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The world would be a completely different place if only it were a completely different place. Bob Ortz has it right. People won't stop driving. Those few that choose to conserve are a drop in the bucket.
--"how do you like your new coal powered car?" That hits the nail on the head. Air, gas, electric, the energy has to come from somewhere. There is no free lunch. Work the equation backwards. If it is shaped like a car and is as heavy as a car then it will use as much energy as a car to push it through the air from point A to point B. That said, the power company does a better job of running a fossil fueled power plant than the average consumer does and so generates less pollution per unit power. If the batteries and drive train are sufficiently efficient then the world would be a better place if all cars were electric. The range of an electric car only determines whether the consumer will choose and use the electric car.
I am not advocating giving up hope, only pointing out that in the course of human history the majority of the people have always done what they could get away with, until they couldn't get away with it anymore. Any plan to save the world has to take into account that the majority of earth's inhabitants are lazy stupid superstitious slobs that are barely capable of controling their baser impulses.
This seems like a "how to save the world" topic. It should be "how do we save people from themselves?" I don't know that that is possible.
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My post will take into consideration Mark P's statment about Helco being in any way efficent, or having any consideration for it's customers. Remember Helco is a for profit business, and is doing quite well(for it's shareholders).
That said, Ormat has analyzed and determined there is enough juice in the Leilani well to power the entire island. Helco has divied them up another 8% increase. To me, I'd like to start a petition of support for Ormat, everyone seems to hate their guts, but a year of walking heals all hurts, who can give a good reason not to increase the well size at least for all Puna and Hilo, and fire Helco. Convert with a federal grant the old overhead wires, going all underground. And setting good sane rates, with nighttime discount rates for vehicles, Make Hilo @ Puna the EV capital of the world!
Gordon J Tilley
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Actually, we can all stop driving, but we need to rebuild our houses and towns to do it. Has anyone read "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Kunstler? It's all about how our communities are not really communities anymore they are just collections of houses that everyone accesses via cars.
We need to build towns and villages where everyone can get most of what they need within walking distance of their house. They suggest eighty acres is a good size of a village so everyone will be willing to walk everywhere. A post office, a cafe, a general store, a few specialty stores, apartments above the stores, an open market, a park, a promenade, a library, a swimming pool and tennis court, a few statues, benches to sit on, narrow streets so if cars do drive they have to go slowly. Sidewalks on each side of the street planted with shade trees and with benches scattered about. Each house with a big front porch and all garages behind the house off an alleyway behind the houses. Gardens behind the houses and maybe a community garden as well. Doesn't that sound like someplace you'd like to live and work? Why don't we build a few and see how they go?
"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson
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I think they sound boring. I guarantee there will be a large turnover, and what will the income source be?
Sure is a good place for a builder, only need one or two plans for the whole joint, and no travel between jobs.
I came from somthing like that, and today none of my old friends are still there.
Nothing's wrong with travelling if you can do it cheaply and clean, I feel not using helco is my gift to the enviroment. My wife and I didn't get around the island as much as we had wanted, and are going to make up for it.
Kuntsler as a lawyer, believed a person can take a life for his "cause" and it is OK. He was known as scumbag defender of killers!
Gordon J Tilley
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Who said anything about HELCO being considerate? They may be raping us but my point is that they are doing so in a way that would result in less polution and perhaps less per capita energy consumption than all of us driving around the gas guzzling clunkers I see on the road trailing a cloud of smoke and leaving oil on the road. I am not even saying it would be cheaper for us. I am saying that an entity that constantly monitors its smokestack emissions and gets fined for exceedences and has 24 hour operators and a maintenance crew can't help but run more efficiently than the majority of the cars on the road that are not new, haven't been tuned in a long time, and who send gas fumes into the atmosphere every time they fill up not to mention the few drops of gas that wind up on the ground multiplied by the millions of cars. You may hate the power company and they may deserve it but HELCO will run its plants as efficiently as it can if only to maximize their profit. Even that may not be all that efficient in an absolute sense but they have the resources and the motivation to do it better than the average car owner.
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Yeah sure, are you aware that the reason they cite for not expanding geothermal, is they can't transmit it from Puna to Kona. Even a "junk" car can do that, but they probably do keep a very clean operation. If you're so finicky about a little smoke, how do you handle the vog?
Helco is so polished they look great, nice impression. Did you know that for only 45000$ they'l hook you up with solar, it's really clean.
But really they are a power company who can't carry the load we need,therefore should be replaced with a Co-op.
Gordon J Tilley
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I made what I consider to be a statement of fact; that a giant powerplant conforming to a DOH permit would convert carbon based fuel to usefull energy more efficiently than the average vehicle I see driving on Hawaii's roads. I may have missed the point, which appears to be that HELCO is evil and anything said about them must show them in a bad light.
It is best to know your enemy. One of my gripes about calling electric cars as "zero emission" vehicles is that they are not. The powerplant emits carbon and other pollutants as it charges them. Also, if every car were switched to electric, there is no way that the current distribution system could handle the load. There are many reasons why the image of HELCO as our savior charging all our electric cars is grossly twisted. If it is possible to say this without enraging you further I just wanted to say that being less efficient is not one of them. I will admit that seeming to defend HELCO in this thread amounts to fight'n words but it is good practice in separating the chafe from the grain. There are plenty of other things to condemn them for.
One can argue that freedom from a monopoly is worth a limited amount of pollution. Is that what you meant with your comments about smoke and vog?
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Mark, your "giant powerplant being efficient" is true, but a giant powerplant with a free source of fuel (being geothermal) is even truer, and it is Helco who is keeping that from happening, supposedly because they can't transmit the juice around the island. Explain that! And explain .45c per KWH. Have you paid their bills?
Gordon J Tilley
I saw this yesterday, http://www.petroalgae.com/
As a feedstock for transportation fuel, algae oil offers many benefits:
Renewable and sustainable
Essentially carbon neutral
Reduces other harmful emissions
Does not compete for land used by traditional oil crops like soybeans, rapeseed, or palm kernel
Uses water efficiently, and has the ability to clean it as well
In addition to oil, algae bodies (the remaining product after oil-extraction) provide many important products:
Animal feed/protein source
Fertilizer
Biomass for electricity generation
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I remember in 1959, Werner Von Braun on Disneyland tv program talking about throwig away our electric meters,as Atomic energy is here, the only little problem is storing the spent rods.
A few years ago Fuel Cells were going to save the day.
Google "Mahogany Project", where Shell oil is trying to melt oil shale on site(in the ground) to pump out as oil. Been working on it for at least 5 years in Colorado or Utah.
The only problem with the algae is water, which it mostly is, seperating the two is the trick, don't hold your breath. Although I'd like to see it happen.
All kinds of pie in the sky projects, costing us a pile, but here we sit on a proven, operating expandable source which could power the island by itself. Geothermal, but we're ready for any new fad project even if Helco would charge us full price anyway.
Gordon J Tilley
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