I also promised not to vote often!
Literally: I had to fill out and sign a form saying I knew voting early means I can’t vote at my normal polling place on election day.
I’ve worked the polls before and I know in the past the procedure for absentee ballots was to check those voters had not cast during normal voting. Presumably DuPage county will have some specific procedure to verify I don’t break my promise and vote twice.
I encourage anyone who thinks they might be rushed on election day to check into early voting. And remember: there is more than the Presidential election at stake. In addition for casting my vote for President, congressman, local judges and so on, I voted on three other issues. These were:
- Amendment to the Illinois constitution touching on pensions:
If you believe the Illinois Constitution should be amended to require a three-fifths majority vote in order to increase a benefit under any public pension or retirement system, you should vote YES on the question. If you believe the Illinois Constitution should not be amended to require a three-fifths majority vote in order to increase a benefit under any public pension or retirement system, you should vote NO on the question. Three-fifths of those voting on the question or a majority of those voting in the election must vote YES in order for the amendment to become effective on January 9, 2013.
Given the state of Illinois finances, and other existing constitutional provisions protecting benefits already promised, I voted YES.
- In my county we also voted on DuPage County Public Office Advisory Question:
Should Illinois law permit an individual to hold two or more public elected offices simultaneously?
I voted no.
- In Lisle we cast rather irrelevant votes on the Lisle Township Advisory Individual Rights Amendment Question:
Should the United States Constitution be amended to clearly state that only individual persons, and not corporations, associations, or any other organizational entities, are entitled to the rights enumerated in the Constitution?
This question’s appearance on ballots for my town only is rather odd. But I guess if the township wants to know what I think I’d be happy to answer the real question: I think corporations should be able to donate money to campaigns. I advised the Township I did not want anyone to amend the US Constitution in this way.
Have fun voting. Today. Tomorrow. Or on or before Nov. 6!
OK, you voted once. But…ahem…did your cats vote?
mwg–
Not yet. Good thing. I’m sure they would favor guaranteed treats, tuna, salmon and cars stopping whenever a cat enters a street.
Oh–sorry, now I’ll have to get out there and counterbalance your presidential selection! I’m hoping you used a write-in box for a little haiku–which by the way we have seen precious little of in 2012…
thomaswfuller2
I think Illinois electoral votes are pretty safely in Obama’s pocket. But I think Illinois residents should get out there an vote in the constitutional amendment which really does matter.
Maryland of course is a lock for Obama. I have been voting third party in the last several presidential elections with the sole idea of keeping alternative parties on the ballot. We also have a number of other contentious items pertaining to redistricting (our Rohrsachesque gendermandered districts could be used to detect and are indicative of thought disorders), same sex marriage, casino gambling (for education of course — pffft), setting college tuition for children of illegal immigrants to instate levels, and a couple of local initiatives.
Your cats do seem to be quite reasonable–but cats always are.
And as far as the haiku…?
Live has been busy
interrupting haiku
I’ll start again. Soon?
Don’t you have to be dead to be allowed to vote twice in Illinois?
Alexj Buergin,
I could still die before Nov. 6. . .
lucia:
Perish the thought!
we voted by mail in Florida. a place where a vote is sure to count – and be counted, and be counted, and counted, and counted …
j ferguson– I assume all chads have been eliminated in this election?
We’ve been absentee voting since 2003, so I don’t know if there are still any punch type voting devices in use in Florida. I would think not after the foofaraw in 2000.
There’s probably some other perfectly good way to screw it up.
I’m not sure what constitutes voting “often” anymore.
Certainly voting 10 times is excessive but some states consider two or three votes to be reasonable. Perhaps you should call Gov Quinn?
Someone just told me, unironically, to “vote early and vote often.”
Uh…
Gosh, I wish we could vote on questions like this in the UK.
My additions to the next General Election voting slate would be staying in/getting out of the EU, and repealing the windmill-subsidising energy-destroying 2008 Climate Change Act.
As it is, our politicians know best, of course….
One question: if all votes are now recorded electronically, are they and the computers which presumably tally them up hacker-proof? 🙂
cui bono
I’m sure the electronic communications aren’t hacker proof. I worked the polls roughly 8 years ago and the designers do think through a lot of manual verifications though. Poll workers generally remain on site after polling for quite some time. Also, physical ballots are kept– and delivered to a collection stations.
