Politicians and energy policy

[krw]

Like Ohio ?

WAIT A MINUTE! The useless states are on either end. You want to
be left alone with the weenies?

 

[Jim Yanik]

You still want to keep the house dehumidified during the day.

I recently interviewed with a company that makes smart power meters.
They can control loads, so the power company can level loads without
blacking out everything. For instance, I doesn't matter much if a
water heater is turned off for a few hours, or the water heaters
across town are cycled. Much better to turn them off for some hours
during the day than have large peaks. The meters network with their
neighbors so metering and control can be done across wide areas.
Slick stuff.

how does the power meter control your WH or other in-house loads?
It would have to have a device wired into the WH and other loads.
(some may just plug in.)

My local power company offers a thermostat that they can control to shut
off your AC during peak power demand periods.

 

[Jim Yanik]

On Fri, 23 May 2008 09:25:52 -0700, "Bob Eld"

[snip]

The governor of Wyoming wants to make synthetic gasoline out of
Wyoming coal. That actually makes more sense because it powers
existing vehicles. With the Hybrids the total fleet would have to
change.

But, coal in NOT the answer. The better answer is biofuels. They
must be fully developed an implemented.


Biofuels? Is that what you get when you convert leftist weenie bull
shit into methane ?

...Jim Thompson

No, actually it's collecting and utilizing the hot air, smoke and
intestinal gas from CONservative politicians and blow hard talk show
host and other repug nitwits out there. This smoke and gas is used to
raise steam in giant boilers to operate a closed rankine cycle power
plant. There is enough blow off from these jackasses to generate about
8 GWatts of power.

As with most thermodynamic cycles, republicans and CONservatives,
about 60% goes right up the chimney doing NO USEFUL work. Carnot
didn't realize he had to deal with republicans!

Yet it's guys like AlGore that use energy FAR above the ordinary household
in energy,while promoting "green" for everyone else.Or like liberal Ted
Kennedy who blocked the windfarm slated for far off his Hyannisport
compound.
Also the jet-set Hollywood liberals that fly on private planes instead of
more-efficient commercial passenger jets.

Leftist weenies are far more "do as I say and not as I do" than
convervatives.

 

[[email protected]]

Well, he's not a warmingist that I know of, but he is fairly insufferable
when he spouts his statist neocon bushist crap.

Actually, when you take brain-lock into account, he's almost
indistinguishable from Bill Sloman. >:->

So much for your powers of discrimination. Too much ingestion of
conciousness-altering substances and you don't know what's real any
longer, any more than Jim does (but at least you've had fun while
getting out of contact with reality, and you can still spell "Sloman"
the same way that I do).

 

[[email protected]]

Political zealots.


Yeah, but nobody listens. ;-)


1. Zero emissions, except for waste heat.
2. 20 years between refuelings.
3. They can be designed to actually produce new fuel, making it
   essentially free.
4. Japan and France, and probably some other countries, get a
   very large proportion of their power by nuclear plants - obviously,
   somebody's figured out a way to do it safely, and profitably.

Safely? France is just slower in getting around to having its own
Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or Windscale (http://www.lakestay.co.uk/
1957.htm).

5. Reactor waste, you say? Just find out where the gov't is putting
   theirs, and put the civilian waste in the same place.

Brilliant - except that the government is sticking their waste in
holding tanks until someone works out where they can set up a safe
long term (hundreds of thousands of years) repository - probably on
the far side of the Moon.

Pretty much, yeah. ;-)

It does seem that way. Though some of us do know more than the average
school child, not that the bulk of us beleive that.

 

[[email protected]]

No western power reactor has ever created any 'fallout' worth mentioning.
TMI was simply turned into a scare story by the media for example.

You've forgotten about Windscale then? As usual, the U.K. screwed up
first.

