In the construction industry a Greenfield is a site that has never had any construction upon it. The word in this context is a wide open space to construct the new project without any demolition or possible hidden underground structures. Engineers love to have Greenfield sites as opposed to Brownfield sites where all sorts of hidden obstacles can add complexities and costs to projects. Greenfield is also a city in Wisconsin that is a suburb of Milwaukee. Very close to Greenfield is another suburb named Oak Creek. On Elm Road in Oak Creek, Wisconsin Energy Corporation (WEC), the local utility decided to build the world’s showcase coal fired power plant on a Greenfield site. They hired Bechtel and convinced their public utilities commission this mega sized coal power generation station would provide “cheap” electricity for the residents of Southern Wisconsin for many years to come.
Local folks put up quite a fight to stop the construction of the power plant and even though they proved that copious quantities of mercury from the coal would wind up in Lake Michigan, the project was permitted and began construction in 2005. Bechtel felt so confident of their capabilities that they offered WEC a lump sum fixed price contract for the power plant at a price of $2.2 billion. Bechtel set about to design and build a flagship power plant with two 615 megawatt identical units that employed “ultrasupercritical” steam technology. In layperson’s terms this means the steam boilers produce very high pressure and high temperature steam that improves the overall thermal efficiency of the electric power generation. The station also did not include cooling towers that are normally used in power plants. Instead cooling water was drawn directly from Lake Michigan and the warmed water is returned directly to the lake. Here is the link on Bechtel’s web site regarding the project http://www.bechtel.com/super_power.html Bechtel was so proud of this project that a senior executive exclaimed “As Elm Road goes, so will go Bechtel’s U.S. fossil power business,” says Project Director George Conniff. “The whole industry is watching to see how we perform.”
Fast forward to 2009 and the project is a disaster. Bechtel is claiming an additional $485 million for cost over-runs. http://biz.yahoo.com/e/081229/wec8-k.html Coal is an expensive method to generate power compared with natural gas that is now much more abundant. Coal generation even with the “ultrasupercritical” technology is much more carbon intensive than natural gas with as much a one pound extra of carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of electricity generated when compared with natural gas. The 38,000 citizens of Greenfield Wisconsin will be paying a carbon tax on this project for the next thirty years. The fish in Lake Michigan will be paying a mercury tax for the next hundred years. Bechtel and WEC will argue the legalities of the claims for the over-runs and who knows if the claims are valid but the Green Machine would like both the constructer and the owner of the failed facility to be taken to the Green Court that is the Supreme Court for those who disobey the Laws Of Thermodynamics. The project was a dumb idea in 2005 even when natural gas was more expensive. Now that natural gas is much less expensive the project is plain idiotic. Perhaps citizens will be better served if the management of utilities were smarter, the contractors were more in tune with being green, and the public utilities commissioners were “ultrasupercritical” of stupid ideas. Can Bechtel please tell George Conniff that the whole world not just the whole industry is watching to see how the project performed. No doubt this project gets a F.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Thank Generations
I have come across the most out of the box idea for electric power generation. It all started when Lawrence an avid reader of my blog asked me if it was feasible to generate electric power by laying down miles of copper wire on the floor and having kids run around the room with magnets tied to their bodies. On the surface this sounds like a not so bad idea. I estimated each kid could put out about 10 watts of power and could run around for at least two hours so if one had ten kids in the house one could generate enough power for one and half hours of watching a 40 inch LCD TV.
This got me thinking about manpower hours. We have horsepower hours. Eldon another reader of my blog once emailed me that a barrel of oil has the amount of energy that eight men working at full pace eight hours a day would generate in a year. I actually did the calculation and it is estimated that a man working at full tilt is about 8% of a horsepower. Therefore 12 men working in unison is one horsepower. 12 men working for an hour is a horsepower hour. 12 men working 2000 hours a year is 2,000 horsepower hours or 1,500 kilowatt hours. A gallon of oil has about 35 kilowatt hours of stored chemical energy and there are 42 gallons in a barrel, therefore a barrel of oil has approximately 1,477 kilowatt hours of chemical energy. Now that we know 12 men working flat out for a year is a barrel of oil, lets all become couch potatoes because human work, kids running, or hamsters tread-milling will not replace our oil imports.
