Congratulations Again Democrats | William M. Briggs

At the acknowledged risk of offending my liberal readers (pretty much everyone who reads my blog and who follows me on Twitter and whom I follow - go figure!) and especially mt, who loathes the author of the blog linked below, he captures my feelings pretty well.

No, I don't agree with Dr. (yes, Dr.) Briggs on everything and have incurred his wrath in his comments by saying so, there's little in this post with which I disagree.

Congratulations Again Democrats | William M. Briggs: "poor winners of the far left"

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Rocket City Rednecks redux

Photo courtesy space.com

In an earlier post, I discussed an episode of a series running on the National Geographic Channel called "Rocket City Rednecks" whose concept is that a bunch of exceptionally intelligent but eccentric Southerners take on projects that "big science" is too slow and ponderous to handle.

In the earlier post I discussed the Rednecks' design of a paddlewheel generator to use the energy in the flow of a river past their anchored boat to power some appliances on the boat. I concluded that, as shown, the system was implausible (though, admittedly, it could have been scaled up in such a way as to actually do what the Rednecks were claiming).

The episode I'd like to discuss here is called "Trailer Power" wherein the Rednecks purport to take Rog's (one of the Rednecks) trailer off grid, in large part due to wishing to avoid both the cost of electricity for cooling and the safety hazards of spraying their roof with water as they were doing as the episode started. As it happens, my intention is to build a house in the desert outside of the Los Angeles basin, and to take my house off grid. Thus, I watched the episode with interest.

They came up with a system consisting of three separate energy sources. One is a "gasifier" (really, as best I can tell, a wood gas generator) in which they intend to burn heat without oxidizing refuse, wood, etc. to generate flammable gasses that are then used as fuel input to an internal combustion engine driven generator. The next is to use ethyl alcohol to power a small internal combustion engine driving an alternator. For this, they did mention that they'd need to build a system for producing the ethanol but, whether or not they actually did this, it was not shown.

The third (intended to supply power for a cooling system that works by misting water onto the roof of Rog's trailer) wound up being powered by an exercise bicycle driving an alternator to charge a car battery which, in turn, powers a pump. The pump sends the water to a barrel reservoir mounted in a tree above the trailer roof, and then gravity drives the water through the hose system laying on the roof to supply the mist. (As an aside, the misting capability of the hose was produced by repeatedly shooting a garden hose with birdshot from a shotgun).

Are any of these systems practical in any way? Without a doubt, a wood gas generator system is capable of providing fuel for an internal combustion engine, FEMA even has a document describing the fabrication of such a system. I'll give this a plausible (though I'm not at all sure the the gasifier they built actually worked).

And, of course, it's true that alcohol can be used as an energy source for an internal combustion engine. The devil is in the details, however - where will the alcohol come from? In the episode as shown, they simply buy it. But electricity is cheaper, on an "effective joule for effective joule" basis, than pure ethanol. And home brew production of biofuel ethanol is fairly problematic, and this was simply left out of the show.

Finally, using leg power to lift water via a system of exercise bicycle -> alternator -> battery -> pump is very inefficient. However, not a lot of water is needed, so let's proceed in my usual fashion of estimation. In a perfect system, the evaporative cooling provided by the mist would by provided by a replacement rate of the water precisely equalling the rate of evaporation. This is the flow that would need to be achieved by the system (though, of course, intermittent operation between setpoints would certainly be the likely mode of operation).

I'm going to propose that the factors involved in the rate of replacement of water needed are: temperature, relative humidity, and roof area. It's much more complex than this of course, since a thorough analysis would incorporate the roof temperature which, in turn, would be a function of ambient temperature, emissivity, insolation, specific heat, etc. For the level of analysis appropriate here, we won't need this depth.

I'm going to use an article from the University of Michigan for an evaporation rate, and use an estimate of 8.5 meters X 17 meters or 144.5 m^2 for the roof area, and some ad hoc estimates for temperature and relative humidity. I will settle on an estimate of 5*10^(-4) grams/(cm^2*sec) or 5*10^(-3) kg/(m^2*sec) for the needed rate of water replacement.

Thus, in an hour, Rog will need to provide energy sufficient to, through the alternator, battery charging system, battery, and pump efficiencies, supply 5*10^(-3)*144.5*3600=2,601 kilograms of water. It looked like the storage barrel was something like 8 meters high, so this amounts to 2600*9.8*8=203,840 joules of work. Doing this in 3600 seconds equates to 56.6 watts.

A human can deliver this for quite a while, but I estimate that the alternator's efficiency might be 80%, the charging system a similar 80%, the battery 95%, and the pump perhaps 50%. Thus, Rog must input 56.6/(.8*.8*.95*.5) watts or 186 watts. Suffice it to say that only periodic activation of the cooling system will be possible if my estimates are in the ballpark (Rog is second from left in the photo above).