 

[[email protected]]

in messageOn Fri, 23 May 2008 09:25:52 -0700, "Bob Eld"
[snip]
The governor of Wyoming wants to make synthetic gasoline out of
Wyoming coal. That actually makes more sense because it powers
existing vehicles. With the Hybrids the total fleet would have to
change.
But, coal in NOT the answer. The better answer is biofuels. They
must be fully developed an implemented.
Biofuels?  Is that what you get when you convert leftist weenie bull
shit into methane ?
                                        ...Jim Thompson
No, actually it's collecting and utilizing the hot air, smoke and
intestinal gas from CONservative politicians and blow hard talk show
host and other repug nitwits out there. This smoke and gas is used to
raise steam in giant boilers to operate a closed rankine cycle power
plant. There is enough blow off from these jackasses to generate about
8 GWatts of power.
As with most thermodynamic cycles, republicans and CONservatives,
about 60% goes right up the chimney doing NO USEFUL work. Carnot
didn't realize he had to deal with republicans!

Yet it's guys like AlGore that use energy FAR above the ordinary household
in energy,while promoting "green" for everyone else.Or like liberal Ted
Kennedy who blocked the windfarm slated for far off his Hyannisport
compound.
Also the jet-set Hollywood liberals that fly on private planes instead of
more-efficient commercial passenger jets.

Leftist weenies are far more "do as I say and not as I do" than
convervatives.

There aren't all that many leftist weenies who have the resources to
be as extravagant as the representative rightist, and I'd guess that a
rather smaller proportion of that small group actually exploit that
capacity when you compare them with their right wing equivalents.

Al Gore and his staff do use a lot of energy, but they also
communicate the global warming message on a large scale. Exxon-Mobil
committed comparable shareholder resources to getting corruptible
"scientists" to exploit their established reputations by publishing
junk science in an effort to discredit the good science behind the
global warming message. I'd be inclined to say that Al Gore's
extravagance - such as it is - is rather more morally justifiable.

 

[[email protected]]

[snip]
The governor of Wyoming wants to make synthetic gasoline out of Wyoming
coal. That actually makes more sense because it powers existing vehicles.
With the Hybrids the total fleet would have to change.
But, coal in NOT the answer. The better answer is biofuels. They must be
fully developed an implemented.
Biofuels?  Is that what you get when you convert leftist weenie bull
shit into methane ?
                                       ...Jim Thompson

No, actually it's collecting and utilizing the hot air, smoke and intestinal
gas from CONservative politicians and blow hard talk show host and other
repug nitwits out there. This smoke and gas is used to raise steam in giant
boilers to operate a closed rankine cycle power plant. There is enough blow
off from these jackasses to generate about 8 GWatts of power.

As with most thermodynamic cycles, republicans and CONservatives, about 60%
goes right up the chimney doing NO USEFUL work. Carnot didn't realize he had
to deal with republicans!

At least we are self-sufficient ;-)

Leftist weenies can't manage without _taking_ from more productive
individuals... Marx/Engels at its finest :-(

It depends on how you define productive. You can't eat money.

Actually, what Marx and Engles pointed out was that the rightists
don't produce anything - they exploit the productive capacity of the
leftist working classes and - in the absence of a well organised
trade union movement - only give their workers the bare minimum needed
to keep them alive.

Bismark was the first right wing politician to realise that by giving
the workers just a little bit more than the the bare minimum he could
decrease their motivation to join and support trade unions and leave
the capitalists with a slightly smaller portion of a significantly
bigger pie.

The U.S. republicans have never really understood this point, and
still want the freedom to wreck the economy by screwing their working
class beyond the point of diminishing returns.

 

[Tim Williams]

3. They can be designed to actually produce new fuel, making it
essentially free.

So what happens when that fuel runs out? Oh...

Reprocessing isn't free, and in fact it costs a significant portion of the
reactor's output. I've heard figures of only three times more capacity to
burn U238 --> Pu239 and other transuranics, when reprocessing is factored
in. Considering U235 is less than 1% of naturally occuring fuel, that's a
considerable loss, going from over 100 times down to just 3. Hardly seems
worth the expense.

