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#143 |
Blu-ray Knight
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IMO gas prices are still ridiculous and we're still getting robbed at the pump. I find it sad that they were screwing us so badly when gas was around $4.00/gallon that now that it's down around $2.50 most people don't seem to mind any more. It's still way overpriced.
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#144 | |
Community Gaming Moderator
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One day I got gas at BJ's wholesale club back when it was $4.25 for 93.... I cursed out loud, and the lady next to me heard me. I had no shame because I was just pissed that I was paying nearly $5 for gas. ![]() |
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#146 | |
Blu-ray Archduke
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#147 | |
Community Gaming Moderator
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![]() Car is paid off and now I just have to worry about gas prices, and maintenance. |
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#148 |
Blu-ray Archduke
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Eh just standard maintenance with the TL. I forgot that you have over 100k on the engine...you must cruise Collins Ave a lot in the summer..
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#150 |
Gaming Moderator
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That should be in the "old timers' remember when thread." Remember when you could put $2.00 in your tank and actually have enough to go somewhere and back.
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#151 |
Banned
Mar 2010
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the price is OK, however, no one will consider it as the lowest price, all the buyer want to get a lower price forever
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#153 |
Blu-ray Samurai
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The gas prices are terrible. Especially since I had to 1. Gas up my car then drop it off at the dealership, 2. get a rental which had only 1/4 of a tank, so I had to gas it up, then 3. return in the next day and take a loaner from the dealership which had 1/8 tank so I had to fuel it up before I could even go home.
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#154 | |
Blu-ray Knight
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#155 |
Blu-ray Samurai
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I posted the details of the issue in the auto thread. But long story short, at 52k my car needed the Master Cylinder, Advanced hydraulic booster brake system and the servo unit replaced to the tune of over $2k. Am. Honda agreed to pay 40% Coggin Honda paid the tax and stuff, so out the door was $1517.01
SO stupid, especially since if I had complained while under the 36k warranty the fix would have been free. SO now they are pushing the extended warranty on me for another 5yr 60k for $3096 |
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#159 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Special Member
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![]() Alternative Energy "I want to believe in innovation and its possibilities, but I am more thoroughly convinced of entropy. Most of what we do merely creates local upticks in organization in an overall downward sloping curve. In that regard, technology is a bag of tricks that allows us to slow and even reverse the trend, sometimes globally, sometimes only locally, but always only temporarily and at increasing aggregate energy cost." (Heinberg & Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed) “My own efforts have focused on the science of alternative energy. The deeper you go into this area, the less sanguine you become that there is any effective mitigation possible… The bottom line is that there is no thermodynamic match for petroleum.” - (TOD). "What's needed is a true accounting of energy costs before we can even start down the right path. How much does Middle Eastern oil cost when millitary protection is factored in? What do ethanol subsidies really cost? Can solar power (or cellulosic ethanol) follow a Moore's Law cost-improvement curve or is that a fantasy" (Rich Karlgaard, Forbes, 8 February 2010) To get renewables to contribute more then limit of 20% under the old electrical system, we are going to have to construct a smart grid the can deal with the intermittent power of wind and solar. Currently renewables produce 0.5 terawatt, far short of the 15 terawatts the world now consumes. Quote:
![]() The Electron in Motion. Solar Solar cells convert photons of light that are at the right wave-length directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect which is when electrically charged particles are released from a material when it absorbs electromagnetic radiation. Solar got its start in 1953 at ATA&T Bell Labs in New Jersy using selenium with a conversion efficiency of 0.05%. A year later 1954, silicon increased that to a useful 6% and found its first use providing power for orbiting satellites and spacecraft. Today the share for crystalline silicone is 85%. This is made up of atoms having 14 protons and 14 electrons. There is space for 4 more in the high energy outer shell, so every atom is attached to 4 other atoms sharing electons with eachother to form a crystal lattice. A single wafer of silicon is doped very carefully with impurties to create the p and n-type sides and the p-n junction. This is