My ballot used a computer screen interface. But in addition, it printed out my choices. The printed ballot scrolled along to my right and the process permitted me to read and verify the printed version. That’s then stored. So, printed versions exist. My understanding is that some fraction of physical ballots are audited routinely. That would make it difficult for any region to get away with widespread cheating undetected.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s unhackable. But it does seem to me the hacking to diddle vote counts could be– and plausibly would be- detected after the fact and the proper vote count could be determined.
Rather than vote early and often, LBJ’s early supporters voted late and often.
“It has been alleged for years that Johnson captured his Senate seat through fraud, but Mr. Caro goes into great detail to tell how the future President overcame a 20,000-vote deficit to achieve his famous 87-vote victory in the 1948 Democratic runoff primary against a former Governor, Coke Stevenson. A South Texas political boss, George Parr, had manufactured thousands of votes, Mr. Caro found.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html
Sent my absentee ballot today, hope it gets there on time. May be last time I can vote, FATCA may force me to go Swiss only.
Re: Don B (Oct 30 07:41),
My favorite LBJ story is the one about one of his political opponents who committed suicide by shooting himself. Five times. In the back. With a bolt action rifle.
Cui Bono:
I’m with you on the polling questions. Could add one for England, Wales and Northern Ireland along the lines of “do you want Scotland to remain in the UK?”
I’m against them leaving us (I’m English). Kind of worried about how our flag is gonna look with a third of it missing. Might cheer the Welsh up though – they aren’t even represented at present.
We need an election bet. Time to redistribute Quatloos.
I do not want to interfere in U.S. politics, but I read in a French newspaper:
“Avec un brin d’amertume, le maire de New York Michael Bloomberg, un indépendant, a déclaré qu’il apportait son soutien au président démocrate Barack Obama, pour l’unique raison de son implication dans la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique.”
“With a touch of bitterness, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he brought his support for President Barack Obama, for the sole reason of his involvement in the fight against global warming.”
A tip though: do not let the naive who are misled by smooth talkers exercise public responsibilities.
Had Obama done anything for global warming? (No.) Bloomberg has been a constant party switcher. Who knows what the bitterness is about.
It’s pretty obvious which candidate is more likely to do something about global warming.
Boris–
I think neither candidate will do anything about global warming. One candidate will say he’s going to do nothing then do nothing. The other candidate mouth platitudes about it’s importance and then do nothing–just as he has done.
Cap and Trade/carbon tax isn’t the only thing one can do about global warming. There are also EPA regs and green energy investments. Romney will reduce regs and investment. Or, that’s what he says. He might change courses 🙂
Re: Boris (Nov 2 10:38),
And recent green energy ‘investments’ have worked so well. Let’s list a few: Solyndra, A123 and the ~$5E9 GM is spending on developing an electric car that nobody will buy. Even if they did, the power grid would be incapable of supporting them.
Regulations are another problem. Let’s say it’s a good idea to effectively ban coal fired power plants through the EPA regulating CO2 emissions. What are you going to replace them with? Not nuclear, that’s anathema. Gas would be OK even though the reduction in CO2 emissions is nowhere near enough to actually do something about GW. But the greens are trying to make fracking, which is the only way we have to produce enough gas to replace coal, sound worse than nuclear. No wonder that stupid TV show ‘Revolution’ is so popular. The fact that its premise of no electricity is ludicrous makes no difference to the Luddite wing of the greens who would like to see us all freezing in the dark like many people in the Northeast are doing now.
lucia,
To be fair, vehicle fuel economy standards do make a reasonable difference. Though there is an argument to be made about what types of fuel economy we would see in a world where the standards were not increased.
Most of the other substantive climate-related action has been through the EPA acting on its Clean Air Act mandates, something that they (arguably) would have had to do regardless of the administration.
DeWitt Payne,
Actually, if done correctly EVs could be a big boon for the grid. Having a large amount of controllable battery storage plugged in at any given time can go a long way towards flattening the load curve.