And finally, why do I care? I'm quite passionate about energy and sustainability and seeing it trivialized in such a way is troubling to me.

Indicated gas mileage

My Lexus CT200h has an indicator that I reset at each fill up that shows an indicated fuel efficiency (in miles/gallon or m.p.g.). I've noted that it consistently (and, now that I've analyzed it, ALWAYS) reads higher than the mileage that I calculate by dividing miles travelled on the odometer versus gallons logged at the pump during fill up.

I thought that I'd have a look at the data and found that every single one of the 56 fill ups I've performed since acquiring the vehicle exhibit this phenomenon. I ran a linear regression between the calculated and indicated fuel efficiency and found the best fit line to have a calculated mileage about 2.6 m.p.g. below the indicated mileage for each fill up. I noted the same error in my previous vehicles (the ones that had such a display), though I never took the time to plot and analyze the data so I can't say if there were no exceptions as I now can with the Lexus.

I don't have an explanation, it doesn't seem credible that it's intentional in order to mislead the driver - the calculation is simply too easy.  Nor can I come up with a theory that attributes the discrepancy to my driving habits. Further, I'm not sure how the indicated m.p.g. is calculated, though I assume that it uses the odometer and integrates a gasoline flow rate. In any case, it seems to exaggerate my actual fuel economy by about 5%. It's a good thing I keep the actual data!

The chart below shows the data points, a line showing where the points should fall, and the best fit line for where they actually fall. The horizontal axis is indicated m.p.g., the vertical is actual (that is, calculated from miles driven and gallons added) m.p.g. Note that every point falls below the upper line, which represents where they'd fall if the indicated and calculated mileages were equal. The vertical distance between the two lines represents the difference between the best fit line for indicated mileages versus a perfect fit between calculated and indicated mileages. In other words, it represents the error in the indicated m.p.g.

A wind blows in London

As anyone regularly reading my blog knows, my enthusiasm for renewable energy and energy efficiency is deep and wide. I'm in the midst of starting an entire division in my Company devoted to efforts in the energy space. I'm a voracious reader of renewable energy and energy efficiency articles, blogs, and literature. And, of course, my Company is positioned in the materials testing and built environment testing arena. Thus, it was with some interest that I subscribed to a free trade magazine entitled "Building Test News," whose tag line is "The industry publication for the testing, research and certification of building materials and applications" and whose thrust, in the first issue at least, seems to be energy related.

In this, the premier issue, one of the main articles is entitled ""Peak demand" and is about a London project called "One St George Wharf." A large part of the article is devoted to a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) atop the 181 meter, 49 story residential tower. The VAWT was designed by Matilda's Planet, a firm specializing in green energy harvesting, energy efficiency, and clean tech. A two page pdf describing the VAWT (from the company's point of view) can be read here. It's anticipated that the VAWT will power the tower's common areas. Given my skepticism regarding the VAWT installation atop the Hess Tower in Houston, what am I to make of this installation? Let's dig in!

According to the brochure linked above, the turbine is rated at 12 kW (kilowatts - a unit of power and a "rate" of energy production) and is anticipated to provide approximately 35,000 kWh (kilowatt hours - a unit of energy produced) in the course of a year, depending on wind conditions. This is a capacity factor of

This is a pretty high number for a VAWT in an urban environment, but they do say "depending on wind conditions." In Mythbusters style I'll give them a "plausible."

OK, next they give the dimensions of the turbine as 10 meters high by 6 meters in diameter, yielding an intercepted area of 60m^2. Let's take a wind velocity of s m/s^2 and look at a calculation similar to the one I detailed in the "What can the wind do?" post. This will yield an available power in the wind of 36*s^3 watts. Now, the Betz' law  shows that, at the very best efficiency, only 59% of the power in the wind can be turned into electrical energy, yielding an absolute maximum of 0.59*36=21.2*s^3 watts. A typical VAWT might actually achieve 30% but we'll be generous and assume that Dr. Tony Mewburn-Crook, the VAWT's primary designer, came up with innovations that allow 35% of the available energy to be captured. This would yield a power of 0.35*36*s^3 or 12.6*s^3 watts.

The literature states that the turbine is rated at 12 kW, so this implies that it achieves its rated power at a wind speed of

This is 22 m.p.h., not unreasonable at all. Also, it would not be surprising to find winds of such speed on a regular basis at the top of a 181 meter (almost 600') tall building in London. Again, quite plausible.

