K4YZ wrote:
Americans were use to having "the wide open spaces" and
cheap gas.


Well, we do still have some "wide open spaces".


So...where was the incentive to make itty-bitty gas sippers? That
wasn't what the American market wanted. Even now more and more SUV's
are rolling off the lines...even Honda and Suzuki have gotten on the
band wagon.

And SUV sales are in the dumpster.

Truck and SUV Sales Plunge as Gas Prices Rise
GM, Ford Hit Hardest in September

By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page D01

General Motors Corp. reported a sales drop of 24 percent compared with
the same month a year ago. Ford Motor Co.'s sales declined 20 percent.


Tuesday, October 4, 2005

SUV sales tank in Sept.

Double-digit losses sock Ford, GM as truck demand falls, employee
discounts for all cool off.

By Brett Clanton and Bryce G. Hoffman / The Detroit News

GM and Ford posted September U.S. sales declines of 24 percent and 20
percent, respectively, as consumers lost interest in employee-pricing
promotions and passed over big SUVs and trucks.

Light truck sales skidded an alarming 30 percent at GM and 28 percent at
Ford last month.

wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:

wrote:

Dave Heil wrote:


If you're talking about electrical energy, any of it which is
produced
but not consumed, is wasted energy. I can turn off my
appliances and
lights, but if no one else uses the electricity I'm not
using, it is wasted.


Dave,

Electricity supply doesn't work like that.

The production adjusts itself to the load. If the load
decreases, so
does production. There is no waste from reduced loading. In
fact, if
the load goes down enough, utilities shut down their least-
efficient
plants.

I accept your statements as fact, as far as they go.


They go pretty far.


However, if
electricity is generated and not consumed, it is wasted.


Where does it go? The utility doesn't put huge dummy loads on
line.

Actually, it does. They are in the form of transformers and wiring.
From what I've read, a little over 8% of generated power is wasted
regardless of the load. That allows no leeway for leakage. That's just
the waste built into the system. The conversion from mechanical to
electrical power is just a little over 41% efficient.

Generally, power is shifted to other parts of the grid if unneeded in
one area, so that it is used where there is demand. If locally
generated power was not connected to a grid, what would happen to
electricity generated, but not used? If my home generator is run at
full load, I might get eight hours of run time. If it is run at 50%
load, I might get only ten hours of run time from the same tank of fuel.
Doesn't this indicate that there is additional waste?

I don't know enough about controlling the total reactive component to
address it.


Dave K8MN

KØHB wrote:
"Dave Heil" wrote


Congrats on Minnesota's capturing the Little Brown Jug for the first time in
nineteen years. That was a long drought.



Those guys give me fits! Win their first four games with 40-50 points per game,
get embarrased at Happy Valley last weekend, then grind out a nice unexpected
win against Michigan. The next two weeks against strong Divisional rivals
(Wisconsin, Ohio State) will tell the tale.

Wisconsin and Ohio State certainly got softened up a bit this weekend.
Penn State looked pretty good.

West Virginia didn't exactly look stellar in beating up little old Rutgers.

Dave K8MN

wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:

Mike Coslo wrote:

Dave Heil wrote:

wrote:

K4YZ wrote:

wrote:

K4YZ wrote:


"THOSE" cars have been pretty much standard for 20 years now...

Yet they still burn gasoline and other petroleum based fuels. The fleet
mileage standards are not improving. The USA imports much more energy
(almost all of it in the form of oil and natural gas) than in the
1970s.



My mileage standards are doing fine. I'm on my third Dodge Neon. The
2 liter engine delivers about 33 mpg on the highway. I'm tall but I
have 4 or 5 inches of space between the top of my head and the roof of
the car.

Yes, the U.S.A. imports more oil than it produces. It looks as if we
*do* have an energy policy and part of it seems to be, "Let's use
theirs before we use ours".


Well, if that is our game plan, we better have enough reserves to
fight most of the world off. Otherwise it is dangerous brinkmanship.

The countries which produce oil are interested in selling it. We're
interested in buying it. I don't see any danger in that at all.


