Don't know if yours is one. North Dakota does well for sunshine, an average of 5 peak equivilent hours per day
You do know that there are locations with effectively double this, right? Also, our sunlight generally isn't as intense as down south. We're also oddballs in that we hardly ever need to cool our homes, but the heating demands are intense. So we need the most energy when sunlight is the least available.
Right now those members of my family that are living in Florida could make much better use of any solar panels than I could. Heck, I'd recommend solar water heating, if nothing else. Much cheaper and more efficient.
Wind is actually the cheapest right now even compared to hydro.
With or without the subsidies?
Solar wins in terms of competing with delivered electricity despite installation costs. This is why the commercial sector is adopting it so rapidly. In terms of new construction in California: http://news.com.com/Solar+industry+targets+new+hom es/2100-11392_3-6187964.html.
California also offers some of the heaviest subsidies coupled with some of the highest general electricity costs in the nation. ND doesn't have that much in the way of subsidies, combined with some of the cheapest electricity in the nation.
I beg to differ, if water is hotter, there will be less oxygen. At around 90F it is already starting to get too hot for fish.
Which is why they shut down the power plant. Still, I wasn't talking about 90F water, I'm talking about when it's colder and the difference is more like between 60-65F.
As a human, I usually like my air temperature around 60-80F. Below that it's cold and I start bundling up, above that I start sweating.
Availability and relability are different. It is the lack of reliability that is driving up costs
Nuclear plants have been achieving a capacity factor of over 90% for the last decade. That's higher than any other major power production system. I'd tend to call that reliable. Nuclear power plants rarely have to shut down unexpected. They even hardly have to shut down expectedly.
You may want to check out what solar and wind actually cost compared to new nuclear power.
I have. New nuclear power plants are expected to cost ~$1-$2 per watt, biased towards $1/watt if multiple reactors of a single {design are built. The materials for solar, even with subsidies, runs about three to five times as much. Installation costs for a rooftop solar system are also estimated at $1-2/watt.
Wind is cheaper, but harder to get a measure on. Not as many individuals putting turbines up. Economy of scale is better than solar panels as well. Still, most installs I've seen cost ~$2-6 per watt.
We are hurting for peak capacity so you are making things a little skewed when you insist on your multiplier I think.
Ah! You mean I get to handicap wind and solar power even more? Solar and wind produce power when it wants to. You can throttle nuclear power plants fairly easily, it's just that power companies tend to throttle their most expensive sources of power first, and nuclear is beating coal right now in fuel costs, so it's just about the last one they shut off. Hydroelectric is cheaper, but also the easy to throttle and has limited 'fuel' reserves(water in the reservoir), so it can be used to help satisfy peak demands economically.
Rough list of cost, from least to most: Hydro, Nuclear, Coal, Natural Gas, Propane, Oil, Gasoline
In terms of surface area needed, the roofs of homes can generate 46% of all power consumed:
Please note that I didn't ding solar on rooftops for practicality purposes. Rooftop solar installs are very uneconomic right now, that's my objection to them. Note: I'm not a rabid anti-enviromentalist, just consider myself a realist. If they made real economic sense, just about every new house going up in California would have them. As it is, it's only used for special purposes or for a salve for excessively green-minded people.
Cut the costs of a solar install by an order of magnitude and I'd be putting them in, and I live in sunny North Dakota(sarcasm warning).
Next thing you know we'll be seeing diesel-electrics in big trucks such as semis.
Then it'll trickle down to pickups and SUVs.
Small cars actually make the least amount of sense to try to make into a hybrid - you have a lot of static costs, making them proportionally more expensive(IE $3k for a $13k car vs $5k for a $30k SUV). Plus - you have the least to gain. Going from 30mpg to 40mpg saves you less fuel per mile than going from 15mpg to 25mpg. Over the course of 10k miles, you'd save 83 gallons of fuel for the car, vs 267 gallons for the SUV replacement.
Then again, we're also finding out that they can produce a four-door 40mpg car without making it a hybrid. The biggest difference I've seen in them is going from a 4 speed auto or 5 speed manual to systems with six gears. Extra gears equals extra expense, and probably extra weight, though the efficiency gains clearly beat it.
