East Coast outage?

Sun Aug 17 21:48:05 UTC 2003

On Sunday 17 August 2003 03:11 pm, Having folded space, the Third Stage 
Guild Navigator said:
> On zondag, aug 17, 2003, at 20:57 Europe/Amsterdam,
>
> hackerwacker at tarpit.cybermesa.com wrote:

> Sure, a regular house has enough surface area to generate this
> electricity, but not appartment buildings or businesses. But why have
> the hydrogen in the middle? Batteries aren't as explosive. Also, it
> seems that the large amount of hydrogen that will leak out (remember,
> tinyiest molecules ever, but this is well established for other gasses
> as well) don't do the environment much good.

Yep. Batt rooms do go boom if not vented. However you loose quite a bit 
in the charge/recharge cycles. i have not worked with the gel or sealed
batts that don't leak anything. When I was off the grid, I factored in the 
costs to transport them vs the cheap marine deep cycle batts 30 miles
away at Wal Mart and the cheap ones won.

>
> I don't think wholesale replacement of our current power systems is an
> attainable goal in our lifetime. (And it will happen automatically
> anyway as oil starts running out and gets so expensive that people who
> just want to burn it can't afford it anymore.) However, it is still a
> very good idea to add more solar energy to the mix, both on the large
> and the small ends of the scale.
>
> Small: a few solar panels (with batteries) will give you at least
> _some_ power when the utility power is out. Being able to recharge your
> cell phone, run a light, a laptop and an ADSL or cable modem is much,
> much better than nothing.
>
> Large: demand for power peaks when it's hot, but generating capacity is
> often much lower under these circumstances because river water gets
> much warmer so power plants that need this water for cooling can't run
> at full capacity. (We could be facing rolling blackouts because of this
> soon in Europe.) Guess what: solar panels don't need cooling and their
> output is highest when the weather is hot = lots of sunshine.

Totally agree. Some here seem to be taking this as an all or nothing.
So much high fat thinking going on. It's gotta be big and it has to feed 
the 
status quo greed where the few make the money.

I learned, while off the grid, that if I made better choices (with my 
energy 
appliances) I did not have to suffer. You do pay more for devices that do 
the 
same work with less power. Cheap things wear out sooner. last time I 
checked
my NG fridge is still keeping the ice cream rock hard and the person I 
sold it to is very happy. All it takes is a candle sized flame. 

Presently now in the grid, however my landlord placed all windows 
on the south side. In northern New Mexico I require no heat during the day 
time, in winter, and can make it most of the time with a little heat from 
the air tight. I simlpe walk in the woods yields all the wood I need; the 
cat powered bed warmers do the rest.

>
> > So, put them on your roof. Lots of unused space. No need to have huge
> > expanses for centralized generation. I've read of Solar Cells as
> > building
> > materials, using the Cells as the shell of the house.
>
> There has recently been a breakthrough that makes it possible to
> convert more of the sun's spectrum into electricity. This could
> potentially double the efficiency of solar cells in the future, then
> maybe they'll be more cost efficient.