We would need a lot more generation in a world with lots of EVs, but with the price of (relatively clean) natural gas these days that might not be a particularly bad thing.
lucia: “One candidate will say he’s going to do nothing then do nothing. ”
Actually, if you believe temps changed from 1980 to 1998 because of CO2, then burning more shale gas instead of coal (and possibly instead of diesel) will do more “good” than any other “thing” you could do.
40% less CO2 just by burning gas instead of coal.
And it won’t cost anything.
Of course the coal not burned in the US will be sold to China and Europe (because Germany banned nukes) so the net effect will be zero … which is the greenies fault.
Zeke–
Presumably, if we wanted to make wind feasible, it might also be useful to have homes contain battery storage also. It would involve changes to home electricity systems– but you could accomplish some load leveling which must be useful for inherently intermittent systems.
Clearly, to the extent that homes recharge stores during low load and draw it down during peak, we would also have a reserve during some weather events. Sort of like I can get water out of my water heater in the event of some sort of horrible (and unlikely around here) water emergency.
Re: Zeke (Nov 2 11:47),
Sorry, but the only significant difference fuel economy standards have made is to the lower the profitability of US car manufacturers who are forced to sell high fuel mileage capable cars at a loss to achieve the CAFE standards.
More bad green ‘investments’: Corn ethanol requirements and subsidies while banning imports of cheaper Brazilian sugar cane ethanol that only benefit Big Agriculture, switchgrass based cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel.
Re: Zeke (Nov 2 11:49),
So every charging station would have to be two way or would you put the inverter and control system in the car? That will make electric vehicles even more uneconomic, not to mention the nightmare of trying to control the grid.
DeWitt–
Maybe you just have an inverter for the home. When power is out, the homeowner uses the car to supply electricity to run their fridge or other more critical need.
If this is a good idea, you don’t actually need to rely on the car. In my home, if I owned a windmill or solar panels — or if it was just the case that energy was much cheaper off peak–, I could store energy to the battery when it was created and draw down after sunset or when the wind died. In someways, having a battery that wasn’t lugged around when you drove the car around would be better than drawing power from the EV’s.
Obviously, this idea needs changes to the house. Either you own the inverter or you buy appliances that will directly off the battery.
One of my pet peeves: off-grid battery backup systems. Except for a short term emergency source, or if you happen to live in the middle of nowhere, batteries are pretty expensive compared to any other source. The best quality lead acid batteries (sealed, absorbed glass mat – AGM), if they are treated very nicely, give on the order of 1500 charge/discharge cycles of 50-60% depth (more than that rapidly reduces life). So a nominal 2 KWH battery can effectively yield 1.2 KWH per cycle, and go for ~1500 cycles, or a lifetime storage capacity of 1.2 * 1500 = 1800 KWH. One of these batteries costs (wholesale) on the order of US$400. So each KWH of stored electricity (from whatever source) sets you back about $400/1800 = $0.28, not counting the cost of the electricity itself. You might do a little better on battery costs with conventional “wet-cell” batteries, but these have to be re-filled with distilled water regularly, and off-gas a mix of hydrogen and sulfuric acid mist, so the battery storage area has to be well ventilated to avoid explosions and corrosion.
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Even if the local utility gave you the power for free off peak to reduce their daytime load, you sill would be paying a very dear price for your electricity. The AC-to-DC-to-AC cycle can’t be better than about 90% efficient, and charger/inverters of significant capacity are not cheap. So for the privilege of smoothing out the utility company’s load you would have an out-of-pocket cost of well over US$0.31 per KWH. This is the minimum cost for off-grid electricity.
.
Lithium ion batteries are smaller and lighter than lead-acid, but comparably expensive per KWH stored over their lifetime.
.
There are no good off-line power solutions, and this is why solar panels still are very far from making economic sense. Even if the cost for the panels falls to US$1.00 per watt (nominal capacity), you still have to pay quite a lot for installation. So considering capital costs plus battery replacement cost and system maintenance, you can expect at a net cost of about US$0.50 per KWH for solar power.
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Anyone who really can’t be without power would be better off buying an inexpensive generator and back-feeding into their AC circuits when the power goes out. The capital outlay is low (well under US$2000 for ~10 KW) and fuel costs are ~$0.50-$0.70 per KWH.
