Yes, but. The original request was about commuting. For most people, that's on-road, very similar to the races from which recumbents are banned. Most of the other bikes I see on the road around here have skinny tires that (I know from unfortunate personal experience) would be well-bent by most off-road riding, as well as by some of our indigenous potholes. My commute has some curb hops (which require a little bit of special effort on a long wheelbase 65-lb cargo bike, but I do them), but if his commute does not, then it's not an issue.

I am not sure that "recumbents are bad at climbing" is not more BS. There is contrary advice for climbing (possibly more BS) of "stay in the saddle". A whole lot of the weight discussion in the bicycling world is through-and-through BS; I weigh 220lbs; adding 11 pounds to the bike weight is only a 5% reduction in climbing speed. A 600-second climb would instead take 630 seconds; I wait longer at some stop lights. (10 minutes = 1 mile at 6mph, or a 370-foot climb up a 7% grade -- 183 watts for my weight, more when you add the bicycle, but well within limits for a moderately fit human). This would matter a whole lot in a race, but hardly at all in a commute.

So please, if you have measurements or studies showing that your claims are true, please describe them, cite them, explain them. And it's important to consider the whole cost -- cleats and special pedals make you slightly faster, but then you have to take the time to change at one end or the other -- does the time gained beat the time spent changing shoes?

Our federal hydro system has always been a thorn to those in the east where power bills are higher. They always want to raise rates on us. California once suggested they build a pipeline to take water from the mouth of the Columbia to supply fresh water. The NW has advantages but is not the magic bullet to solve our energy problems.

After Fukushima I'm surprised anyone with a pulse can look at nukes. What kind of war would it take to set all those storage pools on fire? We are very, insanely, foolish.

Your statement about nuke plants being prevalent in the Eastern U.S., and the idea that our winds prevail roughly West-to-East, are correct.

However, I am not sanguine about the chances and consequences of a major incident at Palo Verde in Arizona.

Look at the satellite pic of the smoke plumes from fires in Arizona in the recent past (2011)...plumes arcing up through Minnesota into Canada...plumes which passed directly over Albuquerque.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/ass...

http://www.kasa.com/dpps/weather/wildfires/forest-fire-smoke-settling-in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=5EUBMdsJcnA

One of many articles (and a government PDF) on contingency plans and possible consequences of of a Palo Verde nuclear incident.

I wonder if their spent fuel assemblies are stored using dry casks, or in pools (yes, I am aware that fresh 'hot' assemblies have to spent some time in a pool before being transferred to dry cask storage)?

Wikipedia claims that Palo Verde has a marginal operating cost for producing electricity of some 1.3 cents per KWh...another 1.4c if one includes other lifetime costs assuming a 60-year plant life and a 5% long-term cost of capital.

These numbers look enticing...as long as there isn't a major incident.

http://hint.fm/wind/

"What do you mean, we?" Only eight of the 104 are in states in the Western Interconnect, ....

And the WI states hold only about 20% of the US population (~68 million), so per head Westerners use a fair share of US nuclear. BTW, before cutting loose of any Eastern nuclear clean up problems, do be sure to send in the tab for all that federally funded hydroelectric in the West.

Moving the majority of spent fuel into dry cask storage would be a low cost measure with significant risk reduction benefits. I suspect that is one of the things (for U.S. regs) which will come out of Fukushima, shortly after the election, if Obama wins. Implementation requirements will probably be something like 10 years, to get down to where only a couple of years of fuel are allowed in the pools, however. I'd prefer it to be more like 2 or 3 but that's not going to happen.

'The China Academy of Sciences in January 2011 launched a program of R&D on thorium-breeding molten-salt reactors (Th-MSR or TMSR), otherwise known as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), claiming to have the world's largest national effort on these and hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology. A 5 MWe MSR is apparently under construction at Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (under the Academy) with 2015 target operation.'

