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It's not that the panels aren't efficient enough yet. The reason for the incredibly slow adoption is just like that in every industry: people are inherently lazy. They have to have an incentive to put forth the effort to make solar power a reality. There has to be a reasonable and dare I say sizeable tangible benefit for their efforts. The tangible benefit also has to be something that can be had in short order. The most logical benefit I can think of is a significant discount on taxes. Not just personal taxes but business taxes if a business chooses to give this a shot. EPACT was a surprising good start towards the needed remedy. It still has significant flaws the must be addressed. Why excluded people heating swimming pools and hot tubs with a solar water-heating system? Are they not some of the biggest consumers of electricity? Wouldn't it make sense for these heavy hitters to also be able to reap some rewards for using a more efficient system?

very cool, similar to a groundwater heat pump for heating your home. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/heatpumps.h tml

right. no one will ever read this since this story is already nearly a day old...

i've been using cfls for my entire house since around 1990 when they were about $20 each and the size of footballs. the current state of cfls today, especially in regard to startup time and the suggestted minimum run time is dramatically better. the core of this is the type of balast used in the bulb. if you have a "magnetic" balast, start up time to full brightness can be in the 3 or 4 second range and you need to run the bulb for a minimum of a half hour or so to ensure maximum bulb life. with the newer electronic balast, startup time is nearly instantaneous and your minimum run time is in the seconds.

so... get electronic balast cfls. more expensive, certainly... but given the dramatic price drop in all cfls over the last ten or fifteen years, still dirt cheap.

here are some fine sources for my statements:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_l amp#Other_CFL_technologies
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/ligh ting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic=12050

You may be interested in the annual Solar Decathlon, although specific passive technologies aren't the focus, there are definitely good ideas in terms of conservation, design, solar use, etc. to keep an eye on. You may also want to research the Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, who is doing very great things in the low sun angles over there.

You can also order a prefab house that uses less waste, responsible materials, and can even be LEED certified. Remember the initial cost and environmental hit of construction, and this starts to make sense. Over the long term, forgotten methods like geothermal heat pumps and rammed earth are real, yet unpopular options today.



The funny thing is that passive building was very common in the past, given the ease of doing things like orienting houses properly on a site, and the inherent efficiency of a heat pump system. Today you won't find a builder who will touch those crazy green ideas with a ten foot pole. There are a few firms if you look, but they are under the radar of the general population.

Actually both are space hogs, especially if you are talking about actual wind or solar 'powerplants'.

The consensus among a lot of the architectural and green-building community, as well as a long-term goal of the US Department of Energy, is residential solar. It doesn't take that much roof space to generate enough power for a home, and it is totally viable. The DOE, and their National Renewable Energy Labs have been sponsoring a competition for universities around the country to design, build and compete against each other with 100% solar powered houses. It's called the Solar Decathlon, and it's an incredible event. The last one, in October 2005, drew over, 100,000 people (picture) to the National Mall in Washington, DC.

I'd recommend taking a look. (Full disclosure: I'm on Cornell University's team).

>> Nuclear power is an inefficient method to create a buffer.

Beg to differ. Nuclear is perhaps the best option now for "clean" energy it produces spent fuel rods, which we can (the French do) recycle/reprocess (since only 4% of the U-235 fizzles, separating byproducts lets you use the same fuel over and over).

OTOH, 1993 worldwide emissions of mercury totalled 5500 tons. This is being controlled (142 tons from the U.S. by 1999), but in the rest of the world it's obviously a big polluter. Cite: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems /pollutioncontrols/overview_mercurycontrols.html/

>> even at low power levels, your fuel will keep fissioning merrily along

Not quite true. Lifetime on fuel rods is dependent on the number of fissions, not the time spent in the reactor. Control rods mediate the reaction or can shut it down nearly entirely. I have looked with "no joy" (unsuccessfully) for info on minimum power levels at nuke plants, my guess would be 5%-ish of maximum power just to keep the turbine spinning. There would also be some interconnect time if they're off-grid.

