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Kenm123t
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 06:30 pm: | 
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I priced my home at my cost to be 60 % off grid Hurricanes are problem here. My cost would have been. 40k now thats battery back up with generator assist. Wind studies showed a Berkey wind generator was a waste of money not enough wind. We run about 9cts a kwh in so florida. My bill for 3000sqft lots of glass. pool a/c in garage is about $280 Pay back on a 40 k solar system is not a good deal. We have 4 soon to be 8 units on the two FPL nuc sites. With the price of copper and aluminum going up daily you may find your solar system being (Havested by the zombies for scrap ) When you take into account the real cost of alternative power its not realy a good deal Buy your kid his solar system when he's born he might live long enough to pay for it |
Strokizator
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 06:49 pm: |
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Ken, I suppose it all depends on where you live. Here in Cali, I figured a break even point of fewer than 5 years when I bought mine a year and a half ago. Given recent developments it will likely be even less.
BTW, your same bill here for 3100 kWh ($280/$0.09) would be over $1,100.00 in the summer season. |
J2blue
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 07:23 pm: |
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Sorry, but I don't find the poets article in the LA Times likable, or useful at all. He can take an 8 ounce glass someone pours 7 ounces of water into and declare it nearly empty. That is not rational. He tries to make rational arguments but there are many problems with his presentation of those arguments. It may make sense in his own mind, primarily because it fits the outcome he wishes for, but it doesn't make sense in any "true" way. |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 07:25 pm: |
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Bigblock, I'm impressed. Solar can work.
So, $10k/ten years. ( my research local...cloudy northern lands ) $30k/five years. ( your buddy. )
Hard to justify for most people. I'm planning on passive solar thermal air heating for the garage, when I can afford to build the garage. Mother Earth news design, simple, cheap, should be enough to keep the garage over 40 deg in winter sorta...the garage will lose all the hot air when you pull in, but the slab and walls should retain enough heat to thaw car.
If I can afford a garage...That's assuming that gas won't go too much over $5 locally. Wish us luck. ( paid $4.16 yesterday, in a foreign land where it's cheaper )
Now, if you'd just let me have a little reactor waste to heat my house, and boil a little water....... screw solar. I know how to do it safely. Dumbo style heat exchanger, ( 60's nuclear rocket tech ) helium closed cycle primary loop. I could make the unit for about a grand not counting reactor waste. No possibility of meltdown or runaway.
People bitch about "waste", they just don't understand that something that's going to be hot for a century is not waste, it's power. |
J2blue
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 07:43 pm: |
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I find this article to be much more useful to the discussion, more balanced, yet still weak in some areas. The point isn't to villify or vindicate "Nuclear Power" but to accurately assess the damage and potential danger of this particular accident.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/12/japan. nuclear.disaster.fukushima/index.html?hpt=Sbin |
Kenm123t
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 07:58 pm: |
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Stroke is you system grid tie or do you have batteries batteries are major expense and very few ever reach the projected life span since few will do the maintence and charging properly |
Bigblock
| | Posted on Friday, April 15, 2011 - 02:27 pm: |
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of course, solar won't be cost efficient for everyone, everywhere. That's not the point. It does work in many places quite well, however.
And it's still way too early to be totally condemning or even partially vindicating Fukushima.
Even after 25 years it's difficult to get a real solid consensus on Chernobyl. |
Bigblock
| | Posted on Friday, April 15, 2011 - 02:27 pm: |
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Good discussion.
Let's go riding! |
Ezblast
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 04:21 am: |
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Both solar and wind power have come a long way, private hydro though still has a long way to go. I've often thought of a 100 acre low mountain area property with 3 windmills, a roof full of solar panels, and a hydro back up would be a really good way to go when retired - a man can dream - lol
EZ |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 07:14 am: |
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Don't forget the drawbridge.
I have a buddy with a stream that he's looked at putting microhydro in. My creek is closer to a ditch, ( actually, much of it IS a ditch ) so that's out for me.
My neighbor has a cool windmill with a diffuser shroud. It's 500 yards away, I don't hear a thing, and all it needs for maximum cool is a better paint job. Flames, or a flower would both work nice. ( either would be a statement of personality. )
http://www.catia.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ A-Shrouded-Wind-Turbine-Generating-High-Output-Pow er-with-Wind-lens-Technology1.pdf
I haven't asked how much power he gets, but I see it sitting idle a lot, and I suspect his location is suboptimal for flow. My side yard would be better, because of the shape of the valley. ( yeah, I actually studied micrometeorology, and USED it for years flying gliders. Wonder why I mock the Global Warming Cultists? I actually took meteorology, unlike Gore who flunked out of the seminary )
Still for steady, reliable power, you want to make water hot. Nuclear does that without greenhouse gases. ( if you care ) Nuclear, while requiring mining, transport, and processing, like fossil fuels, needs far less mining than coal, Way less transport, and is mining of rock, not liquids. There is also the possibility of ocean mining of seawater to extract heavy metals, either with magnetohydrodynamic ducts on ships or platforms... or genetically improved algae to concentrate metals.
Ultimately, our Uranium needs could be met with biological based ( algae ponds ) systems designed to desalinate water and extract useful minerals.
While we wait for that, we need to reprocess all that used fuel, build new, safe plants that can survive an earthquake ( like the Japanese plants did, just fine ) and something taking out the grid and backup power. ( massive tsunami did the real damage to the Japanese plant by taking out the backup generators.) Learn from mistakes, not exploit them for religious or secular power. That's the American Way. |
Bigblock
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 01:52 pm: |
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Oh yeah, I forgot hydro- a friend of mine lives on a mountain in Mendocino, and they make all their power with hydro. Runs 24-7, 365. They have a lot of water up there and sell to a bottling company for a decent income. A heck of a nice trout pond, too! |
Bigblock
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 01:58 pm: |
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Simplest method imaginable. A pipe runs into a small shed to a tiny little one bearing turbine, which directly spins the small generator, maybe 10,000 watts? I don't remember, it's been a decade since I was up there. |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - 10:46 pm: |
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http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw79.html
A good article on waste disposal.
The concepts, and practice, of using a particle beam to burn radioactive waste into relative harmlessness are quite simple. We've had a half century plus of spraying stuff with beams just to see what happens. It's pretty much cookbook nuclear chemistry.
Meaning it's pretty easy compared to finding pentaquarks or Higg's Bosons. We are at a point in Science where we are using more and more powerful tools to try and see, and sometimes make, stuff that may not exist, as we look beyond the known.
As far as Radiation not being bad for you? It's a matter of statistics, and attitude.
Zero doesn't exist. A million Rems will fry you. Hiding in a lead lined room won't make you live any longer, and in fact would eventually poison you.....
There's a variable background level of ionizing radiation....and we get UV burned too. If you choose to be a pilot and fly in the stratosphere, you're statistically more prone to cancers. Ditto if you work next to a badly maintained TSA x-ray toy. I'd worry more about lowest bidder repair work on a body scanner than a plane trip. |
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