Obama To Open Domestic Offshore Drilling

[UNT90]

You might be the biggest pessimist ever.

I prefer realist.

You can be as optimistic as you want about shoving a school bus up a rhino's a&@, but that doesn't mean you are going to be any more successful.

We need an alternative fuel source badly, but unfortunately there isn't a viable one at this time.

Edited April 2, 2010 by UNT90

[UNTFan23]

We need an alternative fuel source badly, but unfortunately there isn't a viable one at this time.

[hickoryhouse]

[FirefightnRick]

I'm not sure what the link was to (I'm always afraid I will end up on some "governmental watch list" if I click on your links) but I will say that we have a wind-powered generator on our farm that generates electricity for the site (stored in batteries that we've had no safety concerns with)! It's a small one (that's what she said) and doesn't generate the royalties of the big ones...but it's green living! Go Mean Green!

Your afraid of clicking on a link? Really? Is that an April Fool's thing?

But I stand corrected and can't think for the life of me what in hell I was thinking when I typed that above about there not being any way to store the power? I guess I was thinking of two separate variations of the same subject, "On-Grid vs Off-Grid" and "Personal vs Commercial" production. Because I knew the capability existed for home use, but more likely for a small scale like what you mentioned for your family's farm? I knew there were batteries that can do that but they are limited. For instance, if the average U.S. home used 750KWh per month, for a non-grid system large enough to handle that and sustain it long enough for you to break even it would cost you around $30K to $50K(not including the cost of maintenance and battery replacement), which isn't very efficient but it can be done. However, the storage of commercial production electricity has been the troubled area for the commercial wind generated wind farm industry, although there is supposed to be a site in Minnesota that is to go online soon for the first time with a battery source large enough to store enough juice to run 500 homes for 7 hours.

If you didn't see it before, I started THIS THREAD WITH PHOTOS back in September 2007 about one of our own alumns who installed his own "On-Grid" system. It's ok EG, you can click on it.

Alex lives in Argyle and said if anyone is interested he would be happy to give anyone from NT a tour of his system. It produces 30KWh, which is commercial grade, and he got it cheap because he had to drive to California to get it, bring it back and restored for home use, and he did most of his own restoration, which is the only way this was an affordable option for him. It took him over two years to get this thing up and running. The kids and I stopped by on our way up for the Pourhouse selection show last month and saw it. I had always heard they are a noise nuisance, but this one sounds really cool, and because it produces three times the energy his house uses, he's getting paid to have it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for wind generation and saving money and all. I'll have one myself someday. And hopefully the commercial battery industry catches up to make the wind farms more efficient as well.

Rick

Edited April 2, 2010 by FirefightnRick

[GrayEagle]

First of all why did Obama suddenly open exploration and drilling? He didn't suddenly have an epiphany. There is something behind this move and I'm not sure what it is but I do worry that it might have something to do with the government taking over the energy industry. Or maybe just getting the energy companies to go along with cap & trade.

As far as automobiles, the electric powered car is the future. Do a search on Shai Agassi. Basically, he proposes giving steep discounts on the purchase of a car then charging you for the electricity to power it. He would own all of the batteries. Charging stations and exchange stations would be about as plentiful as gas stations are today. According to Agassi the cost of electricity would be about a third the cost of gasoline. He already has two countries and an automaker lineed up. I believe that Israel is the first country to be tested.

I do have some concern about jobs when thousands currently employed by oil, gas and coal may eventually be out of work with little prospects to replace them. We have to carefully measure each technological advance and don't abandon what's working until there is a better replacement phased in.