SteveF–
If battery back up was cost effective, it would likely already be popular. It’s certainly not popular!
Lucia, very good point, the invisible hand…
Re: lucia (Nov 2 12:21),
High power pure sine wave inverters, which is what you would need to run anything other than lights and low power electronics that can filter the stepped wave form from an inexpensive inverter, i.e. heat pump and refrigerator, aren’t cheap. Try pricing an uninterruptible power supply that would power your home for more than a few minutes. An APC stepped sine wave UPS that will supply 865 W for less than 4 minutes on two new, fully charged 8 Ah 12V (~0.2kWh) lead batteries lists for $250. The battery capacity of the Nissan Leaf, for example is 24 kWh. As of 2010, that battery pack cost $18,000. Oh, and using the battery for anything other than driving will reduce the battery capacity faster than just driving alone so load leveling is not cost free to the consumer. The Leaf has already had complaints about battery capacity dropping too fast with use. Now think about the capital investment involved in replacing all major electrical appliances with ones that would run on both DC and AC.
EV’s are only somewhat unreasonably priced now because they are heavily subsidized. Those subsidies would be unsupportable if EV’s were to become a significant part of the vehicle fleet. I’m still not convinced that there are significant economies of scale in battery manufacture that would allow those subsidies to be eliminated.
DeWitt–
$18,000 will also cover an awful lot of spoiled food for those who keep freezers stocked with entire sides of beef.
Have users been complaining? I haven’t been keeping track of this.
Re: lucia (Nov 2 14:32),
You can buy a complete standby generator system that will automatically switch on if the power fails and power your entire house for days for less than $18,000. For much less, one that could keep your refrigerator operating. Put a few small UPS’ on the critical equipment like computers and you would barely notice the switchover. If you already have a natural gas line to your house, you don’t even need a fuel tank, presuming that the gas pumping stations have standby generators.
When I was looking up the Leaf’s battery capacity, the many articles on customer complaints about the battery popped up too. I hadn’t been paying attention either. I suspect that like most batteries, the loss of capacity is inversely related to the depth of discharge. Given the relatively short range, I suspect a lot of owners use more than half the battery capacity every day. Not to mention that the heat/AC run off the battery too.
DeWitt:
Proving you can always pay as much as you want.
Depends on what you mean by “aren’t cheap.”
You can get 10kW DC true sine wave inverters for under $1000 [*]. Large systems have come down a long way in price since I’ve first started purchasing them (they used to run around $1 per watt, I’ve purchased 5000W systems that go for nearly $5000 for example, about eight years ago).
This also tells me that there is likely more room for price to drop if demand continues to increase, which is hardly surprising because there’s isn’t that much too them.
[*] The adage “you can pay as much as you want” applies here too.
Regarding running your fridge… typically these use 500W of power, so double it to be safe. I haven’t investigated this personally, but it’s claimed that modified sine-waves aren’t good for the motor (not sure if that isn’t bunk, but like I said).
As you go down in size, cost doesn’t scale linearly with capacity. 1000-W true-sine inverters go for about $250. The batteries will dominate the cost.
Like Lucia, even at this price… it’s not worth it. Just buy some dry ice.
lucia:
I think Romney, if elected, will do things that “hurt” efforts to mitigate global warming by making changes to regulations (or simply removing existing ones). He won’t be doing it because of global warming, but it will have some effect. In that sense, I think Obama may be better for the global warming “cause.”
I think that’s mostly a PR matter though. It’s not like any of the regulations have had a meaningful impact on global warming.
Actually… One could argue Romney would be better for global warming efforts. If one wants to have a meaningful impact on global warming, significant changes are needed. Obama won’t make that happen. Instead, he’ll offer useless platitudes and meaningless gestures that pacify people. Romney, by doing nothing, will instead incite people to care and do more.
I think Romney, if elected, will do things that “hurt†efforts to mitigate global warming
Which one can control the weather and/or climate more, Brandon?
“Solyndra”
Yes, I’m aware of the irrational attacks on Solyndra and other green companies. There are going to be failures in new technologies; in fact failures were figured into the bill itself. I agree that direct investment isn’t the best means. I’d rather a carbon tax increase the price of fossil fuel energy to its true cost. But the DoE grants are the next best thing. And they are better than venture capital so far.
