Sure, the energy conversion efficiency of a cat is pretty good. But what about the litter box pollution? What about the “Scranton Litter Treaty of 2007” that will surely come as a result? Will the industrialized nations of the World have to reduce their litter box cleanings by 50% over 10 years, while kitties in developing countries are allowed to just go where they feel?
What about the poor kitties who become sick and disabled, and thus need a prescription drug plan from Al Gore?
Anthracite
Back in the sixties when I was living at home our cats knew just what to do with solar energy. That sunny spot on the living room floor was their place to take a nap.I guess technology has changed things.sigh
Not quite. My friends are out in the country, in an area of eastern Ontario where the land is pretty cheap. The lot in question is large and rural, about 14 hectares/37 acres.
But my friends are retired, and NOT rich. They built the house themselves, for a total of about 40 000 dollars Canadian, including the lot! Of course, that included a LOT of sweat equity. And they used a lot of recycled materials (doors, etc) from the Useit Centre in town.
They estimate that houses of similar design could be built using paid labour for comparable prices to traditional ones. This leaves the price of the lot as the major variable.
Since this type of heating requires that the house be oriented to the surrounding environment in a way that traditional fuel-heated houses aren’t, it requires that the builders pay attention to lot and subdivision design in a way that may be totally unfamiliar to them.
Houses of such efficiency CAN be built on small urban lots as well… the same architect (Martin Liefhebber of Toronto) who designed my friends’ house also designed a four-story urban infill project in Toronto, a duplex on a small hillside lot, one side of which as a demonstration ALSO supplies its own heat and electricity.
I admit, though, that I do not know the costs of this house and its systems; I believe that it uses some mechanical systems for the solar heat.
According to Awash in Oil (Scientific American, September 2000), the USGS estimates (very optimistically) the current reserves at 649 billion barrels. This is less than Campbell and Laherrère’s estimate of 1,000 billion barrels.
Regardless, there is a finite amount of oil. Given that energy usage is increasing by about 2% per year, even an instantaneous 15% reduction will add less than 10 years to the total reserves and a year or two to the point of decline (my arithmetic is weak but I think I’m in the ballpark). And if (when!) we want to go into space, we will need quite a bit of energy to get things started.
I have absolute confidence in Anthracite’s numbers as they relate to current technology. However, it is the rare science that can’t get improve an immature technology a couple of orders of magnitude in a generation or so (PV sadly seems to be one of those rare areas). We have to find some alternative to oil, and soon, or we will have to dramatically change the nature of our civilization.
At any rate, there will be a point where other forms of energy become competitive with oil but we are not there yet. This crossover point could happen much sooner if gasoline in the US were heavily taxed as it is in Europe. In Europe energy is much more heavily taxed and yet, even there alternative forms of energy hardly make a dent.
Flymaster, that seems like a pretty good example of what I mean. President Carter gave three million dollars to build that solar installation at a high school (plus quite a few more millions for another seven similar installations in other high schools). After a few years most were not maintained and were scrapped. This one is the only one still working. The site says the sites provided “much scientific data” without specifying. I would bet the research being done by Siemens and other manufacturers provides more useful data at no cost for the taxpayer. What this provides (at a cost of 3 million) is a feel good measure for politicians and kids at the high school.
So lets see… the site cost 3 million and produced “between $10000 and $20000 worth of electricity per year”. In other words, the main data it provided was:
a) The cost of producing energy by that method is something like 25 times the cost of buying it from the utility company
b) Politicians will waste money on a project like this and claim a great success as now everyone feels very good.
Much maligned big business will spend their own money to find out the same results.
According to an article in Air & Space magazine there is approximately 300 billion watts available to solar collecting satellites. The Major problems are the enormous cost of constructing and launching the acres of solar cells that would be needed for this to be practical, the cost would be in the scores of billions of dollars. The energy would have to be converted to microwaves then beamed to Earth which is not very efficient either, so unless solar cell cost and efficiency improve by orders of magnitude solar energy is not practical for replacing more common fossil fuels.
