CF's are definately still young enough that all bulbs are not equal. As others noted, try to buy the slightly more expensive versions. A good CF is usually about $3 or $4. Avoid the multi-packs available at discount stores. They usually have awful color and absurdly long warm up times. Buy from a store that has a good return policy.. if the bulbs suck, return them.
Avoid using CFs in areas where the bulbs will only be needed for a short time and where immediate light is required (Hallways, stairs). Good CF bulbs still have a warm up time, but they reach about 70% instantly, and 100% within about 5-30seconds.
If you replace no other bulb, swap out your porch light.
I've had mixed luck with Home Depot bulbs, (they have an in store brand). The GE bulbs from Lowe's are great, especially the new "daylight" series bulbs.
The other recommendation is look at replacing the fixture with an actual flourescent fixture. These days you can get fixtures that are CF, but the electronics are in the fixture instead of the bulb base. Since the electronics are only purchased once, they are generally better quality, and the fixtures are brighter and have faster start times. Selection is still pretty limited, but its worth it where ever possible. (Home depot has a $19 14watt CF dusk to dawn outdoor porch light that works great and puts out an incredible amount of light.)
1. A lot of home stores carry nifty little cubes that plug into a single outlet, and have a single plug and switch on them. Buy however many you need.
2. Learn how to wire outlets yourself. Any basic web tutorial or "home electrical wiring 101" book will give you the basics. Go to your local home store and buy a couple of lightswitches and receptacles (about $.50 each) and some metal or plastic junction boxes. For a little bit more money you can find ones that have one switch and one outlet together. Wire them up to each other, and a short cord to the wall (you can buy plugs, but its usually cheaper to hack the computer end off of a standard power cord. --make sure you know what you're doing, screwing up happens to be an excellent way to burn your house down.
and then convert it to electric with a $3000 conversion kit from e-volks. (They also have a $1500 conversion kit, but I'd go with the better one if I were you.)
Please don't.. the e-volts kits are fantastically underpowered for a car. Despite their claims, a 72V series DC vehicle will not do freeway speeds. Best practice in hobbiest conversions has been closer to 120VDC for awhile. The absolute minimum for a freeway EV is 96V and a small car (Geo Metro). Top end at 96V will be 60-65mph, and a 29+ second 0-60mph time. Most Americans will not be comfortable with that level of acceleration. Also e-volks is using a 6.5" diameter motor. Once again 8" motors are the minimum, and most conversion choose 9" motors. A 6.5" motor will be prone to overheating on long grades, and will not live long.
Expect to spend about $8000-$10,000US on the parts and hundreds of hours of labor on a hobbiest conversion. There are a few kits to simplify the process. Canadian EV has an S-10 and Geo kit, and Electric Automotive has Porsche and Rabbit kits.
I have been working on a kit for the 2003-2006 Mazda 3. It is still in the early stages, but if a customer wants to purchase the parts I will do the conversion work for free. I have done a few others, including a 99 Ford Ranger, 1987 Toyota MR2, and assisted in several others. Some notes from my conversion can be found on my website and TV segment showing the MR2 on the road from the show Austin Now! (about 2/3 thru). Please feel free to email if you have more questions. evinfo AT mindbent.org
Okay, forget the rest of the damn article. Amercia, your problem is right there: MPG
Congrats, you just made a mental connection that eludes almost every American. Fuel economy does suck for a few reasons:
1. Americans are very price motivated when shopping, but rarely consider lifecycle costs. (Walmart could make a killing in the auto business)
2. Cheap oil in the early 90's, and favorable tax and insurance climates made large vehicles very attractive in the late 90's. In 2000 you could get a $4000 tax credit for buying an electric car, but a $100,000 deduction for purchasing a large truck or SUV. The highest fleet average economy in the US was in 1987, at 27mpg. It has been falling ever since, mostly because light trucks have replaced cars and are subject to less stringent fuel economy standards.
3. HP has increased, a lot. In the 80's average HP for a car or truck was 110HP-130HP. Today its more like 190-210HP. More HP generally means larger engines, which consume more fuel when cruising.
If the batteries are damaged, how does one shut them down? Once you short a lithium battery there is no stopping the reaction.
A serious concern but one that the EV industry has thought a lot about.
Lithium batteries are not inherently explosive. Instead certain components used in their construction are. The most common lithium ion battery uses Cobalt in its electrodes. The cobalt when heated (like during an accidental overcharge) becomes unstable and rapidly enters a runaway exothermic reaction. Nearby batteries will also get heated and rapidly the whole pack catches fire. Bad. Cell phone and laptop manufacturers build extensive safety systems into the batteries to shutdown the pack if temps begin to rise into the danger zone. Many of the fires were traced to aftermarket batteries that lacked these safety features.
However there are Lithium ion batteries that do not use Cobalt in their construction. One battery manufacturer "Valance" uses a phosphate system that does not exhibit this runaway when overcharged. I think most of the "large scale" lithium manufacturers do not use Cobalt.
The Tesla is a prototype or low volume car.. I do not think their battery choice is unacceptable to the general public but it may be acceptable for exotic market they are targetting.
It is worth noting that the author of the article works for the High Park Group, "a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa." "..retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry)." In other words, a lobbying group for energy interests.
The long term problems with this type of system should be obvious to everyone. The power companies have a different rate schedule for a reason.
Yes, but that reason is not pure profit for the utility. Utilities have two types of power generators, "base load" which is cheap to run (less than $.01/kwhr) like coal and nuclear. This plants run 24x7 and cannot rapidly scale their generating capacity up and down to handle peak loads. Instead peak loads have to be handled by "peaking" plants, which can scale their generator output quickly.. most of these plants are natural gas turbines, and can cost as much as $.30/kwhr to operate. In most areas the utility charges a fairly flat rate for power (about.14/kwhr in summer here in Austin), with only business getting charge a peak/non-peak load. So for the utility shifting any load to evening, or increasing power usage at night (keeping those base plants loaded) saves a tremedous amount of money on peaking plant costs.
