Hey 2D
Might as well have this conversation in public:
Solar panel kits
How far down would you think this would have to come before it was feasible?
Also: Combination systems:
Vacuum insulated black water pipes for pre-heating water before heading into the water tank.
Underground piping for creating a temp difference for a compressor.
How can you figure out what it is actually going to return?
I mean come on, if you are going to spend $5000.00 of beer money, you had better be dam sure that your going to get something back.
And one final question: do you think that people have not independently tried alternative energy because we are all basically too lazy and have no imagination for these sort of things?
Out of any one, 2D has the most time on his hands to sit around with a calculator and play with numbers.
22 comments Monday 18 Aug 2003 | Wolf | SlantyNet - General
I’ve thought about all this before, and in brief here are my thoughts :
a) solar power is very expensive to make. A 75Watt panel costs upwards of $500…and if you think about it, it only puts out 75Watts, which isn’t enough power to even do ONE 100 Watt light bulb. Solar is good if you can’t hook into the power grid, but it just isn’t worth it if you’re able to plug into normal, cheap electricity.
b) Black thermal water pipes are a great idea. They do a great job of preheating the water, and are cheap to install.
c) My dad actually drew up plans for a underground differential heat pump (works similar to how your refridgerator works), but he never got around to making it. We talked about it about 1 year ago. He seemed to think it was a viable source of cheap power.
solar hot water makes way more sense and is a lot more energy efficient than photovoltaics. not much point in photovoltaics vancouver, where electricity is dirt cheap and is (mostly) renewable already.
I do remember being amazed at the study that pointed out the the majority of Canadian power comes form Coal plants. I guess we’re just so used to Hydro on the west coast.
Actually, looks like Hydro is our largest source of power. Nuclear and coal look to be about the same.
Hmmm… I certainly won’t argue but I thought for sure that the report said that it was coal. In fact it was specifically pointing out that candians had the in-accurate opinion that Hydro electricity was the most common.
Lets try that again:
But what about cars? Shouldn’t cars be taken into consideration when you chart power consumption?
Electric buses, subways and the skytrain add to the consuption of electricity. But we don’t consider cars in our power consumption (thus not addding gasoline & diesel used by non-electric vehicles to the charts)? Seems strange.
I wonder what the stats would be like then?
My folks have solar hot water, and even though Dad designed the house with the roof on the right angle and facing the best direction, the system is only good for two-three ppl. It did pay it self off in about 2 years though ’cause they aren’t on piped gas (and has a gas hot water system).
But our government is trying to get on the bat, like this project (the largest in the sthn hemisphere)
Queen Vic Market Solar System
Doesn’t take into account natural gas consumption in the home either. But I’m not sure how you’d go about measuring gas powered entities against electric powered entities. Convert a car’s horsepower into watts? Everything into Joules? Given the range of fuel efficiency in cars today, I suspect this would be very difficult to do. Doesn’t mean somebody shouldn’t try, but I wish them luck.
Well know a few that made their own energy and pushed power back the the power company,they got checks each month and the power company wasn’t real happy about it.
Yeah i would say go for it it’s got to pay in the long run.
And there is enough residual gass at your place to power this baby for a couple of days:
Biomass generators
Looks like SlantyK was right. Only 11% of power comes from renewable (solar, hydro) sources (according to the T.V. special last night on the CBC). The rest comes from natural gas, coal and nuclear. The spot even mention that most Canadians had the wrong impression that most of our power was generated from clean sources.
But then it begs the question: why is that chart so dam wrong (or is the T.V. show wrong)? The site even states: ” hydro power still accounts fir two-thirds of national generation”
[spelling mistake is not mine]
And then going through this wonderful site: I get the impression that the graph that SlantyOD posted only took into consideration power that was generated and passed onto the consumer via power lines. Not things like natual gass passed onto the consumer (heating houses, power generation on site…).
So, I could be wrong, but I think the difference is in wording: Power consumption V.S. Electrical generation.
And that should have been grammer mistake.
And spelling.
No, the spelling mistakes were mine. I should never poste before my morning coffee.
The difference is BC electric power consumption VS Canadian electric power consumption. Wolf, the show we were watching last night showed us power consumption for all of Canada, which is correct in stating that only 11% comes from Hydro…but in BC, 80% of our power comes from Hydro. So really…BC uses mostly Hydro power, but the rest of Canada uses barely any.
Us = Good; Rest of Canada = Bad
Wolf…you interested in spending a little money and building up a box to see what kinda hot water we could get from a black pipe / vacuum box? It wouldn’t cost much as an experiment, and I’ve got some ideas on how it could be constructed…
To quote the web site SlantyOD was looking at: ” hydro power still accounts fir two-thirds of national generation”
And I am always game to start building crazy contraptions. Hell, you’ve seen the rat cage I built for Loki didn’t you.
i thought that quebec was 90% hydro.
use low-e glass if you’re going to build a box. http://www.toolbase.org/tertiaryT.asp?DocumentID=3612&CategoryID=1282
Hell, I’d be in for constructing that too. I live in the house, if something is going to explode I at least want partial credit.
And what show were you watching (or was it just the news). I’m always a fan of proving I’m not crazy.
The Fonz says “Heeeeyyyyy”
Hummm…I could have sworn that the news report that Wolf and I was watching yesterday said that nationally, Canada was somewhere around 11% hydro.
Anywho, so Kelso and Wolf are interested in making this little boxy eh? I figure it wouldn’t be much more then a box with a glass roof with some black pipes running through it. Vacuum it all out, perhaps put some kind of reflective surface in the bottom, fill the black tubing with water and see what kind of hot water comes out of the black tubing later on.
I know even my dark green waterhose gets hella hot when it’s left out in the sun, so I can only imagine how hot a black pipe would get…
hella hot,… haha no more South Park for you! hehe
Forgot to tell ya all get out those telescopes tonight and check out MARS,closest it will be to us for a long long time!!!
Good lord Wolf, that was a cacophony of bad spelling and grammar, and then to correct it from bad spelling to bad grammer [sic], when it was in fact bad spelling .. I don’t know what to say .. =)
And your second link isn’t much good either, StatsCan probably has a pretty extensive site and I ain’t looking through it.