SteveF:
Actually it’s down to 89 cents/Watt.
I agree the problem is battery capacity and cost. It would still be a problem even if you got the solar panels for free.
(On the other hand, we may not agree over the magnitude of the problem, as I think it’s more surmountable than you or DeWitt apparently do.)
Carrick,
“I think it’s more surmountable than you or DeWitt apparently do”
.
Maybe, but I have given it quite a lot of thought, and I don’t see any easy solutions. If there is a path forward, it would seem to be in the area of extending battery life without adding too much to initial cost. I mean, get 5,000 cycles out of a lead-acid battery and keep your solar panels installed cost near $1.50 per watt and you have a reasonably competitive home power source (like ~$0.15 per KWH net), at least in sunny locations.
.
But lead acid batteries are a ‘mature’ technology that lots of people have worked on; it is hard to see a path to three times the current lifetime… or 1/3 the current battery cost.
Put another way, the other component costs are mostly in the manufacturing but lead costs money.
Having voted in the 2000 Florida election, the whole bit about hanging or dimpled chads was really annoying. The instructions were very clear and posted promininently in election places and within the polling booths themselves.
While someone could make some excuses for some “hanging” chads because they appeared to be fully punched when held parallel to the ground, there was simply never any excuse for the “dimpled” chads that Gore was attempting to steal the election with. Instructions for optical scanners say you have to fill in the bubbles clearly (request a replacement ballot if you make a mistake).
Thankfully, I now live in a state that places more value on “common” (aka horse) sense (except for one major city to my north). I received my “permanent mail-in” ballot last month and dropped it off at the Clerk & Recorder’s office two weeks ago.
One positive thing about democracy — or even a democratic republic (which is what our nation truly is): the majority of the populace receives the leadership it deserves after an election. NYC deserves a mayor who thought (for a week) that running a marathon was more important than providing food, heat and power to devastated citizens. NJ deserves a governor who is bending heaven and earth (including crossing party aisles) to address the needs of his citizens. Nov 7th will show us what 50+% of Americans deserve.
Derek:
“One positive thing about democracy — or even a democratic republic (which is what our nation truly is): the majority of the populace receives the leadership it deserves after an election.”
Nothing more and nothing less. And that includes choosing between the dregs that won the primaries.
For those who want to see the difference go to Venezuela for instance, they vote too. Liberal democracy cannot be reduced to elections there are things like habeas corpus and separation of powers among others.
Tibor said:
“For those who want to see the difference go to Venezuela for instance, they vote too. Liberal democracy cannot be reduced to elections there are things like habeas corpus and separation of powers among others.”
Indeed these are very precious. Sustaining things like these is exactly why good elections are important.
Yes, yes, I just wanted to stress on the fact democracy cannot be reduced to elections ; it’s part of the tyrants rhetorical speech to say that true democracy is primarily listening to the vox populi, the rest being tools used by the dominant class to keep the power.
Tibor
“it’s part of the tyrants rhetorical speech to say that true democracy is primarily listening to the vox populi”
Agreed, and that ‘rhetorical trick’ is also used in a similar manner by the routine incompetent leader (and leader want-to-be). Coo ‘vox populi’, then we are all happy and do not look behind the curtain.
“the rest being tools used by the dominant class to keep the power.”
I am curious by what you mean by “the rest”. Rest of what? (I’m slow on the uptake there.)
mwgrant aka mwg
It’s because of my bad english certainly. What I meant by rest are the democratic principles like habeas corpus and separation of powers or respect of constitution (in a less extent as Great Britain does not have a constitution), etc.
Tibor
Your English is fine and what you wrote makes perfect sense. My reading was off. Living in the US I had never perceived of those being tools of suppression or conceived of them being passed of as such. But the powerful do leave no stone unturned. Thank you for that perspective.
Re: SteveF (Nov 3 16:59),
About the only reliable way to increase the cycle lifetime is to reduce depth of discharge and operate in the regime that maximizes battery life. The Prius, for example, does this by operating its NiMH batteries in the range of 45-55% of battery capacity. But that means you need ten times the battery capacity you are actually using. An EV, however, can’t afford to do that. And for load leveling, it’s not clear that you can exercise that sort of control on depth of discharge. One deep discharge could take many cycles off the expected life. Not to mention that if we’re talking about using the battery packs in EV’s for load leveling, the owner is not going to want to find his vehicle half charged when he needs it fully charged.