It's stated that the VAWT will power the "common areas" in this residential structure. In the post about the Hess Tower, linked above, I used 15 kWh/ft^2 per year as a measure of energy use in an office building. I would expect a residential tower to use less light, less frequently and the common areas less still. I'll go with 3 kWh/ft^2 per year. This estimate means that the VAWT could provide the energy to light 35,000 kWh/(3 kWh/ft^2)=11,700 ft^2. I assume that, in a tower, the common areas are first floor lobby, elevator lobbies, some outdoor areas, and a variety of other miscellaneous areas. For 49 stories, 11,700 ft^2 yields an average of 239 ft^2/floor. I suspect the actual number is significantly higher on most floors and much higher on the ground floor. I'm not buying that the VAWT can light the common areas.

Finally, let's look at the economics. The brochure states that "Approx payback under Feed in Tariff based on current prototype electric outputs 20 yrs." Hmm. 20 years*35,000 kWh/yr yields 700,000 kWh. Feed in tariffs (FITs) are monies paid under contract to supply (typically renewably sourced) electricity. As best I can determine from the University of Google (see here for example), the FIT in England for a generator of this size would be about 24p (pence)/kWh. At current exchange rates this is about $0.39. I find this rather shocking, in that I only pay a bit over a dime for electricity at our house. In any case, this seems to imply that the VAWT costs on the order of 700,000 kWh*$0.39/kWh or $273,000.

Now, payback periods are a poor way to calculate the economic desirability of an investment when they exceed a couple of years, since they fail to recognize the time value of money. But suppose that I receive a cash flow of 35,000 kWh*$0.39/kWh or $13,650/year. If I use a rational discount rate of, say, 8%/year and carry it over 10 years (a VERY long period for this type of analysis), the net present value (NPV) of the cash flows is just under $92,000. Even using a ridiculously low cost of capital of 3%, the NPV is about $116,400.

Conclusion: I don't think ludicrous claims are being made for what this turbine will provide in terms of electrical energy, but I don't think it will light the common areas and I certainly think that the reasons for including it in the project are mostly non-economic. I wouldn't call it greenwashing, but these types of projects really amount to a distraction.

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CT200h fuel economy summary

I've been driving the Lexus CT200h for about 14 months. In that time, I've used 474 gallons of unleaded regular grade fuel and driven 24,372 miles, thus realizing an aggregate fuel economy of 51.4 m.p.g. The maximum I've achieved on a tank full is 54.7 m.p.g., and the minimum is 45.7 m.p.g. The standard deviation of my m.p.g. for each tank full (not weighted by distance driven on that tank) is 1.99 m.p.g.

The graph below shows my mileage history. Click on it for a larger view.

Faulty comparison?

I follow (and link to) a fair number of energy related blogs. One of them is Consumer Energy Report, which aggregates posts from a variety of journalists and energy professionals with various specializations. A recent post was entitled "High Cost Prevents Electric Cars From Penetrating the Market." In this post, Andrew Holland discusses his thinking behind the lack of sales of pure electric cars and the financial troubles befalling some of their manufacturers. However, he's also quite complementary of the Chevy Volt, a vehicle I've considered.

But in the comment section, Buddy says

I’ve also never understood, however, how I can run a 5K Honda generator for a minimum of 2 hours ,and occasionally 4 hrs, on a single gallon of gas, that hybrid vehicles cannot achieve the 100 MPG rate easily.

Is this a valid comparison? After all, I certainly can't drive my hybrid  Lexus CT200h for 2, let alone 4 hours on a single gallon of gas. I think looking at Buddy's comment with the Lexus as the representative is quite reasonable. It's the same drive train as the ubiquitous and iconic Prius hybrid and I've gotten 51.38 miles per gallon total in the 14 months or so that I've driven it.


I wrote a simple Wolfram Mathematica program to determine an estimate for the power required at an input speed and an estimate for the mileage to be expected. The program comes gratifyingly close to my actual mileage at the speeds I've checked so I suspect that the power requirement is likely pretty close, the wild card being the engine efficiency.

In any case, let's go on. Buddy's Honda generator has a maximum rated output of 5 kilowatts, but I'm very doubtful that the two hours to which he refers is at full load. Nevertheless, I'll use it anyway because... who knows? And I suspect the two hour figure is at closer to full load while the four hour figure is at a much lesser load.

5 kilowatts is 6.71 horsepower. I calculated that, at 55 m.p.h., my Lexus requires from its Atkinson cycle internal combustion engine (and, where required, the generator and electric motor) about 13.8 horsepower and achieves about 54 m.p.g. If I assume that, at that cruising speed, the Lexus is capable of 28% efficiency, then I'd be burning fuel to release heat energy at the rate of 13.8/.28=46.4 horsepower. This is 34.6 kilowatts or 34,600 joules per second. Now, upon burning, a gallon of gasoline releases about 120,000,000 joules of heat energy so this gallon should last 3,470 seconds or just shy of 58 minutes. A quick check: at 54 m.p.g. and 55 m.p.h., a gallon ought to last an hour!

