[Don_1]

...... helps keep me from going completely bonkers.

I have a nasty feeling I may regret writting that.

[billinthewoods]

...... helps keep me from going completely bonkers.

I have a nasty feeling I may regret writting that.

i think you may be right.


i dont think its possible to eradicate waste. luckily by using such methods as hydro, wind and light, with the latter 2 there is no problem with waste and with the former the waste can be used for other things.
im sorry that i come back to it but, before the water goes back into the system we have it drop into a "bath/pot/tub" we use that as drinking water, the rest goes back into the watercourse.
and again, i realise that this is not entierly possible in the mainstream (see what i did there?) its easily done on a local level.
wood, wood, wood. it heats, the charcoal can filter and be used on the land, the re-gen can be used for crafts, any waste can be burned, coppice is a damn sight better for the environment than overgrown, overplanted woodland. thats why i live in the woods and why wood is my best friend (no hidden meaning intended)

[Geezer]

Why don't they convert that bloody silly London wheel thing into a giant windmill? It ought to be good for a couple of watts  []

Ah yes Don. See your point about geothermal on the Earth's surface.

[SteveFish]

I hate to disturb the Bill and Don show, but...

The model I said was working just fine was clearly referring to the fact that people will buy what is least expensive. Renewables are rapidly moving to be less expensive than Fossil fuels, and some are already. If the US were to cut out all the corporate welfare going to fossil fuel and nuclear corporations this process would go faster here.

Solar PV panels compete very well with commercial power in areas where there is plenty of sun. My example of having 2K of PV was actually my total investment. My wife and I are living on 900 watts of panels, and we also share this same system with my daughter and her family next door. 450 watts/household is about what all my closest neighbors have. When I switched over to PV and had to think about how I was spending my power the demand dropped dramatically, and my quality of life actually improved. We and our daughter's household each have separate satellite internet and 5 computers between us. We don't have TV but we both have DVD players and screens. We have blenders, clothes washers, microwaves and other such stuff. All it took was a small change in attitude and planning. The rest of the PV I purchased for the new house that I am constructing myself. It is partly set up to run power tools. As the cost of electricity goes up, I am laughing.

Commercial solar thermal electric can store heat in order to provide continuous power.

The bird kill from big wind generators is minuscule. One of the early fields, I think at Altamont, was put in a major bird flyway, but others that are not in a flyway don't kill many birds.

A geothermal electric plant in Switzerland, near a population center, caused a 3 Richter scale quake. Around here this would not even make the local news, and we talk about how they are fun. Fortunately, there are plenty of regions for dry hot rock wells that are far away from population centers.

What is needed to make all of the separate commercial scale renewables work is a smart grid and the new very high voltage DC transmission lines in order to connect regions together that are far apart. I think I saw a plan to put solar in Africa and send the power to Europe and there is a plan on the east coast of the US to put a string of offshore wind mills that would cover a big enough north/south region so that the system would produce continuous power.

The most important thing to make renewables work is conservation, insulation, and solar thermal hot water and yes, as much as is possible, distributed electrical power at the household and community level.

All that said, I am pretty pessimistic. There are organizations who are actively working very hard to keep this from happening just to squeeze more profit from fossil fuels.

Steve

[CliffordK]

I do like the idea of distributed power generation.

And, think that all new construction should include a $10K (or more) solar electric, and solar Hot Water system (at least where you get a reasonable amount of sunshine).

Also consider passive cooling in the locations that need it.

Wind power is great where one has wind...  I never seem to have a lot of wind down near the ground where I'm at, and many lots aren't setup for personal wind generators.

[billinthewoods]

i have a wind genny that i built, the problem is that it is homemade from an old electric scooter, it needs waaaaaay too much wind to get it moving.

i also have the problem of solar panels. ill be exstatic if someone can show me otherwise, but living in gloomy wales in the uk i have a real problem getting any real sunshine, i dont see it being a good way of spending my money.
like i say, please, please, please can someone show me a solra panel that doesnt need light to make electricity lol. till then ill keep burning off my candles at a rate of knots and going to bed early

[Geezer]

Bill,

You could do what they did not so long ago. Get a couple of cows and put them in a byre next to your bedroom. My mother told me this was a very effective method of home heating.

[billinthewoods]

i have a wicked awesome stove to heat, but beef does taste good.

[peppercorn]

Bill,
You mentioned that you make biodiesel. I don;t know how much you're able to make, but you could use it in old genset if you've got enough spare.
Personally, I'm quite keen to try wood-gas for domestic electricity production (plus waste heat for hot-water/heating).

Concentrated solar may bring the costs of PV generation down for cloudy Wales...  I like the solar-trough approach due to only needing single axis tracking.