The info might not be the latest, but scroll down to the section on Energy Payback Time (EPBT): http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html. Looks like a couple of years, give or take. If the technology with the 40% efficiency mentioned is equally cost-effective, then we're probably down under a year.

I don't know what the current level of funding or commitment are, but there appears to be some information about Advanced Burner Reactors from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership at the DOE. This appears to be related to the Advanced Fast Reactor design, which is itself an extension of the IFR efforts.

I don't know if you realized this when you did your calculations, but refining results in slightly less than 50% yield for gasoline from a barrel of oil (according to the U.S. Department of Energy). So it's possible that we'd be left with less than 1500 'tankfuls' of gasoline, although we'd still have the 600 barrels per person.

Another reason is the efficiency of solar panels is questionable at best. ie. the embodied energy is so high that it's better for the environment not to use them.

Strange. That one slipped past my typo filter. That's kind of rare...

Anyways, yeah. Up to 60% savings for insulating and sealing.

1. Please do an estimate on what your annual power production will be. Find a map like this Illinois map from this link and figure out if your $8-$11k is better spent elsewhere for energy conservation. I know if you're not living in one of those two little pink splotches in Illinois, odds are your wind turbine will never pay for itself, whereas insulting your air vents will pay for itself within a year or two at most.
2. Trees will kill your wind generation capability. I believe the rule of thumb is your turbine needs to be X distance away from the nearest tree. X is some sort of multiple (3x, 4x) times the height of the nearest tree. If your house is shaded by 50 foot deciduous trees like mine is, you have no chance. Put up solar panels, and only if those said trees don't block those, either. (Trees are good, by the way; they reduce your cooling costs in the summer, and in the winter when the leaves fall off, the sun can heat your house).

1. Please do an estimate on what your annual power production will be. Find a map like this Illinois map from this link and figure out if your $8-$11k is better spent elsewhere for energy conservation. I know if you're not living in one of those two little pink splotches in Illinois, odds are your wind turbine will never pay for itself, whereas insulting your air vents will pay for itself within a year or two at most.
2. Trees will kill your wind generation capability. I believe the rule of thumb is your turbine needs to be X distance away from the nearest tree. X is some sort of multiple (3x, 4x) times the height of the nearest tree. If your house is shaded by 50 foot deciduous trees like mine is, you have no chance. Put up solar panels, and only if those said trees don't block those, either. (Trees are good, by the way; they reduce your cooling costs in the summer, and in the winter when the leaves fall off, the sun can heat your house).

That's what really matters when it comes to wind power. How strong of wind do you get? How often is it windy? Check out your location first to see if there is enough wind to begin with. I did a little research when my parents asked (and they have enough land that the neighbor problem wouldn't exist) and it turned out that for the most part it wasn't windy enough to make anything worthwhile.

Maybe they're using pure oxygen to reach those temperatures and get a more complete burn.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems /gasification/howgasificationworks.html

What evidence do you have that public transportation produces less greenhouse emissions than cars do? We get most of our power from coal (because of the same groups like the Sierra Club who don't seem to get the clue that nuclear power is a lot more environmentally friendly). Coal produces greenhouse gases. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts /favorites/fcvt_fotw67.html Public transportation doesn't do that much better in terms of energy per passenger mile than cars do. In some cases, it's a lot worse.

...well, at least it was cute and rhymed.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/b asics/jtb_biodiesel.pdf

"biodiesel can reduce the carcinogenic properties of diesel fuel by 94%"

Biodiesel exhaust != Diesel exhaust.

Your article didn't say how to convert the waste Borax back into Sodium Borohydride.

I did find an article that is somewhat useful here:

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress04/iii b1_wu.pdf#search=%22how%20to%20make%20Sodium%20bor ohydride%22

But it is a bit over my head technically. It sounds like you do some kind of electrolysis to convert back to Borohydride.

Steve

The US is quickly turning into the Nanny State. We live in a dangeous world, folks, but -- have no fear -- the mighty government is here to protect you from yourself.

Next thing you know, they'll be telling you how much water you legally can use to flush your crap down the toilet. Oh, wait...

Water splitting microbes -
Check out here, here or here.

Guess, your guess is wrong.
Be a little less sarcastic next time.

