Tesla Motors opens up it's patents for all automakers to use

[Borgholio]

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our ... belong-you

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.

At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.

Holy shit. The most successful electric car company in the world just went open-source on their patents because they would rather compete with car companies building electric cars than be the only one and having a ton of gasoline vehicles on the road.

This is probably one of the gutsiest thing any CEO has ever done. "We'd rather give our competitors our stuff and save the environment than fuck over the environment and keep the competition down".

On the other hand, this could be suicidally risky. What if Tesla gets out-competed and run into the ground, then the big automakers dial back their EV programs and we're back to where we were, just with no Tesla around?


Another article from USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/car ... /10374433/

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that it won't penalize any other company that wants to make products based on its patented technology for long-range electric cars.

Musk said in a blog post that he is taking the action to encourage the auto industry to make more electric cars like Tesla's Model S.

"Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology," he wrote.

He says that technology leadership has been shown historically not to be driven by patents.

"Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world's most talented engineers," he wrote. "We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla's position in this regard."

He says he is taking the action because major automakers are failing to develop long-range electric cars like Tesla's Model S, which has a maximum EPA-range of 265 miles. Instead, those who have made electric cars have generally limited their range per charge to about 100 miles, which hasn't made them popular with consumers.

He says Tesla had once feared that major automakers could copy its technology and use it to clobber the electric-car start up with their powerful marketing budgets. But it never happened. Intead, he says the electric car industry need to be fostered, introducing consumers to more sustainable cars in the face of the world environmental threat.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Nah, it's just good long-term sense. I mean, sure, it's a nice thing to do on top of it, but really he's helping to build a market he already has a strong presence in, which is good for business, rather than keeping a stranglehold on a niche market. Short-term it may seem like a damaging move, but it is in fact a long-term investment in a market, with the goal of paying off much later down the road.

[Zaune]

Makes sense to me. The more people making Tesla-compatible batteries and spare parts, the more people willing to buy Tesla vehicles. Same as with the audio cassette or the VCR back in the day.

[Elheru Aran]

The only problem is being able to afford making these parts and batteries... so you're looking at big companies... which aren't going to particularly want innovation because a.) it's expensive and b.) they don't have a monopoly on the patents because it's open-source and therefore everybody can offer more or less the same thing if they all use the same patents.

Is it a good thing? Sure, but it'll probably take a while before we see anything really happen from this.

[Gaidin]

The only problem is being able to afford making these parts and batteries... so you're looking at big companies... which aren't going to particularly want innovation because a.) it's expensive and b.) they don't have a monopoly on the patents because it's open-source and therefore everybody can offer more or less the same thing if they all use the same patents.

Is it a good thing? Sure, but it'll probably take a while before we see anything really happen from this.

Wrong idea. It's basically opening up the industry to them all. Any other company that's got a mind to can basically use the open source patents as a baseline for ideas. As opposed to just using the patents. Whether any of them will be smart enough to...that's another question.

[Irbis]

Wrong idea. It's basically opening up the industry to them all. Any other company that's got a mind to can basically use the open source patents as a baseline for ideas. As opposed to just using the patents. Whether any of them will be smart enough to...that's another question.

It would be nice if EU actually did its part in the much clamoured 'speeding up the future' and created program incentivizing buying electric cars and for its big carmakers to produce them. Then EU would actually be a technological leader for once while greatly reducing CO2 emissions without crippling its economy. Oh, and independence from Russian energy without pampering far more vile and despotic countries.

Of course, that would also shatter the renewable snake oil viability myth, and would require new nuclear power plants, so it probably won't happen. Pity.

[Gaidin]

Of course, that would also shatter the renewable snake oil viability myth, and would require new nuclear power plants, so it probably won't happen. Pity.

Well, half the problem with most nuclear plant designs, at least this side of the pond, is they don't need to be so dmn big. Personally I'd rather break the huge plants into their equivalent in smaller plants covering an area, but that's me.

[Irbis]

Well, half the problem with most nuclear plant designs, at least this side of the pond, is they don't need to be so dmn big. Personally I'd rather break the huge plants into their equivalent in smaller plants covering an area, but that's me.