So what is the most out of the box idea for electric power generation? Well it comes from Chinookville (Canada). These blokes in Quebec believe that one should place windmills aloft in the sky up to one thousand feet above the land. The rationale being that the wind is more constant at this altitude and the dispatchability of electric power would increase from 20% of the time to 50% of the time. Their device is a rotating airship that is tethered to the ground by wires. They have named their airship MARS for the Magenn Air Rotator Systems http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/magenn_air_roto.php http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2005/12/mobile-air-rotors-use-wind-to-generate-electricity-40993 I have heard of one of the founders of the company as he was previously in the hydrogen fuel cell business. He of course lost his shirt and other investors’ money in the fuel cell effort and is now trying to find the answer blowing in the wind. MARS has raised over ten million dollars so far to commercialize this idea.
My take on the MARS system is that it will never take off so to speak. It is clever but not cost effective. It could be used by ships and the power that is generated could be transmitted via the guide wire back to a ship, but I estimate more energy could be generated if the ship simply had a sail assisting in its propulsion. I have to rename the MARS system to the VENUS system. VENUS = Very Expensive Not Ubiquitous System. I should not knock their idea as at least they are thinking out of the box and there is some chance that the system can find an application here and there but it simply will not do much more to save the planet than having the younger generation run around with magnets tied to them in the hope of capturing some of that seemingly inexhaustible energy.
This got me thinking about manpower hours. We have horsepower hours. Eldon another reader of my blog once emailed me that a barrel of oil has the amount of energy that eight men working at full pace eight hours a day would generate in a year. I actually did the calculation and it is estimated that a man working at full tilt is about 8% of a horsepower. Therefore 12 men working in unison is one horsepower. 12 men working for an hour is a horsepower hour. 12 men working 2000 hours a year is 2,000 horsepower hours or 1,500 kilowatt hours. A gallon of oil has about 35 kilowatt hours of stored chemical energy and there are 42 gallons in a barrel, therefore a barrel of oil has approximately 1,477 kilowatt hours of chemical energy. Now that we know 12 men working flat out for a year is a barrel of oil, lets all become couch potatoes because human work, kids running, or hamsters tread-milling will not replace our oil imports.
So what is the most out of the box idea for electric power generation? Well it comes from Chinookville (Canada). These blokes in Quebec believe that one should place windmills aloft in the sky up to one thousand feet above the land. The rationale being that the wind is more constant at this altitude and the dispatchability of electric power would increase from 20% of the time to 50% of the time. Their device is a rotating airship that is tethered to the ground by wires. They have named their airship MARS for the Magenn Air Rotator Systems http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/magenn_air_roto.php http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2005/12/mobile-air-rotors-use-wind-to-generate-electricity-40993 I have heard of one of the founders of the company as he was previously in the hydrogen fuel cell business. He of course lost his shirt and other investors’ money in the fuel cell effort and is now trying to find the answer blowing in the wind. MARS has raised over ten million dollars so far to commercialize this idea.
My take on the MARS system is that it will never take off so to speak. It is clever but not cost effective. It could be used by ships and the power that is generated could be transmitted via the guide wire back to a ship, but I estimate more energy could be generated if the ship simply had a sail assisting in its propulsion. I have to rename the MARS system to the VENUS system. VENUS = Very Expensive Not Ubiquitous System. I should not knock their idea as at least they are thinking out of the box and there is some chance that the system can find an application here and there but it simply will not do much more to save the planet than having the younger generation run around with magnets tied to them in the hope of capturing some of that seemingly inexhaustible energy.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thank Government
The House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill to drive the US economy toward a less carbon intensive future. President Obama is pushing the Senate to likewise pass this bill that he would like to sign into law soon. The bill intends to cut US carbon emission by 17% in 2020 compared with a base year of 2005. The part of the bill that may actually accomplish its intended target is the part that steers Americans toward smaller and lighter personal vehicles. Consumers may actually save money in buying smaller cars as their first cost and ongoing operating costs are certainly lower than larger vehicles. The part of the bill that is real tricky is in electric power generation where incentives will be given to operate geothermal, wind, PV, solar thermal, biomass, and nuclear power stations and taxes will be imposed on coal, natural gas, and hydrocarbon liquid fired stations.
