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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Beals who wrote (1380)	12/10/1997 3:31:00 PM
From: nic	Respond to of 5827

Flywheels do not need to be heavy if you can make them spin fast enough. (Stored energy = mass * speed^2.) Their energy density can be far higher than anything else - again, if you can spin them fast enough. IMHO they have great potential but need a lot more development before they can be competitive. - nic

To: Don Beals who wrote (1380)	12/10/1997 4:47:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 5827

Don; Neglecting pollution all the combustion engines are far more energetic. Wheel chairs are candidates for batteries, flywheels, but not for int combucstion engines. The LLNL flywheels are just about economic. They can keep 10 KW hours in the space of two car batteries, and since wheel chairs are slow the niche will be one of the first to get occupied. They are more expensive than batteries, but 2 car bats at 12V and 80 Amp hours are 1 KW hour each. So a flywheel chair would run all day at 10-15 MPH(a menace you say). There are some flywheel busses running now, and they might just beat the Ballard stuff as they are getting out the bearing bugs etc now. For stable low speed operations they have potential. For high speed long distance they fail like batteries. The fuel cells will be better than Bats and not as good as internal combustion. The hybrids will affect this and the laws will to, as we want to stop certain emissions. We will not run out of oil for 1000 years or more, as the oil sands in Alberta have this much and more. In addition, many oil fields are buried oil sands and when you dig you find iol, and the CO2 pressure strippers are getting more out every year. At current rates there are 10,000 years of oil, as coal, tar sands and buried tar sands, maybe more. The germans in WW2 made oil from coal. You can make it from sugar cane waste by reforming. So puch for hard lwas that make Ballard the only legal way to go to the store<GG> Bill It is the law that will drive alternate vehicles, not oil shortages.