So this is more a case of miniaturization than entirely new tech.
Next thing you know we'll be seeing diesel-electrics, such as for big trucks such as semis.
Electric motors scale well, and such vehicles already have a huge, heavy, and expensive gearbox, the elimination of which can help offset costs and weight penalties.
On a reliability scale, nuclear power comes in low because it is not there when you need it most.
Yet it has an availability factor higher than even coal. It beats the heck out of solar(40% availability if you're lucky), and even wind on average doesn't beat 30%.
This shutdown is news precisely because it is rare. Besides, it might be expensive and cost some efficiency, but they could increase their alternate cooling systems(IE cooling towers) and be able to run just fine. They just never needed to before now.
This matches its detrimental economic and environmental impact.
Yet I see people advocating solar and wind power generation - when most studies I've seen place them starting at equal cost per maximum capacity watt. Which, when you consider the production factor means they cost three times as much per kw/h produced per year. I've seen other figures that place them at 10x to 100x as expensive.
As for environmental impact - minimal for a properly run nuclear plant. Matter of fact, this shutdown is part of that. The plant could keep running and producing power - but it'd have a negative effect on the river life at that point. Most of the time it's actually positive, studies have shown fish love the warmer water.
Besides, it's not like 'green sources' are free of it either - you need so many acres of solar panels or wind turbines that their effects would add up as well. Solar wouldn't be bad if it wasn't so expensive that for the cost of a basic install you could afford to buy the electricity that would of been produced off of the earnings of a money market account for eternity.
[quote]How efficient is a power generation plant that throws away gigawatts of power as waste heat?[/quote]
It's not throwing away gigawatts by any means; besides, the same problem occurs at many coal plants; some coal plants have their own cooling towers. It's just that they can more often get by dumping the heat up their smokestacks.
Double doors are a great idea; although, after 1 inch of air gap it is not helping (which is probably why storm/screen doors are more bang for the buck.)
I have a storm door as well, so I've effectivly got three doors.
As for building them myself, well, I'm not a carpentor nor do I have enough time to mess with it.
And if it's anything like the last OEM build I worked with, it takes me longer to get the OS into the shape I want it in(crapware removed) than it does to do a fresh install, even with the hassle of finding the drivers.
One of these days I should get a copy of a ghost program.
Join the rest of the world, metric is lovely and far easier to use.
How about 'I don't give a crap'. Yes, when dealing with building materials here in the states I have to work in inches and feet, so that's what I think in. I can work in meters just fine, but if I asked for a 3 meter board down at the store they'd look at me funny.
External thermal moderators are illogical, is is generally cold all winter or hot all summer, external is strictly insulate, internal is heat sinks.
Not to my thinking, as all materials act as both. Besides, even where I am there are wide variations in temperature over the course of a day. In many areas down in the arid south, without sufficient insulation it gets cold enough at night to require heating and hot enough for AC during the day through much of the year. Traditional buildings(IE before AC) were traditionally very open, but built with adobe. Like concrete, adobe tends towards the massive. A properly built building allowed airflow while still providing substantial temperature moderation.
Besides, it's easiest to build your exterior walls massive - that way you aren't using internal space with it.
To put it a different way - make the walls and roof thick enough(around frost line depth), and you'll stay at a steady temperature year round.
As for insulation, I'll repeat: It might not have the insulating properties for the depth as other products, but it still has them.
For the water problem, that's what sealants are for.
Not to mention I just read an article about some concrete homes(not domes) built by edison.
There are some problems with them, for example Edison wasn't much of an interior designer. One also has a leak that they haven't been able to track down. Still, that's one out of a tract of houses, and it's not like traditional houses don't have leaks.
Still, the people apparently like them and find their enviroment nice. I don't know why some people think that they're uncomfortable when you heat/cool them due to moisture.
One thing about massive structures such as concrete or earth homes is that you don't need to seal them up as much, especially during the spring/fall, as the home will naturally moderate to a comfortable temperature, allowing far more ventilation.
R3 of insulation is nothing, are you sure you didn't mean R30?
People build here with R40.
Besides, while concrete isn't a great insulator by the inch, the fact that they can build stuff feet thick helps. It acts less as an insulator than a thermal moderator with it's mass. The old absorbs heat during the day, releases it at night.
First, the Arclight has hexagonal panels - that means seams which water can leak into and expand upon freezing, causing the cracks.
Standard monolithic dome homes are built as a solid structure - no real seams, other than the doorways and windows, and those won't be concrete-concrete seams. They're also much smaller and experience less stress than roadways.
Another problem is that they're indeed difficult to impossible to expand - your best bet is to cast a new dome and expand into that
Adding new openings can be extremely difficult. After all, you're trying to chop a precise hole into steel reinforced concrete.
If you consider superior to consider only availability
I won't consider availability to be everything, but I can't watch a DVD that hasn't been released yet, so the effective quality of said DVD is zero until I can get my hands on it.
Meanwhile, the cam-videos, though sucky, are available.
It's not like quality can't be a sliding scale. A modern Honda civic would steamroll a model-t, for example. But if you go back to 1925, you're not going to be able to get a Honda Civic, the Model T would be the best economy car you could get.
Thinking about it, an EV motor being used as a generator isn't going to be producing the same voltage as what's used to drive it. So in order to draw energy from the motor(slowing the car down), you'd have to step the voltage up above that of the battery pack in order to charge it.
One thing I remember is that changing voltage is easier with AC than DC. Most of the time to change the voltage of DC you change it into AC first anyways.
So while the controller is more complicated, and therefore more expensive, semiconductor and IC technology is used, making economy of scale easily worth it for auto manufacturers, as the cost for the controller would drop substantially when you're building thousands of them.
Add in that most home-brew conversions have less than a hundred miles of range, while most factory EVs have more than a hundred miles of range, so the auto manufacturer is looking for every percentage point of efficiency.
Everything I've heard has the iphone being unavailable without the contract, so you'd have to depend upon secondary sources.
It's also a 'hot item' right now, and that drives the price up. Apple computers has quite a brand name for some people, and that helps them sell stuff for more as well.
Still - I remember hearing a rumor that the iPhone costs 1/3 of what they're selling it for. So once competition enters the market, it should drive the price down substantially.
When you end up talking about stuff like this I look more towards products that actually have competition. IE you can buy an equivalent phone from AT&T or Verizon or Motorola or any of the other half dozen providers and manufacturers.
Just because a battery has Li in it does not mean it's dangerous to handle. (at least, not if it's designed sensibly) Most laptop computer batteries nowadays are LiIo which is not too different.
I was just relaying the recommendations placed in the instruction manuals by the company that made the batteries. Oh, and it's not like laptop batteries have a perfect safety record either.
They may be similar, but from my understanding, laptop LiIon batteries still use electrolyte, of with the presumably exploded battery didn't have.
As for the high voltage stuff - you're right, it does have some interesting effects, yet personally, I'd prefer to see them in lab videos. Still, this cabinet shouldn't see anything more than 240 volts at max, and 120 would be more likely. Fuses should blow long before voltages get to the levels needed to make even a bang audible outside the cabinet.
Actually, the vast majority of cell phones at retail cost $400-500
MSRP might be that high, but given the ease at which they offer rebates and discounts and free phones I doubt they cost that much. I mean, I just saw a new laptop offer for $399. That includes wireless, 17" screen, the works.
I don't believe that cell phones really cost that much 'retail', it's simply that rebates and sales are so prevalent that only a few idiots pay MSRP, it's mostly marketing gimmick, similar to what car salesmen do.
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Don't know if yours is one. North Dakota does well for sunshine, an average of 5 peak equivilent hours per day
m es/2100-11392_3-6187964.html.
You do know that there are locations with effectively double this, right? Also, our sunlight generally isn't as intense as down south. We're also oddballs in that we hardly ever need to cool our homes, but the heating demands are intense. So we need the most energy when sunlight is the least available.
Right now those members of my family that are living in Florida could make much better use of any solar panels than I could. Heck, I'd recommend solar water heating, if nothing else. Much cheaper and more efficient.
Wind is actually the cheapest right now even compared to hydro.
With or without the subsidies?
Solar wins in terms of competing with delivered electricity despite installation costs. This is why the commercial sector is adopting it so rapidly. In terms of new construction in California: http://news.com.com/Solar+industry+targets+new+ho
California also offers some of the heaviest subsidies coupled with some of the highest general electricity costs in the nation. ND doesn't have that much in the way of subsidies, combined with some of the cheapest electricity in the nation.
I beg to differ, if water is hotter, there will be less oxygen. At around 90F it is already starting to get too hot for fish.
Which is why they shut down the power plant. Still, I wasn't talking about 90F water, I'm talking about when it's colder and the difference is more like between 60-65F.
As a human, I usually like my air temperature around 60-80F. Below that it's cold and I start bundling up, above that I start sweating.
Availability and relability are different. It is the lack of reliability that is driving up costs
Nuclear plants have been achieving a capacity factor of over 90% for the last decade. That's higher than any other major power production system. I'd tend to call that reliable. Nuclear power plants rarely have to shut down unexpected. They even hardly have to shut down expectedly.
You may want to check out what solar and wind actually cost compared to new nuclear power.
I have. New nuclear power plants are expected to cost ~$1-$2 per watt, biased towards $1/watt if multiple reactors of a single {design are built. The materials for solar, even with subsidies, runs about three to five times as much. Installation costs for a rooftop solar system are also estimated at $1-2/watt.
Wind is cheaper, but harder to get a measure on. Not as many individuals putting turbines up. Economy of scale is better than solar panels as well. Still, most installs I've seen cost ~$2-6 per watt.
We are hurting for peak capacity so you are making things a little skewed when you insist on your multiplier I think.
Ah! You mean I get to handicap wind and solar power even more? Solar and wind produce power when it wants to. You can throttle nuclear power plants fairly easily, it's just that power companies tend to throttle their most expensive sources of power first, and nuclear is beating coal right now in fuel costs, so it's just about the last one they shut off. Hydroelectric is cheaper, but also the easy to throttle and has limited 'fuel' reserves(water in the reservoir), so it can be used to help satisfy peak demands economically.
Rough list of cost, from least to most:
Hydro, Nuclear, Coal, Natural Gas, Propane, Oil, Gasoline
In terms of surface area needed, the roofs of homes can generate 46% of all power consumed:
Please note that I didn't ding solar on rooftops for practicality purposes. Rooftop solar installs are very uneconomic right now, that's my objection to them. Note: I'm not a rabid anti-enviromentalist, just consider myself a realist. If they made real economic sense, just about every new house going up in California would have them. As it is, it's only used for special purposes or for a salve for excessively green-minded people.
Cut the costs of a solar install by an order of magnitude and I'd be putting them in, and I live in sunny North Dakota(sarcasm warning).
Bleh... I need to go back to english class
Next thing you know we'll be seeing diesel-electrics in big trucks such as semis.
Then it'll trickle down to pickups and SUVs.
Small cars actually make the least amount of sense to try to make into a hybrid - you have a lot of static costs, making them proportionally more expensive(IE $3k for a $13k car vs $5k for a $30k SUV). Plus - you have the least to gain. Going from 30mpg to 40mpg saves you less fuel per mile than going from 15mpg to 25mpg. Over the course of 10k miles, you'd save 83 gallons of fuel for the car, vs 267 gallons for the SUV replacement.
Then again, we're also finding out that they can produce a four-door 40mpg car without making it a hybrid. The biggest difference I've seen in them is going from a 4 speed auto or 5 speed manual to systems with six gears. Extra gears equals extra expense, and probably extra weight, though the efficiency gains clearly beat it.
So this is more a case of miniaturization than entirely new tech.
Next thing you know we'll be seeing diesel-electrics, such as for big trucks such as semis.
Electric motors scale well, and such vehicles already have a huge, heavy, and expensive gearbox, the elimination of which can help offset costs and weight penalties.
On a reliability scale, nuclear power comes in low because it is not there when you need it most.
Yet it has an availability factor higher than even coal. It beats the heck out of solar(40% availability if you're lucky), and even wind on average doesn't beat 30%.
This shutdown is news precisely because it is rare. Besides, it might be expensive and cost some efficiency, but they could increase their alternate cooling systems(IE cooling towers) and be able to run just fine. They just never needed to before now.
This matches its detrimental economic and environmental impact.
Yet I see people advocating solar and wind power generation - when most studies I've seen place them starting at equal cost per maximum capacity watt. Which, when you consider the production factor means they cost three times as much per kw/h produced per year. I've seen other figures that place them at 10x to 100x as expensive.
As for environmental impact - minimal for a properly run nuclear plant. Matter of fact, this shutdown is part of that. The plant could keep running and producing power - but it'd have a negative effect on the river life at that point. Most of the time it's actually positive, studies have shown fish love the warmer water.
Besides, it's not like 'green sources' are free of it either - you need so many acres of solar panels or wind turbines that their effects would add up as well. Solar wouldn't be bad if it wasn't so expensive that for the cost of a basic install you could afford to buy the electricity that would of been produced off of the earnings of a money market account for eternity.
I heard on the radio a couple days ago that they're building an ethanol plant to use the waste head of the local coal power plant.
My first thought was 'great'. I love hearing about waste reduction. When what was previously waste to be disposed of becomes a valuable resource.
[quote]How efficient is a power generation plant that throws away gigawatts of power as waste heat?[/quote]
It's not throwing away gigawatts by any means; besides, the same problem occurs at many coal plants; some coal plants have their own cooling towers. It's just that they can more often get by dumping the heat up their smokestacks.
Double doors are a great idea; although, after 1 inch of air gap it is not helping (which is probably why storm/screen doors are more bang for the buck.)
I have a storm door as well, so I've effectivly got three doors.
As for building them myself, well, I'm not a carpentor nor do I have enough time to mess with it.
You can buy all sorts of pre-fab insulated doors. Still, my solution(for multiple reasons) is to have a foyer area again - two doors.
My house has one that includes a nice convenient coat closet. Still chilly in the winter because it's not directly heated, but it's nice to have.
And if it's anything like the last OEM build I worked with, it takes me longer to get the OS into the shape I want it in(crapware removed) than it does to do a fresh install, even with the hassle of finding the drivers.
One of these days I should get a copy of a ghost program.
Join the rest of the world, metric is lovely and far easier to use.
How about 'I don't give a crap'. Yes, when dealing with building materials here in the states I have to work in inches and feet, so that's what I think in. I can work in meters just fine, but if I asked for a 3 meter board down at the store they'd look at me funny.
External thermal moderators are illogical, is is generally cold all winter or hot all summer, external is strictly insulate, internal is heat sinks.
Not to my thinking, as all materials act as both. Besides, even where I am there are wide variations in temperature over the course of a day. In many areas down in the arid south, without sufficient insulation it gets cold enough at night to require heating and hot enough for AC during the day through much of the year. Traditional buildings(IE before AC) were traditionally very open, but built with adobe. Like concrete, adobe tends towards the massive. A properly built building allowed airflow while still providing substantial temperature moderation.
Besides, it's easiest to build your exterior walls massive - that way you aren't using internal space with it.
To put it a different way - make the walls and roof thick enough(around frost line depth), and you'll stay at a steady temperature year round.
As for insulation, I'll repeat: It might not have the insulating properties for the depth as other products, but it still has them.
For the water problem, that's what sealants are for.
Not to mention I just read an article about some concrete homes(not domes) built by edison.
There are some problems with them, for example Edison wasn't much of an interior designer. One also has a leak that they haven't been able to track down. Still, that's one out of a tract of houses, and it's not like traditional houses don't have leaks.
Still, the people apparently like them and find their enviroment nice. I don't know why some people think that they're uncomfortable when you heat/cool them due to moisture.
One thing about massive structures such as concrete or earth homes is that you don't need to seal them up as much, especially during the spring/fall, as the home will naturally moderate to a comfortable temperature, allowing far more ventilation.
Forced ventilation = air ducts and a fan. Think central air/heat.
Most of those 'problems' can easily be solved by two things:
First, intelligent interior design, you will have square corners, just not for the exterior walls.
Second, the larger your dome, the closer to straight the exterior walls will be (less bend per foot).
Then you simply use the excess space for a nice vault ceiling(helps keep temperatures stable).
I don't feel the need to stuff something in every corner. Even if I did, who says the item has to be square and touching the walls?
R3 of insulation is nothing, are you sure you didn't mean R30?
People build here with R40.
Besides, while concrete isn't a great insulator by the inch, the fact that they can build stuff feet thick helps. It acts less as an insulator than a thermal moderator with it's mass. The old absorbs heat during the day, releases it at night.
The upside is the bridges are predicted to last 50 years longer. The downside is they will cost more at current price levels.
Seeing as how bridges only have 'predicted' lifespans of 50-100 years anyways, as long as it's not doubling the cost it sounds like a win.
First, the Arclight has hexagonal panels - that means seams which water can leak into and expand upon freezing, causing the cracks.
Standard monolithic dome homes are built as a solid structure - no real seams, other than the doorways and windows, and those won't be concrete-concrete seams. They're also much smaller and experience less stress than roadways.
Another problem is that they're indeed difficult to impossible to expand - your best bet is to cast a new dome and expand into that
Adding new openings can be extremely difficult. After all, you're trying to chop a precise hole into steel reinforced concrete.
Rising voltage causes circuitry to use more watts, leading to more current, leading to the fuses blowing.
It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. Of course a circuit breaker designed to trip on overvoltage is a good idea as well.
If you consider superior to consider only availability
I won't consider availability to be everything, but I can't watch a DVD that hasn't been released yet, so the effective quality of said DVD is zero until I can get my hands on it.
Meanwhile, the cam-videos, though sucky, are available.
It's not like quality can't be a sliding scale. A modern Honda civic would steamroll a model-t, for example. But if you go back to 1925, you're not going to be able to get a Honda Civic, the Model T would be the best economy car you could get.
Wouldn't you mean transformers?
Thinking about it, an EV motor being used as a generator isn't going to be producing the same voltage as what's used to drive it. So in order to draw energy from the motor(slowing the car down), you'd have to step the voltage up above that of the battery pack in order to charge it.
One thing I remember is that changing voltage is easier with AC than DC. Most of the time to change the voltage of DC you change it into AC first anyways.
So while the controller is more complicated, and therefore more expensive, semiconductor and IC technology is used, making economy of scale easily worth it for auto manufacturers, as the cost for the controller would drop substantially when you're building thousands of them.
Add in that most home-brew conversions have less than a hundred miles of range, while most factory EVs have more than a hundred miles of range, so the auto manufacturer is looking for every percentage point of efficiency.
Everything I've heard has the iphone being unavailable without the contract, so you'd have to depend upon secondary sources.
It's also a 'hot item' right now, and that drives the price up. Apple computers has quite a brand name for some people, and that helps them sell stuff for more as well.
Still - I remember hearing a rumor that the iPhone costs 1/3 of what they're selling it for. So once competition enters the market, it should drive the price down substantially.
When you end up talking about stuff like this I look more towards products that actually have competition. IE you can buy an equivalent phone from AT&T or Verizon or Motorola or any of the other half dozen providers and manufacturers.
Just because a battery has Li in it does not mean it's dangerous to handle. (at least, not if it's designed sensibly) Most laptop computer batteries nowadays are LiIo which is not too different.
I was just relaying the recommendations placed in the instruction manuals by the company that made the batteries. Oh, and it's not like laptop batteries have a perfect safety record either.
They may be similar, but from my understanding, laptop LiIon batteries still use electrolyte, of with the presumably exploded battery didn't have.
As for the high voltage stuff - you're right, it does have some interesting effects, yet personally, I'd prefer to see them in lab videos. Still, this cabinet shouldn't see anything more than 240 volts at max, and 120 would be more likely. Fuses should blow long before voltages get to the levels needed to make even a bang audible outside the cabinet.
You think this is bad? They ship the cell phone bills to my dad's work in those boxes that hold 8-10 reams of paper. Each month.
Actually, the vast majority of cell phones at retail cost $400-500
MSRP might be that high, but given the ease at which they offer rebates and discounts and free phones I doubt they cost that much. I mean, I just saw a new laptop offer for $399. That includes wireless, 17" screen, the works.
I don't believe that cell phones really cost that much 'retail', it's simply that rebates and sales are so prevalent that only a few idiots pay MSRP, it's mostly marketing gimmick, similar to what car salesmen do.