Their prices are based off of demand. If enough people start using this system, then the peak times will alter and therefore the prices will become essentially a flat-fee.
I'll disagree, for me it sucks about as much as X10 did.
Insteon sells itself as a hybrid protocol, both RF and powerline but the switches are powerline only.. the only RF in the system is in the signal bridges AFAIK.
1. Whenever Insteon signals are traversing the power line the backlight on the KeypadLinc blinks. The labels on the keypad link look like backlite paper becuase of the white LED illumination. Uniform plastic labels, or different color backlight would help improve the look a lot. Construction and feel of the device is excellent.
2. Insteon programming seems simple, but you have to do weird things. Like when you program a button on the Keypadlinc if you want the light behind the button to track the state the fixture when the fixture is controlled from something other than the keypad lic you have to reverse program it.. and the system tends to get confused as to which unit will be the controller and which is the controlee. Once again, if you have noise in your environment.. forget it.
3. Acknowledged transmission.... Insteon devices will repeat transmissions until they get an ACK from the controlled device... but only for about 1 sec. Not enough time to bypass a noisy environment. Also the ACK does not appear to contain the device ID, so when two commands go out in rapid series the transmmitters both assume the first ACK is meant for them.
4. The getting started docs are too simple.. the full use docs are way too complicated.
5. Insteon has an X10 compatibility mode that works ok, but interoperation with X10 automation controllers is still a little dicey.
Intuit's Quickbooks requires local Administrator priviledge for some reason. This is exceptionally annoying becuase the finance folks in many businesses are the ones with just enough computer knowledge to be dangerous.
It is possible to get it to run without it, but it is less than fun:
I think that at its core a lot of home automation/integration is mostly a toy. Sure I can turn off the bedroom lights from any wall switch or remote in the house, but why would I? Yeah its neat to have preprogramming "Romantic" lighting scenes, but only the largest homes have more than one or two lights per room.
Instead focus on how the home can work for its occupants. Energy management is a good area. Zoned heating systems or variable drive heat/cool are still pretty rare, instead we have fancy programmable thermostats running 1930's on off control technologies. Temp and occupancy sensors in each room can manage climate loads, directing energy to where you need it, and anticipating where it will be needed next. Instead of a user setting a thermostat to a numerical temp they are give a simple thumbs up/down style too cool/too hot. The climate system can then goal seek over time. Many people's comfort temp changes with time of day, and the season and other factors like humidity and sun exposure.
A security system is a good choice for making the hub, it knows who's home and when they are likely to return. Keypads are the standard here, but maybe something simple like a row of keylocks. When you arrive home you put your key into your lock (one for each member of the family), and the system makes choices based on that (plus you can't lose keys). A simple button interface for "I"ll return in: 1,2,3,4,8 hours" will help the system choose how much to setback the thermostat.
I'd like to see my DVR work a little more for me.. a TV in the shower/mirror could run the last 30 minutes of Headline news, or compile other interesting data. (Adverts for todays tv programs with a simple. "Oh record that.." interface, Sport highlights, tech news read by supermodels... whatever.) In the morning all that bathroom time is wide open for productivity enhancements. Definately a hollywood toy... but it would make me "feel" more productive.
The kitchen is another place.. nobody has really hit the sweet spot on a kitchen management system. All it would need to be is a receipe file on acid.... It offers suggestions on things I might like to eat, makes shopping lists, and entertains me while I cook. Maybe scafing data from my DVR. (If I see something on a cooking show that seems good I'd like to zap the receipe and the show straight to my kitchen.) Ingredents tracking would be nice but barcode integration is too labor intensive.. I think RFID might break that barrier.
Maybe a way to sell home managment services.. a central panel that will offer to send over a handyman to change my furnace filters, offer convienient access to a maid service.... hotel for guests. If the manufacturer/seller doesn't get too greedy this might be really helpful.
Just some ideas..but the gist is, technology is often rigid, and seldom makes life easier... the occupants need to come first. Remember how few "labor saving" devices have actually saved us. We used to beat carpets once or twice a year.. now we are expected to vacuum weekly.
Design for low cost: Things that must be left on must be cheap: That's my rule. Rather than keep all my systems running, I have a low draw laptop that's hooked up to a flat-screen (tested to make sure it doesn't suck power when off). I like to leave a few lights on when we're not here - they're all converted to flourescent. Anything that has to be left on must be cheap.
We've been experimenting with a Kill-a-watt watt-hour meter and have found some interesting energy wasters in the house. The most noteable... my roommate's brand new APC SmartUPS 400 consumes 11 watts whether its on or off (running the battery charger I'd guess, no wonder the batteries die so quickly). Tivo and the TV are responsible for about 800watt/hours per day... but the big killer is the 24cubic foot side by side fridge (purchased by the previous homeowner in 1992) at 2.4kWh per day. Modern fridges are significantly more efficient than even 10 year old models, new models often consume less than 1kwH per day. I am looking to replace the fridge as my next major purchases, simple payback will be 1.5 - 2 years.
The HAI Omni security systems have really good integration with the HAI Omnistat programable thermostats. The Omni security systems have a very simple macro language for setting up commands based on security, timed, user input or security sensors and the result can be a change in thermostat settings. For example we have ours programmed to setback the thermostat to 60 after 10pm (11pm on weekends). After 5am if the motion sensor in the bathroom triggers (indicating I stumbled into the bathroom for a shower) the systems runs a series of "Wake up" events, including resetting the thermostat to 68. Once the last person leaves the house and arms the security system the thermostat sets back to 60 again until someone returns from work.
Since you have the walls open now is an excellent time to run wire for a hardwired security system (which are a little lower maintainence and cheaper than wireless systems). Having a monitored security system (with a sign out front) is a relatively good way to prevent breakins.
The security system can also be programmed to call you or the monitoring system if the inside temp drops below 45 degrees and you can add sensors for whatever suits you. (How about a water sensor by the washer/dryer and in the basement? Or a fuel level sensor on the oil tank?)
