Do people really think getting rid of SUV's is some big step in energy conservation?
That would be like putting a teaspoon of water into an empty bath tub then jumping up and down while clapping excitedly about your efforts to fill up the tub.
A boeing 747 airplane uses a gallon of fuel per second. A 10 hour flight can use 36,000 gallons(150,000 liters).
How many flights are there per day in the world? Now pipe down about my SUV and its fuel efficiency.
Not in particulary, no.
There are so many recumbent models that it is very hard to know the complete scene.
Wouter
That would be like putting a teaspoon of water into an empty bath tub then jumping up and down while clapping excitedly about your efforts to fill up the tub.
A boeing 747 airplane uses a gallon of fuel per second. A 10 hour flight can use 36,000 gallons(150,000 liters).
How many flights are there per day in the world? Now pipe down about my SUV and its fuel efficiency.
No, but rethinking is essential to solving the problem.
Here's the -thing- on the whole conservation issue, in my little, narrow mind.
Some day, maybe 100 years from now, maybe more, maybe less, nobody knows for sure, but some day, oil will run out, right? I mean it is a -finite- resource, right? Nobody is making more crude, right? So, even if we all conserve and ride bikes and buy Smart Cars, even then, some day, oil will still run out.
Then what?
Shouldn't we all be thinking about that day and trying to
invent
a new fuel now? A fule we can put into our cars, or trains, or airplanes, etc? Or...should we keep doing the same old thing, and just cross our fingers and hope there's enough oil to last until -we- take the big dirt nap, and put it off for the next generation to come up with new answers?
Personally, I like electricity as
fuel
. All we really need is new technology to produce it and a new battery to store it.
You make a fundamental error.
It is not always the few big spenders that make up the largest single segment of use.
Sure an airplane uses alot of fuel per second, but how many SUV's are driving on the road at that very same moment do you think ?
If you have 100 flights in the air and a million SUV's on the road; which of the two do you think is burning off more fuel per second ?
Wouter
Personally, I feel fossile fuel are much to valuable to simply burn it off.
Note how many things are made of oil. Plastics, asfalt, carbon fibre etc.
It is far smarter to use something else for fuel and save the oil for the really high grade and valuable stuff.
Wouter
fuel
. All we really need is new technology to produce it and a new battery to store it.
I feel most of this cycle has been solved already. The only real challenge left is the mobile storage of electricity (= batteries). That is really not up to specs yet.
Other then that, we have all the technology we need.
Personally, I'm convinced we all have to accept to
do it
with less. We simply can't expect to drive an electric F150 with a 500 mile range over the next 50 years. Electic peddle bikes are in the cards however.
It is a totally different picture when we all need a 2.5 kg Li-ion battery pack for our daily transport or a 250 kg li-ion battery pack. (Basically, the difference between a 0.5 hp and 44 hp average over a 50 km/31 miles range).
And of course you simply can not propel a 2 ton SUV on a
0.5 hp over 50 km
daily ration.
You can however have a recumbent bike do 30 mph over that range with
0.5 hp over 50km/31 miles
including some 15 kg of cargo in your side bags or child seat.
Wouter
Wouter, you'd have a coronary if you knew how much my pickup weighs.
Why do SUV take all of the heat in this? Its a free market, people will drive what they want. Does a Windstar or Odyssey minivan make more sense than an Tahoe or a Explorer? Honestly I don't see that many of the bigger SUV's, people don't buy that many Excursions, or Suburbans. Never really have either compared to the smaller models.
I'm actually all for the electric pickup. DC motors a f-ing awesome. Instaneous torque at any rpm. But Americans are terrified of nuclear power, and that is the only means of producing enough electricity to make it a viable solution.
Tim, don't tell the folks in North Dakota sitting on the Willsiton Basin that. You might get laughed at.
Karl, you really think I care what the people sitting on the Willsiton Basin laugh at? Is it a bottomless pit, full of oil? Or is it coal, being turned into oil? Either way, it's going to run out some day.
And here's something I've wondered about since I was a kid. They were building a Nuke Plant about 10 miles from my high school back in the mid 70s', the Seabrook Station, Seabrook, NH. The big fear was escaping radiation in the event of a disaster of some type, like Three Mile Island.
