Saving the World & Solar Energy

[thelerner]

Sometimes you Save the World by saving yourself. Here is an interesting article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24240783 (From the BBC News)

 

Here's an excerpt:

"Giving it all up to be a Christmas Island 'beachcomber' By John Pickford Christmas Island

 

The allure of a new and different life on a South Sea island has tempted many Europeans over the past two centuries. But these so-called "beachcombers" do make sacrifices in return for their life in the sun, away from the stress and strain of the big cities

"Come in, come in!" It is a glorious welcome, considering Perry Langston is not expecting me. He stands outside his simple home and warmly shakes my hand.

 

His house is near the lagoon, single storey, with a half-covered entrance yard and a corrugated tin roof.

Perry first came to Christmas Island - an isolated coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific - in 1966, just a few years after the British stopped using it for nuclear tests, which makes him one of the island's most enduring residents.

He is now 74, slightly stooping, spectacles on nose, with a sharp and intelligent face.

He has a few front teeth missing - lack of access to dentists is a drawback of island life - and a completely unselfconscious smile. He introduces me to his silver-haired Micronesian wife. She exudes calm and grace.

They have had seven children together. One son lives next door and grandchildren are nonchalantly passing in and out as we are talking.

 

"Sit down, sit down," Perry says, beckoning to a battered armchair.

There is a map of the Pacific and an old map of England - both much repaired - pinned to the wall.

He shows me a photograph of the red-brick farmhouse in Warwickshire where he grew up and I think: "How far can a man travel in one lifetime?"

 

But this journey happened without a plan.

Perry trained as an agronomist and went out to the Solomon Islands in the twilight years of Empire to work in a technical capacity for a Catholic mission.After that, his whole life in the South Seas involved practical work - the sharp edge of development.

 

He seemed to revel in his lack of material wealth. He quoted Gandhi to me: "Meet your needs and limit your wants."

He may be poor by Western standards, but surrounded by his island neighbours and his grandchildren he will never fear a lonely old age.

 

Twenty minutes away lives another "beachcomber" with a rather different lifestyle.

Scotsman John Bryden runs a successful grocery and provisions store and has been on the island almost as long as Perry."

Edited September 27, 2013 by thelerner

[thelerner]

Let me tuck this link to The Family here: http://www.greenliferetreats.com/index.htm

 

"Welcome to The Farm Community

The Farm is an intentional community of families and friends living on three square miles in southern middle Tennessee.

We started The Farm in 1971 with the goal of establishing a strongly cohesive, outwardly-directed community. We want, by action and example, to have a positive effect on the world.

Over the last 40+ years, The Farm has become well known for many things, from natural childbirth and midwifery to healthy diet and vegetarian cuisine, creative arts and alternative technologies to its partnerships and assistance to native cultures."

 

There site shows off some green farming, housing and commune ideas. They also have very cheap seminars. Well worth visiting every now and then. They've thrived where many communes have failed. Perhaps there success lies in keeping a foot in an idealized world and foot in the real world. Comfortable with the Amish and corporations like REI.

 

I'll have to put them on my bucket list. A 5 day summer retreat may be the perfect unplugged family vacation.

[voidisyinyang]

The wildlife in the Tchernobyl area are in parts massively radioactive. Lucky that they don't know that. Less chance for cancer to develop if people don't scare you by telling you you're carrying death inside. Also a healthy natural diet.

Saw a documentary a while ago and the wildlife there indeed seems to show no visible signs of radiation poisoning, despite making a geiger counter go crazy.

 

It's always interesting to have a desolate area, for studying how nature reconquers areas. In eastern Germany there are areas where military exercises used to be performed, devoid of any vegetation. Now it's almost a paradise there with many different and rare species.

 

b.s.

 

 

 

In this video of his speech at the Symposium in New York in March 2013, he shared with us the results of his research, fruits 1600 detailed field inventories at Chernobyl and Fukushima, on plants, insects, birds and mammals - Significant increase in genetic damage, birth defects and developmental abnormalities . - Fertility, life size and small populations. - Biodiversity in decline, local extinction of some species. - Transmission of mutations over generations, with the phenomenon of accumulation and migration of populations .

 

amazed at how mind controlled the masses are.

 

"saving the planet" is the problem because it's a philosophy of anthropocentric control of Nature.

 

"saving the planet" goes against Taoism.

 

Any ecological harmonious views are based on the fact that humans don't have a choice - Mother Nature controls us - we exist within Mother Nature.

 

So the planet saves humans, not the other way around.

 

Mother Nature can take care of herself.

 

Humans have been on EArth for less than 2 minutes if life on Earth is 24 hours long.

 

The original human culture is 90% of human history from 100,000 BCE - and lived in ecological harmony with Earth.

 

Modern humans since Plato have structurally destroyed ecology.

