This is an interesting idea for the range issue.
Solar powered
Definitely won't be the car for F150 driving type

aptera.us/vehicle/

Ian K said..
Overhead lines to be used with pantographs have to be set at a a height a metre or so higher than the max allowable height of a truck. This makes it a bit hard to get power all the way down to private transportation vehicles, the pantograph would be too long and spindly. Maybe hold the cable from the vehicle up to the overhead wires with a smart self-tracking drone?
...
Or have a Conga line of teslas hooked in behind the trucks, precision slipstreaming on auto pilot, plugged in nose to tail.

Maybe we need to repurpose rail lines between cities and towns? Drive your EV around the local area, and then drive onto the rail line to head to the next town. The car drives itself along the rail line and recharges at the same time?

Lucky for us that petrol is cheap and we don't need to do this though.

Imagine a world where we would shift our freight to electric powered trains between areas?

There comes my latest invention when it comes to uneground cables. There is limit how much power you could send by cable in the ground due to heat and limited absorption by soil. So let's provide cooling by liquid nitrogen and we should be able to send 10x power by same underground cable. In the future the problem will be resolved by using superconducting cables. They don't generate heat at all. That is another example that we should plan our national transmission grid already on DC not AC. To be ready for superconductors. They work only on Direct current and we don't need to replace all stations if have DC in place already.

What They Aren't Telling People About EeeeeeeVeeeeeees - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk (ericpetersautos.com)

Macroscien said..
3>Then we need to smelt our copper iron here and make cables on our own. But we need to build a plant and industry to make such cables. Possibly that could be the best business opportunity ever - to make underground quality DC cables. But require billions of dollars in investment first. I am sure that good plant to make cables cost less then $150 bln nuclear sub anyway

On due consideration....I will not take that bet.

If you just send what you owe me now, maybe we can double or quits later.


For starters there is already more than one copper and / or iron 'smelter' in Australia and second an electric cable plant would indeed probably cost less than $150 bln to build.

Is that how you propose to power the subs ? - not a standalone self-sufficient on-board nuclear reactor, but have them tow around giant extension cables (DC of course) ?

Not sure that is the greatest military strategy there has ever been. Not even the Ruskis are going that desperate.

Wind farms kill birds. Watch this.


gab.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/posts/109044323554879927

Pcdefender said..
Wind farms kill birds. Watch this.


gab.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/posts/109044323554879927

Much better to die of black lung disease.
Mmmmm love the smell of coal dust in the morning.

Electric cars often catch fire for reasons unknown evident from countless videos.

You have a very short period of time to remove yourself from the vehicle before you are burned alive.

Seems a valid reason to continue with the madness.

Harrow said..

Macroscien said..
Yep we are going to buy subs which is 100 years old asolete war technolgy since Chinesa are going to build microwave oven in space to fry us alive. Clearly 21century technology.
Australia should have some ambition and instead of sending simple ore could manufacture some high tech product. We are not going to make computers or even automobiles, but underground cable manufacturing is something we could do.
Let's occupy this world niche for the best quality and price high voltage cables . Our heroes which I admire , Twiggy is making huge solar farms and intend to make hydrogen from electricity. Efficiency of energy conversion is less then 20% when such energy is exported. If we send electricity by undersea cable efficiency will 90% or better. And undersea cable cost less then gas liquifing plant and cargo ships and storage.
Let's make elrctric cable that span whole Australia first and later even connect us to rest of the world. Beside all EV of future require enormous amount of electric energy to be distributed.

I think a lot people will agree with you on the manufacturing point. We really are the dumb lucky country.

I have a Swiss friend that tells me how from a very young age she was taught a consistent message in school. The teacher would hold a lump of metal in one hand and a watch in another hand, saying, "We have very few natural resources, so we buy this for 20 cents and sell this for thousands of dollars."

Seems Australia continues to be content with the 20 cents.

