1. Joined
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    11 Jan '18 17:44
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    I mentioned no tax. You're talking about a tax. Your plan taxes manufacturers' for expensive R&D and expensive materials to fulfill the mandate, or taxes consumers paying the higher price. What will you get, say in 10 years, compared to our current strategy? I brought up Energy Star since it does the same thing you're talking about through conscious consu ...[text shortened]... re aggressive negative reactions from conservatives for the suggestion to add air to your tires?
    "Your plan taxes manufacturers' for expensive R&D and expensive materials to fulfill the mandate, or taxes consumers paying the higher price. What will you get, say in 10 years, compared to our current strategy?"

    That is ridiculous!
    My suggestion taxes nobody!

    The electricity saved would more than pay for itself in the long term. R&D would not be a burden anywhere near what you just claimed and the cost would go up for the consumer but that would be less than the electricity that would be lost.
    It would be nice if consumers would do the math before making the purchase, but many do not and that is why manufacturers decide to make a cheaper product regardless of the inefficiency that would cost the consumer more in the end.

    You are just plain wrong.
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    12 Jan '18 16:10
    Originally posted by @metal-brain
    "Your plan taxes manufacturers' for expensive R&D and expensive materials to fulfill the mandate, or taxes consumers paying the higher price. What will you get, say in 10 years, compared to our current strategy?"

    That is ridiculous!
    My suggestion taxes nobody!

    The electricity saved would more than pay for itself in the long term. R&D would not be ...[text shortened]... s of the inefficiency that would cost the consumer more in the end.

    You are just plain wrong.
    Your energy conservation proposal is silly. By forcing manufacturers and consumers to make products you want them to make but they don't want to make, hypothetical estimates on energy savings will be overrun by anger about your authoritarian mandates on everything. As tech changes, you'll have to keep mandating more and more things and upping the ante. Companies will cheat like they currently do with cars.

    What does this theoretically accomplish compared to our current strategy (please provide real numbers)? Why are you focusing on small low-energy-use appliances instead of big forward-thinking solutions?
  3. Subscribersonhouse
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    12 Jan '18 21:414 edits
    Originally posted by @humy
    I don't and no one needs to move. I just said

    "..Obviously nobody is suggesting that all the solar panels must be put in the same area of the world. I presume most will go on roof-tops. .."

    And putting them on rooftops doesn't require people to move.
    Those solar panels that aren't put on roof tops generally won't be put into people personal living space ...[text shortened]... many may be put on deserts and other mostly uninhabited land so won't mean anyone needs to move.
    There are experiments putting solar cells in roads where there is a lot of sun and not much shadow, if you can make them cheap enough and strong enough to withstand 18 wheelers, hundreds of thousands of them whacking the cells every day. I saw a figure of 5000 square miles being paved over every year in the US alone. That clocks in at about 1 Terawatt hours counting 20% cells and 1/3 lighting per day. I guess that is about 1000 nuke plants. I guess it would be considerably less with all the vehicles on the road, so make that about 500 gigawatts 24/7. I imagine that would be a multi-trillion dollar project though, and then the infrastructure of getting power from the roads to the grid since they are not parallel but at least it would not use up real estate like forests cut down or deserts paved over with cells which has the infrastructure problem anyway, no nearby grid so it would have to be built there anyway and the cost estimate for just the power lines clocked in at a trillion dollars also.
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    13 Jan '18 16:13
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Your energy conservation proposal is silly. By forcing manufacturers and consumers to make products you want them to make but they don't want to make, hypothetical estimates on energy savings will be overrun by anger about your authoritarian mandates on everything. As tech changes, you'll have to keep mandating more and more things and upping the ante. Co ...[text shortened]... y are you focusing on small low-energy-use appliances instead of big forward-thinking solutions?
    "By forcing manufacturers and consumers to make products you want them to make but they don't want to make"

    Ridiculous!
    They will be fine making them if it is mandated. There would be no competitive advantage, just business as usual. Nobody would be angered when they know they will save money by conserving their electric when their bill is lower.

    I have a Magnavox radio that is very efficient. I takes 3 D cell batteries and the radio can operate for 380 hours on very cheap D cells from the dollar store. I bought it at ABC Warehouse about 10 years ago. It was on sale for 20 dollars.

