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I always wonder whether the next step will show they really need an additional $40 billion dollars and 20 years to actually make a commercial fusion reactor in line with the conventional ITER approach.
Still TAE, Commonwealth Fusion, General Fusion and Helion all have ball-park 1$ billion dollar funding scenarios and 10 year time-lines. Helion is the most optimistic with a goal of net-electricity production with their 2024 reactor. From this far away it is really hard to know how realistic the cost and time-lines of these start-ups except the observation that they defy conventional wisom.
TAE Technologies exceeds fusion reactor performance goals by 250% as company closes $250M round; $1.2B to date
After achieving temperatures greater than 75 million degrees Celsius and demonstrating unmatched real-time control of plasma with its fifth-generation fusion research reactor, Norman, TAE Technologies has secured strategic and institutional investments to fund the construction of its next resea...
Very interesting analysis. Clearly "proved reserves" are a function of how much investment is needed to make them. "Proved reserves" are an economic construct not a geological one.
Production of crude oil as a percentage of proved reserves: Recent worldwide and US trends
by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. In this analysis, I examined the relation between crude-oil production and crude-oil reserves in the world overall and in the United States alone. The variable of interest was the amount of crude oil produced as a percentage of proved reserves of crud...
Agreed E-P. It's great to see Intel investing in both Physical capital and in human expertise in the USA. I expect there are some government insentives at work here too.
Intel to invest $20B to build two processor factories in Ohio
Intel announced plans for an initial investment of more than $20 billion in the construction of two new leading-edge chip factories in Ohio. The investment will help boost production to meet the surging demand for advanced semiconductors, powering a new generation of innovative products from In...
mahonj: "Any you can be sure that if you try to do it, every treehugger in a hundred km radius will try to stop it by finding a sub-species of snail or butterfly to protect."
You are absolutely right. There is a very good project here in Australia to significantly expand our pump-hydro capacity, called Snowy 2.0. It provides 2 GW of instantaneous power and several hundred GWHr of storage. It would also significantly expand the power connectivity between the two largest States in Australia. I follow a lot of renewable energy sites here and you would think this great proposal was invented by the devil himself! Anyway the project will likely go ahead over the moans of objectors who otherwise want to save the earth.
As states use less coal for electricity, driving electric vehicles becomes even cleaner
by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. Battery electric vehicles are only as clean as the energy source used to generate the electricity that powers them. The calculated relative amounts of well-to-wheels emissions of greenhouse gases from eight different energy sources are shown in the ta...
Hooray! Finally we're seeing advanced chemistries go into commercial production. It will be interesting to see if they can translate their theoretically better chemistry into a commercially viable product.
OXIS Energy to build Li-sulfur battery plant in Brazil; initial capacity 2M cells/year
OXIS Energy Ltd UK has signed a contract with CODEMGE PARTICIPACOES SA, a public company incorporated in the city of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, to establish the world’s first digital manufacturing plant for the mass production of OXIS’ lithium-sulfur cells. OXIS Energy...
Harvey, I believe most of the costs are capital purchases to buy the equipment and expertise to build automated factories. Low cost, unskilled labour is definitely not needed.
Tesla reports largest quarterly loss, maintains Musk’s Model 3 revised production targets
In Q4 2017, Tesla posted its largest quarterly loss yet, even while combined Model S and Model X deliveries in Q4 grew 10% globally compared to the prior record in Q3 and 28% compared to Q4 2016. In Q4, Tesla delivered 28,425 Model S and Model X vehicles and 1,542 Model 3 vehicles, totaling 29,9...
Very interesting indeed. One weeks worth of water from fracking gives enough lithium for 200 EVs. Given that 1 barrel/day of crude oil supports about 7.5 cars and assuming the well supplies 1000 barrels/day this implies the well supports 7500 cars. So over the course of a year the well supplies enough lithium to make 10,000 EV's, more than replacing the gasoline cars that need the oil. So fracking could turnout to be a very sustainable form of mining!
