Yes, I did RTFA. Like I said - we're not limited on space for installs. We DO face the problem that solar energy is barely competitive with grid power even with 50% or higher subsidies, competing against retail price for electricity, not utility price. It's noted that these are even more expensive for the energy, presumably because individual panels aren't ideally placed - but are placed such that they tend to pull more power in alternative conditions because some of the panels have better angles for such times as when the sun is near the horizon.
As Icebike said, these designs are probably no more productive than variable tilt solar panels, and they require a heck of a lot more structure than mounting an array on a house.
Whatever solution we come up with has to fit this or it is a step backwards.
I somewhat disagree. Right now it's 'drive it until it's more than half empty, then drive to a fill up station and pay to spend several minutes pouring flammable liquid into it'. There ARE negatives to the way gasoline filling works. Thus, moving away from this model can be a advantage, if done right. One such possibility is inductive charging for EVs. Stage 1: Recharge at home via cable. Let's say that it takes 10 minutes, on average, to navigate a gas station and fill up, once every two weeks. 260 minutes spent at the gas station. As long as it takes you less than 42 seconds to hook up the charging cable 365 times over the year, you're saving time. Stage 1.5: Add capability to recharge at work/restaurant/mall/parking lot via cable. Takes a bit more time, but you're more likely to be topped off for any long trips. If batteries are still a significant issue, allows you to make the battery smaller, as you're charging more often. Stage 2: Recharge at home via induction: You simply park in the designated spot. Newer induction systems are more capable than ever at non-perfect alignments and longer distances. Time savings: Significant. Stage 2.5: Recharge at work/restaurant/mall/parking lot via induction - I view induction systems as less likely to be damaged and more universal(you can always play with how the loops are connected to vary voltage). It's also faster. Stage 3: Induction systems placed in roadways provide charge while driving. It might not be able to 'keep up' at highways speeds, but if it takes care of 50% - that takes a 300 mile charge to 600, effective. Worst case you slow down.
For this reason I'm a big fan of hydrogen fuel.
I'm not a fan of hydrogen because while it's the highest energy fuel by mass, it's about the lowest by volume. It also tends to leak. By the time you're storing a significant amount in a space small enough for a car, you're looking at pressures high enough that it ends up heavier than LiIon batteries for the energy contained. Making hydrogen is also inefficient - though processes have improved significantly, it's still much more energy efficient to charge batteries up. It's bad enough that NG is a better solution, and we even have fuel cells that work with it.
A big reason that the prius is as efficient as it is is still because of the battery - the ability to store the stopping energy and use it for the subsequent start saves a lot of energy. Still, one could do the same thing with a much smaller amount of super-capacitors. Besides, LiIon killed a lot of the advantages fuel cells had over batteries.
Personally, if you ask me my vision of a future where fossil fuels either don't exist or are not used, I see a variety of fuels being used. Electric for in-city short range use, and big things like trains have a continual tap. For vehicles that have to leave the area of the grid or just drive that much - it varies from hybrids fueled by algae based fuels to NG.
So now they're building big solar collectors that cover parking lots so people can park under them.
I read about 'solar roads' a while back. The idea is that they make the roads transparent and put solar panels under them to collect energy, and have light-up road signs and such.
My thought was - Why not cover the roads? Do they have semi-transparent solar panels? Even if not, I'm sure they could stagger the panels so some of the light still gets to the road- while conveniently blocking 'sun in your eyes' type problems and wet, slick roads, not to mention if you're further north the very angle that you end up mounting the panels at for maximum average efficiency should make clearing them a breeze, and better yet, no need for plowing snow! I've read that, for the most part, with a decent slant it's still energy positive to use electric heating to clear panels when necessary. The idea isn't to melt all the snow-just enough that you get a liquid layer between the panel and the snow, causing it to just slide off. I agree - We're a long ways from needing to increase density in this fashion.
I don't have the sources at the moment, but I remember reading that Germany required the power companies to buy back power at 10X the retail rate as a rather extreme subsidy. At such subsidy levels it might make sense to put solar panels in at the poles, and not just for a station only occupied in the summer...
You made a good point; some more thought and I might of come up with that system. You'll still get scalpers that way, but their income will be limited. They'd put in for the max tickets and hope to get lucky.
It'd still allow scalping; it'd simply mean that the scalper would actually need to go to the show. Unless you mean that every ticket has to have pre-assigned names like plane tickets today.
In this case, it sounds like a good idea. A significant amount of work needed, but it might work better - and at $900 a ticket, you can afford to be selective. I was being more generic.
I've thought about this. The first solution, of course, is the best, and has the schadenfreude benefit of screwing the scalpers a bit.
However, it's not always possible to increase supply. I'm pretty sure Metallica(and other bands of that popularity level) could hold two daily shows for the next decade and STILL be selling out every show if they charged $100/head.
The lottery idea has some merit, but how do you decide who gets tickets? Do I get five friends together and each of us apply for five tickets? It might not be 'fun' for me to go unless I can go with my friends... I have five times the odds of getting a ticket than the poor guy who wants to go alone.
I think a better way to state it, would be to say that efficiency per square foot of ground used is not important, unless the cost of the cells come down./quote.
Probably, and I think that it's still got a good ways to go. We ARE getting to the point that I think we're going to need to start paying more attention to reducing the cost of the inverter systems.
