It's available (several different models/companies, in kit or prebuilt), they are all on the order of 1 - 1.5 ft^3, cost about $1100, print from corn based PLA, or oil based ABS, and a guy on kick starter just successfully raised close to a million bucks to build a comparable (possibly superior) model for $~500.
These machines are laying the ground work of distributed manufacturing. Get everyone building trinkets in their home will 1) get people used to the idea 2) build lots of expertise leading to better software, a universe of parts, exponential improvement and 3) prepare us for the real magic when we're laser sintering aluminum, steel parts, ceramics, etc. in our homes on a similar device. There's nothing to it except for a $1000 CO2 laser, powered metal, and other parts shared with these plastic machines including the know-how of a few 100k tinkerers mastering the workflow of distributed manufacturing using additive processes while building cheap plastic trinkets.
Knock off nokia phone data cable (CR42): $2.68 + free shipping. About $4.00-$20.00 to say 'USB TTL' or want some type of connector. In addition to arduinos I talk to a guruplug with one, an unfortunate POS device that will most assuredly be dumped in favor of a pi.
The damn feds keeps trying to stop me from burning used tires and reclaimed motor oil in my homemade furnace! I thought this was a free country, but now I have to deal with my whiny neighbors complaining about the soot and fumes and now the GOVERNMENT is all up in my shit!!
What odd behavior. YTD 2011 50% of oil is domestic and the two largest imports come from canada and mexico (~18%). Furthermore only about ~10% comes from the middle east, the balance is africa and s. america. So apart from your priggish "correction" he remains correct in his main point.
The problem is not calculating solar flux. IMO, I think I could get parts and assemble prototypes while enroute to kenya (excluding TSA interference) and test the phones for a few days in less time than I could develop a convincing model (and I already have all the PV/solar code). IMO, the trip was probably more about how their phones intercept the solar resource under real world usage. A model would necessarily make assumptions that field work could substantiate or falsify.
A larger problem for environmentalism (and most movements and groups of people) is having to combat false representations like this,
Because the people who think they are environmentalists think solar and wind power can meet all of our energy needs."
Wind and solar energy can not yet replace coal. However, we can expand these industries by 10-20x before hitting this supposed grid wall. So in practice, strongly advocating for support/growth of wind/solar isn't really a problem, yet. We can literally build out thousands of gigawatts. I agree that an intermediate solution requires natural gas. Natural gas peaking must be displaced by an over capacity of renewables. The over capacity of peaking natural gas facilities should displace base load coal plants. Wala, 50-70% less emissions from generation. (I could be more controversial and claim this will net cheaper generation too.) Even small natural gas plants are more efficient than our coal grid and they can be ramped quickly, which is a perfect companion to wind/solar. Then we get 50 yr to eliminate the gas with whatever thorium fantasy inhabits the/. mind. Of course, the potential electric car/battery boom (50-100kWh x 10,000,000+ vehicles = storage revolution)
Distributing the load over 2min is child's play. 1944J/120s = 16 W. Children and old people could easily do 25W on a stationary bike (A nominally fit adult could do 100-400W very easily for a minute), meaning that a phone/capacitor/whatever energy could be charged in a few minutes without breaking a sweat. 16W from a hand crank might be unreasonable for a child ( I doubt it!), but seems fine for an adult.
Seems extremely reasonable to me!
There was a NDC study in the last year that approximated 160 million DVR devices in the US. I think they estimated that standby power consumption was something like 2/3 of total power consumed. As in if these devices were powered off we could shut down 6 600GW base load nuclear reactors (or equivalently sizes coal boilers). It's really an interesting problem, so much waste, yet so widely distributed. Who would have thought that Americans turning off TIVOs (when not in use...) would rival the environmental impact of the entire solar industry to date.
I pay similar prices in MN. Avocado prices are strange, they do something like a random walk in quality and price. I generally pay between 0.89 and 1.79. The almond milk though... whoa I pay about half (3.39 - 3.99 for 2L) and this price has gone up about 30% in the last 2 yr. I can get 3.8 - 5.5 lb of frozen vegetables for $4.95 as well. IMO, better deal than the burgers! I would think even 1-2 lb of vegetables, which you could buy fresh are a better deal than the burgers. More mass. More nutrition. Less calories. Less nasties!