The danger is what happens if they decide not to sell it. Or jack up
the price. Or require all sorts of conditions.

Fortunately, OPEC isn't very cohesive. We're not very good at accepting
conditions and we do have political and economic leverage.

Most of all, there's what they do with the money. Buying anyhting from
anyone empowers that person to do things, some of which you may not
like.

Okay. How much time do you spend thinking about what the people from
whom we buy oil do with the proceeds? I don't spend much time thinking
about what the Kroger company does with the money I spend on food and I
spend even less pondering what the Nigerians do with their oil loot.

Why isn't there a massive program to solve our energy problems? The
White House has been in the hands of a former oilman for more than half
a decade now. You'd think there's be some understanding of what needs
to be done for the future, but where's the leadership?

Well, we aren't going to be driving electrics because of limited
range. The hybrids are quite expensive. The hydrogen-powered car
won't be viable until we can produce hydrogen cheaply.


I really doubt that H is going to ever be a valid fuel.

I used to think that but I heard a recent radio story which might change
my mind. The South Africans are developing a "pellet bed" small nuclear
reactor. Tennis ball-sized spheres of graphite and ceramic are packed
with yellow cake. Core temps can never get hot enough for meltdown but
are high enough to produce hydrogen and to desalinate sea water.


At what cost per btu of hydrogen produced?

As I understand it, the core heat is a byproduct of generating
electricity from these pellet bed reactors. It'll be a bonus. No cost
per btu of hydrogen was mentioned in the story.

What kind of leadership would you like to see?


I would like to see some leadership realizing that driving single
digit fuel millage SUV's is an unpatriotic act, that building under
insulated McMansions that take immense amounts of energy to heat is an
unpatriotic act.

Naaaah. Those who drive the SUVs are being bitten in the wallet. I
know a number of pickup truck owners hereabouts, who are buying small
cars. Nobody is building underinsulated anything these days.


The problem is that we have an enormous existing stock of cars, trucks
and houses, and it won't turn over so fast.

How fast if fast enough?

We've been this way before, too. You'd think we'd have learned.

What's this "we"? I learned a long time ago. It has been decades since
I owned a fuel guzzler.



My pal
W8RHM built his dream home three years ago. It is large and it has
geothermal heating. The heating system was supposed to pay for itself
within ten years or so. With the energy hikes of the past few years,
it'll be paid off much sooner. 'RHM is now paying winter heating bills
of 45-65 bucks.


Most of which is electricity to run the pumps.

That's right.


Those who have big, old homes will sell 'em to someone
who can afford to heat them.


If they can.

There's always somebody who wants a great big classic showplace of a
home. That somebody would generally have pockets deep enough to enable
him to heat it, cool it or to have it insulated. Full masonry
construction aside, it is pretty easy to insulate the exterior walls of
a barn. One can make holes in the existing walls from the inside and
blow in insulation before applying new drywall or simply patching where
the holes are drilled. One can make holes in the existing walls from
outside and apply vinyl siding.

The way we are with oil and gas in recent times reminds
me of the legendary lighting of cigars with 100 dollar bills. In yo'
face consumption...

You may feel free to paint me with that brush. My lease agreement with
Columbia Gas provides me with 300,000 cubic feet of gas yearly. I'm
barely using more than half.


Not everyone can live atop a gas well.

....nor would everyone *want to*. Around here, it is quite possible for
just about anyone who wants to own such property, to do it. Some of 'em
receive residuals from the gas wells. Some receive free gas. In these
days, the free gas folks are the winners. My point was that if I'm
entitled to 300,000 cubic feet per year, I'm going to think of as many
ways as I can to use that much natural gas. In the cold weather months,
it would be practical to run my generator a day or two at a time in
order to reduce my electrical bill. It wouldn't be practical in hot
weather because my generator isn't big enough to run the central air.

I'm heating a glassed-in side porch and a workshop in the barn. As soon
as I get around to it, I'm adding a greenhouse lean to on the back of
the barn. I've a gas conversion kit for a gasoline generator. In
short, I'm going to very conspicuously use right up to that 300,000
cubic feet and I'm not going to feel any guilt over it at all.