The least costly methods for power generation are coal and natural gas and the most costly is PV. The office of management and budget has estimated that the average consumer will pay approximately $100 extra per year for their energy as a result of this bill. I have no real data that confirms this. PV electricity is much more expensive to generate than natural gas and it is also intermittent. The power grid will need additional transmission lines and point of use energy storage to overcome the interruptible nature of PV or even wind. Nuclear, geothermal and biomass are base-load generators that can operate 24 by 7. The wildcard in all of this is whether plug in hybrid or pure plug in vehicles will be deployed on a large scale in the next decade. This hinges on the cost of lithium batteries and a good deal of government money is being thrown at this area.
My chemical engineering experience leads me to believe that the cost improvement in lithium ion batteries a decade from now will be moderate and nowhere near the rate of cost improvement in devices such as semiconductors or LCD TVs. Unfortunately a fractional Moore’s Law will hold for lithium batteries. The underlying limitation to the learning curve is that the electrochemistry requires a certain mass of anode, cathode, and electrolyte to store a certain quantity of energy and deliver a certain instantaneous amount of power. My prognostication is that ten years from now the cost of a lithium ion battery system will drop from approximately $900 per kilowatt hour of storage to approximately $650 per kilowatt hour of storage.
The Tesla Roadster has some 55 kilowatt hours of battery storage, the Prius only has 1.5 kilowatt hours of storage as the Prius is primarily powered by its gasoline engine. The Volt plug in hybrid GM is proposing has approximately 16 kilowatt hours of battery storage. Because of the high cost of the batteries my forecast is that plug in hybrids that are capable of 40 miles of electric travel will still be too expensive in ten years from now to capture more than a very small share of the market. Traditional hybrids will capture a third of the market in a decade and small lighter cars will also capture a similar fraction. Bigger cars will still be common with a similar market share to traditional hybrids. A plug in hybrid that goes 8 to 10 miles may be more commercially successful than the targeted 40 mile range battery intensive vehicle. If we do have plug in hybrids with 3 or 4 kilowatt hours of onboard batteries then it is quite plausible that one would recharge at night at home and the operating cost for the 10 miles that one would travel on the batteries will be perhaps 25 cents. If there are five million of these vehicles perhaps some 20 million kilowatt hours of night time power can be stored. Let’s assume the nightly charging last 8 hours, this means some 2.5 million kilowatts or some 2,500 megawatts of power generation capacity will be needed. This is a miniscule fraction of the approximately 800,000 megawatts of power generation that are in place presently in the USA.
The success of the whole plug in program hinges on the lightest metal in the periodic table and this is Li, which are incidentally the first two letters in my name. I wish I could help the planet by inventing a new less expensive material called Lindsayium but alas this is not possible and my suggestion to help meet the 17% reduction goal is to walk, bike, carpool or take the bus.
The least costly methods for power generation are coal and natural gas and the most costly is PV. The office of management and budget has estimated that the average consumer will pay approximately $100 extra per year for their energy as a result of this bill. I have no real data that confirms this. PV electricity is much more expensive to generate than natural gas and it is also intermittent. The power grid will need additional transmission lines and point of use energy storage to overcome the interruptible nature of PV or even wind. Nuclear, geothermal and biomass are base-load generators that can operate 24 by 7. The wildcard in all of this is whether plug in hybrid or pure plug in vehicles will be deployed on a large scale in the next decade. This hinges on the cost of lithium batteries and a good deal of government money is being thrown at this area.
My chemical engineering experience leads me to believe that the cost improvement in lithium ion batteries a decade from now will be moderate and nowhere near the rate of cost improvement in devices such as semiconductors or LCD TVs. Unfortunately a fractional Moore’s Law will hold for lithium batteries. The underlying limitation to the learning curve is that the electrochemistry requires a certain mass of anode, cathode, and electrolyte to store a certain quantity of energy and deliver a certain instantaneous amount of power. My prognostication is that ten years from now the cost of a lithium ion battery system will drop from approximately $900 per kilowatt hour of storage to approximately $650 per kilowatt hour of storage.