From a practical standpoint, I think we'll be seeing a lot more solar roofs before this MIT design starts going lots of places - that much structure is going to cost a bit to build, solar panels that don't even cover the entire roof can cover the average power needs of the average house, as long as it's not all electric appliances.
On a more practical standpoint, I was once very interested in using solar heat to power adsorption chillers for homes instead of AC systems. Make solar panels half as much again and they won't make sense - just go with a traditional(but high efficiency) AC systems and solar electric panels. Solar water heating will still be king for a while yet though.
It's a little late, but I have two thoughts. One was a band that discovered something like 80% of their tickets had been bought by scalpers, who were demanding 10X the ticket price. Their solution? They held 3 more shows. The first, originally scheduled, show was practically empty - the other 3 were packed.
Solution type: Increase supply.
Another option is to hold a 'dutch auction' for the tickets. Easy enough for shows with one seating category, but only a touch more difficult with multiple to handle people who are willing to pay $X for 'good' seats, but $Y for 'normal' seats only if they don't get good ones. The tickets then go for the minimum price that 'just' sells all tickets. Yes, this means that only the richest and/or most dedicated fo fans get to go, but at least the money ends up in the hands of the artist's company, not scalpers. If the artists feel that the price has risen too much, add shows.
Solution type: Increase the price so that demand equals supply.
That's an interesting article, but I found the link about using an ion cannon to make cells 1/10th as thick at 1/2 the cost of cheap chinese cells to be potentially more revolutionary.
At this point we're not especially limited on space for solar installs. Our problem is that our collection systems aren't cheap enough.
In real life we have hundreds of years of fossil fuels left.
In real life we have millions of years; because somewhere between 50 and 200 it'll become increasingly uneconomical to extract said fossil fuels such that alternatives are actually cheaper. The first it's likely to happen to is oil. In 50 years we're likely to let most of it sit in the ground because pulling it out is too expensive except for certain scientific testing.
Thus the 'peak oil' - at some point extraction cost will exceed the economic worth, and production will start dropping.
Nuclear is already viable in all but political arenas. Jump the price of power enough and people will hold their nose and select it. Of course, you can't exactly shove nuclear power into a car, and oil is mostly used for transportation. So you're looking at a BIG change if you're going to use nuclear power to provide transport. Something like vast electrification of rail lines, restoration of electric trolly car systems, etc... More dense housing where mass transit is viable.
Coal is more a competitor for Nuclear, and we have a lot more of it.
Thing is, I believe that active limbs have moved past the 'prototype' stage. Now, because everybody's limbs are different, they're still mostly hand crafted/designed, but this isn't going to change for a while as the market remains too small and too varied for standard sizings to work well.
Still, I don't think we're going to be able to even come close to eliminating disabilities in 50 years. I've heard that there has been a substantial reduction - safer equipment, better medical care saves limbs, sight, and hearing left and right. Heck, having a 'disability' is less disabling than ever, on average. But there's still a lot of things to figure out before we can really eliminate it.
I disagree, for a couple points: 1. A $50 reward will only encourage people to steal the phones for the reward. 2. Phones aren't just stolen for putting in the criminal's account, they're also stolen to be used as a 'drop phone' for drug dealing and such. So it wouldn't remove all incentive.
I believe that the warranty length does have an effect on product design though. If you only have to worry about maintaining something at your own expense for 1 year, you'll design it differently than if you have to support it for 2, 5 or whatever.
Because you want to sell at the lowest price possible, if you have to warranty it to the point where repair/replacement costs become too significant, building it better is actually cheaper than providing warranty support.
Now, I'm normally free market as all heck. But look at the environmental chain - building a fridge that has an average lifespan last a decade might cost 10% more than one that will only last 5. But 2 fridges, each with 90% of the resources of the long lasting one, is still 180% of the resources. Sure, they might be 90% recyclable, but you're still down.
Where does the problem come in? Nobody really offers the longer warranties by choice. I'm forced to go by brand name, consumer reports, and hopefully luck. Brand Name - quality ebbs and flows. Consumer reports doesn't get enough time to test, especially since quality varies over the years. That leaves mostly luck.
As you say, it's spread differently. In Holland the median and mean incomes are probably much closer. In the USA we have a number of hugely wealthy people that drag the mean up. We DO have a 'huge population of poor people'. Also, we have substantial stratification - we have areas where a burglary is front page news, but we also have areas where a murder would be lucky to hit page 7.
Personally, as always when I consider this stuff, I blame the 'war on drugs'. It creates desperate people.
Also, be careful of cherry picking data - England's is worse than the USA, so obviously presence/absence of guns isn't the only factor.
you agree that there was a much better solution to the problem which didn't lead to this loss of freedom and which actually works?
Because I saw you as making logic errors? It doesn't help to deny the facts.
So it is possible for a lower lumen bulb with bluer spectrum to appear as bright as an incandescent bulb with a redder spectrum.
Possible, but how likely? The reviews I've seen mention the blue AND it being noticeably dimmer.
Or link to articles that speak of deaths from particulate pollution while estimating pollution contribution from linked charts of non-particulate pollution?
I was at work and reading quickly. Not writing a research paper, but good catch. I used what came up in the first few lines in google search. On the lights - yeah, the new rules(which have been delayed and there's a bill to cancel them) were not what I'd consider optimal.
Even the connection between light bulb and coal burning plant is tenuous with most bulbs which are subject to the ban operating at peak load times and hence covered more by peaking power than coal burning power. And that's assuming that one lives in an area that uses coal. It wouldn't be the case for much of the Northwest, for example.