My ideal job would be in something like the Bell Labs of yester-years. Do you know of labs that have that kind of environment? National labs are supposed to have such an atmosphere, but my stint in one of them makes me think otherwise. .... Does Slashdot know of labs where basic research in applied engineering is still done in the US, without the pressure of money and immediate results?

What makes them expensive to make?

Well hey, you try turning sand into a semiconductor and not spend a lot of money in the process.

http://www.facsnet.org/tools/sci_tech/tech/fundame nts/clean.php3

http://www.eere.energy.gov/RE/solar_photovoltaics. html -- Scroll down to the bottom of the page for cost issues.

There is one factor that isn't addressed directly, only indirectly in terms of cost; and that's the incredible amount of energy required to make semiconductors (and you have to include the energy costs of creating the facilities in that) and that energy does not come from the solar cells the fab puts out. The whole affair would grind to a halt if you tried that, like a "free energy" machine unplugged from the wall. At which time the cost per any "excess" units would be phenomenal.

The whole thing runs on . . .oil. No oil. No solar cells. Ironic, innit?

And as the cost of oil goes up, the cost of manufaturing solar cells goes up. The break even point is an ever moving target proportional to the cost of what we're trying to replace with something cheaper, and/or compelled to consume its own output in a vain attempt to keep going.

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.

This is the Renewable Dilemma, that it takes energy to make usable energy and without a source external to the system it feeds on itself. It isn't about cost, it's about energy. To follow the money you need to follow the energy, because over the short run the money can be used to disguise what's really going on(investment, tax incentives, etc) at the energy level, but when the energy runs down, so does the money; and costs skyrocket.

So you grow biofuels to replace oil, which means you have to use your biofuels to grow your crops and refine them into fuel. How much fuel is actually left over when you've finished this and - at that point how much is the "excess" going to cost per gallon to the consumer - assuming there is any?

That is your true cost of renewables as an oil "replacement." What you have to pay when the oil is gone and no longer driving the process. Using solar cells to make solar cells.

You won't like it.

But are you starting to get it? Solar cells are expensive because it takes energy to make them.

KFG

Great idea. Let's burn coal to power our cars instead of oil.

Huge improvement, sir. Or at least it is if we have clean coal power.

"4. Northeastern US power grid, 1965
A single protective relay tripped in Ontario, overloading nearby circuits and causing a cascade of outages that left 30 million homes without power for up to 13 hours. A fragile, redundancy-free design ensured that it would happen eventually. After decades of repairs and upgrades, it happened again in 2003."

Although this point implies that the 2003 outage originated in Ontario as well, a joint U.S. and Canadian investigation found that it originated in Ohio due to several failures of FirstEnergy corporation, among them the failure to keep trees near high voltage power lines adequately trimmed! When the Eastlake generating plant in Ohio went offline during a period of high demand, other high voltage power lines in the area experienced increased demand to pick up the slack. The increased current across these HV lines caused them to sag and short-out when they came into contact with said trees. HV lines heat up and sag as current increases, and this is accounted for in both their design and in guidelines for keeping trees near HV power lines trimmed, which were apparently not adhered to by FirstEnergy.

This wasn't the only thing that FirstEnergy did wrong however. In total, they were found to be in violation of *seven* NERC standards. Although more reliability and redundancy could be built into the North American power grid, blaming the 2003 outage on poor engineering is not accurate. It was FirstEnergy's failure to adhere to standards that precipitated the cascade failure. As such, it would be more accurate to blame greedy corporate management that was too cheap to shell out adequate funds for operation.

For more on this, check out the report found here:

https://reports.energy.gov/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf

This NCS analysis supports the SWG's finding that viruses and worms prevalent across the Internet at the time of the outage did not have any significant impact on power generation and delivery systems.

Their definition of "significant" should be examined, but that's not the conclusion I was quoting. It was entirely possible that the systems were overloaded by network traffic and that's what caused them to not trigger miss alarms. That's why the issue was investigated. Whether or not that would constitute a "significant" impact or not is something only the report writers can answer. What's not denied by the above is that critical communications between operators and management were impeded. The lack of human operators to get what they needed is a significant problem.

