Panasonic Battery Could Power House for 1 Week

[jaybus]

Americans use WAY too much power - so they won't last as long on this as the japanese would.

See Nationmaster.com. In per capita electrical power consumption, the US is 9th and Japan 17th. You will notice that nations such as Iceland, Norway, and Canada top the list. No mystery, it's cold there.

 

[cablechewer]

Nuclear isn't emissions free - ever heard of radioactivity?

Anyone who wants to use one of these cells or move off grid is going to have to examine every aspect of energy consumption in their home. Heating with electric radiators of some type? You will need such a huge battery the cost will be prohibitive.

The cheapest thing is always to not use the power. If you don't use a KWH you don't need to size your battery to store it, don't need to dig out and burn coal, import oil or add an extra solar panel. I am not talking about conservation, but rather energy efficiency.

Unfortunately the average North American home consumes vast amounts of energy (I think I heard the average is about 35kwh of electricity plus Gas, oil or electric for heating). You will probably have to bulldoze and properly re-design 80% of homes to make them truly efficient (which then causes its own inefficiencies).

Oh well I don't think anything substantial will change for a decade or more and then people will only change when the cost of continuing exceeds the short term cost of making appropriate changes. In some ways I consider it unfortunate that financial efficiency is almost always more important than energy efficiency. If the world had been capable of reversing these two 100 years ago then our resources might have truly been infinite and our pollution issues negligible.

 

[agentjon]

Awsome! So how many would I need to power my SHTF/TEOTWAWKI Bug Out Location/Counter-Zombie command center for 3 months? This would be a lot better than storing thousands of gallons of gasoline/diesel and propane(ahh sweet propane). Plus being a battery this means no noise generation. Which is great when your trying to hide from Zombies, Looters, and FEMA agents.

 

[Dirty Durden]

My $.02, we are so far in debt with the Chi-coms we can never pay them back, I mean never! We need to dig, drill, blow the shit out of the mountains to get as much fossil fuels (coal, natural gas & oil) we can out & use that to pay off the Chi-Coms. People, we are headed for bankruptcy & the Commies hold are debt. What if that happens, how are we going to pay them, are we going to inflate our money, if so we all starve & burning any trees we can find, we are back in the middle ages again. Who will be the superpower then, China & are they going to care about the environment like we do? Do you think China will give $100,000,000,000 a year to help other countries clean up their environment, no? I think American’s are pretty good with the environment compared to other growing nations; we try to keep things clean here.
What is China going to do after they figure out we cannot pay them back, will they try to take our natural resources at gun point. So we can sale it to them now or we will give it them later at gun point, anyway you look at it, we are in big problem & fossil fuels are the key.

We need to stop listening to these enviro-commies that love China/Russia & start listen to common sense & the American way.

 

[troger5troger5]

It would be nice to live in a world that did not revolve around money but the simple fact is the cheapest energy will be what is used no matter what and oil is the cheapest right now. For the record, fires, volcanos,earth quakes and other natural disaster polute more than man can do in a single day. So many improvements have been made over the past 100 years that no one ever thinks about it. People used to toss human waiste out in the streets. Every home burned wood or coal making the streets, air, black with ash and dust.

 

[Shadow703793]

Hmmm.... now I can use this to power my Nanosuit II

 

[Dirty Durden]

[citation][nom]cablechewer[/nom]Nuclear isn't emissions free - ever heard of radioactivity? Anyone who wants to use one of these cells or move off grid is going to have to examine every aspect of energy consumption in their home. Heating with electric radiators of some type? You will need such a huge battery the cost will be prohibitive.The cheapest thing is always to not use the power. If you don't use a KWH you don't need to size your battery to store it, don't need to dig out and burn coal, import oil or add an extra solar panel. I am not talking about conservation, but rather energy efficiency.Unfortunately the average North American home consumes vast amounts of energy (I think I heard the average is about 35kwh of electricity plus Gas, oil or electric for heating). You will probably have to bulldoze and properly re-design 80% of homes to make them truly efficient (which then causes its own inefficiencies).Oh well I don't think anything substantial will change for a decade or more and then people will only change when the cost of continuing exceeds the short term cost of making appropriate changes. In some ways I consider it unfortunate that financial efficiency is almost always more important than energy efficiency. If the world had been capable of reversing these two 100 years ago then our resources might have truly been infinite and our pollution issues negligible.[/citation]

Nuclear power is the cheapest & cleanest source of energy we have right now & probably ever will have. We can take the radioactivity waste, stuff it in a rocket & boast it to the Sun to burn up, problem solved. If we built 20 to 40 Nuclear plants in the next 10years , think about the jobs that would be “create or saved” as Obama would say. emissions free

 

[bayouboy]

[citation][nom]Godiwa[/nom]1. Americans use WAY too much power[/citation]

Myth. I love how this one keeps cropping up. The USA consumes about 25% of all electrical power generated in the world. At the same time the USA produces 25% of the world's GDP.

Also, industry is the largest consumer of generated power, not households.

