, we now pay more for distribution
>charge (power lines, transformers, etc.) than we do for the actual
>generated energy. Please take this into account before purchasing any
>electric vehicle, because you could end up paying more for the
>electricity to charge your batteries than for gas at the fuel pump.
>
>There is no free lunch.
>
>Still, something worth watching is the federal IVHS program, which
>unfortunately years away from seeing practical implementation. This
>largely focuses on automatic traffic control systems, but also include
>research into providing motive power to vehicles via some transmission
>mechanism in the roadway. I really can't say that this cannot be done,
>but would estimate it to be something that could happen 50 years
>hence.
>
>Harry C.
>

There is more than one measure of efficiency when the subject is transit. Ton-miles per
gallon, or it's metric equivalent may work very well as a measure of efficiency for the
transport of bulk goods from one place to another. When the cargo being hauled is people,
and to a certain extent small lots of goods, the question of timeliness becomes a factor.

An empty commuter train zipping around the tunnels may get an impressive figure for fuel
consumption, but ALL that fuel is being wasted if no paying passengers are aboard. And why
are there no passengers aboard? You don't suppose it's because people are resistant to the
idea that they should be expected to sit for 20 minutes on a hard bench in a grubby
station haunted by crackheads and gang-bangers while they await the train?

Myself, I'd tend to be resistant to waiting that same 20 minutes on a hard bench on a
bright sunny day watching the squirrels caper in the trees, if I had places to go and
people to see.

Consciously or otherwise, people place a money value on their time. That means they are
prepared to spend money in order to be able to apportion more of their time to things they
like doing as opposed to things they DON'T like doing. "Waiting" generally falls on the
"don't like" side of the ledger. This is a fact of human nature, and any scheme for mass
transit that ignores this fact is doomed to failure. With a mass transit system like light
rail, the only way to keep wait times acceptably low, is to have a vast overcapacity,
which means that many trains are running empty or so lightly loaded that ticket
revenue<ones.

With a PRT system, as I understand the definition, the vehicles don't move unless carrying
a paying passenger or are on the way to fetch one. So each journey is a revenue journey.
Even if a PRT system uses more net energy per passenger mile than does LRT, it may well be
more "efficient" from a public-policy standpoint because it GETS USED. Why are automobiles
so attractive, despite the fact that they are clearly much more expensive to the user than
mass transit? Convenience, security, and privacy come to mind. People are prepared to pay
well for such things, and every Honda, Ford, or BMW that rolls off the dealer's lot is
proof of that fact.

I look forward to seeing robot cabs within the next 20 years or so.

Gordon Richmond