“renewable energy” inclludes Hydro power. Solar and wind are only a few percent.
The cost that the popular mechanics article is referring to is the marginal cost to generate power but does not include the infrastructure such as back up power plants. and yes fossil fuel powered plants require a back up for a few weeks a year but not for a significant fraction of every day. The fossil fuel back ups can be scheduled whereas we have no control over the clouds and wind.
edit. The chart you show is a projection for 2040. I can show many projections for 19 years from now and there’s no way to falsify them
Yes, you can’t read a table It was over 10% solar and wind for 2020 in the USA. It was over 20% total renewables…
Wind used to be cheaper (while solar started expensive but obviously had a progressive decrease in cost to come) so we have a decent chunk of wind. Wind is not getting significantly cheaper every year while solar continues to get cheaper every year.
that does not agree with the numbers I have read. And it’s a complicated statistic. For example here in California we have a lot of solar and wind production that are subsidized by the state. So on a clear windy day they produce a lot of power but not at night with no wind.
I will be posting an article on the experience of Germany. even with a national system, they have had extended periods of clouds and no wind.
edit: They need fossil fuel back up. that is why they want to build the natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. They will use that to fuel natural gas power plants for the electric grid.
Anyways, balancing / smoothing generation with the load is an ongoing challenge, I have not disagreed. But commercial- scale energy storage technologies are also following a steep downward curve in cost vs time.
it seems to me that this is a great opportunity for automated driving systems. Driving down the freeway seems like a much easier task to automate than driving on city streets. we are probably not ready for fully automated trucks but I could see drivers having mixed skill sets. For example accountant truck drivers who could work on a laptop while keeping an eye on the functioning of the automated driving system. Actually almost any remote work job could be done from the cab of a truck.
One of my first thoughts was that the future of automated driving trucks might be hurting the labor supply for trucking. To me it seems that the job has a limited future if they convert to automated driving trucks in the upcoming dcade or two. If I was looking for a new career right now I doubt I’d want to jump into an industry that is primed to automate my job. however it seems this may be a more gradual shift. I doubt we’ll see a signficant % of automated trucks within the next 10 years and even if we do its likely they’ll still have an operator on board anyway.
It was a nice ride and lasted longer than I expected, but to me, the only thing that will keep the price up is inflation. That said, trying to ride it down is not my cup of tea.
Mine neither! But I sure need fence repair. You know looks matter.
I have a huge fenced garden area. I had a Rottweiler that could jump that fence to gain entry when anyone was working inside. So with time that fence is pretty shabby.
If I can find a handyman that can use some used lumber I have stashed, it might be a fair price. But, even using my own material, that estimate my still shock me.
I don’t think we’ll see fully automated from point A to point B trucking on a large scale in our lifetime. Maybe the interstate highway part, but that’s still a big maybe. I picture it getting overly regulated 5 minutes after the first self-driving truck barrels into a minivan full of nuns.
Yeah I don’t know’, well have to wait and see. I suspect you may be right.
The techology is progressing at an incredible speed though. About 12 years ago cars couldn’t go 20 yards in a controlled course reliably but now we’re almost at full autonomy. I suspect in 10 more years automated cars will be 10x safer than human driven.
I have actually driven that route from Tucson to Dallas. No doubt that Self Driven truck could save time and money. Me driving with one night at motel, stops for eating, etc.
Self Driver would save tons.
Of coarse obviously obtaining the SD is the biggest problem.
That truck carrying the watermelon’s to Oklahoma is a question to me. I would drive to Oklahoma for the best watermelons in the country. I actually bring those melons back to California, did it many times.
From that article on the self driving truck, cutting the transport time results in " … fresher food and less waste…"
I wonder how much that will matter to the food industry? Could be a lot bigger deal than the cost of paying a human or other efficiencies. I mean something like a watermelon lasts 1-2 weeks and cutting 1 day off the delivery time can matter a lot in the overall picture. I’m assuming groceries end up throwing out a pretty meaningful amount of food due to spoilage and 1 more day will cut that down.
We’re a long way off from it saving money when a trained CDL holder AND someone that has been trained on the autonomous driving software has to be on board - likely making more per hour than a normal driver. And that doesn’t even factor in the cost of the equipment to make the truck autonomous. Suffice it to say, it definitely won’t be used to transport watermelons if the goal is to save money.
