Free energy
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Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not a source of free energy. You might have noticed it being every so slightly reactive. 'Capitalists' keep getting ripped off by scam artists promoting free energy schemes. Those same scam artists often claim the oil industry is keeping them down..
Agreed. It actually takes more energy to produce hydrogen than it gives off but the idea to use hydrogen is because power plants are more efficient than cars and they also pollute less for the same amount of power.
John
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In your case, I'm sure you are paying to get electricity out of the national grid so your power doesn't just come from the dam. If it did, I'm sure things would be different. I think the closest we will see to "free" energy will be when we can finally get small scale hydrogen fusion running. BTW, what was the best free energy device from the show?
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Andy Brummer wrote:
In your case, I'm sure you are paying to get electricity out of the national grid
Nope, I'm on an island in the Pacific ocean and I live within a short drive of two different hydro electric generators that supply all our local power.
Andy Brummer wrote:
what was the best free energy device from the show?
There were none I would term best, but there was a pretty cool looking device by a sculptor (Finsrud), I found a video of it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=553061720631716456[^] It's no more perpetual motion than anything else, but it does seem to run on it's own for a very long time and it's kind of soothing to watch.
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In your case, I'm sure you are paying to get electricity out of the national grid so your power doesn't just come from the dam. If it did, I'm sure things would be different. I think the closest we will see to "free" energy will be when we can finally get small scale hydrogen fusion running. BTW, what was the best free energy device from the show?
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Andy Brummer wrote:
In your case, I'm sure you are paying to get electricity out of the national grid so your power doesn't just come from the dam. If it did, I'm sure things would be different.
Agreed. As power is a commodity that the price is determined by market forces and by government regulation so even though it may cost 1 or 2 cents per kW/H less than coal or nuclear you may not see that savings.
Last modified: 26mins after originally posted --
John
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John Cardinal wrote:
We will never see free energy
We may see it, but we'd still have to pay for it, it's kind of the problem with malign capitalism I think. Assume someone invented a zero-point energy[^] extraction machine, the cost would be hideous, so such a device would only be available to very large corps, we'd still have to pay for the end product, handsomely I'd guess and well beyond the recoup of research and development costs. It's arguable that a device such as this, transcends the interests of a mere coroporation, but try telling that to the shareholders though :doh:
- "I'm not lying, I'm just writing fiction with my mouth"
We already have geothermal, solar and wind energy generation that can be operated on a small scale for a single home which easily pay for their initial costs and maintenance in an increasingly shorter period of time, people are just willing to pay more for convenience and always will.
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Andy Brummer wrote:
In your case, I'm sure you are paying to get electricity out of the national grid
Nope, I'm on an island in the Pacific ocean and I live within a short drive of two different hydro electric generators that supply all our local power.
Andy Brummer wrote:
what was the best free energy device from the show?
There were none I would term best, but there was a pretty cool looking device by a sculptor (Finsrud), I found a video of it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=553061720631716456[^] It's no more perpetual motion than anything else, but it does seem to run on it's own for a very long time and it's kind of soothing to watch.
John Cardinal wrote:
Nope, I'm on an island in the Pacific ocean and I live within a short drive of two different hydro electric generators that supply all our local power.
If that's the case, you might be getting screwed. If anyone here has anything close to an answer then it would be Roger.
John Cardinal wrote:
It's no more perpetual motion than anything else, but it does seem to run on it's own for a very long time and it's kind of soothing to watch.
I'm guessing the ball contacting those metal tubes turns on an electromagnet pulling it along.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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We already have geothermal, solar and wind energy generation that can be operated on a small scale for a single home which easily pay for their initial costs and maintenance in an increasingly shorter period of time, people are just willing to pay more for convenience and always will.
I just read the high level results of a survey that there is way more then enough geothermal energy available in the US to power the entire country, and that building enough plants for 10% of the nations power supply would cost less then the cost of one new carbon sequestering coal plant. The cost of the plants seem really fishy to me, but it would definitely seem to be better then many other options. I wish home solar was a bit quicker at paying for itself. I've got a few neighbors that have solar, but it doesn't pay for itself until about 10 years, and it just seems a long time to trust that nothing will go wrong with it. Also, things like solar screens and insulation are much more cost effective right now and are a good preparation for when solar becomes more affordable.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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John Cardinal wrote:
Nope, I'm on an island in the Pacific ocean and I live within a short drive of two different hydro electric generators that supply all our local power.
If that's the case, you might be getting screwed. If anyone here has anything close to an answer then it would be Roger.
John Cardinal wrote:
It's no more perpetual motion than anything else, but it does seem to run on it's own for a very long time and it's kind of soothing to watch.
