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The image of GA in the media: Commuting by plane causes media hype

I know someone who has a 6kW wind turbine in his “garden” and that will charge a small electric car nicely. Especially where he lives; very windy there. But 99.9% of people would never get planning permission for such a thing, nor would they want it, due to the noise it makes.

To get this from solar (photovoltaic) you would need to spend a huge amount of money on panels. There just isn’t enough sun in N Europe.

Certainly not travelling is one answer

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The Fraport airport vehicles at LJLJ have solar panels on their roofs, held by the roof rack I don’t know if they’re electric, hybrid, or normal engines though.

A friend with an RV had an expensive high-output solar panel installed on the roof, which he said made a big difference. It has two batteries, one for the engine and one for the living area. Both charge when the engine is running, but the leisure battery discharges using the lights, tv etc. Having the solar panel saves paying the electric hook-up in the campsite, or going for a drive just to charge the battery. IIRC the price was in the thousands, so it will never pay for itself, but gives a lot more flexibility.

Only the luxury electric cars would be able to justify having them, as it would probably increase the buying price of a budget electric car by 20%.

Edit: RV as in campervan, not a Vans

Last Edited by Capitaine at 05 Apr 15:56
EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

alioth wrote:

Yes.

Thought experiment. Take a pan of water and put it on a gas stove, set to burn at a certain rate.

“Weather” is trying to predict where each eddy and bubble will form in the next 10 seconds.

“Climate” is predicting that the water will be X degrees warmer in 100 seconds.

It is actually good to have a debate where people can discuss things. Unfortunately Climate Science is now like religion where the two sides are polarised. On the “thought experiment” above I don’t believe it is as simple as described above. I would say it is more like

  • Take a pan of unknown substance where the specific heat is unknown and estimated by models
  • It has been on the gas stove for a while but nobody knows how much gas has been used apart from a few estimated gas bills that were lying around the property where the dates cannot be read
  • Whilst it has been on the cooker for 5000 years, we need to estimate what the temperature in the pan in the next 5 minutes (the sort of time frames involved)
  • The lid on the pan may or may not be on (depending on Sunspot minima, absorption of Oceans, cloud cover etc)
  • There might be positive of negative feedback from the pan lid above
  • The person paying the Scientist has a vested interest in things getting hotter as it allows more control of the population and Governments love to empire build/expand
  • The media reporting the experiment sell more newspapers /clicks if they report bad news
  • Humans love to believe that man is Sinful and responsible for his own downfall – “the litany” – as religion is in decline in the Western World this is great for those who need something to replace it with and or/hate capitalism.

But I am very open to both sides, I’ve read 3 or 4 books on the subject but it won’t stop me flying my plane!

Last Edited by Archer-181 at 05 Apr 16:36
United Kingdom

Archer-181 wrote:

The person paying the Scientist has a vested interest in things getting hotter as it allows more control of the population and Governments love to empire build/expand

Why, then, do the Governments show very little interest in doing anything substantial?

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

To get this from solar (photovoltaic) you would need to spend a huge amount of money on panels. There just isn’t enough sun in N Europe.

Price of panels have been dropping dramatically over the last 10 years. Now about 2.5 Euro/Watt. Indeed in Northern countries you need to put in quite a bit of panels to get some serious yield, but the cost is not prohibitive i’d say. Yes, there is the cost of an inverter and other stuff and installation expenses, but especially if you go for a bigger installation it starts to make sense.

Not really for me, having put it in place 10 years ago with still high panel prices Why am I always on the darned bleeding edge? Stand by for me being one of the suckers who they sell an electric plane to some day Hope the panels have decreased in price even further by that time.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

I work above a car showroom and they have some electric cars, as well as two 6kW charging points.

6kW is roughly what one needs for a small electric car doing local journeys. A Tesla doing 100 miles a day (a typical longer commute) would need a few tens of kW and thus a 3 phase charger which is not trivial to get connected up; I had this in a previous house for a different purpose.

6kW at €2.5/watt comes to €15k. This is no small money but is doable for those with plenty of money and impeccable green credentials (probably not a common combination). But at 200W/m2 it is 30 square metres. That is more than most people could find roof space for.

But you won’t get 6kW on most days in N Europe. Not anywhere near it. A PV panel outputs maybe 10% on a bright overcast day. I have one right here and could measure it… (we use it to trickle charge a battery in a car which doesn’t get much use).