Researchers discover new efficient lithium collection method using MOF membranes; Li from produced water
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, Monash University (Australia) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia have recently discovered a new, efficient way to extract lithium and other metals and minerals from water. They published thei...
I wonder if the US Navy are interested in this? They have all these nuclear powered aircraft carriers and need fuel for their planes. If this technology works at scale they may not need support tankers.
SOLETAIR project produces first 200 liters of synthetic fuel from solar power and atmospheric CO2
The SOLETAIR project (earlier post) has produced its first 200 liters of synthetic fuel from solar energy and the air’s carbon dioxide via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Project partners include INERATEC, a spinoff of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), VTT Technical Research Center of Finland...
Davemart they've used their insane stock price to generate and spend cash like crazy to actually build > 500,000 BEV's/year. No other company is within an order of magnitude of that. Succeed or fail there's no doubt in my mind they've been influential.
Tesla to supply 100MW/129 MWh Powerpack to South Australia wind farm
Through a competitive bidding process, Tesla was selected to provide a 100 MW/129 MWh Powerpack system to be paired with global renewable energy provider Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, South Australia. Tesla was awarded the entire energy storage system component of the project. T...
Some but not that much (maybe 3-4 cents out of the 30 cents). It's mostly rent-seekers taking advantage of poor government market models. Self generation and local storage is about the only way consumers can push back against them.
15 GWh Li-ion battery plant investigated for Australia
A consortium led by Boston Energy and Innovation (BEI) has signed an exclusive memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Townsville, Australia City Council to investigate the financial viability of building a 15GWh battery manufacturing plant in Townsville. Once in full production the 15GWh ...
Actually, retail electricity prices in Australia are so high (> 30 cents/KWhr) that PV+battery storage makes financial sense in many parts of the country. 6 KW PV + Powerwall 2 costs around $16K fully installed. The battery system is 10K$ of that. Although the payback is marginal, many people are so sick of the electricity retailers they're already willing to pay. A further 30% reduction in a 14 KWhr battery would see large scale adoption in the home storage market and even greater PV penetration. Over 15% of households have some PV installed already.
15 GWh Li-ion battery plant investigated for Australia
A consortium led by Boston Energy and Innovation (BEI) has signed an exclusive memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Townsville, Australia City Council to investigate the financial viability of building a 15GWh battery manufacturing plant in Townsville. Once in full production the 15GWh ...
Herman, I was really worried about peak oil between 2006 and 2010. Now I only worry about global warming. There are more than enough fossil fuels to triple or quadruple our current atmospheric CO2 concentration.I suspect the price of oil will drop in the 2020's as fuel efficiencies continuously improve. Hopefully petroleum will go the way of whale oil as its uses are replaced with better technology.
EIA: US produced more petroleum than any other country in 2015
According to data from the US Department of Energy (DOE), gathered by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), world petroleum production was 96 million barrels per day (mmbd) in 2015 and the United States produced more than any other country—16% of the global total. In 1980, the United S...
Dr. Strange, actually I've been a bono-fide member of the open-source community since 1994. I run Linux on all my servers and use it on laptops and PC's where-ever possible. However many of the most useful PC programs don't have a Linux version. Linux on the PC could have been like Android and now AGL. Free and a first class citizen of as a target for 3rd part developers.
Oh well, at least it's a much smaller target for hackers and malware authors :-)
Automotive Grade Linux releases latest version of open infotainment platform
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) has released the latest version of its infotainment platform. Developed through a joint effort by dozens of member companies, the AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) 3.0 is an open-source infotainment platform positioned as a de facto industry standard. The goal of the UC...
This is what the Personal Computer Industry should have done! Congratulations to the AGL members. This will enable rapid advances for in-car computer systems.
Automotive Grade Linux releases latest version of open infotainment platform
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) has released the latest version of its infotainment platform. Developed through a joint effort by dozens of member companies, the AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) 3.0 is an open-source infotainment platform positioned as a de facto industry standard. The goal of the UC...
