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Because fuel cells:

1. Cost a fortune.

2. Run off fuels so explosive they make gasoline look like water.

3. Run off an energy storage medium that has to be produced. If you make the hydrogen from steam reformation of natural gas, it's still fossil fuel and only slightly better carbon footprint than burning the natural gas directly in the engine. If you make the H2 from electrolysis of water powered by renewable energy, it's hugely expensive and with 1/3 as many batteries or windmills you could just feed the electricity directly into batteries.

4. Rely on a hugely expensive non-existent infrastructure. Right now there are billions of EV charging points, also called "wall sockets", millions of more powerful 240V points ready to be wired up (called "oven and electric dryer circuits"), and thousands of level 2 240V public charging stations. As the standard battle described in the RTFA settles, fast DC charging stations can be built along highways for ~$40,000 each. Meanwhile there are a handful of $500,000 hydrogen refueling stations in the entire USA, Gropinator Ahhnold's Hydrogen Highway in California is dead, and the oil companies and car companies are stalled on the chicken-and-egg of "WHEN you build your cars in volume, maybe we'll build some stations" while hoping for government handouts to break the impasse.

H2 may still have a role as a better range-extender than a combustion engine powered by gasoline/bioethanol/whatever, but it's got to show up first. It's likely to start with fleet vehicles run from a central depot. (Go to http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/ and look for electric and H2 stations in your area, though ignore the private H2 refueling stations.)

more fun facts, the SNAP-10 weighed half a ton. http://www.etec.energy.gov/History/Major-Operations/SNAP-Overview.html

Plus of course those nasty oxides of nitrogen (since the combustion is happening in air) that turn into nitric acid when you breath them in to moist lungs. You don't get much of them but a wild absolute claim like that (emissions are only water) shows that you have either been very badly conned by PR or are deliberately attempting to fool others that you assume are either very poorly informed or of low intelligence.

Talk about low intelligence! Your claim took about fifteen seconds to dismiss from that evil PR tainted source, the U.S. Department of Energy on Hydrogen Vehicles...

You see, with a lot more than a high-school education and some practical experience with real life mechanical things, you will learn that even hydrogen cars can use emission scrubbers to get rid of trace nitrogen oxides... emissions are what comes OUT OF THE CAR. Which you will learn when you get one and have to have them tested.

That's not likely. Storage is still a problem and the WWII gas powered vehicle solution of a great big balloon on top of the vehicle to get extra storage capacity doesn't work very well with hydrogen

Well it's nice that your history class went well. But in the meantime lots of research has been going into alternative ways to store hydrogen.

You know, the thing about stupidity is that it's really a choice. It starts with ignorance, the thing that makes someone stupid is when they refuse to learn from new data. So are you an idiot or just ignorant? It is time for you to decide, a choice only you can make.

I will let you have the last reply, if you so wish - an ignorant man would learn from error and leave things lie, while the idiot always digs the hole deeper.

I know the shovel at your feet now tempts you mightily - but I urge you to put it down.

I had some other thoughts, but then I discovered this, which is pretty definitive:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/analysis_saab2007.pdf

It's an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study on the 2007 model of the car you described. If you check Figure 1 (page 4), they explicitly mention in the text that they saw the expected 25-30% worse "tank mileage" (i.e. miles per gallon), and Figure 2 just backs that up with additional tests. That said, Figure 3 (page 5) indicates that ethanol does indeed yield a better "gas-equivalent fuel economy" (i.e. how many miles you can drive per unit of energy present), though the conclusion (page 8) indicates that the improvement over gasoline is only 3% on the highway and 7% in city driving.

It's likely the article you linked was referring to gas-equivalent fuel economy (note that it says "fuel economy" rather than "mileage") when it cited a 15% improvement (though even that idea is hard to swallow). With language that vague, it's difficult to say if "fuel economy" meant mileage (miles per gallon), mileage normalized for energy content, mileage normalized for fuel cost, or something else entirely. Typical car gasoline engines get an average 20% energy efficiency (25% on the highway, but I'll ignore that for the moment). For ethanol to reach the energy output you described with the same volume of fuel, it would need to have nearly 35% efficiency under the same conditions. They simply don't do that yet, though Gizmag had a later article describing some technology that may allow engines using ethanol to do that and better eventually.

So I'll definitely concede that they have better fuel economy once you normalize their miles per gallon based on energy content or the cost of the fuel. But more miles per gallon? Definitely not.

Of course, this may just be another misunderstanding if you and I were using the word "mileage" in different senses. I'm using it to mean "miles per gallon", but if you've been using it to mean one of the other statistics I described here, then we're already on the same page.

A link to the actual press release

First of all, these aren't grants or direct money (as the summary seems to imply), they're loan guarantees. And if you read the press release, it's pretty clear this is a helluva lot less about producing clean energy than producing jobs in California.

Like so many government-funded and government-backed programs these days (NASA, I'm looking in your direction), this is basically a just a jobs program. Some Senator gets to go back to his district and say he created jobs. Whether these plants actually ever create any energy is anyone's guess.