The Tesla Roadster has some 55 kilowatt hours of battery storage, the Prius only has 1.5 kilowatt hours of storage as the Prius is primarily powered by its gasoline engine. The Volt plug in hybrid GM is proposing has approximately 16 kilowatt hours of battery storage. Because of the high cost of the batteries my forecast is that plug in hybrids that are capable of 40 miles of electric travel will still be too expensive in ten years from now to capture more than a very small share of the market. Traditional hybrids will capture a third of the market in a decade and small lighter cars will also capture a similar fraction. Bigger cars will still be common with a similar market share to traditional hybrids. A plug in hybrid that goes 8 to 10 miles may be more commercially successful than the targeted 40 mile range battery intensive vehicle. If we do have plug in hybrids with 3 or 4 kilowatt hours of onboard batteries then it is quite plausible that one would recharge at night at home and the operating cost for the 10 miles that one would travel on the batteries will be perhaps 25 cents. If there are five million of these vehicles perhaps some 20 million kilowatt hours of night time power can be stored. Let’s assume the nightly charging last 8 hours, this means some 2.5 million kilowatts or some 2,500 megawatts of power generation capacity will be needed. This is a miniscule fraction of the approximately 800,000 megawatts of power generation that are in place presently in the USA.
The success of the whole plug in program hinges on the lightest metal in the periodic table and this is Li, which are incidentally the first two letters in my name. I wish I could help the planet by inventing a new less expensive material called Lindsayium but alas this is not possible and my suggestion to help meet the 17% reduction goal is to walk, bike, carpool or take the bus.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Thank Ghosts
I should be a financial planner. Over the past couple of weeks I blogged about Raser the Eraser and Capstone the Gallstone being thermodynamic busts. Well the folks on Wall Street must be reading the green machine. Raser traded today at a paltry $3.60 and Capstone is now trading at a measly eighty cents a share. These two companies are in a race to the bottom. Capstone has more financial resources than Raser so it will last a few quarters longer before its life is over or new equity has to be found to finance their ongoing losses. The companies will soon be ghosts.
Raser is now positioning itself as a big geothermal power plant developer. They have put the “100 mpg” Hummer on the back burner so to speak. Well Raser brings a contract with United Technologies as their entre into geothermal energy. UT may have some good technology but Raser will have to pay full price to buy this technology so unless Raser can raise cheap capital to finance their build own operate geothermal power plants they have no cost advantage over other more well funded project developers. Of course Raser has their hand out for Uncle Sam’s stimulus money and stranger thing have happened so they may pull this off but maybe the Feds can read a balance sheet and even the US might understand that Raser has negative net worth as well as negative working capital.
As for Gallstone they have yet to claim their microturbine can run on geothermal steam but they are asking investors to pony up more cash to keep going. They announced their quarterly results a few days ago. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Capstone-Turbines-4Q-loss-apf-2100563017.html?x=0&.v=2 They lost over eleven million dollars this quarter. This means they spent two dollars for each dollar of sales revenue. Kind of like the State of California.
Enough about losers and losses, I have great news regarding the state of carbon emissions in the USA. We are emitting only 94% of the emissions we had in 2008 and about 92% of the emissions we had in 2007. All fossil fuel based electric generation has declined since last year. Oil usage has declined to 18.6 million barrels a day (this is more than 1.2 million barrels a day less than last year). I doubt that when the economy recovers we will ever go back to the absolute level of energy wastage we had in 2007. The US is no longer the largest polluter on the planet. China will hold this position now and well into the future. GM had good news to report today. Their Chinese joint venture has just sold their 2 millionth Buick. Maybe Raser should move to China now that a Chinese company will own Hummer. I wonder what the Mandarin word for an Eraser is? Perhaps the word is also a Chinese synonym for Ghost.
Raser is now positioning itself as a big geothermal power plant developer. They have put the “100 mpg” Hummer on the back burner so to speak. Well Raser brings a contract with United Technologies as their entre into geothermal energy. UT may have some good technology but Raser will have to pay full price to buy this technology so unless Raser can raise cheap capital to finance their build own operate geothermal power plants they have no cost advantage over other more well funded project developers. Of course Raser has their hand out for Uncle Sam’s stimulus money and stranger thing have happened so they may pull this off but maybe the Feds can read a balance sheet and even the US might understand that Raser has negative net worth as well as negative working capital.
As for Gallstone they have yet to claim their microturbine can run on geothermal steam but they are asking investors to pony up more cash to keep going. They announced their quarterly results a few days ago. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Capstone-Turbines-4Q-loss-apf-2100563017.html?x=0&.v=2 They lost over eleven million dollars this quarter. This means they spent two dollars for each dollar of sales revenue. Kind of like the State of California.
