Featured Gen 6 Prius engine will be a “game changer,” achieve a 53% thermal efficiency

Is anyone predicting that it will get colder ( ice age ) any time soon or, later?

I was wondering if I was the only one believing in the cons piracy of the rise in utility prices as more energy is need ed to fuel demand.
I'm thrilled that someone else said it, so I didn't have 2 get shot down, again - four ! - Not Knowing how government works. Thanks.

State advertising Cold weather heat pumps for all - - - - - . . . . .

300 % theoretical efficiency gains for heat pumps to move thermodynamic heat instead of producing it in it various forms.

300% compared to what ?
electrical resistive heat production Resistive heating explained in details
joule heating Joule heating - Wikipedia

youtube rs are a;ready advertising their heat pump installations showing 500% efficiency gains. (compared to what? )
Gotta love the new ,mafhs . . . . . . . I can't wait to see those algorithms in practice.

Where is Nikola Tesla when we need him most? On vacay in the classified archives?

 

It could regionally. If the gulf stream stops, no more equatorial warmth will be carried to the UK, which sits at the latitudes of Anchorage, Alaska.

Electricity use is mostly during the day. The capacity is built for that heavy use. That leaves unused generation at night. Plenty for charging EVs. Fuel prices for the power plants might go up, but they'll be running for longer periods at their efficient point, so fuel use isn't a linear increase with electric production. Electric rates could go down. Lots of variables.

 

wait for it !

 

Back before AGW became better known and more clear, several decades ago, numerous people were predicting that we'd start sliding into the next Ice Age very soon. Or already were starting to inch that way. The geological evidence so far suggests that entrances into Ice Ages are very long, slow, and gradual, much slower than the warmup process when the most recent Ice Age ended.

But AGW has cancelled the next regularly expected Ice Age, at least for now. With a vengeance, far far beyond any 'balance point'.

Compared to direct electric resistance heating, which is as close to 100% efficient -- at the wall plug, not at the generating plant -- as any consumer heating product gets.

300% is not theoretical, it is typical performance with today's products. The theoretical limit is several thousand %, though varying very strongly with your local climate conditions.

With the best available products, in milder climates, that is very believable. But not yet for colder climate zones, so advertisers must not be 'promising' such results in areas where it can't yet be achieved.

Try taking Thermodynamics 101. That will explain it, in the same chapter where it explains how your kitchen refrigerator works, and the minimum power / energy needed to make it work. Heat pumps and kitchen refrigerators are conceptually the same thing. Today's consumer products still perform well short of their theoretical limits.

 

Or a scientist said it could cause temperature drops in some regions, and then the reporter/editor conflated that as an oncoming ice age.

 

Make that "And", not "Or". And plural, not singular.

Those would mostly be a separate batch of stories. The ones I was remembering were definitely global, not regional. But with the quality of science reporting in too many places, especially these days, I don't doubt that the version you describe has also happened, repeatedly, especially more recently.

Here is one that I picked up long ago, nowhere near the first. While the strongest projected current effect would have been regional, IIRC it would continue to become global over time. But not currently having a paid subscription, and having greatly slashed my hardcopy library, cannot go back to re-read the whole article right now.

SciAm: How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?
'A bold new hypothesis suggests that our ancestors' farming practices kicked off global warming thousands of years before we started burning coal and driving cars'

"New evidence suggests that concentrations of CO2 started rising about 8,000 years ago, even though natural trends indicate they should have been dropping. Some 3,000 years later the same thing happened to methane, another heat-trapping gas. The consequences of these surprising rises have been profound. Without them, current temperatures in northern parts of North America and Europe would be cooler by three to four degrees Celsius--enough to make agriculture difficult. In addition, an incipient ice age--marked by the appearance of small ice caps--would probably have begun several thousand years ago in parts of northeastern Canada."

 

Actually, it wasn’t a false theory. It is based on the Milankovitch cycles which had a large correlation with previous ice ages.
There are three different Milankovitch cycles that have lengths of about 100,000 years, 41,0000 years and 26,000 years.

As I recall from reading the Natural Geographic article on it, written back in the 70s (I have the issue), we had recently started into the downslope of the cycle which may lead to colder temperatures.

