What is Digg?25 Comments
- LeeSoong, on 05/04/2008, -1/+8http://www.homepower.com
All coal power is prehistoric solar power, why buy the outdated stuff when
fresh new fusion power is available right now?
Fossil fuels - dead and buried.
Stop digging in the dirt and look up to the sky! - MtheoryX, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5That's what she said.
- dattaway, on 05/04/2008, -2/+6I'm glad we voted for a President and Vice President with solid experience in the energy industry.....
- pianomahnn, on 05/04/2008, -1/+4If only there was some object that was available and not priced based on different currencies. It's sorta round looking. Yellowish. Really hot.
- louiebaur, on 05/04/2008, -1/+4Damn that thing is huge
- fairley7, on 05/04/2008, -2/+5Yet another reason to conserve energy and switch to solar and wind power.
- charlietuna, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I'd like to be able to negotiate a five or ten year contract to cap the price of my DSL.
- Emperial, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2Yes you are right, the stupidity is huge.... or is that greed???
- joeanon, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3 Nothing wrong with fossil fuels as long as you process or capture the waste.
It's naive to consider most renewable energy technologies to have no environmental impact.
From solar panels, to win turbines they all produce manufacturing waste and unlike coal, they are not particularly efficiency per square foot, so you need to create a HELL of a lot of wind farms to ever come close to a coal power plant.
Biofuels are most realistic compromise between solar power and fossil fuels.
The reality of solar electric is MASSIVE reliance on batteries, which for the most part suck at holding a charge and wear out in not so long. You just can't store electric generated from renewable energy efficiently like fossil fuel.
Fossil fuel on the other hand doesn't degrade over time like batteries, it's high density energy stored..
So, more realistically than technology that creates electricity, that then needs to be stored.
You instead use biology to create biofuel, which in itself is already a stored energy that stays good for centuries.
Then, you address the real problem... the way to convert a hydrocarbon to electricity or use it VERY efficiently to produce the least waste.
This way, you raise the EFFICIENCY of your power system as you're main means to control price and pollution. Today's internal combustion engines for instance are highly inefficient and are a major reason for the high pollution levels we have today. These engines are around 25% efficient the rest being wasted as heat and pollution.
So, we WASTE 75% of every gallon we burn for most transport.
That's the real problem, if we had more efficient engines for the last 50 years carbon level would be much lower and gas would be much cheaper. Today we are stuck trying to make up for the decades of low efficiency gas engines.
Boilers on the other hand are no inefficient. They do what combustion engines do best... make heat. Coal power plants still leave a bit to be desires, but modern ones aren't that bad efficiency wise, which in general is the best way to rate a fuels long term potential.
That's why, of course, you'd want to couple biofuel with something like a diesel fuel cell.
Now you have biological solar power with long term storage than can 'recharge' or fill up in a few minutes. No worries of charge time, or huge expensive battery packs.
With today's technology I really think that's our best model.
The downside is that diesel is the most likely fuel to produce from biofuel processes, and America has the smallest diesel car market of the major industrialized nations. So, as a transition it's pretty good, but ultimately better for diesel nations.
In the long term however a diesel fuel cell, like Penn State has created coupled with biodiesel that doesn't compete with crop land seems more practical and more profitable.
The US could be the diesel capital of the world in a few years, if we had the right leadership. Couple that with exporting fuel cell technology and electric car technology and developing nations will have to buy from US for a change.
Instead of just raising the price of food, we can produce biofuels on non cropland, create cheap diesel, and move toward super low emissions electric cars with no distance limitations since the refuel with diesel.
That makes transport cheaper to build, longer lasting and cheaper to run.
It's similar to how trains work, but instead of an on board diesel generator you use a fuel cell, as they are more efficient than generators.
The weakest link is the diesel fuel cell, but even without it at least you can create heating fuel and diesel fuel for the masses while you wait on mass production of fuel cells.
That's more practical than even thin film solar as we have no iridium shortage to worry about or MASSIVE electric grid and solar farms and resistance loss of transporting electric over large distances from locals with higher solar availability.
That is, how do you power a city like NY with solar panels.... cost effectively. You have to place the solar panels within the range that your electric can travel without major loss. You have STORE the power during the day to have it available at night.
I think rather, thin film panels and other growing solar and wind technology will fit nicely within a biofuel economy.