Dunno, hit this while googling. Seems pretty dramatic.

http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/energy-insights/what-does-renewable-energy-look-like/

In an unrelated google hit on annual electricity consumption.
"The Millstone Plant in CT has two active reactors (out of 3) In 2007, Unit 2 generated 7,686 GWh and Unit 3 generated 8,699 GWh. Three Mile Island in PA generated 6,645 GWh last year."

Another hit says Rhode Island the actual state consumed, coincidentally, about that much (7.7 gwh) in 2005
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=RI

Soooo, half of that reactor's production could support the entire state. Equivalent wind power would take over like half the state land mass.

And again, reactors can produce far more.
It is easy to talk about how small that single wind farm would be, but we use a *lot* of power. Wind will only provide a fraction of it.
The straight dope link I think covers that pretty well.

As for stuff on birds, bats and weather, that was off of the wikipedia page on wind power.

Yes, the land is still usable, but there are limits on its uses. Can't build too high/close, you still have to have easy access to the turbines, and you don't want them too close to people's houses if a blade breaks loose.

The fact that a zone exists does not mean the zone is contaminated, and it does not mean a release has occurred. You can confusing what can happen, the reason, with the evacuation, the precaution and assuming that an evacuation means a health significant release has occurred. I don't know how else to explain it. The fact that some radiation release has occured does not mean the region is contaminated or that this is the reason the evacuation was ordered. Evacuations are done before releases occur, if possible, and in this case thats what Japan did. They declared an emergency when it was clear it would not be possible to get a cold shutdown, thats a precaution in case things get out of control to prevent exposure to the public.

So, the data, the NNSA data as of April 29 is airborne readings:

http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/

This shows some caesium detected using airborne testing (not uranium or plutonium as someone else claimed). In those areas, the vast majority of the area the hr dose is below 0.1 mrem/hr. The annual normal dose a person gets in the US gets every year is about 360 mrem. If you fly or live in higher altitudes your annual dose is considerably higher. If you work at a nuclear powerplant your annual dose is around 1000 mrem a year. If you live in Denver, CO it would be 700 mrem/yr. If you spend a year on the beaches of Brazil your dose would be 5000 mrem/yr. Incidentally, 5000 mrem/yr is the legal occupation dose limit. Its a bit conservative.

The maximum rate measured is in an area north west of the plant on a diagonal approximately 30km long. The rate measured was between 1.9-19 millrems/hr. If you were is one of the areas, and getting a maximum dose at 19 mrem/hr it would take approximately 19 hours to get Us average, or , 263 hours to get a beach dose from Brazil. This is assuming you were near an emitting source. These dose rates will not make you sick (or kill you). If you stayed there for a few weeks you may increase your chances of cancer. Even then its not a given you will get cancer, everyone is different and it depends on how healthy you are, your genetics, distance from source, shielding, etc.

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/rad-health-effects.html

Based on information from the NRC, if you smoke a pack of cigarettes you will lose 6 years of life expectancy. If you are 15% overweight you will lose 2 years of life expectancy. If you get a 360 millirem dose, you will lose 18 days, so figure at 19 mrem/hr its about a day.

As most of the area was measured as being below 0.1 millrem an hour, and the other ranges around the northwest region around 1.9 mrem/hr down to 0.19 mrem/hr, you wouldn't be talking about an appreciable effect. At 0.19 mrem/hr thats nor much at all when the US average is 1 mrem a day.

My definition of significant may be different from yours. Significant to me means it will make you sick now. Is there a likelihood of increased cancers, in that strip of 1.9-19 millirem/hr potentially if you stayed there for a few weeks. Given that the evacuation was done a long time ago, no one should be in that area that does not have adequate protection. So the health effects should be minimal at this point, if people evacuated (which apparently most did).

Additionally, keep in mind that distance from the source will reduce exposure (the inverse square law). Shielding will also reduce exposure, so just because an area may have sources does not mean you will be equally exposed to them or that its an equal amount (hence the variance in that red region). Increased shielding will decrease exposure. Internal exposure can be prevented with masks and clothing.

Anyway, theres some data. I'm tired.

There is quite a bit of independent monitoring:

http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

(Note that those links both use the available TEPCO data, but they also list other data)

So if there is a coverup, it is more than just TEPCO and Japan.

No, the ARPA grant was awarded in 2009.

What have we had since then? Not even an updated video...? How come the existing video doesn't even show something spinning? All I see is a guy with a piece of metal in his hand making extraordinary claims and no evidence whatsoever.

On the issue of using fuel from dismantled weapons, we've already been doing that for 10 or 20 years - that was part of one of the START treaties. My understanding is that for the past 10 years or so, most of the USA's reactors have been using fuel from destroyed weapons.

I totally agree, btw - that's a great way to generate peaceful civilian energy - by reducing weapons stockpiles around the world.

Here's one article.

Also, Megatons to MegaWatts.

Indeed, this is a major reason why the utilities support the "smart meter" investment (it's also a good way to stop employing meter readers). But there's a big question as to who owns the information, and the utilities are solidly behind the position that they use the info and can use it as they see fit (i.e. sell it and use for marketing). Some details about how it can be misused are here.

The DoE actually says that the info is the customer's. Sad to say legislation doesn't support that, and you can be sure that in the continuous struggle for increasing ARPU, the customer will get the shaft.