Enough about losers and losses, I have great news regarding the state of carbon emissions in the USA. We are emitting only 94% of the emissions we had in 2008 and about 92% of the emissions we had in 2007. All fossil fuel based electric generation has declined since last year. Oil usage has declined to 18.6 million barrels a day (this is more than 1.2 million barrels a day less than last year). I doubt that when the economy recovers we will ever go back to the absolute level of energy wastage we had in 2007. The US is no longer the largest polluter on the planet. China will hold this position now and well into the future. GM had good news to report today. Their Chinese joint venture has just sold their 2 millionth Buick. Maybe Raser should move to China now that a Chinese company will own Hummer. I wonder what the Mandarin word for an Eraser is? Perhaps the word is also a Chinese synonym for Ghost.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Thank Gallstones
Today the blog is about Gallstones and Capstones. I know keystones are critical to the support of an arch but what is a capstone. Well in the world of thermodynamics, Capstone is the manufacturer of a microturbine that can produce 30 kilowatts or about 40 horsepower of power. A turbine is a jet engine rather than a piston engine and Capstone has miniaturized the jet engine to be small enough to fit in the hood of a car. They have been at this for about twelve years and blown through almost a billion dollars of investors’ money. The inventor is the brother of the founder of Compaq computers and Paul Allen of Microsoft fame has been a backer.
While the technology is elegant and sweet, the cost of fabricating a microturbine is very high. The 40 horsepower engine from Capstone that has one third the power of a Toyota Corolla, costs them more than $20,000 to manufacture. By comparison the 60 horsepower engine in a Smart Car costs Mercedes less than $2,500 to manufacture. Is the microturbine much more efficient than a piston engine? Over the full driving range that a motorist typically runs their vehicle the, microturbine will approach 30% efficiency while the piston engine will be about 15% efficient. However, when one employs a diesel engine to do the same driving, the diesel engine yields approximately the same efficiency as the Capstone turbine. The diesel engine would only cost about $3,000 to manufacture.
For the past couple of weeks I have been blogging about Raser the Eraser and today it is about Capstone the Gallstone. Capstone also wanted to lift their stock price by getting in on the plug in hybrid bandwagon. CPST is Capstone’s stock symbol and it is a small cap stock on the NASDAQ. It was once a large cap stock during the dot com boom years but it saw a low of 39 cents a share a few months back. Last week some thermodynamic wankers in the UK, fitted a plug in van with a Capstone turbine and are claiming 80 mpg for the van. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Photo-Release-Capstone-C30-pz-15498531.html?.v=1 . On this news the CPST stock rose to close at one dollar sixteen cents yesterday.
Again the claim of the first forty miles being energy free due to the plug in lithium ion batteries propelling the vehicle without the need for engaging the engine is being made. If Raser is an Eraser then the Capstone plug in is a Gallstone. In Capstone’s case one has to add the extra cost of the turbine versus the standard piston engine and this is amounts to another $20,000 on top of the lithium ion batteries that already added more than $30,000 to the base cost of the vehicle. Therefore the Capstone Gallstone will cost you $50,000 more than the base diesel van and get no better fuel economy. I hear gallstones are very painful, the extra fifty thousand dollars per vehicle is also painful to your wallet.
Gall is a synonym for nerve or chutzpah. I really get my hairs up on my back when these gangrene gallists who have jumped on the band wagon to save the world by lowering energy consumption make ridiculous claims about their technologies that are Betamaxs and some fool then buys the stock on the hope this is the next Apple Computer. I suggest that folks rather buy shares in my new engine company Gallstone Turbine Corporation that uses rubber bands to propel a lead acid plug in. I will list Gallstone Turbine Corporation on the NYSE with the symbol GTC which also stands for Get Their Cash.
On Wednesday June 17, Lindsay Leveen will be on blog talk radio at noon California time to discuss Eraser and Gallstone. 12pm PT (3pm ET) at http://BlogTalkRadio.com/AlternativeEnergyRadio The call in number for the radio show is (347) 838-8999.
While the technology is elegant and sweet, the cost of fabricating a microturbine is very high. The 40 horsepower engine from Capstone that has one third the power of a Toyota Corolla, costs them more than $20,000 to manufacture. By comparison the 60 horsepower engine in a Smart Car costs Mercedes less than $2,500 to manufacture. Is the microturbine much more efficient than a piston engine? Over the full driving range that a motorist typically runs their vehicle the, microturbine will approach 30% efficiency while the piston engine will be about 15% efficient. However, when one employs a diesel engine to do the same driving, the diesel engine yields approximately the same efficiency as the Capstone turbine. The diesel engine would only cost about $3,000 to manufacture.