Jesus Christ. I’m sorry I made you spit your oatmeal all over the screen, sailor. I really WAS trying not to inflame knee-jerk reactionaries; the point of my post was NOT that Standard Oil was attempting to squlelch alt-energy research, but that their best interests were in keeping energy production and vending centralized. You wanna argue with THAT?
If you want to belch fire at those whose opinions differ from your own, or to make lengthy statements that basically say what’s good for General Bullmoose is good for America, please utilize the Pit, or GD, or even IMHO. Here in GQ we make SOME attempt to stick to facts.
KEEP it centralized? There are over 100 electrical utilities in the US- how centralized is that? These aren’t all getting power from oil, either.
I’m a little confused because you seem to be saying that “centralized” energy production is bad, apparently because it keeps individuals from using alternative energy sources cheaply.
First, who cares who actually uses the alternative energy sources, as long as SOMEBODY does? Why is it better for 10 million houses to have individual solar panels rather than an electrical utility having one giant solar system, and supplying those homes through the normal grid? Why doesn’t everyone have a coal-fired generator in their house now, instead of hooking up to the grid? Because of efficiencies of scale.
Second, as sailor and others have aptly explained, as soon as some alternative energy source becomes competitive, the large companies will fall over themselves developing products, to stay in business, and make even more profits.
Of course each energy producing company wants to have the largest market share possible (thus “centralizing” things with them). If oil or coal is cheaper than solar or wind power, they’ll use oil or coal. If solar power becomes cheaper, they’ll switch to that (they have to, because if they don’t, their competitors will and undercut them).
The only reasons a company will use a more expensive alternative energy source is if (a) the government forces them to, or (b) the consumer is willing to pay more so that it’s still profitable. Note that in either case the consumer pays more, one way or another.
I’m all for alternative-energy research, but I think it will be a long time before anything’s practical on a large scale. I don’t worry about running out of oil, either. As oil gradually gets harder to find (it will NEVER run out, just get more and more expensive until people stop looking for it and use something else instead), it will get more expensive, and replacements will be developed. This will occur over decades- it’s not like we’ll suddenly run oil in 2035 and civilization will collapse.
Uhhh…actually, on a MW basis, oil-fired electrical generation in the US is very small. So it’s more correct to say that practically none of them are getting power from oil.
Now that I think about it, I guess at one point a lot of people had mini coal-fired generators in their homes. They were called “stoves” In fact, in my grandmother’s house, until just a few years ago there was a small heating stove, with a bucket of coal next to it.
At any rate, I think many people have weighed in here with a lot of interesting information from which you can learn something. You seem to have a preconceived attitude against big business in general and power companies in particular but the facts do not support what you say. As Arjuna points out, if it weren’t for the big power company who mass produces electricity cheaply for you, you’d be running your own generator and energy would cost you much more.
Arjuna, well, of course many people are still using wood stoves for heat, but I haven’t found a computer you can power with firewood
I remember seeing a Sears catalog from 100 years ago which had small steam engines for home use. I think these would make a neat toy today. I for one would love to have one.
The problem with Solar Power Satellites is that they don’t have infinite lifetimes. If we could simply launch one into GeoSynch orbit and have it beam power to us forever after, we’d eventually get our investment back.
Unfortunately, the satellites degrade. Micrometeorites will degrade the efficiency of the solar panels over time, the electronics will eventually wear out, reaction mass needed to stabilize the orbit runs out, etc.
So the equation becomes: Spend X dollars on construction of the Satellite. Spend X dollars on the infrastructure to maintain it. Spend X amount of energy to build it and get it into orbit. In the end, you’ll get Y amount of power before the thing is useless.
With current launch technologies and PV efficiencies, we’d never even get back the energy it took to build and launch the satellite, let alone the money needed to build and launch it.