Roger: The assumed utilization rate is 70%. Most European wind sites are lucky to get 25%. The best middle-East solar sites get 30% for their sub-3 cent per KWHr production. So that doubles the cost of the renewable generated H2.
I think the economics would stack up in places like Texas, Quebec and the Pacific-NorthWest where electricity prices are stably low for long periods of time.
On the road to solar fuels and chemicals
In a new paper in the journal Nature Materials (in an edition focused on materials for sustainable energy), a team from Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has reviewed milestones in the progress of solid-state photoelectrocatalytic technologies toward delivering solar f...
Roger, you neglect the capital cost of the electrolyser. This kills the economics of renewable generated H2. This is particularly the case since you can't run the electrolyser 24/7 because of the intermittent electricity source. On the hand, interest on the capital accumulates all the time.
On the other hand the economics of thermally enhanced H2 production using high temperature nuclear reactors looks good, except for the problem of proving the long term safety of the new class of reactors needed (and their capital cost!).
Nothing is easy.
On the road to solar fuels and chemicals
In a new paper in the journal Nature Materials (in an edition focused on materials for sustainable energy), a team from Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has reviewed milestones in the progress of solid-state photoelectrocatalytic technologies toward delivering solar f...
The USA consumes around 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year.
This 19 Billion gallons is getting to be an interesting number. At 6% compound growth, biofuels will amount to around 30% of liquid fuel consumption by 2030. In combination with increased fuel economy standards and EV take-up, the USA could well be on a steep downward trajectory in liquid fossil-fuel consumption by 2030.
EPA finalizes increase in renewable fuel volumes for 2017; 6% total increase to 19.28B gallons
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized increases in renewable fuel volume requirements across all categories of biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program. In a required annual rulemaking, the action finalizes the volume requirements and associated percentage stand...
This is quite impressive. Tesla are now a 100,000 cars per year company with ~$10 Billion/year in revenue. This is not insignificant.
With this track record, a further factor 2-5 increase in capacity with the release of the model 3 seems not impossible.
Tesla Q3 deliveries up 70% from Q2 to 24,500 vehicles
Tesla delivered approximately 24,500 vehicles in Q3, of which 15,800 were Model S (64%) and 8,700 were Model X (36%). This was an increase of just over 70% from last quarter’s deliveries of 14,402. Tesla only counts a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is co...
Actually, I think this is seriously encouraging. They have a genuinely new chemistry Li-S, with a real product targeting a genuinely interesting energy density of 300 Wh/Kg. The ceiling on this technology is much higher than 300 Wh/Kg. This is a real company to watch.
OXIS Energy and Lithium Balance partner on Li-sulfur battery system for China e-scooter market; targeting spring 2018
Li-sulfur battery developer OXIS Energy UK (earlier post) and Lithium Balance of Denmark are partnering to build a prototype Lithium-sulfur battery system primarily for the e-scooter market in China. Lithium Balance is a battery management expert which has supplied its BMS systems for Li-ion ba...
Thanks for the link Nick Lyons BTW its: http://terrestrialenergy.com/. I'll check them out in detail.
Another very interesting company developing Molten Salt technology is TransAtomic http://www.transatomicpower.com/.
It looks like transatomic biggest issue is corrosion from their LiF salt coolant. It's one of the big issues listed in the ARPA-E request for information.
ARPA-E issues RFI on enabling technologies for ultra-safe and secure modular nuclear energy systems
The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) has issued a Request for Information (DE-FOA-0001598) on enabling technologies for ultra-safe and secure modular nuclear energy systems. ARPA-E seeks input from a broad range of disciplines and fields, including, but not limited to, nuclea...
Henrik, thanks for the numbers on the ratio of input cost of raw Lithium compared to the cost of the batteries made by them.
BTW I used to be worried about "Peak-Oil" but I don't anymore. Compared to that, Lithium is no concern whatsoever. It's not like it's consumed. It can be endlessly recycled.