 

The problem goes back to the concept of "irrational magnitude" and even before that to what archaeologists call the "symbolic revolution" of 10,000 BCE - when anthropocentric philosphy became dominant with the idea that Nature could be contained by rectinlinear phallic geometry.

 

 

40% of the male birds in the more contaminated areas of Chernobyl are completely sterile.

 

See - it's not some psychological disease so stop spreading lies.

Edited September 28, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[Marblehead]

"saving the planet" goes against Taoism.

Repeating this for its truth.

[voidisyinyang]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/sunday-review/life-after-oil-and-gas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

this is a good article but leaves out the most important factor in the equation: exponential growth of energy use.

 

CU's Environmental Center is training a cadre of 50 volunteers who can carry on Bartlett's lectures -- and had been working closely with the professor to preserve the lecture on overpopulation during the months leading up to his death. When Bartlett first gave his lecture “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” to a group of students in 1969; the world's population was then 3.7 billion.

 

He gave the lecture another 1,741 times in 49 states and seven countries, speaking to corporations, government agencies, professional groups and students. His talk warned of the consequences of “ordinary, steady growth” of population and the connection between population growth and energy consumption. Now, the world's population is 7.1 billion.

 

His famous statement was: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

 

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_24050704/retired-cu-boulder-professor-al-bartlett-dies-at-90

 

he died a little over a week ago.

[Marblehead]

Sad he died but we all have to do that one day.

 

Those are two things I speak to as often as I can: energy usage and over-population. I should include potable water as well. That is going to be a serious issue very soon. It already is in some remote areas.

 

Yes, we should protect the planet instead of saving it from our abuses. Cut down a tree? No problem as long as we plant two trees to replace it. And all the other conservation efforts, instead of repairing something after we have broken it.

[voidisyinyang]

Sad he died but we all have to do that one day.

 

Those are two things I speak to as often as I can: energy usage and over-population. I should include potable water as well. That is going to be a serious issue very soon. It already is in some remote areas.

 

Yes, we should protect the planet instead of saving it from our abuses. Cut down a tree? No problem as long as we plant two trees to replace it. And all the other conservation efforts, instead of repairing something after we have broken it.

 

just watch the lecture.

 

http://www.stetzerelectric.com/milham-solar-puts-dirty-electricity-on-electrical-wiring/

 

solar inverters as Electromagnetic pollution

[Marblehead]

But that applies to only those inverters that do not have adequate filters to contain this pollution. My inverters are inexpensive ones (3 -2KW) and I mau sure they would peak high on a test of radiated pollution. More expensive inverters have better filtering systems (I had a 5KW inverter that had good filters but that one crashed and burned) and they put out a much cleaner AC voltage.

 

To test an inexpensive inverter and then make a generalized conclusion is not good science.

[voidisyinyang]

But that applies to only those inverters that do not have adequate filters to contain this pollution. My inverters are inexpensive ones (3 -2KW) and I mau sure they would peak high on a test of radiated pollution. More expensive inverters have better filtering systems (I had a 5KW inverter that had good filters but that one crashed and burned) and they put out a much cleaner AC voltage.

 

To test an inexpensive inverter and then make a generalized conclusion is not good science.

 

well the photo shows an ad for sungevity so we can assume the house uses sungevity - they don't have good filters?

[Marblehead]

well the photo shows an ad for sungevity so we can assume the house uses sungevity - they don't have good filters?

I don't have enough knowledge to compare one brand against another. It was never a concern of mine as my initial installation was solely for electrical equipement, not electronic equipment.

 

Right now I wish that one of the three I have had better filters on it as I do power some electronic equipment with it and I can tell the difference between what it provides and what the electricity utilities provide.

 

The only thing I can suggest to anyone wanting to go solar is to first decide what is to be powered off it then do the reaserch to determine what inverter system to buy. Electronic equipment will always require a better filtering system.

[thelerner]

Very Cool. Good solution, keep watching.

 

<iframe src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

 

sample:

When I came to the United States, I got a shock, to find national parks like this one desertifying as badly as anything in Africa. And there'd been no livestock on this land for over 70 years. And I found that American scientists had no explanation for this except that it is arid and natural. So I then began looking at all the research plots I could over the whole of the Western United States where cattle had been removed to prove that it would stop desertification, but I found the opposite, as we see on this research station, where this grassland that was green in 1961, by 2002 had changed to that situation. And the authors of the position paper on climate change from which I obtained these pictures attribute this change to "unknown processes."..

 

..

