Can We Engineer an Answer to the Energy Question?

Many countries we see now were a result of migration. I could not get even one native in Domnican Republic and was told that they all were killed. where are Red Indians? and the story is endless. Who owns the earth is a virtual idea in time where space now is srinking and giving birth to worries. Can all people who came from South Africa to USA go back to their starting point? It is not a very pleasent side to discuss and let be find something better to talk about.

Shyam:

I have no bias against immigration or migration and was considering the earth as a whole, not just the already "developed" parts of it.

My meaning was that as presently less developed countries move up the development ladder their birthrate declines at a rate that eventually surpasses concurrent decreases in mortality. And that therefore the "birth control" issue is "solved" as a consequence. The obvious implication therefore is for the developed world to assist in raising the level of the less developed, NOT to try to stop immigration. I believe in free people exercising their free will, peacefully, and in their perceived best interests to the extent possible.

To in any way suggest otherwise is a misreading of my intent.

To imply as you did that I suggested ANY people from my country should "go back to where they came from" is an insult, but I think you misinterpreted the word "discounted" (meaning removed from the statistics) to mean "discontinued" (as in stopped).

Our energy is optimized in working together. A cheap labour is accepted to let others do something else meaningful to them. It so happens among the same race people. Human are cheap energy machines and poor world is just that much to the rich world. These worlds are also within any world.

You said nothing wrong. However, I am over protected on this issue as hurting others or getting hurt isn't worth.

So we find one more source of energy in human machine and perhaps animal machine. While human machines sound all right to me, I hate using the word animal machine. Some time ago people used to close the eye of animal to let it not see if the master was behind and they placed some kind of sound making stuff to scare the animal and this animal worked and worked all the day until was tired to death. I am somehow scared of cruelty and it makes me feel sick. Women and child labour is another sick thing for me.

People in India and many countries have used animals for agriculture and transport. They also used them for food. Using them in too much or making them to work while they are sick, giving them poor food sounds cruelty to me. Perhaps when men have no food then there is no logic in talking such things as moral values.

Shyam

Please rest assured tht the "Red Indians" are not extinct. They may be called by a variety of terms such as natives, indigenous people, First Nations people, and I am sure that there are other terms. It is regretable that as a group they have not shared equally in the prosperity enjoyed by many groups in North America but they do exist in large numbers in North, Central, and South America.

The original question was:

What technologies do you see could be developed in the near future as a sustainable, economic and environmentally friendly source of energy?

Another approach is using the by product of one industrial operation as a raw material for another industrial operation. In the PNW log chips and sawdust from the sawmills is often used as fuel. Locally called hog fuel.

Refinements in combustion technology and possbily even advances in creating coal gas from wood can provide a considerable amount of themal energy for power generation. Co-generation is also being explored but the full potential has not yet been reached.

In urban locations they use waste heat from thermal generating plants to heat nearby buildings. One term I have seen use is "distant heating" or remote heating.

I have seen reports that an old thermal generating station in Toronto was revived expressly for such use. This practice is more common in Europe.

Waste heat and waste byproducts can sometimes be recycled and thus reduce the need make it from scratch. This represents deferred carbon gas release to the atmosphere.

While we await the discovery of some magic new solution to our energy crunch we can make tremendous savings and improvements by refining technology already discovered but not widely used. Small is beautiful!

High temperature superconductors, "room temperature" superconductors.

The higher the temperature a superconductor can operate at, the more efficient its use becomes. A room temperature superconductor that met the necessary criteria for commercialization would revolutionize energy producing, transmitting and consuming technologies. There is much information on the web.

A combination liquid H2 pipeline and superconducting electric cable.

While I think that the hydrogen thing is over-hyped at the moment, it most likely will be a big thing in the future barring any major breakthroughs in other areas.

The energy density of hydrogen in the liquid form is fine, but its hard to transport any distance in pipelines economically.

Superconducting electric cables must presently be kept at temperatures requiring the use of liquid nitrogen (an improvement over earlier superconductors which required lower temperatures).

There is an obvious connection here and work has and is being done on its possibilities for "killing two birds with one stone"

One of the real limitations to using hydrogen is the containment problem. Hydrogen molecules are so small they migrate through the materials normally used for containers. We have also discovered that hydrogen causes embrittlement of metals used for piping. Until we develop a safe and reliable means of transporting, storing, and piping hydrogen as a gas or liquid, we are not going to see it used as a consumer fuel. Solving that technical problem would speed up the adoption of hydrogen as a fuel in consumer equipment.

Another problem with hydrogen is that it heads to the upper atmosphere quickly once released which could deplete the ozone layer and cause other ecological problems.

I've updated the list at EagleAlphaOne's post #37. This is getting fairly muddled, but I suppose that's OK at this stage. Purists might quote the Itsy Bitty Spider song: "along came the sun and dried up all the rain". By doing so, they might point out that many of these energy sources are really solar energy: hydro, wind, plant based, electrostatic, "solar"…

I put engine references at the bottom of the list, because they seem to be ways of (possibly) more efficiently using existing energy sources: they are more on the consumption side rather than the supply side. But one could argue that nuclear energy doesn't really exist in a useful way without the reactor, and that the reactor is effectively a machine that eventually spins a generator, just as a diesel engine might.

So maybe we would want to organize the list by energy type: energy of motion (hydro, wind, wave/tidal,); chemical bond energy (petroleum, gases, burning stuff, etc); nuclear energy; particle/ray energy (solar light, gamma rays, mystery rays,) … or maybe not. Dunno, just thinking aloud.

In any case, this is the list. If I've left things out, please copy it and add stuff.

1) Nuclear Energy - fission reactors (thorium and uranium)

2) Nuclear Energy - fusion reactors

a) Hot fusion

b) Cold fusion

3) Electrostatic Energy - Lightning

4) Wind Energy

5) Solar Light Energy - photovoltaics

6) Solar Heat Energy - Sterling engine

7) Tidal/wave energy

8) Hydro Energy

a. dams

b. "run of the stream"

9) Geothermal Energy

10) Fossil Fuel (oil) Energy

11) Organic Oil Energy - ethanol

12) Coal Energy

13) Burning waste (in incinerators to heat boilers, etc)

14) Burning plant materials (wood, corn, etc.)

15) Capturing waste heat from industry and utilities

16) Gasification of waste (synfuel)

17) Gasification of wood/plants (As employed in Europe to power cars during WWII)

18) Methane digesters

19) Oil produced from algae

20) Hydrogen from hydrolysis of H2O

21) Hydrogen from other sources, such as hydrates

22) Localized energy transformations: (fuel to electricity at home, etc)

23) Sterling cycle engines using existing or new feed stocks

24) Utilizing any of the many "miracle" engines, some of which claim efficiencies many times higher than current engines (occasionally so much higher that their efficiencies would be much greater than 100%, making them "over unity" devices, or perpetual motion machines.)

What about the dissipation of all the heat released from the friction effects of the use of all the new energy sources? The radiation equation is

Q=s.A.(T2^4-T1^4), where Q is the heat flow, s a constant, T2 and T1 temperatures, and A an area.

The problem is that A, the surface area of this planet, is a fixed value. So, what happens to T2?

Simply put, it is totally insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Most energy we produce ends up as heat before it escapes the planet but even this is trivial compared to the overall energy flux from the sun versus energy radiation into space, and effects we have on it by development of one kind or another.

Let's try again. Q from fossils on this planet is about 0.6% of the Q coming in from the sun. So, what happens to T2 as fossil Q rises?

OK folks I initially though that there would be a straight list of technologies but this is a complex problem and therefore has a complex answer. As a result I have grouped the technologies together in what I see is some sort of logical order. I have reread all the posts and constructed the following list from the technologies that have been mentioned. I have also included a couple of ideas that, while they are not technology for directly producing energy, could however have an effect on the impact we are having on the planet.

I apologize for the layout of the list but the CR4 editor won't let you indent. However if you follow the topic numbers you can see how I have grouped them together.

1. Solar Energy

1.1. Direct Solar Lighting

1.2. Photovoltaic Electricity Generation

1.3. Thermal Energy from Sunlight for

1.3.1. Heating

1.3.2. Electricity Generation

1.4. Sterling Engine

2. Electricity Generation

2.1. Tidal

2.2. Wave

2.3. Wind

2.4. Hydro

2.4.1. Reservoir Driven

2.4.2. Run of Stream Driven

2.5. Geothermal

2.6. Improved Efficiency of Existing Coal Combustion

2.7. Clean Coal Combustion

2.8. Distributed Multi Source to Grid

2.9. Nuclear Energy

2.9.1. Fission

2.9.1.1.Uranium Fission Reactor

2.9.1.2.CanDu Fission Reactor

2.9.1.3.Thorium Fission Reactor

2.9.2. Fusion

2.9.2.1.Thermal Deuterium to Helium Fusion Reactors

2.9.2.2.Cold Hydrogen to Helium Fusion?

3. Transportation

3.1. Pure Electric Cars

3.1.1. Battery Stored Energy

3.1.2. Fuel Cell Energy

3.2. Hybrid Cars

3.3. Improved Efficiency Internal Combustion Engines

4. Fuel Sources

4.1. Bio Fuels from Vegetable Oil

4.2. Bio Fuels from Fermented Vegetable Products

4.3. Direct Combustion of Plant Materials

4.4. Combustion of Waste Products

5. Hydrogen to Replace Fossil Fuels

5.1. From Water

5.2. From Hydrates

5.3. From Oil

5.4. From Coal

6. Use of Waste Materials

6.1. Collection of Methane from Waste

6.2. Burning of Waste for Heating

6.3. Capture of Waste Energy from Industry

7. Population Control and Reduction Through Various Means

8. Direct Culture of Meat Products

9. Superconductors

While is the rough structure that I intend to use for future discussions it is not set in concrete so if I have left anything off or you think there is something that is worth discussing pleas post your ideas here and I will update it.

Masu:

Good List!

But I think under transportation, you might want to add the category of "Improved external combustion engines" which would include the stirling engine, steam or similar engines engines employing a fluid other than water, and the fuel cell, which with its assumed electric motor comprises an external combustion engine.

The big question to me is where Seaplaneguy's magical mystery engine would go. I've looked and can't find any specifics at all on it, only claims and boasts.

