Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Reader Comments

at 2/26/2008 11:29:08 AM, Meredith Poor said:
"Germany can brag about having solar power, but all they do is tax their people and then subsidize companies that want to put in solar panels." In the United States, by comparison, we tax our people and use it for tanks, aircraft carriers, and 'boots on the ground'. At $1 per watt, we could replace our entire power generation infrastructure in 2.5 years at the rate we spend on defense ($400 billion per year). Admittedly, we would still spend money on defense, and it's been awhile since any generation technology whatsoever has been as cheap as $1 per watt, but it simply proves you choose your own absurdity.

at 2/26/2008 11:33:31 AM, Meredith Poor said:
Using 'conventional' hydrogen storage, a bus is going to be expensive. The technology identitifed below might be cheaper than the prototype bus. Whether it's cheaper than diesel is a matter for speculation. www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/pu-naa021908.php

at 2/26/2008 2:03:30 PM, Brian Dipert said:
Dear Meredith Poor, hallelujah! Dear Paul Rako...what about the San Jose-area population asthma and other health care costs associated with the pollution caused by diesel buses? What about the other environmental impacts of diesel production, transportation, and consumption? And to Meredith's point, look at the hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending to pursue 'stability' in the Middle East, where the bulk of the crude oil used to manufacture diesel fuel come from? C'mon, Paul...you're an engineer, look at the entirety of the respective costs...

at 2/26/2008 5:19:23 PM, Meredith Poor said:
I have never been a fan of 'hydrogen' per se, for some reasons that are obvious and a few that are a bit more obscure. The obvious reasons have to do with the complexity of the hydrogen storage. A less obvious one is that methane is ubiquitous. The biggest source of methane is termites, the biggest man made source is rice paddies, and so-called 'renewable' hydroelectric power is responsible for releasing the equivalent Greenhouse Gas in the form of methane as coal burning plants are of CO2. Were we to aggressively manage artificial point sources of methane we could probably run a lot of our mass transportation infrastructure on that. And... all it takes to make methane into propane is to expose it to UV at 253nm! We have propane buses all over the place. Propane doesn't have any sulfur in it. It might produce some particulates, but nothing on the scale of diesel.

at 2/27/2008 6:36:31 AM, Ken Vickers said:
Hi Paul, Remember that you''re in California. The state in which sheeple buy environmentally correct, yet economically wrong Toyota "Piouses" (thanks SouthPark) like they''re becoming extinct. Will our legislators support a plan that doesn''t work, wastes a bunch of money, yet will make them appear environmentally friendly? Why wouldn''t they?

at 2/27/2008 7:17:34 AM, Paul Rako said:
Well, I dispute there are a decade and two octaves of hidden cost in diesel fuel. Sure, to the extent that we maintain a military in order to secure oil, then that might be a cost but also remember that diesel fuel is taxed to pay for the roads whereas hydrogen and electric is not. If you think of CO2 as a toxic pollutant, which I do not, well then maybe you can justify any infinite cost disparity, but for now, despite all the distortions, we have to assume that the first order effects are all priced in. Other than a vestigial Calvinism that maintains it is wrong for humans to be happy I can think of no greater good than trading worthless paper dollars for thick black oil and then providing for the freedom and mobility of the American people. The foreign oil barons will have inflated paper and we will have a vibrant economy. No, sorry, price is price, if you don''t like oil for religious reasons that is fine, but for technical reasons it sure makes a lot of sense, at least for the next few decades. After that we will liquefy some other fuel and burn that in our buses.

at 2/27/2008 12:36:53 PM, Steven J. Ackerman said:
Hydrogen from H2O @ 85% efficiency: www.qsinano.com/apps_hgen.php

at 2/27/2008 12:42:29 PM, Steve Rosenblum said:
There has never been any issue about running an internal combustion engine on hydrogen. When I was at Los Alamos in the early 70's an engineer in my group converted a Ford pickup to run on hydrogen just by changing the fuel injector to one used for propane and doing some re-tuning of the engine. That was simple and cheap. The big issue was adapting the fuel tank for hydrogen. Since this was a cryogenics group, they mounted a liquid hydrogen dewar in the bed of the truck and fueled it from a 1000 gallon storage dewar at our facility. I don't see how this would work in a consumer environment. I would imagine that most of the costs of the San Jose busses are associated with the fueling system and not with maintenance of the engines.

