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From: mpm on 24 Apr 2010 11:58 On Apr 24, 1:35 am, Paul Keinanen <keina...(a)sci.fi> wrote: > What is wrong with MS Windows ? You cannot be serious! :)
From: Jan Panteltje on 24 Apr 2010 13:05 On a sunny day (Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:52:02 -0700 (PDT)) it happened mpm <mpmillard(a)aol.com> wrote in <04419c55-58eb-4701-a869-17dd82217845(a)c21g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>: >Another example is wind energy. Again, no technological hurdle, but >can you really claim it's taken off? Certainly it is no cheaper that >other energy. Many farms here have windmills, they have their own power, and feed some back into the net. Just up the road are 2 huge ones, If you drive around you see them everywhere. They are noisy though, in the evening you can hear chop chop chop from the blades. And they do not always run. So you still need the grid, or a RTG :-)
From: Don Lancaster on 24 Apr 2010 13:07 On 4/24/2010 8:19 AM, Don Lancaster wrote: > On 4/23/2010 8:58 PM, JosephKK wrote: >> >> An irrelevant financial calculator is not helpful. > > > I think I found your problem. > > The calculator is central and essential to net energy. > > There is only ONE number that matters: Avoided cost utility peaking costs six cents per kilowatt hour and sells for ten cents per kilowatt hour. This is the de-facto standard that establishes ALL alternate energy economics. Any new net energy source MUST go well beyond parity. Which translates to twenty five cents per peak pv panel watt. There is no rocket science here. It is plain old amortization. A present kilowatt hour is worth a present dime. And vice versa. The two are fungible and interchangeable commodities. <http://www.tinaja.com/etsamp1.asp> -- Many thanks, Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073 Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552 rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don(a)tinaja.com Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
From: Paul Keinanen on 24 Apr 2010 14:18 On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:52:02 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard(a)aol.com> wrote: > >Switching gears, let's look at (2) specific technologies that HAVE NOT >taken off. >One is photovoltaic utility power generation. Industry has been >working for decades to perfect this, and have made impressive >strides. But my position remains: If utility PV was ever going to be >successful, you would see the signs early and often. This has not >been the case, and indeed, utility PV has yet to see the light of day >(no pun intended). > >Another example is wind energy. Again, no technological hurdle, but >can you really claim it's taken off? Certainly it is no cheaper that >other energy. >And absent government subsidies & mandates, would we even see wind >power? I don't think so. >In that regard, one might argue government subsidies are an instant >hit! :) The problem with huge government subsidies is that it kills all innovations. Take for example Germany, with huge subsidies for wind and solar energy. Why would anyone improve your product, when you can get a decent income by selling a mediocre product.
From: Joel Koltner on 24 Apr 2010 20:13
"mpm" <mpmillard(a)aol.com> wrote in message news:04419c55-58eb-4701-a869-17dd82217845(a)c21g2000yqk.googlegroups.com... > But solar-cars, electric or electric-hybrids, or even nuclear-powered > cars -- all are possible, but none have proven to be instant hits. Toyota seems to be making plenty of money on Priuses? I think PV cells are like LCDs once were: They have plenty of nichey applications already as LCDs have had since about the '70s, but just as no one knew how to build a 1920x1080 LCD array (with a transistor for every single pixel, no less!) in a cost-effective manner up until the late '90s and yet today such a device is <$200, no one today can build PV cells cheap enough to make them competitive with oil, nuclear, etc. > But to your specific gasoline example, one could say this was tied to > the success of the personal automobile (another big hit over the horse > & buggy!). It's interesting to consider what technology would become porminent if, somehow, all the gas stations and oil refineries suddenly disappeared over night -- bet we still had all the technological know-how as of 2010. I'm thinking the replacement infrastructure might include a lot more diesel automobiles... > I also disagree with your Internet example, though that may be just an >exercise in agreeing to what exact timeline constitutes something > taking off like a rocket. I'm sure you'll agree that (as a whole), >the Internet has been a huge success. Yes, I'm just suggesting that government dollars created the thing we call the Internet (and the methods we use to access it) likely some years sooner than if there hadn't been a DARPA or similar product. As others have pointed out, BBSes were already getting themselves networked (e.g., Fidonet) and the idea of hypertext has been around for many decades, so clearly something like the Internet would have still happened anyway -- I just think it likely would have taken a "significant" amount of extra time, which I'd guesstimate to be perhaps a decade. > But my position remains: If utility PV was ever going to be > successful, you would see the signs early and often. This has not > been the case, and indeed, utility PV has yet to see the light of day PV needs some fundamental breakthroughs in manufacturing costs and (to a lesser extent) cell efficiency. I think you can fairly argue that those sorts of breakthroughs are more likely to be produced in some "basic research" lab somewhere (relatively cheap funding) than from dumping a much larger amount of money into subsidizing production of the existing technology and hoping that what commercial competition remains will spur enough R&D spending by the existing producers to create it. > Another example is wind energy. Again, no technological hurdle, but > can you really claim it's taken off? There sure seems to be a lot of interest in it, but I'm not knowledgable enough about it to speculate on whether or not it would be viable sans government sunsidies/mandates. I do have a relative who interested a sizable chunk of change in a wind energy company and so far has only lost money on it. :-) ---Joel |