Look at the way the earth became from worst to better over time and one day only to return to worst again or do you think it is one way process? Look for things that will happen over larger span may also happen in shorter span in other processes. Even if we try to completely destroy the earth, the earth may not allow us to do so in long run. If our concern is immediate then things may look different. Why we are planning to use so much energy is such a short period? Is there a limit or who will set that limit?

Singapore now charges $2 each time you enter a road by car. It sure will limit common man but may not do so for some one who just wants to burn fuel for fun. Make it a crime and hang some one who is harming many by use of fuel? Do you think this is right? Some eartern countries hang people for small amount of drugs on them so why not for wasting fuel?

Greg,

Magical mystery engine? Hmmm.

I once heard that the mark of a "professional" is he makes it look like magic or a mystery. If the customer thinks they can do it they then don't "need" your service, or are not willing to pay the "big bucks" to have the Pro around. I am trying, therefore, to be "professional" about this. (cough, cough).

Hi Masu

I found two more of them.

Human muscle power and animal muscle power.

The fuel may not be a problem. A Horse Power is a Horse Power. All it needs is some grass.

Human power I can agree with, as in manually opening a food can or sharpening a pencil. (Did I ever tell you about my design for a diesel engine driven pencil sharpener? It could operate on only 3 cylinders for soft leads or crayons! This would save as much as 250%. I've contacted some of the best minds working on this topic but they are only on the second step out of ten, and believe you need at least 6 cylinders at all times.)

As to animal power, it was estimated that approximately 33% of land devoted to agriculture was to produce feed for draft and other "work" animals before the advent of fossil fueled engines. I don't think we can afford or would want to go back.

There are farm workers, people in the kitchen, transport, army, and many other places that you may like to replace with robo. Right? In place of working in jim you can work on man powered generator. You build muscles and also get energy. Perhaps the only animal on earth may be seen is human and few die hard insects. What a company! I will like to have peacock, parrots, squirels, lizards, and almost every thing. I am bio-deversity lover.

There has been a lot of discussion here about generation but we have neglected to reference an equally important aspect...energy efficiency!

This has to be in the answer (along with many of the other citations). We cannot continue to build more and more generation plants and develop new generation techniques without reducing consumption per capita. It is similar to the traffic/transportation problem. A freeway is in bumper to bumper traffic. Naturally, you think add a lane to alleviate the congestion. However, it has been proven that it does not work that way. The added lane actually promotes more cars. that is why so many of the heavily traveled roads now have carpool lanes. This is to reduce the number of cars.

The US utilities agree. They do not want to build more power plants. Instead they invest billions of dollars every year to promote the installation of energy efficient technologies.

Energy is a commodity...a finite commodity and it must be treated accordingly.

There is no doubt that some of us are energy gluttons (and living in the US -we may be one of the worst, I don't know.) If the power companies put a "cap" on how many KWH we used per month, we would pay more attention (install a count-down timer) and buy more energy efficient products and use them less. And--when the timer reached zero, break out the old bicycle/ generator and peddle our way thru the rest of the month. (That'd teach us, wouldn't it?) plus it would be good exercise. I know I need more; I sit all day working on electronics..

Well put. Heat pumps are starting to make some impact, but we have only scratched the surface. Most industries regard energy as a use once and discard comodity. High value heat is dumped into water and them blown into the atmosphere via that great obscenity the cooling tower. If they were outlawed with a time frame for implementation business would have a profit motive to develop viable replacements. If Kennedy hadn't set a goal of a man on the moon by the end of the decade, would it ever have happened?

Cooling towers are not a great obsenity but a cheap source of power!

When you are operating heat engines your efficiency depends on the difference in temperature between the heat source and the cold sink, cold is just as useful as heat.

Not when they both waste and pollute. Cheap obsolete technology is the problem not the solution.

I've often wanted to aim a large parabolic reflector at the sun, where a pinpoint spot of superheated energy would be present at the focal point. Now, if we just had a transducer or "converter" to change this type of energy into usable energy...

Dear Steve-O

Welcome and very happy new year. Where were you?

Simple aluminum film makes a very good solar power reflector. Just twist 1mm thick sheet the way you want it to be and make your tea or toast your bread all the way.

It is getting late for me to have some sleep. See you again. Bye.

Hi Shyam. Thank you, and the same best wishes for you. I have been on holiday for 9 days. (My home land-line is too slow on the internet, so I don't use it!) I was thinking about a pre-made parabola -Edmund Scientific has some- and a thermocouple of some sort. Traditional thermocouples don't produce enough Kw to be useful?

Steve, where have you been? not just the last nine days but the last nine years. Your question has been addressed numerous times from a French research lab on sunlight energy, to a California Sterling engine design using focussed sunlight with a parabolic reflector to any number of lesser complex applications. I have seen about six different solar ovens or cookers at various outdoor stores catering to hikers, campers, rock climbers, etc.

These projects have been featured in popular magazines like Popular Science, Pop Mechanics, Sci American; not to mention Hollywood which used one of the big sunlight concentrator facilities as the background to a eco-thriller movie about an evil genius who used the facility to ostensibly burn toxic waste but in fact was doing other more nefarious things instead.

Its a great idea and has been proven to work. The lack of public acceptance has more to do with non technical issues than anything else.

Incidentally the European facility is supposed to develop megawatts of electrical energy.

Elnav

Yes I've seen the solar cookers and solar cigarette lighters etc. They're good for camping out. Nice toys. I'm thinking of a large reflector that tracks the sun with a "black-box" at the focal-point and (here's where the creative thinking comes in) converts the extreme heat/light energy at that point into electricity or another form of useful energy. I'd like to see this "European facility". Do you have a link or a name?

If you are referring to the SEGS plant in California, for example, this is just another example of heating water to steam to turn turbines. I was hoping for something a little more exotic.

Sorry I lost my FAVORITES in a hard drive crash. Would have to hunt down each itemone at a time.

One example of a "black box" was placing a sterling engine powered generator at the focal point. Development was by a California company. Their target was to design a solar powered generator which produced electrical energy at a purchase price of $1.50 per watt. This is somewhat more expensive than fossil fuel generators at $0.60 per watt but way cheaper than solar panels at $7.00 per watt. At that price point the payback period was estimated to be two to three years for an average California household compared to the fifteen year payback period for photovoltaic cells.

Yes the hiking solar stoves may be "toys" but as proof of concept they serve admirably. They also help introduce new technology to the masses in a cheap and pleasant way. Sometimes the best way to introduce new technology is by way of toys and amusement. People do not perceive it as threateneing or different. They simply enjoy the novelty and later on it seems like a familiar concept they willingly adopt.

Elnav

No it isn't. The facility used as the movie background had heliostats placed in more of a circle around a ball or cylinder at the focal point. That in turn suggest the facility was intended for a sun position nearly overhead. Otherwise how could all the mirrors be positioned correctly to reflect simultaneously? Any geographical location at latitude 23 or higher would have some mirrors positioned to sunward part of the time.

Perhaps the facility was in fact located somewhere in Africa?

Elnav

elnav wrote: "The facility used as the movie background had heliostats placed in more of a circle around a ball or cylinder at the focal point."

---------

I know what you mean. I'm not sure where that particular facility is located, but I know it is not the only one using this approach. For instance, Sandia Labs has a number of experimental solar projects in the works which use this and other techniques.

This is a similar project in Spain.

-e

Steve-O; you asked about parabolic reflectors and "black boxes" take a look at this link. http://pesn.com/2005/08/11/9600147_Edison_Stirling_largest_solar/

I first read about it before the deal with CPUC materialized.

regards

Elnav

Great Idea!!

Ok let's break the issue down into the following components:

Generation; Transmission; Usage; Waste.

Generation:

Notwithstanding the controversy over global warming being manmade or natural in origin, it simply makes sense for us a guardians of the planet to minimize all waste we generate whether that waste has a negative impact on the environment or not!!

In my way of thinking, the energy technologies we should focus on are those that minimze the effect of any polluting elements generated during the process. Solar, thermal, wind and tidal are the ones that come to mind in this regard, followed by nuclear (including thorium). (The issue of what to do with nuclear waste can be settled easily - mix it with silica and then store it in the mines where the uranium was mined from).

Required technolgies: small scale nuclear (ie slo-poke reactor); more effective solar and termal technologies for industrial and residential use.

Transmission:

Currently (pardon the pun) there is a significant lost of electrical energy when it is transposrted over long distances. For example nearly 50% of the electricity generated in Labrador Falls is lost during transmission to New York City. IF we are to rely on these huge power generation facilities such as James Bay and Labrador Falls, we need to figure out how to get the resulting electricity to market with minimal loss.

Required technologies: developing super-conductors and other means of transmitting electrical currents while minimizing energy loss due to friction

Usage:

We need to be more efficient with what energy we use be it individually or industrially. Co-generation plants are a great idea (electrical generation plants using natural gas or oil where the heat dissapated from the generator is cooled by water which is then used to heat a nearby facility (plant, school, hospital etc). Can we not apply such technology to the home where furnaces can also heat water which is then stored in a well insulated holding tank for use in the house? Instead too much energy is simply "going up the chimney).

We need to develop LED technologies so that the light given off by the lights is equivalent to that thrown off from incandescent lights. Personally I find the flourescent bulbs that fit into a normal light socket tend to be too dim in many situations. If we can create equivalent light that uses less energy - we have a winner. (ie. direct the energy into making the light and minimizing the "heat throw-off").

Required Technologies: Appliances and lights that use electricity etc more efficiently and yet maintain an acceptable output; An LED light that has the output of a Halogen light!!!

Waste

If we can minimize the overall waste that we generate as humans (solid, liquid and gas) the overall energy usage should reduce. If we recycle and compost most of what we generate, there is less reliance on raw materials and less energy used to ransport our waste to places like landfills etc. If each house was designed to filter the "gray sewage" (that created from the sinks) and then redirected for use in the toilets, our need for pumping water to our homes would decrease thus reducing energy) Also less water is being pumped to sewage facilities.

I like the concept of heat exchange pumps being used in homes to offset the use of convential gas or oil furnaces. Combine this with solar power (where feasible) and/or thermal power and/or wind power, many homes could be maintained in a comfortable setting with a minimal reliance on hydrocarbons.