There is also the Elk M line of systems which lack direct thermostat intagration (although I think they too can control the Omni series of thermostats over a RS232 link). The Elk systems are much cheaper than the HAI and have support for Proximity cards for disarming/door unlocking but I have no experience with them. Both systems are available from Smarthome or other online retailers.
As someone else noted, setting back a thermostat will usually save money, but only if the thermostat is setback for several hours (the exact amount depends on how well your house is insulated and how much thermal mass it contains). You may want to experiment while watching some form of "runtime" meter attached to the furnace or thermostat.
No.. as the article says, deaccleration of the vehicle itself has very little to do with the safety of the occupants. Even in the most forceful collisions the car will deaccelerate at less than 100G's. Human's regularily survive deaccelerations up to 150-200Gs when the force is spread out.
The problem is peak loads as the occupant collides with the interior of the car. The design goal is to keep the passenger in his seat, and the passenger compartment largely intact. A stiffer vehicle hitting a less stiff one causes the softer vehicle to absorb more than its share of the collision force, often exceeding the design force of the softer vehicle (that was designed to absorb only its own velocity, like when hitting the solid barrier in common crash tests).
Crash compatibility appears to be the greatest factor in crash surviability, and the hardest to measure. For example, the standard side impact test crashes a simulated front end of a Ford Tuarus into the car under test. Most vehicles do well in this test becuase the short soft Taurus tends to engage the door framing, pushing the test car away and spreading the impact force out. Try this same test with a taller stiffer vehicle impact and the passengers in the test vehicle are often killed. A famous test found that when the test vehicle was hit with a Dodge 4x4 pickup the passengers sustained much less injuries than when hit by the same model 4x2 pickup despite the 4x4's 800lbs of additional weight. It took many weeks of film analysis to figure out why... the 4x4 came with factory tow hooks mounted under the bumper. These hooks caught the top of the door frame and pushed the test car out of the way... the 4x2 version's bumper rode over the door frame and struck the dummy directly.
I've been an active and sideline member of the Austin Linux community and the ALG group Joe Barr is primarily referring to for many years. I think Austin is somewhat unique, and the slow death of its user group can be attributed to people as much as anything.
Some issues: During the early years of the group is was usually hosted at sites that had two rooms. One for organized presentations, and the other for freewheeling conversations and people were able to wander between the two. The site had some form of open net access. The moderator (Stu Green, or others) usually started the conversation going with a 15 minute rant on current events, and elicited questions, inform the group on what people were working on and what they needed to find out. This helped match people together by interested and really jump started the socialization.
Later the group moved to venues that had one room, and on days where a presentation was less than interesting there could be no social aspect until dinner after the meeting (Katz's, Starseeds or some other late night venue.) Also, the new venue's were at City and State owned buildings, and some core members had such strong political views that they refused to attend meetings in those buildings. The meetings also for a time alternated between a North Austin and South Austin location instead of a central one, meaning most people only attended whichever meeting was closest.
The Internet Bubble hit Austin hard in 2001-2002, and many core members were jobless, and could no longer afford to eat out. The dinner group dwindled to just a few, and we found many people were attending meetings just for the dinner socialization.
There were a lot of ongoing ego battles... many of the original founders of the group held strong political opinions but did not frequently attend meetings. They were also typically older, and had some of the grumpiness generally expected of people in their age bracket.;-) Over time the leadership of the group, and its direction became set by the younger, more frequently attending members. The mailing list became a venue for a battle between the young vs the old, the new members vs the founders. Some members split off to form splinter groups, some people got tired of the fighting, and the group dwindled further.
In both computer and social networks there are true benefits in the number of nodes/people. The more people, the more interactions, and the more useful and interesting the group becomes. The Austin Linux group died the death of a thousand small cuts.. the increasingly mainstream use of Linux is only one of those.
Not at all. The current generation of hybrids are all running Nickel Metal Hydride "D" batteries, which are pretty safe overall. See Panasonic's disclosure. The worst chemical in them is the Potassium Hydroxide... which you should avoid contact with but which is not generally considered toxic. (Like the lead used in convential starter batteries)
You can simple toss NiMH batteries in the standard municipal waste stream, although recycling them is always a good idea.
The batteries carry an extended warrenty, 7-8 years IIRC. Accelerated testing has shown that they will probably last considerably longer and the price for replacements has already fallen to about $1500.
Buying a hybrid might be hard to justify financially (since the gas savings are unlikely to offset the price premium for a long while) but its still a good thing environmentally.
Also don't know why but some of the most dangerous driving I have seen was done in the largest suvs.
Simple, SUVs tend to be purchased by people the auto industry terms "self-oriented" (marketspeak for "self-centered"). In several studies the auto industry found that, for example, minivan owners were twice as likely to attend church, be involved in charity or volunteer work and other community activities than the average SUV owner. That's why SUV marketing almost never shows the vehicle surronded by many people, and instead focuses on "getting away" or solitary driving experiences. Remember the famous Escalade ad that showed an enlarged upclose view of the front grill with the word "Yield" superimposed.
Taking that further.. if the driver is mostly interested in themselves and their family it is not too surprising that they drive aggressively at the expense of the community.
There are no actual guarentees that CDMA time will be accurate. Its supposed to be, but it doesn't have to be. A friend that does cell phone work has recorded cell towers off by minutes.. even days.
I read the article and I am still not all that comfortable with his solution. His tracking system is way cool, but using mirrors to cheaply concentrate power onto solar panels was tried years ago.
The result was burned out panels... too much heat cooked the cells. (A utility sized concentrated solar project failed from panel burnout for example) Also photovoltaic panels are more efficient at lower temps. Hard to do with something sitting in the sun and even tougher when you a tripling the amount of solar energy hitting them.
I have had the same type of problem.. too many servers, to little Air Conditioning. The accountants have no problems with buying 5 more servers to support a particular project, but spending $10k on AC upgrades is not permitted.
