Sorry, I was to direct. Dutch and drunk (3 beers) but a bad combo. Nuclear is a trigger for me. Just like prepper, some people like to call me so. You dont want to hear the tirade that follows . Just trying to take care of my family, not a prepper.
And yes, be happy with less is the key. And make sure you do before you have to. But no one does, that is reality. Me included. In the shop we need a 100 kWh a day. No problem if the sun shines, but try to convert that to wood.
Our former mister president, now chief/ marionet of nato says we have to prepare for war in 4-5 years. What does he know what we dont? I dont like the toughts but where to go? Is there a safe place in Europe? Dump the real estate and travel light?
Iceland would be fine, besides the weather.
Never been to Portugal but heart nice stories.
Well, back to energy prices. They are a little higher without the cheap sun. Are they to high? Flat line during the day, no peaks in the evening etc. Last week there was a big spike, together with the cyberwar/ news. Cant explain that spike. You rely on daily/ hour prices?
Yes I do, but I havenāt been using it. The price needs to be close to 1ā¬/kWh to be worth the effort I need to babysit it without some kind of automated kill switch. If the belt slips or brakes the Volvo could rev itself to death.
True about solar. Itās pretty much dead for at least 3 months up here.
Hmmm. Well fellows I think because of the US State (think EU country) I was born and have lived in; I been Nuke-close my whole life. No choice. We were selected for the the five, became eight, breeder reactors that made the plutonium for the majority of the bombs. Hanford Reach, WA.
Then we became later THE west coast nuclear submarine; then nuclear aircraft carriers home base. Bremerton, WA.
Then a 1970ās ramped up building of five big civilian Nuclear power plants to be added. WPPS bond default event.
Driven hundreds of times past the across the Columbia River, only one in Oregon state nuclear power plant. Trident.
The five WPPS plants were never completed because of hog-troughing price running up by Any and All, in all phases of their construction.
So then we did beat all of the 1960ās 1970ās energy use projections by conserve, conserve, conserve. But did we? Yes, some. More by shutting down energy the electrical use intensive industries of aluminum smelters, paper making and others. Those 10,000ās of family wage job all gone now out of country by the end of the 1980ās.
Oregon Anti-Nuke folk rabbled the premature closing down of their one Nuke power plant. And not satisfied, until the what could have been a stand-up We-Won Fist-in-the-Skyline cooling tower, was demoāed down out of sight.
Still . . . the spent active fuel rods are still stored there in deep water ponds. Waiting. Waiting for the huge cost over-run Nation nuke wastes storage site. Decades behind schedule.
Even with all of the energy conserving measure we are now regionally in growth every year for energy usages again since the late 1990ās.
Energy sucking Data centers. Higher and higher usage of all electric vehicles.
Yeah. Yeah. Lines of wind turbines being put up. Places here with acres of PV solar farms too.
In the mean time Hydro was regionally maxed out as of the 1980ās. Now the once anti-nuke folks want to tear out Hydro electric dams. Restore the rivers to ābefore white man cameā. Annually late spring runoff flooded widely back then. The myopic one-issue fools.
Base line capacity now made up with large natural gas turbine generator plants.
Our one fossil-coal steam turbines generator plant maxed out being supplied with FIVE 100 car trains a week of eastern Montana/Dakotaās coal.
The ludercruousness of the culture-driving mavens/Influencers; and the always will be fed Elites is outstanding. Want their energy use cakes without ever accounting or paying the true full costs: cradle to grave.
ALL BIG PLANT SOLUTIONS are hazardous and leave contaminated areas. The four-corners states area massive coal fired power plants feeding the lights, and hustle and bustle of L.A. city and surrounds.
I do not have the For-All solutions. Only for myself and my household. And any willing to life-size down and wood sweat similar.
I think the megalopolis BIGS should all have their power plants within themselves. Visible; and then accounted for just as once-was with Urban coal power
Then . . . they will truly conserve. Watching those Nuke cooling towers and containment domes. Wondering, wondering will this be the-Day.
Come to South America. Not much international intrigue. No nukes here or aimed at here. A mas o menos culture. Lots of natural resources. Of course a bit far if you want to stay close to Europe, but thatās the point though, with war seemingly coming there. Downside , you may need to learn a new language. However, I arrived with no Spanish skills and did ok. With NATO stirring things up, Iām glad not to be anywhere near. But relocating is tough and not everyoneās cup of tea. And some countries are to be avoided.
OK thanks for the respond, They probley hardly know what it is in USA for the most part,probley think it some kind of construction equipment, LONG as its not making bunch of smoke, loose hopper door problem/ECT.RARE. probley.
Yes it is. I would do it for the kids, not myself. I dont want to go anywhere. This is my last station. My work is here, my network, etc. To old to start all over again. Respect to the people that do. Like you or Bill Schiller or Mr Steve. I wont even move to the next village. Maybe our woodplot, far enough.
I was out for a walk in the woods looking for down trees and I gave your question some more thought.
My limit of 1ā¬/kWh to be worth the effort, is still less than the saving on DOW. Letās say I run the generator for one hour and produce 10 kWh - thatās 10ā¬. If I DOW for an hour, it replaces gasoline for even more. Still, one of the police who pulled me over lately, asked if it was really worth the effort to DOW
Well, I found at least a dussin down trees. Also, twice that amount of dead standing spruce - beetles I guess. More firewood than I can handle.
Btw, the snow melted off of my panels, the sun showed and they produced a stagering 5 kWh today By 2pm the sun went to bed again.