I think that one critical lesson that should be gleaned from these
two hurricanes this summer is that we are incredibly vulnerable in a few
important areas. under the right circumstances, losing that much oil and
gas production could be a near fatal blow.

That's right. We need to drill in more places. ANWAR should be
hurricane proof.


But not blizzard-proof. Nor drunken-oil-tanker-captain-proof.

I don't see high odds of those things taking out drilling platforms.
Environmentalists have claimed that pipelines would be disruptive to the
caribou herds. In other areas of Alaska, where there are currently such
pipelines, the caribou huddle near the pipes and enjoy the heat.
They're thriving.

Nor can it provide near enough oil to solve the problem.

We don't need enough from the one source to solve the problem. We need
enough sources to reduce the problem until additional sources are up and
running.

Nobody wants to discuss one of the real solutions to sufficient energy:
more nuke reactors.


Are they a real solution?

How much does it cost to extract the fuel to run them?
How much to build and operate them?
How much to decomission after they are worn out?
How much to deal with the waste?

I don't have the answers. I think the new pellet bed reactors are worth
looking into.

A lot of those costs have been hidden from the utility customer.

Not really. The consumer gets to pay the tab in the end.

I say the best thing to do now is to *not* rebuild the parts of NO that
are below sea level. Salvage what can be saved, and move away.



Will Our President exhibit leadership and say that's what should be
done? Or will he make exorbitant promises, pouring much more money into
rebuilding than it would take to relocate?



Do you really think that the POTUS has the clout to declare that NOLA
won't be rebuilt?


Nope. New Orleans will be rebuilt, and will be rebuilt again, and
perhaps a third or forth time, until it slips beneath the waves for good.

Yep and people are free to build where they choose.


Not really.

Really, within reason.

Without the freedom
to make choices, America wouldn't be America. I won't be
rushing to buy
a home in New Orleans but most of those folks wouldn't live on a hilltop
in rural West Virginia. That suits their needs...and mine.


The problem isn't the choice. It's the fact that we are expected to
fund and support other people's bad choices.

There's the rub. As in my post which responded to Mike, others should
be free to make bad choices, but it is up to them to fund them.

The factor that is forgotten here is that almost all construction
requires permits, insurance and financing. Government gives the
permits, and has an influence on the insurance and financing.

I don't know about your area. It isn't necessary to have a permit to
build a home within the county here. An electrical inspection is
necessary. Towns all have different regulations and permits.
If you have sufficient acreage here, it isn't even necessary to install
a septic system, as long as you aren't discharging sewage into or near a
stream.

How many people will choose to rebuild in NO if the govt says that the
whole thing is a bad idea and they're not going to fix the levees, nor
provide new flood insurance for below-sea-level construction?

That "if the government says" thing is a hypothetical. The rebuilding
of New Orleans is a given.

Suppose I were to build a house whose roof could not stand the snow
loads encountered here in EPA in a bad winter.

And suppose a bad winter came along and the roof collapsed.

Should I expect the govt. to pay to rebuild my roof?

No. If you had insurance which covered such an occurance, your policy
should pay. If you were unable to to obtain such insurance, you'd pay.

Worse - should I expect that they would allow me to build it the same
way again?

Sure. If you're paying for the roof and for the insurance, I think you
have the freedom to be unwise as many times as you can afford it.

Of course the above isn't likely to happen because I'd never get a
permit nor pass inspection to put up such an inadequate structure. But
the principle is the same as building below sea level in a flood zone.

You might obtain a permit to construct an approved structure which might
still be destroyed. It could also be that something other than the roof
might fail.

My house is at a little over 1500' in elevation. I did not purchase
flood insurance. Last year's rains from Ivan flooded my basement to a
depth of a couple of feet. My furnace and electronic air cleaner
circuit boards were ruined. I had to pay for repairs. I still don't
have flood insurance...but I have a sump pump. I paid for that too.

One thing's for su We'll not see leadership on this issue from the
current administration.

Then it won't be any different from the last four or five
administrations, will it?

Anyone else chase K7C?