This is not some opinion I pulled out of my ass. Schneier came up with it and the accident report does little to refute his notions. Specifically (pages 50 and 51), the number one cause of the accident is "inadequate system understanding". Remote terminals then the main system failed along with it's alarms. As Schneier noted the report states:

14:54 EDT. However, for over an hour no one in FEs control room grasped that their computer systems were not operating properly, even though FEs Information Technology support staff knew of the problems and were working to solve them

You can take it back further to the first failures of the State Estimators due to network communications problems. It was this problem that had IT people fooling with the system to begin with. Later, the alarm system stalled. I imagine both of these problems can be traced back to the blaster worm then tearing through corporate networks the world over. They did not get their contingency planning systems back till 16:04 (p49). The report, for one reason or another, does not mention the exact reason for the SE failures so all we have is strong coincidence.

For the second time in two weeks, I've had to correct you when you blamed an operating system you don't like for errors in somebody else's software.

Your compulsions and ideas are entirely your own, but I'm flattered by your close attention to my writing.

Actually, more often than not the power company doesn't have to purchase excess energy.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/netm etering.shtml
http://www.irecusa.org/connect/net_metering.pdf

Well, according to the US department of energy, some fuel cell systems achieve efficiencies upwards of 80%. According to this, a cutting edge coal gasification plant achieves 45-50% thermal efficiency. Meanwhile, here (oddly, I had troubling Googling for a more authoritative link), you see a gasoline ICE achieves around 25-30% efficiency. So, in the end, hydrogen is a win.

But, the thing you really need to understand is that efficiency isn't *really* the point, anyway. The real reason to use hydrogen is that:

a) You can leverage alternative fuel sources. You can't power a gasoline engine with solar cells, a wind farm, or a nuclear power plant. With hydrogen, you can.

b) You can easily leverage new technologies as they come available (such as coal gasification).

c) You can more easily upgrade a few thousand power plants with newer technology, both to improve efficiency and to reduce harmful pollutants. Upgrading millions of cars, not so easy.

And lastly:

d) It reduces the dependency on fossil fuels, which, as we reach peak oil (assuming we haven't already) is going to be *vital*.

Department of Energy's plan, from August, 2004:

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarker sImplementationPlan.pdf

Includes:
1. Large Surface Markers;
2. Small Subsurface Markers;
3. Berm;
4. Buried Storage Rooms;
5. Hot Cell; and
6. Information Center.

http://downlode.org/etext/wipp/ http://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarker sImplementationPlan.pdf As presently planned, the Level II messages will state through text and pictographs that there is danger present, and the danger is below the land surface. Level III messages tell that radioactive and hazardous waste is buried, instruct persons not to dig or drill, indicate the depth of burial, when WIPP was closed, that the repository is intended to last at least 10,000 years, that there is a decreasing danger over time, and requesting that the messages be updated to the current language or languages in use (space will be left on the markers for this purpose). Level IV messages expand on the above topics, and also address the potential for releases through ground water, identify cancer as the primary risk, provide detailed information on radioactive and chemical constituents of the waste, provide a geologic cross-section with reasons for choosing the Salado Formation for the WIPP, describe the locations world-wide where other nuclear waste sites are located, and urge readers to seek out those other sites and ensure consistency of messages. To enhance the potential for comprehension of the messages, it is planned that they will be inscribed in seven languages: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, and Navajo. This spread of languages representing different cultures and geographical regions will, it is hoped, potentially allow the markers to serve as "Rosetta Stones" for future populations, and thus increase the chance that they will be understood. Other means of improving possibilities for comprehension include the use of complementary diagrams and pictographs, use of simple words and short sentences, and through the testing of message comprehension with populations indigenous to areas speaking each language, as described in this plan. The proposed text of the Level II, III, and IV messages are included in Appendix PIC of the CCA. Pictographs proposed in Appendix PIC include the following. Level II Message: Graphic symbols of the human face expressing horror and terror; DOE/WIPP 04-3302 42 Graphic symbols of the human face expressing something nauseating or poisonous; and Trefoil and biohazard symbols. Level III Message: The pictographs described above, plus: Diagram conveying the danger of digging or drilling; Spatial perspective of the marking system to the underground repository; and Time elapse diagram from WIPP closure via north celestial pole migration, including faces showing disgust at closure to neutral at 10,000 years, to contentment well beyond 10,000 years, and decreasing size radioactive symbol. Level IV Message: The pictographs described above, plus: Detailed spatial perspective of the repository; Geologic cross section of the WIPP site and relative position of the repository within the formations; Periodic chart of the elements, identifying the major radioactive and nonradioactive elements present in waste buried at the WIPP site; Azimuths of the bright stars Vega, Arcturus, Sirius, and Canopus as they rise above the horizon at the time of WIPP closure, allowing calculation of the time of closure; and World map showing the locations where other radioactive wastes are buried. Drawings of these pictographs are shown in CCA Appendix PIC.