Look at who started using Drupal in the last year or two: The Economist, The Grammys, Fast Company, The Examiner, House.gov (and all ~535 house websites) recently moved to Drupal, Energy.gov, WhiteHouse.gov, and here's a list of some 120 national governments using Drupal.

But hey, Drupal only has 2% market share of all sites on the web, is being adopted by government and corporate organizations at a maddening pace, and just had their first major release in 3 years. There's no reason why this Drupal shit should be discussed on Slashdot.

What studies show that daylight saving time reduces energy use in practice?

http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html links to this DOE 2008 report [PDF] which suggests Daylight Savings saved the US 1.3 TWh over 4 weeks in 2007. While this only corresponds to 0.03% of the annual energy output, it's a fair chunk in absolute terms.

Of course, the energy picture is complicated by the fact that DST typically occurs in summer, when temperatures are hotter and there is greater demand for powered cooling, and the demand for that varies from year to year. There's no control environment to measure it against, so it won't satisfy stringent experiment conditions.

In other words, "when pigs fly". In 2009, swine flu.

Err... ok... how exactly are you equating the H1N1 "swine" flu with pigs flying? did you want me to label it independently-ambulatory true porcine gravitational counteraction resulting in the significant unassisted elevation and movement of Suinae Sus?

While not 100% renewable, Geothermal heat pumps would represent a 60-70+% reduction in fossil fuel/electricity use YEAR ROUND for heating and cooling homes and businesses plus free hot water in the summer.Geothermal heat pump technology can be used (almost) anywhere in the US. Installing these systems in new homes and businesses when they are built would be much more cost effective. Closed loop systems don't pollute and most have lifespans of 30-50 years. Seems like everyone should be using it NOW!! http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/heatpumps.html

Bio diesel has promise and can be made from organics in your garage, it is quite possible NOW to ramp up production commercially and use of this fuel for transportation? http://www.cubiodiesel.org/how_to_make_biodiesel.php

Solar and battery technology are quickly improving, the more we use the technology the better(cheaper, more efficient) it becomes. We should install more solar electricity and hot water systems NOW.

But...we are currently sitting on our hands waiting for petroleum to hit catastrophic price levels before fully embracing these technologies, I hope we can start aggressively using these now?

NASA has a sort of close working relationship with the military. Sort of like the Department of Energy and nuclear weapons. See http://www.energy.gov/nationalsecurity/nuclearsecurity.htm for more info. NASA often develops and tests tech that the military wants. The military looks at space as the "high ground" critical for national security.

Some people think that parts of the DOE and NASA budgets should be considered part of the US defense budget.

The US Department of Energy funds a lot of stuff that is only tangentially related to 'energy'. For example, the Human Genome Project was largely funded by the DOE, because DOE is in charge of studying the effect of energy and production of energy on people, and so needs to understand people and how they work and develop. Bit of a stretch if you ask me, but I'm all for science, so I'm happy they did it. Similarly, DOE fund lots and lots of other basic science. See: http://www.energy.gov/sciencetech/index.htm. One of those things is basic research in materials. They want to know how to make really strong things (like for flywheels and reactor vessels) or light things (for windmills), or things that do not fall apart when exposed to various kinds of radiation, etc.

US DOE also runs most of the big government labs that you have heard of (Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, etc.) See their page at http://www.energy.gov/organization/labs-techcenters.htm . People don't realize just how big DOE is; it's huge.

The US Department of Energy funds a lot of stuff that is only tangentially related to 'energy'. For example, the Human Genome Project was largely funded by the DOE, because DOE is in charge of studying the effect of energy and production of energy on people, and so needs to understand people and how they work and develop. Bit of a stretch if you ask me, but I'm all for science, so I'm happy they did it. Similarly, DOE fund lots and lots of other basic science. See: http://www.energy.gov/sciencetech/index.htm. One of those things is basic research in materials. They want to know how to make really strong things (like for flywheels and reactor vessels) or light things (for windmills), or things that do not fall apart when exposed to various kinds of radiation, etc.

US DOE also runs most of the big government labs that you have heard of (Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, etc.) See their page at http://www.energy.gov/organization/labs-techcenters.htm . People don't realize just how big DOE is; it's huge.

I would think that any person pushing to eliminate our need for foreign oil or oil in general and actually expecting some level of success would have done a tiny bit of research.

Oil billionaire T Boone Pickens did the research for his Pickens Plan. Of course some accuse him of using the plan to hide his plan to steal water.

We could reduce our need on oil by a massive amount with nuclear power

Yea, and create more problems. Nuclear power is not profitable, it is hooked on subsidies.

On the other hand, there's A Solar Grand Plan: "By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions". There's also Wind: "The United States has enough wind resources to generate electricity for every home and business in the nation."

To tell the truth there is not one energy source operating on large enough scale to power the US that does not get subsidies. Even oil gets subsidies.

Falcon

GE plans to acquire 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015.

Do corporations get the same tax break as consumers do for electric vehicles?

If so, then GE could get a $187,500,000 tax credit (25,000 * $7,500) in the process.

Just FYI, for the US, usually, when you abbreviate as DoE, you mean Dept. of Energy
http://www.energy.gov/
The Federal Department of Education prefers to call themselves the education dept. (ED)
http://www.ed.gov/
as you can see used many places on their website.

