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Automotive News & Views How does gas at $4 and higher impact you?
2183 messages, Last post on Nov 21, 2009 at 6:13 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: gagrice (Sep 23, 2008 7:50 am) I am surprised that a wind turbine is that cheap, at least relative to solar. Appears to be about half the cost, except I'm sure they'd try to upsell me to the $20k version. Whisper Wind. Is that sort of like Clean Coal?  Anyone here from Atlanta having trouble finding gas for their car?
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Replying to: steve_ (Sep 23, 2008 8:53 am) 
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My electric bill peaked at $145 this summer, my first in my new house. There are a bunch of fees in the bill so even if I used 10 KWhrs, it would be $25 min per month. In the winter, the elec bill was about $45 for April, the first month in the house. I was still running heat most days. So chasing after 20 a month in the winter and 120 a month in the summer adds up to about 500 a year. To finance a 16k wind turbine is going to eat that up, so there is never a break even point for wind power.
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Replying to: steve_ (Sep 23, 2008 8:53 am) brief story |
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 23, 2008 7:03 am)
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Replying to: dave8697 (Sep 23, 2008 9:20 am) I wouldn't say that France is overwhelmingly enamored with nukes. New incident at French nuclear plant (Reuters) Financing is in disarray with the credit crunch for building new ones on the drawing boards around the world although Warren Buffett seems to have snatched up Constellation Energy - that's a diverse energy company but is big in nukes and hopes to bring them to the US. I bet they won't try to put one in Omaha though.  Financial Times
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Replying to: dave8697 (Sep 23, 2008 9:12 am) That must be a really efficient house! My last electric bill (~Aug 19 to ~Sept 20) was about $225. I've blown about $1700 on electricity so far this year. Back in 2004, 2005, and 2006, it usually averaged out to about $100-110 per month. But with the way rates jacked up, I blew about $2000 in 2007. Now part of that was because of a leaky faucet that made the water heater run constantly, and I didn't realize just how bad it was leaking until the bill came! And because I didn't get a plumber out right away, it carried over to the next bill. That could have easily accounted for about $250-300 right there. I'm looking forward to the October and November bills. They should be pretty reasonable, since I won't be running a/c anymore, and it won't get cold enough to really put a strain on the new heat pump. And I still have about a half-tank left of oil, so I'll probably try to burn that off this winter, before retiring the old furnace for good.
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Replying to: dave8697 (Sep 23, 2008 9:20 am) Actually, that will be ending very soon. I read stories almost every week of solar panel breakthroughs. Silicon prices are coming down too. There are already solar roof tiles, and solar windows, and solar skylights. Soon solar will be built into walls and easily put into windows. Someone, someday, WILL reach 8 to 10 cents per kwH for solar technology. It is as certain as the fact that fossil fuels will eventually run out. |
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 22, 2008 2:27 pm) Quickly is a very subjective word, so it's impossible to say you're incorrect, but... To provide people with more electricity is not just a matter of constructing more power plants in many locations. The transmission lines are only designed to handle so many amps at a certain voltage. You can not just say convert all houses using oil to electric, as the lines would not handle it. Similarly people's houses may not have adequate breaker-boxes; especially older homes, to handle the number of amps needed. Similarly you can't just say because there is a lot of natural gas available people can just go ahead and convert. The gas-line main ends 45 miles from our city. And the size of that line may just be adequate for the places using that N.G. So how long do you think it would take to run large gas-lines from the fields, running them hundreds of miles, and then running lines to every house over thousands of square miles, just here in the small state of NH? You'd burn millions of gal. of diesel fuel in the construction equipment ove rthe years, before the first molecules of natural gas ever got down the pipeline. Your solutions sound good, until you look at the reality of how you'd actually implement them. |
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