OK, so we have that I need 13.8 horsepower, a bit over twice what Buddy's generator supplies at 5 kilowatts or 6.7 horsepower. Multiplying my one hour by that 2 figure, I'd think his generator should run for about 2 hours at 5 kilowatts if it was as efficient as my Lexus. I don't think there's any reason for Buddy to be surprised!

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away...

In a book entitled "The Positive Philosophy," French philosopher Auguste Comte, writing about the unknowable, said of the stars "we can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere." Of course, very shortly thereafter, the spectrograph (or spectroscope, spectrometer, or spectrophotometer) was turned to the heavens and the rate at which we learned the inner workings of stars and, soon thereafter, galaxies was truly amazing.

We can now look back about 96% of the way to the beginning of the universe (some 14 billion years ago). How do we look back? It's because light, travelling at 300 million meters per second (186,000 miles per second) takes a finite amount of time to reach us. If we look at something a light year away, we're seeing it as it was a year ago.

Instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope were used to create the image above, now the deepest look into space ever, showing galaxies formed at the very beginning of the star forming phase of the Universe's evolution. You can read about the instruments and methods that allowed us to look at this truly incredible view of our Universe here.

Note: I am currently working at moving my blog from Blogger, with its limitations, to a Wordpress self-hosted site. I'm hoping for a smooth transition with all comments, links, graphics, etc. intact and even search engine continuity. We shall see.

A (kilo)calorie quickie

I've been in "downsizing" mode and have been on a reasonably rigorous workout regimen. As is my wont, I've adopted some technology assists and, in particular, utilize a couple of iPhone apps. One of the ones I use on days when I run is called "Runmeter" by abvio. It uses the GPS in the iPhone to yield distance, time, pace, altitude gain and loss, and others. It exports my path to Google Maps as well. If I select, it will Tweet my run and people can follow me and, when they tweet replies, it will speak them to me. I don't use this option though.

To the point of this post, once weight is entered into the program, it tells calories used (of course, these food calories are really kilocalories) and time. This can be converted to average power used during the run. it's as simple as plugging "471*kilocalories/(2287*seconds) in watts" into Google search bar. Unfortunately, the resulting number, about 860 watts, seems highly implausible if not downright ridiculous. That's over one horsepower for 38 minutes, and I'm no world class athlete. I'm hardly a neighborhood class athlete! Perhaps it's calculating the total, including my base metabolism of about 100 watts. That would make the increment of the running 760 watts or right at one horsepower. Also not possible.

And yet I've read that very strenuous physical exertion can burn on the order of 600 kilocalories/hour. This is just shy of 700 watts. On the other hand, many sources say that world class athletes can produce 1000 watts very briefly and a much smaller number for any significant length of time. For example, the graph at left shows the continuous power production of Masters Men (35-39) Hour Record holder (bicycle) Jayson Austin's rides in 2008 and 2009 (click to enbiggen). In 2009 his average power output over the hour was 302 watts.

I think that there's not much question that there's a problem here someplace! My suspicion is that the athlete figures are "external work" only, i.e., force exerted against the environment times speed. Then, the "food energy burned" figures count that as well as the internal energy burned to produce that work. If this is the case then, if I knew my rate of performing external work, what I'll call "athletic power," then I could use that and the internal metabolic power to calculate my efficiency of energy utilization. In my cycle of rotation of exercise, one of my workouts is a bicycle ride. One can get a "power meter" to measure actual athletic power. I'll post results when I get them.

This actually is pertinent to me as another iPhone app, Lose It, tracks my weight loss progress. In it, I log my food intake (it scans barcodes and has an extensive list of foods plus the ability to create your own foods and recipes) and my exercise calories to predict when I will reach my goal weight. Its evaluation of my exercise is similar to the output of the run meter when I plug in my weight, exercise type, and pace. It also tells me, based on my desired kilocalorie deficit (the difference between my daily "burn" and my intake), how many kilocalories I have left to eat on a given day. If my exercise kilocalories burned are less than the apps indicate, I may be eating more than I should given my desired deficit. On the other hand, the weight loss progress is good so I don't think I'll modify the inputs.

Kentucky GOP Outraged Colleges Want Students to Know Things

I'm a huge critic of California and its controlling Democrats' ridiculous leftist slant, pandering to unions, enacting policies that motivate businesses and employers to leave the state, etc. but, on the other hand, there's Kentucky and its brain-dead GOP.