    Your claims to the contrary are false. I think you are making it up to save face and you are doing a poor job of it. What is your source of information?
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    13 Jan '18 19:20
    Originally posted by @metal-brain
    "By forcing manufacturers and consumers to make products you want them to make but they don't want to make"

    Ridiculous!
    They will be fine making them if it is mandated. There would be no competitive advantage, just business as usual. Nobody would be angered when they know they will save money by conserving their electric when their bill is lower.
    ...[text shortened]... aking it up to save face and you are doing a poor job of it. What is your source of information?
    Obviously you are my source if information. I asked you a question about the potential impact of your energy savings measures on energy use. If you already have a functional, energy efficient radio, it sounds like you are saying there would be no impact at all.
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    13 Jan '18 19:25
    Originally posted by @sonhouse
    There are experiments putting solar cells in roads where there is a lot of sun and not much shadow, if you can make them cheap enough and strong enough to withstand 18 wheelers, hundreds of thousands of them whacking the cells every day. I saw a figure of 5000 square miles being paved over every year in the US alone. That clocks in at about 1 Terawatt hour ...[text shortened]... ere anyway and the cost estimate for just the power lines clocked in at a trillion dollars also.
    I love the idea, but knowing how often these things need to be maintained it might be a disaster for traffic patterns.

    What about laying them above existing utility poles and power lines? They'd already be above the shade, and it would be pretty easy to feed the power into the grid. Also, like you mentioned, it uses land that has already been used up. I had a similar idea to put wind turbines in the median of interstate highways. That area is typically high-wind, already devoid of wildlife or recreation, and should be easy to feed into power grids.
  7. Subscribersonhouse
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    15 Jan '18 17:46
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    I love the idea, but knowing how often these things need to be maintained it might be a disaster for traffic patterns.

    What about laying them above existing utility poles and power lines? They'd already be above the shade, and it would be pretty easy to feed the power into the grid. Also, like you mentioned, it uses land that has already been used up. ...[text shortened]... igh-wind, already devoid of wildlife or recreation, and should be easy to feed into power grids.
    The problem with sticking the cells on top of existing power lines is the fact in the places where there is a lot of sun there are zero big grid pylons. That is one of the big problems of solar on a national scale size. The talk I hear is to get the grid to the places where there is max sun or even highways, it could be a trillion dollar project AFTER you get the solar cells running, no infrastructure to get gigawatts or terawatts to the outer world. The big grid pylons are roughly around the perifery of the US, say the east west corridore from NY Chicago, Denver, Seattle or the south, Miami/Dallas/Phoenix kind of thing or Miami north to NY or San Diego to Seattle. The big guys are noticably missing say in the middle of the country. There is of course hundreds of the smaller units, say 19,000 volt lines but you need million volt lines if you expect to carry multigigawatt loads and they are in short supply in the center of the US. And of course that goes for any major desert road highway that would have lots of sun. There is a project just about finishing in China to do exactly that, solar cells in the highway but it remains to be seen if they can take the rough and tumble of giant 18 wheelers running 80 MPH, 130 KPH or so.
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    16 Jan '18 15:00
    Originally posted by @sonhouse
    The problem with sticking the cells on top of existing power lines is the fact in the places where there is a lot of sun there are zero big grid pylons. That is one of the big problems of solar on a national scale size. The talk I hear is to get the grid to the places where there is max sun or even highways, it could be a trillion dollar project AFTER you ...[text shortened]... e seen if they can take the rough and tumble of giant 18 wheelers running 80 MPH, 130 KPH or so.
    Interesting. I think with these vast opportunities to better utilize land that has already been destroyed, it makes the projects like Cape Wind and Renewable Energy Vermont seem even more insane. Why are we destroying large tracts of pristine wilderness and marine estuary (all under the ruse of "environmental protection"😉 when there is so much junky land that is under-exploited?