You get pollution with NG plants as well. But yeah, it depends on what's actually be admitting; I'd pay more attention to the details if I was in office and had minions to look up the details/give me estimates.
Why aren't they running the plant full tilt most of the time? Coal is pretty cheap. And they could sell the night's excess to someone with pumped storage or other electricity storage systems.
1. Not enough demand 2. Nobody to sell too; the plant is isolated. It's also a cogeneration plant - it provides heat to the local buildings as well. Age wise, it was first built in 1952, but majorly upgraded somewhere around 1987.
That might work; One of the other problems you might have is that people generally don't like seeing their light source - thus the frequent use of diffusers, flush mount floods, etc...
It also wouldn't provide enough light, I think.
An 'ideal' system would actually be to have the whole ceiling light up with a relatively dim amount of light per area; but so much area that the room is well lit. You wouldn't get any shadows except right under something.
Incandescent bulbs don't keep the oldest, worst polluting coal burning plants operating (which were grandfathered in under 1977 legislation and still kicking).
I already wrote specifically against grandfathering. I already expressed an ideal intent to completely shut down coal power, essentially replacing it with nuclear(and replacing current nuclear with wind/solar).
The problem here remains that instead of fixing a problem, we decided to regulate mostly irrelevant human behavior.
I agree. I buy energy star products, I bought CFLs before the big pushes due not only to the lower energy usage. My homes typically don't have AC, electric heat is 'expensive' and counterproductive in summer, and I just plain dislike replacing light bulbs. LEDs, as of last check, were: 1. Lying about their equivalency. They were claiming to be equivalent to a 60 watt bulb while only producing the lumens of a 40 watt. 2. Energy efficiency per lumen was equal at best to CFL. 3. Expensive enough that even with their presumed double the lifespan of CFLs, 2-4 CFLs would be significantly cheaper than the one LED.
That's not to say that you couldn't get me to buy one - I looked into one for my fridge. They're not available locally, but the ~$12-20 each didn't kill the sale(I'm a techie; I like toys like this), but the shipping did(not available locally).
Most of what you see there are already energy efficient enough that they avoid the ban. But collectively, they burn a lot of coal.
Actually, much of it is exempt from the law's requirements due to being outside the light range(310-2600 lumens) or 'specialty' - appliance, 'rough service', colored, plant, 3-way, over 150 watts. Of course most meet the standards by being huge, and that those installing outside lighting generally care more about overall cost than light quality or personal preference.
Yeah, it does end up burning a lot of coal - which is the point. We could do a lot in the way of managing our outdoor lighting, again, it'd likely save more energy than trying to force people to swap light bulbs - a lot of people already have, so you can no longer assume that you can save X energy per home by swapping.
For coal to burn efficiently and with low pollution, the system has to be in a steady state. That means you need to burn coal and generate additional pollution just to get it to the state where you can generate power.
It depends on how the system is designed; our local one you can feed more coal to the boilers and simply generate steam faster, then they open a valve to another turbine in a planned, routine operation. It can be quite quick.
And I am doing it right. So no worries here.
I disagree - you keep strawmanning me. I recommend that you use sources, pay a bit more attention to not continuing arguments where the other person already agrees with you,
Um, isn't that true everywhere? It's a private company here also, but (this is hilarious) you are *required* to have trash service, or the county leans on you.
At my parent's house it's folded into the property taxes. At my previous place it was water/sewer/trash. It's required in most places, but I'm not in most places. I readily admit that. Work takes me out to the (relative) boonies. I'm on a well and septic system. It's kinda nice not having a water/sewer bill. Well other than the electricity to pump the water and the occasional dose of Rid-x. I figured on ~$40/month in water expenses anyways when I bought the house; septic systems need to be fixed/replaced occasionally.
remember glass milk bottles, so I would be fine with that. I wonder, though, what happens to the returned burned-out bulbs? Do they really get recycled, or do some companies just dump them?
Glass bottles were actually up a step on the conservation ladder - reuse vs recycling. 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Dispose'. Of course, nifty sayings aside, plastic gained prominence because it turned out the NG needed to make a plastic gallon milk jug was less than what was needed to heat the water to sterilize the bottles; much less manufacture them(and they still had a loss rate on the bottles, I think I read 6% loss per cycle). Plastic is/was cheaper. So, in a sort of meta way, you could say that plastic milk bottles are actually 'reduce' - you reduce the amount of resources needed in the first place with disposable plastic. Weird, huh?
On returned bulbs - I presume they're recycled for the most part, I'm sure there's the odd store that simply trashes them, but that's a investigative reporter, nosy local shopper, or squealing employee away from nasty headlines. Nasty headlines that would quickly have the EPA breathing down the company's neck.
But I don't have any idea where it goes after it leaves my house. For all I know, it becomes landfill.
You want fun? Look up NYC's glass recycling history. They charged fees, collected the bottles, etc... But then they smashed them all together and because they didn't sorted by color, there wasn't enough manufacturers willing to work with varying shades of brown that they also have to worry about contamination with(so no food products!), that something like 4/5ths of it ends up being dumped with the rest of the trash - at a cost of millions. At one point 'recycling' glass cost twice as much as landfilling it(and the majority ended up there despite the extra expense anyways!).
Following up to my own post, I just had an ugly thought -- or do they just carefully rebox them and put them back on the shelf? That would explain the high incidence of infant mortality.
