the main advantage is that none of your ideas are mutually exclusive and they can be combined with turning off PCs. I won't argue the virtue of your statement that they are all better than offing pcs [although you are wrong]. Instead, I chose to emphasize your totally bankrupt perspective on the issue.

The idea that it is a waste of time or not worth the effort to conserve is precisely the attitude that has brought us global energy problems. It isn't necessarily about saving pennies or grams of CO2, its about becoming aware of our resource usage and understanding the value and costs of high availability, high quality energy.

Unfortunately, this thread is filled with a bunch of skeptical assholes who don't know what they are talking about. Don't be one of them.

Nope I was giving a weight on stationary ~100kw generators that I've worked with. 605lb is heavy enough to reiterate my point. Not to mention the FCX clarity is a million(s) dollar car.

How do you shed significant weight from a generator/motor? Do they use the same drive motor for regen braking? A 400 lb motor + batteries ? That is going to be heavier than an IC system ? Backward progress. No point in sizing the system to capture excessive amounts of braking power for the rare instances where that happens.

Forget the battery. A 100hp generator weighs 1500 pounds. Even ~10 hp generators are excessively heavy for mobile application. I assume that's what keeps the regenerative braking (for 'normal' braking) efficiency 60% in toyotas... unless they use some other method?

I'm looking forward to serving on jury duty for the sole purpose of acquitting alleged criminals and declaring laws void.

You can buy plenty of solar at less than $1/W. Check the internet bargain bins for super low efficiency cells, rejects, used cells, broken panels, surplus inventory, etc. Many options are available for you, troll. You can easily make solar power at less than a dollar a watt.

You lose.

If you came out from under your bridge you might know that manufacturing at $1/W has been an important target for well over a decade. Thus, the announcement hardly seems useless.

What purpose does your whining serve?

"Again, I'll say it: the car hasn't been built yet (and never will) that doesn't need periodic maintenace"

Not true. Vehicles don't need any maintenance for years. Most leased vehicles will satisfy your requirement. Bold use of the word never considering an electric car is absent every thing that gets maintained in a modern car before about 100k miles. Besides, why are you using such a inappropriate analogy? Mechanical wear in no way resembles broadband, computer hardware, or software.

Broadband connectivity has obvious advantages even for stupid old people. All services, TV, phone, etc can converge over a single pipe. It will provide new delivery/tech. opportunities. It will allow us to abandon old crap. We can establish local utilities that maintain 1 cable for all this stuff (and hopefully make it independent of content delivery). It will save money and resources. In short, it has little to do with the internet. It makes sense.

I'm also totally fine with letting stupid old people cling to funny copper lines that dangle over the streets and connect to nothing while the rest of the world enjoys the fruits of our technological labor. But F me for having to maintain that ancient crap because a bunch of clueless idiots can't cope with change.

Good points except, "They need to be angled for the best sun during the time the power need is greatest."

This is true under only very specific circumstances that I think do not apply in this situation. I think in most cases, for grid connected systems with no tracking, the panels should be oriented to receive the greatest amount of solar radiation on an annual basis. This is basically at or near latitude (minimizes the incidence angle, expect variations depending on local climate and weather patterns). This is independent of the power requirements of the load. The load should only enter in the calculations if the economics have a tremendous influence (e.g. high dollars for desert A/C). It seems to me that early-adopters would maximize green power over ROI.

You shouldn't be so critical. His experience will be more typical of future solar converts than your know-it-all solution. One of the main problems is that solar energy will necessarily have to respond to the twisted and misinformed attitudes of most people... Relatively speaking this guy seems on the ball... Besides your answer is just as half-assed when compared to a number of other 'superior' methods.

I'm confused whether your argument is against green gadgets or the entire green industry. Either way, true that most of it is contaminated for business purposes, but some of it is hard science. I think your derision is accurate, but not to all green products... Even so, the 'sham movement' will help in the long run because even if specific claims are bogus the fundamental principle is sound. I suppose it could backfire, but that's a risk I'll take (vs. what?) and I think a compromise we have to make given USA culture.

Offhand, elimination of a phantom load is an example where greenness is quantified because there is virtually no change to the product. The Energy Star program is a good example of a rigorous green program. I can't give other examples because I don't know anything about gadgets... and the the vast majority of gadget purchases can't be justified to any environmental extent.

More generally, green metrics can be established when the output changes solely as a function of the quantity of input. It's really easy to do this in building construction, e.g. I know the energy/resources/cost input to both insulation and N*insulation and I can quantify the heat loss over their equivalent lifetime. I use this to market the 2nd case as green.

totally agree. I have 8 tires and 4 Al-Mg alloy rims in my living room. I'm probably going to burn them for heat this winter due to the favorable economics. end of story.

disagree. car speed is just one important variable that someone decided to regulate. It has little bearing on real accidents, but by suppressing the limit you can reduce damage. It's a band aid effort of the worst type and it encourages negligence.

The obvious problem is human behavior. Willful negligence, general ignorance, and a failure to appreciate that, energetically, driving a car is the same thing as waiving a half-stick of TNT around in a crowded room before wetting-out the fuse at the last minute.

That said, speeding below 50mph serves no obvious benefit except thrills. Driving slowly, however, gives you ample time to recognize the clear and present danger brought to you by the average clown with a drivers license.

On the other hand imposing a speed limit over a 3 mile suspended freeway with unlimited visibility and no traffic also serves no obvious benefit unless we pretend fuel conservation is some type of priority.

Battery technology is not the most effective way to power cars.

True!

Avoiding energy density for a second, it has been about -20 to -10C here for the past few days. It will get colder for about the next month. I know that my lead acid battery is now jelly and has something like 40% capacity. What happens to the fancy batteries? What happens to my range? How much energy will my resistance heater use?