I'm guessing the ball contacting those metal tubes turns on an electromagnet pulling it along.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Nope, no electricity at all, just the combination of the regular non electric magnets and the pendulums which very slightly tilt the wheel the ball rolls around so that it's rolling downhill all the time. There's all sorts of explanations of it around the net. Apparently guesses range from 90% efficiency to 99% efficiency but it's still losing out in the end to friction etc. What I like about it is just the artistic appeal I guess, it just looks cool, like a lot of handcrafted technology from Victorian times. http://www.museumofvictorianscience.co.uk/images/main_800.jpg[^]
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Nope, no electricity at all, just the combination of the regular non electric magnets and the pendulums which very slightly tilt the wheel the ball rolls around so that it's rolling downhill all the time. There's all sorts of explanations of it around the net. Apparently guesses range from 90% efficiency to 99% efficiency but it's still losing out in the end to friction etc. What I like about it is just the artistic appeal I guess, it just looks cool, like a lot of handcrafted technology from Victorian times. http://www.museumofvictorianscience.co.uk/images/main_800.jpg[^]
Ah, so I'm guessing most of the energy is in the long pendulums and the ball is there to provide a distraction and keep them synchronized.
John Cardinal wrote:
What I like about it is just the artistic appeal I guess, it just looks cool, like a lot of handcrafted technology from Victorian times.
Definitely cool looking. When I was growing up a neighbor of mine had a back yard full of WWII and earlier era radio equipment. We used to sneak in there and just play with all the old electronics and vacuum tubes.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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How true. :)
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:rolleyes: Thinking is in short supply around here today. :) Seems that I pointed that out already. The point is no matter how cheaply you can source the energy it still costs money to get it to the end user. The real wtf is why isn't it at least cheaper than an operation that runs a nuclear power plant or shovels millions of tons of coal into a burner all day? Anyone who want's to argue that it costs the same to maintain a 40 year old dam as it does to run a nuclear power plant I'll gladly take on.
John Cardinal wrote:
Anyone who want's to argue that it costs the same to maintain a 40 year old dam as it does to run a nuclear power plant I'll gladly take on.
Nuclear is very expensive, but I think you've really underestimated the cost of hydro-electric in your mind (compared to coal for example). Just because all of the cost is up-front doesn't make it cheap. Go price a dam, and I'm sure you'll say "Damn! that's expensive". BUT, hydro's hardly worth discussing anyway. The main problem with hydro-electric, is that everything worth damming had been dammed. Unless you live in China, where it's okay to submerge entire cities when building your damn, there isn't much economically feasible hydro capacity left in the world.
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:rolleyes: Thinking is in short supply around here today. :) Seems that I pointed that out already. The point is no matter how cheaply you can source the energy it still costs money to get it to the end user. The real wtf is why isn't it at least cheaper than an operation that runs a nuclear power plant or shovels millions of tons of coal into a burner all day? Anyone who want's to argue that it costs the same to maintain a 40 year old dam as it does to run a nuclear power plant I'll gladly take on.
John Cardinal wrote:
why isn't it at least cheaper than an operation that runs a nuclear power plant or shovels millions of tons of coal into a burner all day?
In your case, I don't know. In ours, hydro @ $.015/kWH, coal @ $.07/kWH, gas @ $.10/kWH, solar @ $.16/kWH, nuclear @ $.11/kWH, plus wheeling, capacity, and spot-market premiums add up to about $.05/kWH purchased cost, if we get the mix right. Add in system maintenance & repair, equipment replacement, labor and the $.077/kWH we charge seems a bargain. Get the mix wrong, or fail to secure sufficient long-term supply contracts to cover base load, and a company can quickly end up insolvent. It's an extraordinarily risky business compared to the era of utilities being a stolid, steady investment vehicle. And although it's information I can't give out, I have the budgets for the Parker-Davis-Mead hydro system, and it costs far more than you might imagine to keep those aging plants alive. Forget about replacing them with new ones, too. The econazis will never allow it. They'd rather we all listen to NPR by candlelight, anyway.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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John Cardinal wrote:
why isn't it at least cheaper than an operation that runs a nuclear power plant or shovels millions of tons of coal into a burner all day?
In your case, I don't know. In ours, hydro @ $.015/kWH, coal @ $.07/kWH, gas @ $.10/kWH, solar @ $.16/kWH, nuclear @ $.11/kWH, plus wheeling, capacity, and spot-market premiums add up to about $.05/kWH purchased cost, if we get the mix right. Add in system maintenance & repair, equipment replacement, labor and the $.077/kWH we charge seems a bargain. Get the mix wrong, or fail to secure sufficient long-term supply contracts to cover base load, and a company can quickly end up insolvent. It's an extraordinarily risky business compared to the era of utilities being a stolid, steady investment vehicle. And although it's information I can't give out, I have the budgets for the Parker-Davis-Mead hydro system, and it costs far more than you might imagine to keep those aging plants alive. Forget about replacing them with new ones, too. The econazis will never allow it. They'd rather we all listen to NPR by candlelight, anyway.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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If those are costs then clearly hydro is cheaper to produce. Still it reinforces my original argument that there will never be such thing as "free" energy.
John Cardinal wrote:
there will never be such thing as "free" energy.