The lights or the bottles? I'd imagine that putting blown lights back on the shelves would quickly get a store a bad reputation(don't see lots of people returning working ones), and the connection with babies is iffy(even if so, the biggest concern for CFLs are mercury, and mercury poisoning has specific symptoms and can be tested for). So probably the bottles - they went back to the filling center where they'd be inspected, washed, and sterilized - steam wash, basically autoclaved, before being filled up again. As for infant mortality being higher when glass milk bottles were common- lower levels of medical knowledge, all sorts of furniture and toys were less safe(and I'd argue more fun), etc... The milk was unlikely to have been that significant of a cause.
Dang, first post got eaten. Anyways - on enforcing the law. I did some research. It bans the importation and manufacture of non-compliant bulbs. It doesn't make selling them domestically illegal, nor possession, etc... So unless you're running a factory or importing business, I don't think you have to worry. Just like the toilets. They aren't going to break down people's doors looking for them.
Even you can see the right answer. So why go with a wrong one?
Remember I only stepped in to explain the analogy. Didn't say I agreed with it. I think we can both agree that pollution, especially too much of it, can be bad.
But not from light bulbs.
Let's see: ~70kdeaths from air pollution in the USA per year. The UK is 50k. Worldwide is 1.3M per year. Lighting is 9% of electricity usage. Eyeballing this and averaging the four sources, I get 24% of air pollution from energy production and distribution. EPA says 67% sulfur dioxide, 23% nitrogen oxide. I dropped CO2. That would be 45%. I'll stick with 24%.
Using a straight blame - 70k deaths from air pollution. 17k would be from electricity generation. 1.5k for pollution from powering lights, on average. 28k worldwide. So yeah, I can trace thousands of deaths to the pollution from light bulbs. Making matters worse - there's plenty of survivors affected - per 75 deaths there are '505 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory diseases, 3,500 respiratory emergency doctor visits, 180,000 asthma attacks, 930,000 restricted activity days, and 2,000,000 acute respiratory symptom days.' Per 75 deaths seems an odd measure to use, but it's what the article listed. That's a lot of lost labor due to the pollution.
As for the baseload vs peak - 'not many lights are left on overnight'? I refer you to this image. And coal power isn't entirely baseload - fire up another boiler, spin another turbine. It might have to be scheduled a bit more compared to hydro or NG, but it's there.
Look, it's not that we don't agree on some things, it's just that, well, if you're going to argue this stuff, you need to do it right, and denying facts isn't going to help. I lean majorly libertarian, but given the pollution levels in my town on occasion,
Don't take my word for it. Bring a DVD to a lighting store and see for yourself.
Don't live in a big enough city to have a 'lighting store' handy, at least one where the lights are seperated enough to actually tell.
Is an LED flashlight enough? I just checked; both look continuous to me. But then, I'm using 'Philips Alto II TL 865 F32T8' for the FL, which is advertised as having a 82 CRI@6500K.
Don't you love how if you'd followed my asterisk footnote, you'd have seen my addressing the lifespan? I said much the same as you did in there. Still, you get much the same improvement if you 'only' get 20-25X the lifespan. For that matter, I was installing CFLs before they were 'cool' for the energy savings because I don't like replacing lightbulbs. The extra buck or two was worth not having to replace one for a few years.
We also need curbside recycling of CFLs.
FMP: 'Or put them in the recycle bin for your trash pickup, like my parents do.'? My parents have curbside.
In my area, you pay by the size of your trash can, and I can get the smallest and cheapest trash can because the recycle bin is huge and I don't get charged for it. (Your mileage may vary.)
In my area, unless you pay a private company you don't get curbside pickup for anything. About once every 2 weeks I dump my 1 kitchen bag into a dumbster at the trash collection point. I'm on a septic system, so I don't use or even have a garbage disposal(it'll shave decades off the lifespan of the system). They even have limited recycling pickup there, but we're in a remote enough area that it generally costs more resources to ship the stuff to a recycling processing center than it is to obtain new(IE recycling would actually cause more pollution). Burnables go to the coal plant, to displace burning coal. It's not much, but it helps.
How about a stamp like the UL tag, which would signify that the product has met certain standards of longevity? Then I could buy those and avoid the crappy ones.
I'd endorse this. Then again, the rating agency will have to keep on their toes - wouldn't do for the company to start off by hiring a run from a quality factory, before switching to the lowest bidder. On further thought - I'd do something like require them to stamp manufacture date & warranty info on the bulbs- and honor their 5 year or whatever warrenty off of that, even without a receipt. Plus, say, 2-3 months for 'Storage, Shipping, and Retail'. It might not give the consumer a full 5 years from purchase, but it'd still be 4 more years of coverage if the buyer didn't take the time to photocopy their thermopaper receipt and file it carefully away. In any case, getting 90% of the warranty is better than maybe 10% of it.
Who's to know? But tell them they can put it in on the curb in a recycling container, and they're more likely to do that.
Ease wins out, doesn't it? And, as you mention, even if you have half a carload to take, that's a fair amount of resources to haul the car over there and back. Most people don't have half a car's worth of empty space to store up the stuff either. Which is why I mentioned having the recycling at retail stores. When I was a kid the recycling collection point was in a mall parking lot.
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Yes, I did RTFA. Like I said - we're not limited on space for installs. We DO face the problem that solar energy is barely competitive with grid power even with 50% or higher subsidies, competing against retail price for electricity, not utility price. It's noted that these are even more expensive for the energy, presumably because individual panels aren't ideally placed - but are placed such that they tend to pull more power in alternative conditions because some of the panels have better angles for such times as when the sun is near the horizon.
