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If you live in an area where net metering is not available, a solar electric system for your home probably won't pay for itself during your lifetime, unless the declining supply of coal and oil causes unprecedented increases in the cost of electricity. Your money may be better spent on energy- efficient home improvements.

If you live in an area where net metering is not available, a solar electric system for your home probably won't pay for itself during your lifetime, unless the declining supply of coal and oil causes unprecedented increases in the cost of electricity. Your money may be better spent on energy- efficient home improvements.

Bad comparison, no cookie for you.

However http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/ 1979-07-01/An-Amazing-75-MPG-Hybrid-Electic-Car.as px
and http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/ 1993-06-01/1993-Update-Dave-Arthurs-Amazing-Hybrid -Electric-Car.aspx cover what was done to that car.

Bad comparison, no cookie for you.

However http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/ 1979-07-01/An-Amazing-75-MPG-Hybrid-Electic-Car.as px
and http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/ 1993-06-01/1993-Update-Dave-Arthurs-Amazing-Hybrid -Electric-Car.aspx cover what was done to that car.

You could burn them, and let plants photosynthesize the carbon into wood. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to make water.

You could even use the energy to propel you forward.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportatio n/1980-05-01/Ajax-The-Woodburning-Steam-Powered-Tr uck.aspx

Yeah, it's as niche as using cooking oil from restaurants, but it might work. And there is always the nice living to be made from saving those interesting things people forget they ever stored on those CDs from seeing the light of day.

Check out this one from 2 years earlier on mother earth news:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportatio n/1978-03-01/This-Car-Travels-75-Miles-on-a-Single -Gallon-of-Gasoline.aspx

They get a large chunk of the way there, by using 1920's era tech. Tech that's apparently available now, just needing to be bolted into cars.

Check Mother Earth News 1980:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportatio n/1980-09-01/Mothers-Own-Hybrid-Car.aspx

The site was slow to begin with, so here's the Google cache:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:ePauTxj56ckJ:ww w.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1980-09 -01/Mothers-Own-Hybrid-Car.aspx+site:motherearthne ws.com+hybrid+1980

Not only are small-scale digesters common throughout the world but you can trivially build your own.

Here's my take on the economics of a windmill approach... I recently read an article about how a typical power generation windmill has three blades, maybe 25 M in diameter, and in the future might generate 500 KW. Today, say 3-5 KW per blade per meter but in no case do shorter blades offer the efficiency of bigger blades. Some of the better dehumidifiers out there get about 20 Liters/day (say 6-1/2 gallons) per kilowatt from reasonably moist. So a 3 blade 5 meter windmill would get 3*5*3=45 KW of energy, and presumably put out about about 900 liters of water. Enough to live on and water a small garden, but not drought ending by any means.

Now then, in a hot climate, use that same power generation to pump seawater into a salt pond, then consider that in hot climates the sun provides enough heat over a 40mx40m pond (1600 Sq Meters)-- this equals around 9 MW day avg -- and use that tremendous heat rise to power a moist-lift evaporation / power unit -- now you've got the capacity to create a whole lot more fresh water and power. Even if the power generation capacity is only 5% efficient, by my calculation that's still about 70 KW/hr. PLUS the remaining heat is still available for desalination purposes

But all the engineering to make the pond, the moist-lift evaporator, and the power unit plus the water storage or transport system-- all of those cost serious money because they just can't be mass produced.

See this article in Mother Earth News" that is kind of old but has the specifics of one implementation like this...

Methane gas is utterly renewable. You can make it from shit, literally, and without any special equipment. The only special thing you need is a way to compress it to store it... say 200 psi tops? The only thing I can't find is a small compressor suitable for this purpose on a household scale. You can actually just run your waste into the bottom of a pond along with a steady flow of water, tent it, and capture methane - you bubble it through water to purify it. The compressing is the only issue left...

Side note: While searching for goodies I found this url which attempted to root my computer. No idea how successful it was, I'm off to go run defender and spybot.

This 1981 article in Mother Earth News cites a father who lived offgrid, who submitted to his kids' demands for television with a bicycle generator that charged a battery for a 12 volt TV. 1/2 hour of cycling got them one hour of TV.

They have a three part article on how to build your own, with detailed instructions.

This 1981 article in Mother Earth News cites a father who lived offgrid, who submitted to his kids' demands for television with a bicycle generator that charged a battery for a 12 volt TV. 1/2 hour of cycling got them one hour of TV.