Required technologies: Creative minds would do more here than new technologies.

..my 2 cents worth :)

Improving the electrical grid backbone should be a high priority and has been recieving much attention of late. It was not originally designed for its present use (moving large amounts of power 24/7) after "de-regulation" and was for the most part (except for dedicated lines from large hydro facilities and the like) designed for reliabilty related re-dundancy and limited "sharing".

Unfortunately, at present there is no economic incentive to invest in this infrastructure due to the existing regulations and the way power is bought and sold between power plants and utilities. The added costs are just passed down the line to the consumer.

Therefore I agree improved transmission of electricity should be added to the list. There are a number of ways to accomplish this short of superconductivity.

"We need to be more efficient with what energy we use be it individually or industrially. Co-generation plants are a great idea (electrical generation plants using natural gas or oil where the heat dissapated from the generator is cooled by water which is then used to heat a nearby facility (plant, school, hospital etc). Can we not apply such technology to the home where furnaces can also heat water which is then stored in a well insulated holding tank for use in the house? Instead too much energy is simply "going up the chimney).

We need to develop LED technologies so that the light given off by the lights is equivalent to that thrown off from incandescent lights. Personally I find the flourescent bulbs that fit into a normal light socket tend to be too dim in many situations. If we can create equivalent light that uses less energy - we have a winner. (ie. direct the energy into making the light and minimizing the "heat throw-off")."

Waste heat applications are only cost effective on a large scale. The cost of the heat excahnger and necesary piping in a residential situation would make the application cost prohibitive.

LED technologies are there. Take a look around at the stoplights...at least in California, every city has switched these out from incandescent to LED. Also, look at many new cars have LED brake lights. In both of these Applications, the lamps must emit significant light. The problem is that the white LED lights are still very expensive. The price is coming down but it just isn't low enough for a consumer to afford...especially a low annual operating hours of a residential situation. Here is a link that shows some of the lower light output LEDs. The higher output products do exist.

If your CFLs are not giving off enough light, you need to increase the wattage. The same lumen output for a CFL vs an incandescent requires about 25-30% of the incandescent wattage.

Hello Impact Cases, (strange name!)

You may be surprised to know that many of your ideas are already being explored on a small scale. I'm presently involved in designing electrical power systems for boats and ships. Many of the ideas you mention have a direct application in the maritime world. Each ship is a microcosm - a self contained world wherein they have finite energy generation capacity, the need to manage this energy, deal with wastes disposal and storage until it can be disposed of.

As an integral part of my job I am always looking for more efficient ways to generate power, means of reducing line losses between generation source and point of use, and of course more efficient ways to achieve the end result with reduced consumption of power.

Some of my clients have taken my advice to heart. They prepare and cook their meals using less energy, provide a comfortable environment despite hot climates without resorting to massive energy gobbling air conditioning, and generally maintaining their chosen standard of living but using less energy than they would use in a land based home.

It isn't rocket science. Its careful application engineering using available technology and of course using some new technology.

Many times I find that not knowing about the new technology is the biggest reason for non adoption. Once the clients learn what new technology is available they are willing to adopt it.

Elnav

Does anyone else think that this one is slightly on the arrogant side?

Not at all...from my perspective, he is simply telling it "as it is" from his position.

As for my name...well when I signed up I used a name I could remember easily...the company I work for..

Steve, my apologies! I assumed that since this was an engineering forum; that the majority of members would be somewhat acquainted with technical developments in their field. So far I have only referred to technical matters that have already been publicized in the popular press. Not restricted to the more exclusive realm of scientific peer review journals and publications. I consider my awareness level of new technology to be average. Hence my surprise to find the engineers on this forum to be unaware of technical developments that in many cases took place as much as ten years ago. I just took it for granted that engineers would already know these things.

Elnav

Elnav, No problem. I am not a technical expert in this field, as well as many other fields; I just enjoy the brainstorming aspect of certain threads, and input what I consider possible useful information, if I believe it to be pertinent and constructive to the topic. I agree with Masu, though that this is getting out of control, and I would like to stick with devices rather than birth control. I was also thinking about the single-home approach rather than large scale energy production. I should have made that more clear. For example: we live way out in the country. There is an old style satellite TV dish still in the yard (about 15 ft. diameter) If I were to coat it with reflective material and place a Peltier junction device at the focal point...just things like that.

Steve wrote: we live way out in the country. There is an old style satellite TV dish still in the yard (about 15 ft. diameter) If I were to coat it with reflective material and place a Peltier junction device at the focal point.

I also live out in the country. Don't have a a TV dish though.

Your idea would work, but you may find you have to change the pivot mount to an equatorial style like telescopes have in order to track the sun more easily. Peltier cells are simply thermo couples being run backwards. Be prepared to look for other methods of converting the solar heat to usable electrical power.

Elnav

Steve-o wrote:

There is an old style satellite TV dish still in the yard (about 15 ft. diameter) If I were to coat it with reflective material and place a Peltier junction device at the focal point...

There are two problems with your idea. The first is that the Peltier junction device needs a cold side as well as a hot side. It works on the temperature difference between the two. The second is the Peltier generators are hideously inefficient, somewhere in the 4% range.

You'd be better off either putting solar cells at the focal point or boiling a working fluid and running a turbine. In fact, the best way to use the energy would be to use the heat directly to heat your hot water or augment your home heating system, although in Southwest Virginia maybe that's not such a benefit

One other thing you'll need is a way to keep the dish pointed at the sun. As a satellite dish it only needed to point at a fixed spot in space. As a solar heater, it will need to track the sun to be efficient.

The peltier junction would have ambient air temp. on one side and 2000 degrees on the other. Enough differential?? Yes, sun tracking would be a must. I realize that such a peltier device probably does not exist. Again, just throwing out ideas..

The peltier modules will require a cold junction to generate current and efficiency is pretty low. I was keen on trying it until a colleague showed me his test equipment and test results. On a similar vein there was a thermocouple device used during world war 2 as a power supply for radios the heat source was charcoal and the cold junction atmospheric air. I think I saw it in the "Museum of Retrotech".

The same people that ran the peltier experiments make parabolic dishes which self track and are still trying to find a useful heat engine. They use green LEDs as tracking detectors, hope that is useful.

Hello Impact Cases.

On the subject of LED, you will be pleased to know these developments are already in the works and available to consumers. Luxeon is leading the way with their super bright star line. Nichia is close behind with their white LEDs.

In many cases the straight replacement with a substitution LED module is a misapplication of the technology. Until the latest Luxeon modules come into widspread use at a lower cost, it is better to use LED as task lighting than as general area lighting. There is also a subjective perception issue to deal with. Because the spectral emission of LED is very narrow compared to tungsten filament, many people feel the LED light is too "cold" and some feel the light is not as intense.

The USCG had no end of trouble devising a fair and correct way to test and measure the light output of navigation lights using LED instead of conventional tungsten filament bulbs. When LED are used as point specific task lighting and the light source is placed in close proximity to the work/viewing object these objections disappear.

Mention was made of the conversion to LED for traffic lights. That was an excellent example. Power consumption dropped from 20 Amps @ 120V to 2 Amps @120V for an entire intersection. Much of that remaining 2 Amp power is used by the controller instead of burned up by the filament bulbs. At a dark intersection you could practically read a newpaper headline from the light of the old style lights. Not so with the LED, but the roadside vizibility at a distance is just as good if not better. After all, the intent is to regulate road traffic, not provide reading lights for pedestrians.

Regarding appliances; same thing. Have you checked into what the retail stores have on offer in the way of counter-top food preparation/cooking appliances?

Because I work in this field, I have checked out many of these appliances for power consumption. The new appliances uses half to one tenth as much power to cook the same food recipes. I have even made a point of timing the entire cooking cycle to determine the kWh consumption and comparing it to what it takes to cook the same meal using the olderconventional resistance coil stove and oven.

When you live on the end of a 30A 120V extension cord, power management becomes very crucial to your well being. A typical household100A service can deliver 24kW while a 30A @120V 3 conductor extension cord can only deliver 3.6kW

The point being that a "household" on a boat or in an RV somehow manages on the 3.6kW while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.

Look at the potential energy savings that could be realized if even half or one quarter of all households adopted this approach.

The solutions are already available. It only requires people to start using them.

Elnav

Thanks Elnav!

I think you need to add STORAGE to that general grouping. Without the ability to store energy in some form, we are stuck with maintaining a closely coupled ratio of generation capacity to amount of energy used. The ability to store energy from a source during light loading and then using this stored energy later on during periods of peak demand is crucial to good enegy management.

Elnav

Hello Impact Cases

Your ideas are good one and worth appreciation.

I will prefer all those ideas that have long survival nature and least on environment damage.

1. LEDs for lighting is a very good idea.

2. Using solar power with long life solar cells is also very good thing. This can work well even on ships. Desalination of water using solar power is very good.

3. Human waste can also be processed scientifically

4. Drain water reuse is a very good idea.

Let me work on some of the processes to see what can be achieved. Perhaps cost of the solar cells if get reduced then lot more may be possible.

Very good thinking.

I have always had a soft spot for sterling engines. If they can be made big enough to power submarines they may have some real uses in this world. Could They be used to reclaim energy from the hot flue gasses in thermal electric plants or gogeneration plants. could smaller models reclaim the heat in the catlytic heaters and exhaust systems of internal combustion engines to generate electrical energy.

How big a temperature differential must exist between the hot and cold sides to make a useful engine. In addition to using heat from flue gasses could they make use of the exhaust steam from a conventional turbine before it goes to the condensor. How about the cooling medium of a nuclear reactor.

Again it is the symbiosis thing, wringing out the last bit of useful energy from any process. The stirling engine isn't the only way, how about using the waste heat to boil a fluid with a relatively low boiling point, run the gas through a turbine, and then condense the fluid and recycle it.

In a symbiotic system not all parts of the system may be as effective as the other parts but as long as they add to the usefull output they should be considered. I truly believe that the symbiotic relationship between technologies has been ignored.

The short answer is yes! Whispergen marketed by Victron has an exhaust temperature so low you could place your hand in the exhaust stream without being burned. In addition the combustion was complete enough that the generator could be run normally inside the sales booth at trade shows. Regrettably inadequate bearings led to unacceptably high failure rates and the product was withdrawn from the N. Americna market. Hopefully it will reappear once that technical issue is resolved.