Dave K8MN

Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:

wrote:

Dave Heil wrote:

If you're talking about electrical energy, any of it which is
produced
but not consumed, is wasted energy. I can turn off my
appliances and
lights, but if no one else uses the electricity I'm not
using, it is wasted.


Dave,

Electricity supply doesn't work like that.

The production adjusts itself to the load. If the load
decreases, so
does production. There is no waste from reduced loading. In
fact, if
the load goes down enough, utilities shut down their least-
efficient
plants.

I accept your statements as fact, as far as they go.


They go pretty far.


However, if
electricity is generated and not consumed, it is wasted.


Where does it go? The utility doesn't put huge dummy loads on
line.

Actually, it does.

No, they don't.

They are in the form of transformers and wiring.

Those losses are not dummy loads, they're inefficiencies. They are not
connected to use up power others don't use.

From what I've read, a little over 8% of generated power is
wasted regardless of the load.

8% of 100 kVA is 8 kVa. 8% of 50 kVA is 4 kVA. As the load goes down,
so does the waste.

Of course the situation is somewhat more complex, because even with no
load there is some loss, the loss is temperature dependent, etc.

That allows no leeway for leakage.

It includes "leakage". Copper loss, dielectric loss, skin effect,
corona, etc.

That's just
the waste built into the system. The conversion from
mechanical to
electrical power is just a little over 41% efficient.

That number is actually from the heat in the fuel to the final
customer. It includes boiler losses, turbine losses, alternator losses,
transmission and distribution losses, and all the electricity used to
run the plant and auxiliary loads.

It's actually very good compared to, say, a car.

Generally, power is shifted to other parts of the grid if
unneeded in
one area, so that it is used where there is demand.

Not really. If the load goes down, less is generated.

If locally
generated power was not connected to a grid, what would happen to
electricity generated, but not used?

It's not generated in the first place.

If my home generator is run at
full load, I might get eight hours of run time. If it is run at 50%
load, I might get only ten hours of run time from the same tank of fuel.
Doesn't this indicate that there is additional waste?

What you're seeing is the inefficiency of the *engine* at light load.

A perfect genset that burns X gallons per hour at full load would
burn 0.5X gallons at half load, 0.25X gallons at quarter load and
nothing at all at no load. But real engines aren't that good, so you
might find that a real genset that burns X gallons per hour at full
load burns 0.65X gallons at half load, 0.4X gallons at quarter load and
0.2X gallons at no load. The extra gas goes to run the engine itself -
unbolt the alternator and the engine will still burn about 0.2X gallons
per hour just to spin the shaft. Just like your car uses gas at idle.

It's the engine, not the electrical system.

This is where hybrids get their efficiency improvements. The engine in
a hybrid is almost never idling. It's either driving the car, charging
the battery or shut down.


I don't know enough about controlling the total reactive
component to address it.

I do. Utilities always aim for unity power factor. They have auxiliary
capacitors that are switched in to compensate. Some big customers can
control their power factor and compensate the system as well. Ever hear
of a synchronous condenser?

73 de Jim, N2EY

KØHB wrote:
"Michael Coslo" wrote


I would like to see some leadership realizing that driving single digit
fuel millage SUV's is an unpatriotic act, that building under insulated
McMansions that take immense amounts of energy to heat is an unpatriotic
act.


Naaaah. Those who drive the SUVs are being bitten in the wallet.

Sure. But they are also using up a critical strategic resource, contributing
to the imbalance of trade, and other things like that. Some patriots.



Patriotic? Unpatriotic?

Don't look now, but economics pretty much went global about 50 years ago.
"Patriotism" has didly-squat to do with it.

I'm not talking about overall economics, Hans. I'm talking about the US
importing a large percentage of its oil needs.

If you had to choose between fuel for some Escalade luvvin momma, and
the fuel for say our military to train with, who would ya choose?

Look at the big picture. While it is always nice to have both the jet
and the soccer mom accommodated, since many of the people we import oil
from are not the closest allies, the day will come when we have to choose.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:

Dave Heil wrote:


If you're talking about electrical energy, any of it which is
produced
but not consumed, is wasted energy. I can turn off my
appliances and
lights, but if no one else uses the electricity I'm not using, it
is wasted.