4. Japan and France, and probably some other countries, get a
very large proportion of their power by nuclear plants - obviously,
somebody's figured out a way to do it safely, and profitably.

Japan and France together occupy about half the population of the U.S., and
don't burn as much energy per capita (remember we're notoriously
power-hungry...politically or otherwise). If much of the world adopted
nuclear for 100% of their needs, the risk would be substantially higher.

What's more, I've heard estimates of anywhere from 100 years worth of fuel,
to just 3 years, if the world switched to nuclear power. I don't know the
details of these figures, but you do need to consider just how much energy
the world actually uses. It's a *LOT*.

5. Reactor waste, you say? Just find out where the gov't is putting
theirs, and put the civilian waste in the same place.

Hah, wasn't there a tale of nuclear waste being burned in open pits with
gasoline or something at Area 51? Probably as told by, like...Bob Lazar,
but hey...

Tim

 

[Tim Williams]

You've forgotten about Windscale then? As usual, the U.K. screwed up
first.

He said *western*. The UK is a couple THOUSAND miles EAST of the U.S.,
which you should know by now is the center of the world. So there. ;-)

What he should've said is, no *modern* western nuclear reactor *design*,
such as used at TMI. For instance, the period's corresponding eastern
design, the Soviet RBMK, was inherently unstable and weren't shielded with
a huge-assed concrete reactor dome.

Tim

 

[Tim Williams]

Yet it's guys like AlGore that use energy FAR above the ordinary household
in energy,while promoting "green" for everyone else.

Nah nah, you have to look at it on the larger scale. For one thing, he's
only following Thomas Jefferson, "do as I say, not as I do", which surely
should be a most patriotic, American approach to begin with.

Now, you've got to figure that, if his efforts can starve more than ten
poor households out of existence, then their energy consumption more than
compensates for his own, and he has therefore made a net benefit in
reducing energy consumption. See how that works? ;-)

Tim

 

[rickman]

You still want to keep the house dehumidified during the day.

I recently interviewed with a company that makes smart power meters.
They can control loads, so the power company can level loads without
blacking out everything. For instance, I doesn't matter much if a
water heater is turned off for a few hours, or the water heaters
across town are cycled. Much better to turn them off for some hours
during the day than have large peaks. The meters network with their
neighbors so metering and control can be done across wide areas.
Slick stuff.

When I was a kid, we had "dumb" electric meters, one for the water
heater and one for the rest of the house. But we had "smart" rates.
If we let the power company set the water heater meter so that it was
cut off during peak load times, we got a break on the rate.

I think that a lot of this should be done by providing rates dependent
on the aggregate amount of juice used. If rates were higher during
the day, *everyone* would be cutting back on electricity use during
the day.

I don't see how the "smart" load controls can do a good job. For all
practical purposes this is exactly the same as a rolling blackout,
just spread out rather than being focused on a specific area. If my
AC is running 80% of the day to keep the house cool and the meter cuts
"levels" it for an hour, that just means it will run continuously for
the rest of the day playing catchup raising the peak load the rest of
the day. This would cause other houses to be "leveled" which will
raise the peak load the rest of the day, resulting in more
"leveling"... You see where this is going. Load leveling won't
reduce peaks without having an effect on the average temperature in
the places being cooled... unless there is some means of leveling over
a 24 hour period which requires energy storage.

The point of using the hybrid batteries for this is that they are
actually well suited to night time charging since that is when they
are not otherwise used and as long as you aren't running them, they
represent untapped power generation. This is a useful way to level
the load over a 24 hour period.

My concern about using the hybrids this way is that the batteries will
wear out earlier and these are some seriously expensive batteries.
But that is the point of paying the consumer for his storage of
energy. Since this is all done with rate changes between day and
night, the consumer will be the one paying and power usage will also
be moderated during the day.