But you can do that. Nuclear power plants can be dispersed and tiny compared to the power they generate, the problem is NIMYBYism and safety standards four orders of magnitude more strict than other forms of energy generation.

[Darth Tanner]

Why would an electric car roll out destroy renewables... if anything they would massively increase energy demand, likely at non peak times which would help with levelling out demand peak and contribute to higher energy prices, making them more financially stable without direct subsidy. Also a serious roll out of electric cars would inevitably lead to reductions in storage prices as battery technology is improved and enjoys benefits of scale resulting in the potential for limited storage applications of renewables.

But you can do that. Nuclear power plants can be dispersed and tiny compared to the power they generate, the problem is NIMYBYism and safety standards four orders of magnitude more strict than other forms of energy generation.

Does that not massively increase the associated security costs as your going to need the same number and quality of security guards for each plant regardless of how many reactors it has. Also every individual site you use is forever tarred by nuclear taint, fewer concentrated sites contaminate less land.

Also the problem with nuclear roll out is cost... all the reactors under way in Europe are grossly over budget and behind schedule. None of the private companies want to build them because the massive investment required is so high risk (only some of this risk is political - few countries are as crazy as Germany to scrap nuclear) for limited return as energy prices are actually pretty low from the continuing economic troubles an increasing efficiency. The only people looking at investing in the UK nuclear fleet at the moment are state owned companies from France and China, and the only reason their doing that is a 40 year subsidy at 200% market rate which likely will not pass EU law.

There are plenty of existing nuclear sites to hold reactors and I'm pretty glad safety standards are so high... the potential impact of failure of a nuclear plant is orders of magnitude worse than a failure at any conventional plant.

Obviously if I was dictator or we hadn't sold off the electricity industry to friends of the Tories nukes would be brilliant and with cheap state ownership to bypass the high finance cost they would make perfect sense, unfortunately we are left with a free energy market where the shortcomings of nuclear let it down big time.

[Irbis]

Why would an electric car roll out destroy renewables... if anything they would massively increase energy demand, likely at non peak times which would help with levelling out demand peak and contribute to higher energy prices, making them more financially stable without direct subsidy.

Um... Seriously?

You just pointed out two huge reasons right after your question - the fact that renewables can't power our civilization now, much less after adding huge additional load from cars, and the pesky fact that extra load at off peak would kill the renewable grid and pee on its corpse. What with sun not shining at night and winds being much weaker.

Electric cars are perfect for nuclear grid, not wind/solar one.

Also a serious roll out of electric cars would inevitably lead to reductions in storage prices as battery technology is improved and enjoys benefits of scale resulting in the potential for limited storage applications of renewables.

Nope. It would create huge demand for batteries for cars, if you add to try to add batteries for renewables to the mix you will end up raising prices of both and further reducing renewable viability.

Yes, there are schemes to use batteries in cars as a sort of balancing element for renewable grid but it would require massive investing into electrical grid, cars being plugged in 100% of time they are not driving, and drivers not minding plugging car in can discharge, not load battery. I don't know, these sound hard to sell.

Does that not massively increase the associated security costs as your going to need the same number and quality of security guards for each plant regardless of how many reactors it has. Also every individual site you use is forever tarred by nuclear taint, fewer concentrated sites contaminate less land.

Not really, no. I'd even expect extra guards to be much cheaper than land close to the cities that renewable energy would need to devour to provide 1/10 of power nuclear can.

Also, pardon? Tainted? In Greenpeace literature? There are multiple reactors right in the cities (ones producing medical isotopes for one), multiple deactivated reactors that worked 50+ years that left no trace in environment once they were demolished, nuclear has vastly better environmental and safety record than all other forms of energy generation combined. Hell, even solar kills more people than nuclear ever did.

Also the problem with nuclear roll out is cost... all the reactors under way in Europe are grossly over budget and behind schedule.

Thank stupid policies requiring three orders of magnitude too large safety margin as a knee jerk reaction. Had we used half of that in other power plants they would all be out of business. Also, not all. France and Russia as far as I am aware don't have that problem.