Speaking if NiMH batteries, I notice that the consumer grade AA and AAA NiMH batteries no longer say they can be recharged over 1000 times. Now it’s hundreds of times. Buying a smart charger helps.
DeWitt, about the only thing I would add to that is historically there wasn’t much of a market to develop batteries that could last much longer than 5-years. When you talk “market maturity,” you have to address the market that it was developed for, not some future market.
I’m not sure what the real physical limits on lifetime of a battery is. I suspect it’s longer than non-optimized for this use version of the battery thats getting used right now.
I do know that lead costs a dollar a pound or so. A 60-lb battery at Walmart (100+ A-hr) goes for about $85 or so (from memory, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve bought one). Not much room for the price to come down, so I can follow the logic we’ve hit the “floor” in terms of cost per A-hr already.
Where you and Steve and myself probably don’t agree is I don’t think we’ve hit the floor on battery lifetime yet. I do know there are newer battery designs coming on the market that see only a moderate (maybe 15%) degradation over a 10-year span. I don’t find arguments, really prognostications, over how much such a battery would cost to produce compared to a traditional battery very convincing.
Just four years ago, I wouldn’t have predicted solar panels under $0.60/watt, but we’re there now.
Re: Carrick (Nov 5 15:18),
With lead batteries there’s a fundamental thermodynamic problem, the interface between the lead metal and the lead dioxide coating of the battery cathode. It isn’t stable and never will be. In contact with each other and the sulfuric acid electrolyte, they both would rather be lead sulfate. That’s one of the major self discharge reactions. A normal lead battery lasts about six years before so much of the cathode base structure has been oxidized it starts to fall apart. It lasts longest if you keep it fully charged with a continuous trickle charge. But of course if you’re continuously discharging and charging, you can’t do that. I guess you could make it last longer by using more metal, but at a significant increase in weight and cost. If lead dioxide were impermeable, it might be different, but the crystal structure is such that it can’t be. And we haven’t talked about the possibility of whisker formation at the anode during recharging.
Lithium batteries have a similar problem in that the electrolyte is not stable to oxidation at the cathode (Co(III/IV) and reduction at the anode (Li/Li+). Eventually the degradation products will build up and kill the battery. This is again a thermodynamic problem. Someone once said that batteries are a triumph of kinetics over thermodynamics.
DeWitt:
Just curious… in what sense would you describe this as a “fundamental thermodynamic problem”?
It seems more like a chemistry contamination problem or even possibly just a design issue, not so much governed by the laws of thermodynamic as by the limits of imagination (or prior need) of the battery designers. I also don’t see how it’s “fundamental” in usual sense, e.g. F=ma or the 2LT is fundamental. The price ≥ the sum of the constituents is a fundamental limit.
In any case, it certainly doesn’t seem like 6 years is a non-penetrable barrier” see e.g. this. And this.
Obviously extending from 6 to 10 years is a huge leap towards practicability.
How many years lifetime, in the typical configuration, charge/discharge cycles used for solar power, assuming price limited by cost of constituents does it take before one concludes this isn’t a stumbling block for solar power?
Carrick,
The Li-ion cell you link to is impressive (claimed lifetime of 3500 cycles at 75% depth of discharge); more than 10 years… if correct!
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Still the cell has 11 watt-hours capacity to 75% discharge, so a practical house battery bank would be about 40 KWH, or somewhere near 3600 of these cells. Do you have any idea how much the cells cost? My SWAG is about $20 each in volume… if so, then the per KWH stored over the battery life comes to somewhere near $0.50…. more expensive than a premium lead-acid battery. If there were economically viable alternatives for storage, then I could already justify installing solar panels on my house (in Florida). But there aren’t. The cost of storage needs to drop by a factor of ~3 to ~4 to be competitive with the grid. Will that happen? Maybe, but it probably won’t happen in the next decade or two.