They have a three part article on how to build your own, with detailed instructions.

This 1981 article in Mother Earth News cites a father who lived offgrid, who submitted to his kids' demands for television with a bicycle generator that charged a battery for a 12 volt TV. 1/2 hour of cycling got them one hour of TV.

They have a three part article on how to build your own, with detailed instructions.

This 1981 article in Mother Earth News cites a father who lived offgrid, who submitted to his kids' demands for television with a bicycle generator that charged a battery for a 12 volt TV. 1/2 hour of cycling got them one hour of TV.

They have a three part article on how to build your own, with detailed instructions.

So what advantage is there to creating (heavier, more expensive, more complex, more maintenance-heavy) hybrid diesels?

Low flush toilets are 1.6 gpf (see, e.g.: http://www.dpw.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/WhattoKnowBefor eYouGoLow-Flow.pdf or http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading/2002_J une_July/Water_Wise_Toilets.

Regular toilets run 3 - 5 gpf.

some links to start with.

http://www.otherpower.com/wardalt.html for making the alternator that makes huge power from low rpm's.

http://redjar.org/jared/projects/windmill/gallery. html for basics on the design we modified heavily.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1974_March_ April/The_Savonius_Super_Rotor
another link to the basic design.

http://home.messiah.edu/~jebeneze/WindEnergy/WindE nergy.htm

I have never really drawn up plans of our modification, put it this way slit more barrels in the rotors to make what looks like a "turbine". Using light materials is important here to make the thing to start and run in light winds. plastic barrels work great here. if you have the ability to form carbon fiber you can make it even more efficient in slower winds.

basically we mount it on top of a stub of TV tower guyed to all hell for strength. we then have a metal pipe structure around the rotor to hold onto the top bearing of the pipe that runs down through the bottom bearing where a pully is attached.

it's as simple as that.

Next up: Bullshit powered battery. John Dvorak would probably be able to fuel his entire home from the stuff he spews!

Being a geek, I would like to point out that, while your joke is funny, there is a technical point that needs to be made. And that is this: actually, you can generate elecricity from bullshit. Here's another article about it too.

(Please note that I realize both of my sources are web sites that are mostly full of fringe nutcases. But, since they're different types of fringe nutcases, that filters out their bias and makes what they have to say perfectly valid. (Right?))

How many hybrid cars did we have in 1974 or 1979?

One can argue the practicality, but not the existence. (I believe there were a number of hybrid cars built as academic exercises, for "energy crisis" competititions, etc. but I can't list them off the top of my head. Of course, none were production models.)

Is it difficult to set up better public transportation in the US? No... most other countries do it better.

The FCC is endangering the lives of midwesterners with this move. I cry "Terrism!"

1. Batteries suck. Flat out they are boxes of acid and lead. Read any of the solar energy magazines and you will find huge articles discussing battery safety.

2. Generators are not green! You would want your Generator to be your last choice. Grid power will be cheaper and cleaner than what you will get from a generator.

That's about the size of it, backup genies should be the last thing as long as ac is available. But there's a growing movement of people moving off the grid, and depending on how far powerlines would need to be run it could be cheaper to have a totally self sufficient power supply with a genie backup.

3. What about cooling. Ac sucks a HUGE amount of power. If you are someplace with a lot of sunshine odds are pretty good you will need a lot of cooling.

Passive solar design can help with heating and cooling as can other techniques.

Better yet, let's just throw thousands of these bags in the ocean and create an underwater city instantaneously!

Excess water would probably yield very poor quality concrete and ocean currents would probably wash the concrete away before it set. Also, the baloons would need to be well anchored or they would float to the surface.

Another technique for this (although not as quick) is to just deploy a metal mesh (think window screen size). Then you apply electricity to the mesh and the minerals in sea water acrete onto the structure. This technique was described in article in the Mother Earth News 25 years ago although it apparently wasn't pursued enough. More recently, this technique has been used to restore coral reefs and one group plans to use it to create an underwater habitat .

There is some research at Standford and a Wikipedia entry . Apparently, there is some confusion about how much energy is needed to produce such structures and a structure similar in size to the inflatable one would probably use around $500 worth of electricty.

There are at least six manufacturers of tubular skylights. They're not too useful, because, as windows, they're small. And you have to clean them, which is hard. They're used mostly by home architects who've managed to create a dark interior area and need to get out of that design mistake.

Plastic skylights are bigger and more useful.