The swedish submarine model used stored oxygen to enable combustion while submerged. Hence the engine is not classed as a normal air breather such as a steam or diesel engine would be.

Recovering heat from the exhaust of an IC engine does not appear to be cost effective at this time. There are less expensive ways to generate the required electrical energy for onboard vessel or vehicle use.

The workboat fleet in the Gulf does use waste heat recovery equipment for distilling clean potable water for use on board. Look up Baird Industries - evaporator water makers - for more details. They require something like a 200 degree differential plus a vacuum tank.

Since the Sterling engine was invented, there have been issued something like 400 designs for generators using the rankine cycle as the prime mover source. They range from the most basic to some extremely sophisticated military applications. The latter being cost prohibitive for consumer use.

Hi All,

I see an opportunity for some software geeks (and some of us engineers) to write component macros/libraries for simulators (like PSpice etc), to model each of the "Energy Building Blocks" in these lists of energy components.

Comprehensive Energy Simulator Libraries would then be available for us engineers to connect together, SCALE energy components in a grid, to simulate power/energy networks. We engineers would then have available a tool to model and try-out some of our ideas on our favorite CAD simulator.

THIS WOULD SAVE A WHOLE LOT OF INTELECTUAL ENERGY BEING WASTED!

NeilJ

The main solution is not to invent new types of energy suppliers but to change the way we handle the energy.

Oil based energy carriers are perfect for mobile applications (powering cars and trucks): you can simply carry an enormous amount of energy with you (1kg contains approx 42 MJ), all other energy carriers have size/weight/safety problems. (try to imagine a hydrogen powered truck with a 1000 km active radius)

Electricity is perfect for typical appliances like stationary motors, computers, TV's, lighting, ... Things that simply don't work with other energy carriers.

Natural Gas is perfect for local fixed energy supply (electricity and heat) as it can easily be transported through buried pipes. Combining the two functions give the CHP systems were the mini and micro variant is superb for the near future. Gasifying waste and other stuff can be used to supply the network when NG becomes rare, but we are far from that point.

There where present, renewable sources can be harvested, hydro-power and wind power are the easiest to do and most used.

It all comes down to the question: is the fuel we use for our application the most appropriate? Government should prohibit the use of oil for heating. We need the oil for other applications. For new houses/users the decentralized production should be promoted and punish all organisations that try to prevent it (typical problem when you install a windmill is that the local electricity supplier only pays 1/10 to you for the energy that you drop on the network, where you have the pay the full bucket when you want your energy back).

We should reduce the amount of energy that is thrown away because it is generated where we don't need it. Rivers are heated up by industry and power plants as this is easier & cheaper than transporting the heat to the nearby villages or even their own office building. This cheaper is only the installation cost. Tax-ate each company on the usable heat that is thrown away and use this money to support others that try to do it different.

Houses are build with radiators instead of floor heating, the cheapest & easiest solution; later the owner throws the energy through the chimney as he wants oil. A decent floor heating coupled to a condensing NG system would save at least 5% of fuel.

We engineers should not discuss here on the internet but help people making the right decision on energy choices. And be correct to our own ideas for ourself. We do make a nice living as most of you earn way more that the average citizen, spend some of that money in a decent installation for your own.

I personally am replacing filament bulbs with high efficient lamps, and where possible I'm introducing LED. My house heater is condensing NG coupled to floor heating and I'm seriously thinking on a heat recuperation/storage system to use some of that excessive summer heat in the long cold winter. all simple thing that can make the difference, or do you really think that those Thorium reactors will be supplying the energy for each application next week.

I am pretty much in agreement with specifics of everything you say, and I certainly don't want to be apologist for electric utilities, but there is no free lunch.

"For new houses/users the decentralized production should be promoted and punish all organisations that try to prevent it (typical problem when you install a windmill is that the local electricity supplier only pays 1/10 to you for the energy that you drop on the network, where you have the pay the full bucket when you want your energy back)."

The 10 cent pay phone call was subsidized by other phone customers...mainly businesses, which then passed the added costs on to us. The price we pay for electricity is a multiple of the generation costs required to pay for the transmission system, metering, payroll, etc etc. Electric distribution is not a simple thing, and the existing system was not designed for receiving power from distributed locations, although in small amounts it is no problem (yet). As home generation becomes more common, the system will adapt accordingly, but some cost is involved and the major portion of it should be spread among those who utilize feeding power back to reduce their own bills.

Basically you can think of an electric bill as representing two major components, plus of course an amount for return on investment, and profit. Those components are the fixed costs of the infrastructure, payroll, and other overhead, including paying for the generation capacity needed at peak loads, while the other component is a variable cost, based mostly on the fuel consumed. If I, as a homeowner use less electricity, the utility burns less fuel, but the other costs don't change significantly. Therefore at some point they may be required to raise my unit cost of power. I know this doesn't sound fair, but it is just the economic reality. In other words don't expect to ever get more when you give power back than about 1/4 of what you pay per KWh, and likely much less the more you feed back, and the less you use from them. If it cost them $.03/KWh for fuel to generate power, and they charge you $.13, they can't be expected to give you back more than their own generating costs, and if the government makes them, rest assured you will pay some other way. A reasonable (for all ratepayers) proportion to expect back would be somewhere between 1/10 and 1/4 of what you would pay, depending on how much you use net, the size (ampacity) of your service and particular local considerations. Distorting the market by asking the government to "encourage" something has a limited place, and I certainly am not opposed to it across the board, but in the end, we all pay every penny, along with an extra one for middleman involved in the cost shifting .... sometimes its worth the extra costs somewhere else and sometimes not.

I know I oversimplified it a bit, but thats the basic picture.

Greg,

A data point. A local AFB pays 4.2 cent per Kw-hr (was around 3 before gas went up) and total yearly electrical is around 9.5 million. Base load is 25 Mw and 45 Mw peak. If they were to generate it at 3 cents on base and use the waste heat, they could save around $10-12 million/year for heat. Multiply that by all bases world wide... That could buy some needed hardware.

I don't consider that a data point, just speculation. If they produced it for 1.8 cents/KWh they would save twice as much ...and?

Of course IF you could utilize waste heat it could save money. All these things are obvious, but that doesn't make them necessarily economically practical unless you disregard the money required to accomplish them. And as to the government doing something more efficiently than private enterprise? Occasionally yes, most times no. Plus, I suppose that there would be no chance at all that some congressman's big campaign contributors would get the contracts at some exhorbitant price.

I'm on your side philosophically, but I just think that you tend to get too carried away in pushing what is possible without giving enough consideration as to how much is actually practical (economically speaking).

Greg,

Actually 4.2 was from the horses mouth. That is what it cost them, not what it cost the power company, who may have had a cost of 1.8 based on coal or nuke.

Yes, of course it will take money to change over, that is what makes it so hard to get new systems installed that are 10-20% better. The payout is long. The same goes for hybrid electric cars. The pay out is in many cases is negative. It has to pay for itself in 3-5 years or it is very hard to sell.

In my case I would not sell it, but lease it to them with long term service contracts, and negotiate a rate for heat and power, and pocket the savings from historic rates based on BTU flow, changing the rate by the spot market of fuel. They would get a fixed savings, say (10-20%) over what they would have paid and I would not get pinched by fuel cost changes. Win-win. GE captital would back out the capital (my factory cost, not retail) so long as the cash flow is enough to service the debt plus a healthy profit. A government utility contract is a pension type investment and very stable.

Such is not possible with current Diesel and microturbine tech.

Seaplaneguy:

How does leasing change the overall economics?

The power company may have had a generating cost of 1.8 cents/KWh, but the current projected cost of power from a new coal fired plant, at current coal costs, factoring in the cost of the plant itself, and its operation over its anticipated life time, is in the neighborhood of 3-5 cents/KWh depending on local factors and the amount of pollution controls. This cost does not include the distribution cost.

In addition to your cogeneration style power plant, are the land costs for the plant, and related equipment, fuel storage etc. It has to be located on the base or immediately adjacent to it. You have to get fuel to it, by pipeline, rail or truck. Distributing the electricity is easy: the on base infrastructure already exists. How are you going to efficiently distribute the heat? In NYC, Con Edison has a vast distribution network of buried steam lines that branch into many buildings for heat and air conditioning (by the absorptive process). Distributing heat to buildings spread out on an existing military base will be very expensive, not to mention the modifications required to the heating systems in each building.

If you distribute the cogeneration among the buildings that has pros and cons of its own. The cons are distributed fuel storage (and delivery), the need for sophisticated equipment for power sharing, or else sizing each unit for the peak load of that particular building, backup equipment, etc. plus the modifications in the existing heating/cooling systems. "Small" generating systems running 24/7, 365 days a year require oversight, idle time for maintenance, and major rebuilds every 10,000 to 15,000 hrs (roughly every 18 months or so).

You start off by looking at valid current energy inefficiencies, and then apply valid techniques or approaches to improve the efficiency dramatically ... (so far so good) .... but then disregard the underlying economics and payback requirements with lip service to "they build engines wrong" or "if they did such and such" with little or no regard to the costs involved.

The home generator/heating plant, sized for say 10-15 KW max, and associated equipment, backup capability of some kind, maintenance etc etc, could use fuel at let's say even 95% efficiency but if it cost $20,000 initially, would never even pay itself off, let alone save money. Of course using the energy to generate power first, and then use the byproduct of heat to heat the house, hotwater etc sounds great, and may one day prove feasible, but its no closer than the "hydrogen hoax" right now: not economically practical in the forseeable future.

Distributed cogeneration also leads to thousands (millions) of point sources of pollution. No matter how clean they start out (and they don't start out that clean), maintenance will be neglected (human nature) and performance will deteriorate. It's much easier to monitor, control, and maintain a few large sources than many small sources.

Steve:

I agree with you. I was responding to the many posts that presume that "getting off the grid" is some kind of altruistic goal, that we are victims of a vast conspiracy, or that since heat is wasted in so many applications, we have a "free" source of power to tap ... (the energy is there for the taking, but getting it turns out to most often cost more than its worth in the current economic framework).

We know not what future breakthroughs will lead to, but for the average urban/suburban homeowner it is not feasible in the foreseeable future, and one of the hoaxes going on is that it is just around the corner.