North America has a lot of sunlight, more than enough to generate enough biodiesel for the entire planet.... non cropland of course. You can't do that with corn or soil or any dumb ass ideas like that. Our technology and large government puts us in the position to take the lead in biofuels and position ourselves as the new major provider of fuel to the planet.
If we had the leadership that is. Hopefully Obama reads some of my letters :P because it's just no in the public best interests to give away the biofuel infrastructure to foreign powers and private industry. We should, as a nation, take the lead in the market. Thus ensuring cheap domestic supply first, not global market trade *****. With the dollar fallen it's the US people who suffer the most from high oil prices, while the price hasn't changed nearly as much in Europe. When your currency falls against oil producing nations... tada... the cost of oil goes up. The dollar fell 50% and oil went up 50%. If the dollar hadn't fallen oil would be roughly half the price it is today. - Suricou, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2It means consumers have time to prepare.
Most of them wont bother, prefering not to worry about it. But at least there is time for some.
Better this than to have the cost of electricity double overnight. - hdrkid, on 05/07/2008, -0/+1There goes my dream of an electric car.
- MtheoryX, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Locking in low rates? Kinda like a fixed rate mortgage versus an adjustable rate.
- GlassAgate, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1If you're referring to Bush and Cheney, then
I wasn't part of "we". - Spanktacular, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1"Fortunately because utilities buy coal with long-term contracts, we will see our electric bill go up over time."
How is that fortunate? - FairDinkumMate, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Good luck! This article is big on hope & short on facts. The US in 2005 exported 50 million tonnes of coal - Australia exported 250 million tonnes! BHP(Australian), Rio Tinto(Australian/British) & CVRD(Brazilian) are the world's three largest coal producers/suppliers. Between them these 3 companies own the market & most of the proven, viable deposits globally. They also own the world's best technology & labor forces to realise these investments. The barriers to entry into the global coal producing market are HUGE(much larger than petroleum for example). By the time these companies & the countries in which they operate begin to run out of coal(at least 50 years) coal will be too expensive to use to generate electricity(due to carbon trading) & will be used primarily to produce steel, thus reducing its market & price.
The US has a HUGE advantage over other countries in some of the fastest growing markets in the world - such as Medicine, Pharmaceuticals & IT. It also has an educated workforce and an entrepreneurial populace well suited to leverage these skills. Regardless of free trade deals, manufacturing will continue to be outsourced by multi-nationals to developing nations with low labor costs. Stop trying to send your country backwards by entering into a race to the bottom for manufacturing & laboring jobs & utilise your advantages to continue improving your living standards! - cronian, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1On the positive side, maybe this will finally reduce the US trade deficit. We now have the ability to export more highly priced commodities.
- Ratteler, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1We all don't need our own personal Sun if we just learn to share the one we have.
- bincoder, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Ours is a combo of nuclear, hydro, and solar. Not enough coal to mess around with.
- MacBookForMe, on 05/04/2008, -1/+1in this way we could only dream about carbon offsetting...
- NelsonR, on 05/04/2008, -2/+2I'm just elated that FINALLY our pundits and elite are saying a Recession is here and the possibility for Depression is real while our economic situation is deteriorating.
BUSH still doesn't agree but we mostly all know the man is an idiot who is a large cause of it all. BILL CLINTON isn't immune you ultra Libs, he sent our jobs to China with Glee with NAFTA and outsourcing the norm. Hillary is looking to export them to her kin on Mars.
Houses will continue to devalue, food will soar along with other commodities but our rich will find a way to have a larger slice of the pie, it's human nature.
No, I'm not gloating but only saying for years we must pay the piper now and with Bernanke continuing Greenspans policies it will only get worse. - ckedge, on 05/04/2008, -2/+1Yeahhhh, problem is mother Nature spent 4 billion years capturing the energy from that source and concentrating it into convenient form for us. Are you saying *you* know how to replicate that kind of effort economically? Because the rest of us have been spending billions of dollars a year on that, and it ain't there yet, not by a long shot. Getting closer though!
- jakethelake, on 05/04/2008, -2/+1Energy is cool. :)
- celotil, on 05/04/2008, -4/+0I'm just going to rip straight from the summary and comment on that, and no I didn't RTFA.
"Fortunately because utilities buy coal with long-term contracts, we will see our electric bill go up over time."
Yeah, and because of that it will take too damn long before the energy companies shore up alternate reserves to keep the cost of electricity down, screwing over us, the consumers, in the long run.
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