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27 Comments
- AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+35More treehugger blogspam. They just summarized a small portion of a much larger and more insightful article. I have no problem with people doing that, but please don't submit it to Digg. Submit the original article, instead. Here you go: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/09/01/100169862/index.htm
- Dested, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Yah, I noticed that almost 50% of the upcoming top 10 are from this website.
- euphemizeme, on 10/10/2007, -4/+10I wonder how much electricity is used by all the servers treehugger has to handle all the traffic they get by spamming digg. Probably about a gajillion gigawhats.
- 11Heather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Whoa! Is this technology really available? Had no idea that the transmission losses were a big factor.
- wassim2k, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5So Digg, while you're working on a "Picture" section, why not create "TreeHugger" and "LifeHacker" and "AutoBlog" and "Jalopnik" sections?
- Rileyper, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Wow, I learned nothing from that article
- Y0tsuya, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They've been talking about residential fuel-cells for years now. The last California electricity crisis (2000) got me interested in it but nothing substantial has happened since except for a few scattered trials. Fuel cells are more efficient, IF you also make use of the waste heat to heat your water. Otherwise you lose most of the advantage.
- drmangrum, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Did I not read far enough or did they not include how this is supposed to actually work? Forgive me if I don't get excited over a very simplistic diagram.
Saying it uses a hydro-carbon fuel cell is pointless. Tell me how it's supposed to work or don't submit the article. - Urusai, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1And pray tell how is this hydrogen being generated? No doubt by cracking hydrocarbons, which isn't exactly a lossless process.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1BS alert! BS alert! the phrase "business 2.0" was detected in this article.
someone is trying to get investment for their product. - 955701, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1So tell me, how does the fuel cell get replenished? Wouldn't someone have to drive more fuel around?
I'll bet my left breast that generating electricity with a large system and distributing it is far less lossy that trucking fuel cell fuel and maintenance teams around the burbs. - microkitty, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Haven't read the article yet, but just read a book written in 1977 called Soft Energy Paths, which details the degree to which costs of electricity are tied up in the delivery, conversion, transmission and distribution. There are energy losses inherent to sending electricity over a wire (small diameter wires generate an electromagnetic field and heat -- good if you want a motor or light bulb, bad if you want to get the energy through the wire to the end use). But far exceeding this loss, is the loss in conversion -- something like half the energy used to burn fuel that makes steam to spin turbines is lost as heat. Then there's the massive cost of maintaining a highly reliably and fail-safe infrastructure, which also involves significant energy cost due to the need to have excess capacity at the ready. It's not just a problem with electric -- gas, and to a lesser degree heating oil are also affected by these dis-economies of scale.
The idea of creating usable energy close to the actual user is an incredibly important one. Its implications have been seen as a threat to the established and entrenched (and massive) energy delivery infrastructures, and the companies that benefit from them, not just in the US, but throughout the world. - greenlight2001, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Roughly 7-10% of transmitted energy is lost enroute (depending on distance and a bunch of other factors, this is average). And when you factor in how much power is transmitted every year across the nation's power lines, that's huge.
- BufordT, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I remember an article where Treehugger recommended that Google use black as it's background color instead of white because it uses less electricity to display black on monitors. Yet the Treehugger site continues to use a plethora of colors, white being dominant in most articles. They are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.
- SkippyDoorknob, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Don't forget Consumerist
- Y0tsuya, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1@VitriolAndAngst
Hey Junior, don't you have homework to do? Now run along. Grown-ups are talking.
What is it with overzealous teen greenies anyway? Yes many of us have known about fuel-cell co-generation for quite some time, from about when you're still learning your ABC's. - MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1In that case, we should switch to electric cars. Distributing hydrocarbons being so lossy and all.
- kd1s, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The question is, what hydrocarbon does it use. You guessed it, natural gas.
The benefit of the heat and water produced by the process is more interesting than selling power back since in the long run the power saved by using these entities is significant. Both can be useful. Clean potable water is one benefit.
The heat can be used in native mode to warm a home, which in many cases is the bigger user of electricity. The heat could also be used to power ammonia-absorption cooling systems.
So in the long run even though natural gas in my area is about $1.50 per CCF when you add all the fees together, I'd recover a significant part of that by using the waste byproducts. - rootnik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Ironicly, the server hosting treehugger.com is also ran off solid-oxide fuel cells.
- worksmart, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0giga... what?
- thefifth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0i just drove around the block a few times, to pollute the earth.