Both your thousand spent and your fifty thousand over the course of their life are very different from the real numbers, but your argument is actually made more valid by using reasonably current figures

Federal spending, per capita, for public primary and secondary education (2007 - most recent year data have been aggregated for public release):
$ 9,683
Average contribution (per year) for a US worker to the US GDP (In 2007 standardized dollars, as used to apply a cost of living locally factor to all other countries figures - note that the cost of living in the US is always the base for reporting and so not adjusted).
$46,436
Average contibution without even a high school diploma or GED:
$6,283
Average contribution with a publicly derived High School diploma:
$28,608
And just for a little more of the overall picture, average contribution with graduation from a four year college or better:
58,447

Average number of years working for a high school graduate: 42 years
(Note this is less than the number from age 18.5 (typical graduation age) to normal retirement at age 67 (now the typical age to receive full social security benefits), mostly because of people who retire at less than full social security age or become disabled, plus the occasional death or criminal conviction or other such factor.)
Total Time for primary and secondary education in US (K-12): 13 years.

God damn, you're totally ignorant. That's for the diesel version (look at page 15 of the pamphlet [linked] this guy pulled info from). As you know, diesel contains a large amount more energy per volume unit. Real mileage: 28 mpg of GAS. That's on a TINY car, whereas the CR-V from earlier is a fucking SUV with 50% more weight, AND tested in sub-optimal conditions, unlike the rabbit. On top of all that, emissions of NOx, SOx, unburnt hydrocarbons, and all sorts of other shit has been lowered substantially, which you don't account for at all.

I never understood how the free market electric power was going to work. Somebody still has to pay for the infrastructure and you don't get multiple companies running multiple wires down the street.

I think my post was not clear, the majority of power generation and distribution is privately owned and operated. Investor owned and independent power producers account for 75% of power generation and investor owned utilities own 80% of transmission lines and systems.

The power grid and power plants in the United States are not a public utility.

I have no idea where you lived in California but it is a well know and documented fact that in 2000 and 2001 Enron and others colluded to cause wide spread rolling blackouts in California and this had a significant effect on energy dependent businesses like manufacturing and information services.

The electrical power rationing and market manipulation in California was not caused by the evil government it was caused by greedy, unethical, and criminal corporations.

And if you think the government cannot ration fuel supplies then you are dreaming because it has already occurred.

The fact is that with electrical power generation there are many options for the end user to produce their own energy which cannot be rationed by the government or corporations. Oil based energy can and is controlled and rationed by government and corporations.

you are mixing up everything in here. Yet, they are all different issues.

I am not mixing things up. To use coal, it has to be mined, burned, then the slag has to disposed of. And that's just the use of coal, not building the power plant, maintaining it, then decommissioning it. All are related to the use of coal as a fuel. Without reprocessing nuclear power has those and other requirements. Natural gas doesn't have all the same requirements but pipelines are needed.

As to using what is 'best', well, Geo-thermal appears to be usable everywhere.

Sure geothermal can be used everywhere, but it does not make economic sense to use it in some places as compared to other energy sources. Otherwise the same can be said about solar and wind.

With enough money solar can be used at the poles, North and South. Alaska, along with much of Canada, has good wind potential. In the 48 contiguous US states the Rocky Mountains from Canada through to northern Texas alone has enough potential wind energy to electrify the US from coast to coast. However that's not the only places with good potential. All along the Pacific coast from British Colombia to southern CA wind potential is good. Actually while there was the energy crisis in California with the rolling blackouts, there was also an idle wind farm capable of producing 10 megawatthours, 240 megawatts per day. Hook an eastward turn in SC and go through AZ, NM, into west Texas. That route has good potential as well. Over on the east, Atlantic, coast from Maine on down to Cape Hatteras is good offshore. Onshore through the Appalachian, Catskills, and other mountain ranges of NY is good too.

For solar there are good places too. California may be the Saudi Arabia of Solar but Nevada may have more potential. Quite simply different energy sources can be used in different places. What ties them all together though is that their use will require a national smart grid. High Voltage Direct Current powerlines running from coast to coast and Canada to Mexico will be needed. Even better, hook up Canada's and Mexico's grid.

Then expand net metering. Originally I wanted to build my own home off the grid, and I may still but right now I'd like to remodel an existing place. If so then I'd like to use geothermal or solar thermal heating, space and water, depending on which may be more effective in my area. I know both are used around here now. I may also install solar PVs.

Falcon

Dbill,
Geo-thermal has many shallow well locations around the world. We have not looked for them. In addition, deep drilling is about to get REAL CHEAP. Two companies: Potter Drilling and foro energy (heck the pdf)

You're story is very interesting and all, but how about some actual numbers. According to department of Energy the EROI is 1-2.7 years. Yes, if you want to be of the grid you'd need batteries (though there's some good research on molten salt going on and of course gravity batteries have a proven track record), but for general usage solar could easily cover up to30-40% of energy needs (which are generally almost double during office hours).