None of the private companies want to build them because the massive investment required is so high risk (only some of this risk is political - few countries are as crazy as Germany to scrap nuclear) for limited return as energy prices are actually pretty low from the continuing economic troubles an increasing efficiency.

Um, even here, in Poland, PGE builds NPP right now and a few more are planned. At least 3 more reactors are being built in neighbouring states. Britain only, you say?

There are plenty of existing nuclear sites to hold reactors and I'm pretty glad safety standards are so high... the potential impact of failure of a nuclear plant is orders of magnitude worse than a failure at any conventional plant.

Failure at nuclear plant has less impact than normal function of coal plant. Even if we include radioactivity, radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels, with each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year. Just no one cares as it is invisible and doesn't produce nice sounds in pocket detectors.

And you don't want to know impact producing renewable panels and turbines has in China. Are nuclears perfect? No, but unless you apply a lot of incompetency and greed to it, it's pretty much 99% safe.

[Darth Tanner]

You just pointed out two huge reasons right after your question - the fact that renewables can't power our civilization now, much less after adding huge additional load from cars, and the pesky fact that extra load at off peak would kill the renewable grid and pee on its corpse. What with sun not shining at night and winds being much weaker.

I'm afraid I'm not seeing the reasoning... renewables obviously can't power our civilization now there arnt remotely enough of them installed and no one sane other than the Germans want to even try running a high % of your Grid off of them (thankfully Germans have their neighbour to back them up with conventional capacity). They do however add quick capacity that thanks to generous subsidy arrangement the private market is prepared to build here and now. Their embedded use also negates the need for expensive transmission connectivity and the losses associated with it. Transmission connected wind farms obviously not so much.

Why would extra off peak load kill a renewable grid? One of the big problems with wind is it can result in lots of generation over night when we simply don't have the demand to use it, resulting in curtailment payment to wind farms to shut down or other power stations being forced off the grid which has implications for voltage stability. If EV demand resulted in a flatter profile wind power could be better placed to provide energy without this issue of wasted generation capacity.

Solar obviously doesn't provide energy at night but we know this ahead of time so it doesn't create a structural imbalance. Although An issue we are seeing is that lots of solar can throw grid frequency off quickly with fast moving cloud covered resulting on a roving area of dropped solar generation. Most countries won't see a large scale roll out of solar though. I suppose this is more of an issue in America where southern states have much more solar resource than the UK.

Nope. It would create huge demand for batteries for cars,

The technology and infrastructure for one can easily be used for the other. If EVs are rolled out and investment in battery tech pays off for EVs it can be used in power uses without much issue. Obviously your still left paying for battery storage of electricity when you can avoid this cost with nuclear/conventional generation capacity.

Yes, there are schemes to use batteries in cars as a sort of balancing element for renewable grid but it would require massive investing into electrical grid, cars being plugged in 100% of time they are not driving, and drivers not minding plugging car in can discharge, not load battery. I don't know, these sound hard to sell.

I agree with you that this scheme is horrid and I can't imagine anyone wanting to wake up to find their car battery has been drained to keep the lights on because the wind was below forecast, not to mention the damage to the battery of repeat cycles. However that is not what the main application of batteries should be, they would be installed at the renewable generation site to store it locally. I believe many renewable organisation believe that they will be able to use worn out batteries from EV cars, the loss of weight to power from age experienced by multiple discharges doesn't matter when your not mobile and don't care about such things..

Not really, no. I'd even expect extra guards to be much cheaper than land close to the cities that renewable energy would need to devour to provide 1/10 of power nuclear can.

I meant extra guards from splitting nuclear reactors up into smaller individual sites. Also renewables are not traditionally built near cities. In the UK at least I believe nuclear security is however paid for by the state so this wouldn't be of much concern to the actual power generators.

Also, pardon? Tainted? In Greenpeace literature? There are multiple reactors right in the cities (ones producing medical isotopes for one), multiple deactivated reactors that worked 50+ years that left no trace in environment once they were demolished, nuclear has vastly better environmental and safety record than all other forms of energy generation combined. Hell, even solar kills more people than nuclear ever did.

