Yankee Rowe and Northfield Mtn... the Nuke plant is long gone but the pumped storage is still used... I visited Yankee Rowe before it was decommissioned and removed. Interesting operation... Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station - Wikipedia Northfield Mountain (hydroelectricity facility) - Wikipedia
In same boat, perfect location but $24,000 solar install to remove $80 a month bill is not an efficient use of resources.
Not only that, but it's cloudy today and getting snow tomorrow so I wouldn't have any power production for the next 2 days. That's makes going off the grid and saving 150$ per month all but impossible
Up here they are requiring us to pay them $75 an hour to come clean them off after snow storms so they are not damaged, crazy
I understand, and if you think I am upset at you, I assure you I am not. I have met people from forums online, bought them coffee and lunch, and would certainly do the same for you, so we are not as far apart as you think. If I have conveyed I am upset at all at ANYTHING you have said, I truly am sorry. Here I produce a lot of sheep manure, and that makes really good compost that produces amazing amounts of heat. I thought what if I put that heat to use and used it to heat my house as I have 100% radiant floor heat. All I would need to do is move the heat from the pile, to the floor via pex pipe. But here is the thing, by the time I move the manure around, form the piles, add the water, run the pex pipe...while it could be done, in two days time...a lot less time... I could put up enough firewood to heat my house instead. Or cut up 6 cord of firewood, sell it and buy coal to heat my house...The point is that it is not that it could not be done, it is that there are more efficient ways to do the same thing (heat my home). To me it is the same with solar and coal. It is not that solar cannot be done, it is just at the end of the day, it is not the most efficient way. The powers that be knew this too, and to force their agenda, used heavy regulation to force the coal plants into expensive compliance, and that I do not believe in. I think it is wrong to use heavy handed regulation to make one sector of power production inefficient so that another sector of power production can compete because they are inefficient. That is just not how the free market system works; it works by building a better mouse trap. In this case solar is an inferior mouse trap, but the powers that be wanted it in place, so they regulated the mouse trap that caught mice well, out of reasonable cost. To me that is just plain wrong.
LodgedTree what a well written post, I also believe in saving the planet but doing so with common sense. My degree a BSBA A few credits short of a Masters from an ivy league school, yes I am an educated redneck. There are hundreds of texts talking about the benefits/costs of goverment subsidies and the law of unintended consequences. Moreover, personally, I liked reading older articles in the archives because of learn from the past principles. Nonetheless, there was a great article written in 1880s about the use of whale oil for lights in New England. How hunters were charging more for the oil as Whales were becoming a scarce commodity and the discussion of the what will be the next fuel to use for light. At that point in time many thought it would be methane as the horse (the prominent mode of transportation) had such 'useful byproduct'. Actually encouraging the Arthur administration to subsidize it. I really think in another decade or so this conversation will also become moot, as hydrogen motors are in existence already just cost prohibitive. Any one else remember 1979 a Sony betamax was 1200 dollars a new car was only 3 or 4 times that. It is ironic that this is being discussed by people who are using the oldest technology for heat
What, you have not slayed a whale this year and rendered the blubber to fire up your oil furnace yet? Shame on you! (Joking people, only joking). I always thought compost heat (140 degrees) and geothermal cooling (47 degrees) might be enough of a differential to allow a Sterling Engine to churn a small generator and allow small farmers such as me to make electricity. In that case Sterling Engines do exist, I just have not found any commercially made that are inexpensive enough. One would have to be homemade, but if it could be done, it has the benefit of being a 24/7/365 operation. Right now Sterling engines are used for power production with solar power, but that works only when the sun shines.
In addition to the negating factors you mentioned is the fact that a composting pile requires some of the heat it produces to sustain itself, much as a fire does. So you would also need monitoring and regulating equipment to maintain a certain level of heat in the pile. Or so I think...
Feel free to place yourself into a room filled entirely with this life giving gas. You will likely change your opinion... It's a proven green house gas. People don't point this out to make you feel bad or ruin your day... It's just science. Not politics.
what is the level of proven green house gas that earth requires for not enough, just right, too much, for life to live on this rock? what is the perfect temp for mother earth? if man is the supreme forcing the answers must be there. no win conversation here, i'll end with this 2016-17 hot as hell. my opine as to why! el nino, not that green house gas. here is an interesting chart. been in the same two places for how many years? the area around has change can't say how much. I don't think that the heat island was as strong in 1820, just a curious illustration!
Found this to be interesting. Oil Resurrection Sets Stage for Another OPEC-Shale Clash in 2018 “West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, is now trading at the highest level since mid-2015, pushed above $60 a barrel by a severe cold snap in the northeastern U.S. that spiked demand for heating fuel. Oil topped natural gas as the biggest source of electricity in New England on Thursday morning, after temperatures plunged well below freezing.” Can only imagine that they need to burn oil for electricity due to extremely high demand for natural gas in home heating. I, for one, would like to see the option remain available to burn coal for electricity. Kind of like firewood, it doesn’t cost much to store a lot of it.
Why do you believe that it has to be one... And not the other, or a combination of the two? The universe is not binary. Also, El Nino is a relatively local phenomenon... The whole world does not warm because of it. Aside from the Midwest, east coast and Eastern Canada, the entire planet as a whole is running well above normal for this time of year. The signs of a warming climate are way too numerous to ignore. You can believe what you want, you can post all the memes you want(don't eat the tide pods, seriously) , hug your Trumpy Bear(made in China, btw) and pretend everything is normal... But it won't change the fact that too much CO2 warms the planet. So, if can capture the carbon from a coal plant, capture the particulate pollution, and still somehow be economically viable, it turns out that the ash itself is mildly radioactive. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste
we are all part of the climate change, natural forcings are given the short end on the stick. '97 and '17 the high pts on the temp chart were driven by super nino's. today agw uses the co2 as the driver for everything, including our latest cold snap in our neighborhood. last summer it was the super cyclonic storms in the atlantic basin. those storms were the chosen ones, the rest well they just couldn't find the co2 control knob. then there is the south pacific, must not have that magic level . p.klotzbach, phd via twitter Southern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) is only 8% of normal for the 2017/18 season to date - the lowest Southern Hemisphere ACE on record from July 1 through December 29. til your settle science is settled there is gonna be questions to the science and there should be. for the record voted for unknown from Utah, if I had voted for the President I could blame it on AGW. I would guess from your comment that you have a low opinion of those who did vote for the President, suggest you might keep those thoughts to yourself, just doesn't have a place here.imho through December 29.
OK guys let's keep this from getting political! I personally see both sides and both sides have points! Global warming, yes we are on a warming trend in recorded history which is what less than 150 years! But we can pull ice cores that go back thousands of years, OK fair enough, but we have still have found mammoth frozen in the tundra of Russia. I am NOT a paleontologist but how did a mammoth survive up there ? Its twice size of elephant that lives in Africa so logically need 2x as much food. Nonetheless we are not going to solve the world' problems here! So in short let us keep burning wood and make sure we replace trees we cut!