at 2/27/2008 1:11:03 PM, HH said:
Seems to me that the "broken window fallacy" is just like our government's plan to borrow around 160 billion dollars and mail checks to the citizens to stimulate the economy.

at 2/27/2008 1:17:03 PM, 56Packfan said:
Paul, I hope your house is not in Foster City. If you think cutting CO2 emissions at a high cost is stupid, think about how much of our infrastructure investments would be under water when the ocean level rises several feet due to global warming. A million dollar house here, a million dollar house there. Pretty soon that adds up to real money.

at 2/27/2008 2:09:55 PM, Hyperkinetic said:
Steven J. Ackerman said: "Hydrogen from H2O @ 85% efficiency:" I say: What a load of GARBAGE! Simple physics state at least HALF of the electricity used in electrolysis of water goes to *heat*, and is NEVER recovered. Burn that hydrogen in an ICE an piss away another 80% of that energy as, you guessed it, HEAT! Couple that with the fact that hydrogen has one TWENTY FOURTH the energy density of any gasoline. Even if your process were 100% efficient, you'd be stopping to fill up every six miles or so.

at 2/27/2008 2:45:30 PM, John L said:
I don''t think your example of solar cells and Germany are very valid......."It is OK if the purchase price is more, as long as the operating savings make up for it and the total expenditure is less.".....Your words. If the life span of the installed solar cells is significant, then, even very expensive installations will make sense at some point. Is this the most effective usage of reasources? This is a question that is rarely addressed in the market place. Infrastructures of power distribution are generally addressed by political bodies... not engineers. And I doubt if any of them are reading this.

at 2/27/2008 3:10:14 PM, Hank Walker said:
I am not sure why you are comparing the cost of a prototype with a production model. Obviously the prototype costs much more, no matter what the technology. The relevant question is whether at scale hydrogen makes sense as an energy transfer and storage medium, in competition with other mediums.

at 2/27/2008 3:24:21 PM, John L said:
"unless a technology makes economic sense it is not good for the Planet".... I do not believe this is a valid observation..... (reads like: what is good for GM is good for America ). I don''t know anyone that believes buying the cheapest or most cost effective product is related to the health of the planet. It is related only to the health of economies. And , yes, we can have great world economic conditions without clean air. I do acknowledge, it is far easier to get people to "do the right thing" if they have an economic incentive...but this discussion wouldn''t be happening if we were in agreement on what the "right thing" (technology for the future) was.

at 2/27/2008 3:35:29 PM, Jay Mackey said:
The most energy efficient way to get hydrogen currently known is from certain oils, not water, ironically. (Remember, oil is a HYDRO-carbon). This was discovered when developing oils for use in transformers. It''s probably still nowhere as cheap as diesel, even with all other cost factors figured in. "we could replace our entire power generation infrastructure" Replace it with what? I would vote for nuclear, but all the green weenies and half the ''sheeple'' would vote it down. Or a handful of enviro-lawyers would override the will of the people, as they have been for years. Hydro-electric? Enviro-lawyers say no. Solar Furnaces? Windmills? Photovoltaics? Even if some breakthrough finally makes these approaches viable, ultimately you have to put these things on somebody''s land, which is right next to somebody else''s backyard, and again the enviro-lawyers step in to say ''nyet, you may not use your land as you wish.''

at 2/27/2008 3:45:28 PM, Jay Mackey said:
HH:"Seems to me that the "broken window fallacy" is just like our government's plan to borrow around 160 billion dollars and mail checks to the citizens to stimulate the economy" That's exactly what it is, if you put it like that. As long as they don't cut spending by the amount of taxes they return, then it is ultimately arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. To make it worse, it is a shotgun-vs-elephant approach. It's so spread out, that the effect on the economy will be unnoticeable, not to mention that as far as I know, TV manufacturers in China and Korea are not in need of stimulus.