Very true, unless we suddenly evolve an organ that allows us to directly extract energy from the ether, transmute it into any form, and inject it into any device that requires energy to operate. We'll, at the very least, always need some way to store, distribute, and control energy, no matter how free it is. That will always involve some sort of infrastructure, along with its various support needs and costs. But there's nothing wrong with shooting for "very inexpensive" energy...:-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I was watching some strange documentary last night about the history of the perpetual motion machine and free energy devices. These free energy guys were going on about the benefits the world would see once these devices were invented and one of their claims was that we would all have all the energy we could use for no cost. The problem with that theory is that personally, where I live, we have all the free energy we want and it is billed at the same rate as any where else. All our local power comes from hydro electricity, there is a river and a dam further up the highway and a generator that has been there for so long it's surely paid off it's initial investment many years ago with only maintainence costs at this point. Yet I still get an electricity bill in the mail and I'm sure I'm paying roughly the same per kilowatt hour as electricity that comes from a nuclear power plant or a coal burning plant or whatever. We will never see free energy.
The free energy nut jobs are in the same crazy league as "the US government bombed WTC on 9/11". You often find a conspiracy theory attached to these "documentaries". The government and corporations doesn't want free energy for the people (and all what that implies). You never see serious scientists backed by a university or a corporation claiming to have found "free" energy. It's all bullshit. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is definitely no free energy.
-- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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I just read the high level results of a survey that there is way more then enough geothermal energy available in the US to power the entire country, and that building enough plants for 10% of the nations power supply would cost less then the cost of one new carbon sequestering coal plant. The cost of the plants seem really fishy to me, but it would definitely seem to be better then many other options. I wish home solar was a bit quicker at paying for itself. I've got a few neighbors that have solar, but it doesn't pay for itself until about 10 years, and it just seems a long time to trust that nothing will go wrong with it. Also, things like solar screens and insulation are much more cost effective right now and are a good preparation for when solar becomes more affordable.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Yeah, I have read about several different types of generation based on solar that could fill all the USA's energy demands and although might seem costly to build, would be paid off shortly with current energy rates. The only problem is that the greed driven corporations in this world do not want them and will do everything to block all forms of solutions. They want full complete control and keep the energy costs at a maximum. One of them I recently read about (within the last year) is a large scale solar plant that they said could power the entire USA with only 1,500 sqare miles of land. Break that up to several points across the USA, and boom, no more energy problems. Will it be done? Not in our lifetime! Greed and control rules. Until that changes, essential things in our lives will always come at a bone crushing premium.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: OpenID - More thought - Great system if.. Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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I was watching some strange documentary last night about the history of the perpetual motion machine and free energy devices. These free energy guys were going on about the benefits the world would see once these devices were invented and one of their claims was that we would all have all the energy we could use for no cost. The problem with that theory is that personally, where I live, we have all the free energy we want and it is billed at the same rate as any where else. All our local power comes from hydro electricity, there is a river and a dam further up the highway and a generator that has been there for so long it's surely paid off it's initial investment many years ago with only maintainence costs at this point. Yet I still get an electricity bill in the mail and I'm sure I'm paying roughly the same per kilowatt hour as electricity that comes from a nuclear power plant or a coal burning plant or whatever. We will never see free energy.
Well, I believe 100% in free energy. After all, everywhere you look there is energy, it all around us and includes us. Everything contains energy. That would mean that there is free energy. I do not however believe in free energy collectors. As you mention, there will always be someone in conrol and requiring you to pay for that energy even after the energy collector has been paid off. Then you have the middle man who delivers the energy to your location with yet another cost. The closest thing we can do is to tap into as much semi-free energy such as solar, wind, hydro and geothermal as possible where we happen to live. I was just visiting a website for a local farm (local being about 100 miles away) where they make goat cheese. Their production is under 100 pounds per month, but that is just fine with them. They have are not connected to the grid at all. Their main power comes from three solar panels and heat from a wood burning radiant water floor system. They recently got a permit to put in a micro hydro generator on a seasonal Creek. While they are not using free energy collectors, they are not pulling any power from anywhere other than their land with the except of the wood powered heating system (they might even be using their own wood, do not know). http://pholiafarm.com/about_us.htm[^] If everyone would attempt to use the ambient energy in their location, there would not be such a need for national energy systems :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: OpenID - More thought - Great system if.. Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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Yeah, I have read about several different types of generation based on solar that could fill all the USA's energy demands and although might seem costly to build, would be paid off shortly with current energy rates. The only problem is that the greed driven corporations in this world do not want them and will do everything to block all forms of solutions. They want full complete control and keep the energy costs at a maximum. One of them I recently read about (within the last year) is a large scale solar plant that they said could power the entire USA with only 1,500 sqare miles of land. Break that up to several points across the USA, and boom, no more energy problems. Will it be done? Not in our lifetime! Greed and control rules. Until that changes, essential things in our lives will always come at a bone crushing premium.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: OpenID - More thought - Great system if.. Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
Yeah, it would be sweet if someone came up with a solar collecting asphalt that was safe to drive on.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