The best winter time Bell peppers and tomatoes are green house grown in MN and Ontario!!
It is a common myth that healthy food is expensive. Tasty, healthy food is very cheap. I get 109% of my daily nutrition and less than 30% of my calories from breakfast and lunch (5-6 days a week) and I have been doing so for many years now. 6 vegetables + 2 nut + 2 bean medley for lunch 200-250 kcal ($0.40/lunch ~$0.90-1.10 if I add avocado) (OJ,almond milk, granola, oat flake, flax seed, spinach + 3 vitamin pills for breakfast 400kcal ($1.20). I don't know, these seem like food shelf prices to me and total less than $60/mo. 20% of the time I can't follow this diet, 7% I don't eat, 7% I eat out, 6% I eat garbage.
I then gorge myself for calories on tasty pasta, bread, sauces, etc for supper. $5.00 for a total cost of roughly $150.00/mo. (The bill for 2 is less than $300) A fast food meal costs me about $5 - $13, where as I could add fine cheese/meat//fish and easily beat that cost per meal at home with healthier, tastier cuisine that is lower impact, more conscientiousness, makes me feel good, does not cause behavior problems in children, and does not slowly transform me into a burden for society. Even fast food value meal crap in the morning or lunch (or similar processed food from the market) would be significantly more expensive than eating the right healthy food.
I wouldn't consider it credit until there is a cost to the debt or the credit liabilities exceed cash on hand. Otherwise it's not much different than organizing your check deposits and withdrawals. There is never any net liability. IMO bonuses offer absurd incentives. The +5%, +3%, +1% discount/cash back are serious discount to realize when you can simply direct all spending through the card, which dwarfs savings account interest for me. Also it yields a very nice credit score/available credit balance in the absence of secured credit/mortgage/ interest payments. It's a game, better to play it right than just sit out!
So why don't I have it? Because my home like so many others is upside down and the cost of a solar install of decent size is looking like $30K or more which will be saving me something like $150 a month on my electric bill. How exactly does THAT make sense?
LOL That is a bigger return than the bank is getting off my mortgage. Sounds good to me!
Try going to a solar panel distributor and ordering a bunch of panels, made in the US or china doesn't matter, the shipping cost of sending a truck out to you full of delicate glass is really quite high.
If a distributor sends semi-trailer that can hold 400 kW to deliver a 5kW residential system, then one might look for a supplier with a wider selection of delivery options. My experience ordering glass by freight (larger more delicate glass than PV) was not especially different from normal freight costs.
If oil spiked, the demand for installed panels would be extremely high, but the UPS cost of delivery would probably rise to a multiple of the cost of the panels, its very unclear if this would improve or destroy overall system economic budget numbers.
I just did a quick calculation, each new pv panel (~23kg) on a trip of 10,000 km costs $1.3, $1.9, and $12.6. for rail, ship, and truck, respectively. We still would need 15-270x in fuel price to see the cost of long distance shipping approach the $200-350 cost per panel. These costs are about 10x-500x final delivery distances e.g., your scenario is mad max $1000/gal scenario
The leaner & meaner Chinese firms are putting weak competition out of business, including firms based in the US, Germany, and China. They have licensed American & German processes, equipment, and construction and have transitioned PV into a commodity. IMO, everything is relatively above the board, that is why the move is brilliant. These Chinese firms are remaining profitable and still have ~22-30% margins. Conspiratorial accusations of atypical dumping and government subsidized manufacturing are unfounded. Primarily smaller poly silicon and maybe some tier 3 module producers are dumping product as their last move before bankruptcy, but these companies have only affected the market for crappy 2nd rate goods. Municipal and federal tax subsidies may be generous for the Chinese firms, but they are not that different from their US counterparts (checkout the sweetheart deals on all the failed US solars). The Chinese juggernauts do have access to massive CDB loans, but 1) They are largely untapped (e.g. like ~5% used) and 2) the CDB capital has more expensive terms than the equivalent US DOE loan guarantees. Furthermore, this point is moot since these companies have expanded using money (asset/security/bond) sales in the private markets (mostly US and HK).
