It would pretty easy to build a gas turbine w/ genset at 1 kW/kg I think. Anyway, add 15kg for a 15kW power plant. Assume 30% net efficiency * energy of petrol (45MJ/kg) = 15,000 kJ/kg of fuel. So each kg of fuel gives a run time of ~4hr. So 20 kg in weight you would have the strength of 11 horses for 20 hours. I don't know, that's frightening to me. Good thing I'll be able to hear that 100,000 RPM gas turbine at 300 yards....
oops. Pulled up some old calcs, that is dry fossil fuel kg, but the living biomass includes the water so the 600x should be on the order of 1000x instead.
Familiarization with the scales may allow different conclusions. For instance, burning 100,000,000 yrs of accumulated carbon over the course 100 yr sounds frightening. Let's be conservative and burn 1,000,000 yr of accumulated carbon over the course of 1000 yr. That's a rate increase of 1000 compared to your static natural processes. Consider proven global fossil fuel reserves, which will last about ~100 yr at present consumption (I'm lumping coal/ gas/ oil to be simple). The dry mass of 'proven' coal/nat gas/oil reserves is ~600x of all present living biomass. I find that disturbing. I encourage you to perform this straightforward calculation. Where does your expectation of a trivial impact hail from?
U.S. energy use has largely stagnated for 10 yr (recession helps) and several advanced economies are twice as efficient as the U.S. in terms of GDP/kWh (and look even more impressive from quality of life/energy measures). I'd say there is a lot of room for negotiation.
Doubling? No. You have some catching up to do. 80% of the global population has(will soon) flat line/d. Narrowly focused programs can reach the remaining 20% e.g. central/south africa.
You're just reiterating baseless claims made by whining American firms. The Chinese players have already shown sufficiently low production costs to sell modules at 1.05 $/pW and some are structured to turn a profit at prices as low as 0.90 $/pW. There may be dumping by smaller firms going out of business and other firms (soon to be out of business who cannot compete with the economies of scales of the new big players). Isn't this destructive capitalism? I invite you to look at Jinko Solar as an excellent example of a new company structured to make bucket loads of money at present "dumping" prices. Then maybe you can further explain your accusation.
I'm not very excited about this. This simplicity is a flaw masquerading as a feature. I don't accept the comparison to an iPod either. The goal here is energy conservation. The path to this goal is through awareness, not some magical gadget. People need to understand "energy" and its relationship to the economy, the environment, and their values. An automatic thermostat will 1) never be as miserly as manual adjustments (including programming) and 2) it disconnects people from heating/cooling, the largest end use of energy on the planet -and the easiest, cheapest, and largest target for saving $$ and energy. An automatic thermostat may aid conservation for some, but people must somehow remain engaged. In other words, excess energy consumption for space heating is in most cases not a technical problem, thus we should not be searching for technical solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
It would pretty easy to build a gas turbine w/ genset at 1 kW/kg I think. Anyway, add 15kg for a 15kW power plant. Assume 30% net efficiency * energy of petrol (45MJ/kg) = 15,000 kJ/kg of fuel. So each kg of fuel gives a run time of ~4hr. So 20 kg in weight you would have the strength of 11 horses for 20 hours. I don't know, that's frightening to me. Good thing I'll be able to hear that 100,000 RPM gas turbine at 300 yards....
oops. Pulled up some old calcs, that is dry fossil fuel kg, but the living biomass includes the water so the 600x should be on the order of 1000x instead.
Familiarization with the scales may allow different conclusions. For instance, burning 100,000,000 yrs of accumulated carbon over the course 100 yr sounds frightening. Let's be conservative and burn 1,000,000 yr of accumulated carbon over the course of 1000 yr. That's a rate increase of 1000 compared to your static natural processes. Consider proven global fossil fuel reserves, which will last about ~100 yr at present consumption (I'm lumping coal/ gas/ oil to be simple). The dry mass of 'proven' coal/nat gas/oil reserves is ~600x of all present living biomass. I find that disturbing. I encourage you to perform this straightforward calculation. Where does your expectation of a trivial impact hail from?
U.S. energy use has largely stagnated for 10 yr (recession helps) and several advanced economies are twice as efficient as the U.S. in terms of GDP/kWh (and look even more impressive from quality of life/energy measures). I'd say there is a lot of room for negotiation.
Doubling? No. You have some catching up to do. 80% of the global population has(will soon) flat line/d. Narrowly focused programs can reach the remaining 20% e.g. central/south africa.
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_7.htm
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm
You're just reiterating baseless claims made by whining American firms. The Chinese players have already shown sufficiently low production costs to sell modules at 1.05 $/pW and some are structured to turn a profit at prices as low as 0.90 $/pW. There may be dumping by smaller firms going out of business and other firms (soon to be out of business who cannot compete with the economies of scales of the new big players). Isn't this destructive capitalism? I invite you to look at Jinko Solar as an excellent example of a new company structured to make bucket loads of money at present "dumping" prices. Then maybe you can further explain your accusation.
I'm not very excited about this. This simplicity is a flaw masquerading as a feature. I don't accept the comparison to an iPod either. The goal here is energy conservation. The path to this goal is through awareness, not some magical gadget. People need to understand "energy" and its relationship to the economy, the environment, and their values. An automatic thermostat will 1) never be as miserly as manual adjustments (including programming) and 2) it disconnects people from heating/cooling, the largest end use of energy on the planet -and the easiest, cheapest, and largest target for saving $$ and energy. An automatic thermostat may aid conservation for some, but people must somehow remain engaged. In other words, excess energy consumption for space heating is in most cases not a technical problem, thus we should not be searching for technical solutions.