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63b_china_nuclearfuelcycle.html

This is not the same as a small demonstrator reactor for LWP's etc, as many of those designs are only practical at large sizes, so to hold costs down the initial prototype would be small, and progressively scaled up through other builds to full size.

A LFTR is happy at any size, from a few MW up to 20GW or so, so commercial designs could be developed much earlier in the design cycle.

Uranium hexafluoride UF₆ is a covalent molecule, which is crystalline under cool atmospheric conditions and sublimes at 56°C. The gas is used in centrifugal and gas diffusion uranium enrichment, and vast quantities of "depleted" uranium (²³⁸U) are stored in this gaseous form, in big drums in open fields, at places like Seversk and Oak Ridge.

Uranium tetrafluoride is a salt, solid under atmostpheric conditions, melting point 1036°C, of uranium fluorine ions, UF³⁺ and fluoride ions, F^-.

They're related, but not the same thing at all.

Ummm, they use Bing not Google.

NAOM

HARM - A bit of sarcasm delivered with a sledge hammer combined with some bad memories that obviously still p*ss me off. We all know there are various sh*tholes around the world but many don't have the pleasure of witnessing them first hand. Why I suppose I reacted harshly to the EU's holier than tho attitude

Or eventually, batteries. There seem to be some new developments in battery chemistry and/or structure that can take advantage of the inherent high energy density sulfur allows while avoiding or overcoming the various problems of sulfur (eg, nanoscale expansion and contraction during charge and discharge tends to break down the materials, limiting the number of cycles).

Back during the 2008 commodity spike wasn't sulphur getting close to a thousand dollars per ton. This was a side benefit for sour-oil refiners, and smoke stack removal of sulpher dioxide. Sulpher does have a certain industrial value. That doesn't make having a mountain of it in your backyard a good thing. But, the stuff does have its uses.

The "either nuclear bombs or invasion" choice is more of a sort of post-war moralization on the part of Americans, and is highly problematic. I suggest reading Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan for a more accurate depiction of events, as well as the chapter regarding possible "what-if" scenarios.

I'm in the "we can't know" camp concerning how counterfactuals would have played out. Certainly the Russian declaration of war plus massive invasion of Manchuria (rushed because Stalin wa afraid the A-bomb might end the war before he could seize territory in the east), coming nearly simultaneously with the A-bombs had to have been quite a shock. There are also tragic decisions that happened. The Japanese made the worst possible choice of peace mediator -Russia (when Stalin's interest was to join in and claim territory and spoils). The US war planners made an assumption regarding civian casualties, -they assumed that most of the population would be in bomb shelters, as was the case for massive conventional bombing raids, but the US had "trained" the Japanese not to fear overflights by two or three B-29's, so no-one took shelter, and civilian deaths were massively greater than anticipated.

The Japanese were still making unrealistic demands as conditions of surrender. Not just survival of the Imperial system, but continued military governance, and no occupation. So the negotiating positions were still lightyears apart. The Japanese had no real reason to expect the nearly benign occupation which actually followed the surrender. That Hirohito was allowed to remain emperor in even a symbolic role, rather than face war crimes trials (he was clearly complicit), was not expected by either the Japanese or the Americans.

From wiki..

Operation Ketsugo

Meanwhile, the Japanese had their own plans....

... The Japanese defense relied heavily on kamikaze planes. In addition to fighters and bombers, they reassigned almost all of their trainers for the mission, trying to make up in quantity what they lacked in quality. Their army and navy had more than 10,000 aircraft ready for use in July (and would have had somewhat more by October) and were planning to use almost all that could reach the invasion fleets. Ugaki also oversaw building of hundreds of small suicide boats that would also be used to attack any Allied ships that came near the shores of Kyushu.