Good for them, the majority of UK nuclear sites and waste storage are fully contaminated and will require billions spent on decontamination when they close - although newer modern reactors might avoid this the old crap the UK is currently left with are not that good. Obviously the same is true of the UK coal fleet but you are not arguing against coal but renewables.

I fully agree with you that nuclear has the best safety record in terms of fatalities and accidents, that wasn't what I argued against.

Also, not all. France and Russia as far as I am aware don't have that problem.

Flamanville, the only unit under construction in France is already 4 years behind and nearly 3 times over budget. Not to mention France is having doubts over its nuclear future. Obviously those doubts are nearly purely political cowardice from Hollande but there is still massive concern over cost of replacing their existing capacity with like for like nuclear. Russia does seem to be having much more success though so perhaps its just EDF incompetence.

At least 3 more reactors are being built in neighbouring states. Britain only, you say?

The British energy market is what I know... your mileage may vary.

No, but unless you apply a lot of incompetency and greed to it, it's pretty much 99% safe.

Definitely agreed and as I said if I was dictator or we had a nationalised industry I'm sure nuclear would have a major part to play... however we are unfortunately in a free market where nuclear has major hurdles... in the UK at least.

[Aharon]

Wrong idea. It's basically opening up the industry to them all. Any other company that's got a mind to can basically use the open source patents as a baseline for ideas. As opposed to just using the patents. Whether any of them will be smart enough to...that's another question.

It would be nice if EU actually did its part in the much clamoured 'speeding up the future' and created program incentivizing buying electric cars and for its big carmakers to produce them. Then EU would actually be a technological leader for once while greatly reducing CO2 emissions without crippling its economy. Oh, and independence from Russian energy without pampering far more vile and despotic countries.

Of course, that would also shatter the renewable snake oil viability myth, and would require new nuclear power plants, so it probably won't happen. Pity.

Actually, Germany has the goal to increase the number of electric cars to 1.000.000 (~2.3% of the current fleet) by 2020. While it is not as ambitious as the goals set in other areas of energy policy, it's still there. Currently, there are no monetary incentives, but there are already tax incentives: If companies buy cars for the use of their employees, income and social security taxes are employed to 1% of its gross cost per month. For electric cars, the gross cost is reduced by up to 10.000 € (=100€/month) for the purpose of this calculation, dependent on the battery size of the car.

@Tesla's move
I think this is a great idea - electric cars can only take off if the infrastructure is improved - which is more likely to happen if several companies are invested in the market.

[madd0ct0r]

You do talk bollocks sometimes Irbis.

1) you claim renewables won't work at night.
2) you claim the electricity demand from cars would be 'huge'
3) you seem to think off peak loads are worse then on peak loads? Are you thinbking about peak generation instead of the usual peak demand?
4) You clearly don't know a thing about using cars as a balancing agent. 'They have to be plugged in 100% of the time'
You get up in the morning, unplug the car, drive it to work, get to work, plug it in and go upstairs to work. Or do you think everyone works out in areas with no electricity? As for the idea 'people need to accept their car could discharge,' do you really think such a system would work if people are coming out at 5pm to flat cars? Each car would have an energy management system in place. It knows from experience, that at 7am it needs to be charged, that at all times it needs to have sufficent for emergency transport. It helps with the small spikes that would otherwise need pumped storage, like the classic 'east enders kettle'.
5) Whinging about the cost of grid upgrades while advocating 100% nuclear is fricken stupid. Quite apart from the necessary grid upgrades and expansions needed anyway (becuase there's going to be more people and more demand and capacity is already full), nuclear power stations are not agile beasts. Demand is very variable, and becoming more so. One of the classic pumped strorage schemes in the UK recently went bust becuase the periods of high and low demand were too short for it's lakes to work effeceintly. don't believe me? download the data for yourself: http://www2.nationalgrid.com/uk/Industr ... -Explorer/


Finally

each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year. .

??? source?

[Thanas]

I really do applaud Tesla here. No matter if it will benefit them in the long run or not, giving up their patents is a very gutsy move.

[Borgholio]

My wife and I are in agreement that out of all the other major automakers, Toyota is probably going to be the first to jump on these patents and apply them to their Prius line.