If you want nukes. fine. I agree we need them at least for the immediate future and might need them for base load beyond, but their not the easy fix some people make them out to be. Their ROI, Energy or otherwise, is certainly not automatically better than some renewable systems. Nukes are very complex, very expensive, suffer from the cooling issue and require fairly massive mining and enrichment operations. Not to mention the decommissioning cost, which somehow never are factored in. And if you include refuelling and maintenance (plus the aforementioned lower power during hot summers or low river waters) their uptime is only around80-85%. Good but certainly not panacea their made out to be.

And in the US, tack on a few more acres for storing the waste indefinitely, as the Federal Government is unlikely to get it's act into gear and actually create a storage facility for it anytime soon.

The Department of Energy already did. Nevada didn't want it, so it's dead (gotta love state's rights). The search for options begins again with to a new Blue Ribbon Comission.

Even on mercury they are by far the worlds largest polluter. A recent comprehensive study of anthropogenic mercury emissions in China (Streets et al., 2005) yielded a figure of 536 t of mercury for the year 1999 with coal combustion (all types) accounting for 38% of the total.
Oth, Mercury emissions continued to fall in the decade of the 1990s. In 1993, U.S. yearly emissions totaled about 242 tons. By the end of the decade, emissions had declined to less than 160 tons per year. And we have continued our downward emissions due to putting in more and more controls. China has treaties in which they are required to have the controls installed (with japan and koreas), but have never even turned them on some plants(not required in the treaties). WHen a friend of mine went to China to study air pollution she was telling me that all of the plants (over 100) that they checked, NONE had controls turned on. Several that they saw closely she said were looked brand new, as in nothing had ever been routed through them (both plants had bypasses that were being used).

As I have said in several other posts, population and/or economic output are VERY bad metrics on this. Instead, it should be tied ONLY to the size of the land. Every country gets the same amount of emissions on a per km^2. That way every nation can decide how to dole out the emissions. If they want more economic output, then lower your per capita emissions. Or plant more trees to absorb the emissions. By going with this approach, it is by far the fairest and easiest means of dealing with CO2.

I guess its not 2 billion but check it out (Press release from DOE website): Department of Energy Offers $102 Million Conditional Commitment for Loan Guarantee to U.S. Geothermal, Inc. Oregon Project is First Geothermal Project to Receive Conditional Commitment link: http://www.lgprogram.energy.gov/press/061010.pdf

Actually, Nevada does have the highest average geothermal gradient of any state, so, pork or not, Nevada is one of the best places to do geothermal power in the United States. There are also substantial areas of elevated geothermal gradient in Oregon (already mentioned in the article), Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, but Nevada is arguably the best of them. Even on a global scale the southwestern parts of the USA are fairly good because this is an area of the Earth's crust that is being tectonically stretched and thinned. There are certainly other parts of the world that might be better overall (e.g., Iceland), but the area still rates highly.

Here are a few more sources for info. regarding the contract...posted for no other reason than my own annoyance with Inhabitat =P

DOE Press Release with Media Contact Number

Sustainable Business Blog, apparently the initial plant will produce 49.5 MW in capacity

Home website of NGP, the contract winner

Write up from EON, with quite a bit more info, including contact info. for various parties involved.

I strongly doubt millimeter wavelength radiation (somewhere around microwave/low IR) is going to cause any problems unless it's at such high magnitude that it actually causes tissue heating. These scanners probably operate at 1-10nm. Very high energy. Even at very low intensity, X-ray radiation imposes some risk of DNA damage. But I'd probably be more concerned about cataracts in frequent flyers and airport security employees. http://lowdose.energy.gov/abstracts/kleiman_cataract.aspx

"The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others"

That would be a step in the right direction, but I don't think it is enough.

Neither do I. Another part of the problem is the grid, it is old and dumb. The national grid needs to be rebuilt and made smart.

In addition to all the other factors stated in posts above, we have to consider the massive infrastructure in place to support the status quo.

The infrastructure as it is today is part of the problem. Power outages in the US costs almost $100 Billion a year. So rebuild it using smart grid technologies. Now that is one place where government is needed, only government can allocate the easement or right of way needed for the cables and such.

Without subsidizing alternative energy, it might end up taking 50-100 years to completely replace all the infrastructure that currently supports coal and oil.

Not really, if anything blackouts, whether accidental such as those in the Northeast US and part of Canada in 2003 or rolling blackouts shows the national grid needs to be rebuilt. Businesses won't stand by idly losing billions of dollars year after year. Some are already working on it installing alternative systems of their own for instance.

Where to store the energy for later use or low wind times?

Coal doesn't have that problem because it's always being burned.

Not being able to build near existing lines if there isn't wind there.

Power grid not designed to handle spikes in power,

As stated above the grid needs to be rebuilt anyway, just make it smart and include methods by which energy can be transmitted.

Likewise if I wanted to start an electric car line. No 'recharge stations', no bulk battery makers, battery technology research needs to be furthered, etc..

There weren't gas stations everywhere when autos were first built either. Actually the first autos were electric. The internal combustion engine only came after electric vehicles.

Subsidize should be used to encourage industry to move in the direction the benefits the public. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be used in that fashion very consistently.

No, economically they were only meant to allow enterprises to get off the ground but they are not used that way at all. Frequently subsidies are used to prop up businesses that would otherwise fail or put more money into already wealthy people's pockets.

Falcon

Methane has a GWP of 33 in the latest reports, not 20, over 100 years. It has a GWP of 72 over 20 years.