In our case the AC could hold the room in the mid 70F running continously. This lead to a compressor failure every 6 months and no backup AC. Temps in the room would quickly soar in the 100-110F until servers began failing or shutting down. (This failure always occurred on weekends, when the building air was shutdown and the datacenter was cooling its normal load plus leakage from a 90F degree building thru uninsulated walls.) By the time IT staff made it onsite several servers would be dead.
The solution was temp based emergency shutdown. Take a DB9 female connector and solder a 10k resistor between CTS and DTR and attach a two connector cable to RTS and CTS. Run the two wire cable to the Y and R(or RC) terminals of a common home thermostat. Set the thermostat to cool mode and the setpoint to 85. Plug the DB9 into a spare serial port.
Install UPSd or use the UPS tab in windows to assign a generic UPS to that port and set a 5 minute shutdown on AC failure. When the thermostat turns on (indicating temp is above the 85F setpoint) the cable will simulate an power failure on a old dumb UPS and shutdown the system.
Another option.. if you control DHCP you control the default route to the internet your clients use. You can setup a Linux box on a static IP and change the gateway IP of anyone (based on MAC address) to that Linux box. The Linux box should forward the packets along to the actual internet gateway. Once traffic is passing thru your machine you can do many things. (Maybe some transparent proxying tied to a virus scanner? Snort with a route to nowhere action? Lots of options once you control the egress point.
Your subscribers can always override DHCP and enter the correct default gateway but this takes a little know-how and is beyond most lusers.
Redirecting traffic this way has some negative effects on the network (lots of ICMP Redirect Traffic)...it might help to NAT the connections or only route the really offensive users thru this method.
Microsoft unveiled its Performance Peak Initiative -- a line of computer systems to help the auto industry better coordinate supply chains, streamline design, production and sales andfill vehicles with computer gadgets.
Is it just me or does the feature list for Performance Peak seem a lot like what we expect from MS?
A number of useful sounding tools (thanks to excellent Marketspeak), bundled into a odd configuration with some really unrelated productivity destroying crap.
As a side note: Lock the file cabinet.. a significant fraction of burglers like to dabble in identity theft (or have friends that do).
It sucks to have your house broken into.. its worse when weeks later the thief trashes your credit and uses your spare car keys to swipe the car from the driveway (which is easy since he has the title that was in the file cabinet).
I didn't think the power plant emissions were relevant, but a bunch of posts have given the "moving the pollution" argument so I'll address it.
1. Moving the pollution is actually a bit of a good thing. Pollution is bad anywhere, but cities have more people getting lung cancer. Most power plants are spread out and away from population centers.
2. The control issue... its a lot harder to clean up 100,000 tailpipes than one power plant. Bigger scrubbers aren't cheap but still cheaper than the pollution controls on the car. CO2 sequestering really isn't even possible at the car level, but might soon be at the plant level.
The problem gets worse when you look at how little maintainence the emissions controls get on most cars. Approx 15% of cars in the US are driving with the "Check Engine" light on, indicating some reduction in power and emissions. Add in the the people actively subverting the emissions controls for increased in performance. Search google for "drilling out the cat" for some fun stories. Getting high horsepower in an EV doesn't require increasing pollution when the car is being driven normally.
3. Pollution and cost improvements by using electric cars to avoid expensive and often inefficient peaking power. Electric cars can charge at night using cheap base load electricity, and help balance the day/night usage swings. Some tests have even had the EVs putting power back into the grid from their batteries during daytime emergency brownout situations.
3. An extension to the control issue is that while an large fleet of electric cards would be only be about 25% -50% less polluting with todays electric grid (which relies on a lot of dirty coal) is that the cars now have a choice of fuels. We can keep generating power from dirty but plentiful US coal (avoid Mideast oil). Or we can add clean renewable sources, or nuclear, etc. If something better comes along: fusion, solar energy sats whatever it can be quickly integrated, without waiting 10 years for the cars to be taken off the road. 90% of the current air pollution is cuased by less than 10% of cars on the road (mostly 70's and 80's cars still in use and built with minimal pollution controls.)
And the other arguement is "just wait for fuel cell cars":
Fuel cells are not a replacement for electric cars. They _are_ electric cars, just with a different battery tech. All of the research investment in electric cars applies. Right now the auto industry is using fuel cells as a stalling action. By saying that fuel cells are still immature, and electric cars impractical they avoid retooling their production for 10 years or more.
The numbers are pretty close, it depends on the battery technology. Electric cars are really efficient, 80% or more of the power from the outlet ends up moving the car down the road. But electricity is much more expensive per unit of energy than gasoline (the old comparison that gasoline is cheaper than bottled water, at least in the US). For most homebrew EVs the electricity is about half as much per mile than gas a $1.50 per gallon. Factor in battery replacements and you're a little closer, especially comparing against 30+ mpg cars. But there are a lot less maintainence issues on EVs, so you end up way ahead after you consider lifecycle costs like oil changes, filters, valves, brakes (regen braking extends brake life).
The other factor is while the batteries are pricy now, mass demand would get the price down. The EV1 got 140 mile range on a pack of Nickel Metal Hydrid batteries, at an estimated cost of about $40,000 each set (although extended testing has show that NiMH batteries last over 100,000 miles in vehicle service). Honda originally said a new battery for the Insight would cost at least $7000 and sold the cars with a 7 year warrenty on the battery. Already the price has dropped to about $1500, and it will probably drop more as demand increases.
Lithium Ion was never available for the EV1, but it is available today, and LiON EVs are reaching 200+mile ranges in a $14,000 pack of batteries that is estimated to last 10 years. As production ramps the $14,000 will drop to about $6-7000 and the electric will have a comparable sticker price, and much lower lifecycle costs than a gas or diesel vehicle.
Oh.. and I hear there are some environmental benefits.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
CF's are definately still young enough that all bulbs are not equal. As others noted, try to buy the slightly more expensive versions. A good CF is usually about $3 or $4. Avoid the multi-packs available at discount stores. They usually have awful color and absurdly long warm up times. Buy from a store that has a good return policy.. if the bulbs suck, return them.