For the past couple of weeks I have been blogging about Raser the Eraser and today it is about Capstone the Gallstone. Capstone also wanted to lift their stock price by getting in on the plug in hybrid bandwagon. CPST is Capstone’s stock symbol and it is a small cap stock on the NASDAQ. It was once a large cap stock during the dot com boom years but it saw a low of 39 cents a share a few months back. Last week some thermodynamic wankers in the UK, fitted a plug in van with a Capstone turbine and are claiming 80 mpg for the van. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Photo-Release-Capstone-C30-pz-15498531.html?.v=1 . On this news the CPST stock rose to close at one dollar sixteen cents yesterday.
Again the claim of the first forty miles being energy free due to the plug in lithium ion batteries propelling the vehicle without the need for engaging the engine is being made. If Raser is an Eraser then the Capstone plug in is a Gallstone. In Capstone’s case one has to add the extra cost of the turbine versus the standard piston engine and this is amounts to another $20,000 on top of the lithium ion batteries that already added more than $30,000 to the base cost of the vehicle. Therefore the Capstone Gallstone will cost you $50,000 more than the base diesel van and get no better fuel economy. I hear gallstones are very painful, the extra fifty thousand dollars per vehicle is also painful to your wallet.
Gall is a synonym for nerve or chutzpah. I really get my hairs up on my back when these gangrene gallists who have jumped on the band wagon to save the world by lowering energy consumption make ridiculous claims about their technologies that are Betamaxs and some fool then buys the stock on the hope this is the next Apple Computer. I suggest that folks rather buy shares in my new engine company Gallstone Turbine Corporation that uses rubber bands to propel a lead acid plug in. I will list Gallstone Turbine Corporation on the NYSE with the symbol GTC which also stands for Get Their Cash.
On Wednesday June 17, Lindsay Leveen will be on blog talk radio at noon California time to discuss Eraser and Gallstone. 12pm PT (3pm ET) at http://BlogTalkRadio.com/AlternativeEnergyRadio The call in number for the radio show is (347) 838-8999.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Thank Gigawatts
What to do with a watt?
Everyday day in the news there is an article claiming some breakthrough in energy efficiency. I have blogged about Raser the Eraser and how they claim greater than 100 mpg for their plug in hybrid Hummer. They have even taken the claim a step further on their web site by now stating that if the driver of this supercharged Hummer drives less than 40 miles before a recharge the “fuel economy is unlimited”. Raser also claims that 75% of drivers could enjoy this “unlimited fuel economy, as 75% of drivers have trips that are less than 40 miles and can therefore recharge the vehicle from the infinitely efficient electric grid. http://www.rasertech.com/news/raser-in-the-news/msnbc-reports-electric-hummer-in-washington-dc
This got me rethinking something that I had written about back in 2003. The average person has no clue of the meaning of the units of energy that we use to describe the quantity of energy generated or consumed. Many of the units of energy or power are named after a long dead scientist such as Watt or Joule. Many of the units of energy are even more strangely named. We have calories, kilocalories, BTUS, horsepower-hours, ergs, Hartree, Rydberg, reciprocal centimeters, therms, quads, gigawatt-hours, foot-poundal and even electron volts. So back in 2003 I invented the universal unit of energy that every Joe or Jane could relate to. This ubiquitous unit is the TV-Hour™ or TVH™ that equals the energy needed to power a 24 inch tube TV for an hour. Back in 2003 the most common TV was a 24 inch tube TV and it consumed 100 watt-hours of energy in an hour. Now LCD TVs are becoming the viewing standard and given the larger size of their screen I will revise the TV-Hour™ TVH™ to be the power needed to enjoy one hour of TV viewing of a 42 inch LCD TV. A state of the art LED driven 42 inch LCD TV requires 150 watt hours of energy to operate. Of course some energy is needed to power the cable box and just about every TV in the US is connected to cable or dish but for the sake of this article I will assume we will use the 150 watt hour equivalent for our standard measure TV-Hour ™TVH™.