One cubic meter of methane hydrates at the sea floor expands to over 164 cubic meters of natural gas at the surface.

The methane being released from the world's oceans is estimated at 14 teragrams (about 15.4 tons) a year, half of which is from just the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Researchers are pretty sure the reason it's matching the rest of the oceans is because the type of methane hydrates that we've been talking about are releasing gas and becoming increasingly unstable.

It seems some researchers blame releases from methane hydrates below the seas and below melting permafrost for past rapid warming trends. This is said to be the sort of warming feedback loop that carbon dioxide by itself probably couldn't trigger.

Do note the dates of some of these articles. This is recent reporting.

The short-term effects of methane are very important.

For one, you and I probably won't be worried about it personally in a century. For another, when you have methane estimated in the billions of tons in little sections of the ocean and it seems that a little warming gets that all released, things start to compound rapidly.

Your numbers seem a little off. From a Dept. of Energy website:

PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.

It's probably not practical to build an 800 gigawatt solar plant, but we do have the distributed land and certainly the minimal technology to significantly supplement gas/coal/nuclear power generation without going into orbit.

What are you smoking? Windows kernel itself hasn't really been vulnerable to anything, it's the third party software like Flash, Adobe PDF Reader, internet browsers, and previously some services.

So here's what Google has to say on the subject:

• Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel
• Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (977165)
• Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Privilege Escalation
• GDT and LDT in Windows kernel vulnerability exploitation
• Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege
• And many more...

For the lazy reader, almost every article here has the phrase "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode." For the even lazier, allow me to summarize: "That's a Bad Thing"

Indeed, like any long-lasting public multi-version kernel, the Windows kernel has had a hefty share of vulnerabilities. What you said is just plain false. However, to the OP:

So this means your hypervisor can get infected? Is it really such a great idea to use the largest individual security risk in computers as a hypervisor?

You may want to think a little harder about what you mean by kernel. Every hypervisor is a type of kernel. Some things that perform hypervisor-like roles are full-fledged kernels. However, if you actually click the link in the article that you're quoting, you'd see that they're not talking even remotely about what you think they are. The article details how Microsoft is investigating changing some fundamental (read: legacy, UNIXy, etc.) kernel models and roles to take a shot at getting more successful multicore performance and a better user experience. It's less about "zomg Windows is a hypervisor" and more about "what traditional Kernel roles can we modify?"

If you understood even fundamental systems architecture concepts, you'd realize that Windows as a hypervisor is a lot less scary than Windows as a standalone OS, as the latter is not only handed full system control, but is also responsible for arbitrating userspace execution.

The thing about lighting is that it only accounts for about 11% of home energy use. Over 50% comes from some form of heating or cooling (be it refrigerators or water heaters or central heating or whatever), and space heating alone accounts for 31%. The trick is that it's a big one-time expense to swap your water heater out, but switching to CFLs is relatively cheap, and you can spread the cost out over the year (e.g., buy a 5 pack once a month).

Of course, going to more efficient heating or cooling will get you further, but the cost/benefit ratio of CFLs is still pretty good.

Fair enough. But if I was Obama (i.e. a radical progressive), then I'd toss a billion dollars at this if the science is good. Would do more than all the money spent on the weatherizing boondoggle.

Actually efficiency/weatherizing has the fastest payback between doing nothing, installing alternative/renewable energy, and efficiency/weatherizing. That is why when people go, build, off the grid the first thing they do is work on efficiency/weatherizing. Doing so can save a bundle of money. According to one graph by the Department of Energy the single largest use of energy in the US home is space heating, at 31%. Tied for number two is water heating and space cooling, at 12%. A properly designed and built building needs little if any heating or cooling.

>>About the only way to fight the unions is by allowing school choice with charter and private schools getting matching funding.

Nah. Right to Work states like North Carolina (IIRC) made unionizing in critical sectors outright illegal. So no police unions, firefighter unions, and, yeah, teacher unions.

Banning unions, which runs afoul of the First Amendment's freedom to assemble, protest, and seek redress, will not improve education. Competition between schools will. Now why is it people complain about competition when it affects their pay but like it when it drives their costs down? People complain about how Walmart drives other businesses out of business but then they're perfectly willing to shop at Walmart and Sam's. People complain about drug prices but how many liked it when Walmart lowered the price of thousands of drugs to $4? So yes, I shop at Walmart and am a member of Sam's Club. What I don't like is that I pay to be a member of Sam's whereas anyone can shop at Walmart yet by company policy Sam's can not offer a lower price on the same item as Walmart does. It only makes it worthwhile because Walmart doesn't offer the same bulk quantities as Sam's.

I like competition!!!

Falcon

Simply, you have to provide for the baseline needs. For that, you need large plants. Currently, your options are gaz, coal, large hydro, and nuclear.

Geothermal can provide [pdf warning} a baseload [pdf warning]. Ah, I see you mention it later.

In the context of a rapidly developing World, it is highly desirable that nuclear be the choice for large-scale generation,

Aha, that's it. Like so many others you're looking for the next big thing when what will work, and is needed, is many small scale solutions. Coupled with a new smart grid, grid failures in the US currently cost businesses billions a year so it needs to be upgraded anyway, what's produced in one location can be used in another.