Avoid using CFs in areas where the bulbs will only be needed for a short time and where immediate light is required (Hallways, stairs). Good CF bulbs still have a warm up time, but they reach about 70% instantly, and 100% within about 5-30seconds.
If you replace no other bulb, swap out your porch light.
I've had mixed luck with Home Depot bulbs, (they have an in store brand). The GE bulbs from Lowe's are great, especially the new "daylight" series bulbs.
The other recommendation is look at replacing the fixture with an actual flourescent fixture. These days you can get fixtures that are CF, but the electronics are in the fixture instead of the bulb base. Since the electronics are only purchased once, they are generally better quality, and the fixtures are brighter and have faster start times. Selection is still pretty limited, but its worth it where ever possible. (Home depot has a $19 14watt CF dusk to dawn outdoor porch light that works great and puts out an incredible amount of light.)
Two ideas:
1. A lot of home stores carry nifty little cubes that plug into a single outlet, and have a single plug and switch on them. Buy however many you need.
2. Learn how to wire outlets yourself. Any basic web tutorial or "home electrical wiring 101" book will give you the basics. Go to your local home store and buy a couple of lightswitches and receptacles (about $.50 each) and some metal or plastic junction boxes. For a little bit more money you can find ones that have one switch and one outlet together. Wire them up to each other, and a short cord to the wall (you can buy plugs, but its usually cheaper to hack the computer end off of a standard power cord. --make sure you know what you're doing, screwing up happens to be an excellent way to burn your house down.
and then convert it to electric with a $3000 conversion kit from e-volks. (They also have a $1500 conversion kit, but I'd go with the better one if I were you.)
Please don't.. the e-volts kits are fantastically underpowered for a car. Despite their claims, a 72V series DC vehicle will not do freeway speeds. Best practice in hobbiest conversions has been closer to 120VDC for awhile. The absolute minimum for a freeway EV is 96V and a small car (Geo Metro). Top end at 96V will be 60-65mph, and a 29+ second 0-60mph time. Most Americans will not be comfortable with that level of acceleration. Also e-volks is using a 6.5" diameter motor. Once again 8" motors are the minimum, and most conversion choose 9" motors. A 6.5" motor will be prone to overheating on long grades, and will not live long.
Expect to spend about $8000-$10,000US on the parts and hundreds of hours of labor on a hobbiest conversion. There are a few kits to simplify the process. Canadian EV has an S-10 and Geo kit, and Electric Automotive has Porsche and Rabbit kits.
I have been working on a kit for the 2003-2006 Mazda 3. It is still in the early stages, but if a customer wants to purchase the parts I will do the conversion work for free. I have done a few others, including a 99 Ford Ranger, 1987 Toyota MR2, and assisted in several others. Some notes from my conversion can be found on my website
and TV segment showing the MR2 on the road from the show Austin Now! (about 2/3 thru). Please feel free to email if you have more questions. evinfo AT mindbent.org
Okay, forget the rest of the damn article. Amercia, your problem is right there: MPG
Congrats, you just made a mental connection that eludes almost every American. Fuel economy does suck for a few reasons:
1. Americans are very price motivated when shopping, but rarely consider lifecycle costs. (Walmart could make a killing in the auto business)
2. Cheap oil in the early 90's, and favorable tax and insurance climates made large vehicles very attractive in the late 90's. In 2000 you could get a $4000 tax credit for buying an electric car, but a $100,000 deduction for purchasing a large truck or SUV. The highest fleet average economy in the US was in 1987, at 27mpg. It has been falling ever since, mostly because light trucks have replaced cars and are subject to less stringent fuel economy standards.
3. HP has increased, a lot. In the 80's average HP for a car or truck was 110HP-130HP. Today its more like 190-210HP. More HP generally means larger engines, which consume more fuel when cruising.
If the batteries are damaged, how does one shut them down? Once you short a lithium battery there is no stopping the reaction.
A serious concern but one that the EV industry has thought a lot about.
Lithium batteries are not inherently explosive. Instead certain components used in their construction are. The most common lithium ion battery uses Cobalt in its electrodes. The cobalt when heated (like during an accidental overcharge) becomes unstable and rapidly enters a runaway exothermic reaction. Nearby batteries will also get heated and rapidly the whole pack catches fire. Bad. Cell phone and laptop manufacturers build extensive safety systems into the batteries to shutdown the pack if temps begin to rise into the danger zone. Many of the fires were traced to aftermarket batteries that lacked these safety features.
However there are Lithium ion batteries that do not use Cobalt in their construction. One battery manufacturer "Valance" uses a phosphate system that does not exhibit this runaway when overcharged. I think most of the "large scale" lithium manufacturers do not use Cobalt.
The Tesla is a prototype or low volume car.. I do not think their battery choice is unacceptable to the general public but it may be acceptable for exotic market they are targetting.
Mark Farver
It is worth noting that the author of the article works for the High Park Group, "a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa." "..retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry)." In other words, a lobbying group for energy interests.
See:
http://www.stikeman.com/newslett/EnNov04.htm
The long term problems with this type of system should be obvious to everyone. The power companies have a different rate schedule for a reason.
.14/kwhr in summer here in Austin), with only business getting charge a peak/non-peak load. So for the utility shifting any load to evening, or increasing power usage at night (keeping those base plants loaded) saves a tremedous amount of money on peaking plant costs.
Yes, but that reason is not pure profit for the utility. Utilities have two types of power generators, "base load" which is cheap to run (less than $.01/kwhr) like coal and nuclear. This plants run 24x7 and cannot rapidly scale their generating capacity up and down to handle peak loads. Instead peak loads have to be handled by "peaking" plants, which can scale their generator output quickly.. most of these plants are natural gas turbines, and can cost as much as $.30/kwhr to operate. In most areas the utility charges a fairly flat rate for power (about
Their prices are based off of demand. If enough people start using this system, then the peak times will alter and therefore the prices will become essentially a flat-fee.