China wins the race to grid parity. I hope they are rewarded for their vision, if only to light a late spark for the U.S.
Speaking of disingenuous, I find that your comment lacks full disclosure. You forgot to mention all the ideological riders attached to the house bill that are similar political theater (contrary to much rabble rousing against these types of tactics). Perhaps you are correct in this instance, but I certainly wouldn't try to defend any political caucus as ideologically consistent (unless that ideology is to promote oneself)...
unless of course that organization is is a non-affiliated group of people who txt while driving. Then (observe story last week) we collectively freak out when actions are suggested, not to punish them, but merely prohibit their infringing behavior.
The boom (70% decline in solar prices) has coincided with global recession. Energy use has declined or remained stagnant. Hence no solar demand (or any demand). Massive oversupply as China scales up production. Yet still, the pipeline for solar and wind exceeds fossil fuels everywhere except China. Give them until 2015. The future is already set in stone.
Dude get with the times. Panels can be had for ~$1.00/pW in bulk and there are 10s of GW in the global utility scale pipeline at $4.00/pW and even $3.00/pW. That yields 0.9 - 0.12 $/kWh in the sunbelt without tracking and without subsidies... There has been a cost revolution that no one noticed because the economy sticks and for the last ~4 yrs net energy consumption has decreased or remained stagnant.
I would imagine the environwhacks will stop complaining at about the same time as all these whacky white guys stop complaining about discrimination against whites and proclaiming the need for a white people only political party.
Slashdot Mirror
It's available (several different models/companies, in kit or prebuilt), they are all on the order of 1 - 1.5 ft^3, cost about $1100, print from corn based PLA, or oil based ABS, and a guy on kick starter just successfully raised close to a million bucks to build a comparable (possibly superior) model for $~500.
These machines are laying the ground work of distributed manufacturing. Get everyone building trinkets in their home will 1) get people used to the idea 2) build lots of expertise leading to better software, a universe of parts, exponential improvement and 3) prepare us for the real magic when we're laser sintering aluminum, steel parts, ceramics, etc. in our homes on a similar device. There's nothing to it except for a $1000 CO2 laser, powered metal, and other parts shared with these plastic machines including the know-how of a few 100k tinkerers mastering the workflow of distributed manufacturing using additive processes while building cheap plastic trinkets.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105629/ Forward thinking
Knock off nokia phone data cable (CR42): $2.68 + free shipping. About $4.00-$20.00 to say 'USB TTL' or want some type of connector. In addition to arduinos I talk to a guruplug with one, an unfortunate POS device that will most assuredly be dumped in favor of a pi.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=nokia+ca+42+cable
The damn feds keeps trying to stop me from burning used tires and reclaimed motor oil in my homemade furnace! I thought this was a free country, but now I have to deal with my whiny neighbors complaining about the soot and fumes and now the GOVERNMENT is all up in my shit!!
What odd behavior. YTD 2011 50% of oil is domestic and the two largest imports come from canada and mexico (~18%). Furthermore only about ~10% comes from the middle east, the balance is africa and s. america. So apart from your priggish "correction" he remains correct in his main point.
The problem is not calculating solar flux. IMO, I think I could get parts and assemble prototypes while enroute to kenya (excluding TSA interference) and test the phones for a few days in less time than I could develop a convincing model (and I already have all the PV/solar code). IMO, the trip was probably more about how their phones intercept the solar resource under real world usage. A model would necessarily make assumptions that field work could substantiate or falsify.
A larger problem for environmentalism (and most movements and groups of people) is having to combat false representations like this,
/. mind. Of course, the potential electric car/battery boom (50-100kWh x 10,000,000+ vehicles = storage revolution)
Because the people who think they are environmentalists think solar and wind power can meet all of our energy needs."