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By coincidence I found an old file folder in my office with the final building inspection report for my house (built 16 years ago), which included a complete breakdown of insulation and expected heat gain. Had I been building myself, I would have doubled the wall insulation and upgraded to thermally efficient windows.. and cut my total energy costs by about 40% for an initial investment of about $6,000. The low hanging fruit is the simple stuff.
Zeke (Comment #105986)
November 2nd, 2012 at 11:49 am
“Actually, if done correctly EVs could be a big boon for the grid.”
There is one Nissan Leaf in my office parking lot. It is CHARGING every day between 2 and 5 PM(after lunch) so the owner can get to a place called home.
EV’s will do nothing for peak load shaving, they’ll probably make peak load worse. They may boost off peak as the charging needed to get to work can generally be done during off peak.
EV’s also suffer from the problem that while most miles are driven commuting people purchase vehicles in order to engage in activities that don’t involve ‘work’, like going to visit Grandma or Skiing. They almost always are engaged in ‘wishful’ thinking on such subjects and end up buying more vehicle then they end up needing as a result. Purchasing a vehicle is as much about ‘aspirations’ as it is about need.
*Fair Disclosure – my wife used to sell RV’s, she knows something about ‘vehicle sales’.
SteveF, I don’t know how much these cost, but they aren’t a mature technology yet with a developed market, so I’m pretty sure they’d be pretty high.
If I were to try and make solar work economically for my home, I’d probably start with passive solar heating and cooling. I live in a state where I can install this stuff on my own so that could be done very effectively on a low budget.
I wouldn’t touch home electric solar power, but the road towards feasibility is better battery storage technology on the on hand, and reduced power consumption on the other.
harryrw2:
I think the point is, given a smart grid and smart chargers, the charger on the electric car can negotiate with the grid on how much power it should use at any given time. This allows much better balancing than can be achieved by devices like a fridge that needs a lot of juice to start the electric motor on the condenser turning, and then not nearly as much once the motor is running.
Of course there are ways to do this on the fridge too so that its peak power consumption is closer to its average (while condenser running) consumption. It’s just not being done ATM. Point being there is a lot that could be done economically that isn’t, and one should not assume that just because you live in a cave unlit by fire, that this is the end road for humanity.
As a for example, they are finally wiring the vending machines in my building to the internet. No idea why it took so long from the first coke machine on the internet.
Re: Carrick (Nov 6 00:32),
PbO2 is a strong oxidant. Pb is a reducing agent. They are in physical contact. The standard potentials of Pb(IV)/Pb(II) and Pb(II)/Pb in acid solution are determined by the electronic structure of the lead atom. They’re physical properties like the heat of fusion and vaporization of water. I consider that fundamental thermodynamics.
In the presence of an electrolyte you have a short circuit. You always have electrolyte because of the crystal structure of PbO2, another physical property. There are two different crystalline forms, α and β, but the β form is far and away the major form in a lead battery and it doesn’t pack well enough to be impermeable to electrolyte. With an applied current you can prevent the reduction of the PbO2 at the expense of continuous oxidation of the Pb. Eventually you run out of Pb even if you never discharge the battery.
Ah, it is Wednesday. I’m going over to the local high school to vote today. I don’t think it will be as crowded as yesterday.
I avoid going to high schools when students are present. Suggest you try tonight, say after 5.
Excellent idea! Thanks, Carrick.
Re: harrywr2 (Comment #106212)
It sounds as if the Leaf owner who parks in your office parking lot might be guilty of slightly “aspirational” purchasing (or else he/she doesn’t want to charge at home for whatever reason). I think the Leaf makes a lot more sense if you know you can make it to work and back every day without additional requirements (e.g., charging). For such a usage pattern, doing all charging off-peak makes sense. Maybe you can charge it at work only on days when you plan to run extra errands?
As for buying more car than you need, I guess it all depends what one is willing to spend on ‘wishful’ usages. For some people, the optimal solution may simply mean owning two cars (one for skiing and one for commuting). EVs aren’t right for everyone at the present time, and that’s perfectly okay. Obviously as EV ranges (and fuel prices) increase, the consumer appeal of EVs will expand.
Anyway, it would have been useful last week if I’d had a Leaf parked in the garage and I could have somehow run my refrigerator off its battery while the power was down!