Someone said you have to "dehumidify" during the day... maybe you do
to some degree, but if you aren't in the house, there is very little
moisture entering it. It is when you open the doors that most of the
moisture enters the house. That can be removed at night when you need
to cool the house. The "smart" controls need to be able to turn the
AC way back when you are not there and then return the house to the
conditions you want *before* you return home. So they need to be
controlled from your cell phone or from your work computer. A simple
timer just doesn't cut it for many of us not on a timetable.

Rick

 

[Tim Williams]

Then you've never lived in FLorida.

Or an old house. This house was built in 1898 and leaks like a sieve!

Tim

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

I heard a bit of a politician on the radio today. He was governor of
one of the western states. He said some things that I didn't hear any
supporting evidence for. I wonder if there are facts to support these
ideas.

He seemed to think that driving hybrids is the answer to the oil
problem. He describes this scenario. Everyone drives a hybrid which
can be plugged into the power grid and charged at night when the power
grid is way below peak usage. Then they can be driven up to 40 miles
the next day without using any fuel.

He would also set the power rates at lower amounts at off peak times
and higher during the daily peaks. You would be able to sell power to
the grid at the same price that it would cost you to buy it. So if
you weren't driving that day, you could sell power back from your
hybrid to the power company and make a profit!

He claimed that this would eliminate our need for foreign oil.

I don't get it. Sure hybrids can save fuel. If you otherwise drive a
vehicle that gets 20 MPG and you switch to a hybrid that gets 40 MPG,
you save half the fuel you otherwise would use. But a 50% savings on
auto use of petroleum is not a 50% savings in imported oil. There are
many, many other uses of oil. The fuel saved by plugging into the
power grid may not be a savings at all. Where does this power come
from? A lot of power plants burn petroleum. Otherwise they burn coal
which is very dirty or use nuclear energy which is a whole 'nother can
of worms.

I don't remember his name. Anyone here know who this is? Do his
numbers add up? Has he given any real numbers to support his claim or
is this one of those half baked ideas that sounds good in a sound
bite, like having a gas tax "holiday"?

Just switching to hybrids won't do any significant good, especially now
that Detroit is selling bigger, heavier, more powerful hybrids that still
use about the same amount of energy to get from point A to B. Even the
Toyota Prius is becoming less efficient because they have added more
horsepower and weight. A real contribution will be made by driving smaller
vehicles with less power, and driving them more conservatively. If a
significant number of people switched to more efficient vehicles for daily
use, and/or changed their driving habits, demand for gasoline would drop
enough to cause a surplus, and prices will immediately drop. If it happened
quickly enough, it would create a storage crisis, as the refineries keep
pumping, ships keep coming into port, and tanker trucks fill up, expecting
to fill up tanks at gas stations. The strategic reserves are already near
capacity, and there is very little individual storage capacity, so even if
prices would drop to $2, there would be no place to put the excess
gasoline. But it probably "ain't gonna happen".

Paul

 

[Martin Griffith]

A large part of "the oil problem" is the falling dollar and the
resulting market instability.

It'll all be fixed when crude is priced in Euros. But then central banks
won't need dollar reserves. The exchange rates will collapse and you and
I won't be able to raise the money to buy new tires for the old pickup
truck, let alone a brand new hybrid car.

Like this?
http://pricedingold.com/us-retail-gasoline/


martin

 

[rickman]

Or an old house. This house was built in 1898 and leaks like a sieve!

I live in an old house (ca 1962 with plenty of unintended ventilation)
near Washington, DC with summer humidity of nearly 100 % and temps
above 90F. Unless you are in the middle of the Everglades, you got
nothing on us. The bottom line is that even leaky houses don't leak
unless something is pushing the air. Humid weather seldom has
significant winds and if you aren't home, no one is opening the
doors. I have left my house closed up and the AC off for hours during
the day. Other than the first hour that it takes to get the temp down
to anything remotely reasonable, it is then fine.