Wind and solar energy can not yet replace coal. However, we can expand these industries by 10-20x before hitting this supposed grid wall. So in practice, strongly advocating for support/growth of wind/solar isn't really a problem, yet. We can literally build out thousands of gigawatts. I agree that an intermediate solution requires natural gas. Natural gas peaking must be displaced by an over capacity of renewables. The over capacity of peaking natural gas facilities should displace base load coal plants. Wala, 50-70% less emissions from generation. (I could be more controversial and claim this will net cheaper generation too.) Even small natural gas plants are more efficient than our coal grid and they can be ramped quickly, which is a perfect companion to wind/solar. Then we get 50 yr to eliminate the gas with whatever thorium fantasy inhabits the
Distributing the load over 2min is child's play. 1944J/120s = 16 W. Children and old people could easily do 25W on a stationary bike (A nominally fit adult could do 100-400W very easily for a minute), meaning that a phone/capacitor/whatever energy could be charged in a few minutes without breaking a sweat. 16W from a hand crank might be unreasonable for a child ( I doubt it!), but seems fine for an adult.
Seems extremely reasonable to me!
There was a NDC study in the last year that approximated 160 million DVR devices in the US. I think they estimated that standby power consumption was something like 2/3 of total power consumed. As in if these devices were powered off we could shut down 6 600GW base load nuclear reactors (or equivalently sizes coal boilers). It's really an interesting problem, so much waste, yet so widely distributed. Who would have thought that Americans turning off TIVOs (when not in use...) would rival the environmental impact of the entire solar industry to date.
I pay similar prices in MN. Avocado prices are strange, they do something like a random walk in quality and price. I generally pay between 0.89 and 1.79. The almond milk though... whoa I pay about half (3.39 - 3.99 for 2L) and this price has gone up about 30% in the last 2 yr. I can get 3.8 - 5.5 lb of frozen vegetables for $4.95 as well. IMO, better deal than the burgers! I would think even 1-2 lb of vegetables, which you could buy fresh are a better deal than the burgers. More mass. More nutrition. Less calories. Less nasties!
The best winter time Bell peppers and tomatoes are green house grown in MN and Ontario!!
Lots of houses in minneapolis for $50K 10 yr ago and today. You can comfortably afford that on 8-9$/hr.
It is a common myth that healthy food is expensive. Tasty, healthy food is very cheap. I get 109% of my daily nutrition and less than 30% of my calories from breakfast and lunch (5-6 days a week) and I have been doing so for many years now. 6 vegetables + 2 nut + 2 bean medley for lunch 200-250 kcal ($0.40/lunch ~$0.90-1.10 if I add avocado) (OJ,almond milk, granola, oat flake, flax seed, spinach + 3 vitamin pills for breakfast 400kcal ($1.20). I don't know, these seem like food shelf prices to me and total less than $60/mo. 20% of the time I can't follow this diet, 7% I don't eat, 7% I eat out, 6% I eat garbage. I then gorge myself for calories on tasty pasta, bread, sauces, etc for supper. $5.00 for a total cost of roughly $150.00/mo. (The bill for 2 is less than $300) A fast food meal costs me about $5 - $13, where as I could add fine cheese/meat//fish and easily beat that cost per meal at home with healthier, tastier cuisine that is lower impact, more conscientiousness, makes me feel good, does not cause behavior problems in children, and does not slowly transform me into a burden for society. Even fast food value meal crap in the morning or lunch (or similar processed food from the market) would be significantly more expensive than eating the right healthy food.
I wouldn't consider it credit until there is a cost to the debt or the credit liabilities exceed cash on hand. Otherwise it's not much different than organizing your check deposits and withdrawals. There is never any net liability. IMO bonuses offer absurd incentives. The +5%, +3%, +1% discount/cash back are serious discount to realize when you can simply direct all spending through the card, which dwarfs savings account interest for me. Also it yields a very nice credit score/available credit balance in the absence of secured credit/mortgage/ interest payments. It's a game, better to play it right than just sit out!
