Power Collection and Distribution via Transportation Networks (patent pending)

Efficiency pays for infrastructure:

JPods Networks cut urban transportation energy costs by 90% by using the same principles that allow long-haul freight trains to average efficiencies of over 400 ton-miles per gallon. JPods vehicles are ultra-light, removing the parasitic mass of moving a ton to move a person in a car. JPods robotic vehicles travel suspended from overhead rails, eliminating repetitive start-stop applications of power of cars, buses and passenger trains.

Averaging about 260 passenger miles per gallon, energy savings pay for the infrastructure.

If all the roads were solar collectors:

The distributed nature of the transportation network is ideal for collecting distributed natural power sources and makes the networks durable against blackouts and other a single-point-of-failure. The supply chain becomes very simple:

Solar and wind collectors mounted over the rails gather 40,000 vehicle-miles of power per mile of rail per day (40,000 vehicle-km of power per km per day).

Synchronizing, transporting and storing electrical energy is complex. Nature’s low-work solution for using solar energy is:

-       Drive the energy via chemical reactions into hydrocarbons, plants.

-       Transport energy in chemical form.

-       Generate power at the point-of-use in vast numbers of very small power plants, mitochondria.  Use the waste heat to advantage.

JPods Networks follow this model by putting small, automated chemical factories in our rail structures. Spare electricity drives the chemical process to produce natural gas (methane) and oxygen. 

Unlike electrical grid tied wind and solar collection that must be removed from the grid when the solar inputs are marginal, the chemical process continue to produce at proportionally lower yields.  Electrical grid tied wind and solar are limited to less than 15% contribution because of grid instability. The chemical network has no such limitation. Vast numbers of devices can be networked, contributing what they can, when they can.
Storage containers can be widely distributed.

Pipelines in the rail superstructure transport the methane and oxygen to the point-of-use where they are used in fuel cells or generators to produce electricity. The carbon dioxide from the generator is returned via pipelines to be reprocessed in the rail structures.

Unlike electricity, there is no synchronization requirements when connecting gas pipelines. Unlike the electrical grid that is constantly working even when there is not demand (hum in high power lines is an example), the natural gas and oxygen simple wait without consuming powering.

When power is required, point-of-use generators draw from the locally stored energy capacity. Waste heat is used to accomplish economic work such as heating spaces or water.

US consumes about 100 Quads per year. Waste of 34 Quads can be preempted by the innovation defined in this patent.

Energy Storage of Solar from Bill James on Vimeo.