The killer is that you need this at night (when most people charge their cars) but the sun doesn’t shine then. During the day they would need charging at their place of work and then due to demand that could not be solar; in fact the company would need a very big grid connection (same with flying schools btw).

For wealthy retired people you could make it work. They are a good fit. Mostly local journeys (they hate driving anyway), mostly living in the countryside (“old” people move out of cities if they can, especially in cultures where house ownership is a high priority) where there is more space.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Airborne_Again wrote:

Archer-181 wrote:
The person paying the Scientist has a vested interest in things getting hotter as it allows more control of the population and Governments love to empire build/expand
Why, then, do the Governments show very little interest in doing anything substantial?

This was my “thought experiment” Scientist but if we are talking about the real world Governments

  1. UK Government putting in transfer payments on UK electricity so “poor people” running Economy 7 heating in small flats pay extra on their electricity to subside “rich people” with a large south facing roof 40 pence per Kwh for PV’s working at very low efficiency in the Northern Hemisphere. These rich people will no doubt be heating their large houses with gas and getting “free” electricity paid for by the taxpayer (perhaps a Pensioner Taxpayer with modest income).
  2. The UK Government not doing the most sensible policy which is insulating houses as they can’t sort out any complicated contract with the Private Sector and come up with things like the “Green Deal” or “Wood chip” schemes which are so poorly designed they cost a fortune, end up with ripping off the tax payer and get shut down.
  3. Governments banning fracking which provides natural gas to run fast spool up generation which complements Wind Power. Banned as it people believe scare stories on YouTube about water pollution. This policy then increases CO2 emissions as base load is provided by less clean sources like coal
  4. The German Government shutting down clean Nuclear and replacing base load with Coal. So Germany ended up with the highest proportion of “PV” and “Wind” sources, the highest Electricity costs and amazingly higher CO2 emissions due to the coal burning than they had before the “green” roll out.
  5. Worst of all, all Governments who are in power for 5 years promise Carbon Reduction and often stupid schemes which kick in 6-20 years later after they have been voted out of power.

So if you are saying Governments haven’t done much, as far as I’m concerned I’d rather they did far less as most “Green” policies are an absolute cock up

The pot of water on the stove looks so appealing now!

United Kingdom

The local bus company has recently replaced single deck buses with hybrid double deck buses, almost doubling the carrying capacity.
But I’ve seldom seen a single deck bus 1/4 full. A minibus would suffice.
I wonder if an energy per passenger journey audit is ever done.
My biggest energy waste is taking a 40 seat bus for the journey home from a 10 mile walk, with sometimes no other passenger on board.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

But you won’t get 6kW on most days in N Europe. Not anywhere near it. A PV panel outputs maybe 10% on a bright overcast day. I have one right here and could measure it… (we use it to trickle charge a battery in a car which doesn’t get much use).

You are right in that combining the northern sunlight with a electron-guzzling car like a Tesla (no offence, great car!) does make it hard to drive all-solar.

But we from the Southern Flanks of EuroGA can make it work. My case:
2 BMW i3’s, 5.6 kW peak power solar installation. The i3 are pretty energy efficient and we drive carefully, so that’s 13 kWh/km. In total we drive 35.000 km/yr so that’s 4.550 kWh of energy required for mobility. Our installation yield 5500 kWh per year. Top days 25kWh, average in the year 15kWh/day. So in balance we are more than propelled by the sun. However, as you rightfully say there is the issue of the sun not shining 24 hrs. So we try to be a bit clever about it and use one car, while the other charges. Became a bit of a sport to plan things to become as sun-propelled as possible. But sometimes we need to cheat by charging at a public station in some town. Subsidized by the EU, so thank you so much Northern Flanks of EuroGA!

So @emir what are you waiting for to compensate that $%·"%-spewing DA42 of yours!

Last Edited by aart at 06 Apr 07:56
Private field, Mallorca, Spain

Archer-181 wrote:

Humans love to believe that man is Sinful and responsible for his own downfall – “the litany” – as religion is in decline in the Western World this is great for those who need something to replace it with and or/hate capitalism.

Precisely. It’s the largest driver for environmentalists. We think irrational, we act irrational. I often think that the largest effect of religion is it’s ability to confine human destructive irrationality (guilt, shame, anger, envy etc) and nullify the effect of it in the society, which always is destructive. Religion itself is of course highly irrational, it has to be. Without religion, all kinds of things will work as substitute, some better than others. The environment is a tailor made substitute, and this also makes it highly irrational, but for the wrong purposes. There are wacko and highly destructive religions also of course, but that’s beside the point.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
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