Getting back to Raser and their claim of “unlimited fuel economy” for the 75% of us who drive less than 40 miles per trip, let me relate the operation of the wondrous Hummer to how many TV-Hours of electricity were used to propel the vehicle on the 40 mile journey to nowhere. The Tesla plug in roadster that is half as heavy and certainly twice as aerodynamic than the brick styled Hummer, needs 300 watt-hours or 2 TV-Hours™ of energy to travel a mile. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/ Therefore the Raser Hummer will need at least 600 watt-hours or 4 TV-Hours™ of energy to travel a mile. To travel 40 miles the Raser Hummer will require 160 TV-Hours™ of energy. The average person in the USA watches approximately 25 hours of TV a week, so the “unlimited fuel economy” monstrosity driven for the single 40 mile trip uses the equivalent of six and a half weeks of TV watching energy. I don’t know which is more worthless the 40 mile trip in the Earser or watching TV for 160 hours, my readers can be the judge of that. Arne the Governator wants to buy the Eraser perhaps he would be better served if he powered eighty 42 inch TVs simultaneously all showing his 2 hour long Kindergarten Cop movie rather than a 40 mile trip in the Eraser on the now defunct Hydrogen Highway he proposed.
For more on my original 2003 work on the TV-Hour™ please go to http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu.html
http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu2.html
http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu3.html
TV-Hour™ TVH™ are pending registered marks of Lindsay Leveen
Everyday day in the news there is an article claiming some breakthrough in energy efficiency. I have blogged about Raser the Eraser and how they claim greater than 100 mpg for their plug in hybrid Hummer. They have even taken the claim a step further on their web site by now stating that if the driver of this supercharged Hummer drives less than 40 miles before a recharge the “fuel economy is unlimited”. Raser also claims that 75% of drivers could enjoy this “unlimited fuel economy, as 75% of drivers have trips that are less than 40 miles and can therefore recharge the vehicle from the infinitely efficient electric grid. http://www.rasertech.com/news/raser-in-the-news/msnbc-reports-electric-hummer-in-washington-dc
This got me rethinking something that I had written about back in 2003. The average person has no clue of the meaning of the units of energy that we use to describe the quantity of energy generated or consumed. Many of the units of energy or power are named after a long dead scientist such as Watt or Joule. Many of the units of energy are even more strangely named. We have calories, kilocalories, BTUS, horsepower-hours, ergs, Hartree, Rydberg, reciprocal centimeters, therms, quads, gigawatt-hours, foot-poundal and even electron volts. So back in 2003 I invented the universal unit of energy that every Joe or Jane could relate to. This ubiquitous unit is the TV-Hour™ or TVH™ that equals the energy needed to power a 24 inch tube TV for an hour. Back in 2003 the most common TV was a 24 inch tube TV and it consumed 100 watt-hours of energy in an hour. Now LCD TVs are becoming the viewing standard and given the larger size of their screen I will revise the TV-Hour™ TVH™ to be the power needed to enjoy one hour of TV viewing of a 42 inch LCD TV. A state of the art LED driven 42 inch LCD TV requires 150 watt hours of energy to operate. Of course some energy is needed to power the cable box and just about every TV in the US is connected to cable or dish but for the sake of this article I will assume we will use the 150 watt hour equivalent for our standard measure TV-Hour ™TVH™.
Getting back to Raser and their claim of “unlimited fuel economy” for the 75% of us who drive less than 40 miles per trip, let me relate the operation of the wondrous Hummer to how many TV-Hours of electricity were used to propel the vehicle on the 40 mile journey to nowhere. The Tesla plug in roadster that is half as heavy and certainly twice as aerodynamic than the brick styled Hummer, needs 300 watt-hours or 2 TV-Hours™ of energy to travel a mile. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/ Therefore the Raser Hummer will need at least 600 watt-hours or 4 TV-Hours™ of energy to travel a mile. To travel 40 miles the Raser Hummer will require 160 TV-Hours™ of energy. The average person in the USA watches approximately 25 hours of TV a week, so the “unlimited fuel economy” monstrosity driven for the single 40 mile trip uses the equivalent of six and a half weeks of TV watching energy. I don’t know which is more worthless the 40 mile trip in the Earser or watching TV for 160 hours, my readers can be the judge of that. Arne the Governator wants to buy the Eraser perhaps he would be better served if he powered eighty 42 inch TVs simultaneously all showing his 2 hour long Kindergarten Cop movie rather than a 40 mile trip in the Eraser on the now defunct Hydrogen Highway he proposed.