Kentucky GOP Outraged Colleges Want Students to Know Things:

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Freedom and justice, evicted from America, may have found a new home « Fabius Maximus

While I don't condone all of Julian Assange's actions, on balance, it's my belief that he's done more good than harm. I completely agree with the author of the blog post linked below and, in particular, that Osama Bin Laden achieved much of what he desired in that my Country is not what it was. I've blogged that US efforts to extradite him and to shut down Wikileaks make me ashamed. 

Freedom and justice, evicted from America, may have found a new home « Fabius Maximus:

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Paul Ryan And His Family To Benefit From The $45 Billion In Subsidies For Big Oil In His Budget | ThinkProgress

Embarrassed to be conservative - take five. It disgusts me that this man represents the best the GOP can do to come up with a principled, intelligent, critically thinking conservative. "It's my wife's, I just don't know a thing about it."

Paul Ryan And His Family To Benefit From The $45 Billion In Subsidies For Big Oil In His Budget | ThinkProgress:

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Paranoid conspiracists, crackpots, and climate change

As anyone who follows the continuing online debate regarding AGW/climate change will know, the number of skeptical (for those who contest the legitimacy of the contentions of the mainstream climatology community) or denier (for those who accept same) sites is huge. In reading some of the posts and comments on such sites, there seems to be a very significant population of participants who entertain bizarre theories of matters extending far beyond climate change. Their acceptance of the notion that those who promote action on reduction of carbon emissions are really tools of the vast conspiracy to subvert democracy, steal assets of hardworking Americans (or Australians) and subject all of us to domination by the one world socialist oppressors is a given. But many go far beyond.

On Steven Goddard's (a pseudonym as nearly as I can determine - his efforts to maintain anonymity are fairly strenuous) Real Science skeptical site (one of the more stridently vituperative sites) we frequently find the comments of one "omanuel" who, along with his disbelief in mainstream climatology, has a disjointed blog whose main theme seems to be that the energy we receive from the sun is not produced as is commonly held and promulgated by the cospiracists, but rather by neutron repulsion. Somehow, this conspiracy to hide the true source of the sun's energy is a part of the overarching conspiracy to dominate the world. Oliver K. Manuel's site is full of references to totalitarianism, David and Goliath, God, etc. Manuel signs as "Former NASA Principal Investigator for Apollo." I guess he must be right then.

Next, we find Harry Dale Huffman, an enthusiastic supporter of the "greenhouse warming fails to explain the surface temperature of Venus, therefore AGW is false" trope. Mr. (NOT Dr.) Huffman describes himself as an "independent research physical scientist, author, and discoverer of the astounding world design behind all the ancient mysteries." He's written several books laying out his discoveries. I haven't dived into the deep end of his theories but I did read his contention that the landmasses of the Earth are laid out (by aliens of some kind) in a regular dodecahedron. He reaches this conclusion by drawing lines that follow arbitrary portions of continental boundaries and measuring the intersections of these lines with latitude parallels. His blog site is entitled "The Earth and Man: Setting the Stage" and the url is  http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/.

And Goddard himself has some paranoid conspiracist tendencies. Refer to his post entitled "The Elephant in the Room" where he presents his case that James Holmes, the shooter in Colorado, is part of some greater conspiracy apparently being covered up by the government. The evidence is that a gag order was issued by the judge handling the case. Now, I'm no fan of secrecy (though I'm a HUGE supporter of privacy) but when John B., M.D. is fine with the gag order under the theory that the criminal case won't be tainted, Goddard replies "They are hiding something."

So does finding some of the paranoid/crackpot fringe mean that the skeptical/denier sites are wrong? No, it doesn't but it certainly motivates one to look carefully at the real arguments presented. The fact that such writing attracts these folks certainly should raise warning flags among those who have no baseline of climate knowledge and to whom the arguments presented sound "sciency" enough to be plausible.

CT200h after a year

I've been driving the Lexus CT200h purchased by my Company for one year. In that time, I've put 20,343 miles on the odometer and put 394.351 gallons of fuel in the vehicle. This has resulted in a year-long average of 50.6 miles/gallon. The EPA estimate for the vehicle is 42 m.p.g. for city and highway combined. I've exceeded that by 20.5%. Had I gotten the 42 m.p.g., I'd have burned 484 gallons, so my driving habits saved about 90 gallons of regular, which would have cost about $350 and released about 1,700 pounds of carbon dioxide.


Had I continued to drive the Land Rover LR3 HSE I had prior to the Lexus, I'd have burned something like 970 gallons of premium gasoline, 576 gallons more. These 576 gallons would have released about 5.5 tons of carbon dioxide. That Land Rover has now been recycled (unfortunately, not by design).