Dave,

Electricity supply doesn't work like that.

The production adjusts itself to the load. If the load decreases, so
does production. There is no waste from reduced loading. In fact, if
the load goes down enough, utilities shut down their least-efficient
plants.


I accept your statements as fact, as far as they go. However, if
electricity is generated and not consumed, it is wasted. If I have a 25
KVA generator running and only use 12 KVA, the available balance is gone
forever. Admittedly, the generator will use less fuel under the smaller
load.

Jim is correct, especially because of the scale of the power
generation. The emergency gas generator is pretty much uncontrolled,
save for gas savings/expenditures due to load. The Power grid has a lot
of controls on it regarding generation. That is one of the reasons that
utilities are not all that wild about people who "co-generate". It makes
their job a bit more complex keeping track of it all.

- Mike KB3EIA -

KØHB wrote:
"Dave Heil" wrote


Congrats on Minnesota's capturing the Little Brown Jug for the first time in
nineteen years. That was a long drought.



Those guys give me fits! Win their first four games with 40-50 points per game,
get embarrased at Happy Valley last weekend, then grind out a nice unexpected
win against Michigan. The next two weeks against strong Divisional rivals
(Wisconsin, Ohio State) will tell the tale.

It appears that the Nits were not a fluke, though.

- Mike -

"Mike Coslo" wrote


I'm not talking about overall economics, Hans. I'm talking about the US
importing a large percentage of its oil needs.


We import a large percentage of a lot of stuff, both raw material and finished
goods. Coffee. Rubber. Titanium. Tin. Wolfram. Textiles. Clothing. And,
yes, even oil.

We also export to other countries a large percentage of their needs. Food
(wheat/soy/corn/meat/dairy products). Lumber. Technology. Education.
Medicine.



If you had to choose between fuel for some Escalade luvvin momma, and the fuel
for say our military to train with, who would ya choose?


I could ask a corresponding patronizing question about any of the other goods I
mentioned.

The point is that individuals here don't make that choice about oil any more
than a citizen of Japan makes that choice about lumber when they want to build a
new home. If the cost of oil goes too high, then Escalades will fall from favor
and be replaced by and Vegas and Pintos. If the price of lumber gets too high,
Japanese homes will be built from compressed rice straw or some other material.

Has nothing to do with patriotism. Has to do with simple economics.


Look at the big picture.

I do.

73, de Hans, K0HB

Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote:

But "we" didn't, because "we" didn't think it was worth the costs.

"We" are busy selling our hats to each other at the moment. "We" don't
have a national will to do great things any more.

And I think "we" made the right decision.

Lessay we concentrate all our resources into feeding the poor, fixing
all the social inequalities, and making the world a better place for our
children and our childrens children.

After all that. I would wager my life that there will still be poor,
there will still be starving people, there will still be inequality, and
the world will not be any better a place than it is today.

A-yup.

Brian ought to be able to at least partially attest to this...I am
sure Somalia bears some resemblence...

While on one of those missions that he and Lennie said I wasn't on,
we were briefed on the poverty of the local community, certain cultural
do's and don'ts and the likelyhood of who/where the "bad guys" would
be.

During the "these are really poor folks" part of the lecture, we
were told about how the average (certain Central American country)
citizen only earned less than the equivilent of USD $1000/yr. And
indeed, when we got there, there were some of those same kids you see
at 3AM, doe-eyed and playing in squalid poverty.

We were only in this community 6 days, and I was initially prone
to dispensing my MREs to the kids...Until I realized that almost
everyone had an AK-47, M-16, or FN-FAL rifle...And each bragged of how
much it cost him to get it...

They will live in putrid, debilitating poverty, but manage to find
the cash for guns and ammunition.

That's where my liberal streak ended.

I am always amazed at the CNN, MSN, and other news shows that have
"on the scene" reporters in countless third-world countries that are
pontificating about poverty while the men in the streets are carrying
assault rifles like my wife carries her purse.

73

Steve, K4YZ