December 21st at 4:19 am is the time Google gave me for the Solstice.
I love this āuse less energyā talk. Itās absolute bullshit though. None of you want to crap in an outhouse. Thatās what less energy looks like. No pipes, just buckets. I have used buckets for ten years here. When I go somewhere I pour ethylene glycol in the toilet, and sink traps. While I write this, I am checking a camera pointed at a thermometer in my house. This, so I can make sure my pipes arenāt freezing. The weather forecast said it would be warm last night. I believe they are getting their weather model very accurate. The pipes are still warm this morning. Presently, I am in Hancock, visiting my trophy wife, who laughs at the thought of buckets. I think I understand the ranting going on here. I just donāt think itās very realistic. I think you miss the sun. I know I do.
Story timeā¦
In 1845 they told people downstate about the copper here. The miners came here in droves. From 1845 to 1865 they cut down every tree here. The mines used timber to support the stopes, and they used wood to fire the boilers for the skip engines. They left nothing. Old men would hack at the stumps for wood stove fuel, to sell. In 1865, they started shipping coal here on boats. Everything was coal powered even the electric generators and air compressors. It didnāt change until 1968, when they stopped mining.
Those first twenty years there was no electricity, no coal, no gas, no oil, just wood. You know, they built all their own stuff here too. I have been to the pattern shop and have seen the patterns for casting steam engines. At max there were 88000 people here. The island part of the peninsula is 70 miles long and about 15 miles wide. It takes 80 years for the wood to grow back enough to be useful.
When I first heard all this, it didnāt take long for me to realize that people will voraciously use up every resource.
I think I would like to live with less. My wife will not, nor will yours. I miss the free solar. I enjoy gasoline engines because they start when itās cold. Once itās warm, I enjoy diesel engines because they use really cheap fuel. I donāt want grid because I donāt want neighbors. I like this forum because this is about as social as I want to get.
Well said Bruce, totally agree. This one in particular. Exactly the reason I didnt start a pelletfactory in Bosnia around 10 years ago. Free EU money, minimal investment, max profit. But at the end there will be no trees left. Hungry hungry. Small scale is what I want.
And nor will most people - thatās true. Still, Iām advocating restaraint.
What pisses me off is all the wasteful behaviour. Iām not talking only about our wifes, but people in general. Buy new, throw away as fast as possible and repeat - seems to be the main purpose of life for most people. I hate it. Endless shopping malls, huge arenas for chasing balls and gyms for thredmills and weight lifting. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
Storyā¦
A couple years back I was loading some logs of mine onto the Fergie trailer by hand - close to a forestry road. The sweat was pouring. Two hundreds yards down the road a logging company had stacked another huge pile of logs. To my surprice a soccer team in shiny clothes showed up with their coach. They started lifting logs up and down - for excersize. I bet most of them donāt heat their houses with wood because of the labour involved. Priorities.
Lol! My favorite is the obviously overweight person rolling down my road in their car, with their dogs trailing behind. I used to confront them, and ask why not simply walk the dogs yourself? The day I stopped asking, was the day Mr. Jackovich walked past my interrogation. He is a Vietnam veteran who lost a leg over there. I looked at her, I looked at him, I decided to go home and mind my own business.
āI think I would like to live with less. My wife will not, nor will yours. I miss the free solar. I enjoy gasoline engines because they start when itās cold. Once itās warm, I enjoy diesel engines because they use really cheap fuel. I donāt want grid because I donāt want neighbors. I like this forum because this is about as social as I want to get.ā
I like this whole post but especially this last " brother from another mother" paragraph. Solar was never an option for me. I live in trees a few miles from Lake Michigan and in the winter there is no sun. I like basic IC because Iām just smart enough to keep it working. I like all the electricity I can get my hands on. I want to run my fan and pumps for my heating system and I want to keep my grow lights on 16 hours a day if I need to. I like to be able to start these things up and not worry about keeping them running. Electricity is fairly cheap here. About 4 dollars a day on average. I spend half that much in bird seed. I havenāt driven a mile in three and a half weeks so DOW doesnāt really do anything for me and wood gassing my equipment is more for a prep than an passion. I just love to build crap and make it work. Then I mainly move on to something else. I kept interested in wood gas after I produced some workable systems mostly because I enjoy staying involved with the people on this site. Doers, innovators, builders. My kind of folks.
I am not sure that would have made a difference. Germanyās nuclear needed a trillion euro upgrade to keep the facilities online. They decided to show the world about solar, and wanted to be the world leader in solar products.
German engineering sucks or it was intentional to kill off solar.
The design of their plan wasnāt ever going to work. Had the US not talked China into āgoing greenā, we would be sitting around saying āsolar doesnāt work, look at Germany!ā
The US plan isnāt Germanyās even though many German bloggers think we copied them, we didnāt. We really countered them because it isnāt in our best interest to let them kill off solar for 30 years.
My solar is doing 2 kWh and 4 kWh a day. In summer 100 kWh or moreā¦
Price was 0 last night, some wind and average during the day 10 ct, tax excluded and transport is another 16 ct. That means low prices even for wintertime.
I think the biggest problem with solar is darkness.
Europe already has more electricity than it can handle as long as the sun shines and the wind blows, but I donāt see how enough storing capacity can be solved anytime soon. Hydrogen has proven to be a dead end over and over again for 100 years and batteries can only smooth the ripple out.
. Just trying to take care of my family, not a prepper.