That was expected to take thousands to tens of thousands of years.

These cycles happen. We can measure them and run them backwards against historical climate events.
What we don’t know is how exactly they affect our climate and to what degree.

These cycles are also not the only influence on our climate. Currently, our affect on the climate would overwhelm the Milankovitch cycle’s impact if it continued until the ‘bottom’ of the next cycle.

I would encourage anyone curious about these cycles to read the papers on them rather than the media reports about them.

Here is a good scientific article about them:
Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth's Climate - NASA Science

 

It could be true. On the other hand, the farther back in history that scientists try to peer, the more that the evidence is left up to interpretation. Did we skip an ice age due to human activity 8,000 years ago? While I'm sure the article presents some evidence, how do you actually go about proving that?

 

Read some of the scientist's papers & you'll discover how the models prove themselves.

Milutin Milanković - Wikipedia

Survived two world wars .... a hundred years ahead of his time
.

 

The age of ice ages has a very high level of confidence.
If you really want to know, follow the links Hill provided. The data has been tested over and over again and has held up extremely well.
The orbital mechanics are even simpler as they are basically mathematical. Unlike the climate, there are very few variable involved.

As for ‘skipping an ice age 8000 years ago’, who said we did?

 

I think we have veered wildly off topic of toyota's new more efficient engine. I am hoping if it is really going into a vehicle in less than 2 years, we will get some better press releases.

I don't think it is possible for "US" to skip an ice age, they just happen although human activity can speed up or slow down the process. Ice ages have come about every 83,000 years and the last one only ended around 12,000 years ago. I don't expect any of us will be alive in the next ice age.
Ice Age - Definition & Timeline | HISTORY

bolding is mine.

 

I'm guessing you couldn't resist restating your previous heat pump claim of 300 % theoretical efficiency.
So, what are you writting about now a year later?
Next !

 

I never said I didn't believe in ice ages. I'm sure they happened and I'm sure whatever cycles are in place will keep happening unless something major stops them. There is plenty of evidence for major things of the past, like dinosaurs and the Big Bang and such. But saying that Joe Somebody 8,000 years ago completely changed the world's climate is pretty hard to prove IMO.

Apparently you didn't read @fuzzy1 's comment about a "bold new theory" of how what humankind did on Earth 8,000 years ago has now caused us to start missing the beginning of what was supposed to be the next ice age. My comment was how can such a statement have any meaningful proof. It sounds more like someone trying to make excuses about our current CO2 emissions, because our ancestors did it 8,000 years ago so it's ok. What!?

What's the controversy? Heat pumps can put out what seems to be 300% efficiency. It's not really 300% efficient, it's just taking heat from one place and pumping it somewhere else. But from a power standpoint, you can more more heat that way than just creating it via directly from an energy source. But with the caveat that it only works when the temperature difference is very small.

 

"Why is it assumed oil companies' gasoline output is fixed? "

Its not. I am merely stating cause and effect in a logical sequence. There are a lot of variables at play so my guesses arnt going to be 100% accurate or right, but there is truth to it. As it stands now, electricity is made by

• Fossil fuels: 60%, including coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases
• Nuclear energy: 19%
• Renewable energy sources: 21%, including wind (10%), hydro (5.6%), solar (5.6%), and biomass (1.1%)

The average American home consumes 29kWh per day. 1 kw for 3 miles, (3x29=) thats 87 miles. The average driver in the U.S. drives 39.7 miles per day. Which means an EV is equivilent to half the electricity a house uses per day.

Essentially, what you can take away, if EVs do infact become the primary car driven on road, (thats 50% or more) you would see at least a rise in price of electricty by 21 cents minimum, making it 38 cents on average in the US. Right now its 16.8 cents per kwh. [The math= 16(price of kwh)x5(factor of EV increase) then divide by 2 since its half of house consumption]

Maybe Cali will feel it the least since their electricity is already 30 cents, due to the strain on their grid by having the most EVs.

Btw, fun fact, California has 903,620 EVs (2.50% of all registered vehicles) Leading the charge in EV adoption, California stands out with the highest number of electric vehicles in the country.

2.5%. I was modest when i said only 10% of cars on road right now are EVs. But 2.5% in the state with the most EVs, if you 5x that, it only hits 10%. To get to 50%, you would need 50x.