Tesla And Other Tech Giants Scramble For Lithium As Prices Double
by James Stafford of Oilprice.com Demand for lithium—the hottest commodity on the planet and the only commodity to show positive price movement in 2015—is poised to continue on its upward trajectory, becoming the world’s new gasoline and earning the moniker of “White Petroleum”. And the battle f...
This article is a good example of why Biofuels cannot be the main energy source of propulsion for travel. British Columbia has probably the world's greatest ratio of forests to people. Yet even it's forests are projected to only meet 10% of the Provinces needs via forest waste. To get a larger share they'd have to use whole trees. So in B.C. its a choice between wood or fuel...
Boeing, Canadian aviation industry launch sustainable aviation biofuel project using forestry waste
Boeing, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and SkyNRG, with support from Canada’s aviation industry and other stakeholders, are collaborating to turn leftover branches, sawdust and other forest-industry waste into sustainable aviation biofuel. Canada, which has extensive sustainably certif...
Havey, your statement is just not true. If it was, people would be investing like crazy in it and making money as they undercut the fossil fuel/nuke companies.
Here we read about new advances in technology on a weekly basis with very few, (actually none so far) who actually get to market their factor 2 - 10 improvements. That said, I think there is a good chance Tesla will actually succeed at making batteries good enough to get a non-trivial fraction (> 10%) of home PV's generating electricity without government subsidies.
My personal hope is that numerous molten-salt nuclear reactor concepts get a good chance of actually building working technology with funds like this. For example if the vision of
http://www.transatomicpower.com/
is full-filled the energy problems of humans will be substantially changed. Their technology is truly scalable and sustainable into the very long term (> 10^6 years on Earth). Likely needs a few billion dollars though and so far they've received about 4 million.
Global billionaires unite in “Breakthrough energy coalition” to support development of zero-carbon energy
As the UN climate conference COP21 opened in Paris, Bill Gates announced the formation of the “Breakthrough energy coalition”, an investment grouping of global billionaires focused on developing the technologies that will create a new zero-carbon energy mix. While governments play the key role...
I used to be a believer in "Peak Oil" where resource constraints will push the price of Oil to a point where the world economy could no longer grow. I no longer think this will happen.
Now I think a substantial increase in Oil price will push a greater fraction of the world's auto transport to various types of EV's at a higher rate than would otherwise occur.
There is no doubt at all that there is more than enough lithium to supply the EV's, especially since it can all be recycled at the end of battery life.
Opinon: Lithium Market Set To Explode; All Eyes Are On Nevada
by James Stafford of Oilprice.com While other commodities are floundering or completely collapsing in this market, lithium—the critical mineral in the emerging battery gigafactory war—is poised to explode, and going forward Nevada is emerging as the front line in this pending American lithium ...
Kalendjay, sd, Lets hope the private sector comes through...
http://www.transatomicpower.com/
Burns nuclear waste or runs through all the Uranium inventory starting from 1.8% U235 enrichment.
If they pull it off its CO2-free Energy forever and our next challenge will be how to regulate the waste-heat from 9 billion humans living "Western" lifestyles..
I haven't kept track of all the various Molten-salt reactor proposals around the world. I guess it's close to a dozen, some of them with very large state funding (like China). I think there's reasonable chance of one them coming though.
Meanwhile better PV's means more demand for high performance batteries which we need for transportation.
Here in Australia its now obvious that we need batteries to continue to scale PV. Utilities now buy electricity back at genuine wholesale prices (4 cents per KWHr) so people want to use their solar power to reduce their purchases of retail electricity (which often costs over 30 cents per KWHr). Hence, batteries!
There's plenty of room for good ideas in different technologies.
Obama announces more than $1B in DOE initiatives for renewable and advanced fossil energy; loan guarantees and ARPA-E projects
President Obama announced more than $1 billion in Department of Energy (DOE) initiatives to advance clean energy technologies. As part of the President’s Clean Power Plan, DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) is making up to $1 billion dollars in loan guarantees available to support commercial-scal...
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