Month: August 2022

Charging Your EV Like it’s Your Iphone

California’s proposed ban on Internal Combustion Engines may deliver the coup de grace to gasoline powered vehicles. Meanwhile, battery technology just getting warmed up.

Washington Post:

In a report released this week, government researchers said they have found a way to charge electric car batteries up to 90 percent in just 10 minutes. The method is likely five years away from making its way into the market, scientists said, but would mark a fundamental shift.

“The goal is to get very, very close to [times] you would see at the gas pump,” said Eric Dufek, a lead author of the study and scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, a research center run by the Department of Energy.

The report comes as the Biden administration takes on a daunting task: trying to wean America off gas-guzzling cars and push them toward electric vehicles. Though billions of government dollars are being poured into the effort, electric vehicles are still seen as elitist, unreliable and cumbersome to charge — making people hesitant to change.

Currently, car manufacturers and public charging stations use multiple kinds of chargers that offer varying levels of recharge times.

The slowest, known as level 1 chargers, can recharge an electric vehicle battery in 40 to 5o hours, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Some of the fastest, known as direct current chargers, can charge a battery up to 80 percent in 20 minutes to an hour.

Tesla’s vast supercharger network can provide 200 miles of charge in 15 minutes, the company said. But the equipment it uses makes it off limits to other electric vehicles in the United States. (Later this year, Tesla will release supercharging equipment that non-Tesla drivers can use, the White House said in a June statement.)

But the race to super charge electric vehicles has faced obstacles over the past decade. At issue is the delicate balance of trying to charge an electric vehicle battery quicker, but not doing it so fast that a rapid charge does long-term damage to the battery or plays a role in causing them to explode. Charging electric batteries fast can cause damage, reducing the battery’s life span and performance, scientists said.

“You’ve had batteries when you first got it, they were great, but after a couple years or a few charge cycles, they don’t perform as well,” said Eric D. Wachsman, director of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute, an energy research organization at the University of Maryland.

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How Hot is Too Hot for Humans?

How our bodies use a “Physics hack” to keep us cool.
It has limits.

Good explainer of a slippery concept.

Digg:

There’s a temperature threshold beyond which the human body simply can’t survive — one that some parts of the world are increasingly starting to cross.

Key Details

  • “Wet bulb temperature” is a measure of heat and humidity, essentially the temperature we experience after sweat cools us off.
  • In Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on Earth, temperatures often get up to 120 degrees F — but the air is so dry that it actually only registers a wet body temperature of 77 degrees F.
  • When the wet bulb temperature gets above a certain point, our bodies lose their ability to cool down, and the consequences can be deadly.

Jeff Masters and I discussed a few months ago, below.

Zelensky: Ukraine Nuclear Plant “Narrowly escapes Disaster”

Reuters:

The world narrowly escaped a radiation disaster when electricity to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was cut off for hours, Ukraine’s president said, urging international bodies to act faster to force Russian troops to vacate the site.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian shelling on Thursday had sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station that disconnected the Zaporozhzhia plant from the power grid. A Russian official said Ukraine was to blame.

Back-up diesel generators ensured power supply vital for cooling and safety systems at the plant, Zelenskiy said, praising the Ukrainian technicians who operate the plant under the gaze of the Russian military.

“If our station staff had not reacted after the blackout, then we would have already been forced to overcome the consequences of a radiation accident,” he said in a video address on Thursday evening.

“Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster… Every minute that Russian troops remain at the nuclear power station there is a risk of a global radiation catastrophe,” he said.

Residents in the capital Kyiv, some 556 km (345 miles) to the northwest of the plant, expressed alarm at the situation.

“Of course everyone is afraid, the entire world is afraid. I really want the situation to become peaceful again,” said businessman Volodymyr, 35, who declined to give his last name. “I want the power shortages to be overcome and additional facilities to be operational.”

Joe Biden: “We Beat the Climate Deniers”

Dark Brandon in fine form.

Check out @atrupar thread on this.

Storms Slam Southwest Desert

But not enough to end drought.

Above, and below, same area.

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