Let's look at some results. This is land close to land that we manage in Zimbabwe. It has just come through four months of very good rains it got that year, and it's going into the long dry season. But as you can see, all of that rain, almost of all it, has evaporated from the soil surface. Their river is dry despite the rain just having ended, and we have 150,000 people on almost permanent food aid. Now let's go to our land nearby on the same day, with the same rainfall, and look at that. Our river is flowing and healthy and clean. It's fine. The production of grass, shrubs, trees, wildlife, everything is now more productive, and we have virtually no fear of dry years. And we did that by increasing the cattle and goats 400 percent, planning the grazing to mimic nature and integrate them with all the elephants, buffalo, giraffe and other animals that we have. But before we began, our land looked like that. This site was bare and eroding for over 30 years regardless of what rain we got. Okay? Watch the marked tree and see the change as we use livestock to mimic nature. This was another site where it had been bare and eroding, and at the base of the marked small tree, we had lost over 30 centimeters of soil. Okay? And again, watch the change just using livestock to mimic nature. And there are fallen trees in there now, because the better land is now attracting elephants, etc. This land in Mexico was in terrible condition, and I've had to mark the hill because the change is so profound.

Edited October 28, 2013 by thelerner

[thelerner]

This also. Edible garden done on a city wide scale:

 

<iframe src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes.html" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

[Marblehead]

I really appreciate the posts in this thread.

 

Unfortunately, it is too late

It's never too late. The knowledge must be recorded for the future. Oh, sure, it is too late in most parts of the world right now. But that doesn't negate the value of the knowledge. One day in the future conditions might be such that the knowledge can be applied on a large scale.

 

My little bit of catching the sun's energy reduces the burning of fossil fuels just a little bit. My catching rain reduces my utilizing water from the aquafer just a little bit.

[soaring crane]

Heat pumps are also being talked up for a new subsidy. Anyone have experience of those?

They have to dig up your back garden apparently.

 

I have connections to the heat pump industry here in Germany. They're best for new-installs with floor heating. There are better options for renovations/updates.

 

The most critical aspect of a heat pump is actually the installation. Quality units (do not buy Chinese, at lest not yet) are generally very dependable but the installer can quickly make a mess of it.

 

The company I work with offers very expensive training for their customers (installers). The cost outlay for the schooling offsets the service costs to the company by a good margin.

 

As far as saving the world (whatever that means) whatever became of the Graphene revolution? Last I heard, there were already a few hundred patents approved for all possible future uses of the wonder-material.

[Marblehead]

As I am working in power sector, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal resources are not simply enough to give all the electricity we consume each year. Currently, you either have to build nuclear power plants or coal fired thermal power plants or natural gas fired combined cycle power plants. Nuclear power has its own merits and sins, thermal power plants are producing CO₂. The problem does not have a solution in the next two decades. Yet, CO₂ concentration is already too high.

I agree that there are drawbacks regarding any source we select. But I think that the lesser polluting means should be developed at a faster rate so that coal/gas fired plants need not be increased in number thereby causing more pollution.

 

Yes, nuclear plants have strong drawbacks as we witnessed recently in Japan.

 

I am constantly trying to find more efficient uses of my solar when I have full-sun days like today. Trying to keep the demand as high as possible during the day so that none of the regulators ever trip in because of full charge on the batteries. As long as I can keep the batteries as 12.5 volts when the sun goes down that is enough energy to run one pond pump until the sun comes up the next morning.

 

I even have battery-powered night lights with LED lights in the house that I just started charging off the electric Honda solar panel that supplies the light and instrument power for the car as that panel puts out more on a full sun day than the vehicle needs.

 

I know that providing constant power commercially is more demanding than my little situation is but there are still things that can be done to improve the output without increasing the pollution. Solar-thermal with fossil-fuel backup is an excellent system. Amazingly, Spain was the first country to put one of those on line. And as soon as it proved successful they started building a second one. This was a while back so likely the second one is probably on lline by now. There are many places in the US where these could be constructed.

 

I'm still waiting for cold fusion and electrolysis to get developed.

[soaring crane]

As I am working in power sector, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal resources are not simply enough to give all the electricity we consume each year.

 

First - stop consuming so much. We're a family of three and used under 3400Kw in 2012, about a third of the average for a US household.

 

Next - those technologies can easily produce more than any society, including the USA, can ever consume. The problem is the bottlenecking in the grid. That's what my engineer colleagues tell me, anyway.

[soaring crane]

The electrical energy unit is kWh, not kW, that means 1000 W (1 kW) machine works for 1 hour. You have spent 283 kWh/month which is pretty still pretty high to save the world although it is much less than average US household.

 

Average US household is a catastrophe by the way.

 

Next - As a mechanical engineer, managing thermal power plant projects, I strongly disagree with your engineer colleagues.

 

We do what we can. We use power strips and shut the electric in the apartment off at the circuit breaker when no one's home. The house isn't very efficient, but we're renters so we only have so much say in the matter. We also switched to 100% green energy about five years ago. The switch is very easy to do here in Germany. The company we use is called 'Naturstrom' and they're very reputable. Our electric bill actually dropped a few % points after the switch, which surprised me.