[...] (hear that Bush?!). [...]

George Bush lobbied heavily for funding for research into Hydrogen powered cars in 2003 and has been very active in supporting alternative fuels and letting the country know that our dependence on imported oil must be reduced.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20 030206-12.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/energy/
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/

Perhaps it is not George Bush that has the hearing problem. Turn off the blare of Michael Moore screaming "Haliburton Sucks!".

You missed the part where calendar life of modern Li cells, not the crap you are still using in your cell phones, mind you, is pushing the 15-year-mark. They wouldn't be seriously considering them for PHEVs were this not the case -- in fact it is part of their standard. Latest estimates by SAFT are 17 years, and other manufacturers are confident they can acheive the 15-year figure as they are not that far off from it.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/p rogram/2004_energy_storage.pdf

Note many of these cells are already available for purchase, e.g. the A123 cells are coming out in the DeWalt 36V power tools which are already taking pre-orders. So we're not talking "10 years down the road" technology here.

Yes, efficiency has generally remained at around 15%. (Except for one company in California, which is commercially producing panels with 21% efficiency, but the competition remains stuck around 15%.)

Cost per watt is another matter however. The US Department of Energy (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/mission_vision_ goals.html) reports a rather dramatic drop in the cost per Kilowatt-hour over 12 years from $0.40 in 1991 to $0.20 in 2003. I believe the price has spiked in the last couple of years due to very high demand at this price point. Demand is projected to outstrip supply for the next couple of years until new solar panel production facilities can be completed.

This development may help to further reduce costs by allowing the creation of solar panels which use fewer solar cells.

There have been improvements in safety systems. The Westinghouse AP1000 recently approved by the NRC and proposed for deployment at 5 locations in the States within the next 8 years is projected to be 100 times safer than current reactors (and less than half the price to build).

See:

http://www.nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeAcc identsAtNuclearPowerPlants

and

http://www.nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCos tOfNuclearPower

Regarding waste storage, Yucca is undergoing final review. In the longer term the US proposes to build next generation "burner" reactors to transmute the trans Uranics to shorter-lived waste. Current plans are for prototypes in 2014, commercial deployment in the 2020's.

It remains to be seen if the US can maintain the funding required to see these projects to frution. Long term development projects in the States have to have their funding reviewed every year and there is always some senator with an axe to grind...

Anyway, see:

http://www.gnep.energy.gov/

And if you consider intermediary methods of storing energy, fusion power for home heating goes back much further.

By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

You're way behind the times; they already do. The US burns about 9 million barrels/day of motor gasoline out of a hair over 20 million total.

Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

Setting aside the question of why you drive a Suburban while touting light SUV-class stuff (hypocrisy?), the SUV form factor is inherently draggier than a car. The same powerplant technologies that can make a 40 MPG SUV can make an 80 MPG car. You know, like the Daimler-Chrysler ESX3, the GM ParadiGM and the Ford whateveritwas.

Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.

Done long before you ever thought to ask. (More here).

Take it from the horse's mouth: 2005 ethanol production was only ~4 billion gallons. Production this year isn't even projected to reach 6 billion gallons.

Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology.

I've read The Billion-Ton Vision. It projects a whole 10% of transportation fuels will come from biomass in 2020 (see the sidebar in the first page of the introduction, page 18).

