You can use FireFox and set your default search engine to Ecosia’s. Best of both world’s.

There is also a FF extension called Search For Trees that defaults to Google’s search engine instead of Ecosia/Bing where you don’t have to pre-load each search with #g, unlike Ecosia. The Google search in this extension is a little wacky though so not perfect. Search For Trees donates to Trees For the Future btw.

Yep exactly

I agree: transportation will probably favor hydrogen over batteries.

That being said, to pile on hydrogen, I’m not sure if I like the water demand part of it either. Coastal hydrogen production might make sense if sea water is the feedstock and corrosion/discharge can be released to the source in a manner that doesn’t lead to biodiversity death.

Then again, fossil fuel and mineral based (thermal) energy sources like coal, nat gas, oil, and nuclear all require cold water for cooling purposes. If we transition those sources to hydrogen production (and maybe use in the case of 100% hydrogen fired CCGTs that GE, Siemens, andbMitsubishi are making), there might actually be increased water demand since you have hydrogen + cooling.

It’ll have it’s niche, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t count it out.

And on the topic of better solutions, I’d love to see vertical underground pumped hydro storage pick up steam (buh dum tss). I don’t see how underground pumped hydro isn’t feasible since we already do geothermal in the same way.

Don’t store it in diatomic form. Ammonia is the common alternative for hydrogen storage and transport, iirc

And even if round trip efficiency is poor, if renewables are in excess, it would be so much better to dump that energy into something that to have to curtail.

In a region like Finland, sand batteries appear to be worthwhile for seasonal storage. Might be an avenue to pursue

Then there’s always green hydrogen as well

Great point, thanks for bringing it up

There are other ways in which we sell our bodies in exchange for resources. A lot of people point to soldiers, but for those of us in knowledge work, we sell our brains in exchange for stress and depression if things aren’t in balance. Think about construction workers who break their wrists drilling down floorboards, or caregivers that expose their immune systems to a high quantity of kids who are likely to spread any bugs they pick up because they don’t know better.

Sex work just involves people selling entertainment or enjoyment in a more intimate setting. The fact that it is intimate doesn’t change that it’s work, and that resources can be exchanged for service.

I think this all comes down to stereotypes specific to a certain culture. Hoping I see my culture in America make it more legal so we don’t have some of the issues that come from this market not being legal

Hey nice to have ya!

Friendly reminder that the Fediverse is awesome, and you have the power to control the content in your feed not only by which subs you subscribe to or instances you make an account on, but also which you can block - including specific users if it comes to that. Of course, instance admins can do the same, and if that happens to content you want to see, you can always make a new account on a different instance and see everything.

It takes a little to understand the Fediverse structure, but imo it’s one of the best ways social media can be structured.

There have been steady and iterative advancements.

Steady imo is a synonym for constant, and revolutionary breakthroughs can be subjective if referring to industry or academia.

When was OP involved in this conversation?

Apologies. I sometimes refer to an OP as the Original Poster of a thread in a given post, but perhaps a better use of language would be OC for Original Commentator.

Depends on how you define “constant”. Battery prices have been falling year over year, no thanks to technological improvements.

If we’re referring explicitly to Academia and R&D, then OP is correct. You’re main point is that these huge breakthroughs haven’t affected the market, but OP isn’t arguing that.

You’re both talking past each other.

Michael Thackeray filed a patent under Argonne National Laboratory for the leading EV battery chemistry worldwide today, Lithium Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt Oxide (NMC), sometime around 2007-2008.

The first cars with that specific technology started coming out in the US market in 2013/2014 IIRC, with EVs coming out before then basing their battery chemistry on NCA (Tesla) or LMO (Nissan Leaf & Chevy Volt).

That’s a 5-7 year timeframe from laboratory to mass production.

If you consider new technologies today like Samsung’s battery in this article, and make the not so unrealistic leap that we’re better at battery production today than in 2013/2014, it’s very possible that we see this technology hit the market in 5 years or less.

Technology always improves. It’s CAPEX that hinders it, and I’m willing to bet that there are financial interests out there to keep the main battery chemistry NMC and secure steady profits.

Don-old - that’s amazing. I am never disappointed with Lemmy’s memes of the Big Orange Liar

*cognitive dissonance, but I totally agree. How does the far right insulate themselves in such non-realities

Thank you for continuing this history that the US education system never taught me.

EE here. Chargers put out power in units of kW, while batteries store energy in units of kWh or MJ or what have you. Otherwise, you’re absolutely correct.

Typically Distributed Generation (DG) scale solar PV and battery storage sites are sized anywhere from 1 to 10 MW.

At 1 MW, you could run (1) charger at a speed of 1 MW, or (2) at 500 kW, etc. Usually need just (1) transformer for that size installation too.

At 10 MW, you can run each charger at 1 MW or so, but you’re also talking about probably (4-10) transformers @ $250k USD a pop. Installation prices go up the more you demand in power transfer.

Then you need to consider that most DG projects need to pay for the upgrades to their downstream grid architecture, meaning reconducting or upsizing cable, breakers, switches, transformers, reactors, sensors, relays, etc.

Not saying it’s impossible. You could co-locate and DC-couple solar PV or Wind parks next to charging points to get around some of the grid upgrades, but most people live in areas that require homes and grocery stores and other buildings than flat land meant for solar PV or Wind.

When it comes down to it, it’s so much easier to just trickle charge your EV at night via arbitrage and when you’re sleeping so all of this infrastructure doesn’t have to been upgraded - and I’d argue upgraded needlessly because we need to save that copper and iron and materials for upgrades to the parts of the grid meant to interconnect renewables.

But there is no silver bullet to these things so we’ll likely see more, larger chargers come through unless regulators stop it from happening.

Take my upvote…

I highly doubt Kamala will want to pull a sitting Democratic senator away from the 50/50 Senate given the elections coming up.

I think there is a greater chance that she picks one of the governors. My pick is J.B. Pritzker.

Unfortunately I think casting away Kamala as the pick would do more harm than good. She is the likely candidate. Joe can even make the transition smooth by entrusting the rest of his legacy with her, which is the reason he chose her as a VP in the first place.

People also know the name Kamala Harris, and they’ve known it for years now. It’ll be a huge turn to bring in a new candidate on top and do all of the rallying needed to get votes.

I think Kamala’s success will spend on the VP choice, her administration, and her campaign team more than her herself.

Mark Kelly as Kamala’s VP? Having that balance of ethnicity would help her get the votes. It’s exactly why Obama picked Biden

Being an elder zoomer be like: