Diesels may be quite effective there. And future generation of spark plug engines or plasma combustion will probably beat diesels.
Hasn't yet. There are two big problems with trying to have a spark engine beat diesel.
The first is that diesel simply has more energy per gallon than gasoline, much less propane, natural gas, or even hydrogen. It's the same sort of thing that has people complaining about ethanol. Ethanol has only about two-thirds the energy of gasoline, and it adversly affects gas milage right now.
The second is that diesel engines operate at much higher compression levels, high enough to cause auto-ignition, otherwise known as knocking. The value of higher compression ratios are that they increase the efficiency of the engine. Of course, ethanol has a higher octane rating than gasoline, which would allow some compensation for the decreased energy. Of course, it wouldn't be what's considered a 'flex fuel' vehicle at that point, you might be able to run premium in it, but I wouldn't count on it.
Finally going all electric and disposing of the engines might make sense for solar powered short range commuter cars.
I hope you're not talking about putting solar panels on the roof of the car. There's not enough energy there, even if you assumed 100% efficiency, to keep a car moving at even in-city speeds. Though I agree that there may soon be a good market for short range electric vehicles, I just think that the power will be grid-sourced, IE everything from solar and wind to nuclear and coal.
Now one might argue that anything that makes an engine more efficient could be turned around and applied to a hybrid engine, so hybrids should always win.
Very good point. One of the points I try to make is that I'd like to see a hybrid using a diesel engine. A diesel can be made to be extremely efficient if you can run it at a constant rpm.
On the other hand, if you increase the efficiency of the IC engine enough you could run into a problem where the increased efficiency of electric isn't enough to offset the weight and cost disadvantage.
What the heck do you think it takes to 'keep up' on the highway? I travel on the highway all the time, and I only have a smidge over a hundred horsepower.
It looks like you're still thinking in terms of gasoline engines. An electric engine is different than an internal combustion engine. While a car's horsepower is rated in terms of maximum power, an electric is rated in terms of sustained power. It's quite possible to drive an electric motor to 300% of it's rated maximum for a short period of time. For the most part, this rating is only limited by the motor's cooling. Increase the cooling through forced ventilation or other cooling and you increase the capacity.
From my research, due to the efficiencies and torque range of electric motors most conversion sites(from gasoline to electric) say that you only need 1/3 to 1/2 the horsepower for similar performance.
So a 300hp electric could act like a 900hp electric for about 10 seconds. Plenty of power to pass even a number of vehicles on the highway, not to mention get any highway patrol real interested in talking with you...
On the other hand, while you're coasting your vehicle is using a minimum amount of gas, not enough to maintain speed. This is less than the amount needed to maintain the vehicle at speed.
Over time, this can add up to a small increase in milage.
If you're going to have to stop anyways, it's the most efficient to spend your momentum getting to the stopping point than to use gas to get there at speed, only to bleed it away as heat with the brakes.
Why don't they sue the football player? They'd be lucky to get 300k, maybe garnishment of wages. Garnishment isn't guarenteed, the guy could turn out to be a bum, or become one in protest of the ruling. I figure 100k or so of family personal liability, 200k for other assets.
In the case of random scumbag shootings, they generally have no assets and even if they do have insurance it doesn't cover deliberate criminal acts such as muggings, forced home entry, murder, etc...
So why sue the school/gun manufacturer? They have assets/insurance capable of covering millions. Much more worth the lawyer's time.
Our area had a 'cold coffee' day after this - All the restraunts turned down the temperature of all the coffee down to a 'safe' level as described by the court settlement. The protest was universal to turn it back up.
The thing about switching to an electric motor is that the electric is at it's best in the very range that the gasoline engine is at it's worst. Low RPM torque allows an electric to produce far more power during starts, allowing quicker accelleration with fewer horses.
That may be true in your area. Where I live, consumer rates are about 20 cents/kW.hr.
That's retail. I'm talking about national averages. Plus, especially if you're living in California, you're getting much of your power from natural gas fired turbines.
That's 7.5 cents per kwh to produce, then you have to account for distribution, taxes, etc...
Coal is cheap, nuclear is inexpensive and safe, wind and solar are very expensive and don't produce power on a demand schedule.
Remember though, those numbers change when you separate out the Japanese cars designed and legitimately built in Japan from the fords, chevys, and chryslers; designed and built by those monkeys in detroit. Most of the hybrids that are on the market now are Hondas and Toyotas. So their lasting well past ten years can safely be assumed to be the rule, not the exception.
I was comparing hondas to hondas in this instance. I wouldn't trust much of the detroit stuff to make it even 10 years. Still, I use the 10 year meterstick because it's easy, and the odds are against most cars making it past 10 years, even if only through accidents.
I will ALSO keep for the lifespan of the (yes, it WILL be Japanese) car.
I'd suggest against ruling out all non-japanese cars. I'd make the Japanese earn my business against all the other competitors personally. Eliminating choices out of hand isn't good for competition.
Yeah, but I don't need all the power stuff. Besides, the basic honda civic is rated closer to 34mpg than 30mpg, and I happen to like manual transmissions. Oddly enough, the current automatic transmission is rated for better milage than the manual, by 1mpg, but costs a little more. The models I compared do NOT have satellite navigation, and investigation shows that even the basic civic has power windows and such today. Whatever... ($800@$3/gallon=266 gallons, or around 9k miles)
Accessories on the Hybrid but not on the LX: Automatic Climate Control and Satellite radio. Let's say the missing features are worth $2k, so it's 22.6K vs 19K. Difference of $3.6K.
15k miles: Hybrid: 300 gallons of fuel Lx: 441 gallons
Difference: 141 gallons of fuel, $423@$3/gal. $564@$4 Cost of capital can still kill you here: Payback@0% interest: 8.5 years @$3/gal, 6.4 years at $4/gal. Payback@5% interest: 11.2 years, 7.75 years Payback@10% interest: 19.2, 10.25 years.
Please note that I've heard that a battery replacement may be required after the five year point, at a cost in the thousands of dollars. My solution right now is to hang onto my current car until it wears out in the hopes that hybrid maintenance requirements will become better known, prices will drop and efficiency increase even more.
Ughhh... I knew I should of put a qualifier in there.
Regardless, until the feds hold the power plants to those standards(IE clean up your stacks or pay for the pollution), in raw economic terms they're cheaper.
Still, I've stated it before, but I'd shut down every coal power plant and replace it with nuclear if I could.
Much of the baseload demand could be taken care of with nuclear power, with solar/wind supplimenting, and hydro/geothermal being used for peak demands. I'd use the excess baseload power created by overbuilding on nuclear plants to produce hydrogen, ethanol, or whatever other fuel that'd end up being most economical.
With the tax credit -Key words here. In other words you're receiving a subsidy because you're not economic.
Back of hand calcs- 15k miles a year. 30mpg 'standard': 500 gallons fuel 50mpg 'hybrid': 300 gallons fuel.
Difference: 200 gallons. $600-800 in fuel.
Cost of a hybrid over standard: $7k (Honda Civic Sedan vs Civic Sedan Hybrid, base MSRP)
Break even point, assuming 0% interest? ~10 years. I usually assume a car's lifespan at 10 years. Many last longer, but many die earlier. Then there's the question of taxes and insurance. A car that costs 7K more is going to cost more to insure, and frequently cost more to license.
Solars tend to make up for their cost within 5 years(depending on location).
Last time I figured out for me(last year), it exceeded 40 years without figuring out cost of capital costs. I could actually take the money required, invest it into a mutual fund and more than pay for my electricity bills off of the interest alone.
Of course, I live in about the worst area for alternative power: extremely cheap local power($.08/kwh), combined with far north. I'd be better off going with wind. I've looked into a wind turbine before, but they don't have good figures.
Why isn't the electric utility installing large solar panels to generate electricity during peak hours? Because that takes more money than burning fossil fuels in power plants?
Exactly. Burning fossil fuels in power plants is an extremely cheap method of power. It can generate power at a cost of ~4cents/kwh. Nuclear is something like 3.9 average. This includes production and capital costs, from the chart on this page(scroll down), actual production costs are only ~2 cents, with nuclear edging below coal in 2000.
What kills solar is the install cost. There was an article about a canadian plant on slasdot recently, they were expecting it to cost $300 million for 40MW. Now, $300 million at 5% interest is 15 million a year. That's capital cost. I estimate that it'd produce 140 million kwh* a year. That's 10.7 cents per kwh for the capital costs alone, this does not include any plant costs.
10.7 cents vs. 4 cents? Tough sell
They could get creative e.g. leasing rooftop space from homeowners.
That would be a huge hassle, as they'd then be liable for everybody's roofs whenever a good storm comes through, as well as having to worry about climbing on 10k roofs to make repairs. It ends up being cheaper to buy property out somewhere and building a massive plant. Building owners can make it pay for such small installs because they're paying retail for electricity, not wholesale. Personally, I'd be installing a solar water heating system, preferably capable of heating the house as well. That's currently far more economical. Doesn't take much roof space either. If solar panels were a tenth of their current cost, it'd make far more sense.
Storing power is expensive. You'd need a battery charging system and inverter, as well as some sort of system capable of detecting when to switch from charging to delivering power.
Besides, it's not 100% efficient by any means.
16.3 cents per kw/h. Most systems would be lucky to achieve 80% efficiency*, so a 'stored' kw/h would actually cost 20.4 cents. Then there's the fact that most lead-acid battery systems end up costing ~8 cents per kw/h stored, amortizing over their life, because you have to replace them periodically. So you're up to 28.4 cents, vs 29.7 cents for the peak power. Considering the capital costs to install all this, it's not worth it. Drop the efficiency to a more realistic 60% and the costs become 35.2. Youch.
NiMH might be better, but is more expensive initially. LiIon is the most expensive, degrades over time whether you use it or not, but has the highest efficiency.
Now, oversizing your solar panel arrays and having the storage systems so you can go off-grid entirely, also expensive enough that it's probably not worth it. You still generally end up getting special high efficiency DC appliances and doing your cooking and drying with gas.
As a side note, to show the vast difference between areas, my power is ~8 cents/kwh. Off-peak, if I had it installed, is 4 cents including fuel charge. And people wonder why I'm willing to let the californians install this stuff first.;)
Answer: With my almost absurbly cheap power, combined with very little in the way of rebates, it just doesn't make economic sense.
*Efficiency in this case is a combined metric of battery, charging system, and inverter efficiencies.
I'd contest the 'rest of the world' thing, at least for Germany. Their basic charge was just as high as in the USA, every call was metered, and service was worse than most areas I've been to in the USA.
How about some examples? Just remember that places with lower average wages can indeed offer products for less as their techs earn less. So India can field a cell phone tower install team for far less than the USA can, leading to India being able to offer cell phone service for less.
From what I've seen, 1GB of video using an advanced Codec can often be as good visually as a DVD, which uses a relativly simple codec.
If I could actually see sources that were compressed from the original sources as opposed to being compressed from DVD's it'd probably be even better.
I've seen some tests, it's better to compress more than to scale down, so you leave the resolution in there and compress the heck out of it. Use a VBR type bitrate for even better results, though it'd mean that flicks with lots of action would take more to download on average than a snoozer.
For that matter most DVDs don't take the whole thing for the movie. They'll stick a good half hour of previews for other movies, interviews, and such on the disk which I don't care about.
And, as the market for online music shows; people aren't actually that concerned about quality. Your arguement could be made for CD's too, you know. A CD is around 1.1 mbit/second where most compressed music online is 128kbit/second. Around one tenth, in other words.
For those obsessed with hidef and quality, well, the saying 'Never underestimate the bandwidth of USPS/UPS/Fedex' comes into play. They're still stuck visiting the store or buying online and waiting for the delivery.
For my needs I could que up three or four movies and get them quicker than standard shipping could. They'd have to use advanced download technology that's capable of recovering from connection losses and such, of course.
That seems quite expensive. Then again, that's the business model for most service industries these days - stiff those that can least afford it.
Quite expensive? The cheapest monthly plan alltel(cellphone company) offers is $39.99/month until you go to the prepaid service. At $.75/day, that's $22.50/month, without making any calls. Or at least no prime time calls, so all your calls should be either to your free number, or on the weekends/nights(starts at 9pm).
Even a standard landline runs $20-30/month. So they're getting it for half price. That's not too shabby for a service that allows unlimited local calls, as well as unlimited incoming long distance.
Suppose they fall and cannot reach the landline phone? They can always get a portable phone that hooks up to the landline. Worst case, they advertise special devices that are to be hung around the neck on a lanyard. You simply push the (big) button if you have a problem. It makes an auto-call to the service which has operators tied into the 911 system and such. It's a lot like the advertisements for Onstar actually.
What if the landline phone goes down, because high winds or errant JCB drivers took out the phone cable?
We've never had this happen. The phone lines in our area are buried.
Mobile phone service is a hell of a lot more reliable than landlines. It's also a lot cheaper. Landlines have had their day.
For somebody living on a fixed income(IE most disabled/retired), there are special phone line plans that come out to around $10/month. As for reliability, we've never had our landline fail, the cell phone on the other hand has.
And that's incredably inefficient, not to mention occasionally unsanitary.
For the motor oil, most of those places also have a changing service, so they have to have the disposal facilities anyways. Would it really be that difficult to have a few centralized disposal areas? I'd require that it be closer than the dump, for example.
While you can appeal any conviction, the 'working your way up' is done before the trial. You can push a shoplifting case all the way to general, but in return if you're found guilty they can give you an extensive prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge.
So, the solution to the problem that solar panels are uneconomical is government subsidies? That hurts us all, even those who don't invest in solar panels.
I'd prefer to see direct research, with the occasional special purpose install. There are places where solar power does make sense due to the expense of trying to hook it into the grid.
Actually you do. There are three forms of court martial in the US miliarty. Summary, Special, and General. One is done by one officer, one is done by a panel, and the last is jury. Indeed, I could argue that any jury trial in the military, because the sitters in the jury are also military, that they're, on average, more the peers of the tried than in the civilian world.
You do get to have a defense. It's even a seperate command in the Air Force.
Thing is, the available punishments go up as you go towards a general court martial. A General can impose the death penatly if the crime warrents it.
Actually, it might not be. While commanders do have much in the way of being able to give orders, violating the bill of rights generally isn't included.
Saying you [i]can't[/i] blog/write letters to the paper, send emails, and such is stepping into a legal minefield. They are allowed to prevent the spread of classified and opsec type information; but the commander would have to be very careful of blanket statements. After all, it's perfectly possible that I could be operating a blog concentrating on soccer or the latest computer games, not military items at all.
I can and do sometimes download 10GB in a single day. I'm not limited on my downloads in that fashion.
For that matter most movies don't need a complete 9GB. 1GB would be good enough quality for many movies(non-hidef, of course), and I could put a thouand movies on a single HD at that price.
Remember, it wasn't that many years ago that the same thing could be said about storing music on a HD... Compression has gotten better right along with the sizes of HD's.
If it's any consolation, it's a common mistake, propagated by anti-nuclear types who also use safety and production records from the 1960's to say nuclear power isn't safe or cost effective.
That's a lot like saying cars are unsafe and citing the safety of a Model T. We've made huge strides in both safety and efficiency for both cars and nuclear power. Cars tend to get around the same gas milage only because they're much heavier today and offer many more features.
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Diesels may be quite effective there. And future generation of spark plug engines or plasma combustion will probably beat diesels.
Hasn't yet. There are two big problems with trying to have a spark engine beat diesel.
The first is that diesel simply has more energy per gallon than gasoline, much less propane, natural gas, or even hydrogen. It's the same sort of thing that has people complaining about ethanol. Ethanol has only about two-thirds the energy of gasoline, and it adversly affects gas milage right now.
The second is that diesel engines operate at much higher compression levels, high enough to cause auto-ignition, otherwise known as knocking. The value of higher compression ratios are that they increase the efficiency of the engine. Of course, ethanol has a higher octane rating than gasoline, which would allow some compensation for the decreased energy. Of course, it wouldn't be what's considered a 'flex fuel' vehicle at that point, you might be able to run premium in it, but I wouldn't count on it.
Finally going all electric and disposing of the engines might make sense for solar powered short range commuter cars.
I hope you're not talking about putting solar panels on the roof of the car. There's not enough energy there, even if you assumed 100% efficiency, to keep a car moving at even in-city speeds. Though I agree that there may soon be a good market for short range electric vehicles, I just think that the power will be grid-sourced, IE everything from solar and wind to nuclear and coal.
Now one might argue that anything that makes an engine more efficient could be turned around and applied to a hybrid engine, so hybrids should always win.
Very good point. One of the points I try to make is that I'd like to see a hybrid using a diesel engine. A diesel can be made to be extremely efficient if you can run it at a constant rpm.
On the other hand, if you increase the efficiency of the IC engine enough you could run into a problem where the increased efficiency of electric isn't enough to offset the weight and cost disadvantage.
What the heck do you think it takes to 'keep up' on the highway? I travel on the highway all the time, and I only have a smidge over a hundred horsepower.
It looks like you're still thinking in terms of gasoline engines. An electric engine is different than an internal combustion engine. While a car's horsepower is rated in terms of maximum power, an electric is rated in terms of sustained power. It's quite possible to drive an electric motor to 300% of it's rated maximum for a short period of time. For the most part, this rating is only limited by the motor's cooling. Increase the cooling through forced ventilation or other cooling and you increase the capacity.
From my research, due to the efficiencies and torque range of electric motors most conversion sites(from gasoline to electric) say that you only need 1/3 to 1/2 the horsepower for similar performance.
So a 300hp electric could act like a 900hp electric for about 10 seconds. Plenty of power to pass even a number of vehicles on the highway, not to mention get any highway patrol real interested in talking with you...
Hopefully, I did no wrong calculations, since I'm just a IT-Nerd.
Nothing against your calculations, but they don't apply to this situation.
I was talking about when you have to stop anyways, such as a stop sign or parking.
The benefit of making a green light by slowing down is simply a side benefit.
On the other hand, while you're coasting your vehicle is using a minimum amount of gas, not enough to maintain speed. This is less than the amount needed to maintain the vehicle at speed.
Over time, this can add up to a small increase in milage.
If you're going to have to stop anyways, it's the most efficient to spend your momentum getting to the stopping point than to use gas to get there at speed, only to bleed it away as heat with the brakes.
Why don't they sue the football player? They'd be lucky to get 300k, maybe garnishment of wages. Garnishment isn't guarenteed, the guy could turn out to be a bum, or become one in protest of the ruling. I figure 100k or so of family personal liability, 200k for other assets.
In the case of random scumbag shootings, they generally have no assets and even if they do have insurance it doesn't cover deliberate criminal acts such as muggings, forced home entry, murder, etc...
So why sue the school/gun manufacturer? They have assets/insurance capable of covering millions. Much more worth the lawyer's time.
Our area had a 'cold coffee' day after this - All the restraunts turned down the temperature of all the coffee down to a 'safe' level as described by the court settlement. The protest was universal to turn it back up.
The thing about switching to an electric motor is that the electric is at it's best in the very range that the gasoline engine is at it's worst. Low RPM torque allows an electric to produce far more power during starts, allowing quicker accelleration with fewer horses.
That may be true in your area. Where I live, consumer rates are about 20 cents/kW.hr.
That's retail. I'm talking about national averages. Plus, especially if you're living in California, you're getting much of your power from natural gas fired turbines.
That's 7.5 cents per kwh to produce, then you have to account for distribution, taxes, etc...
Coal is cheap, nuclear is inexpensive and safe, wind and solar are very expensive and don't produce power on a demand schedule.
Remember though, those numbers change when you separate out the Japanese cars designed and legitimately built in Japan from the fords, chevys, and chryslers; designed and built by those monkeys in detroit. Most of the hybrids that are on the market now are Hondas and Toyotas. So their lasting well past ten years can safely be assumed to be the rule, not the exception.
I was comparing hondas to hondas in this instance. I wouldn't trust much of the detroit stuff to make it even 10 years. Still, I use the 10 year meterstick because it's easy, and the odds are against most cars making it past 10 years, even if only through accidents.
I will ALSO keep for the lifespan of the (yes, it WILL be Japanese) car.
I'd suggest against ruling out all non-japanese cars. I'd make the Japanese earn my business against all the other competitors personally. Eliminating choices out of hand isn't good for competition.
Yeah, but I don't need all the power stuff. Besides, the basic honda civic is rated closer to 34mpg than 30mpg, and I happen to like manual transmissions. Oddly enough, the current automatic transmission is rated for better milage than the manual, by 1mpg, but costs a little more. The models I compared do NOT have satellite navigation, and investigation shows that even the basic civic has power windows and such today. Whatever... ($800@$3/gallon=266 gallons, or around 9k miles)
Still, more detailed comparison.
Civic Hybrid: 50mpg*, Base MSRP(NO SatNav) $22.6K, 5yr maint: $2,056
Civic LX: 34mpg, MSRP: $17K, 5yr maint; $2,011
Accessories on the Hybrid but not on the LX: Automatic Climate Control and Satellite radio. Let's say the missing features are worth $2k, so it's 22.6K vs 19K. Difference of $3.6K.
15k miles:
Hybrid: 300 gallons of fuel
Lx: 441 gallons
Difference: 141 gallons of fuel, $423@$3/gal. $564@$4
Cost of capital can still kill you here:
Payback@0% interest: 8.5 years @$3/gal, 6.4 years at $4/gal.
Payback@5% interest: 11.2 years, 7.75 years
Payback@10% interest: 19.2, 10.25 years.
Please note that I've heard that a battery replacement may be required after the five year point, at a cost in the thousands of dollars. My solution right now is to hang onto my current car until it wears out in the hopes that hybrid maintenance requirements will become better known, prices will drop and efficiency increase even more.
*Found by averaging city and highway EPA figures
Ughhh... I knew I should of put a qualifier in there.
Regardless, until the feds hold the power plants to those standards(IE clean up your stacks or pay for the pollution), in raw economic terms they're cheaper.
Still, I've stated it before, but I'd shut down every coal power plant and replace it with nuclear if I could.
Much of the baseload demand could be taken care of with nuclear power, with solar/wind supplimenting, and hydro/geothermal being used for peak demands. I'd use the excess baseload power created by overbuilding on nuclear plants to produce hydrogen, ethanol, or whatever other fuel that'd end up being most economical.
With the tax credit -Key words here. In other words you're receiving a subsidy because you're not economic.
Back of hand calcs-
15k miles a year.
30mpg 'standard': 500 gallons fuel
50mpg 'hybrid': 300 gallons fuel.
Difference: 200 gallons. $600-800 in fuel.
Cost of a hybrid over standard: $7k (Honda Civic Sedan vs Civic Sedan Hybrid, base MSRP)
Break even point, assuming 0% interest? ~10 years. I usually assume a car's lifespan at 10 years. Many last longer, but many die earlier. Then there's the question of taxes and insurance. A car that costs 7K more is going to cost more to insure, and frequently cost more to license.
Solars tend to make up for their cost within 5 years(depending on location).
Last time I figured out for me(last year), it exceeded 40 years without figuring out cost of capital costs. I could actually take the money required, invest it into a mutual fund and more than pay for my electricity bills off of the interest alone.
Of course, I live in about the worst area for alternative power: extremely cheap local power($.08/kwh), combined with far north. I'd be better off going with wind. I've looked into a wind turbine before, but they don't have good figures.
Why isn't the electric utility installing large solar panels to generate electricity during peak hours? Because that takes more money than burning fossil fuels in power plants?
Exactly. Burning fossil fuels in power plants is an extremely cheap method of power. It can generate power at a cost of ~4cents/kwh. Nuclear is something like 3.9 average. This includes production and capital costs, from the chart on this page(scroll down), actual production costs are only ~2 cents, with nuclear edging below coal in 2000.
What kills solar is the install cost. There was an article about a canadian plant on slasdot recently, they were expecting it to cost $300 million for 40MW. Now, $300 million at 5% interest is 15 million a year. That's capital cost. I estimate that it'd produce 140 million kwh* a year. That's 10.7 cents per kwh for the capital costs alone, this does not include any plant costs.
10.7 cents vs. 4 cents? Tough sell
They could get creative e.g. leasing rooftop space from homeowners.
That would be a huge hassle, as they'd then be liable for everybody's roofs whenever a good storm comes through, as well as having to worry about climbing on 10k roofs to make repairs. It ends up being cheaper to buy property out somewhere and building a massive plant. Building owners can make it pay for such small installs because they're paying retail for electricity, not wholesale. Personally, I'd be installing a solar water heating system, preferably capable of heating the house as well. That's currently far more economical. Doesn't take much roof space either. If solar panels were a tenth of their current cost, it'd make far more sense.
*40MW plant, 40% load factor
Storing power is expensive. You'd need a battery charging system and inverter, as well as some sort of system capable of detecting when to switch from charging to delivering power.
;)
Besides, it's not 100% efficient by any means.
16.3 cents per kw/h. Most systems would be lucky to achieve 80% efficiency*, so a 'stored' kw/h would actually cost 20.4 cents. Then there's the fact that most lead-acid battery systems end up costing ~8 cents per kw/h stored, amortizing over their life, because you have to replace them periodically. So you're up to 28.4 cents, vs 29.7 cents for the peak power. Considering the capital costs to install all this, it's not worth it. Drop the efficiency to a more realistic 60% and the costs become 35.2. Youch.
NiMH might be better, but is more expensive initially. LiIon is the most expensive, degrades over time whether you use it or not, but has the highest efficiency.
Now, oversizing your solar panel arrays and having the storage systems so you can go off-grid entirely, also expensive enough that it's probably not worth it. You still generally end up getting special high efficiency DC appliances and doing your cooking and drying with gas.
As a side note, to show the vast difference between areas, my power is ~8 cents/kwh. Off-peak, if I had it installed, is 4 cents including fuel charge. And people wonder why I'm willing to let the californians install this stuff first.
Answer: With my almost absurbly cheap power, combined with very little in the way of rebates, it just doesn't make economic sense.
*Efficiency in this case is a combined metric of battery, charging system, and inverter efficiencies.
I'd contest the 'rest of the world' thing, at least for Germany. Their basic charge was just as high as in the USA, every call was metered, and service was worse than most areas I've been to in the USA.
How about some examples? Just remember that places with lower average wages can indeed offer products for less as their techs earn less. So India can field a cell phone tower install team for far less than the USA can, leading to India being able to offer cell phone service for less.
From what I've seen, 1GB of video using an advanced Codec can often be as good visually as a DVD, which uses a relativly simple codec.
If I could actually see sources that were compressed from the original sources as opposed to being compressed from DVD's it'd probably be even better.
I've seen some tests, it's better to compress more than to scale down, so you leave the resolution in there and compress the heck out of it. Use a VBR type bitrate for even better results, though it'd mean that flicks with lots of action would take more to download on average than a snoozer.
For that matter most DVDs don't take the whole thing for the movie. They'll stick a good half hour of previews for other movies, interviews, and such on the disk which I don't care about.
And, as the market for online music shows; people aren't actually that concerned about quality. Your arguement could be made for CD's too, you know. A CD is around 1.1 mbit/second where most compressed music online is 128kbit/second. Around one tenth, in other words.
For those obsessed with hidef and quality, well, the saying 'Never underestimate the bandwidth of USPS/UPS/Fedex' comes into play. They're still stuck visiting the store or buying online and waiting for the delivery.
For my needs I could que up three or four movies and get them quicker than standard shipping could. They'd have to use advanced download technology that's capable of recovering from connection losses and such, of course.
That seems quite expensive. Then again, that's the business model for most service industries these days - stiff those that can least afford it.
Quite expensive? The cheapest monthly plan alltel(cellphone company) offers is $39.99/month until you go to the prepaid service. At $.75/day, that's $22.50/month, without making any calls. Or at least no prime time calls, so all your calls should be either to your free number, or on the weekends/nights(starts at 9pm).
Even a standard landline runs $20-30/month. So they're getting it for half price. That's not too shabby for a service that allows unlimited local calls, as well as unlimited incoming long distance.
Suppose they fall and cannot reach the landline phone?
They can always get a portable phone that hooks up to the landline. Worst case, they advertise special devices that are to be hung around the neck on a lanyard. You simply push the (big) button if you have a problem. It makes an auto-call to the service which has operators tied into the 911 system and such. It's a lot like the advertisements for Onstar actually.
What if the landline phone goes down, because high winds or errant JCB drivers took out the phone cable?
We've never had this happen. The phone lines in our area are buried.
Mobile phone service is a hell of a lot more reliable than landlines. It's also a lot cheaper. Landlines have had their day.
For somebody living on a fixed income(IE most disabled/retired), there are special phone line plans that come out to around $10/month. As for reliability, we've never had our landline fail, the cell phone on the other hand has.
Landlines still have their uses.
And that's incredably inefficient, not to mention occasionally unsanitary.
For the motor oil, most of those places also have a changing service, so they have to have the disposal facilities anyways. Would it really be that difficult to have a few centralized disposal areas? I'd require that it be closer than the dump, for example.
While you can appeal any conviction, the 'working your way up' is done before the trial. You can push a shoplifting case all the way to general, but in return if you're found guilty they can give you an extensive prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge.
So, the solution to the problem that solar panels are uneconomical is government subsidies? That hurts us all, even those who don't invest in solar panels.
I'd prefer to see direct research, with the occasional special purpose install. There are places where solar power does make sense due to the expense of trying to hook it into the grid.
Actually you do. There are three forms of court martial in the US miliarty. Summary, Special, and General. One is done by one officer, one is done by a panel, and the last is jury. Indeed, I could argue that any jury trial in the military, because the sitters in the jury are also military, that they're, on average, more the peers of the tried than in the civilian world.
You do get to have a defense. It's even a seperate command in the Air Force.
Thing is, the available punishments go up as you go towards a general court martial. A General can impose the death penatly if the crime warrents it.
Actually, it might not be. While commanders do have much in the way of being able to give orders, violating the bill of rights generally isn't included.
Saying you [i]can't[/i] blog/write letters to the paper, send emails, and such is stepping into a legal minefield. They are allowed to prevent the spread of classified and opsec type information; but the commander would have to be very careful of blanket statements. After all, it's perfectly possible that I could be operating a blog concentrating on soccer or the latest computer games, not military items at all.
I can and do sometimes download 10GB in a single day. I'm not limited on my downloads in that fashion.
For that matter most movies don't need a complete 9GB. 1GB would be good enough quality for many movies(non-hidef, of course), and I could put a thouand movies on a single HD at that price.
Remember, it wasn't that many years ago that the same thing could be said about storing music on a HD... Compression has gotten better right along with the sizes of HD's.
If it's any consolation, it's a common mistake, propagated by anti-nuclear types who also use safety and production records from the 1960's to say nuclear power isn't safe or cost effective.
That's a lot like saying cars are unsafe and citing the safety of a Model T. We've made huge strides in both safety and efficiency for both cars and nuclear power. Cars tend to get around the same gas milage only because they're much heavier today and offer many more features.