[madd0ct0r]

I've been keeping a tally of car adverts i've seen in real life for the last month. All of them have been electric/hybrid so far.

[mr friendly guy]

Finally

each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year. .

??? source?

Actually he is not talking crap with this. This is well known. Unless you are Greenpeace or some such crazy environmental group. Radioactivity is everywhere including in the rocks where coal is found. While nuclear plants keep their waste stored, coal plants emit their waste into the air concentrated. As for the source try scientific American.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ear-waste/

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

As for his other point, I am not sure electric cars will kill renewables per se. It will increase demand for energy derived produced by power plants, which includes coal, solar, nuclear etc. If sufficient energy demand is generated, it might promote nuclear or coal at the expense of renewables, or society might try all those solutions BUT it might be be in disproportionate amounts favouring fossil fuels.

Edit - it might favour fossil fuels because while nuclear > coal > renewables, a lot of countries cough mostly EU cough have this phobia of nuclear. Renewables most probably won't cut it.

[Borgholio]

I was always under the impression that it was mercury, not uranium, that was the biggest worry coming out of coal exhaust.

[mr friendly guy]

Of course, that would also shatter the renewable snake oil viability myth, and would require new nuclear power plants, so it probably won't happen. Pity.

Well, half the problem with most nuclear plant designs, at least this side of the pond, is they don't need to be so dmn big. Personally I'd rather break the huge plants into their equivalent in smaller plants covering an area, but that's me.

Such plants exist, called small modular reactors (SMRs).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

The wiki article does need to be updated though. For example it lists South Africa's pebble bed in the list of new reactors designs even as it says South Africa has stopped funding for it, and doesn't mention China who have built a pebble bed and have laid the groundwork for more pebble beds.

Does that not massively increase the associated security costs as your going to need the same number and quality of security guards for each plant regardless of how many reactors it has. Also every individual site you use is forever tarred by nuclear taint, fewer concentrated sites contaminate less land.

That depends on the plant to some extent. The AP 1000 has a shield building one metre thick reinforced concrete sandwiched by two cm steel plating designed to pass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirement to allow plants to withstand 9/11 type attacks.

Some other plants cannot explode, for example the pebble bed reactors and the theoretical Liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR).

Also the problem with nuclear roll out is cost... all the reactors under way in Europe are grossly over budget and behind schedule. None of the private companies want to build them because the massive investment required is so high risk (only some of this risk is political - few countries are as crazy as Germany to scrap nuclear) for limited return as energy prices are actually pretty low from the continuing economic troubles an increasing efficiency. The only people looking at investing in the UK nuclear fleet at the moment are state owned companies from France and China, and the only reason their doing that is a 40 year subsidy at 200% market rate which likely will not pass EU law.

That's really the fault of governments who lack vision. At least vision when it comes to energy sources which reduce carbon emissions.

I was always under the impression that it was mercury, not uranium, that was the biggest worry coming out of coal exhaust.

The amount of uranium from coal plants isn't going to be harmful. The point is, nuclear plants emit less uranium so by basic scientific reasoning, nuclear plants would be less harmful than coal plants in terms of radioactivity. Not that will stop the anti nuclear crowd, but then those guys aren't really driven by the evidence but by ideology.

[madd0ct0r]

it's the 'hundreds of kilos per power station' crap I was calling out.

I do wish people would actually use numbers in these sorts of debates, instead of emotive 'renewables probably can't cut it'.

for an example: http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk ... 111/sankey
go here and a look at the current energy flows into road transport. You should see 336Twh/yr, only 14 of which come from electric.

now go here (max allowed conversion to batteries, nothing else changed)
: http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk ... 111/sankey

211TWh/yr of which 73 are grid based.

That's a fairly huge energy saving since electric cars are much more efficient. it means an extra 59 TWh/yr load on the grid, which in the scale of the model, is peanuts. It's about 6.7GW of generation capacity. It's almost exactly equal to the 53 TWh/yr we'd get from offshore turbines if we keep building them at the same rate. That's not what I'd call high effort.

[mr friendly guy]

it's the 'hundreds of kilos per power station' crap I was calling out.