Interesting could be such simulation. Let's imagine that all energy in Australia is delivered from green resources like solar and wind. Maybe even nuclear fusion. We use electric energy to power all cars and homes. Industry where is possible. So whole country is running on electricity. Some electricity is sourced locally from roof panels, local Wind turbines but some need to circulate across Australia.
The question is what sort of transmission capacity lines we may need. How realistic is to build such network ? If it cost 10bln? 100bln? Or 10 trillions? Such modelling could give us idea how to plan for future.
This is like planning for my outback home. 700 m of the street. What sort of underground cable I may need , mm2 copper core., voltage drops, cost of material and digging.
For my own project 20 kW solar panels and big battery storage us hand down winner.

But similar calculations and simulation we could do for country. Percentage of local production and remote transmission.
What size of copper cable we need to span whole country? How many tones of copper is needed and how it relates to our copper production capacity. We should start building industry to prepare and make our own cables. It could be the biggest investment effort in Australia history and the most expensive too, but one than change the future completely.Why our planers able to plan 150 bln spending on imaginery nuclears sub but unable to make plans for real life energy security for country? We could see on Europe example the energy supply is the biggest obstacle for economic safety. But unlike Europe Australia it that lucky country where 100% of energy could be delivered from solar alone assuming the we have enough storage.

Sometimes people do things the way that they do because they work. No vacuum required. No nitrogen cooling. No worry about whether they just spent 400 billion dollars on something that doesn't work.

Tell me Macro, what insulation do they use when playing games with a Tesla coil? Does it work well?

What about in a CRT? What do they use for insulation in that? Does it work well? What level of 'vacuum' do you need to be effective as an insulator? What happens if you lose the vacuum through a leak?

Here is example what we are doing now wrong in Australia.
www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-25/billion-dollar-shock-as-grid-renewal-costs-become-clear/101469176



OK we are spending few billion dollars on technology that is already old , absolute and never deliver what we really need.
This is like building now dial up network for our internet needs and telephone bots on every street.

We are going to spend 150 bln on subs, twice as much on tanks, bombs and helicopters that will never see an action.
But we are concern about 5 bln investment into electric grid network - that is responsible for our everyday needs and our future.

Macroscien said..
Here is example what we are doing now wrong in Australia.
www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-25/billion-dollar-shock-as-grid-renewal-costs-become-clear/101469176

Just FYI that headline appears to be a crock. Investigation shows ERA report shows the $1B cost comes from rising interest rates.

hardpole said..
This is what you need - dont need high voltage if its a superconductor. And I think a loop of superconductor can be used as a battery, just keep putting more in and it goes round and round.The Room-Temperature Superconductor Arrives at Last
www.energy.gov/science/fes/articles/room-temperature-superconductor-arrives-last

of course Room Temperature is a relative thing!

Obviously superconductor is a dream but like a fusion is 20 years away and will be for next hundred years :). But it points to DC network, at least planing for such is long term thinking.
What we need is draw corridors on the map for national transmission network , start building underground tunnels. Discuss some interesting concepts for future. For example do we want cable going along the coast where all cities are or star configuration with cables going across continent: Perth to Brisbane straight line . For second solution advantage could be future utilisation of center of our Island where massive solar farms could be build. Not scarifying aearable and fertile land for solar farms but useless desert land. That could also bring jobs and stimulate development inside island, far from coast.

Macroscien said..
Obviously superconductor is a dream but like a fusion is 20 years away and will be for next hundred years :). But it points to DC network, at least planing for such is long term thinking.
What we need is draw corridors on the map for national transmission network , start building underground tunnels. Discuss some interesting concepts for future. For example do we want cable going along the coast where all cities are or star configuration with cables going across continent: Perth to Brisbane straight line . For second solution advantage could be future utilisation of center of our Island where massive solar farms could be build. Not scarifying aearable and fertile land for solar farms but useless desert land. That could also bring jobs and stimulate development inside island, far from coast.

You want to build a tunnel from Brisbane to Perth? Trenched cables are expensive enough at around 10 to 20 times the cost of overhead lines. Do you have any idea what that tunnel would cost!?