The people behind this just by coincidence happen to sell windmills, solar arrays, or are working on the "fuel cell in every basement" among other "scams". Not to leave out the wishful thinkers and the "unlimited power from sea water" crowd. Someday, who knows, but not soon, and certainly not cheap.

For normal applications, it is good to take advantage of whatever is ecomonical. Only when we work in extreme conditions and where survival is more of concern, we talk about special ways and least of cost involved.

There are purpose in energy and fuel use

If you need faster energy conversion and small space then your choice will be limited.

If you have small energy need but want to hang around for many years then you have different need.

Reusability of resources is another need but not for common man. See how agro waste is reused in farms as manure and dranage water is reprocessed and and made as drink.

Solar energy storage as green earth or solat used up for Hydrogen based energy storage may be good for towns and cities for large plants. We can say that solar energy is to be stored and used in whatever form we can be stored. This energy after use will not change climate as what you take is used. You have neither added or subtracted from the system of sun and earth.

We also have to put break on too much use of energy in short span.

India is going through greater cold wave this year and hot is shifted towards UK and AU. Can any one explain why it is this way now? Does it tell who has done more harm to the environment is also getting it back from nature?

Greg,

No, it is an engine in every basement. got it? No fuel cell. Engine good, fuel cell, bad.

Around the corner? I agree, fuel cells are a hoax. Yes, cheap and sooner than you may think...

If you run off of natural gas like most furnaces are today, then this is not such an issue. The point is there already.

Greg,

Ask GM why they do zero down, free interest for 6 months. Each customer has "issues" and ways of dealing with risk. Many government types are highly risk adverse and they may not have capital money, yet have operations money in the "budget."

Leasing is a way to remove the complaint of risk in a new system. If they lease it and it does not work, or they don't like it, or whatever, then they can get out of the deal. There are many ways to get a customer to use the product and then they get comfortable with it, whereas if they have to buy it, they won't try it.

My target is not a "plant" but a heater for homes, offices, and industrial parks in a network. The home provides the ground space. Typically a subdivision would unplug from the grid and island. Each home, maybe 1/4 of the houses, would generate electricity when heat is needed. A central controller would throttle power as needed to cover electric and thermal loads. The other 3/4 of the neighbors would buy from the generating houses at a competitive rate and just do furance heating. They win by signing up with a lower rate.

Ideally we would be attached to the grid, but the politics will likely prevent this for reasons you have stated. The utility company will play hard ball, and so will we. Just unplug. The fuel would be from natural gas that is used in home heating now, or methanol, diesel, bio. This would give the gas company a great incentive to support us because they would be able to have income year around instead of just in cold times. This would greatly benefit the gas company and we should get discount bulk rates for gas over what a home would pay.

If you can get 60% efficiency, then you have a lot of flexibility in electrical vs thermal load consumption, whereas at 30% you end up having a lot of heat load maching needed which may not be valid in spring and fall. I can do resistance heating with electric, but I cannot do electric with waste heat. The practicality of co generation is dependent on how high the electrical generation efficiency is and as it approaches 100% (obviously not possible), the issue becomes much easier to deal with.

The base already has a distributed heat system that could be tapped into in each building via and external "box" outside the building. You are correct it will be very hard, and the military will definitely NOT be my first customers, if ever. The union civilian guys would scream bloody murder. I already asked the head guy and he was totally pissed about the idea. His pay grade is dependent on how many GS-12s and lower he has under him. The maintenance would be done by my people, not the civilians, and they would not like that at all. However, the top brass wants outsourcing, so we will see. I have much better ability to cash flow homes and offices that pay 13-20 cents per Kw-hr, whereas the military is paying only 4 cents. The low hanging fruit is not in the military, and I cannot stand the risk adverse culture of the civilian workers...life is tooooooo short for that.

My engine is slow running, not like a typical Diesel at 1200-2000 rpm. I'm talking 50-300 prm. I avoid the heat loss by the way I do it.

Yes most look at an evolutionary engineering approach to the problem, as you say. I don't. Payback is in my favor because of scale. I build and design one engine and sell 1 million (deaming here, I know, but...for discusssions sake...). A coal plant cannot do that. Each of the 300 new coal plants going in this year have unique issues that I think I will not have, and 300 is not "volume" production, more like "first article." I need to be well below $600/kw-hr in capital cost. Maybe 200. That is 3-5k / 25 kw. If I target neighborhoods that are 30 years old, there will be a lot of houses that need new stuff...make them a win-win deal. I might get much of the engine costs from my manufacturing plant paid for, and back the rest out so that I can expand fast. I make the money on power and heat generation, not the sale. I then have continual cash flow, and banks love that.

Then I take that engine and install it in my seaplane. I have volume production and an engine for 1/10th the normal cost. A roadable seaplane in every garage now becomes possible. Forget cars...

Seaplaneguy:

Now I have a much better idea of where you are coming from.

I am especially looking forward to a 50-300 rpm high efficiency engine at 1/10 the cost of present engines, and of an appropriate power to weight/size ratio, that will power a seaplane.

Greg

Greg,

If you want to buy a 959 Porsche (have a picture of one in my office from when I was there in Suffenhausen Germany), it will cost you around $1 million. Build 300,000 and you have a 80k car. Build an custom car in limited volume of 300 and it will cost around $250,000; buy a better Toyota and it costs $25,000. 10:1 is not uncommon as you suggest.

Each of these coal plants is highly engineered and custom. Each needs drawings, documentation, and on and on. Make a million and it can be spread out.

A lycoming 0-360 will cost around $30,000, and a Chevy v-8 about $3k. Then you have to factor in the custom marketing and dedicated staff that Toyota does not have to have to their customer. Hmmm

Also, you implication that a distributed power generator should get 1/10 to 1/4 th compensation is totally bull crap. That means the independent generator must pay for your bad capital costs and high wages. Wrong. We call it competition. Utilities don't want to have to compete, just like the government. We compete on price, not what the utility has to make up for from past bad decisions, such as torn down nuke plants.

Once a viable technology comes on line, like what I am doing, there will be a $100 billion if not $trillion dollar legal battle to bust the market open. My cousin took on ATT and Nextel and won. There were government bribes and lies and a truck load of nasty crap, but in the end, fairness and truth prevailed. He won, in part, because he has a personality flaw. Its genetic... He is about as close to a human pitbull as it gets. He loves a fight and it is totally personal down to grandma. He also likes my engine idea...

I got your "coming from." :)

Seaplaneguy:

You definitely have a way with numbers, and making them go your way. I'd love to have you do my taxes! (That is if you aren't mad at me) :-)

If I understand you right, you want to re-invent the community power company using co-generation. Its been done already and sometimes the numbers work so I don't disagree as much as you may think. You can call my numbers for getting paid back by the power company for power you put into the grid bunk ... that's easy to do! But to make the words stick, you have to rewrite the state laws that regulate public utilities, but at the same time guarantee them a sufficient rate of return on investment. I know all about the effect of volume on price, I deal with it every day.

But this is what you said:

"Then I take that engine and install it in my seaplane. I have volume production and an engine for 1/10th the normal cost. A roadable seaplane in every garage now becomes possible. Forget cars"

I don't see anything about revving your 50-300 rpm motor up to 2500 rpms. This must be quite a motor. When you start making them, I want one ... make that two. The original diesel engines ran in the 200 rpm range (and many very large ones still do as I'm sure you know) but they couldn't "rev up".

BTW: This Thread is so long now, its getting unwieldy to keep this back and forth going on ... We should find another thread for the next round. Your "Hydrogen Hoax" one maybe.

I feel Seaplaneguy's statement

"Then I take that engine and install it in my seaplane. I have volume production and an engine for 1/10th the normal cost. A roadable seaplane in every garage now becomes possible. Forget cars"

Just couldn't go unanswered. Pleas, pleas, please, the concept of letting the many suicidal idiots that you see on the roads loose with an aeroplane sends shivers down my spine. You would need to keep one eye pointed skywards looking out for falling debris.

On a serious note however as Greg_G said this thread has become unwieldy large so lets call it a day.

The CR4 administrators were kind enough to set up the An Engineer's Look at the Future of Energy blog for discussions on future energy technologies and I have started a new thread Possible Technologies for Future Energy and Power Production there that has a list of all the technologies that were put forward on this thread. If I have left anything out please use the links in the blog preamble to send me an e-mail and I will happily amend the list.

Masu,

Is Nancy Grace from CNN your relative? She would say such a thing. All libs are full of fear. They think all other people are not capable of flying or understanding the big picture. When the Cirus SR20 hit a tower in New York, Nancy got on CNN and said the same thing. I about lost control. I was going to offer her free lessons, just to give her a clue.

Ok. The end...

Nancy who? Since I live in Australia I have no idea of whom you speak and before you start about us being a backwater we do get CNN. That is if you wish to pay for it and since the local free to air news services are for the most part better than the majority of cable news services they don't get that great a following here. We do have CNN packaged with our service but I must admit that on the few occasions I have watched I found the reports very shallow and poorly researched. Besides, it was a tongue in cheek dig at the competence of the majority of drivers not the safety of aviation. Even so as a fellow pilot you must admit that piloting an aircraft is somewhat more complex than driving a car and I am unsure of whether the majority of drivers would be capable of controlling an aeroplane.

Greg,

Take Saab for example. I read the patent. Called the owner up after searching for his number. He had passed away. I then found the new owner. I talked to him an hour or so on the phone. I got all the research papers on it I could find. Paid ASME (SAE?) for a paper online download. All the time I was looking for what caused the 40%. What about their system was not included in the effect. If part of the process was unchanged and it did not affect it, then I don't weight it. I look to the root of what really happened. A good engineer can make a good rough guess. That is what I am doing.

When I get my engine on the stand I will do controlled Design of Experiment and parametize and then update my computer model of performance so that I understand each effect. Maybe I am an anal retentive engineer, but this is how I do things because it works. No employer I have ever had thinks like this. DOE, what's that? I bring the analytical and experimental together as it should be.

One reason I am pissed at the so called work of the Global Warming crowd it that they only go by models and do not do controlled DOE's with known data to see what emperical data is telling them what future effects would be. They do not then correct their models to reflect both. This is how it should be done, but the so called "scientist" seem to have forgotten the scientific method.