I do wish people would actually use numbers in these sorts of debates, instead of emotive 'renewables probably can't cut it'.

for an example: http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk ... 111/sankey
go here and a look at the current energy flows into road transport. You should see 336Twh/yr, only 14 of which come from electric.

now go here (max allowed conversion to batteries, nothing else changed)
: http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk ... 111/sankey

211TWh/yr of which 73 are grid based.

That's a fairly huge energy saving since electric cars are much more efficient. it means an extra 59 TWh/yr load on the grid, which in the scale of the model, is peanuts. It's about 6.7GW of generation capacity. It's almost exactly equal to the 53 TWh/yr we'd get from offshore turbines if we keep building them at the same rate. That's not what I'd call high effort.

Few questions.

1. With this 211TWh/yr of which 73 are grid based, where does the remainder come from? Is this because such people provide their own electricity via solar panels etc?

2. Just for interest, what are your assumptions regarding the 6.7 GW generation capacity to produce 59 TWh of energy? That is how many hours per day do you expect the renewable source to generate energy?

3. Source for the 53 TWh/ year the UK gets? According to This source (page 7) the UK only produces 19.6 TWh for 2012. Only the top wind power nations, the US and China surpassed the 59 TWh target, and we both know those two countries are still heavily reliant on coal (unfortunately).

[Wild Zontargs]

Just a back-of-the-envelope estimate on automotive electrification:

According to government statistics, the province of Ontario has 7.3 million light cars, each driving an average of 16,000 km/year. That's about 320 million km/day. By act of Q, all cars become Teslas. Tesla says that, in the best charger configuration, it takes 0.2 kWh per km to charge them. So that's about 64 GWh/day, more with transmission losses. Average daily usage is around 400 GWh/day, so that's about a 17% increase after losses, or enough to change our load distribution (with perfect distribution of new car-charging load into nightly off-peak hours) to the daily maximum load running 24/7. Not impossible, but it would take some work.

[madd0ct0r]

@Mr Friendly Guy

secondry source is the model itself. try moving the offshore wind 'lever/button' up to level 2. the details will appear by your mouse.
if you want more detail, there's the wiki and also the underlying excel model can be downloaded for free.
In case it's not clear, the sankey diagram is looking at scenarios in the year 2050. Level one for offshore wind is we don't build any more and the exisiting ones are decommissioned by 2025. Level 2 is we keep building at the same rate as now.


1. the remainder is liquid hydrocarbons (diesel and petrol). digging into the excel sheet, this is slighlty because even by 2050 not all diesel cars have aged out, and mostly because electrification of road freight is driven by a different lever.

2. 6.7GW is the literal conversion of 59TWh/yr, not the built capacity. A level 2 buildout of offshore wind represents about 60GW of installed capacity by 2050. By that point, the capacity factor is running at 45% (it goes up as you build in more sites.) By the same token, the Plant Load factor for nucelar is currently about 60%, and expected to reach 80% by 2050.

3. We're looking at future scenarios here, since a change over to an electric grid is a slow thing as vehicles age out.

[Spoonist]

*Sigh* Irbis again showing his "great" knowledge of the energy market and industry...
Still doesn't understand that renewables isn't limited to solar and wind. How many times do we need to rehash this?

the fact that renewables can't power our civilization now,

If this statement had been on its own and from someone reasonable I would agree. But with you I have had to repeatedly point out the exceptions which you usually ignore to make such statements generally viable. You have to be very lucky with the geographic and political lottery for such a utopitan scenario even to be viable. Iceland would be an extreme example. So since most states are not in such a scenario then you are rambling against an outlier which isn't even an option for most of the world. So you are missing that most countries are not even aiming for a scenario with only renewables, instead they are aiming for MORE renewables. This because a mix with MORE renewables makes economic and political sense. Grids with distributed energy sources are a bitch to build but are the most reliable out there. Reliability is good for business.

the pesky fact that extra load at off peak would kill the renewable grid and pee on its corpse

Source please, because this is so backwards its funny. Why would a renewable grid be more vulnerable to extra load during off peak?

What with sun not shining at night and winds being much weaker.

