Carmakers made fewer wagons and made more SUVs because wagons were subject to the CAFE and crash safety regulations that cars were subject to and SUVs were not. Our government gave SUVs a break!
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
Don Klipstein wrote: ...
Plutonium is a result of all fission reactors. "Breeder" reactors differ only in the relative amounts as compared to "non-breeders".
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Thank you.
They won't crank down the hydro. Whatever hydropower you don't consume will get sold over the grid to someplace that will crank down their oil fired or whatever plants.
Some of the casinos and other places on "The Strip" have replaced incandescents with CFLs. Many of the marquees with chasing lights now have cold cathode CFLs. I was there in early November and I saw the spiral tubing. And, the upper left corner of my left eyeglass lens is prismatic enough to see enough spectrum detail to identify light source types. Cold cathode ones are somewhat less efficient than hot cathode ones, but they can be blinked without harm and they are still a lot more efficient than incandescents.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
I would be glad to see HPS lamps go. LED ones appear to me to be very expensive and maybe not the best deal for the taxpayers paying for them. However, I would not mind replacing a 400 watt HPS with a 175W or 250W metal halide.
A 175-250 watt metal halide will illuminate streets close to as well as a 400 watt HPS does, for 2 reasons:
Then again, a lot of streets are illuminated more brightly than they need to be. 100 watt metal halides could work just fine!
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
300W is awfully high for a traffic signal incandescent. Look in a lamp catalog by any of the "Big 3" makers and see what wattages "traffic signal lamps" come in. I somehow think 116 watts is a popular one.
Now, major reasons why LEDs can do the same job with 12 watts or so (for red and green): Mostly, because an incandescent with a red or green filter in front of it has the filter remove about 2/3 of the light. Meanwhile, LEDs normally specialize in producing light of a particular color. (The usual white ones have blue-emitting chips and a phosphor that absorbs some of the blue light and fluoresces out a broadband yellowish light whose sectrum goes from mid-green to mid-red.)
Another reason why incandescent traffic signal lamps are easy to improve upon in energy efficiency is because they are superlonglife vibration resistant versions that have about 65% of the efficiency of "standard" 750 hour incandescents. LED units also have more carefully controlled directivity patterns and less light is wasted by going where it does not need to go.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
I seem to recall reading somewhere that a manufacture of metal halide type HID lamps developed custom lamps specifically for the Vegas casinos that provided colored output via the lamps gas chemistry vs. external color filters with a resulting significant increase in efficiency from eliminating losses from color filters.
On that last point, many streets would do fine with no streetlights at all. The only areas that have any real need for street lights are in urban areas with nighttime pedestrian activity, and in rural areas only in the immediate vicinity of traffic lights and significant intersections.
What brand and model was it? Was it UL listed? Self-ballasted lamps are normally UL listed. (Ones with pins and requiring external ballasts don't seem to need this.)
I have seen some CFLs fail in scary ways, and all of them were dollar store stool specimens. In fact, in my experience most dollar store CFLs are not UL listed. (And in my experience, most dollar store CFLs have horrible color, some have color both bad and badly misstated, and none with light output claims met them.)
The Consumer Product Safety commission can get a CFL recalled if it's ballast housing is made of non-flame-retardant plastic.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
It's been a long time since I looked at them.
A couple of the features that make LEDs good for signals that you point out, and which also make them good for other warning type signals - Tight emissions spectrum and directional output - are the reasons that current LED technology is not appropriate for residential lighting use. Residential lighting needs a much broader output spectrum and wide beam pattern. When they get an LED with a "warm white" equivalent output spectrum and a wide beam spread then they'll be on the way to residential lighting applications. Price will still have to be brought down a lot, but once the units are mass market acceptable production scale should take care of price.