You numbers are right in some States. I don't think they are bunk, I think it is bunk that your numbers are true in some States. In some, like Idaho, the utility is required to buy at 5.8 cents per kw-hr. Others give you options on how you sell it, such as base power capacity and then actual power, or a flat rate. You have to agree to 20 years of prices (yah right). It is all different where you go. It is all very unappealing to a would be entrepreneur, and in fact it is a show stopper for VCs.

I will target areas where I can make money first, "prove" out the system, and then build, and move out from there. Once I have a proven system, then comes the "open up the gate or I knock it down" lawsuit. They are not dumb. They know if a guy like me gets his foot under the tent, they are in for lost of competition from others much smarter than I.

2500 was stated other places. Sorry, I thought you understood that. Now you are clear. I am slowing an engine down from the design speed of 2000-2500 where airplanes usually are (prop size drives this). I have a non-crank based system. A free piston that produced power would also work. The piston would fire, wait, fire, and wait, kind of like a machine gun that can change speeds depending on how much power is needed. The conversion is done fast so that heat loss is minimized. Maybe one "bullet" and hour, or ten per hour, or 1000 when the hair dryer is on. I realize that large engines cannot "rev up" but my engine is not like those large engines.

I ("we", Fry, I, and others) declared victory in the Hydrogen thread, like Bush did on the aircraft carrier years ago. (It is not over…)

I am equally impressed, Greg. I'm glad to see we have both been won over. It's inspiring to see the results of this sort of out-of-the-box creative thinking. Take 10% sound science, 10% plausible (albeit unlikely) extrapolations, and 80% dementia, and you can come up with some pretty cool stuff.

I am so swept up with Seaplane's ideas, that I've got to cut this short to go meet with the contractor who is enlarging my garage to accommodate the 75 foot propeller required by my new seaplane. (As an alternative, I may simply have the contractor do a quick carbon fiber reinforcement* of the garage floor, to support the extra weight of the step up gearbox* required to take the phenomenally high torque of this engine and convert it to high enough speed (and lower torque) for a more conventional prop. Any advice on route to go*? I lean heavily toward the large prop -- it would really impress my neighbors, I think. Imagine the landing gear*, and the monumental ladder* required to reach the cockpit. When I jump in for my commute (30 miles to the Atlanta airport, and then back to my home office by Hummer) my neighbors will be green with envy.

Buying the Hummer, to do my part for the environment, has set me back quite a bit, but I know that soon, I'll be taking money to the bank. I'll be undercutting the power company as I sell power to my neighborhood, raking in the green, big time. Send me some money*, and I'll let you in on the ground floor.

I feel like a dark cloud has been lifted. When I was in engineering school, I thought that engineering and science were inextricable linked. I even thought that engineering was based on good science! Now, realizing that scientists are just bunch of eastern-intellectual-commie-pinko-money-grabbing-conspirators who are trying to force all of us to wear tweed jackets with leather patches* on the elbows, I'm ready to throw the bums out! I'll finally be feel free to really think! Now, anything seems possible, when we can crawl out from under the oppressive thumb of those blasted smarty-pants scientists. (To think... there was actually a time when I admired those creatins for being "smart" and generous with their knowledge. I thought it was the "best and brightest" who went to MIT.) Workers Unite!

I have only one worry: With the 75 foot prop on my seaplane, I'm worried that the plane will spin around on its longitudinal axis when I apply power for takeoff. Maybe helicopter blades out on the wingtips -- one facing up, one facing down?* Just thinking aloud here -- I'm sure the obstacles will be easy to overcome. And I keep reminding my self -- there's so much I don't "get" yet. Get it?

* might papier mache work somehow?

From where I sit, it looks more and more like the only engineering that will actually solve the energy crunch is social engineering, not technical engineering.

Looking at how this discussion thread has evolved and morphed, it's becoming obvious that any solution that doesn't increase the profit of some corporation or business sector will receive short shrift from the "experts" and will be denigrated by the establishment.

Any real solution that actually reduces our consumption and our dependence on oil or other established power sources, will be bad for business, cause job loss (maybe the business executives) and therefore does not fit into mainstream western world thinking.

Any new technology that seriously threaten to upset the status quo wil be perceived as a danger by the established business world and will be attacked by every means.

So much for freedom of action or thought. It doesn't fit the business plan!

Elnav

Elnav,

Don't tread on my cash flow is rule #1 in business and government. I offered to save $1 million/ year on a small military system and the manager, off the record, said he could not because it would lower the budget and the congressman would be mad about job loss. People kill for cash flow. Utilities are union and quasi government operations and don't want their "peace" disturbed. People hate change above all. So called experts hate new ideas because they have to rethink their ideas.

Tell me something I don't already know. Which is precisely why I say some serious social engineering has to be done before we can move ahead.

Our business, government and entire society is based on some seriously flawed thinking processes and basic premises. No amount of new technology is going to make a difference; or for that matter emerge and see the light of day as long as the old ways of thinking remains.

Your points are well taken. My poking fun at Seaplaneguy is a bit over the top, I'd have to admit, probably contributing to contention rather than reducing it.

Frankly, I wish he would simply focus on the merits of his engine from a technical standpoint, and leave out

• the "roadable seaplane in every garage"
• the leasing plans
• the claim that he'll own the industry
• the global warming "hoax"
• the slings at people like Masu and Roger Pink, both of whom have reputations for being patient, thorough, and generous with well-thought-out-advice,
• the drama: "there will be a $100 billion if not $trillion dollar legal battle to bust the market open"
• and the obfuscation: "My engine is slow running, not like a typical Diesel at 1200-2000 rpm. I'm talking 50-300 prm. I avoid the heat loss by the way I do it." And then a couple posts later, it's a standard aircraft engine, operating at 2500 rpm.
• One minute advocating driving Hummers to feed plants, the next advocating high fuel efficiency (meaning far less CO2).

I think he might have some good ideas – they simply get lost in all the above. If he has an engine that is 60% efficient and has a relatively flat BFSC curve, then all the applications are obvious. No hype is necessary. No political diatribe or criticism of scientists is necessary.

Regulations such as the clean air act and the numerous safety standards have been a boon to the auto industry here, adding thousands of dollars of content (and profit) to cars, and causing the startup of thousands of businesses. Nevertheless, the auto industry kicked and screamed all the way.

Aside from all the contention here, there are all sorts of small businesses and some large ones doing tons of stuff to reduce our consumption and dependence on oil. I think the picture is far less bleak than the one painted here. Energy is, after all, the hot area for VC money.

Mr. Fry,

A seaplane in every garage is a spoof on all roadable airplanes. MIT gang is doing a roadable airplane, which I very much do not like. They think they know what they are talking about, and none even has a pilot's license.

Leasing plans...business, not engineering...all that engineers do is towards a businesss, unless it is science. An engineer takes science and makes a product. I might be wrong and we might be in an era of no products, but hey just a thought.

If I get 1% I will be very successful. Own it? Nah.

Single out people? I make a statement on GW and am blasted as a hairy tick.

Look, there are thousands of conspiring co generation power guys out there wanting to brake into power generation. There should not be laws that block progress and access to this market. Even the perception of a fight is an assault on freedom. It is a threat, which is a 3 degree felony. Utilities don't have mob power to force people to buy their overpriced power and force people to pay for their poor business dicisions.

Utilities are monopolies. That model will no longer be valid. Competitition must prevail. If it take a lawsuit, then that is the American way. Lawsuits are the war of the modern world. In the old days, and still in the middle east, one pulls out a sword and we go at it. Today we hire a lawyer. A monopoly is an assault on freedom and commerce. They do not own the grid any more than GM owns the road. They do not own a subdivsion power grid, nor should they. They think they do. The model of the past in no longer valid, and yes it might take a massive lawsuit.

Ah, well, that is the way I am doing my engine. If you don't think it is possible, or good, then fine. I share with you what I am looking on and you mock me. I should have just not told you anything. You seem to have not understood the fundamental issues I have clearly stated. The engine will be a 250 hp engine detrated to last many many years and it runs most effciently in the 250 rpm range as I see it. It is less efficient at higher speeds without the added cooling of a vehicle's motion. In a car high speeds are ok, but not in a house. This is not unusual or outlandish, and frankly critical to co generation. It just does not fit into your experience, so you reject it. Great, make your own engine fast and small. Good luck. My goals are not your goals.

Look, Saab got actual data of 40% better economy. This is FACT, not hype. BMW has their turbosteam assist. They get 15% better. 1.4x.1.15= 1.61. 60% better. A guy I know did some other things on the combustion side and got at least 25%. 1.61x.1.25=2.01, or about two. None have regenerative braking, which is 40%. 2/.4=5. An none of these truly address the fundamental flaw in the engines regarding power change. All have a throttle, which means there is even more. Do the math, or is that to hard.

My point is valid, and is based in real world data, not hype, or speculation. If you put the puzzle together using your brain in on mode you get 100 mpg. That was my point, to inspire others and to clear up the false notion that an IC engine is at its end in efficiency. Wake up and stop the spin.

You can do it the SAAB-BMW-guy-I-Know way or make a new machine and add in some other stuff. The point is that there is gold in them thar hills. If you don't have the courage to "risk" going after it, then great. I do. That is the difference between me and you. I put my money each and every day where my mouth is. You don't.

There is zero money from a VC on a new engine tech. Let me know if you can find one. I will give you a $100k finders fee. Put up or....

I agree with a lot of what you say here. We are, in many ways, on the same side.

You write:

Look, Saab got actual data of 40% better economy. This is FACT, not hype. BMW has their turbosteam assist. They get 15% better. 1.4x.1.15= 1.61. 60% better. A guy I know did some other things on the combustion side and got at least 25%. 1.61x.1.25=2.01, or about two. None have regenerative braking, which is 40%. 2/.4=5. An none of these truly address the fundamental flaw in the engines regarding power change. All have a throttle, which means there is even more. Do the math, or is that to hard.