The car is by no means spacious, nor is it a rabbit or a greyhound. That's to be expected and I did expect it. But it does put lie to those who claim that the CAFE standard of 54.5 by the year 2025 would have us all driving battery powered, beer can skinned econoboxes. Were I to employ more exotic techniques of hypermiling, such as pulse and glide, I'm sure that I could achieve that today. Of course, we can't rely on everyone to drive as I do now, and pulse and glide is more work than even I want to devote to driving. But with 12 model years to go, it's pretty hard to believe that this cannot be accomplished.

"Trade-Off"

Just in case anyone is feeling excessive optimism (otherwise known as "irrational exuberance"), this linked pdf from Metis Risk and Feasta, entitled "Trade-Off - Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse" by David Korowicz should provide quick relief.

Gravity and storage

My firm was contacted a bit over a year ago by a start-up firm called "Genergy, LLC" with what appears to be an innovative technology for utilizing buoyancy to generate electricity. This post is NOT about that concept. Rather, it's a side trip down a road that originated in a post by the founder of the firm and inventor of the patented technology, Mr. Kurt Grossman, in a thread in a Linkedin group he started called "Gravity Energy." The specific thread discusses pumped hydro storage.

Photo Credit: Mitsui & Co., Ltd.

Pumped hydro storage is one of a very few currently viable methods to store energy at so-called "utility scale" or "grid scale." The idea is to use energy (typically generated by intermittent sources such as wind and solar) to pump water from a lower to an upper reservoir and then to re-capture the potential energy imparted by this process by running the water back down to the lower reservoir through a hydroelectric turbine generator (diagram at left - click to enbiggen).


The technology is, in principal, capable of turning an intermittent source into one suitable for base load power. Of course, you might recognize that hydropower from dams utilizes this principle with mother nature providing the pump via the hydrologic cycle.


In the thread, I mentioned that geography places limits on the wide-scale adoption of pumped hydro storage because of the necessity for two very large reservoirs with a large elevation difference in close proximity. This is something that we don't find naturally around every corner and that, to construct, would entail an extraordinary infrastructure expenditure. Of course, given that one of my Company's main Divisions is dedicated to quality assurance and quality control of infrastructure projects, I'm not at all opposed to such an undertaking!


But I want to "bring this storage method home," so to speak. Were I to install a solar array and utilize pumped hydro in my household, what would this entail? Let me assume that I'd like to have the ability to store sufficient energy to provide electricity to my home for three days. Such a need will most likely arise in winter when I won't need air conditioning - hot summer days usually provide plenty of sunshine and the three days' worth of winter storage should also suffice for summer nights when the sun is down.


As it happens, I've calculated my home's average continuous energy use before, and it's an embarrassingly large 2.1 kilowatts. Therefore, I need to provide 2.1*24*3 or 151.2 kilowatt hours of energy in the system's water tank (that my homeowners association will never let me build no matter how the numbers come out). Energy units are energy units, so I can convert these 151.2 kilowatt hours to 5.443*10^8 or 544.3 million joules. My system is likely to run, optimistically, at about 75% efficiency, so I'll need to store 7.258*10^8 joules. As a side note, this is the total thermal energy available from burning about six gallons of gasoline. To actually use this energy and assuming a Home Depot generator runs at 25% efficiency, I'd need to have 24 gallons available. Keep this number in mind!


Now there are two ways to increase the energy stored in a pumped hydro system: increase the quantity; and increase the height to which it's pumped. A cubic meter of water is 1000 kilograms and raising this 1000 kilograms one meter will add 1000*9.8*1 or 9800 joules. Let's say instead that I could raise it 10 meters. Note that this is 33 feet so that the average height of the water in the tank is above the tops of the roofs in my neighborhood. Now I've added 9.8*10^4 joules. This means I need to raise (7.258*10^8)/(9.8*10^4) or 7406 cubic meters of water. This is just shy of two million gallons (1.96 million) so I'll go with the two million gallon tank. This is the part where I suggest recalling the 24 gallons of gasoline.

Photo credit: San Patricio Municipal Water District

As it happens, we have a swimming pool. It's likely on the small side of average at around 19,000 gallons. So the water in about 100 of those will just do the trick! To the left is a photo of such a tank. Perhaps this explains why those who go "off grid" use batteries to store energy captured by their solar arrays and wind turbines and keep fossil fuel powered generators for those times where the batteries don't suffice.


There's much more on the practicalities (or lack thereof) for utilizing pumped hydro storage on a wide scale to store energy from intermittent sources at one of my favorites sites. It's called "Do the Math" and is published by Dr. Tom Murphy, a professor of physics at UC San Diego.