Fewer than 2,000 kamikaze planes launched attacks during the Battle of Okinawa, achieving approximately one hit per nine attacks. At Kyushu, because of the more favorable circumstances (such as terrain that reduced the US's radar advantage), they hoped to get one for six by overwhelming the US defenses with large numbers of kamikaze attacks in a period of hours. The Japanese estimated that the planes would sink more than 400 ships; since they were training the pilots to target transports rather than carriers and destroyers, the casualties would be disproportionately greater than at Okinawa. One staff study estimated that the kamikazes could destroy a third to half of the invasion force before its landings. [20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_Ketsug.C5.8D

Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the vote would likely have been 0-6, unanimous against surrender.

Alan

Well . . . with most scientific fields you can isolate other variables and do a controlled experiment. But with the global economy, we only have this one world and most experiments are done as simulations. You can look at the policy effects in different countries, states, etc. but it is really impossible to hold everything else constant. So economics is a difficult area to do hard science.

That said, clearly some economists are better than others. But it is difficult to identify the better ones since over time, the view of which ones are better changes.

But the third danger, and this is the one that if you are a doom and gloomer, could be the one that seals the fate of modern humanity, will be that once collapse occurs, the average person will likely reject academics since obviously it was academics (Krugman, Bernanke types and friends) who got us into this mess.

I would not blame Krugman nor Bernanke. I think it is ourselves who got us into this mess. We voters all want lots of government services and no taxes. So the politicians gave us what we wanted via debt. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

I hate to say it, but science and engineering have also caused their share of today's problems. Engineering in particular has been a double-edged sword - the "built environment" designed around cars, shorelines turned to concrete (a much worse problem in Japan than the US), the creation of factory fishing boats, hydroelectric dams, cars themselves... Even computers are very far from a universal boon. All of these things have massive downsides along with their massive upsides. When rivers like the Colorado and Rio Grande don't always reach the sea, you have to wonder whether anybody realized the end result of massive engineering.

Science has it's own list of sins, though it tries to put itself behind the barrier of being research into the way the world works, that doesn't explain the nuclear bomb or genetically modified crops (the problems of which are actually more environmental rather than on personal health, but are very serious just the same - herbicide and insecticide resistance through an attempt to get around nature, basically).

And what about nuclear power? The people that seem to support it the most are very smart, scientists and engineers... Hubris comes with knowledge. You think because it makes sense in theory it is a good idea. Not always so.

I would say the essential problem of all of the human race has been hubris.

But to discount any discussion about it, out of hand, seems something less than cordial. He is on a liberal roll. Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

I have no idea what you mean by "fully binding on the economy". Neither Krugman nor Reich have a clue re: the physics of energy conversion. They are stuck in the mind set of techno-cornucopianism. The truth is that the market (for alternative energy sources) is actually spot on. Alternatives do not have high returns and probably never will. It is a matter of energy density of the source. Sunlight = diffuse. Oil = dense. What you have to invest to make up for the difference is huge (large collection apertures). And to build those apertures you need to use, guess what(?), fossil fuels!

Amen, Alan
After the collapse of the herring fisheries and the complete devastation of some of their east coast communities in the late ‘60s, the Icelanders got it. They established a 200 mi limit, confronted the Brits and others, and have tried to hold on the remaining stocks of cod and haddock. Their self-imposed restrictions on fish size and load size are enforced by the same converted whale boats that challenged the Royal Navy. Living isolated for centuries on that desolate rock with few resources taught them much about “sustainability” and “carrying capacity.” The rest of us in the bounteous New World should watch and listen. (a shame they still like to murder whales)

And the carrying capacity of Iceland (just 300K people now) is likely increasing with global warming.

Well, maybe, maybe not. I saw a claim that during the deglaciation roughly ten thousand years ago, volcanic activity (due to removing the confinement pressure of ice), was fifty times the present rate. I don't know if that is actually supported by the evidence -I figured the effect would be more like a factor of two. But, if a new round of deglaciation due to AGW, spikes volcanic activity, it could be problematic.