This would be a valid criticism only in the vapid strawman of a grid with all of its sources being wind and solar. Since such a utopia/dystopia doesn't exist and isn't planned it is totally ignorant of reality. All grids are mixes.

Electric cars are perfect for nuclear grid, not wind/solar one.

Source please, because this is also built on misconceptions not based in reality. Neither is 'perfect' if you are talking about some utopia with a majority of cars being electric, since you would have a load station at work as well. So the peaks would be after rush hour in the morning and after rush hour in the evening. (You do know that the energy industry has made plans how to make money if elecric cars take off, right?)
To handle that on nuclear alone you would have to turn on and then off reactors during these peaks, something which we can do but don't like to because it really strains the grid. Wind and solar would be great for the morning peak but crap for the evening peak. etc
What we do in reality is using mixed sources - like we have done for centuries now - only by using the local conditions to your advantage through a pragmatic mix could you get something 'good enough' for such peaks. Perfect is off the table since the market is changing all the time.

It would create huge demand for batteries for cars, if you add to try to add batteries for renewables to the mix you will end up raising prices of both and further reducing renewable viability.

The second doesn't follow from the first.
Batteries for cars and solar grids and wind grids are not done using the same specifications since their purpose are different. So they are using different techs and resources. Your argument is as flawed as if the rapid development of the market for cell phone batteries would be increasing the price of AAA batteries.

Yes, there are schemes to use batteries in cars as a sort of balancing element for renewable grid

This is based on journalists misunderstanding tech papers. There are no such concrete plans that I've seen in the industry.
Instead the energy industry is making all kinds of research into possible markets, if there pops up common largish household batteries (like car batteries) then there is a potential market for loading those. One way of using two trends to make more money would be to sell surplus peak energies at a discount to the loading of such common largish household batteries. Lots of different such scenarios has been looked upon, one of which is of course using a local surplus of solar and wind to load such using municipal stations where politically viable. But you are missing that pragmatism wins, so if we can fill that loading station with any type of energy from any source and then sell it as if it is only from renewable sources then that makes a lot of PR and marketing sense.
The energy industry would be insane not to look into such scenarios and make such calculations and if only 1 in 10 actually plays out we will still make a lot of profit.

but it would require massive investing into electrical grid, cars being plugged in 100% of time they are not driving, and drivers not minding plugging car in can discharge, not load battery.

Source please, because to me none of those are true. If there is a mass-market for loading batteries we'd be happy to make investments to get that market and we would make a killer profit on it. If you are running an electric car you'd want it to be plugged in always when parked so that it is fully charged when you come back and the energy industry would love using that most cars would be plugged in most of the day to fill with discount peak energy, trying to claim the opposite is plain weird. Car batteries discharging doesn't come from the energy industry but rather universities trying to get political grants and is not required to make the rest of the scenario potentially profitable.

I'd even expect extra guards to be much cheaper than land close to the cities that renewable energy would need to devour to provide 1/10 of power nuclear can.

Source please because this is pure insanity. With the exception of Germany renewables is not supposed to replace nuclear, it is supposed to complement it. The market demand trend is so huge we can easilty sell them all sorts at a profit. Then you are really comparing apples and pumpkins, security for nuclear plants is an annual cost with large geopolitical implications making it non-viable option in large regions of the world, while land investments is an up front one-time cost at the same time that you are making your ROI calculations, they are really not comparable, if we can make the choice between costs with unknown variability over time and depending on politics versus easy to calculate one-time up front costs - then we'd easily go for the second type every time. Then we have the whole problem where the cost of guards is the cheapest you usually have the biggest security problems with the guards. At the same time the places where security is the cheapest is usually also where land is cheap as well. The company I work for build huge installations worldwide and we can almost never hire security personnel locally and expect high efficiency. Now in the history of nuclear and hydro this cost has normally been taken off the books by the state using their military and police budgets, but nowadays that is not the case in most markets, the biggest and most notable exception being china.

nuclear has vastly better environmental and safety record than all other forms of energy generation combined

source for the safety record please. Without having any numbers in front of me I'd guesstimate that both waste-to-energy and geothermal would beat most others. Then you have the whole factor of comparing effects, societies have a lower threshold for big effect type of disasters than a continous but smaller effects even if the sum is greater. Typical comparison would be aviation versus car safety. Since big installations like nuclear and hydro have huge effect when disasters happen so they are heavily regulated for a reason. Also when big effect disasters happen its usually the state that takes the biggest costs for clean-up etc, if such costs are not easily budgeted for (like car accidents are) then the state will of course take a lot of interest.
Then the only reason why nuclear has such a good safety record is due to the regulations that you have repeatedly advocated against, there is some sort of hypocracy using that then as an argument for your views don't you think?

