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Giving Up Alternating Current
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday we discussed Soylent, the artificial food substitute created by Rob Rhinehart and his team. As it turns out, this isn't Rhinehart's only unusual sustainability project. In a new post, he explains how he gave up on alternating current — a tough proposition for anyone living in the U.S. and still interested in using all sorts of modern technology. Rhinehart says, "Most power in the US is generated by burning coal, immediately squandering 67% of its energy, then run through a steam turbine, losing another 50%, then sent across transmission lines, losing another 5%, then to charge a DC device like a cell phone another 50% is lost in conversion. This means for 100 watts of coal or oil burned my phone gets a mere 16."
The biggest hindrance was the kitchen. As you might expect for the creator of Soylent, he doesn't cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment's LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes? How much of an effect does this really have?
The biggest hindrance was the kitchen. As you might expect for the creator of Soylent, he doesn't cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment's LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes? How much of an effect does this really have?
It's the new outdoor trend anyway. All the lighting is obviously LED, so no problem there, the gadgets all transform their AC to DC anyway, so no problem there as well, you just need a decent lab trafo.
Washers and dryers that use solar heated water are no problem either, they mix warm and cold as they need it.
Even the small 12 Volt Camping washing machines work very well nowadays.
You cook by gas and use a gas refrigeration unit as well.
There's a German project the 'direct current house' (in German obviously)
http://www.dasgleichstromhaus....
They have solved many problems.
Shouldn't it be powered by his sense of self importance? Or at least by PEOPLE!!
He's still living on the electrical grid, he's just not using it at home.
Also, WTF? "I enjoy doing laundry about as much as doing dishes. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me."
"For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines".
So he can't survive without it....
So he gave up refrigeration?
an ac synchronous motor is much more efficient than DC alternatives.
Why doesn’t he just use a gas stove?
At that point why heat drinks at all? It’s wastefull.
His low power computer? He’s just using AC remotely.
Why not just move to a mud hut in east Africa?
this experiment is fine if you're doing little LED lights and laptops, but if you're running something like air conditioning or a washing machine you're building a fire hazard and a mortality risk
the decision to use AC over DC was not random nor taken lightly, there are many factors involved (heck, it was a major engineering, corporate, and PR war between Edison and Westinghouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), but the right decision was made
for our modern world where some people only care about their laptop and smartphone, it does indeed seem silly and wasteful to convert to AC then back to DC, especially if you've ever tried charging electronics in a car. but there are of course many other uses for electricity, and the navel gazing small electronics crowd is but a minor topic
but i do see a time in the future as more people use local solar and other renewables, that a small DC subsystem is made available in the house for electronics like computers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I respect the man for having ideals and trying to live up to them.
Of course he has fresh water. That comes from his pipes. Some requires transport from the Colorado River and that uses fuel. Some requires desalination from the Pacific Ocean and that uses fuel. With a water bill comes a related sewer bill. Sewer and effluent treatment require chemicals and fuel.
Of course he has batteries. That's how his solar cell provides his DC power. Both solar cells and batteries cost exotic chemicals/components, and take fuel to produce. Solar cells don't degrade as much over time but the typical deep-cycle battery requires replacement every 24-36 months [depending on the charge, cycle, use, etc.]. This also applies to the TMO cellphone battery he uses to power his TMO Internet.
Of course he buys his clothes from China - has them shipped - and throws away old clothes. This way instead of using water and detergent and some electricity (or some 25 coins and a laundramatt) he uses a lot of jet fuel, some delivery truck fuel, throws away cardboard boxes and plastic wrappers (think hydrocarbons which could be used as fuel, and fuel itself). He feels better because he donates his old clothes. I'm not sure that he thought about this much because ***ALL THE OLD CLOTHES HE DONATES ARE WASHED BY GOODWILL*** or whomever prior to putting on the shelf. So he costs the environment more, not less.