FIshing fleets used no significant oil until the 20th Century. It is possible to go anywhere, apparently, in a sailboat. Although a motor is very nice for harbours and docking, but that limited use might be possible with solar electric.

Propulsion is relatively efficient using wind, on the other hand I'm not sure if you could run the freezers with the wind & solar collected on board.

Electrification would not reduce oil use by the fishing fleet. I'd guess long-time-at-sea fishing fleets will likely be the very last thing to electrify, even after aviation and transport shipping switches over.

As for costs, the high cost of importing electric cars might be causing Icelanders to wait and see a bit, maybe hoping for some biofuels.

I see where the fishing is becoming more efficient - as planned when I worked there. But auto and aircraft are more than making up the difference !

Best Hopes for the Islanders !

Alan

Iceland has no fossil fuel resources but yet is an increadibly car dependent country. Aside from some transit buses in Reykjavik and Akureyri and a few intercity (intervillage) buses along the Highway 1 ring road, there's no public tranportation and not a single railroad in the whole country. And for some strange reason, Icelanders are in love with massive 4x4 SUVs, which they can barely afford to operate.

On the plus side, Iceland's population is tiny (320,000) and they have a glut of hydroelectric power. If push came to shove, Iceland could certainly electrify a significant portion of their land tranporation although it would cost a bundle.

I think large parts of the global trade will spring to a halt once the banks collapse under the pressure*, since normally a bank is needed mediate the transaction, since one usually doesn't send letters with money in them to pay for a ship full with steel or wheat. In international trade letters of credit are used. They have so far (for centuries) been seen as very safe, since if the receiver can't pay the banks can seize the commodities used as security for the trade and sell them to pay the supplier. But when banks fall like bowling pins all over the world the trust in letters of credit will fall as well. The problem will probably be remedied through states going in and putting up letters of credit for the commodities deemed important. But what happens to the states not deemed credit credible?

*How long this process could take is uncertain, but it seems rather inevitable when considering that entire nations, of the acronym BIGBIPS (Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Britain, Italy, Portugal, Spain) could/will default on their debts, with the crisis worsening with every country defaulting.

In a NYT article today, a Spanish citizen noted that at the same time that they were being asked to "Tighten our belts we are being told to drop our pants."

The conventional wisdom approach appears to be that debt financed stimulus spending is necessary to keep the economies in OECD countries at least stable, while we wait for the inevitable return of cheap oil prices and strong economic growth. But many countries now have critical levels of debt, so, at least in the Eurozone, some countries are being forced to curtail public spending, leading to the above observation.

I've thought for a while that most debt and stock market values are mispriced, because there will not enough be exported oil available to generate the economic activity necessary to pay back the debt and to generate the corporate earnings that the stock markets are expecting.

It seems likely to me that it is not if, but when, that most oil importing OECD countries will face the problems that Iceland and Greece are facing. So, as noted above, it occurs to me that it may be better for debt ridden countries to default earlier versus later.

A political pundit on British TV, discussing the current politico/economic shenanigins in the UK, was clever enough to incorporate into his missive the observaton that all current political initiatives (odd idea) are based on the assumption that economic stability will return within the next two years, thus making victory in the next election possible.

This is why I drink too much!

Together, last year, they installed something like 3x, more than we have in six decades.

Try 4x according to the data on this Wikipedia page. What is even more amazing is that according to reports, in December of 2011 alone, Germany installed more PV than the total US capacity up to the end of 2010!

When I think about the growth rates of solar PV capacity in the fastest growing markets, It appears to me that it is far easier to install large amounts of solar PV and wind capacity than it is to install other types of generators. I mentioned wind because China has installed almost 20GW per year over the past couple of years and th US installed close to 10GW per year during it's fastest growing two years.

Just as an example, if Italy were to continue to install PV at their 2011 rate, in Just 6 years they would have installed enough PV to have a peak PV capacity equal to the output entire Japanese fleet of Nuclear reactors! I know full well that intermittent, daytime only PV cannot be compared to baseload nuclear but still, that would mean installing that much PV in the time it takes to design and plan much less in the way of nuclear power!