I'll disagree, for me it sucks about as much as X10 did.
Insteon sells itself as a hybrid protocol, both RF and powerline but the switches are powerline only.. the only RF in the system is in the signal bridges AFAIK.
1. Whenever Insteon signals are traversing the power line the backlight on the KeypadLinc blinks. The labels on the keypad link look like backlite paper becuase of the white LED illumination. Uniform plastic labels, or different color backlight would help improve the look a lot. Construction and feel of the device is excellent.
2. Insteon programming seems simple, but you have to do weird things. Like when you program a button on the Keypadlinc if you want the light behind the button to track the state the fixture when the fixture is controlled from something other than the keypad lic you have to reverse program it.. and the system tends to get confused as to which unit will be the controller and which is the controlee. Once again, if you have noise in your environment.. forget it.
3. Acknowledged transmission.... Insteon devices will repeat transmissions until they get an ACK from the controlled device... but only for about 1 sec. Not enough time to bypass a noisy environment. Also the ACK does not appear to contain the device ID, so when two commands go out in rapid series the transmmitters both assume the first ACK is meant for them.
4. The getting started docs are too simple.. the full use docs are way too complicated.
5. Insteon has an X10 compatibility mode that works ok, but interoperation with X10 automation controllers is still a little dicey.
Mark
Intuit's Quickbooks requires local Administrator priviledge for some reason. This is exceptionally annoying becuase the finance folks in many businesses are the ones with just enough computer knowledge to be dangerous.
It is possible to get it to run without it, but it is less than fun:
http://www.sbslinks.com/lua2.htm
I think that at its core a lot of home automation/integration is mostly a toy. Sure I can turn off the bedroom lights from any wall switch or remote in the house, but why would I? Yeah its neat to have preprogramming "Romantic" lighting scenes, but only the largest homes have more than one or two lights per room.
Instead focus on how the home can work for its occupants. Energy management is a good area. Zoned heating systems or variable drive heat/cool are still pretty rare, instead we have fancy programmable thermostats running 1930's on off control technologies. Temp and occupancy sensors in each room can manage climate loads, directing energy to where you need it, and anticipating where it will be needed next. Instead of a user setting a thermostat to a numerical temp they are give a simple thumbs up/down style too cool/too hot. The climate system can then goal seek over time. Many people's comfort temp changes with time of day, and the season and other factors like humidity and sun exposure.
A security system is a good choice for making the hub, it knows who's home and when they are likely to return. Keypads are the standard here, but maybe something simple like a row of keylocks. When you arrive home you put your key into your lock (one for each member of the family), and the system makes choices based on that (plus you can't lose keys). A simple button interface for "I"ll return in: 1,2,3,4,8 hours" will help the system choose how much to setback the thermostat.
I'd like to see my DVR work a little more for me.. a TV in the shower/mirror could run the last 30 minutes of Headline news, or compile other interesting data. (Adverts for todays tv programs with a simple. "Oh record that.." interface, Sport highlights, tech news read by supermodels... whatever.) In the morning all that bathroom time is wide open for productivity enhancements. Definately a hollywood toy... but it would make me "feel" more productive.
The kitchen is another place.. nobody has really hit the sweet spot on a kitchen management system. All it would need to be is a receipe file on acid.... It offers suggestions on things I might like to eat, makes shopping lists, and entertains me while I cook. Maybe scafing data from my DVR. (If I see something on a cooking show that seems good I'd like to zap the receipe and the show straight to my kitchen.) Ingredents tracking would be nice but barcode integration is too labor intensive.. I think RFID might break that barrier.
Maybe a way to sell home managment services.. a central panel that will offer to send over a handyman to change my furnace filters, offer convienient access to a maid service.... hotel for guests. If the manufacturer/seller doesn't get too greedy this might be really helpful.
Just some ideas..but the gist is, technology is often rigid, and seldom makes life easier... the occupants need to come first. Remember how few "labor saving" devices have actually saved us. We used to beat carpets once or twice a year.. now we are expected to vacuum weekly.
Mark
Design for low cost: Things that must be left on must be cheap: That's my rule. Rather than keep all my systems running, I have a low draw laptop that's hooked up to a flat-screen (tested to make sure it doesn't suck power when off). I like to leave a few lights on when we're not here - they're all converted to flourescent. Anything that has to be left on must be cheap.
We've been experimenting with a Kill-a-watt watt-hour meter and have found some interesting energy wasters in the house. The most noteable... my roommate's brand new APC SmartUPS 400 consumes 11 watts whether its on or off (running the battery charger I'd guess, no wonder the batteries die so quickly). Tivo and the TV are responsible for about 800watt/hours per day... but the big killer is the 24cubic foot side by side fridge (purchased by the previous homeowner in 1992) at 2.4kWh per day. Modern fridges are significantly more efficient than even 10 year old models, new models often consume less than 1kwH per day. I am looking to replace the fridge as my next major purchases, simple payback will be 1.5 - 2 years.
Mark
The HAI Omni security systems have really good integration with the HAI Omnistat programable thermostats. The Omni security systems have a very simple macro language for setting up commands based on security, timed, user input or security sensors and the result can be a change in thermostat settings. For example we have ours programmed to setback the thermostat to 60 after 10pm (11pm on weekends). After 5am if the motion sensor in the bathroom triggers (indicating I stumbled into the bathroom for a shower) the systems runs a series of "Wake up" events, including resetting the thermostat to 68. Once the last person leaves the house and arms the security system the thermostat sets back to 60 again until someone returns from work.
Since you have the walls open now is an excellent time to run wire for a hardwired security system (which are a little lower maintainence and cheaper than wireless systems). Having a monitored security system (with a sign out front) is a relatively good way to prevent breakins.
The security system can also be programmed to call you or the monitoring system if the inside temp drops below 45 degrees and you can add sensors for whatever suits you. (How about a water sensor by the washer/dryer and in the basement? Or a fuel level sensor on the oil tank?)