For more on my original 2003 work on the TV-Hour™ please go to http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu.html
http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu2.html
http://www.dalefield.com/slspartners/hydrogen_stdu3.html
TV-Hour™ TVH™ are pending registered marks of Lindsay Leveen
Saturday, May 30, 2009
No Thanks Gray
We used to have a white flag of surrender, now the US government is proposing a far bigger white surface option. Our secretary of energy Dr Chu has proposed that we paint our roofs white. No kidding yes he did. Is the Nobel Prize winning physicist buckling under the pressure of the job? Or has he realized the Martians are invading? No he has done a calculation that shows if roofs were painted white less heat would be lost in the winter from our homes and more heat would be reflected away from our homes in the summer. This simple act of painting roofs white will save a couple percent of the energy consumed in heating and air conditioning our homes. See the London Telegraph article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5389278/Obamas-green-guru-calls-for-white-roofs.html
Chu also suggested that the paving of roads should be done with lighter color material than asphalt. This got me thinking we should have pastel color roofs and pastel color concrete roads and sidewalks. We should allow kids to decide the color of the roof of the home we live in as well as the color of the roads and sidewalks. Living in such a neighborhood would like being on an acid trip without any LSD and it would be a declaration of victory for the Hippies of yesteryear. I am all for brightening up the neighborhood and getting rid of dark color shingles on the roofs of our homes. Why did the roofing materials companies come up with dark colors in the first place? It might have been that historically tar and gravel was a simple, abundant, and inexpensive choice in the material selection process. I am sure that folks could come up with pastel colored alternatives for roofing material but they will be more expensive. In many European and Asian countries roofing of dwellings is accomplished with red terracotta tiles. This is because of the global abundance of the red clay that can be baked into tiles, pots, and other objects. In old soviet style housing drab gray concrete tiles were used. Perhaps we could resurrect concrete roofs but add some pastel tints and colorants to the concrete before it cures.
Road paving with pastel colored concrete is a much simpler task. However the production of cement is a carbon intensive undertaking. I have performed some simple arithmetic that does show over the complete lifecycle of a road that will span 20 years a pastel colored road does significantly reduce global warming compared with an asphalt road. Perhaps the government should set aside several billion dollars of the stimulus to replace the pothole filled roads in America with Dorothy’s light yellow brick road. I also have a suggestion for the government that we should install a few hundred thousand air compressor stations along our roads that would conveniently offer free compressed air for the tires in our vehicles. Most folks are driving with underinflated tires and the simple act of properly inflating tires will increase fuel economy by as much as three percent. Why not use a few of these billions of dollars of stimulus to have the news cars from Congressional Motors (the renamed General Motors) drive nicely on smooth and cool roads with properly inflated tires?
Chu also suggested that the paving of roads should be done with lighter color material than asphalt. This got me thinking we should have pastel color roofs and pastel color concrete roads and sidewalks. We should allow kids to decide the color of the roof of the home we live in as well as the color of the roads and sidewalks. Living in such a neighborhood would like being on an acid trip without any LSD and it would be a declaration of victory for the Hippies of yesteryear. I am all for brightening up the neighborhood and getting rid of dark color shingles on the roofs of our homes. Why did the roofing materials companies come up with dark colors in the first place? It might have been that historically tar and gravel was a simple, abundant, and inexpensive choice in the material selection process. I am sure that folks could come up with pastel colored alternatives for roofing material but they will be more expensive. In many European and Asian countries roofing of dwellings is accomplished with red terracotta tiles. This is because of the global abundance of the red clay that can be baked into tiles, pots, and other objects. In old soviet style housing drab gray concrete tiles were used. Perhaps we could resurrect concrete roofs but add some pastel tints and colorants to the concrete before it cures.
Road paving with pastel colored concrete is a much simpler task. However the production of cement is a carbon intensive undertaking. I have performed some simple arithmetic that does show over the complete lifecycle of a road that will span 20 years a pastel colored road does significantly reduce global warming compared with an asphalt road. Perhaps the government should set aside several billion dollars of the stimulus to replace the pothole filled roads in America with Dorothy’s light yellow brick road. I also have a suggestion for the government that we should install a few hundred thousand air compressor stations along our roads that would conveniently offer free compressed air for the tires in our vehicles. Most folks are driving with underinflated tires and the simple act of properly inflating tires will increase fuel economy by as much as three percent. Why not use a few of these billions of dollars of stimulus to have the news cars from Congressional Motors (the renamed General Motors) drive nicely on smooth and cool roads with properly inflated tires?
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