How many people can actually use E85 when ethanol is only 10% of transportation fuel? That's the proof that the whole flex-fuel vehicle thing is a scam. The auto companies are getting CAFE credits for guzzling monsters that can run on E85, without there being enough ethanol to run more than a small fraction of them.

Production of ethanol loses about 50% of the energy right off the top; it disappears into the process either as metabolic losses of the yeast or process heat in hydrolization or distillation. That's energy that can be used productively if you aren't wedded to the idea of using liquid fuels. There are other ways to use biomass, such as carbonization. Direct-carbon fuel cells (a variant of molten-carbonate fuel cells) can convert charcoal to electricity at up to 80% efficiency, and the off-gas from carbonization is combustible and can run engines. With a scheme like that, you can do a lot more than just offset some fraction of oil consumption; you can:

• Provide all transport energy.
• Between carbonization and wind, provide most scheduled electric generation requirements now provided by gas and coal.
• Manufacture excess charcoal for use as a carbon-sequestering soil amendment (search for "terra preta de los indios", or start reading here).

Ethanol is a very lossy way of making biomass suitable for even lossier internal combustion engines. It's a dead end.

By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switc

Long-Term Savings Tip: Consider demand or tankless water heaters. Researchers have found savings can be as much as 34% compared with a standard electric storage tank water heater.

They're talking about electric units rather than gas ones, but heat is heat, so long as you're comparing two units that use the same source of it.

In any event, I found this page within 2 minutes using Google. The conventional wisdom is that tankless heaters save at least 30% over tank ones. You disagree. I don't know what's wrong with your math, but if you were correct, then the rest of the universe would surely agree with you. So I say the onus is on you to prove how everyone else is wrong.

Any new built home should be ultra insulated and be self powered. The concept is called "zero energy homes". By using "superinsulation" techniques, combined with intelligently purchased home appliances, and then adding in such things as active and passive solar heating, hotwater, and garnering your own electrical supply with PV or wind, etc, you can get down to about zilch for "energy bills" and always have your home be powered and heated and cooled.

    In addition, they should be built to be storm proof as much as possible, ice, wind, even fire can be dealt with using more advanced construction techniques like earthships, cordwood masonry, concrete domes, earth bermed,etc, plenty of different styles and techniques. There's no one size fits all, it really depends on geographical location and budget.

here are a some useful links to get you started

http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar_decathlon/ (check the homepages of last years entries to see the completed structures, the homes even run the car!)

http://www.google.com/search?q=zero+energy+homes&s tart=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

http://www.google.com/search?q=earthships&start=0& start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Basically, ANYTHING but normal energy hog and fragile square stick built framed housing. That is so 20th century. Oil is not two dollars a barrel anymore, yet most homes are built about the same way they were back when that was true. You got to ask yourself, is that just plain nuts, or what? I vote "plain nuts". There are better ways to do things now...

I am afraid that you do not know what you are talking about in this case.

The ethanol engines were of the same DDC design as the diesel engine used for comparison. However, the engines were modified so they could run on E95: DDC changed the electronic control system, enlarged the holes in the fuel injectors, added a glow plug to assist ignition during cold starts, and increased the compression ratio (from 18:1 for diesel to 23:1 for E95).

(http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/pdfs/adm_cs.pdf)

Another tasty tidbit:

One of the E95 trucks logged more than 325,000 miles without a major engine overhaul. However, operational issues are inevitable with any new technology, and the DDC ethanol engines were no exception. The two main problems related to the alcohol engines: injector plugging and glow plug failure.

My diesel already runs at 22:1 compression, and has a turbo. The Elsbett multifuel kit installs longer, hotter glow plugs, that are kept on for longer (~10 minutes) to keep things burning nicely until the engine heats up. You can get such a relay separately, it's a standard Bosch part, and I see them on ebay occasionally. I'm pretty sure that I can run E95 without any modification :P

I'm trying to figure out what making alcohol has to do with making hydrogen. I think you're mistaking this for another (E85) technology.

The deal is air quality. Maybe coal can be burned cleaner than oil. My bet is on: probably not.