 

[loomis86]

Nuclear is the cleanest, but coal is still the cheapest. It will remain so until the day that natural gas beats coal as the cheapest. Nuclear will likely never be the cheapest. The future is methane, ammonia, urea, hydrogen peroxide, cyanogen, hydrazine, hydrogen, and acetylene...imo. Wind/solar are dead ends for all but small handheld devices and some minor houshold appliances.

 

[agentjon]

[citation][nom]loomis86[/nom]Nuclear is the cleanest, but coal is still the cheapest. It will remain so until the day that natural gas beats coal as the cheapest. Nuclear will likely never be the cheapest. The future is methane, ammonia, urea, hydrogen peroxide, cyanogen, hydrazine, hydrogen, and acetylene...imo. Wind/solar are dead ends for all but small handheld devices and some minor houshold appliances.[/citation]

So I'm not going to get a personal fusion reactor anytime soon?

 

[necronic]

the biggest advantage I can see of something like this is in the temporary storage that is necessary on city wide scales due to changes in electrical usage. A normal house's electrical use drops to almost nothing at night, but the power generation is still there. Therefore many cities do things like fill a resevoir with the excess nighttime power then drain it to reclaim the energy. This is not a very efficient way to do things, but there isnt much of an alternative.

Giving houses a high density power cell that could store excess energy during low use regions of the cycle could remove the necessity of actions like this, and increase energy efficiency greatly.

In terms of the more experimental, higher efficiency batteries that exist in research labs you need to realize that the distance between working model in a lab to a manufacture ready system is absolutely massive.

 

[Glorian]

We probably have a better chance of developing super conductive wires than producing zero emission power plants.

BTW I think we are ignorant to think we as human beings can change this world on a whim, even if we had never developed emissions the temperature of this earth would still increase whether we like it or not. This planet has done it before with out our help.

This battery is only worth having like the battery for your computer's power strip, just enough time to shut the thing off properly. I also woulda been happier with numbers than a comparison, especially a comparison some people have no idea about.

 

[Dirty Durden]

[citation][nom]loomis86[/nom]Nuclear is the cleanest, but coal is still the cheapest. It will remain so until the day that natural gas beats coal as the cheapest. Nuclear will likely never be the cheapest. The future is methane, ammonia, urea, hydrogen peroxide, cyanogen, hydrazine, hydrogen, and acetylene...imo. Wind/solar are dead ends for all but small handheld devices and some minor houshold appliances.[/citation]

In the long run nuclear would be cheaper.

 

[omnimodis78]

[citation][nom]the dark wall[/nom]How can it be emission free? Batteries need to be charged you know, and where does that electricity come from?[/citation]
You hit the nail on the head!!! I remember having a cool geography teacher (Mr. Green) who told us 15 years ago that the next "green" energy will be batteries in cars, etc - and he always asked us, how do we think those batteries will be made, charged, and where will they end up once they aren't used? Batteries themselves may have no emissions, but think of its process of production, and where will they be when we throw them away? Unless they can be recycled we're have landfills full of batteries (heavy metals, chemicals, plastics, etc.)

 

[schizz69]

[citation][nom]JamesSneed[/nom]If this is true I can see this being very usefull in an off the grid solar powered house. Use the surplus electricity to charge the battery durring the day. If up north you would probably couple it with a geothermal system with radiant tubing in the floor to reduce the electrical demand. If solar panels get more effiecent by 2011 they could end up selling a good amount of these. My two cents.[/citation]

Ever heard of hydro-electric, something that we use lots of in NZ... could be used a lot more in the states mind you.

 

[tmike]

I'd go for it if it were cheaper and more convenient than my somewhat loud generator, but that isn't likely to be true.

 

[jaybus]

Ever heard of hydro-electric, something that we use lots of in NZ... could be used a lot more in the states mind you.

Not really. The good locations were tapped long ago. It would be prohibitively expensive to place them anywhere else, not to mention the protests and licensing hurdles are about the same as for getting a nuclear station approved.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Hmmmm.....I think of it more as research and development. After all, where would we be without experimentation?

 

[formin]

the battery will store sufficient electricity to power a (Japanese) household for about one week of use.

i bet my SUV is bigger and uses more power then the average Japanese house
lol

 

[jawshoeaw]

[citation][nom]troger5troger5[/nom]It would be nice to live in a world that did not revolve around money but the simple fact is the cheapest energy will be what is used no matter what and oil is the cheapest right now. For the record, fires, volcanos,earth quakes and other natural disaster polute more than man can do in a single day. So many improvements have been made over the past 100 years that no one ever thinks about it. People used to toss human waiste out in the streets. Every home burned wood or coal making the streets, air, black with ash and dust.[/citation]

Most people on Earth still toss their waste in the street, or deposit it there in the first place. Any so called improvements in technology and standard of living are dwarfed by growth in human population in mostly poor parts of the world. And no natural disasters pollute the special way humans do. It's not like hurricanes dump mercury, lead, PCBs, etc. into the ocean, except when they wash it out of our factories.

Folks, you can't tech your way out of conservation. Tech helps, maybe, but you have to give something up.