Had we used half of that in other power plants they would all be out of business.

Not really. You are reacting emotionally not thinking that through. For instance if the regulation of waste-to-energy would triple it wouldn't even make a dent since the cost for regulation-related issues is miniscule part of the total running cost.

France and Russia as far as I am aware don't have that problem.

France (EDF) definately do have those problems and they are pro-nuclear with a large % of all power being nuclear, Russia is hard to get accurate stats from but any large project should be over budget due to how politics work over there regardless of which industry we are talking about.

Failure at nuclear plant has less impact than normal function of coal plant. Even if we include radioactivity, radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels, with each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year. Just no one cares as it is invisible and doesn't produce nice sounds in pocket detectors.

Here you could almost score a point but fail due to more journo exagguration. A failure of a nuclear plant definately have a larger impact than a normally operating coal plant, especially since the loss of the energy made usually means that you indeed have to start up stuff like an extra coal plant to compensate. What you forgot to say due to wanting to hyperbole is that most nuclear plants don't fail so the average impact of running nuclear is less than the average impact of running coal, so the sum of radioactivity over time is less from nuclear than coal. But you didn't...
Also since you know diddly except propaganda articles you missed thorium, potassium, radium and the rest of the NORM or TENORM in the coal ash.
Then source please on the "hundreds of kilograms of uranium" per plant and year because depending on origin its about 1-2ppm of uranium in coal. US total consumption for energy is almost 1 giga tons of coal per year, divided on something like 600 largish plants. So if we round up its tops about three tons of uranium per plant and year, your claim would have about 10% of that into the atmosphere. It just doesn't add up. I'd guesstimate that its much more uranium in the coal ash used for cement/concrete production than goes into the atmosphere.
And the arsenic and air pollution from coal is killing loads more than the radiation ever will.


But really you are grasping for straws when you compare your favorite to the dirtiest plant in the class.

Just no one cares as it is invisible and doesn't produce nice sounds in pocket detectors.

It does produce sound in pocket detectors... We use them all the time when inspecting coal plants and their vicinity. Sorry to spoil your soundbites.

No, but unless you apply a lot of incompetency and greed to it, it's pretty much 99% safe.

99% WTF nuclear is orders of magnitudes safer than 99% you idiot. And in which world would you get a nuclear company without incompetence and greed?
http://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC5 ... f-3_en.pdf

88. However, despite the increased awareness of the significance of a strong safety culture as well as the ongoing reinforcement of safety culture by the IAEA through meetings and OSART missions, the IAEA has observed, based upon support missions and technical meetings, that regulators and licensees often lack a systematic, long-term and committed approach to continuously improving safety culture and that nuclear organizations tend to take an inadequate, ad hoc approach to safety culture in their nuclear operations.

Its exactly due to the prevalence of incompetence and greed that regulations are needed and improved upon continously.

You are the worst kind of fanboy - your arguments are hurting your own cause more than the opposition. If our profit from nuclear relied on fanboys like you I'd be really worried about my next paycheck, but fortunately I think I will be fine.


tl;dr
Irbis knows diddly about the energy industry and market. Which he repeatedly shows.

[Spoonist]

Actually he is not talking crap with this. This is well known. ...As for the source try scientific American.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ear-waste/

That source actually disproves his claim. Its not the uranium and its not hundreds of kgs per year. Its the sum of TENORM in the ash emishions that makes the total radiation higher than nuclear.
But what's worse is that the radiation from a nuclear disasters are orders of magnitude higher so his conclusion is wrong as well.