I can't imagine that the FF power industry likes the idea of being a backstop for renewables so, that might explain why there is not much enthusiasm for the subject in the corporate owned mainstream media.

Alan from the islands

Well,, terra, I was saying all the cost numbers you guys are so good at don't give the right weight to - as far as I can see- the overwhelming fact that we are burning up the planet (terra del fuego?) and no dollar whatsoever is worth doing that. In other words, we gotta quit what we are doing and get to doing it the way our grandkids will be glad we did.

Or, we get to blowdry our hair today, but we pay for it in dead grandkids tomorrow. Bad buy.

In my humble opinion.

Besides, and I think this gets far too little attention here- solar is way more fun than golf or driving around in a stupid sport car. And you get to be ostracized at parties for being insufferable.

Ghung - They haven't broken ground yet and I've seen no updates. I suspect the drop in NG prices may be the reason with a lot of plants switching.

And above you make my point perfectly. Just flaunting your achievement getting off the grid is worth a lot of off book value. OTOH there is nothing you can do that can have any measurable effect on AGW, sea level rise, resource wars, etc. Even Allan's very laudable efforts to push choochoos won't have a meaningful effect. Which isn’t the same thing as saying the world switching to electric trains wouldn’t be of great benefit. Or that Allan’s efforts are pointless. But not becasue he isn't correct. I do truly admire his dedication to the cause. And just as I appreciate westexas pushing ELM. But the world isn’t taking his model any more serious than Allan’s. As a common sidebar on TOD claims: Anyone can fight a battle when their victory is certain. But it takes true courage to fight against what appears to be insurmountable odds.

The real value in those your efforts as well as Allan’s, dlt’s, wimbi, etc is the satisfaction each of you derive. The sad reality is that the path society is on will be unchanged by any of your INDIVIDUAL efforts. Again, collectively if many others took the same paths it could make some difference. But that’s not the subject matter at hand. We can discuss the value of collective actions the rest of this lazy Sunday if folks like. We’ve been chatting about the value of the efforts of various individuals here on TOD. And virtually all that meaningful value has been gained by those individuals…not society IMHO. If dlt goes solar it will be of no meaning to any other electric consumer on that shared grid. Now if dlt’s experience is communicated to a few thousand consumers on the grid and causes them to go solar we could be talking about a more significant local affect. But, again, that’s a different topic.

Ah, that is more like it. Sadly, the California rebate program has pretty much run out of money and the amount it now provides is trivial. (And given our budget situation, I doubt it gets renewed.) But the Federal tax-deduction is still worth a lot.

The PV peak output and the electricity peak demand are not perfectly aligned . . . they are shifted by a few hours. Most demand charts tend to put the peak at around 3pm. But that does not mean he is not generating power at peak demand! He certainly *is* generating power at time at peak demand!

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Friday night I reviewed two small (14.4kw and 13kw) residential net energy metering applications in SoCal, which I assume are receiving what's left of the CSI incentive, as well as sales tax and property tax exemptions and permitting fee exemptions, as well as the 30% federal income tax credit. Both of them will be allowed to net at full retail price, and to sell back any excess. Both of them will require relatively major rebuild (costing on the order of the installation cost of the PV) of the local distribution system due to causing excessive local voltage rise. 6.8% and 7.5% voltage rise will drive transformer replacement and secondary conductor replacement, as well as primary line extension in one case. In my considered opinion, both of them impose major costs on ratepayers and taxpayers which are not borne by the installer and which exceed the positive externalities of the PV. If I had the ability to limit the size of those installs to the point where upgrades to my system were not required, and the funds saved on the applicant's side were used by the applicants to reduce their power consumption, I think everyone would come out ahead. Unfortunately, despite largely acheiving stated aims of supporting the infant growth of PV manufacturing and installation, advocates of the PV industry want to twist the interpretation of NEM to further expand this program beyond the current 5% cap. The CPUC's ratepayer advocate supports the utility position as to the meaning of the 5% cap. For those of you unfamiliar with ratepayer advocates, they are not noted for supporting utility positions.