No containment (outer shell): once the reactor itself is burst, the radioactive material is out in the open, whereas in western designs, there is still an outer shell.

Years ago I did some research on Chernobyl accident and remember reading that there was a concrete containment shell, but it blew up with the reactor. Most of the sites I now found by googling repeat the statement that there was no containment shell, but at least this site claims the opposite: "2. Despite official statements made in the U.S. right after the accident, Chernobyl No. 4 did have a reinforced-concrete containment--one that was installed in 1980. Whether the shell was comparable to what you'd find on the average U.S. reactor isn't clear. In any event, Chernobyl No. 4's outer shell was probably breached by a powerful hydrogen explosion, which, you may recall, was the greatest fear in the days following the Three Mile Island accident. The power released in such an explosion could be great enough to destroy any existing reactor's containment."

Read the article on geothermal power. Once the water has been heated, it will return as high-pressure steam. In California, the temperature difference can be as much as 3632F per mile drilled downwards.

If low-mainenance Stirlings are in the offing, it's worth taking another look at solar ponds. Pioneered in Israel, and I believe RMIT in Melbourne is still looking at them.

Basically a swimming pool filled with dense brine with two or three different salts, which settle into layers. A greenhouse effect traps heat in the bottom layer, and the Stirling works off the temperature differential between bottom and top.

Drawbacks are corrosion, algae, transparent covering, control of the layers, scalability.

Advantage is storage: heat can be retained through the night, though at the expense of the temperature gradient, I suppose.

India

Israel

Texas

It depends on how much DIY you are willing to tackle. I had to do a little googling but I located information on a DIY Hybrid that appeared in The Mother Earth News some years ago. Actually in 1979 with a followup in 1993. I purchased the plans and although I didn't get one completely finished, it's still a viable project. Actually applying an additional 10+ years of technology might make it easier &/or better. Try the following links as a starting point. The original article at: http://www.motherearthnews.com/index.php?page=arc& id=2263 and the followup at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1279/is _n138/ai_13817084. A google search for ["mother earth news" hybrid electric car] yields about 350 links. Good luck.

Second, the earth sheltering is only on three sides, leaving the southern exposure open for solar heating. Intelligent design permits free heating and cooling year round. The earth surrounding the house is 52 degrees year round, so A/C is used minimally, and you get free heat from the sun year-round. Oversized overhangs on the roof keep the summer sun at bay.

For more information, check out Mother Earth News. It's not about living like a caveman, it's about more intelligent use of renewable materials.

Cellulose ethanol is a terrific idea, and saves food crops for food purposes...

Actually, it's a myth that the ethanol process uses corn that goes for food. Most corn doesn't get processed into food. It is used as animal feed and the by-product of corn ethanol production is a distiller's mash that is actually better for animal feed since it is high in protein and rich in water-soluble vitamins and minerals. Because the fermentation process removes only starch, all the remaining digestible nutrients are left in the distiller's grain.

I do think ethanol from waste straw is a good idea but getting it from corn is also a good idea that could be even better.

Oh yes.. Mother Earth News CDROM archive. Glee. No word on what the 2400 articles contain, though..

Well, you might want to look at this article, which includes a description of a solar installation in Woodbury, Minnesota. This suburban community is neither country-like nor particularly sunny, but the guy put solar panels on his roof anyway.

Also, Sustainable Minnesota has plenty of information on use of solar energy in the great white north. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any concrete estimates of the economics of these installations, but with the hefty rebates/tax breaks given by the state ($3,000 back on a $8,500 system!) and selling power to the utilities through net metering, some claim a payoff date of "a few years" for small industrial/commercial installations. A homeowner would probably have to wait awhile before the system started paying off, though.

Of course, the real way to generate renewable power in the upper midwest is wind. In fact, the utilities up here are happy to build wind farms, but that requires building new transmission lines to remote areas, which is always a problem.

So there are pipes traversing Utah ...

which carry pig... er... waste? From the farms to... where? Landfills?

Perhaps this should be required of all factory-sized animal feeding operations; open waste lagoons rupture, and the consequences are nasty whether the crap is coming from pigs, steers or chickens

I'd love to see their entrprise solution. Would it be larger or smaller than the computer room it was designed to power...

I'd expect though that you could be a happy energy concious 21st century citizen by reading the Mother Earth news which would recommend scrapping the computer instead of getting a flywheel to power it.

I have to say though, It's certainly an interesting concept.

--CTH

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