Yeah. Then subtract off your 45k (non inflated, non increasing) utility bills for 25 yr and your 3% return is pretty similar to the solar install.
So why don't I have it? Because my home like so many others is upside down and the cost of a solar install of decent size is looking like $30K or more which will be saving me something like $150 a month on my electric bill. How exactly does THAT make sense?
LOL That is a bigger return than the bank is getting off my mortgage. Sounds good to me!
Try going to a solar panel distributor and ordering a bunch of panels, made in the US or china doesn't matter, the shipping cost of sending a truck out to you full of delicate glass is really quite high.
If a distributor sends semi-trailer that can hold 400 kW to deliver a 5kW residential system, then one might look for a supplier with a wider selection of delivery options. My experience ordering glass by freight (larger more delicate glass than PV) was not especially different from normal freight costs.
If oil spiked, the demand for installed panels would be extremely high, but the UPS cost of delivery would probably rise to a multiple of the cost of the panels, its very unclear if this would improve or destroy overall system economic budget numbers.
I just did a quick calculation, each new pv panel (~23kg) on a trip of 10,000 km costs $1.3, $1.9, and $12.6. for rail, ship, and truck, respectively. We still would need 15-270x in fuel price to see the cost of long distance shipping approach the $200-350 cost per panel. These costs are about 10x-500x final delivery distances e.g., your scenario is mad max $1000/gal scenario
The leaner & meaner Chinese firms are putting weak competition out of business, including firms based in the US, Germany, and China. They have licensed American & German processes, equipment, and construction and have transitioned PV into a commodity. IMO, everything is relatively above the board, that is why the move is brilliant. These Chinese firms are remaining profitable and still have ~22-30% margins. Conspiratorial accusations of atypical dumping and government subsidized manufacturing are unfounded. Primarily smaller poly silicon and maybe some tier 3 module producers are dumping product as their last move before bankruptcy, but these companies have only affected the market for crappy 2nd rate goods. Municipal and federal tax subsidies may be generous for the Chinese firms, but they are not that different from their US counterparts (checkout the sweetheart deals on all the failed US solars). The Chinese juggernauts do have access to massive CDB loans, but 1) They are largely untapped (e.g. like ~5% used) and 2) the CDB capital has more expensive terms than the equivalent US DOE loan guarantees. Furthermore, this point is moot since these companies have expanded using money (asset/security/bond) sales in the private markets (mostly US and HK).
China wins the race to grid parity. I hope they are rewarded for their vision, if only to light a late spark for the U.S.
Speaking of disingenuous, I find that your comment lacks full disclosure. You forgot to mention all the ideological riders attached to the house bill that are similar political theater (contrary to much rabble rousing against these types of tactics). Perhaps you are correct in this instance, but I certainly wouldn't try to defend any political caucus as ideologically consistent (unless that ideology is to promote oneself)...
unless of course that organization is is a non-affiliated group of people who txt while driving. Then (observe story last week) we collectively freak out when actions are suggested, not to punish them, but merely prohibit their infringing behavior.
Check out GP signature, he points to some activist group with that exact goal.
Um ok, that is kind of an odd way of thinking about it given the low rate of production from Alberta sands compared to net annual consumption.
yes. you are exactly correct.
The boom (70% decline in solar prices) has coincided with global recession. Energy use has declined or remained stagnant. Hence no solar demand (or any demand). Massive oversupply as China scales up production. Yet still, the pipeline for solar and wind exceeds fossil fuels everywhere except China. Give them until 2015. The future is already set in stone.
Dude get with the times. Panels can be had for ~$1.00/pW in bulk and there are 10s of GW in the global utility scale pipeline at $4.00/pW and even $3.00/pW. That yields 0.9 - 0.12 $/kWh in the sunbelt without tracking and without subsidies... There has been a cost revolution that no one noticed because the economy sticks and for the last ~4 yrs net energy consumption has decreased or remained stagnant.
I would imagine the environwhacks will stop complaining at about the same time as all these whacky white guys stop complaining about discrimination against whites and proclaiming the need for a white people only political party.