So why don't they build nuke plants under ground, like a nuke missle silo?
OK, being board to tears and living in the lightning capital of the world, why are we not looking at building big lightning rods that can harness the lightning strikes and store the energy in big battery banks underground? Free energy with every thunderstorm!
http:/
1336 MPG !!!!! Now we have something LOL LOL
Doug
wouter,
just wantedto say 'hello'.i am moving to tampa at summers end,...18 years in caribbean is enough.
ii was just getting the inter 17 dialed in pretty good,.....pity...but new competition will be good, regards, bruce, st. croix
ps, at least i can drive away from a hurricane now
Damn near, the Energy Information Administration estimates it at 503 billion barrels of light sweet oil.
http:/
A lifetime in the Caribbean is never enough...
Assuming 347 passengers per flight, that's about 103.7 gallons per passenger or 10.3 gallons to cover over 400 miles every hour.
Yea but there are two sides to St Croix. One good, one bad. OH and when I was working there the light bill on the condo for the month was $936. Luckily company paid for it.
Doug
I'm actually involved in this field of electricity generation and this is an telling chart.
Uranium itself is pretty finite as well. If we start using it to provide for all our
current needs
it too will run out in about 50 years.
I doesn't make much sense to replace one finite resource by another of equal duration.
The only real reserve is coal with 200 years but that has serious drawbacks of its own.
Other then that, there are only one way we can generate enough energy for our TRUE needs and that is solar power (which includes wind by the way)
It is just that we simply can't continue at our current level of energy usage. Basically, we used up 300 million years of solar energy stored as oil in 150 years. We simply can not glass over (mirrors) and area large enough or proces enough silicium to install enough solar power in the next 50 years.
But the best point is that we also don't have too !
Pretty large savings can be had by simple modifications in our way of living. Hell, if our grandparents could live of an energy diet that was only 10% of the
bare necessity
today then why can't we make a significant reduction in the same time span of 50 years ?
The biggest problem is that we THINK we need to spend large amounts of energy ... or else the sky will come falling down.
And I'm not only talking about it. I was forced to ditch my car and my energy consumption has now been reduced by just over 10.000 kWh. It was just over 12.500 kWh and now it is 2500 kWh or 20%. And I can't say that my life has changed that much in quality at all. When I transport my boat I lend a car from a friend or my parents; it is only a few times a year at max. For all my other needs I'm well cater for by public transport like trains (another good infratruction in the Netherlands) and bicycles.
Interestingly enough, over the next few year the Dutch will have installed 1000 MW or wind power on the north sea or 10% of the demand for the whole of the Netherlands. With this ratio I'm personally only using 10% the amount of fossile fuel that I was a year ago. We a large section of the populace does this then we have just expanded a 50 year oil span into 500 years; although installing the other 10% or renewables is still the really smart thing to do.
Wouter
The biggest problem is that we THINK we need to spend large amounts of energy ... or else the sky will come falling down.
Yup! Whole post was very to the point and good, but the last bit sums it up. World is changing..
Well, it was a very well learned lesson hearing the Norwegian story Rolf.
I couldn't believe the amount of energy these guys used up per year. They had lots of installed water power and it was so cheap per kWh that they were using many more times the total amount as other citizens in Europe. I remember you telling me that Norwegian didn't even isolate their houses against the cold and just turned up the heating.
That is what an abundant available and cheap energy source does. It stimulates waste and unreasonable energy usage. And that is exactly what happened with oil.
Cheers mate !
Wouter
Now this is what I think has future from an engineering sense
http:/
http:/
Although I would have extended the seat by some 350 mm (between rear wheel and driver seat) and thus create a small internal cargo bay behind the rider.
The styling is right however and with a 350 Watt BionX electric assist drive it'll do 30 mph which is enough for commuting. A 15 sq. ft. solar cel array on the roof of your house will be enough to power this thing whole year around if you drive a total 30 miles a day.
This way environmental may even be cool heh guys ?
For kicks, I guarantee you that you'll be looking for the hills to drive downhill from. The speed sensation in such a thing cornering at 90 km/h is something else. Makes the climb up all worth while.