at 2/27/2008 4:21:05 PM, PaulR said:
Hmm, to answer Brian, I would say that if oil supply is the problem causing us to spend hundreds of billions in Iraq, it would be much better to spend that money buying Canada, where there is much more oil in the form of oil sands, etc., than Middle Eastern oil reserves. What's more, although I don't see anything about it in the news, Machine Design (I believe) had an article a while back about the absolutely MAMMOTH machinery being used in the extraction of oil from those oil sands. It is now feasible, and then some, due to current oil prices. I'm not sure what it would cost to ramp that up rapidly, but, I'm sure the cost is not in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year neighborhood. HOWEVER, simplifying the Middle East situation down to that of "obtaining a stable oil supply" is foolish, spelled "suicidal". Oil is 10% of it. Maybe.

at 2/27/2008 4:45:39 PM, PaulR said:
Incidentally, just as an interesting exercise, try to consider in depth the geopolitical ramifications if the "industrialized world" actually could stop buying oil from outside sources, in the next decade. The operative phrase is "Be careful what you ask for..."

at 2/27/2008 5:25:23 PM, S. Uy said:
Brian Dipert: "what about the San Jose-area population asthma and other health care costs associated with the pollution caused by diesel buses?" Paul, Brian has a point. Would the savings from diesel fuel offset the cost for health care? Even if it does, I believe the health of the people should be the priority.

at 2/27/2008 5:26:47 PM, PaulR said:
Question: Do we buy some sort of special grade of oil from the Middle East to make diesel fuel from? From what I know of refining, that seems unlikely, and, absolutely, most of U.S. oil sourcing is NOT from the Middle East. Now, if one wants to consider "us" as the entire industrialized world, it's a little different story: Those efficient Germans and such would totally collapse without Middle Eastern oil.

at 2/27/2008 5:44:15 PM, PaulR said:
That's a good question, S. Uy. When I was in the Philippines, the pollution in the streets (especially riding around in "Jeepneys" --their form of public transportation) was pretty rough. Way worse than anything I've experienced anywhere in the U.S. (Davao wasn't too bad, but Cebu sometimes was, and Manila - ugh!) Anyway, that reminded me that I'm glad I got out of doing sound systems in smoky bars and such, 2 decades ago, and that my lungs are probably my weak point (I also picked up TB infection years ago and was successfully - I hope! - treated with INH) Anyway first you'd have to try to figure out what percentage of those health problems can be attributed to the buses. Then you could take a stab at the costs. Then compare. If health costs add $2 per mile to the cost of operating all the busses, then the best that can be done is clean up the busses as much as practical and live with it. If the health costs add $40 per mile, Brian and you have a good argument!

at 2/27/2008 7:00:26 PM, sam ho said:
I have been reading about automotive emission pollution since I was introduced to Max-Zone 4in1 after market car prodouct in 2005, see www.eesingapore.com The bottomline for any government who are interested about global warming is "economical values'' not the bs of saving the environment. The responsibility should the owner of the vehicle as a person or a company

at 2/27/2008 11:51:57 PM, Gregor F said:
Of course solar power is today a very expensive way to reduce CO2 emissions. Especially here in Germany with not so much sun. The idea is to bring the cost down by large scale fabrication of solar modules. A lot of work is done to optimise process and equipment. So in some years it will be a cost efficient technology, maybe not in Germany but in sun rich countries.

at 2/28/2008 8:18:33 AM, David Scott said:
I have to agree about all those green weenies who don't know **** from a hole in the ground. They complain about carbon-dioxide as a "green-house" gas but don't bother doing research that shows that in the Earth's history, Carbon dioxide is a lagging indicator of warming/cooling. Further, carbon dioxide is used by all the trees and plants, so I guess they want to kill all the trees and plants in order to stop global warming. Then of course, if you ask them what are the "green-house gases" they are at a total loss. Especially with the #1 "green-house" gas, comprising anywhere from 75-95% of all of the "green-house" gases, depending on who you speak with, that being of course water. And what would be the by-product of hydrogen based engines and such, you guessed water, and not only that, the outputs of these engines is warm water. So, cut the carbon dioxide, kill the trees, and effect at most 3-5% of the total of green-house gases in favor of flooding the atmosphere with more of the #1 gas, water. Then to boot, the energy companies pushing these things want to build hydrogen gas stations for filling up, and making vehicles/products needing to re-supply the hydrogen, when a good system would be totally closed, with the combusted water product flowing to a water reservoir where it would then be re-separated, and compressed back into component oxygen and hydrogen tanks. While running, this process would use an alternator type to do the re-separation process until one arrives at an electric outlet where any remaining can be separated. Better yet, add a few solar panel cells on the roof and park the car in the sun, like at work, and have it all re-converted for free. But the energy companies won't make any money, i.e. their pound of our flesh, so instead we'll switch over to hyper global warming and continue to pay the greedy industry that comprises energy generation. Final note, it is now a verified fact that oil is not a fossil fuel, verified by NASA no less, and that oil is constantly being replenished as a geological process requiring no biological factors.