Lastly... that TMO Internet again... he is one of the people who encourages TMO to have towers. Towers have little generators on them so they don't lose power in storms, power outages, etc. Those use fuel which goes bad after a year and must be replaced. That means once a year cellphone tower generator fuel tanks are purged and dumped and new fuel is acquired and put in the tank. [Yes, some carriers have a 2yr schedule and some don't discuss their schedule, but if we're talking ideal... here you go.]
It's good to have ideals. It's nice try and live by them.
Ehud Gavron
Tucson, AZ, where 4 months out of the year the temperature is above 100F and the humidity above 40% so if you don't have an air-conditioner using direct-expansion gas (not a "swamp-cooler" or "mister") you will bake. They don't make any that run on DC. Even if they did, that would be a LOT of solar cells!
No birthday cakes, no cherry pies, no fresh baked bread, no roast pork with caramelized potatoes, no steaks, no cauliflower broccoli cheese casserole, not even any homemade French onion soup? I shudder to think what Julia Child would say to that.
He doesn't cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment's LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes?
No. I have a wife.
saying "Excellent".
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Sounds like he's badly confusing something. I think he's badly misunderstanding how a rectifier works. Some waste of course happens, but not nearly that much.
He has decided upon a very specific, and limiting, style of living. Bravo. Now try applying his philosophy to a household with children. Or a household frequented by guests. Try this in less sunny locales.
I think it is admirable to try to be different, and to advocate alternative. I am completely turned off by his holier than thou attitude and his dismissiveness towards that which does not fit his chosen lifestyle.
queue up the Thomas Edison/Tesla fanbois out there the current wars have returned.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Okay, sure so DC for gadgets and lighting that consume about 1% of household energy. When he has a realistic solution for replacing central heating, cooling, refrigeration, normal kitchen usage, well pumps, water heating and other meaningful uses of electricity then it might be worth listening to.
Meanwhile, Nikola Tesla is spinning in his grave (probably at about 120hz).
"No" and "Who gives a shit" respectively. Show us that the conversions needed to do this provide enough financial benefit to make any sort of sense. I don't think it will pencil out.
That is all.
This guy is not washing his cloths. He is wearing them till they are dirty. Then he donates them unwashed somewhere. (I assume he tosses his underwear, or wears diapers)
Most of his personal savings just offload the burden of destruction to someone else, like taking uber (fossil fuels) and donating dirty clothes (water use, and being a scumbag donating dirty things) such that I was not entirely sure this was not satire.
I've read this guy's blog post & came to the conclusion that he's an idiot. He champions his lifestyle as a way to reduce energy usage, but does so by doing things like having new shirts shipped from China instead of doing laundry. Or that he's saving energy by eating out when he doesn't want to eat his nutritional paste, and somehow that's better than cooking for yourself mainly because he doesn't like going to the grocery store. Nothing this guy has done is scalable beyond just himself.
This guys whole blog post reads almost like someone saying it's better to have a 3d printer because you can print Lego bricks for free.
Getting rid of AC for off grid applications makes sense. I'm all for it and look forward to the new DC appliances we're seeing come on market.
however, this article is not going to have people following suit.
I'm not giving up my quality of life. I don't have to and I don't want to and its the 21st century so anyone that disagrees can eat a rail gun round to the face.
I do believe in sustainable living. However, more in the way of breaking free from crumbling infrustructure and gaining a certain amount of logistical indepedence.
I'm a big believer in the backyard green house. I think solar panels and wind mills are a good idea AT YOUR HOUSE. And I am looking forward to economical energy storage systems that work at a personal level.
Am I dumping my refrigerator and cooking food on a camping stove? No.
Really none of this sustainable stuff works in an urban environment. Its sort of odd that so many people that like the idea live in the one place where it isn't possible. Logistically you're going to be depending on a very energy and resource intensive infrastructure and there's just no way around that in a city. That "IS" the city. The city is all the things the sustainable people say they don't like. Live in the suburbs and you have a CHOICE. You have enough property that you can do something. Live rural and you can go completely off grid for everything... food, water, power, whatever... live like the Amish or something. Yabba dabba doo. But in a city you're on the grid. I don't care if you shut off the breakers in your apartment or drink your own pee. You're on the grid because everyone around you is on the grid and you depend on them whether you're drinking your own pee or not.