There is also the Elk M line of systems which lack direct thermostat intagration (although I think they too can control the Omni series of thermostats over a RS232 link). The Elk systems are much cheaper than the HAI and have support for Proximity cards for disarming/door unlocking but I have no experience with them. Both systems are available from Smarthome or other online retailers.
As someone else noted, setting back a thermostat will usually save money, but only if the thermostat is setback for several hours (the exact amount depends on how well your house is insulated and how much thermal mass it contains). You may want to experiment while watching some form of "runtime" meter attached to the furnace or thermostat.
No.. as the article says, deaccleration of the vehicle itself has very little to do with the safety of the occupants. Even in the most forceful collisions the car will deaccelerate at less than 100G's. Human's regularily survive deaccelerations up to 150-200Gs when the force is spread out.
The problem is peak loads as the occupant collides with the interior of the car. The design goal is to keep the passenger in his seat, and the passenger compartment largely intact. A stiffer vehicle hitting a less stiff one causes the softer vehicle to absorb more than its share of the collision force, often exceeding the design force of the softer vehicle (that was designed to absorb only its own velocity, like when hitting the solid barrier in common crash tests).
Crash compatibility appears to be the greatest factor in crash surviability, and the hardest to measure. For example, the standard side impact test crashes a simulated front end of a Ford Tuarus into the car under test. Most vehicles do well in this test becuase the short soft Taurus tends to engage the door framing, pushing the test car away and spreading the impact force out. Try this same test with a taller stiffer vehicle impact and the passengers in the test vehicle are often killed. A famous test found that when the test vehicle was hit with a Dodge 4x4 pickup the passengers sustained much less injuries than when hit by the same model 4x2 pickup despite the 4x4's 800lbs of additional weight. It took many weeks of film analysis to figure out why... the 4x4 came with factory tow hooks mounted under the bumper. These hooks caught the top of the door frame and pushed the test car out of the way... the 4x2 version's bumper rode over the door frame and struck the dummy directly.
Mark
I've been an active and sideline member of the Austin Linux community and the ALG group Joe Barr is primarily referring to for many years. I think Austin is somewhat unique, and the slow death of its user group can be attributed to people as much as anything.
;-) Over time the leadership of the group, and its direction became set by the younger, more frequently attending members. The mailing list became a venue for a battle between the young vs the old, the new members vs the founders. Some members split off to form splinter groups, some people got tired of the fighting, and the group dwindled further.
Some issues:
During the early years of the group is was usually hosted at sites that had two rooms. One for organized presentations, and the other for freewheeling conversations and people were able to wander between the two. The site had some form of open net access. The moderator (Stu Green, or others) usually started the conversation going with a 15 minute rant on current events, and elicited questions, inform the group on what people were working on and what they needed to find out. This helped match people together by interested and really jump started the socialization.
Later the group moved to venues that had one room, and on days where a presentation was less than interesting there could be no social aspect until dinner after the meeting (Katz's, Starseeds or some other late night venue.) Also, the new venue's were at City and State owned buildings, and some core members had such strong political views that they refused to attend meetings in those buildings. The meetings also for a time alternated between a North Austin and South Austin location instead of a central one, meaning most people only attended whichever meeting was closest.
The Internet Bubble hit Austin hard in 2001-2002, and many core members were jobless, and could no longer afford to eat out. The dinner group dwindled to just a few, and we found many people were attending meetings just for the dinner socialization.
There were a lot of ongoing ego battles... many of the original founders of the group held strong political opinions but did not frequently attend meetings. They were also typically older, and had some of the grumpiness generally expected of people in their age bracket.
In both computer and social networks there are true benefits in the number of nodes/people. The more people, the more interactions, and the more useful and interesting the group becomes. The Austin Linux group died the death of a thousand small cuts.. the increasingly mainstream use of Linux is only one of those.
Not at all. The current generation of hybrids are all running Nickel Metal Hydride "D" batteries, which are pretty safe overall. See Panasonic's disclosure. The worst chemical in them is the Potassium Hydroxide... which you should avoid contact with but which is not generally considered toxic. (Like the lead used in convential starter batteries)
You can simple toss NiMH batteries in the standard municipal waste stream, although recycling them is always a good idea.
The batteries carry an extended warrenty, 7-8 years IIRC. Accelerated testing has shown that they will probably last considerably longer and the price for replacements has already fallen to about $1500.
Buying a hybrid might be hard to justify financially (since the gas savings are unlikely to offset the price premium for a long while) but its still a good thing environmentally.
Also don't know why but some of the most dangerous driving I have seen was done in the largest suvs.
Simple, SUVs tend to be purchased by people the auto industry terms "self-oriented" (marketspeak for "self-centered"). In several studies the auto industry found that, for example, minivan owners were twice as likely to attend church, be involved in charity or volunteer work and other community activities than the average SUV owner. That's why SUV marketing almost never shows the vehicle surronded by many people, and instead focuses on "getting away" or solitary driving experiences. Remember the famous Escalade ad that showed an enlarged upclose view of the front grill with the word "Yield" superimposed.
Taking that further.. if the driver is mostly interested in themselves and their family it is not too surprising that they drive aggressively at the expense of the community.
There are no actual guarentees that CDMA time will be accurate. Its supposed to be, but it doesn't have to be. A friend that does cell phone work has recorded cell towers off by minutes.. even days.
I read the article and I am still not all that comfortable with his solution. His tracking system is way cool, but using mirrors to cheaply concentrate power onto solar panels was tried years ago.
The result was burned out panels... too much heat cooked the cells. (A utility sized concentrated solar project failed from panel burnout for example) Also photovoltaic panels are more efficient at lower temps. Hard to do with something sitting in the sun and even tougher when you a tripling the amount of solar energy hitting them.
I have had the same type of problem.. too many servers, to little Air Conditioning. The accountants have no problems with buying 5 more servers to support a particular project, but spending $10k on AC upgrades is not permitted.