Remember, it’s not just how much energy you can get out of the Satellite, but how much *extra energy you can get over building and deploying the same number of PV cells on Earth.
I don’t think SPS is feasible even if we knock an order of magnitude off of our launch costs. We’d need extremely cheap launch, AND highly efficient PV cells. That’s not going to happen for decades, if ever.
And don’t underestimate the zealousness of environmental groups. There are dangers with all concentrated forms of energy. Once we deploy something like this, people will work to shut it down. Hydro Power used to be the panacea of the environmental movement - now the same people are working to shut it down. The same will happen with Fusion (if we ever get it working) when they find out that there is actual radioactive waste, and the same will happen with geothermal and other possible methods.
But that’s just the pessimist in me. Perhaps I’m wrong. I sure hope so.
I use a solar power-heated pool. It’s real enough. There are a lot of them.
And solar powered calculator. Lightweight because there’s no battery and practical, since it won’t be dead when I need it.
So, I guess we can agree the answer to the original question “whatever happened to solar power?” the answer is “not much, and that’s the problem, we don’t know how to make it happen yet”. And the cites in the OP are a good representation of the high degree of ignorance surrounding this subject.
There have been several threads in this board about people saying they had little or no use for math and algebra etc. But math and algebra give us a very necessary view of things, especially when we are talking about dollars, which are counted with numbers, like everything else.
Half of what you hear about energy solutions are just plain dumb because the author just does not understand the numbers involved. I always remember an old lady who wanted to heat a huge space with a tiny electric heater and she kept insisting on the idea saying it heated more because “it is ceramic”. Of course this lady just does not have a clue about some basic concepts and some numbers and orders of magnitude. The rest of us were just trying to be polite and rolled our eyes and tried to move on.
So, knowing how much some people hate numbers, let me do some math here.
A button type battery for a watch or calculator stores about 0.2 mwh and sells for about $2 (I am rounding numbers here). That means you would need 5000 of them to get 1Kwh at a cost of $10,000. Seeing that you can buy a Kwh off the shelf from the utility company for 6 or 7 cents, the price increase factor is about 150,000.
Well sailor you’ve got a lot of nerve speaking for the “rest of us”.
Your mind has been set for some time about solar energy probably because you have had a bad experience.I’ve yet to hear something positive from your posts.I’m beginning to believe Uke is right.Lets hear some real verifiable numbers Please.
In the vegetable powered cars thread you just said let anthricite do it. When I pinned you down as to where you got the 2 for 1 fuel conversion you said it was just an example.You spouted it out like it was fact.
OK guy lets hear it.
justwannano, have you bothered reading this thread? I didn’t think so. Never mind.
My post was meant to be a proposal for a summary of the majority of the posts in this thread and if anyone thinks it misrepresents the thread they are welcome to say so.
Besides your posts about Anthracite’s cat (which add nothing substantive to the thread) I can only find one post from you relating an interesting home experiment. In spite of being interesting as a home experiment I cannot see how it adds to the OP. You do not propose that such solution can be feasible commercially.
You criticise me for not giving numbers? WTF are you talking about? Are you sure you are in the right thread? Or have you been smoking something? You must mistake me for someone else. Please read my posts. You can start with http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=40310&pagenumber=1#post773367 and let me know what’s wrong with it. Then continue scrolling down and you’ll find plenty of numbers, including about the 3 million dollar experimental installation at that high school.
I cannot find where you have provided anything that would contradict my opinions or those of the majority of people in this thread. I still think that the majority of knowledgeable people in this thread agree that solar energy is not ready for prime time yet. I think we also agree the two cites included in the OP are bunk. If anyone thinks I am misrepresenting the conclusions of this thread I would ask them to clarify. I do not think your home experiment, however interesting, really provides a substantial contradiction.
In fact, in my grandmother’s house, until just a few years ago there was a small heating stove, with a bucket of coal next to it.