Net metering is not a subsidy to the utility, it is a strong subsidy from the ratepayer to the installer/applicant. As PV becomes more mature, incentives become less necessary. Once the sliding CSI incentives have entirely phased out, I would like to see upgrade costs borne by the applicant, NEM export credits decline toward avoided cost, and imported power billed at retail rate (just like PURPA gen). Time-of-use rates would be available, so the positive aspects of the PV load profile would be compensated. I can see continuing subsidy at some level to account for positive externalities.

Alan,
One can delay the average PV peak, by favoring SW oriented mounts. Make the incentives more generous for afternoon peaking, as opposed to morning or noon. It is also possible to modify thermostat settings so as to move consumption forward (i.e. let the AC run the indoor temp down at say 10am, and let the temp recover during the afternoon (i.e. let the indoor temp act as load shifting battery).

It would be better to have time-of-use pricing (including for excess solar sold back), then given a suitable spread (between retail use charge versus and payback for sellback of instantaneous sellback), one could capture true cost/benefits. That would also allow people to arbitrate power usage (use when power is cheap, and save when its expensive, -or if one has storage buy low, sell high), thus encouraging the provision of grid services.

I have been following the Solar vs. Wind production today - REMARKABLE mirror images.

If California had 2.5 as much solar as they do, a base load of 1.7 - 1.8 GW would result, with a 3 AM to 7 AM droop and a late afternoon bulge.

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html#Renewables

But the peak is still forecast at 9 PM and solar is shutting down for the day.

Add some pumped storage, and a VERY nice system could result. Unfortunately, California's best wind potential has already been tapped.

I wonder how many days of the year California has this wind + solar combo ?

Alan

There would certainly be some of that in the cities, particularly Dallas and Houston.

Though I think outside of a few problem areas, it wouldn't turn into Thunderdome. And despite its negative stereotypes, I'm confident rural Texas would be comparatively civilized, despite all the guns. Country folks here may believe in God and guns, and hate gays, but I think they'd be remarkably immune from mass hysteria. There are lots of societal expectations that would prevent devolving in to that sort of thing.

Frugal - I think such events would be much more likely in NY than Texas. Armed rioters would likely be out gunned down here. Add that to the basic Texas philosophy that if you damage my stuff, let alone endanger my life, we have not just the right but an obligtion to kill you. It would be even safer in rural areas where my daughter lives, There is limited road access. If civil unrest broke out you would find a few pickup trucks on the local roads checking ever vehicle. And I can promise local law enforcement wouldn't stop them. And forget them just being armed with deer rifles. There are more than a few full auto assault rifles out there. And a bunch of rednecks who daydream about emptying a full clip into a deserving crowd.

Which reminds of a line I recently heard from the Texas comic Ron White: there's a current bill proposal to amend our death penalty law. If you're ssntenced to death and there are at least 3 witnesses you don't get to sit on death row for a decade or two filling appeals...you get moved to the head of the line. As Ron noted while other states are dropping the death penalty Texas is putting in an express lane.

*NOT* the most competent, but the most laid back, city drivers may be in New Orleans (taxi drivers not included !). Most streets have 25 mph speed limits and the larger, divided streets - 35 mph. More drivers at or below the speed limit than above, even 2 or 3 mph above.

Live and let live attitude towards pedestrians and bicyclists.

And we ALL know how to parallel park :-)

OTOH, sobriety is not a universal virtue.

PS: 42% of the drivers that run into streetcars have Texas plates.

Best Hopes for LOW speed limits,

Alan

Agreed Mc.

LA first, by a wide margin. SF second, again wide margin. Then CA, then other. And I'm from Canada.