No, the math is not too hard… it's too easy. If Saab got 40% better economy, it is reasonable to assume that there is less energy in the exhaust stream. Thus the "waste" energy that BMW exploits is not available to the same degree. So .15 is probably higher than you are likely to get. Also, there can be anti-synergistic effects between the two (in the sense that the precise cause of the 40% improvement for Saab, might be almost completely cancelled by the technology employed by BMW. (There is also the possibility that both are overstating the facts for a great many reasons of which we are all too aware: if you're the engineer who just spent millions and whose career rests on the results, do you understate results?) So – you may be exactly on the money. But the apparent certainty with which you state it makes it seem that you haven't thought about all the possibilities (or that you are overdoing the spin).

But hey – I know it's difficult (very difficult) to be both the engineer and the guy promoting the idea. (At the risk of offending some here: 90% of all engineers can't promote themselves out of a wet paper bag.) Over simplification (thinking big picture) is almost always necessary to sell an idea to people with money. But selling an idea to anal-retentive engineering types means that you have to be arch-conservative and extremely thorough and without passion in the presentation. It's tough to strike a balance. You are passionate about your engine, as well you should be. But you also have to step back and be the skeptic, or devil's advocate.

I was in your shoes after having designed and built the Windrocket (a rigid wing sailboat aimed at capturing the world speed record for soft-water sailboats… but I was doing that mainly for promoting the boat as a commercial product: a boat that anyone could sail fast in average winds – unlike a windsurfer which is fast only in high winds.) I even had the huge advantage of having the current world speed record boat to point to, and could say, "as you can see, the physics are essentially the same, but there is this small point, and this other small point etc. that suggest that mine can go faster." How much faster? 2 knots: 4 percent. But getting even people who should know better to understand the physics of the existing record boat was tough – it was as though they thought the current record boat worked on magic. (And I've worked a lot at explaining things, in general: I've tutored college physics students and taught for a while at a tech school – and in fact, made technical training a huge part of my life for 20 years. So not only was there the frustration of having them "not get it" but also the frustration with myself for not being able to "teach" them quickly.)

I was looking for money to commercialize the venture – so I'd first have to go through all the physics… and then go through the market stats, the management team, etc. etc. etc. It was a really hard sell – especially for a tiny market, at best. In retrospect, it would have made far more sense to simply go for sponsorship money: the boat attracted attention wherever I took it – and that's really all that's required. Whether I'd taken the record or not would be incidental. And in the process, people might have said – wouldn't it be cool to have a boat just like that. And I'd say, "Gosh. Golly, sure 'nuf, you can." The value of hindsight. As it was, I had to get back to paying work before I could get sufficient testing on the boat to say: "Yes, it works beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if you think it works by magic, that's fine."

Compounding my difficulties was the fact that I was doing this exactly when the .com bubble burst: "sure thing" investors disappeared.

Re VC money: I took a course at NC State on developing biz plans, getting VC money, etc. Several in the class thought the Windrocket had the best potential, by far, and the biz plan got good reviews. But at the time the money was going into "technology" which didn't mean "technology" as I understood it: combustion technology, wing technology, vehicle technology… but pretty much one thing: computing technology. Now VC money is going into energy technology – and your idea qualifies, in a far more real way than some of the things that are getting funded. If you can find someone to help spin it right, I think you can get lots of money – but this is coming from someone who couldn't get the funds. OH – and I think you are aware of this: it's easier to get a lot of VC money than to get a little. I had a really hard time spinning my idea into anything close to the sort of funds that made VC sense -- couldn't do it and retain any sense of integrity at all. I think you could spin yours that way – but doing so probably involves oversimplification -- just the stuff I've been ranting against. Go figure.

BTW, re money where mouth is: we are actually almost the same in that respect – I'm self-funded, and have been for 25 years. I'm just a little less vocal re my current project.

(re roadable plane: I fly too. Imagine Atlanta traffic, but in the air. The weather report: "Today we expect it to rain bodies early in the day, clearing around noon, and then resuming at about 4:30.")

Mr. Fry,

I agree with most of what you say. I am not a good salesperson and I have been told that I should keep my mouth shut and be the quiet type.

I have several people who can get the money, once it is at that level. I want to do all I can, including the prototype, without VC. There is a point where a project has max value to a VC and I am not there yet. Ideally I would like to see if it could boot strap itself. I have passive cash coming in, so I would like to do bank, but that is beyond what we should be talking here.

A pilot? I sensed a very conservative streak to you. Pilots are very very very conservative, or should I say skeptical, and rightly so.

My point was to change the belief that the IC engine has some way to go, not so much sell my engine. As for help, I am looking for someone who wants to go for it and do the journey. This is an adventure. Financial types don't get it. I have those, but they don't relish in the engineering, which is where the fun is. This is an engineering thing. The problem is I am finding is that most engineers are not financially independent enough to "go for it" and still need the day job, or are working for retirement. I am trying to get a friend of mine "independent" so he can break loose and have some fun doing this. He wants to bad, but has a family, mortgage, and such.

I agree that the BMW 15% could be hype or it could evaporate. I think they are using the engine heat that would have been wasted in a radiator to give some of that benefit. I mention it just to make the point that there is a strong case for large improvements.

The Saab 40% effect could cancel, but I think not because the recompression is not a transfer but a thermodynamic gain or restoration to where it should be at low power. I could be wrong in part or whole. To know either way is very costly.

A finance friend of mine said to me once, "I don't care about your technology, and neither do the customers." They just care it is better and it works. The rest is for engineers to nerd about. I could use rats on steroids with a big whip on a wheel as far as he cared. Do most people know what or how their PC works? NO. They don't care. It just has to work.

VC guys only want to know if it will make money. I don't want people like that around me at this point. They are a pain in the butt. VCs are like cattle; they go where everybody else is going. Markets go in herds. If you are going the opposite direction as the herd, look out.

Last but not least, I want to manufacture it in the USA (best place in the world for manufacture IMHO), not sell it off. A VC will want the fastest way to get his money back out. I am in this for the long term, and I want to use the engine to build other things. Power generation is at the center of all modern equipment; especially transit, such as snowmobile, ATVs, airplanes, boats, and a host of things. At the center is the power source. That is why I am focusing on the engine. The engine is key. It is the prime mover. All else is an add on.

If you have an engine, you can build a car. If you have a car and not the engine, you are then beholden to the engine company for layout. Lycoming, as an example, will not tailor their engine to meet a new roadable airplane requirement. They also want insurance, which is 3/4 of the price of the engine at least. They will not give my safe airplane a "break" for being safe even if it were somehow "proven" to be 10 times safer in engine out.

Put another way, if I have an airplane in the extreme that is safe with engine out, like a glider with a monster tire, parachute, etc (for sake of discussion follow along), then the reliability of the engine is not so critical, and it becomes more an inconvenience, just like a car is not critical if the engine quits, then the economics changes. If I have an airplane that lands at 100 mph and is a coffin when the engine quits, then the engine must be 100% bullet proof (Lancair IVP is an example). The cost of those two engines are 10:1 or more. We are so far up the backside of the cost curve in aviation that airplanes now are $400k, where they should be $40k. Any current aero engine will not get the volume production needed to bring the cost down to a point where the volume of the end product airplane can go up. Chicken and egg. No VC will go along these lines or entertain what I am trying to do. People have tried to use GM v-8s, but in the end GM will not allow their engines to be used in airplanes without their approval for very good reasons.

Enough rant. Thanks for the reply.

I could not agree more re the situation in general aviation. Really,aircraft engines are one step removed from lawnmower engines, but they cost a gazillion dollars. Imagine the shock of someone who has not flown in a small plane, when they step out of their, rattle-free nicely-finished beautifully-integrated Honda and into a contraption held together with rivets and dzus fasteners. The passenger starts to slam the door, and the pilot shrieks "Wait.. Don't slam that, you'll break the catch!" But hey, whadya want for $400,000? (Do you remember the first time you fired up a small plane, and the whole thing shook like a Labrador retriever coming out of the water as the engine kicked and bucked to life.?)

I had a BD5 kit at one point long ago, and planned to throw out the wings and make them much larger and of a more forgiving section shape, making a moderately low-performance motor-glider: especially something that could be landed at low speed, so that should the engine quit, I'd survive. I had a four-stroke counterbalanced Yamaha twin I planned to put in it. Unfortunately, the kit was sold in a divorce settlement (at least I guess it was unfortunate -- would I ever have found the time to build the thing? -- did anyone every find the time to build a BD5?)

I remember even way back when a Cessna 172 was about $40,000 bare, the average cost of manufacturer's liability insurance was $78,000 per plane sold. Fortunately, Cessna had Citations to sell. And as you know, despite their crude appearance these general aviation planes are extremely safe, in the sense that it is unheard of that a plane at less than VNE simply comes apart, or that something just breaks, and the plane comes tumbling down. No, they are not designed for crash-worthiness -- but when used as designed (and everyone knows the risks going in) they are remarkably good machines. There are always airworthiness directives, but I think it is really hard to claim that any manufacture has been negligent, or that any crash is the fault of the manufacturer. Naysayers would say: Well, what about the forked-tail doctor killers the Beech made? But don't you have to say to the doctor's family: "Did he read the flight manual?" (I haven't followed this recently, but last I knew there was not one that came apart at less than VNE.)

As they say: "Whadya call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start."

Re the rest of your post -- all good stuff. I pretty much agree point-by-point. If you can work with banks, that's clearly the way to go. Or do I have it wrong? The V in VC stands for "vulture" doesn't it.

And regarding engineering uncertainties, there's no substitute for simply building the thing -- it's hard to get a computer to push anything down the road. (With Vista, it may be hard just to get a computer to boot up, let alone do anything whatsoever of a useful nature!)

Blink,

I agree.

A BD5? A friend of mine built one with his dad. On first flight the engine had issues. His dad lost control while looking down trying to restart it, spun it in, ...dead. Hmmm. Not so good. They were one of the few who actually got it to fly...a few minutes at least. The BD17 looks interesting. Bede jr is now selling kits. I saw Jim at Sun N Fun a few years ago. I like Bede's posts on drag reduction going from a bd-4 to a cessna. Interesting how a sharp corner "box" does better than a rounded "streamlined" machine. He tells why.