 

I don't see where you replied to my mention of the grid. The biggest problem here, as explained to me, is the way the cables in the grid are laid out. Traditionally (and simplified because I don't have the English vocabulary for this stuff), the larger cables are at the big power generation plants and the power is sent through ever smaller cables until it reaches the end user. Makes sense.

 

But local photovoltaic and wind generation parks have to have the large cables on-site in order to exploit their fullest potential. And that's a huge cost, involving creating a new infrastructure. Germany is working on it, thinking long-term, but as of now, there's the problem of bottlenecking holding the renewables back from their full potential.

 

Where I wrote Kw instead of kWh, I was writing 'verbally'. We don't say 'Studenkilowatt', we just say 'KW'.

 

I should mention that I'm not terribly concerned about CO2 per se. I think clean water and air are reason enough all on their own to drastically cut, or forbid, filthy energy sources.

Edited October 28, 2013 by soaring crane

[Marblehead]

Germany is working on it,

Yes, Germany is well ahead of the US regarding green energy. Your government invested a lot of resources to develop your solar grid. And yes, most solar panels generate DC voltage so the feeder lines must be much larger than for AC voltage until the energy gets to its point of conversion then it follows the rules for AC power.

 

I just recently had an increase for the cost of energy from my Electricity provider and that prompted me to buy and additional eight solar panels.

[Isimsiz Biri]

Yes, Germany is well ahead of the US regarding green energy. Your government invested a lot of resources to develop your solar grid. And yes, most solar panels generate DC voltage so the feeder lines must be much larger than for AC voltage until the energy gets to its point of conversion then it follows the rules for AC power.

 

I just recently had an increase for the cost of energy from my Electricity provider and that prompted me to buy and additional eight solar panels.

 

 

Germany is the best country thanks to Greens as a political movement. They did their best, really promoted renewables.

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/428145/the-great-german-energy-experiment/

 

In 2010, Electricity Generation of Germany according to sources

 

Nuclear 23%, Coal 41% (sum of Hard Coal and Lignite), Renewable 17%, Natural Gas 14%, Others 5%.

 

This is the best one in the world, a remarkable 17% from Renewable sources.

 

They really tried their best to reach this result since 2000.

 

However, even this best result is far away from being sufficient.

 

And the country has fully utilized for its potential for Renewable sources. Still 55% of electricity from coal and natural gas.

 

If you consider total primer energy sources, electricity plus heating and transport, the share of oil, gas, coal is much higher.

[soaring crane]

About CO₂, it is better you are concerned with it.

 

well, the thing is, my views on clean environment are so extreme that my policies would drop CO2 anyway. Sort of a shotgun approach.

 

And in my perception, the issue polarizes people and creates more hardcore opposition which could well be holding back real advances. There are a lot of people out there who cringe when they hear 'CO2' and I'm leaning in that direction.

 

It's going to take drastic governmental action to really change the energy industry, One suggestion: requiring smart meters on all new buildings, domestic and commercial. And part of that system would include smart cards like they have in hotels these days. You have to use the card to open the door, and to activate the non-essential electricity in the house. When you leave, you take the card with you and the electric is shut down at the switchbox.

 

About the only things in a house that need electricity when no one's home are the refrigerator and alarm system if there is one.

 

Something else that has to be done is end light pollution. NO non-essential lighting at night. That would be a blessing for nocturnal animals, and drop power consumption as well.

 

Make air travel a luxury again. Massive excise taxes on flights, especially short hops, the revenue to go directly into land-based mass transit ... those are the kind of things I would welcome.

Edited October 29, 2013 by soaring crane

[Flolfolil]

...

Edited March 6, 2015 by Flolfolil

[Marblehead]

Okay.

 

Today I made an improvement on my solar system at the workshop area. I made and installed a switch system so that I can easily switch from commercial to solar for better usage of solar power on full sun days.

 

I think that tomorrow I will save the world.

[Marblehead]

Well, I spent this morning refining my solar on my Honda in an attempt to get more out of the solar potential. I'll know after a couple weeks if it was worth the effort.

[Marblehead]

Well, I didn't manage to save the world today but tomorrow is another day.

 

I don't have a problem with being conservative because that's the way I had to live most of my life.

 

But what y'all are saying is true, first that we humans must become more conservative and it is also true that there is a trend that is being put into action by some who understand the need and are doing something about it.

 

But it will take some serious problems before most people realize the need.

[thelerner]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24730361

Glasses for 80 cents each. A micro intensive, partly solar, aquaculture fish farm that can raise 2-4 tonnes of Tilapia. Solar ovens, cheap transportation for carrying natural gas. These things can make a difference.