Energy

Thom Hartmann - The new car from Arizona carmaker Lucid has an EPA-rated range of 511 miles on a single charge, meaning that we’re now well into the territory where “range anxiety” will become a thing of the past. And as battery “energy density” continues to increase while prices fall, 400-700 mile ranges for electric vehicles will probably be commonplace within a few years.

But, aside from making it easier for people without a garage to own an EV and just recharge it every few weeks like we buy gas, what does that mean for both the future of transportation and its impact on climate change?

The key to easily understanding both is hairdryers. Seriously.  Most people know that a hairdryer draws about as much power as your average modern outlet will give it — typically around 1000 watts or, at 110 volts, just shy of 10 amps. (Plug in and turn on two hairdryers from the same outlet and you’ll usually blow a circuit breaker: most homes max out at 15 or 20 amp circuits.)

If those numbers are gibberish to you, hang on: it’ll all have meaning in a moment, particularly when I get to the really shocking part about climate change and hairdryers.

Last week, Donald Trump was trashing electric cars and he went into this rant about how if everybody in America bought an electric car, charging them would take down the entire country’s power grid. “They want everybody to have an electric car,” he said. “We don’t have enough electricity. We couldn’t make enough electricity for that,”

This assertion is, to be charitable, a baldfaced lie. But since we all know what a hairdryer is and have, at least, a sense for how much power one typically uses — the equivalent of ten 100-watt light bulbs — let’s convert an electric car’s power usage into hairdryers.

A typical electric car using a 110 volt home charger pulls about the same amount of electricity when it’s charging as does a hairdryer: between 800 and 1200 watts, or 8 to 12 amps, with an average of 10 amps or around 1000 watts per hour (one kilowatt-hour).

Solar power at K-12 schools in the U.S. has more than quadrupled in the past decade, a new report found.

Axios - Electric vehicle charging company Beam Global is introducing a patented streetlight-based system powered by wind and solar energy. The company says the chargers minimize the need for disruptive construction and electrical work while providing handy access to charging in public places like apartments, shopping centers, airports and stadiums. Some communities might not favor the way the 40-foot-tall towers alter the landscape.

The BeamSpot system doesn't require new or upgraded utility grid circuits, which is often the biggest — and costliest — challenge associated with installing EV charging infrastructure.

• Instead, the BeamSpot poles replace traditional streetlights, using existing foundations and grid connections.
• A 1 kw solar array and 1 kw wind turbine extending above it supplement the existing grid power by generating electricity that is stored in a 15 kwh battery inside the pole.
• The stored energy, coupled with existing grid power, are enough to illuminate the area with a high-lumens, low-energy LED light while also providing "meaningful" EV charging, Beam Global says.