Falcon

The TVA is NOT run to US Naval Warship Standards nor is it operated according to US Naval Warship Standards.

If you really want to understand Nuclear Safety read up on Naval Reactors in Wikipedia or from the Naval Reactors web site and learn what safety in the context of nuclear reactors is all about.

“RESPONSIBILITY IS A UNIQUE CONCEPT"
It can only reside and inhere in a single individual.
You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished.
You may delegate it, but it is still with you.
You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.
Even if you do not recognize it or admit its presence, you cannot escape it.
If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance, or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else.
Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
ADM H.G. RICKOVER

That is a direct quote from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover the father of the Nuclear Navy.

Mercury - Here are some mercury FACTS from the department of energy... http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/pollutioncontrols/overview_mercurycontrols.html.

Do you know even the definition of that word that you’re shouting so loudly? Because if you’re not simply lying, then you’re not.

Just to give you a perspective: You trust in your brain, your eyes, your screen, your cables, your graphics card, your data bus, your CPU, your network card, your drivers, your OS, your browser, your provider, every server, network device, cable and owner of that equipment between here and there, the government servers, the admins, the website builders, the authors of the content, the extractors of information from the data set, the collectors of the data set, the creators of the data set, the source of what was measured, and the physics to be equal where you are and where all those things are, just to get to the point where you are able to compare that input to your own inner model of the world.

And then, solely because it is consistent in itself, and with your inner model, you accept it as a “FACT” and scream it out loud. Which also screams “look at how defensive I am, because I thing else nobody will believe me”. (Cry me a river.)
And of course, because you now accepted it, you will stand behind it until the bitter and ugly end. Because your inner “it” literally associates the breakdown of your inner model with real death, and therefore massively repress everything that conflicts with it. (Cry me an ocean.)

You passively live in a tiny teeny little box of your own simple world, acting in a walking daze, and you can’t even get out. It is so sad that I would cry. If I would care even the tiniest bit about you and your world.

Ahh, I see the eco-nuts are in full force with this post... Putting on tin-foil hat...

Nuclear power - PLEASE put one of these in my back yard! http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

Mercury - Here are some mercury FACTS from the department of energy... http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/pollutioncontrols/overview_mercurycontrols.html.

Drilling for oil - So while the rest of the world goes out and drills for oil, going so far as to cross drill under US soil, the United States should take a back seat and watch these resources be taken and used against us. Gee, I certainly hope the countries that are actually drilling for oil don't stop sending it to us. I'd hate to see what that would do to our economy.

The whole "smart grid" thing is way too complicated. All you really need are a few bits per minute broadcast from the power company, telling you how their current load status. A few more bits from your local electric meter about your own current load would be helpful. Loads that draw more than about 300 watts and can run unattended needs to be receiving those bits, which in a home mostly means major appliances and HVAC.

During periods of power scarcity, the power company can send out, in increasing order of need, requests to drop excess load, warnings that excess load will push your electric bill into extra high rate territory, and finally an order to drop below a given load or the electric meter will cut your power. Or, at the other end of the scale, "power is really cheap right now, good time to charge electric cars, self-clean ovens, etc."

Businesses would probably sign up for demand pricing, where power during peak periods above some threshold is very expensive, and would have their own local controller devoted to keeping the cost down by making freezer cabinet compressors take turns, cutting off some lighting, and such. You can get that now; data transmission from the power company just means it has more info about the power supply situation.

Very little info needs to flow back from the meter to the utility. A reading once an hour is sufficient, if not overkill.

We do not need something that gives every appliance an IPv6 address.

Unfortunately, there's a pork-laden subsidy program for "smart metering" that encourages meters to talk too much. This is becoming a boondoggle like ethanol.

How long they are 'guaranteed' for is completely and utterly irrelevant. In the first place, trusting in that means trusting the company offering the guarantee will be around and will honor it, and in the second place that the owner will remember to invoke the 'guarantee' and obtain replacements.

If people don't stand up for thenselves nothing is relevant, people usually have to stand up for themselves, no matter what it's over. This is no different. People need to investigate installers and the products they use if they are not specified. Plenty of people have built off the grid and share information and their experiences. There are a number of publications, magazines, touching on various things these people do or are interested in. I've personally been reading magazines like Homepower, Backwoods Home, and Solar Today for 10 or 20 years if not more.

Even if the 'guarantee' exists, and is honored, that still doesn't change what I said. Panels that need replacement for whatever reason mean new panels need to be manufactured.

This doesn't change the fact that old panels can be recycled and that new one have better efficiency so less are needed to supply the same amount of power if not more.

Learn to think, rather than parroting.

I suggest you do the same, PV Panel Disposal and Recycling, The Value and Feasibility of Proactive Recycling.

Falcon

The great blackout of 2003, which took out the north east united states and a good chunk of ontario, was caused by deregulation (removing the requirement to clear the branches around the power lines).
Quebec, which has state-owned power (Hydro-Quebec) was not hit hard by that blackout, because it keeps its grid out of phase with those dangerously unregulated parts around it.

Learn the lesson: You can't trust the greedy to run critical infrastructure.

Misleading and incorrect.

