How Many Cowpower is That?

Zlorfik writes: " Accoring to a a Des Moines Register story, a new facility in Iowa can generate enough renewable energy from 700 cows to power 1,000 100-watt bulbs." This sounds like a good reason to switch to a slightly more efficient lighting system.

Comments

India

[Screaming Lunatic]

This has been done for years in third-world countries for a long time. Particularily in India. It's nice to see industrialized countries following suit. Especially since we don't have an endless supply of gas (pun intended).

Re:Possibilities

[vrt3]

I didn't read the article since the link seems to be broken, but I assume you're right:

CH4 (methane) + 2 02 (oxygen) -> 2 H2O (water) + CO2

But, considering that the greenhouse effect of methane is much larger than that of CO2, this is not a problem.

On a related note, many gasses have an effect on the greenhouse phenomenon. CO2 is the most famous one because it's the one that varies the most, and the one that (according to most scientists) has an increasing concentration due to human activities.

obDidn'tRTFA

[JabberWokky]

.
But aren't cows more expensive to burn than coal or oil?

--
Evan (no references in this message)

One Mouse power

[brejc8]

Or you can use one mouse to power an asynchronous microprocessor.
We never found the need to use any bigger animals.

Cows in the news

[n-baxley]

In an unsuccessful attempt to find the real story link, I searched the Des Moines Register for "cow power". I ended up with over 50 hits. Not many news sites can say that!