    This article claims there are 155,000 miles of high-voltage lines that could be used for this purpose, enough for 20% of all energy use in the US. Although they do have the caveat that I don't completely understand: "Note: There may not be good interconnection opportunities for solar under these huge towers, so this should be read as a land-use discussion rather than technical analysis of interconnection to the grid."

    http://grist.org/solar-power/2011-10-17-could-the-u-s-get-20-percent-of-its-electricity-from-solar/
  9. Subscribersonhouse
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    16 Jan '18 16:37
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Interesting. I think with these vast opportunities to better utilize land that has already been destroyed, it makes the projects like Cape Wind and Renewable Energy Vermont seem even more insane. Why are we destroying large tracts of pristine wilderness and marine estuary (all under the ruse of "environmental protection"😉 when there is so much junky land ...[text shortened]... p://grist.org/solar-power/2011-10-17-could-the-u-s-get-20-percent-of-its-electricity-from-solar/
    There may be other problems putting any electronics under a million volt line: There would be huge induction of voltages in any wire close to the towers.

    There was a case where a guy living in a trailer relatively close to a tower got the idea of burying a bed spring in the sand (which is a good insulator) and running a wire to his trailer. He was actually able to extract about 100 watts of energy 24/7 for free.

    But he didn't know how sensitive the time domain reflectometers were, they are like a hard wire radar, they send a pulse of energy down a wire and in this case on a million volt wire, and if there is a place on the wire where there is a change of impedence, there will be a reflection read out at the instrument and they were able to find a spot where there was a change in impedance but nothing there to indicate a problem like a bad insulator or partially broken wire, none of the regular problems causing energy loss. Mind you, they were effectively measuring an energy loss of 100 watts out of megawatts, pretty sophisticated stuff.

    So they looked around and saw the trailer and put two and two together, dug under the pylon and found the bed spring and the dude was arrested for energy theft, just like as if there was a neighbor he snuck a power cable in and plugged it in to that dude's house.

    Just thinking there would be a significant engineering challenge isolating the huge 60 hertz electric field around those wires if the electronics and cells were plopped directy under the pylons.
  10. Joined
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    16 Jan '18 17:44
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Obviously you are my source if information. I asked you a question about the potential impact of your energy savings measures on energy use. If you already have a functional, energy efficient radio, it sounds like you are saying there would be no impact at all.
    The radio is efficient and nobody forced Magnavox to make it that way. That is my point.

    Most people don't own that radio. I was fortunate to get it. Mandate all manufacturers to meet that efficiency and there would be an impact.

    I'm not your source of information. Since you claimed an efficient DVD player exists (although probably not a best seller) I can claim that of you though. Are you sure that DVD player exists? You never did offer proof. What is your source of information?
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    16 Jan '18 18:19
    Originally posted by @metal-brain
    The radio is efficient and nobody forced Magnavox to make it that way. That is my point.

    Most people don't own that radio. I was fortunate to get it. Mandate all manufacturers to meet that efficiency and there would be an impact.

    I'm not your source of information. Since you claimed an efficient DVD player exists (although probably not a best sell ...[text shortened]... you sure that DVD player exists? You never did offer proof. What is your source of information?
    Energy star, man. Energy star. We've been over it. How will the mandate help?
  12. Joined
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    16 Jan '18 18:21
    Originally posted by @sonhouse
    There may be other problems putting any electronics under a million volt line: There would be huge induction of voltages in any wire close to the towers.

    There was a case where a guy living in a trailer relatively close to a tower got the idea of burying a bed spring in the sand (which is a good insulator) and running a wire to his trailer. He was actu ...[text shortened]... ric field around those wires if the electronics and cells were plopped directy under the pylons.
    Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense. Every long-term scalable option for renewable energy will have significant challenges to over come. This seems like a relatively minor one. Couldn't you insulate the wires in the solar cells?
  13. Joined
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    16 Jan '18 18:23
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Energy star, man. Energy star. We've been over it. How will the mandate help?
    I already explained why the mandate would help.
    We have been over it. Too bad you don't remember it. How old are you?
  14. Joined
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    16 Jan '18 19:12
    Originally posted by @metal-brain
    I already explained why the mandate would help.
    We have been over it. Too bad you don't remember it. How old are you?
    Are you sure that DVD player exists?
  15. Joined
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    16 Jan '18 19:46
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Are you sure that DVD player exists?
    You said it did, not me. If you are asking me you must have lied.
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