[billinthewoods]

slow down there peppercorn
"
Concentrated solar may bring the costs of PV generation down for cloudy Wales...  I like the solar-trough approach due to only needing single axis tracking."
translate for me lol.

i make 150l of bio at a time, it is enough to keep the vehicles running and for use in a backup generator. unfortunately, if we use it to make electricity too often it doesnt work out any cheaper than an electricity supplier

[SteveFish]

There is a bio diesel company in my area and it has a lot of customers driving old Mercedes diesels. It is a status symbol here to have a nifty old car that smells like french fries (chips) when it drives by. I know the owner of the company and he is a very serious (and nice) person, however I always thought that the modification to run a diesel directly off of the oil, as the engine was originally designed to do, and just skip the cost of converting vegetable oil to diesel makes more sense.

[billinthewoods]

with our deisel there is no mod. you put the bio straight in, it goes a bit thick in the winter, add normal white deisel or a dash of petrol and away you go.
no engine mod. it costs 40 something pence per litre to buy waste oil and about 25 pence per litre to refine it. with costs on top it is about 75p/ltr as opposed to the current £1.25.9/ltr.
the start-up equipment to make 150L at a time cost about £200

however i will grant you that any vehicle newer than about 2003 does seem to have problems with the bio, i think the engines are getting to hi-tech and in many ways a lot like petrol engines, too computerised and not enough old fashioned combustion

[peppercorn]

slow down there peppercorn
"Concentrated solar may bring the costs of PV generation down for cloudy Wales...  I like the solar-trough approach due to only needing single axis tracking."
translate for me lol.

Not a trough but does have fairly simple tracking tech.

[CliffordK]

I suppose my question is why concentrated solar would be so much better than "regular" solar on a cloudy day.

I've been wanting to experiment with some of the Sanyo bifacial solar panels, with the idea that the back side will be able to generate a higher percentage of the power on a cloudy day.  However, some of the other brands are getting to be significantly less expensive, so I'm re-thinking some of my goals.

[peppercorn]

I suppose my question is why concentrated solar would be so much better than "regular" solar on a cloudy day.

A good question. On a completely overcast day - very little.
The advantage in my mind is for the the person who is good with their hands.  Buying a much smaller and less expensive (for the same output) high-temperature pv panel that can generate as many Watts with a concentrator seems a better use of investment, especially in a lower sunlight area.  This applies as long as the tracking and concentrating mechanism can be made on a shoe-string.

I've been wanting to experiment with some of the Sanyo bifacial solar panels, with the idea that the back side will be able to generate a higher percentage of the power on a cloudy day.  However, some of the other brands are getting to be significantly less expensive, so I'm re-thinking some of my goals.

Other panel designs will recover more ambient light (a remarkable amount of bluer spectrum light makes it through the cloud) by moving the focused spectrum towards the blue end or having three 'doped' regions on the substrate to 'catch' red, green and blue light when available.

[k.anderson3454]

We have so many renewable energy. Nature is indeed very amazing.

[glenncz]

Renewable's are only renewable as long as politicians decide that their construction and operation is worth the enormous tax breaks and incentives that they receive.  Because almost no country has money to pay for anything, it means that we construct renewable energy makers by either decreasing federal spending on other services or by placing the costs on the federal decific, meaning we are taking a loan which we plan on paying the interest on forever. 

You see the word renewable is just a "clever" word, because no "person" would ever use their money to construct a renewable energy maker, because there is no such thing.  The only reason a person buys renewable energy or builds a renewable energy maker, is because the gov't pays a very substantial amount of the cost, otherwise it would never make near the energy to make it plausible, let alone renewable. 

The word Renewable is a very clever word!  You would think that by its' definition that a renewable energy source contributes energy to our society, when in fact, they take energy and wealth from our society, in every case, that is why such a clever word was coined for deception, and it has worked quite well.

[SteveFish]

Glenncz:

Your information is faulty. There are subsidies for renewable energy, but there are even greater ones for oil, coal and nuclear. In any case the fossil fuels are running out and getting more expensive, while renewables are getting more efficient and less expensive.

Steve

[peppercorn]

The only reason a person buys renewable energy or builds a renewable energy maker, is because the gov't pays a very substantial amount of the cost, otherwise it would never make near the energy to make it plausible, let alone renewable.

You clearly have absolutely no idea what the term 'Renewable Energy' means.
I particularly like "renewable energy maker" []

Just out of interest what category of energy generation would you put the Hoover Dam in?
Would you say that it's energy contribution has not been substantial, plausible or renewed in the last 70 years?

[Geezer]

Just out of interest what category of energy generation would you put the Hoover Dam in?

Sheesh Peppercorn. That's an easy one. Obviously, it's vacuum energy.

There's another one in Sweden called the Electrolux Dam.