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BTW, I just looked at the Gray County (KS) wind farm production data. Since initial startup mid-2001 thru mid-2007, they have averaged only
40% capacity factor w/ a high month of less than 60% and several months of only 20%. That implies from 2.5X to 5X the required generation even to get the output which still would be awfully expensive to have such excess installed capacity. Wind has some benefits, but it can't replace baseload generation in large quantites w/o very high excess capacity at other times. This facility is in W KS, one of the highest wind energy potential areas in the US.It's still dark where it's dark when it's dark and those folks need lights when it's dark, not while the sun's shining... :)
I understand what you think you would be doing there, but while haven't done actual calculations, one problem is that you're adding even more requirements for transmission during those dark times or still require other generation facilities.
Certainly hydro, tidal and pumped storage have very limited geographical constraints. I don't recognize "CAS".
No, it was the first new _application_ filed for a license. The "streamlined" process of review is expected to take 4 years or so before the issuing of an actual construction license.
TVA was the filing utility for a unit at the existing Bellefonte site in AL (where there's a 1000 MWe abandoned unit at greater than 95% complete, quit work on in the "upgrade mania" after TMI owing to unconstrained cost growth).
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I've driven past some relatively huge wind turbine farms in west TX and they sure didn't seem to be anywhere near full production either. Wind certainly isn't the answer by itself, but it can certainly contribute to the total.
No single solution, a lot of different sources need to be adding power to the grid in a lot of different places. If we can get better storage technology than current batteries that will solve a lot of problems, including EV range or lack thereof.
Hydro and tidal generation are geographically limited, but a have a lot of energy available and should be significant contributors to the total. CAS is compressed air storage, same basic idea as pumped hydro storage, compress air with off peak excess and run back through a turbine on peak.
We'll never know, will we? But that's a "commons" arena.
I agree on collusion; not so much on monopolies.
Free market monopolies are usually good. The greatest monopoly of all time, the company held up as the poster child as evil, was Standard Oil. Yet Standard Oil managed to reduce the price of kerosene from $3.00/gallon to five cents. In three years. By so doing, they revolutionized society. Of course the whale-oil people raised a fuss and Standard Oil was broken up. Make no mistake, the consumer benefited by Standard Oil's monopoly. Oil drillers, refiners, and transporters suffered, but the consumer came out way ahead.
The monopolies that harm society are the ones sanctioned or owned by the government: utilities, mail, transportation, and the like.
I wonder how much of that statement is based on the assumption that the CFLs are going to be gotten rid of the way they should be, which is not likely to be the way they are.
Of course not. Your "imaginary" advantages may be very "real" to the family. Status in the community or with peers is important, even crucial, to some. Maybe they can't get the 35% improved vehicle in their alma mater's colors, or the "better" vehicle doesn't have a cup holder. Whatever.
But it works both ways.
Somebody pointed out that there are two hybrids (Civic and Prius). One LOOKS like a hybrid, the other doesn't. Aside from looks, the two are equivalent in gas milage, price, and virtually all other characteristics. The one that LOOKS like a hybrid (Prius?) outsells the conventional-looking car by three-to-one! Why? Because the environmental types want others to know they are environmentalists! That they care, that they are doing something wonderful. Peer pressure. [Confession: I may have Civic confused with Prius or vice-versa - I don't know and I don't care.]
It's their money. If a family is willing to put their earnings into a gas guzzler or a non-disguised hybrid, who has the gall to tell them otherwise?
A YEAR? Think FIVE YEARS and ten years to build it.
A few years ago a gas-fired plant was proposed in my area. It would have a
3/4 mile long discharge canal connecting the cooling basin to the bay.The environmentalists went nuts. "THERMAL POLLUTION" they cried. It would kill all the marine life from Houston south to Mexico and 100 miles into the Gulf! Four years of to-ing and fro-ing before construction began.
Plant eventually got built. Now the discharge canal is lined shoulder to shoulder with fishermen. Seems as if the marine critters that like warmer water (mostly shrimp) head for the canal. The fish who like to eat shrimp follow. Creatures who don't like warm water move away - to Canada, I guess.
On the contrary. I think about eight people on the planet would go for an 8% increase in price to achieve these goals. But carry on.
That's what fungible means.
Then he got an MBA from Harvard.
Pity to think of the ranks to which he could have risen had he only applied himself.
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