Posted By: SteamyTeaOil is just compressed and heated vegetation with homoepathic quantities of animal. So some those bits floating in the Pacific and Atlantic that get subducted down into the Earth's crust may turn into new crude oil. Take a while mind.

Are you sure it's by subduction? I thought it was when organic stuff on the sea and lake beds gets covered and compressed by further sedimentary layers.

The beach outside my window is bounded by remarkably sedimentary cliffs and there's an oil well to be seen out of the other window.

No. Titan (Saturn's largest moon) has hydrocarbons: mostly methane and ethane. While it's one of the less implausible places in the solar system for life there's no suggestion that the bulk of those came from plants.

OK, Titan's not technically a planet but it's a planetary body indicating that similar planets might also have hydrocarbons. Mars seems to make methane - it's possible that comes from life but other possibilities are far from eliminated. You don't need a planet to make them, either - there are hydrocarbons in interstellar gas clouds and on comets. Actually, that might be where Titan's hydrocarbons came from (I don't know) - in which case I suppose it might be true that it doesn't “manufacture” hydrocarbons as such. Still, the methane on Mars seems to be being freshly produced somehow as it would be broken down quickly.

Also, a small proportion of Earth's hydrocarbons (oil and gas) will come from dead animals including, presumably, at least some dinosaurs. But they're not the main constituents contrary to the tongue-in-cheek use of terms like dino-diesel.

(Sorry, not a lot to do with electric-car battery storage, but FT did ask.)

Posted By: Ed DaviesAre you sure it's by subduction?

It is one of the ways, being capped my sediment is another. This was one of the problems of early exploration. They did not fully appreciate the many ways that oil is formed.
I think gas (my Father was involved in oil more than gas, though was responsible for the gas terminals up Fife) can be formed by heating the correct type of rocks (There was a bloke in Norway that said if you drill deep enough you will find natural gas).

Posted By: fostertomBut they got it from eating plants.

Near enough all fossil fuels are just stored solar energy.

Back to the battery storage in vehicles being used got grid balancing.
Assuming this is technically possible i.e. develop a grid (local or national) and the software to mange it (30 million vehicles and 30 million houses plus industry/commercial/warehousing), would the extra mass that vehicles would have to carry around i.e. 3.5 kWh of batteries, not counter any grid efficiency saving?

If all the surfaces of a car were covered in solar cells continuously charging the battery, how many miles per day could it drive on the resulting charge?

Say 4 m² facing in any one direction would be fairly optimistic given that covering the windows might be a bit counter-productive. About 2.5 hours sunshine per day on average - quite a bit more in midsummer, a lot less in midwinter. You'd pick efficient solar cells - say 20% efficiency so 4 * 2.5 * 0.2 = 2 kWh per day. 30p's worth of electricity at best. The 85 kWh Tesla Model S does about 4.9 to 5.8 km/kWh depending on which numbers you use so about 10 km.

That's if you can arrange to park it facing the right way. And it's unshaded. And you can get panels to follow the car's outline. All in all, not worth bothering.

The Fiskar Karma plug-in hybrid was supplied with a PV panel roof that was said to generate 0.5kWh per day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Karma

:-) nice one Ed, but I do think your Focus is a little smaller than mine, though larger than Crispy's rather lovely Fisker.

An engineer would estimate the solar area of a Focus by parking two Focuses in front of a 20m2 domestic array and eyeblling they are 10 m2 each. An Astra would also work for this.

A scientist would take the vector normal to each plane on the car surface, compare this to the azimuth of optimal solar yield at their latitude, take the cosine of the result and multiply by the plane area, summing to 10m2. I used radial coordinates but spherical would also work.

A mathematician would consider an idealised homogeneous hemispherical Focus and derive that the circular area presented to the sky, 10m2, is half the curved surface area, 20m2. I used Glenmorangie for this but Old Pulteney would also work.

I'm off now to invent the flexible printable translucent solar cell material!

Edit: drat, someone invented some already. http://www.gizmag.com/transparent-perovskite-solar-cells-graphene-electrodes/39349/

Posted By: fostertomSurely easier to put a windmill on the roof for when you drive along the motorway?

There was a fad quite a while ago for building sails onto cars. I think they did work but not well enough to be worth the hasle.

I think the main commercial effort is http://www.skysails.info/english/

Apparently still in business but not yet setting the world on fire:
http://www.skysails.info/english/skysails-marine/skysails-propulsion-for-cargo-ships/references/

Posted By: fostertomAnother scheme for vertical axis turbines arranged like masts, which would generate power regardless of upwind/downwind.

When sailing into the wind, I wonder how the energy gained from the turbines would compare to the increase in effort needed to push into the wind due to the presence of the turbines?

The 'sky sails' idea seems more practical (aside from anything else there's far less to go wrong when you are in the middle of an ocean, & likely less consequence if it does!)?

If you really want to generate electricity too, combine sky sails with the idea that flies 'aerobatic kites' in a figure of 8 (on its side) to generate energy...

PS. The last para is not entirely serious. I think maximising use of the wind energy to minimise the burning of dirty fuel oil is probably a 'better thing'?

Posted By: djhBlow your mind:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_" >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(land_yacht)

Wow! Thank you.
I already knew that you could go faster than the wind by tacking across the wind, but that 'Blackbird' idea really is "the appliance of science"!

I note they didn't use a VAWT...

I think I would have trouble getting it under the overhead telephone and power cable where I live.

Why have solar or sails, when you could have both?

http://www.sailmagazine.com/gear/sail-rope-and-rigging/power-sails-sails-built-with-integral-solar-panels/

Posted By: fostertomAdd tidal and you're away

Boats have always sailed taking advantage of tidal power. I'd say it makes up a significant fraction of a sailing boat's mileage in many cases. Obviously it depends on where you are!

I have lived in two places by the coast that have little tidal range. One had a max of 0.4m and the other a max of 0.44.
It is odd now seeing tides of 5.8m, and if I went up the coast a bit to Newquay, then it is almost 8m.
Joe90 country has tides of 9m, then it becomes a different country.

So I think taking advantage of the tides is a very English thing (and a bit of France and the Bay of Fundy).