The government is supposedly working on a coal fired zero-emissions power plant by the name of FutureGen. If you'd rather get an official source, here's the official Dept of Energy page.

I have numbers now... From the US Department of energy. High pressure sodium is still the winner in light per watt for outdoor lighting by 40%.

You need to read your own references before you call bullshit on somebody.

Your articles say that they're more efficient that incandescent (duh), and Compact Flourescent. Those are at the low end of the efficiency scale.

White LEDs aren't even close to 100% efficient, because a large portion of the light they emit isn't in the visible spectrum. They don't work strictly like normal LEDs.

Efficiency wise, white LEDs fall between CF and traditional flourescent in producing visible light. I'd provide a reference, but there's no definitive guide, so instead I'll show you how to do the research and the math yourself. First read about how to determine how much light an LED actually produces, and why you can't compare lumens to candela directly. Then take a look at some incandescent and flourescent lamps, and you'll see that incandescent produces between 15 and 20 lumens per watt, CF produces between 40 and 75 lumens per watt, traditional flourescent goes up to about 100 lumens per watt, and high pressure sodium are around 140 lumens per watt.

The best white LEDs currently available produce 37 lumens per watt and there may be 60 lumens per watt LEDs available soon.

It pisses me off that blatent mis-information like what you posted gets modded up, while the truth doesn't, just because geeks have an unnatural love for LEDs.

If "BIG IF" a housing/large apartment/buildings are required to install sabatier conversion unit and solar power unit? The energy input (+400C and some pressure) with CO2 and 4H2 intake (even at low efficiency), output would be methane, a source of energy which can heat up the house/building and excess production can feed into molten-carbonate fuel cell plants through existing gas pipe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_process

"Circle of life, Simba, Circle of life."

When the methane is collected and used where molten-carbonate fuel cells are used to further absorb CO2 and use methane as anode gas, it can be used to produce electricity at ~80% efficiency (at the most). Then the circle of life breaks for CO2 with energy conversion gain with less CO2 output as byproduct.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/fu elcells/fc_types.html

Of course, there are problems with MCFC due to high temperature, but this can be easily overcome. I mean, it can't be harder than overcoming FUSION's crazy amount of heat.

Yeah... but I know... I could be talking about of my ass.

If your A/C is centralised, you might consider using a ground-source heat pump to take part of the load. It would require some ground area for the pipework, which can be laid either horizontally or vertically.

The general principle is a heat exchanger with a compressor, much like an ordinary air-sink A/C system, except that it uses the ground which has a much larger specific heat capacity; this makes it considerably more efficient. I'm not sure whether this technology is directly applicable to data centres, as it's usually used with liquid systems in underfloor heating and cooling.

The cost for a GSHP capable of providing all the heating requirements for a UK home is currently in the 5-10 kGBP range.

Alternatively, there are energy storage systems which might allow you to transfer some (probably not all) of your peak load to off-peak hours. Economic constraints probably prevent you from using fuel cells, but deep-cycle lead-acid batteries may be worth investigating, along with compressed air.

But look at the citation for the data on that table: Energy and the U.S. Economy: A Biophysical Perspective Cutler J. Cleveland; Robert Costanza; Charles A. S. Hall; Robert Kaufmann Science, New Series, Vol. 225, No. 4665 (Aug. 31, 1984), 890-897.

Technology has advanced a long way since 1984, particularly in the area of enzymology to break down chemically resistant carbon in plant tissues, like cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Brazil's ethanol program relies heavily on conversion of sugar; to make ethanol economically competitive in the US, we would need to rely on conversion of cross-linked starch and long-chain polymers. The phenolics in lignin would be a feedstock for industrial chemistry. Here's some more general info.

The USDA's Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit is all about developing new tools to increase the efficiency of extracting usable energy from plant products. Here are a few examples:

Aqueous Enzymatic Extraction of Corn Oil and Value-Added Products from Corn Germ Produced in New Generation Dry-Grind Ethanol Processes

Economic Competitiveness of Renewable Fuels Derived from Grains and Related Biomass

Enzyme-Based Technologies for Milling Grains and Producing Biobased Products and Fuels

Full disclosure: I don't work for these guys, and I have no financial interest in bio-based fuels (other than the usual "No Blood For Oil" thing). I just think that what they're doing is cool.