Wouter
I couldn't believe the amount of energy these guys used up per year. They had lots of installed water power and it was so cheap per kWh that they were using many more times the total amount as other citizens in Europe. I remember you telling me that Norwegian didn't even isolate their houses against the cold and just turned up the heating.
Due to the sheer scale of hydroelectric installations electricity was cheap. My own house have electric heating cables all over the ground floor, with no unsulation to the ground (that I know of). If I turn them on, they will heat the floors and rooms, but also the part of mother eart beneath my house.
You have to remember that during winter our heating and light demands are a fair bit higher than yours and we love hot water! Still no excuse for not insulating houses during the 50s. From the 60s and onward houses are insulated with 10cm in the walls and 20cm in the ceiling. Still, what is used in the private sector is not that much compared to the industry. E.g. melting aluminium with electricity.. It is all changing though as our dear state is building more and more transfer lines to export electricity to Europe. Prices are on a steep rise here now thanks to these lines.
A solar cell will not recharge the batteries in that vehicle during winter. At leat not here. It is frequently
dark
all day and night if the weather is bad. Even with sun there is not more than three to four hours of sun midwinter.
I do think vehicles like that is what we all are going to drive pretty soon.
dark
all day and night if the weather is bad. Even with sun there is not more than three to four hours of sun midwinter.
Modern cels don't really need direct sunlight anymore and can make do with dispersed light; it is just that the total yield is lower. I calculated 50 Watts per sq mtr. where modern cels are rated up to 150 watts in good lighting conditions. Additionally, I wrote the post with the Yanks in mind and they are alot closer to the equator then either one of us !
In our situation a combi power station with a solar cel and a small wind turbine is probably best.
Something like a (smaller version) of the darrieux turbine depicted here
http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk
The version depicted is quite large at 5 mtr tall and 3 mtr width but it also does between 4000 kWh and 10.000 kWh per year. Actually, almost twice to 4 times the amount my household uses annually including everything.
The depicted vehicle would only need in the order of 150 kWh per year if it does 12.500 km/7800 miles (= equal to 20L or 6 gallons of gasoline a YEAR when converted at 50% efficiency = typical powerstation). So for 400 kWh (= need + ample margin) our home turbine would be 1.5 mtr tall and just under a mtr wide. Fitted to the chimney of our houses. Actually, you can home build a darrieux turbine yourself. The underlaying principle is not that hard.
Wouter
Give me one of those vehicles with a spare seat and I'll use it for commuting and other everyday needs. A lot cheaper to buy and run than a full car!
Wouter:
Looks neat. ? How hot is it closed in? It get in the 100's here is the summer.
Doug
Taking a defensive drivers course online today for a ticket dismissal. I thought this was hilarious !!!!! Straight fron the course!!!!
If you cannot find the owner that does not mean that you're not responsible for your mistake. If you hit a parked car, you are obligated to find the owner, if at all possible, and take financial responsibility.
Taking a defensive drivers course online today for a ticket. I thought this was hilarious!!!!! Straight from the course
You are required by law to leave a note explaining the situation and providing your name, address, and contact phone numbers. The note must be attached to the vehicle in a secure manner.
If you leave the scene without making an attempt to find the owner or without leaving a note, you can be charged with a hit-and-run violation, which carries a far greater penalty than the cost to fix the other.
Doug
They Hyperion system is a cool concept, but... as was said before, Uranium is a finite resourse. They are in process of mapping the moon right now since there is Uranium there.
http:/
Breeder reactors are a very interesting technology. You would start making fuel and after three years of operation (I think) you would have enough fuel to start another reactor.
Sounds too good to be true. But. . . who knows?
Still have to deal with the politics and politicians who will milk the
NIMBY
angle for favors and/or money, or both.
I read something about how Naval scientists recently rectified the findings on cold fusion and its theoretical possibility of existence.
I'm not an expert in that area of science... any promise there?
That is rich; spending heaps amounts of fuel and resources to mine Uranium on the moon.
I know solar stations got that hippy green environmental rep to them but dare I venture to say that building those in large enough numbers is both easier, cheaper and more dependable then mining uranium on the moon ?
Breeders are alot better then normal fission reactors but there is one small snag if I remember correctly. The breeders are also very good at producing (waste) plutonium; the main ingredient for powerful nuclear bombs.
Wouter