Conclusion. Theres no way in hell electricity would be cheaper than gas without restrictive government meddling with gas companies. Even then, i still see it more affordable for the end users pocket to use gasoline in their prius vs electricity in their teslas. Mile for mile basis. Its about the same right now, imagine how much cheaper it would be in the future if gas prices dont change, but electricty does. Yes, gas companies will lower production to keep sale price high because demand will decrease, but theres an equilibrium they follow. They had a big lag when covid hit, and then the inverse happened when demand spiked.

The problem with electricity everyone is ignoring is how thermal efficient is it really. At 60mph, the prius relies solely on ICE because its more efficient than transforming mechanical energy to electrical and back to mechanical. So its a 1:1 ICE to wheel ratio, with minimal losses and beats out EVs. The amount of people driving on the road wont change, but what will change is how energy efficient their car will be. And seems to me that it will be a net negative because EV are less energy efficient. That electricity will now be required to be made more of, from elsewhere that is currently not there. Demand will rise the cost UNLESS supply goes up too. Either be fossil fuel, renewables or more nuclear. There will need more of any of those if we are pushing to drive vehicles that are less thermal efficient than current ICE cars are.

 

The current very rapid stage of AGW started with the industrial revolution. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been previous stages that moved at much much slower rates.

Skip a whole Ice Age? Not at all, not even close, that isn't what anyone claimed.

From what I've seen elsewhere, the cold phases of Ice Ages last vastly longer than that. As mentioned earlier, the entrance into a cold phase seems to very long and slow, that 8000 years would represent only a few degrees of cooling.

You are making a totally unfounded assumption about that article.

 

Well I can't read the article because it seems to be paywalled. Or maybe I just don't understand the point of why you mentioned the article. Sorry for any misjudgement.

At any rate, I believe that the main problem today is the rapid release of CO2, methane and other pollutants into our air, water and elsewhere that is causing problems with our climate at a scale never before seen, at least during humankind's existence.

 

When talking about heat pumps, "efficiency" is just common vernacular for "coefficient of performance", or COP. When someone says a heat pump is 300% efficient, they really mean is has a COP of 3. And they mean that at some particular but unstated input source and output sink temperatures (or ranges). With outdoor air temperatures in the mid-40s F, many can operate at COPs of 5, though most of us also use them in colder conditions. Theory requires their COP to fall as source temperature drops. Many cold-climate units can now produces COPs at or above 2 in sub-zero conditions, a significant advance over 20th Century models.

None of these break the theoretical Carnot Cycle limits of heat engines and refrigerators. In fact, none of today's consumer products even come close to that limit.

 

Hill, myself and others put solar panels on their roofs, how does that count in your calculation?

The us consumes 4000 TWH of electricity and business pay a much lower rate than individuals. In the US there are about 3.2 trillion vehicle miles traveled per year. Most evs in the US are tesla model 3/y that average around 4 miles/kwh, but lets use 3 for all the electric pick ups and suvs that are coming. If half of the miles are traveled in evs getting 3 miles/kwh then they would consume 534 TWH of electricity or about 13% more than the country is using now. Most of that could be generated cheaply but grid upgrades would need to be made, especially since most electricity is used during the work day charging at night doesn't need that many new power plants. 40% efficient old steam natural gas plants can be replaced by 60% efficient natural gas plants, that and wind are what is being built. Setting up the math is half the battle.

The strain on the grid is not because of evs, it is because of mismanagement from the major public utilities and the california PUC. 100 year old power lines have started major fires. California consumers are paying for the mismanagement. A Nuclear plant was upgraded badly and needed to be shut down. Again rate payers pay not the utilities. Not enough plants have been built causing California to import a great deal of its electricity. Drought has cut into hydro generation causing even more problems. California is poised to be one of the most expensive electricity places even if there were no plug-in vehicles.

 

No, your numbers are so far off they are basically meaningless.
@austingreen gave a great overview of why. I only have one ‘big picture’ item to add:

While the USA consumes about 4000 TWH, it has capacity to produce about 9000 TWH.
Most of this capacity is available at night. If EVs can be charged overnight there is very little impact on the grid. Well, other than making it more efficient.