Rentier Debt and the Collapse of Debt-Based Finance | The Energy Collective

A very interesting take on the economic growth/resource constraint/self-poisoning/debt nexus.

Rentier Debt and the Collapse of Debt-Based Finance | The Energy Collective:

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The money value of time

Photo Credit: The Clock Works, Unlimited

Our Company held an event at our San Diego facility last Tuesday, June 5. Quite a few people from our Long Beach headquarters traveled to the event and it's true that alcoholic beverages were served. Thus, we determined that it was in our best interest to hire a so-called "party bus" to transport our people to the event.


My first calculation involved determining how much money we'd save in fuel by avoiding individual drivers (ignoring the possibility of carpooling). It turned out that, with reasonable assumptions, we'd avoid purchasing about $300 worth of gas. The cost of the party bus exceeded this by a factor of three, so it was risk avoidance and a good time at the cost of $600, money well-spent.


On the way down to San Diego, I was talking to one of my two partners in the Company, who suggested that I evaluate my strict 55 m.p.h. self-imposed maximum speed with respect to the value of my time. Of course, I pointed out to Brian that I'd done so on several  occasions. But that was using numbers applicable to my Jeep Grand Cherokee and my Land Rover LR3. Even with those, it was clear that saving fuel by driving 55 m.p.h. was a philosophical rather than an economic decision. I suspect that with my current vehicle, a Lexus CT200h (basically a re-badged and upgraded Prius), the numbers will be worse. Let's see.


Since many of the fuel-saving techniques I used in my previous vehicles are superfluous in the Lexus (it turns the engine off at stop lights, turns it off and uses some of the gravitational potential energy in travelling down hills to charge the battery by using the transmission to turn the electric motor to a generator, etc.) I think I'll get fairly close to my fuel savings over the "typical" driver of my vehicle by simply comparing my fuel economy to the EPA ratings for the vehicle.


Inverting the average rating for the CT200h of 42 m.p.g., the EPA suggests that the typical driver uses (1/42)=0.0238 g.p.m. (gallons per mile). My economy for the duration I've had the car is  50.49 m.p.g., so I use (1/50.49)=0.0198 g.p.m. Thus, for every mile I save 0.00400 gallons, currently worth (at $4.159/gallon) $0.0167.


On the other hand, at 55 m.p.h. it takes me (1/55)=0.0182 hours to travel that mile, whereas at 70 m.p.h. it would take me 0.0143 hours. Thus, it takes me 0.00390 hours longer to drive a mile. Since I'm reluctant to provide numbers on my blog that would enable someone to calculate my salary, I'll determine what salary would equate these numbers. This is simply a matter of dividing $0.0167 by 0.00390, yielding $4.28/hour. Suffice it to say that that severely underestimates my hourly cost.


Now, it's true that there are many inaccuracies in the calculations above. For example, it really should be isolated to highway fuel economy, where the EPA thinks I'll get 40 m.p.g. and I actually get more like 55 m.p.g. Using those numbers, $7.27 would be the wage that represents the break even point. Surprisingly, my wage exceeds this number as well.


The conclusion is, of course, that now more than ever my driving to achieve maximum fuel efficiency derives much more from philosophy (and some would say eccentricity) than economy.

Obscenity: I Know It When I See It – The New Inquiry

Another in a shockingly long series of reasons to be embarrassed to be thought of as a conservative, despite the fact that the incident described herein is the very antithesis of real conservatism. And even by the incredibly low moral standards of the modern Republican Party (of which I used to be a member) this is beneath contempt.


Obscenity: I Know It When I See It – The New Inquiry:

'via Blog this'

What would it take for the U.S. to bring Brent crude to $68./bbl? (Newt Gingrich on energy, part 2)

In a previous post I made my case that, in order to bring Newt Gingrich's campaign promise to bring gasoline prices to "$2.50/ gallon or below," the U.S. would need to bring enough crude production to market to bring the price per barrel (for Brent crude; WTI, or West Texas Intermediate is the figure most often quoted on the radio and typically is quite a few dollars lower) of around $68.00. The spot price of Brent crude closed Friday, April 20 at $118.52/bbl (as contrasted with WTI at $103.88/bbl).


Can the U.S., with all regulatory hurdles removed, supply sufficient oil to the market to bring the price down by 42%? And would the extraction be economically viable at a price of $68.00/bbl? Let's take a look.


This will only be from a 30,000 foot level - there are many subtleties involved in U.S. gasoline prices, else how to explain the huge difference in price per gallon between Tulsa, OK and Chicago, IL ($3.459 vs. $4.464)? But crude oil is sold into a worldwide market. If there's a significant discrepancy (with quality taken into account) between the price that willing buyers will pay in disparate geographic regions, arbitrageurs will quickly step in to profit from the difference and equilibrate the prices.