As Icebike said, these designs are probably no more productive than variable tilt solar panels, and they require a heck of a lot more structure than mounting an array on a house.
Whatever solution we come up with has to fit this or it is a step backwards.
I somewhat disagree. Right now it's 'drive it until it's more than half empty, then drive to a fill up station and pay to spend several minutes pouring flammable liquid into it'. There ARE negatives to the way gasoline filling works. Thus, moving away from this model can be a advantage, if done right. One such possibility is inductive charging for EVs.
Stage 1: Recharge at home via cable. Let's say that it takes 10 minutes, on average, to navigate a gas station and fill up, once every two weeks. 260 minutes spent at the gas station. As long as it takes you less than 42 seconds to hook up the charging cable 365 times over the year, you're saving time.
Stage 1.5: Add capability to recharge at work/restaurant/mall/parking lot via cable. Takes a bit more time, but you're more likely to be topped off for any long trips. If batteries are still a significant issue, allows you to make the battery smaller, as you're charging more often.
Stage 2: Recharge at home via induction: You simply park in the designated spot. Newer induction systems are more capable than ever at non-perfect alignments and longer distances. Time savings: Significant.
Stage 2.5: Recharge at work/restaurant/mall/parking lot via induction - I view induction systems as less likely to be damaged and more universal(you can always play with how the loops are connected to vary voltage). It's also faster.
Stage 3: Induction systems placed in roadways provide charge while driving. It might not be able to 'keep up' at highways speeds, but if it takes care of 50% - that takes a 300 mile charge to 600, effective. Worst case you slow down.
For this reason I'm a big fan of hydrogen fuel.
I'm not a fan of hydrogen because while it's the highest energy fuel by mass, it's about the lowest by volume. It also tends to leak. By the time you're storing a significant amount in a space small enough for a car, you're looking at pressures high enough that it ends up heavier than LiIon batteries for the energy contained. Making hydrogen is also inefficient - though processes have improved significantly, it's still much more energy efficient to charge batteries up. It's bad enough that NG is a better solution, and we even have fuel cells that work with it.
A big reason that the prius is as efficient as it is is still because of the battery - the ability to store the stopping energy and use it for the subsequent start saves a lot of energy. Still, one could do the same thing with a much smaller amount of super-capacitors. Besides, LiIon killed a lot of the advantages fuel cells had over batteries.
Personally, if you ask me my vision of a future where fossil fuels either don't exist or are not used, I see a variety of fuels being used. Electric for in-city short range use, and big things like trains have a continual tap. For vehicles that have to leave the area of the grid or just drive that much - it varies from hybrids fueled by algae based fuels to NG.
So now they're building big solar collectors that cover parking lots so people can park under them.
I read about 'solar roads' a while back. The idea is that they make the roads transparent and put solar panels under them to collect energy, and have light-up road signs and such.
My thought was - Why not cover the roads? Do they have semi-transparent solar panels? Even if not, I'm sure they could stagger the panels so some of the light still gets to the road- while conveniently blocking 'sun in your eyes' type problems and wet, slick roads, not to mention if you're further north the very angle that you end up mounting the panels at for maximum average efficiency should make clearing them a breeze, and better yet, no need for plowing snow! I've read that, for the most part, with a decent slant it's still energy positive to use electric heating to clear panels when necessary. The idea isn't to melt all the snow-just enough that you get a liquid layer between the panel and the snow, causing it to just slide off.
I agree - We're a long ways from needing to increase density in this fashion.
I don't have the sources at the moment, but I remember reading that Germany required the power companies to buy back power at 10X the retail rate as a rather extreme subsidy. At such subsidy levels it might make sense to put solar panels in at the poles, and not just for a station only occupied in the summer...
You made a good point; some more thought and I might of come up with that system. You'll still get scalpers that way, but their income will be limited. They'd put in for the max tickets and hope to get lucky.
It'd still allow scalping; it'd simply mean that the scalper would actually need to go to the show. Unless you mean that every ticket has to have pre-assigned names like plane tickets today.
In this case, it sounds like a good idea. A significant amount of work needed, but it might work better - and at $900 a ticket, you can afford to be selective. I was being more generic.
I've thought about this. The first solution, of course, is the best, and has the schadenfreude benefit of screwing the scalpers a bit.
However, it's not always possible to increase supply. I'm pretty sure Metallica(and other bands of that popularity level) could hold two daily shows for the next decade and STILL be selling out every show if they charged $100/head.
The lottery idea has some merit, but how do you decide who gets tickets? Do I get five friends together and each of us apply for five tickets? It might not be 'fun' for me to go unless I can go with my friends... I have five times the odds of getting a ticket than the poor guy who wants to go alone.
I think a better way to state it, would be to say that efficiency per square foot of ground used is not important, unless the cost of the cells come down./quote.
Probably, and I think that it's still got a good ways to go. We ARE getting to the point that I think we're going to need to start paying more attention to reducing the cost of the inverter systems.
From a practical standpoint, I think we'll be seeing a lot more solar roofs before this MIT design starts going lots of places - that much structure is going to cost a bit to build, solar panels that don't even cover the entire roof can cover the average power needs of the average house, as long as it's not all electric appliances.
