You don’t want to dam everything up.
You screw up the watershed.
3 Likes
James Bay II would have provided a lot of needed electricity.
But the people that live up there and what it would cost to buy them out are questions no one had answered too ( compensation for 10,000 people, their decedents as well )
2 Likes
You don’t have to dam anything, every lock and dam on every river built by the Army corp in the 50’s were mandated to be hydro ready. Only one used is a city owned unit here in WV. Also there are natural terrains like Niagara falls.
4 Likes
There are low head turbines, the Soviets largely perfected the technology back in the day. Too many dam projects gave little or no consideration to fish migration, which is very unfortunate. The Hoover dam drastically lowered river temps leading to fish extinctions and major habitat disruption. It is true that practical hydro has limited geographical potential, also sufficient river flow is needed.
3 Likes
You guys need to visit this area, these rivers run with enough flow. I have been to these locks when they change water levels for the barges massive amounts of water. We get feet of rain per year, not inches.
6 Likes
Unfortunately all major human energy systems have come at a cost to the local environment. On ballance I think the Hover Dam is an example of a public works project from the great depression which had paid back the nation several times over.
3 Likes
Agreed. Any power extraction system, or resource activity has a consequence. Which to me reminds me of the conservation 3 R’s, reduce, re-use, and recycle. People are all over recycle, no matter how far they have to drive to put the water bottle or pop can in the blue bin. 
Re-use people kinda forget about. We’re a happy single use, long supply chain economy. Reduce - that’s almost a declaration of war on what people believe is their way of life, brainwashed by corporate interests.
Note that reduce is the first, easiest, and most important conservation measure. The money you never had to spend is a gift. Resources not spent are money in the bank, or used wisely, the open door to achieve more.
7 Likes
Even the best projection for low head hydro from the Norwegians was a Max total of 14gw in the US.
That is the equivalent of 28 coal units. It really isn’t much and they are an ecological nightmare. They are also seasonally variable. Hydro really has its own dead end like pumped storage.
For comparison there are over a 100gw of wind project’s in at least the planning stages not all will come to fruition, but it has a lot more potential.
2 Likes
5 Likes
Or “re-pair”.
I might have mentioned earlier, but back in the early 90s at university, we got to read a book by a guy called Hubendick. I forget the title but he claimed manufacturing a new car has 20 times greater enviromental impact than what exits the exhaust of your old car during its lifetime. Things may have changed slightly but it kind of sets things in perspective.
5 Likes
I had read somewhere Jo, that a vehicle should spend at least 20 years on the road to defer the emissions used to build it. As you are doing with the Mazda.
That should be easily achievable, especially with government mandated stainless steel floor pans, rocker panels, and fenders. Is that too much to ask? Apparently science fiction yet in our corporatist world…
3 Likes
I did some fact checking on FF consumption for personal vehicles.
Google tells me annual US gasoline consumption in 2017 was 142.98 billion gallons. To simplify, I’ll ignore diesel used in personal vehicles, which might roughly balance for lawn mowing, etc.
So, assuming 30% energy use efficiency, how many kWh is this equivalent to?
Google tells me there are roughly 9 kWh energy potential per liter of gasoline, so 3 kWh × 3.785 = 11.355 kwh. 11.355 × 142,980,000,000 = 1,623,537,900,000 kwh.
Multiply this by a further 15%, for charging and discharge losses. × 1.15 = 1,867,068,585,000 kWh.
Depending on line losses, and or grid storage losses you could be looking at an additional 30%. = 2,427,189,161,000 kWh.
Annual US electric generation is said to be 3,911,000,000,000 Kwh.
So to electrify passenger vehicles would take an expansion of the electrical grid by at least 62%, depending on timing of charging needs of consumers.
I stand corrected, I was relying on UK figures, maybe it was a figure for all road transport. It may also have been skewed by national reliance on natural gas.
This would not touch diesel or other transport uses of FF, the clearly most efficient (first choice mimimum losses) uses being overhead lines for trains, then following being for transport trucks on special routes as Wallace highlighted.
We could do a lot better by simply reducing curb weights, or improving urban planning.
2 Likes
Apparently an East German Trabant had an average life of 30 years on the road.
It was designed to have as few parts as possible and be fixed by its owner.
The car was widely viewed as a real piece of crap and joke by western standards.
But it was made with any kind of steel, the body was plastic made of all kind of waste fabric left over chemicals/plastics from other industries for the glues.
This was a promotional video I guess.
And the factory is depressing but the ideas of making it this way to reduce cost and add to its working life are lessons we can learn.
Think about it they could not afford to throw things away
They did make great cars in the east block too.
Tatra from a 1960s factory promotional video.
but it was also a well built car designed for bad roads and a long service life.
2 Likes
And don’t forget how the Yugo car factory was bombed steadily for a month in a certain feeedom fighting campaign…
2 Likes
6 Likes
YA but Yugo was a piece of crap.
Joke about them was they started to rust before the got off the assembly line.
Hemp car:
I heard of that before but did not know the story.
Fantastic idea
2 Likes
Actually there are chargers on the market that plug right into an AC genny. You can stack them too, these guys offer 120 amp chargers, I have one and its awesome. This way you have a dual mode generator. Either way your converting AC to DC. But that is a good price for 3kW DC.
1 Like
Thats where Im going with pellets. As soon as we have the processor, we will be pelletizing hemp pellets. Ill then have to invent an automated arm to knock the hippies off the machine when its running. Probably need a sandwich dispenser too. lol
5 Likes
For some reason great powers thought it worthwhile to bomb the factory for 30 days. Obviously the roof was gone from day 1. They were aiming for machine tools and dies.
3 Likes
I think Thoreau said something like this: A man’s wealth is determined by what he can do without.
7 Likes