Tesla is doing well, and now even better: Daimler takes a stake in electric carmaker Tesla

Tesla Motors Press Room

I am currently considering placing a reservation on a Tesla S. My wife has visited Tesla's main showroom, in Menlo Park, CA, and came away very impressed.

I don't think it's as bad as you think. New nuke plants are already getting traction, you can google about it, it's happening. If demand starts spiking due to electric cars (which will be gradual anyways), power companies will simply make their rates more progressive, charging more for peak than off-peak usage, encouraging people to charge their cars overnight when demand is typically lower. A lot of metro areas are also looking at incentive programs to start making the grid more resilient. Think solar panels on everyone's house to feed the downtown office buildings during the day, etc.

It will be bad for a short while just because of how long it takes to get approval and to build a power plant (10+ years!). Hopefully they are learning their lesson to look ahead so we don't end up with the rolling blackouts that Cali experienced in the past.

Subsidizing distributed power is a good idea but it takes money and so the government needs to have funds to buy in. Germany has been doing this with huge success in the past few years. People are buying subsidized solar panels (cheaply) and sticking them on their roofs to sell power back into the grid. Farmers are allocating fields and setting up solar farms because it is more profitable than actual farming. There are some rebates here but they vary by state, and some states have none.

If it needs rebates, it's not profitable. That's just shifting the cost to someone else (other taxpayers). Solar panels are nice but they won't produce enough power to do anything significant anytime soon. I found that if you covered 40 average sizeed rooftops with panels, it would generate enough power in one hour to replace 1 gallon of gasoline...at 100% efficiency.

Pretty much exactly what I believe to be true. There are major allegations of fraud. supposedly two sets of books. Then, like you said, there are the allegations about the car too and if its capable of what they claim.

I am not swearing 100% that I am certain that these things are true, but allegations are out there and they are being investigated. The truth will come out soon and we will know what is true and whats not true.

You don't understand the grid. (I work in the industry.) Our antiquated grid NEEDS off-peak to keep the equipment together. It can't take peak load around the clock. And accepting tiny amounts of power from multiple sources is a lot bigger physics problem than people realize. You don't just plug in a new source. It impacts the balance of the entire system. And if something goes wrong, it gets ugly in a hurry. (The major U.S. blackouts of the last couple of decades have almost all been minor small-source issues that took big grids out of balance, and off-line.)

And the last nuke plant permitted in the U.S. took (hold your breath) THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS just for the permitting process. $78.5 million JUST FOR THE PERMITTING (with no money coming in)! Then, they shut down the project.

Power generation is a lot harder than the bureaucrats realize.

That's new. That MAY just save them!

I wonder if they'll hush up the improprieties or go through with the investigations.

Solar is only 20% efficient at the moment, so the benefits will improve as the technology does. I also favor the building of new efficient power stations, both traditional (coal / nuclear) and alternative.

The useful efficiencies were "just around the corner" back in the 70's. With current tech, it would cost me well over $25000 to be able to generate 4.4 Kilowatts (enough to replace a small power generator,I looked into this after Hurricane Ike left me powerless for a week). That would only be for about 6 hours a day and wouldn't even let me run my air conditioners. To totally go off the grid would be over $100,000 and lots of extra stoage capacity. All the "success" solar power stories I've read involve reducing energy uses by something like 2/3rd's AND huge tax rebates. Solar as a major player is just a no go anytime in the near future. Wind power is much better......IF you live in the right place. :D

Yes, going off grid with solar just isn't feasible unless you live like you're in the 19th century. There are some feasible solar concepts using solar collectors to generate steam (which can be stored). Photovoltaic cells have a long way to go.

The whole house generators I've looked into are natural gas or propane. We loose power several times a year, this winter we lost power for a week during a ice storm with temperatures near 0F. At first I tried to keep the house warm using the fireplace but that was a losing battle. Eventually I got smart and hooked an inverter up to my truck and wired it up to my gas boiler so that the ignition system and circulater pumps would work. Idling my truck the gas tank lasted about 2 days. Obviously a full on generator would be more efficient than a 300W inverter.

Well, it seems the biggest problem is the bureaucrats themselves. I have faith that the NRC, etc will get things done quicker this time around though, re: approving new nuke plants. There are already proposals underway for a new generation of plants. Once the first few make it through the process, hopefully more will start. Nuke power is smart, and it's mostly ignorant fear on the part of the public that holds back nuclear plans :(

Brace yourself. Environmentalists (and people who live near wind farms) are putting an end to the concept of major wind farms. That's why, for a time recently, you heard the proposal to site wind farms offshore, out in the ocean.

Problem #1 -- Aesthetics. You're taking wilderness and/or beautiful countryside, stripping it naked of all natural tree life (clear-cutting to the extreme), and filling it with ugly metal towers. The construction itself creates a major greenhouse gas deficit.

Problem #2 -- Ultra-low frequency harmonics. Windmills go whump-whump-whump-whump constantly. When you've got a few hundred of them going whump-whump-whump-whump constantly, day after day, month after month, year after year, you drive away wildlife and make people within five miles of the installation go psycho. It's a big noise issue. Health as well as environmental interests are at work.

But how about waste-to-energy? You don't hear much about it because the waste management companies don't want you to hear much about it. But, if you use the WastAway system to process the garbage first, it's clean. It saves landfill space. It doesn't stink (as garbage incineration does). And it only takes three to five years to go through the permitting process and construction.

I was getting 10 to 12 hours of 5kw off of 5 gallons of gas on my very very old gas generator. After about a week of this, I bought a new 6KW Diesel Generator (diesel was much easier to find than reg gas after the hurricane), gassed it up, hooked it up and ran.........for about 30 min and the power came back up. I was almost mad. :D

wind, nuclear and hydro are going to be the answers, all are clean and high enough output that the small disadvantages to them are going to have to be over looked if the power shortages and green house gas problems are ever going to be addressed.

edit: wow didn`t realise how off topic this thread has got lol, i didn`t even remember what thread it was after reading through it and posting haha had to go to the top and look

Waste-to-engery is at the top of the list as "doable". There is some interesting algae alternate fuel stuff that looks very promising as well.
Pond-Powered Biofuels: Turning Algae into America's Newest Alternative Energy Source - Popular Mechanics
and
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science...oil/index.html