On a more practical standpoint, I was once very interested in using solar heat to power adsorption chillers for homes instead of AC systems. Make solar panels half as much again and they won't make sense - just go with a traditional(but high efficiency) AC systems and solar electric panels. Solar water heating will still be king for a while yet though.
It's a little late, but I have two thoughts. One was a band that discovered something like 80% of their tickets had been bought by scalpers, who were demanding 10X the ticket price. Their solution? They held 3 more shows. The first, originally scheduled, show was practically empty - the other 3 were packed.
Solution type: Increase supply.
Another option is to hold a 'dutch auction' for the tickets. Easy enough for shows with one seating category, but only a touch more difficult with multiple to handle people who are willing to pay $X for 'good' seats, but $Y for 'normal' seats only if they don't get good ones. The tickets then go for the minimum price that 'just' sells all tickets. Yes, this means that only the richest and/or most dedicated fo fans get to go, but at least the money ends up in the hands of the artist's company, not scalpers. If the artists feel that the price has risen too much, add shows.
Solution type: Increase the price so that demand equals supply.
That's an interesting article, but I found the link about using an ion cannon to make cells 1/10th as thick at 1/2 the cost of cheap chinese cells to be potentially more revolutionary.
At this point we're not especially limited on space for solar installs. Our problem is that our collection systems aren't cheap enough.
In real life we have hundreds of years of fossil fuels left.
In real life we have millions of years; because somewhere between 50 and 200 it'll become increasingly uneconomical to extract said fossil fuels such that alternatives are actually cheaper. The first it's likely to happen to is oil. In 50 years we're likely to let most of it sit in the ground because pulling it out is too expensive except for certain scientific testing.
Thus the 'peak oil' - at some point extraction cost will exceed the economic worth, and production will start dropping.
Nuclear is already viable in all but political arenas. Jump the price of power enough and people will hold their nose and select it. Of course, you can't exactly shove nuclear power into a car, and oil is mostly used for transportation. So you're looking at a BIG change if you're going to use nuclear power to provide transport. Something like vast electrification of rail lines, restoration of electric trolly car systems, etc... More dense housing where mass transit is viable.
Coal is more a competitor for Nuclear, and we have a lot more of it.
Anymore odds are you're going to have at least a few military types well used to MRE's on board.
Of course, an MRE could keep me entertained for a couple hours of flight...
Thing is, I believe that active limbs have moved past the 'prototype' stage. Now, because everybody's limbs are different, they're still mostly hand crafted/designed, but this isn't going to change for a while as the market remains too small and too varied for standard sizings to work well.
Still, I don't think we're going to be able to even come close to eliminating disabilities in 50 years. I've heard that there has been a substantial reduction - safer equipment, better medical care saves limbs, sight, and hearing left and right. Heck, having a 'disability' is less disabling than ever, on average. But there's still a lot of things to figure out before we can really eliminate it.
The AC I responded to simply said 'Verizon Phones', and also asked 'why does anyone steal them'?
I won't disagree that if they promptly disabled phones reported stolen in a fairly permanent way that thefts would go down.
I disagree, for a couple points:
1. A $50 reward will only encourage people to steal the phones for the reward.
2. Phones aren't just stolen for putting in the criminal's account, they're also stolen to be used as a 'drop phone' for drug dealing and such. So it wouldn't remove all incentive.
I believe that the warranty length does have an effect on product design though. If you only have to worry about maintaining something at your own expense for 1 year, you'll design it differently than if you have to support it for 2, 5 or whatever.
Because you want to sell at the lowest price possible, if you have to warranty it to the point where repair/replacement costs become too significant, building it better is actually cheaper than providing warranty support.
Now, I'm normally free market as all heck. But look at the environmental chain - building a fridge that has an average lifespan last a decade might cost 10% more than one that will only last 5. But 2 fridges, each with 90% of the resources of the long lasting one, is still 180% of the resources. Sure, they might be 90% recyclable, but you're still down.
Where does the problem come in? Nobody really offers the longer warranties by choice. I'm forced to go by brand name, consumer reports, and hopefully luck. Brand Name - quality ebbs and flows. Consumer reports doesn't get enough time to test, especially since quality varies over the years. That leaves mostly luck.
As you say, it's spread differently. In Holland the median and mean incomes are probably much closer. In the USA we have a number of hugely wealthy people that drag the mean up. We DO have a 'huge population of poor people'. Also, we have substantial stratification - we have areas where a burglary is front page news, but we also have areas where a murder would be lucky to hit page 7.
Personally, as always when I consider this stuff, I blame the 'war on drugs'. It creates desperate people.
Also, be careful of cherry picking data - England's is worse than the USA, so obviously presence/absence of guns isn't the only factor.
you agree that there was a much better solution to the problem which didn't lead to this loss of freedom and which actually works?
Because I saw you as making logic errors? It doesn't help to deny the facts.
So it is possible for a lower lumen bulb with bluer spectrum to appear as bright as an incandescent bulb with a redder spectrum.
Possible, but how likely? The reviews I've seen mention the blue AND it being noticeably dimmer.
Or link to articles that speak of deaths from particulate pollution while estimating pollution contribution from linked charts of non-particulate pollution?
I was at work and reading quickly. Not writing a research paper, but good catch. I used what came up in the first few lines in google search.
On the lights - yeah, the new rules(which have been delayed and there's a bill to cancel them) were not what I'd consider optimal.