at 2/28/2008 11:43:25 AM, Meredith Poor said:
Nanosolar.com is saying they can produce solar panels at $1 per watt, although this this is volume dependent. Nanosolar is selling only to utilities at the moment. General Electric periodically announces contracts for wind turbines that translate to $1 per watt (i.e., $600 million for 600Mw of generating capacity). Other times, however GE announces prices that come out to more like $1.50 per watt.

at 2/28/2008 5:46:45 PM, Jay Mackey said:
GE is claiming that only 7% of Arizona would need to be carpeted with their PV cell product in order to meet the current US electricity demand. I wonder if Paul would be interested in evaluating this statement and determining the likely costs. I could not find anything on their website (energy) that elaborated on this or backed it up. But their site search is weak.

at 2/29/2008 8:59:20 PM, Meredith Poor said:
At noon, one square meter receives 1Kw of sunlight. At 20% conversion efficiency, this is 200 watts. Over one day, a flat plate receives the equivalent of 5 hours of peak exposure, so 200 watts x 5 hours is 1Kwh. Dividing 1 trillion watts (i.e., 1 million megawatts) by 200 suggests an area of 5 billion square meters. Dividing 5 billion by 1 million square meters in a square kilometer is 5,000 square kilometers. 70 Km x 70km = 4900 square KM. 70Km x .6 = 42 miles. Given that that 5000 square kilometers represents 5 hours of power, multiplying by 4 to get 20 hours of peak load yields 20,000 square kilometers. The square root of 20,000 = 141 KM or 85 miles. The Nevada (nuclear) test site is about 80 miles x 80 miles. I wouldn't count on too many housing developments in the area, not in our lifetimes at least.

at 3/3/2008 11:16:29 AM, W17053 said:
I'm not sure about the 85% being a conversion effiviency. If you look at the website, it states "In fact, 85% of the world’s hydrogen is produced by steam reformation". I interpret this to mean most of the hydrogen 'made' is by steam reformation, and not an efficiency of the steam reformation process.

at 4/22/2008 4:00:01 PM, seattlecrow said:
Factor in downtime from the odd green monkeywrencher and fanatic terrorists, and you can just multiply that 150 km-on-a-side square by at least four. Suddenly covering 20% of Nevada is looking a bit conservative. Remember the "too cheap to meter" morons promoting Nuke power back in the 1960's? Evidently they're still working for GE...

at 4/27/2008 12:35:09 PM, Meredith Poor said:
If an average daily commute is 40 miles, and that trip uses the equivalent of 12Kwh, and the usable surface area of a car is some value less than 6' x 15' (net, maybe, 3 square meters, or 33 square feet), then the daily capture of sunlight (presuming the car is left out in the parking lot) is about 3Kwh (5 hours x 200 watts x 3 square meters). This implies that solar power could contribute 25% of the energy needed to run the car. This would further suggest that a 20 MPG car would then be a 25 Mpg car. At 20 Mpg, a day's drive is currently costing 7$ to 8$. Reducing that by $2 per day would be $720 per year. At $4 per watt, 600 watts would cost $2400, so 2400/720 = 3 years, more or less. Anyone see a mistake in the physics or math?

at 5/21/2008 3:04:08 PM, Prius Driver said:
You say "...for a technology to be really green it has to cost less." That is absurd. For a technology to be green, it has to have little impact on the environment (relative to other options). For a technology to be economical it has to be low cost (relative to other options). Green and economical are orthogonal issues. They may coincide in a particular technology, they may not. Clearly, you value to economy over the environment. Others value the environment over the economy. Who is right? Neither, just don't impose your values on others.

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