In our case the AC could hold the room in the mid 70F running continously. This lead to a compressor failure every 6 months and no backup AC. Temps in the room would quickly soar in the 100-110F until servers began failing or shutting down. (This failure always occurred on weekends, when the building air was shutdown and the datacenter was cooling its normal load plus leakage from a 90F degree building thru uninsulated walls.) By the time IT staff made it onsite several servers would be dead.
The solution was temp based emergency shutdown. Take a DB9 female connector and solder a 10k resistor between CTS and DTR and attach a two connector cable to RTS and CTS. Run the two wire cable to the Y and R(or RC) terminals of a common home thermostat. Set the thermostat to cool mode and the setpoint to 85. Plug the DB9 into a spare serial port.
Install UPSd or use the UPS tab in windows to assign a generic UPS to that port and set a 5 minute shutdown on AC failure. When the thermostat turns on (indicating temp is above the 85F setpoint) the cable will simulate an power failure on a old dumb UPS and shutdown the system.
We have a few back burner projects that could be a summer project for a talented programmer. Send an email to slashjob@ticom.com
Another option.. if you control DHCP you control the default route to the internet your clients use. You can setup a Linux box on a static IP and change the gateway IP of anyone (based on MAC address) to that Linux box. The Linux box should forward the packets along to the actual internet gateway. Once traffic is passing thru your machine you can do many things. (Maybe some transparent proxying tied to a virus scanner? Snort with a route to nowhere action? Lots of options once you control the egress point.
Your subscribers can always override DHCP and enter the correct default gateway but this takes a little know-how and is beyond most lusers.
Redirecting traffic this way has some negative effects on the network (lots of ICMP Redirect Traffic)...it might help to NAT the connections or only route the really offensive users thru this method.
Microsoft unveiled its Performance Peak Initiative -- a line of computer systems to help the auto industry better coordinate supply chains, streamline design, production and sales and fill vehicles with computer gadgets.
Is it just me or does the feature list for Performance Peak seem a lot like what we expect from MS?
A number of useful sounding tools (thanks to excellent Marketspeak), bundled into a odd configuration with some really unrelated productivity destroying crap.
As a side note: Lock the file cabinet.. a significant fraction of burglers like to dabble in identity theft (or have friends that do).
It sucks to have your house broken into.. its worse when weeks later the thief trashes your credit and uses your spare car keys to swipe the car from the driveway (which is easy since he has the title that was in the file cabinet).
I didn't think the power plant emissions were relevant, but a bunch of posts have given the "moving the pollution" argument so I'll address it.
1. Moving the pollution is actually a bit of a good thing. Pollution is bad anywhere, but cities have more people getting lung cancer. Most power plants are spread out and away from population centers.
2. The control issue... its a lot harder to clean up 100,000 tailpipes than one power plant. Bigger scrubbers aren't cheap but still cheaper than the pollution controls on the car. CO2 sequestering really isn't even possible at the car level, but might soon be at the plant level.
The problem gets worse when you look at how little maintainence the emissions controls get on most cars. Approx 15% of cars in the US are driving with the "Check Engine" light on, indicating some reduction in power and emissions. Add in the the people actively subverting the emissions controls for increased in performance. Search google for "drilling out the cat" for some fun stories. Getting high horsepower in an EV doesn't require increasing pollution when the car is being driven normally.
3. Pollution and cost improvements by using electric cars to avoid expensive and often inefficient peaking power. Electric cars can charge at night using cheap base load electricity, and help balance the day/night usage swings. Some tests have even had the EVs putting power back into the grid from their batteries during daytime emergency brownout situations.
3. An extension to the control issue is that while an large fleet of electric cards would be only be about 25% -50% less polluting with todays electric grid (which relies on a lot of dirty coal) is that the cars now have a choice of fuels. We can keep generating power from dirty but plentiful US coal (avoid Mideast oil). Or we can add clean renewable sources, or nuclear, etc. If something better comes along: fusion, solar energy sats whatever it can be quickly integrated, without waiting 10 years for the cars to be taken off the road. 90% of the current air pollution is cuased by less than 10% of cars on the road (mostly 70's and 80's cars still in use and built with minimal pollution controls.)
And the other arguement is "just wait for fuel cell cars":
Fuel cells are not a replacement for electric cars. They _are_ electric cars, just with a different battery tech. All of the research investment in electric cars applies. Right now the auto industry is using fuel cells as a stalling action. By saying that fuel cells are still immature, and electric cars impractical they avoid retooling their production for 10 years or more.
The numbers are pretty close, it depends on the battery technology. Electric cars are really efficient, 80% or more of the power from the outlet ends up moving the car down the road. But electricity is much more expensive per unit of energy than gasoline (the old comparison that gasoline is cheaper than bottled water, at least in the US). For most homebrew EVs the electricity is about half as much per mile than gas a $1.50 per gallon. Factor in battery replacements and you're a little closer, especially comparing against 30+ mpg cars. But there are a lot less maintainence issues on EVs, so you end up way ahead after you consider lifecycle costs like oil changes, filters, valves, brakes (regen braking extends brake life).
;-)
The other factor is while the batteries are pricy now, mass demand would get the price down. The EV1 got 140 mile range on a pack of Nickel Metal Hydrid batteries, at an estimated cost of about $40,000 each set (although extended testing has show that NiMH batteries last over 100,000 miles in vehicle service). Honda originally said a new battery for the Insight would cost at least $7000 and sold the cars with a 7 year warrenty on the battery. Already the price has dropped to about $1500, and it will probably drop more as demand increases.
Lithium Ion was never available for the EV1, but it is available today, and LiON EVs are reaching 200+mile ranges in a $14,000 pack of batteries that is estimated to last 10 years. As production ramps the $14,000 will drop to about $6-7000 and the electric will have a comparable sticker price, and much lower lifecycle costs than a gas or diesel vehicle.
Oh.. and I hear there are some environmental benefits.