This is one of the purposes of the various Commodities Exchanges (the others are things like the ability to hedge and to speculate) and they provide a very efficient market. The discrepancies above can be attributed to proximity to refiners, proximity to pipelines, specific blending requirements and taxes of states, etc. It wouldn't be possible to buy 20,000 gallons in Tulsa for $69,180, truck them to Chicago and sell them for $89,280 and pocket the $18,800 difference (after paying about $1,300 for the trucking).


In any case, the price of oil is demonstrably very sensitive to small changes in either demand or supply. An economist might say that price elasticity of both supply and demand are, at least in the short term, very low. That is, the graphs that show price on the vertical axis and quantity demanded or supplied on the horizontal axis are close to vertical. In an efficient market, the point where these lines cross sets the so-called "clearing price," that is, where the price is that which causes supply and demand to be equal.


What we want is the price elasticity of supply (PES) so that we can figure what amount of additional supply would cause the price to decrease from $118/bbl to  $68/bbl. This is, of course, a simplistic analysis in that it assumes assumes that "all else is equal." Among other things, this assumes that demand doesn't rise as prices drop (though, since the demand curve is inelastic, this might not be a bad approximation in the short run), that OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers don't react by lowering production (they might not since they count on the foreign exchange income), and other considerations.


PES is defined as % change in Quantity supplied divided by % change in price. Estimates range from 0.1 to 0.01. Using a baseline of 85 million bbl/day and plugging in the numbers represented by a decrease in price from $118/bbl to $68/bbl, it can be calculated that the increase in production needed would be about 3.6 million bbl/day at an elasticity of 0.1. At 0.01, it would be a mere 600 thousand bbl/day.


The second number is highly unlikely to be correct in that it was calculated by using production figures as prices rose at a time when most producers were unable to increase production (regardless of their protestations to the contrary). There are a few more seemingly authoritative sources that use the 0.1 figure and this excellent essay discusses the interaction between supply and demand in recent history and suggests (through implication) that the interaction leads to an effective doubling of elasticity.


In any event, the sharp eyed will have noticed that the implication here is that a price decrease would result in an increase in quantity supplied. This is, of course, not what's implied in a discussion of supply elasticity. But the supply elasticity is so close to vertical that what we're really looking for is the rightward shift of the quantity supplied curve that, in combination with the quantity demanded curve, would clear the market at $68/bbl. I simply used the negative of the PES in the calculation.


This very informal (and, no doubt, flawed) analysis indicates that an increase in world production on the order of between 3 and 4 million bbl/day, ceteris parabus, could cause a decrease in crude prices sufficient to drive the cost of gasoline to $2.50/gallon or less.


Next I'll discuss whether the U.S. technically recoverable reserves and the available equipment would allow such an increase.

More of the same, but worse

On Intrade.com, as far as I know the best and most extensively used prediction market, it's estimated that President Obama's chance of being re-elected in November, 2012 are at about 60% and the chances of the Republican Party adding control of the Senate to its existing control of the House of Representatives are about 65%.

Say what you will about prediction markets' accuracy in comparison to other forms of prognostication, they've typically exhibited accuracy at least as good as poll results (though the markets are heavily influenced by poll results) and it's awfully easy to get moment by moment snapshots as trading takes place.

Of course, the voting results for President and for the Senate are far from independent but, if they were and if the chances above could actually be treated as probabilities rather than betting odds (see below*) then there's about a 40% likelihood that we'll have a Democratic President and that both houses of Congress will have Republican majorities.

This is not atypical of the second term of a President, but with the level of toxicity exhibited by present-day political discourse and a significant degree of public discontent (cf. the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party Movement) this seems to me to be a recipe for increasing levels of public disorder and chaos.

And, on a subject near and dear to my heart and that which is the foundational area of concentration of this blog, this is not a political environment in which the energy Sword of Damocles hanging over all of our heads will be able to be blunted.

*The salespeople in my Company must enter a "probability of win" when they log a proposal into our CRM database. We all know what we mean by this but, logically, it makes no sense. It's a one-time event and the probability is either 0 or 1, and we'll know what it was when the results are in. It's not as if we can say "in 100 similar opportunities that we've pursued in precisely this way in precisely similar environments we have won 60 of them." In order to reconcile this to the logical framework within which my thought processes operate, when a salesperson enters 60%, I interpret this to mean that he or she would take either side of a 3 to 2 bet where the bettor against us was offerred 3 units if we fail, and we win 2 units if we succeed.

Image credit: Felix Auvray via allposters.com