Even the connection between light bulb and coal burning plant is tenuous with most bulbs which are subject to the ban operating at peak load times and hence covered more by peaking power than coal burning power. And that's assuming that one lives in an area that uses coal. It wouldn't be the case for much of the Northwest, for example.
You get pollution with NG plants as well. But yeah, it depends on what's actually be admitting; I'd pay more attention to the details if I was in office and had minions to look up the details/give me estimates.
Why aren't they running the plant full tilt most of the time? Coal is pretty cheap. And they could sell the night's excess to someone with pumped storage or other electricity storage systems.
1. Not enough demand
2. Nobody to sell too; the plant is isolated. It's also a cogeneration plant - it provides heat to the local buildings as well.
Age wise, it was first built in 1952, but majorly upgraded somewhere around 1987.
That might work; One of the other problems you might have is that people generally don't like seeing their light source - thus the frequent use of diffusers, flush mount floods, etc...
It also wouldn't provide enough light, I think.
An 'ideal' system would actually be to have the whole ceiling light up with a relatively dim amount of light per area; but so much area that the room is well lit. You wouldn't get any shadows except right under something.
Incandescent bulbs don't keep the oldest, worst polluting coal burning plants operating (which were grandfathered in under 1977 legislation and still kicking).
I already wrote specifically against grandfathering. I already expressed an ideal intent to completely shut down coal power, essentially replacing it with nuclear(and replacing current nuclear with wind/solar).
The problem here remains that instead of fixing a problem, we decided to regulate mostly irrelevant human behavior.
I agree. I buy energy star products, I bought CFLs before the big pushes due not only to the lower energy usage. My homes typically don't have AC, electric heat is 'expensive' and counterproductive in summer, and I just plain dislike replacing light bulbs. LEDs, as of last check, were:
1. Lying about their equivalency. They were claiming to be equivalent to a 60 watt bulb while only producing the lumens of a 40 watt.
2. Energy efficiency per lumen was equal at best to CFL.
3. Expensive enough that even with their presumed double the lifespan of CFLs, 2-4 CFLs would be significantly cheaper than the one LED.
That's not to say that you couldn't get me to buy one - I looked into one for my fridge. They're not available locally, but the ~$12-20 each didn't kill the sale(I'm a techie; I like toys like this), but the shipping did(not available locally).
Most of what you see there are already energy efficient enough that they avoid the ban. But collectively, they burn a lot of coal.
Actually, much of it is exempt from the law's requirements due to being outside the light range(310-2600 lumens) or 'specialty' - appliance, 'rough service', colored, plant, 3-way, over 150 watts. Of course most meet the standards by being huge, and that those installing outside lighting generally care more about overall cost than light quality or personal preference.
Yeah, it does end up burning a lot of coal - which is the point. We could do a lot in the way of managing our outdoor lighting, again, it'd likely save more energy than trying to force people to swap light bulbs - a lot of people already have, so you can no longer assume that you can save X energy per home by swapping.
For coal to burn efficiently and with low pollution, the system has to be in a steady state. That means you need to burn coal and generate additional pollution just to get it to the state where you can generate power.
It depends on how the system is designed; our local one you can feed more coal to the boilers and simply generate steam faster, then they open a valve to another turbine in a planned, routine operation. It can be quite quick.
And I am doing it right. So no worries here.
I disagree - you keep strawmanning me. I recommend that you use sources, pay a bit more attention to not continuing arguments where the other person already agrees with you,
Um, isn't that true everywhere? It's a private company here also, but (this is hilarious) you are *required* to have trash service, or the county leans on you.
At my parent's house it's folded into the property taxes. At my previous place it was water/sewer/trash. It's required in most places, but I'm not in most places. I readily admit that. Work takes me out to the (relative) boonies. I'm on a well and septic system. It's kinda nice not having a water/sewer bill. Well other than the electricity to pump the water and the occasional dose of Rid-x. I figured on ~$40/month in water expenses anyways when I bought the house; septic systems need to be fixed/replaced occasionally.
remember glass milk bottles, so I would be fine with that. I wonder, though, what happens to the returned burned-out bulbs? Do they really get recycled, or do some companies just dump them?
Glass bottles were actually up a step on the conservation ladder - reuse vs recycling. 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Dispose'. Of course, nifty sayings aside, plastic gained prominence because it turned out the NG needed to make a plastic gallon milk jug was less than what was needed to heat the water to sterilize the bottles; much less manufacture them(and they still had a loss rate on the bottles, I think I read 6% loss per cycle). Plastic is/was cheaper. So, in a sort of meta way, you could say that plastic milk bottles are actually 'reduce' - you reduce the amount of resources needed in the first place with disposable plastic. Weird, huh?
On returned bulbs - I presume they're recycled for the most part, I'm sure there's the odd store that simply trashes them, but that's a investigative reporter, nosy local shopper, or squealing employee away from nasty headlines. Nasty headlines that would quickly have the EPA breathing down the company's neck.
But I don't have any idea where it goes after it leaves my house. For all I know, it becomes landfill.
You want fun? Look up NYC's glass recycling history. They charged fees, collected the bottles, etc... But then they smashed them all together and because they didn't sorted by color, there wasn't enough manufacturers willing to work with varying shades of brown that they also have to worry about contamination with(so no food products!), that something like 4/5ths of it ends up being dumped with the rest of the trash - at a cost of millions. At one point 'recycling' glass cost twice as much as landfilling it(and the majority ended up there despite the extra expense anyways!).