That is the point. If the house is allowed to heat up during the day,
it then takes less work to cool it down than it would to keep it cool
all day. But no one wants to come home to a house that is 90F inside
and wait for it to cool down. But if the AC is smart enough to
actually "know" when you will be home, then it can cool it down to
match your needs.

The idea of using a "smart" electric meter to achieve the same power
reducing effect as rolling blackouts is bogus. AC, the primary power
consumption, is duty cycle driven. The thermostat in your house is
actually a duty cycle modulator to maintain a temperature. If the
power company has control over it to cut it out for periods at peak
usage, all that does is to make the AC run at a *higher* duty cycle
the rest of the time. The only way they can actually save power is to
reduce the periods that your AC is enabled to the point where the duty
cycle is below where it can maintain the set temperature. Then the
temperature inside will rise, because the power company is now
regulating it, not your thermostat.

Rick

 

[rickman]

Welcome to the Usenet. Its your job to step over the steaming piles of
dung, looking for the gems of knowledge.

I don't see this as inevitable. I participate in many other groups
and this is the only one that periodically invokes the Nazi clause of
usenet.

But there is the policy of "When in Rome...". Since I disagree with
you, maybe I should call you some offensive name and ridicule your
heritage???

Naaah. I'll just sit back and watch the idiots play.

 

[rickman]

[email protected] wrote:



Remove the (political) restrictions on waste reprocessing. To keep the
high level product out of terrorist hands, put the gov't in charge of it
instead of the lowest bidder. This would probably be a contractor
facility located in the middle of a military base.

There was an interesting opinion article on this in the current issue
of Scientific American. The author pointed out a lot of problems with
reprocessing which include the fact that the power plants that use the
reprocessed fuel are much more dangerous, so much that we scrapped
plans for them many years ago. Also the construction costs for the
reprocessing plants required is in the 100's of billions... and when
was the last time something like this was built *on budget*?

The end waste product would be a much lower volume than what we bury
today. That can be glassified and stored in a relatively small volume.

The issue of storage is very under-researched in the sense that we
only have data on how to store these materials for about 10% of the
time required. After that it is up to the ingenuity of those who come
after us to figure out. Is that the sort of legacy we want to leave
behind? I don't want my generation to be responsible for a Nuclear
"Love Canal".

Don't find some desolate place in the middle of Nevada to bury it and
forget it. Build a 'temple' right in the middle of a major metropolitan
area. It'll be right there, where people can see it, remember why it was
build and keep alive the knowledge of why future generations must keep
the facility in good repair.

That might sound like a reasonable idea, but in 1000 years, it may
well result in the complete abandonment of the "major metropolitan"
area. Or worse, it may end up the target of a terrorist attack
resulting in the poisoning of millions.

Do you really think the energy problem can be solved so simply?

Rick

 

[krw]

how does the power meter control your WH or other in-house loads?
It would have to have a device wired into the WH and other loads.
(some may just plug in.)

Yes. Controlling these devices is trivial compared to the power
meter "network" though. BTW, the network is over-air RF. The other
obvious advantage is billing. No more meter-readers to pay inflated
union benefits to.

My local power company offers a thermostat that they can control to shut
off your AC during peak power demand periods.

They do that too, though IIRC, they control the temperature
"setback" (both for heat and AC). It's designed so any load can be
controlled by the power company to do a "soft" load shed, though
only the larger devices make sense. People may not like it but they
don't like "hard" load shedding much either. OTOH, perhaps a few
(million) more blackouts are needed to get people off their asses
and fire their representatives. $4 (and up) gas may have a silver
lining.

I didn't think an interview was a good place to discuss the security
implications though. ;-)

 

[krw]

No, Jim. Since all the Mexicans are leaving Mexcio, build them
across our southern border. Or use Sloman's back yard and an undersea
HV DC cable. Then it won't matter if it goes into meltdown. There
isn't one damn thing in that area worth saving, anyway.

There are *plenty* in Ohio too. Surprisingly, I never saw any
illegals in VT, the whitest and farthest left state in the union
(funny how that works). ;-)