Now you can appreciate part of my motive for doing my engine. I think it will work, or I will have lots of fun trying. The common idea I hear at EAA is "if we only had volume production of the engine it..." Volume means 100-300k+ units per year. The entire demand is at most 5k. Pilots are only .25% of the population. An airplane designer would have to take the entire market, and grab Grandma off the porch to get those kind of numbers. It would have to be "roadable" to suit the business guy, it must be usable daily, which may happen with the right engine but the public will take lots of time to get used to the idea, which means low volumes for 10-20 years. So how do you get volume? High price, no volume. Using Lycoming does not get volume or save the insurance costs I mentioned before. I get volume by selling engines as heaters/generators for your house. I design the engine so that it can also go into an airplane with a few mods. I get data and engineering costed through the house generator, not airplane sales. The airplane engine is the "advanced" model...

If the engine is light weight and can be taken out in sections, unlike a "block" then I can get the engine into a basement without a crane, ramp, and such. So if the engine needs overhaul a worker can piece wise take it out (three main sections) and lift it by hand with 1-2 guys, and then slap in a new/overhauled section as a module in a matter of an hour or less so that home owners don't stress out with having a stranger in their house for long. You know, white shirt, badge, board, big smile, a grown up Boys Scout. The lighter it is the lower the lower back tramma is.

Anyhow, that is where I am going with it. Thanks for the comments.

"Nevertheless, the auto industry kicked and screamed all the way."

The American companies did react this way. Japanese are nearly there with the objectives.

Last year I visited California, guess what I remarked: Nearly no evolution in technical consumer products.

I'm a development engineer for an American company. When we want to do something new we need to see the lawyers first (that division is bigger and they earn more) to study the impact of the product on the legal situation. When there is even a minor risk that someone could cause a failure, the project is cancelled.

We can only work on evolutions and crash actions when a supplier decides to stop the production of one of the components.

Sorry, got dragged away with my normal job.

What I try to say is that the Asian companies are constantly looking for new designs and are taking risks. Western companies don't do this risk taking any more. The bigger the company the less risk is taken.

Fire all the lawyers, send your cat to the judge when you are in another hot coffee trial and start developing new technologies. (might sound a bridge to far but after all we need to pick up evolution again)

Seaplaneguy is doing great things, he wants to take risks, and is not afraid of his head.

That is also why this discussion forum is great, you hear different opinions and can filter out the interesting things. Nobody is holing in his voice, keep it that way.

Mr. Fry,

High torque? You obviously misunderstood what I said. An engine for the seaplane would run at 2,500 rpm and produce around 250 hp, or about what a O-540 would do. No difference. No redrive needed just like a lycoming. Why the mock? Jokes on you...

At 250 rpm it would produce 1/10th or about 25 hp. At 50 prms, 5 hp at full "throttle." Nothing unusual about that either other than the ability to run at 50-250 rpm. There is a very good reason to do it this way, such as longevity, and some thermal recoup issues. Oil well pumps run about that speed. Running it slow also makes it much easier to make it less harsh.

As for neighbors, do the math. $150/house/month times 50= 7500. So for $250,000 you can get a net of $7500/month. That is like buying an apartment complex at 25 times months rents. Today apartment (passive income) are 125-150 times months rents. It should be around a 30-40% return depending on many factors. If you can leverage it at 75% it would be around 100% return. Not bad. Go into an apartment complex and you can flip it for some serious cash because of the new flow. Lot better than what a utility is making.

Ya, you don't get it. Have a fried brain nice day. (Too much coffee will fry your brain, mr. fry) (Are a back to the future guy? hmmm)

The mock motive is explained in a reply #174 to Elnav. Actually, although we could hardly be further apart on politics or world view, I don't really think you are evil incarnate. So if the mock bugged you, I apologize. I suspect, though (and you've said as much) that you are pretty thick-skinned. The line between sport and mortal combat can be fairly thin, I suppose. And to tell you the truth, although I've heard all the "fry" puns, they still make me chuckle.

Ken:

We seem to think along pretty much the same lines here.

Greg

Hey Ken, your mock didn't bug me, and maybe I dumped my comment into the wrong point in the discussion thread.

But unless I started a whole new thread I had to add the comment onto some post or other. Maybe I should have been a hippie back in the sixties. Unfortunately I wanted to be an engineer too badly to drop out and join a commune. Although maybe in a way I did. I bought a 50 footer and live aboard year round. Let me tell you, living aboard a boat on the end of a 30 Amp shore cord sure makes you conscious of energy conservation! When I sold my boat and eventually built a house on land I upgraded it for energy efficiency. I doubled the size of the floor area and cut the heating fuel from $1500 annual to $900 annual according to actual billing. At one point the power utility came and exchanged my meter and inspected the whole installation because they figured I had found a way to bypass the meter. According to them no one with that size house used so little electricity. So they concluded I must be cheating. And since I worked for a power utility they figured I had found a way at work to cheat the meter.

It appears to me that being an advocate for energy conservation and adopting a life style that uses less energy is considerd some kind of social disgrace . .. or worse.

In America I would be branded some kind of pinko -socialist or worse, communist, who is an enemy of society and the "american way of life". Sheesh!!

Cheers

Arild

elnav,

You are messing with their cash flow. You can do anything but mess with that flow.

We think alike in many many ways. (I, too was a hippy sympathizer in engineering school, and value simple living, sailing, and energy conservation.) Although I've only done some cruising, (as well as quite a bit of racing, etc.) hardly a day goes by when I don't think: wouldn't it be great to sell it all and buy a live-aboard boat. Frankly, I probably will, after the kids are in college.

Regards, Ken

Dear ken

Excellent plan. I thought of living on hills when I was 20. I went to North Himalayan place called Nainital, a hill station for my MS education. There was a big lake between two hills and city is on hills and I used to boat daily for few hours. It was sure fun and it still is. In my later life I lived 50m close to the sea at Kalpakkam in South India near Madras. We have this fast breeder reactor and also heavy water reactors at Kalpakkam www.igcar.ernet.in

Most funny thing about this place is that British here build a back water canal linked to sea waters for transpotation of goods. It was like a water road for small boats. It is still there, but used by fishermen now. No longer used for transportation.

Pondicheri about 150km from Madras (Chennai city) was a French Colony. There is a small French fort near Kalpakkam where only deads are buried and a cannon is placed outside this small building made of walls. They must be French men who came for business with Indians to sell their arms against British. These places must have been gifted to them as they did not fight Indians.

It is very suprizing that people from many civilizations came here and lived. Some are still there and living along with others and feel OK here. In early times, Indians used to look for brides from far places to build relationship with other countries. The women were like ambassadors of their countries. They were highly respected and were known from the name of their country. Panchali married five men in one family and came from Panchal. Women living with many men or getting child through man other than husband in a planned way was also written in history. The most surprizing things is having a child froma dead man. Surgeon could make use of the dead body to make his wife pregnent and obtain birth of a child normally son with something like tissue culture or whatever it may be. There is not much details other than that the body of the men was kept is some kind of oil for few days for the process.

One more interesting thing is that wars were not fought in civil areas and place was often selected for it ahead of time and preparation for war was made several months ahead of actual war with date fixed for it and time to start and stop war also fixed as per rules. There was also restriction on the type of warhead can be used or what should not be used in any case. There is also a description of viewing the war from remote and only few people had the instrument. These are so much in details that they sound true.

Mr. Fry,

OK. All in fun...

I see how you try to explain the cost buildup.

It is correct: the cost of the electricity is only a fraction of what we need to pay.

For a distribution company it is also very difficult to work with suppliers who supply when they want.

There are experiments set up to cope with this.

The big advantage would be that the distribution network would be simplified: no need to organize that the complete system is fed from one point (actual architecture)

But the distribution companies are so closely linked to the producers that they really don't want the consumer to be a supplier to. It is a shift of money to pay less tax. When we would get the same price as the producers, it would be a nice gain.

Masu:

Congratulations! Excellent thread.

Extensive research has gone into both the technical and economic aspects of exporting Icelandic geothermal power to Europe but progress seem to have stalled for the moment

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-49,GGLJ:en&q=Iceland++cable

Geothermal energy is good only from volcanic activity and is full of danger. It is like asking death to cook your bread which death may agree for a while. If it is an accepted way of life then it may be a fun for a while and nothing lasts forever in any way. One can get it without having to burn coal. I think those who live at such places are of high courage and greater mental strength than army men.

Deep drilling and using that temperature may not all that great idea.

Another risk about geothermal is related to tectonic and/or volcanic activity. You may have your system in place and are relying on the source when an earthquake or a volcanic eruption diverts your heat source.

When Mt. St Helen's erupted, the temperature of the hot springs at both Radium BC and Banff AB dropped significantly to the point the springs could both be classified as a warm spring. Neither place has recovered to their pre-Mt. St. Helen's temperature.

Geothermal power is already used to operate large Aluminum smelting plants, I think the heat source is stable as Iceland sit on the junction of two moving plates, it is not like a volcano that is supplied by a magma reservoir.

The cable would not have to be superconductive apparently a conventional cable could carry 600MW to Germany with 17MW losses or half that loss to Scotland.

Iceland consists of volcanoes as it is a part of the mid Atlantic ridge. While geothermal may be applicable there because of its particlar situation, it is not easily adaptable to other places where the source of the geothermal heat could be interrupted by tectonic events.

Energy recycling is a source of useable energy that sure interests me. Recovery of waste heat from all sources including the CO2 sequestration process seems logical. Already you can buy heat pumps for water heating and space heating with Coefficient of Performance rating of around 4.

Superconductors have been somewhat limited in application due to cooling requirements. In the "Clean Coal Technology" world there will be heaps of liquified CO2 available, hopefully the use of some of this as a coolant will speed the expansion of superconducting technologies.

Convenient supplies of clean CO2 should also be a boon for some agricultural enterprises including biomass fuel production.

It requires thinking outside the box, as Masu has designed this thread to promote.

Hi Emjay4119,

Have you seen my new blog An Engineer's Look at the Future of Energy where we are discussing all the technologies that this thread generated? The first thread Technologies_for_Future_Energy_and_Power_Production has a list of the technologies that were put forward in this thread and links to the discussions that have already taken place. Each week the Sunday mail out will have a new technology for discussion and I believe all the points you have raised are covered by existing topic on the list. If you however think there is something that you would like to add pleas use the link in the blogs preamble to send me an email and I will happily include it.

The whole discussion is, as you stated, designed to get people thinking out of the box and it is intended as an open document that anybody may use and republish whenever or wherever they believe it may do some good.