diffrent from the way a DVD is made where two discreet physical layers are bonded together. The N-type contains 5 electron phosphorus with having one extra electron, and the p-type contains 3 electron boron having one fewer electron that create holes. Neather have an electric charge. Photons from the sun striking the N-side knock off electrons that are picked up by the conduction grid on the surface to be passed through an electrical circuit. If there is a load in the circuit, useful work is done. When an N-type electron fills a P-type hole, a negative charge is created on the P-side and a positive charge forms on the N-side. The electrons return to the N-type of the cell, and the process begins anew. A solar cell is like a diode, letting current flow in only one direction from the P-side back to the N-side. As of 2009 most production solar have conversion efficiencies of about 15%, 15 electrons for every 100 photons. Efficencies of up to 40% have been achieved in the laboratory. If you are going to get solar, CK the independent efficiency rating and not 'nameplate output'. Also, inverters can be expectd to last only about 10 -15 years. The burning question is can solar cells be manufactured with no carbon inputs, that is, on electricity alone? Regardless, the sun's energy that reaches earth is impressive: About 1.353 kW/m2. (it actually varies about 6% a year. 1.308 kW/m2 to 1.398 kW/m2 because of the changing changing earth-sun distance). Power density also varies with the 11-year cycle of sunspots. Total power reaching the ground is 101,000 terawatts. Power from the sun Wind It powered sailing ships and was used in Europe 900 years ago to grind grain. It came to rural America in the 1860s to pump water. By 1890, there were 100+ manufacturers with sales over 8,000,000. It went into deline with the 1937 Rural Electrification program. Most were out of business by the 1950s. Wind power made a comeback in the 70s after the duel oil shocks only to have interest ebb again as fuel became plentiful. In the 90s, oil prices were on the rise, interest picked up and continues to this day. Wind is free but harvesting it's power is not and is currently a more expensive alternative to coal and oil, and the economy does not run on electricity alone. Nerverthless, it is the fastest and lowest cost source of renewable electricity. The turbines are impressive with blades from 27 to 45 meters and can produce up to 5 megawatts of electricity - each, at least during opmimal wind conditions. There is 20 terawatts that can be put to use out of a theoretical 190. Global Winde Energy Capacity: 1981 - 10 Megawatts, 2009 - 121.6 gigawatts. That capacity is expected to reach 400 gigawatts by 2014, 1,000 gigawatts by 2020. Could we build a wind farm and have only the power generated by the turbines provied all that is needed to produce other wind farms...Wind is variable and can not be counted upond to be producing energy 24/7... Compensating for the uncertainty of supply will require a huge amount of over-engineering. 25GW of wind power, it reckons, would be worth only abount 5GW of fossil-fired generation" (The Economist, Aug 8, p50). "Name-plate capacity is not actual generation. Wind turbines are only 25% efficent or lower" (ntrnews) Wind energy is more variable than electricity produced by fossil fuels and by nuclear energy (Gail, TOD) "Because of its relatively low “capacity value” (a result of usually not blowing very regularly during peak load hours), wind largely competes as a “fuel saver” resource, and can generally be compared against the fuel cost of what ever mix of fuel it is displacing (whether from existing capacity or from alternative investments in future capacity). In the U.S., this is typically some mix of relatively inexpensive coal and somewhat expensive natural gas, depending on the location of the wind plant, and the resulting seasonal/daily wind and load profiles . . ." (Namoviz, EIA) Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills (TOD) Wind Power (Wiki) Wind's wild side ![]() Hydrogen Water former, Lavoisier and Henry Cavandish, 1766. Hydeogen is not an energy source, but an energy carrier. The lightest atom must come from a feedstock material. 96% comes from hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas because it is the cheapest way of getting it. Using methane and steam: CH4 (g) + H2O + e > 3H2(g) + CO(g). The other 4% is from water feedstock via electrolysis, the breaking of H2O into it's hydrogen and oxygen atoms - a process that is still fossil based because that is where the world gets 78% of its energy from. These methods deliver less energy then is put into the system; having an EROI that less then 1.1 which is also called an energy sink. Another problem is storing, as it evaporates form a sealed containner at a rate 1.7% per day because of the smallness of The Hydrogen atom. As a gas, it has a volume of 238,000 litres to 20 gallons of gasoline. As a liquid, it requires four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Also is the expense of transportation and delivery. The entire system is estimated to be about 30 - 40x over the cost of producing and delivering gasoline. Dismal numbers where some caculate mass starvation in some poor countries when gas climbs over US $10 a gallon. See The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy. On the other hand, it could be a great way to store energy that would otherwise be lost when using veriable sources such as wind and solar. The Lightest Element Quote:
![]() Ethanol. "Producing first generation ethanol from corn is a mistake... It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol. One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." (Gore) "The amount of energy required to grow the crop, harvest and collect it, and distill it into nearly pure alcohol was perilously close to the amount of energy that the fuel itself would yield when burned in an engine. This meant that ethanol wasn’t really much of an energy source at all; making it was just a way of taking existing fuels (petroleum and natural gas) and using them (in the forms of tractor fuel, fertilizer, and fuel for distillation plants) to produce a different fuel that could be used for the same purposes as gasoline...a USDA study claimed a positive energy balance of 1.34:1" (Heinberg, Peak Oil) "Biofuels are estimated by the IMF to have been responsible for 20-30% of the global food price spike in 2008" (Guardian.co.uk, 15 February 2010). "Our initial venture into this area was the ethanol fiasco which, predictably, took more energy to make than it produced, and had disastrous effects (still does) on corn commodity prices - in effect stealing from the food supply in order to drive to the Wal Mart" (JHK, 4 April 2011) Argriculture uses 70% of the worlds available freshwater on a land area about the size of South America. Continued deforestation for more farmland will fan global warming. Add to this a projected population of 9.5 billion by 2050, and an additional land area the size of Brazil to go under cultivation; feeding our cars by corn based ethanol looks like a trip down the wrong road. (Scientific American, November 2009) Quote:
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EROWI - Energy Return of Water Invested. Litters per Megawatt hour: Extraction of Petroleum: 10 - 40 Oil Refining: 80 - 150 Enhanced Oil Recovery: ~7600 Corn Ethanol Irrigation: 2,270,00 - 8,670,00 Thorium Reactors A tone of thorium fuels equals about 200 tones of uranium or 5,500,tons of coal. However, "Natural thorium contains no fissile isotopes; fissile material, generally 233U, 235U, or plutonium, must be supplemented to achieve criticality. This, along with the high sintering temperature necessary to make thorium-dioxide fuel, complicates the fuel fabrication process." - Wiki. The God of Thunder Nuclear Fusion If light nuclei are forced together, they will fuse with a yield of energy because the mass of the combination will be less than the sum of the masses of the individual nuclei. E=mc^2 (mass–energy equivalence, 1905) explaines how a small amount of mass could be transformed into energy, lots of energy, and has been the carrot we have run after despite cost and complexity. Fusion is the process by which multiple atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus. It powers the stars (Hans Bethe, 1939), and multiples exceedingly the energy a thermonuclear bomb would have over a fission only bomb. The Atomic Bomb (Hiroshima) yielded 10^14 J, the E = mc^2 of 1 gram, while a 100-megaton H-bomb, 10^17 J is the E = mc^2 of 1 kg. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, making it the holy grail in energy science - liberating us forever from the worries of powering up modern civilization with few toxic side effects. For us here on earth, the ideal situation is to use the raw material Deuterium and Tritium in a D-T-Reaction that produces Helium and a Neutron. Tritium Breeding Little tritium occurs in nature since it has a 10-12 year half-life. Only about 2.5 - 3kg exists worldwide, so it must be bread by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons from the D-T-Reaction. "As of July 2010[update], the largest experiment was the Joint European Torus (JET). In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1 megawatts (21,600 hp) of fusion power (65% of input power), with fusion power of over 10 MW (13,000 hp) sustained for over 0.5 sec." (Wiki) It has not been scaled up to industrial levels. It also uses helium coolants that are products of nonrenewable natural gas. Latest estimate say it will not be commercially viable untill 2050. Since the 1950's, it has remained a promise that was always 20 to 30 years into the future. The Power of the Sun Zero-point Energy Free Energy? Glossery AC - Alternating current, cycles back and forth 60 times per second (60Hz US). DC - Direct current, electrons that flow in one direction. Grid-Connected Systems - connected directly to the grid. Net Metering - two meters: one tracks consumption, the contributions to grid. Off-Grid, Stand-Alone system. ROI - Return on Investment. Energy density Feedstock The raw material that is required for some industrial process. In the case of hydrogen, it's Water (H20), natural gas (CH4), biomass (cellulose), and fossil fuel hydro carbons. Wind Power and Home Systems Air in horizontal motion across the Earth's surface - a product of sunlight or solar energy. Produced by fifferences in air pressure between two regions. Types of Wind/Breezes
Wind Turbines
Tower Types
Grid-Connected Wind System W/Battery Backup
Battery Backup Options: Deep-cycle, no car batteries.
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Kinetic Energy (K) = 1/2mv² where m is kg, v is m/s, and K is J. P = Power available in the wind. d = density of the air. A decrease of 3% per 1,000 feet(300 meters). A = Swept area. The area of the circle(Πr²) described by the blades. V = Wind Speed. Back to The Oil Post Last edited by U4K61; 03-11-2012 at 07:55 PM. |
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