The better the insulation, the greater effect thermal mass will have on your house. I recently had built a new modular house with Energy Star windows, R-30 in the ceiling, R-19 in the walls, and an R-6 Mylar faced insulating blanket on the basement walls extending from the joists to below the frostline, and am heating with a Trane high efficiency heatpump backed up by propane. Because of the good insulation, even if it is in the 20's outside, the temperature only drops a degree an hour or so if I turn back the thermostat. If you want to keep the house at 70 during the morning breakfast hours, cool at 60 when away, and 65 at night, the temperature does not really have an opportunity to settle at your programmed levels, at least not for very long. I have thought about getting a programmable thermostat, but I am lazy and just keep the house at 70 all the time, unless I am going to be away for a couple of days or more.

Keeping the house at a constant temperature has advantages in itself. Because of the lag in warming the walls, floors, etc. compared to the air, keeping the temperature at a constant compromise setting insures that those surfaces you touch feel warm as well. If the air is 72 degrees, but your desk is 65, you will have cold hands, and that isn't even talking about how cold the bathroom floor feels at night after cutting back the heat. By the time the floor, counters, and desk are warm, you are well onto your way to work.

The house itself also tends to benefit from constant temperature as well. I found out the hard way that temperature swings can make drywall crack after I heated the house back up after cutting the heat back to 50 when I went away for several days. Frequent temperature variations also start to work loose fasteners such as nails and screws as well, and can eventually result in squeaky floors, cracked grout, and nail pops in drywall as well.

Because of the improvements in windows, doors, heating systems, and insulation built into newer houses, my new house has about half the energy cost of my old 1946 vintage farmhouse, despite being 20 percent larger and built on the same windswept hill as my old house. One thing that is important when doing major energy efficiency upgrades to insulation and windows is to optimize the heating system for the new heat loss characteristics of the house. Just as a big pickup truck needs a V-8 to move it along as well as a Civic with a 4 banger, a house with major improvements to doors, windows, and insulation will be able to get by with a smaller furnace as well. If you are replacing an oil furnace with another, keep this in mind if you have the opportunity to replace the furnace. If the furnace has been recently replaced, you might still be able to tweak some things like nozzle size, fuel pressure, etc. to optimize what you have.

Another thing to consider if the furnace is on the "to do" list is to investigate Geothermal Heat Pumps . They are not for everyone, and the capital investment can have a fairly long payback period, but if you are blessed with suitable soil, a large enough lot, or a nearby body of water, they can cut your heating and air conditioning bills to a fraction of the cost of heating with oil or other fossil fuels. I made the decision not to go with the Geothermal heat pump because of the extra cost and a rapidly tightening construction budget, but with the recent increases in the price of propane and looming increases in electricity, it is one decision I might have reconsidered.

The Federal energy bill that was signed into law and went into effect Jan 1 has some nifty tax credits. Maybe your boss might be interested. And if you are in California it just got even more interesting. Not totally free, but some dineros to be saved there on installs. HTH

GM didn't go for ultimate slipperiness -- the Vette redirects some air to the front brakes for helping cool them under track conditions, and it uses some air for downward force for stability at high speeds on the track. Things Toyota didn't exactly have to worry about with the Prius.

It looks like Cd's can get down to 0.11 when it's made a really important criterion.

The UNH study is based on a ~20 year U.S. DoE study on algae biodiesel. Anyway, while it is true that there is enough land in the United States to grow enough algae to replace all gasoline and diesel fuel use, it's not the ideal solution. The problem is that the algae requires something around 13% CO2 gas to grow in any useful amount. The level of CO2 naturally occuring in the atmosphere is about 0.035%. The only economical source to generate that much CO2 is burning Coal. So, the entire process still yields tremendoes amounts of CO2, contributing to global warming. Certainly, it is better to harness CO2 from existing Coal power plants for biodiesel instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, but it is not a permanent solution.