Here is my suggestion for the urbanites. Support nuclear power. Worship the fucking atom.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
DC arcs are strongly self-sustaining once ignited, as there's nothing to halt the continuous generation of ions which provide an easy conductive path. In contrast, AC arcs tend to self-extinguish twice a cycle when the voltage drops to zero, and so the AC arc has to re-ignite each cycle once the voltage rises high enough. Even if it does manage to re-ignite, the arc is not usually conducting the full cycle.
This reduced arcing makes AC a significantly lower fire hazard than DC, and the same effect happens to make AC switch contacts last much longer since breaking a circuit rarely arcs for more than a half cycle so contacts don't usually heat up and little metal is carried away from their surfaces.
There's nothing magical about AC-DC conversion, and NEWS FLASH, it's much more efficient to transmit AC over long distances than DC. That's HALF THE REASON we use AC. The other half is that it's extremely easy to convert to other forms of AC and DC.
I'm afraid my degree is in physics, though I've done more engineering than pure research oriented work. In my understanding, long distance transmission efficiency is mainly about high voltage, not AC per se. It's true that you need some AC stages for voltage conversion, so the conversion part is more efficient if you only use AC. However, AC will bleed energy via induction in some cases such as undersea cables, making DC more efficient overall even after conversion losses. In addition, phase matching is an issue you won't have with DC. Then you also have the age-old facts about peak vs. average voltage that make DC easier for things like insulation, so the future of power transmission is actually going more in the way of DC, even if end users still see AC.
Frankly, this entire discussion has little to do with AC vs. DC, it's mostly about the dependence on the grid. I agree we should use more nuclear power, and perhaps educate the people a bit more to end the irrational fears about anything that has the word "nuclear" in it.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
We will never run out of either coal or oil. The price will increase to the point where they are no longer economical but there will still be a lot of both in the ground.
"I'm still dead" - Julia Child
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The problem with Rob's assessment is that his efficiency numbers, expect for power transmission, are way off the mark. It is MUCH better than he purports! DC to AC conversion is roughly 90% or more efficient these days so you are not saving much by using DC at home rather than AC. It is simply not worth it to limit yourself so much by having only DC appliances.
The line losses are a NIMBY problem, people don't want power plants near their houses.
That's not really true. Coal-fired power plants need to be located near a large, reliable water source for cooling and the closer they are to their fuel source the less energy is used to transport the coal. They also have to be of a certain size in order to operate efficiently. Hence even if everyone was willing to tolerate a coal fired power station in their neighbourhood most locations would be unsuitable for their construction, rural communities would be too small to warrant a power station even if suitable and even then there would be an increase in the energy to ship the coal the larger distances required. This means that only small reductions in transmission losses would be possible and since this is already one of the most efficient steps in the power consumption process you'd lose a lot more than you would gain.
I was waiting to read about how AC kills and see some good ole electric chair demonstrations.. *sigh*
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I can't say much about your specific situation, but in general if you're far enough from the equator for snow, the ideal solar panel will have a fair bit of tilt to it. At which point you have some options for snow-clearing. One of the popular ones is to use a relatively small amount of electrical heating once the snow stops to make the panel 'too slick' for the snow, at which point it simply slides off. Then the panels make up that energy through the day. Keep in mind that they're considerably 'slicker' that way than an asphalt roof.
Also, if your roof is only worth 1/3rd your electrical use, that may be something that you want to examine, because you could save considerable money for cheaper than installing solar panels fixing whatever is taking so much.
I say this because I can satisfy my electrical needs using about 2/3rds of my south-facing roof, and I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska. Disclaimer: Annual average; I'd have to sell electricity in the summer and buy in the winter.
I don't read AC A human right