Hence my second sentence, in which I acknowledged the point. Tiered rates on your NG are much more of a worry.
BTW, the fact that you have a 1000W power supply on your PC doesn’t mean it’s DRAWING 1000W - that’s the max wattage rating. In fact it’s almost certainly drawing a good bit less most of the time. I have a 650W supply on the PC I’m typing on at the moment. The UPS, which also has the router, modem and monitor plugged into it, has a readout on it, and says the whole mess is currently drawing about 160W.
Right, but mine doesn’t sit at 160W either due to having more power hungry components than yours. Without testing it I can say definitively my PC draws at minimum ~230-250W at all times. I never put it to sleep or into hibernate so that is 24/7, so we’re looking at 5 kWh a day every day, that’s significantly more than a CNG compressor/refueler.
Using CNG in automobiles will always present problems. It would be more efficient to convert the natural gas into methanol (the conversion reaction is pretty simple). That way, you have an enegy density aboyt 60% that of gasoline, and can use the existing distribution system (conventional gas stations).
Its far better than corn-derived ethanol, and very clean.
Good point ralph. Tiered rates? Aren’t they usually set up the more you use, the lower the rate? My gas bill has 2 figures, a constant to cover fixed costs and a per therm charge. As far as I know, that doesn’t change no matter how much or little you use.
No, for residential use, they are often set it up the other way to encourage conservation.
From my PG&E bill:
Gas: two tiered, baseline at $0.95166/therm, over baseline usage at $01.2287/therm. I’m in heating season, so I got a bit above baseline usage last month.
Electric for PG&E is five tiered - my baseline is $0.12233/kwh. I didn’t use any over baseline. The highest tier is around $0.50/kwh, IIRC.
Other states also have similar tier structures for their utilities - you can google discussions in several states about them. For instance, about this kind of tiering on electric usage being counterproductive to encouraging people to use electric vehicles. When the Nissan Leaf came out, there was some LA area columnist that had a lengthy article about how the Leaf cost him MORE to run than a gas vehicle because the extra electricity to charge it was at the higher tier rate. He apparently didn’t realize that was going to happen.
Haven’t quite a lot of taxis, delivery vehicles, etc. all been running on compressed natural gas for years? It’s ideal for a set of vehicles with limited daily range, regular routes and so can return to a central refill point every day without worrying about running out of fuel in the middle of a trip.
The biggest advantge is that a significant part of gasoline costs is road taxes. As long as nobody catches on and adds these taxes to NG, it’s a real savings too.
(I recall an incident in Toronto about 10 or 15 years ago where a taxi when “poof” due to some sort of leaking gas cylinder. )
But evading these taxes like this results in a continuing deterioration of our roads, with them becoming filled with potholes and even bridges falling down. The costs of repairs to your car caused by driving on decrepit roads is higher than these taxes!
I wouldn’t be concerned about our roads falling apart because NG isn’t paying road taxes. As soon as it becomes very popular. likely they will fine a way. On a auto oriented site a few year ago there was discussion about tracking everybody to tax them on miles to tax the electric cars. Great concern about privacy.
They are still trying to figure out how to collect sales tax on net purchases.
When I first went with Vonage VOIP, I was paying a lot less tax than on my land line. As different jurisdictions discovered VOIP, my bill kept going up.