- DailyLlama, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1I think I'll stick to being Amish...Less electricity and more hair on my women.
- mysdak, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0check out http://www.ballard.com/
This company is a leader in fuel cell technology. They are presently running buses in California and Vancouver with fuel cells and they have been fitting houses in Japan with fuel cells to produce electricity. Just need a hydrogen filling station. - VitriolAndAngst, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1So you are anti-planet?
The whole logic you have of being self-satisfied with waste is that you aren't a hypocrite? Most people aren't asking us to go back to the stone age -- just be aware of alternatives to being wasteful and ignorant.
Just shut your piehole and go back to your 60" TV. - mysdak, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Yes it is...A Canadian company is a leader in fuel cell technology http://www.ballard.com/
- Error601, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1I seriously doubt they're getting 43% generator efficiency which is what you'd need to match a large generate minus grid loss. It's probably more in the 20s.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0The most efficient and cost effective power generating plant is a natural gas fired power station or coal dust injection and gas turbine. I live in Perth, Australia; we have all three because we have a cost effective supply of natural gas and low grade brown coal which is pulverised and injected. The fuel produces steam which drives steam turbines. Gas turbines burn gas to turn the generator directly.
In power houses, steam turbines are fired up depending on load. There may be 10 generators only which say five are operational. As the load increases individual units are fired up to provide demand. With a population of 1 million people the power stations know exactly when the maximum and minimum loads are and can estimate the peak loads to compensate for temperature. They know that extremely hot or cold days is when there is maximum power consumption.
Coal power stations are built near the coal supply because it is easier to transport the coal via a conveyor belt to the boiler and then transmit the electricity via high tension distribution lines. Natural gas power stations have more flexibility because they can be built closer to the city therefore minimising transmission losses in the cable. Gas turbines can be built within a suburb of the city near the local sub-station. Gas turbines are the most efficient for power generation. The down fall is that gas turbines operate on either off or full load. Gas turbines produce full power whether it is being used or not, hence they are only fired up to supply peak loads.
The people who design power stations are not stupid. The locations are a compromise between the fuel source and transmission losses. Transmissions losses in long lines can be up to 50%. Put the power station closer to the city and fuel transport costs are more expensive than the transmission losses.
The trouble with alternative technologies is that you need a coal fired power station to develop the technologies. Fuel cells need to be developed from raw materials. They have to be mined and refined. That means waste material. Coal and natural gas is a one step process. Fuel cells and batteries are multiple step processes. What happens to the waste once the fuel cells are exhausted? They have to be buried. C02 can be recycled by trees. Deforestation in the Amazon region has contributed to the global C02 output, so replant the trees. No-one has produced the actual C02 emissions for producing fuel cells and the eventual disposal. I am willing to bet it is higher than manufacturing and operating fuel cells.
The problem with the global warming debate is only one side of the story is being promoted. The Earth is a closed living organism revolving around the Sun which is flying through space. Solar flares and the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn influence the Earth’s climate. The last ice melt was 10,000 years ago. Humans were not there to cause the global warming, so what caused the ice melt. The Earth spins at a 23 degree axis. That gives us the climate changes. The previous North Pole was at Hudson Bay. That means that the Earth did an axis shift. What causes the axis shift? Humans were not around. It can be assumed based on all the known knowledge that the Sun orbits around the centre orb of the Milky Way. What other factors are out there to influence the Earth’s climate? Loose asteroids, comets and other suns.
The number crunchers are using flawed data because the bigger galactic picture is unknown. What obliterated the dinosaurs after millions of years, and caused another life cycle evolution?
Don’t reply with the God factor intelligent design crap. If the Christian God is that all powerful, why did he place the first humans in an oasis near a semi-arid desert region? HUMANS invented technology Not GOD. The lifestyle we have today is because of human ingenuity. Think about this; if GOD did not provide humans with technology then technology is the work of SATAN. Therefore any GOD fearing Christian who believes in intelligent design is using SATAN inspired technology. Therefore intelligent design believers are in league with SATAN and not abiding by GOD’s rules.
Consider this. The current global warming debate and the alternative clean technologies are irrelevant. The religious right controls the USA. A similar extremist faction controls the Middle East. There is a global drive to construct nuclear power stations as the most cost efficient and clean power source. Nuclear power stations manufacture nuclear weapons. All you need is a future extremist and religious government to escalate a world wide nuclear weapon production. End result; back to a stone age and throwing boomerangs.
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