Following up to my own post, I just had an ugly thought -- or do they just carefully rebox them and put them back on the shelf? That would explain the high incidence of infant mortality.
The lights or the bottles? I'd imagine that putting blown lights back on the shelves would quickly get a store a bad reputation(don't see lots of people returning working ones), and the connection with babies is iffy(even if so, the biggest concern for CFLs are mercury, and mercury poisoning has specific symptoms and can be tested for). So probably the bottles - they went back to the filling center where they'd be inspected, washed, and sterilized - steam wash, basically autoclaved, before being filled up again. As for infant mortality being higher when glass milk bottles were common- lower levels of medical knowledge, all sorts of furniture and toys were less safe(and I'd argue more fun), etc... The milk was unlikely to have been that significant of a cause.
Dang, first post got eaten. Anyways - on enforcing the law. I did some research. It bans the importation and manufacture of non-compliant bulbs. It doesn't make selling them domestically illegal, nor possession, etc... So unless you're running a factory or importing business, I don't think you have to worry. Just like the toilets. They aren't going to break down people's doors looking for them.
Even you can see the right answer. So why go with a wrong one?
Remember I only stepped in to explain the analogy. Didn't say I agreed with it. I think we can both agree that pollution, especially too much of it, can be bad.
But not from light bulbs.
Let's see: ~70k deaths from air pollution in the USA per year. The UK is 50k. Worldwide is 1.3M per year.
Lighting is 9% of electricity usage.
Eyeballing this and averaging the four sources, I get 24% of air pollution from energy production and distribution. EPA says 67% sulfur dioxide, 23% nitrogen oxide. I dropped CO2. That would be 45%. I'll stick with 24%.
Using a straight blame - 70k deaths from air pollution. 17k would be from electricity generation. 1.5k for pollution from powering lights, on average. 28k worldwide.
So yeah, I can trace thousands of deaths to the pollution from light bulbs. Making matters worse - there's plenty of survivors affected - per 75 deaths there are '505 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory diseases, 3,500 respiratory emergency doctor visits, 180,000 asthma attacks, 930,000 restricted activity days, and 2,000,000 acute respiratory symptom days.' Per 75 deaths seems an odd measure to use, but it's what the article listed. That's a lot of lost labor due to the pollution.
As for the baseload vs peak - 'not many lights are left on overnight'? I refer you to this image. And coal power isn't entirely baseload - fire up another boiler, spin another turbine. It might have to be scheduled a bit more compared to hydro or NG, but it's there.
Look, it's not that we don't agree on some things, it's just that, well, if you're going to argue this stuff, you need to do it right, and denying facts isn't going to help. I lean majorly libertarian, but given the pollution levels in my town on occasion,
Don't take my word for it. Bring a DVD to a lighting store and see for yourself.
Don't live in a big enough city to have a 'lighting store' handy, at least one where the lights are seperated enough to actually tell.
Is an LED flashlight enough? I just checked; both look continuous to me. But then, I'm using 'Philips Alto II TL 865 F32T8' for the FL, which is advertised as having a 82 CRI@6500K.
First, the bad stuff:
That assumes 50X lifespan. See above.
Don't you love how if you'd followed my asterisk footnote, you'd have seen my addressing the lifespan? I said much the same as you did in there. Still, you get much the same improvement if you 'only' get 20-25X the lifespan. For that matter, I was installing CFLs before they were 'cool' for the energy savings because I don't like replacing lightbulbs. The extra buck or two was worth not having to replace one for a few years.
We also need curbside recycling of CFLs.
FMP: 'Or put them in the recycle bin for your trash pickup, like my parents do.'? My parents have curbside.
In my area, you pay by the size of your trash can, and I can get the smallest and cheapest trash can because the recycle bin is huge and I don't get charged for it. (Your mileage may vary.)
In my area, unless you pay a private company you don't get curbside pickup for anything. About once every 2 weeks I dump my 1 kitchen bag into a dumbster at the trash collection point. I'm on a septic system, so I don't use or even have a garbage disposal(it'll shave decades off the lifespan of the system). They even have limited recycling pickup there, but we're in a remote enough area that it generally costs more resources to ship the stuff to a recycling processing center than it is to obtain new(IE recycling would actually cause more pollution). Burnables go to the coal plant, to displace burning coal. It's not much, but it helps.
How about a stamp like the UL tag, which would signify that the product has met certain standards of longevity? Then I could buy those and avoid the crappy ones.
I'd endorse this. Then again, the rating agency will have to keep on their toes - wouldn't do for the company to start off by hiring a run from a quality factory, before switching to the lowest bidder. On further thought - I'd do something like require them to stamp manufacture date & warranty info on the bulbs- and honor their 5 year or whatever warrenty off of that, even without a receipt. Plus, say, 2-3 months for 'Storage, Shipping, and Retail'. It might not give the consumer a full 5 years from purchase, but it'd still be 4 more years of coverage if the buyer didn't take the time to photocopy their thermopaper receipt and file it carefully away. In any case, getting 90% of the warranty is better than maybe 10% of it.
Who's to know? But tell them they can put it in on the curb in a recycling container, and they're more likely to do that.
Ease wins out, doesn't it? And, as you mention, even if you have half a carload to take, that's a fair amount of resources to haul the car over there and back. Most people don't have half a car's worth of empty space to store up the stuff either. Which is why I mentioned having the recycling at retail stores. When I was a kid the recycling collection point was in a mall parking lot.