1. The article your cited does not state that the blackout was due to deregulation "removing the requirement to clear branches around the power lines." It states, quite clearly, that the main cause was due to a generating plant going offline, then several power transmission lines going offline (or "tripping") due to tree contact. Nowhere does it say that deregulation had anything to do with that sequence of events.

If you assert deregulation lifted a requirement that power transmission line RoW be clear of vegetation, please cite.

2. Wikipedia's summary of the findings is somewhat watered-down. Many other factors went into play, from the lack of situational awareness at FirstEnergy's control center, to reactive power deficiencies, and finally to the violent swings as 10s of gigawatts of electric power sloshed about the northeast trying to find an equilibrium, tripping generating plants and power lines along the way. A full report is available at https://reports.energy.gov/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf

3. You seem to imply that Quebec's "state-owned" power concern decided to sever its AC links to adjacent areas because it did not want to be taken down with its "dangerously unregulated" neighbors. Are you sure it is because of that? I'm pretty sure that Hydro-Quebec has been its own AC interconnection since well before deregulation occurred.

That's simply not true. The grid operates with accordance to guidelines set by the North American Electricity Reliability Commission (NERC), one of the policy is something called "N-1 Criterion". Which means any one single transmission line or generation unit can go down without affecting the grid. And NERC also requires that the operator balance the grid to satisfy N-1 criterion after one contingency happens. So it's not like once one unit trips, another unit trip would destroy the grid. Yes, balancing the grid after a contingency takes time, but the likely hood of 2 events happen so closely is low. Plus, the N-1 Criterion requires the grid to remain stable for the single WORST scenario, which many contingencies aren't.

The cause of the August 2003 blackout also was caused by improper procedure by FirstEnergy, along with lack of situational awareness on the grid. The joint task force report on the blackout concluded the blackout could have and should have been prevented by proper operating procedure. You can find the link to it at the bottom of that wiki page you linked to, or here: https://reports.energy.gov/

Yes, electricity travels fast, but that doesn't mean the grid is not operated to handle failures. BTW, this is my current research area, so I know at least a little bit of what I'm talking about. Not to make the logical fallacy of appealing to authority or anything.

Your math is flawed. Let's start over.

In the article 45% of the install subsidized. So in your $10,000 install Joe pays $5500. The article states a 5-year return period. For simplicity we're going to say that the solar panels produce $1100 of electricity per year. There are some issues with inflation, opportunity cost of investment, maintenance, etc but we'll assume the $1100 reflects those adjustments.

So that means over the 20-year life of the solar panels, Joe gets $22,000 worth of power from a $5500 investment. That amounts to a 8% annual return on investment which is about the median for a 20-year stockmarket investment after adjusting for inflation (http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2005/20050509.html). Obviously, Joe's payout is not a spectacular government bailout.

While you're right that centralized power generation is cheaper, distribution eats into that. Miles of copper, substations, control systems, and raw distribution losses are a pain. Plus there's the discussion of buying/retasking land for singular megawatt solar arrays.

The government investment has the immediate advantageS of:
*stimulating the economy with construction
*contributes to the overall health of NJ by *reducing coal fired coal emissions (coal was 50% of NJ's power in 2005 http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=NJ) with the associated reductions in healthcare/medicaid costs
*reduces the need for additional distribution system
*doesn't require additional land acquisition *doesn't adversely affect the ecology
*convinces average people to invest at a time they might save

Your right, there will not be any oil shortages any time soon.

However, if there was, it wouldn't be as bad as you think. Most diesel engines can be modified relatively easily to run on propane-natural gas. Also, there is bio-diesel as well as coal gasification that can be used. Not to mention that in the US, we already have coal gasification in production for electrical generation which is more efficient and cleaner then burning coal in it's natural form.Recent breakthroughs can make synthetic diesel which burns cleaner then traditional oil
(even gasoline) cheaply and cost competitive to about $45-$70 a barrel oil.

The Fischer Trospch (FT) synthesis process can actually be used on municipal wastes and other bio sources of carbon too. Imagine the shit factory of LA or NYC producing a majority of the nations diesel and gasoline (albeit syngas). Work is being done currently that suggest using the FT process on corn can create fuels much cheaper then conventional fermenting and distillation.

Pennsylvania recently announced plans to purchase Diesel for their state vehicles and equipment, synthetic diesel made from waste coal from mining operations. I'm not sure if the FT plan is operational but it's likely close to being there if it isn't.

While a lot of this is niche or in development, it will be a lot more mature and availible by the time we run out of oil if we even need it still.

Also, the US Department of Energy recently released a study (forgive me, I couldn't find the link) that states that 96% of the cars on the road could be transitioned to plug-in hybrids or battery electric...as long as they are charged off-peak. Does anyone else remember this, and/or provide the link?

The Department of Energy has 17 national laboratories and 4 additional "technology centers" (mostly colocated at one of the labs). TFA doesn't mention particular laboratories, just that the National Labs are involved. Which 5 are the submitter referring to?

Yeah, I live in NM, and remember when the WIPP site opened up and how difficult it was to get it through people's head's that the stuff being stored was just secondary waste that had been exposed to radioactive sources, and not nuclear material itself. That was mostly what I was thinking of when I mentioned medical and scientific waste, although they do have some primary waste as well.