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I have all this solar power on my house and I found out last week that the electric utility, TXU Energy, has been STEALING electricity from me.
I called up the Customer No-Service line and tried to explaining to several people, over the course of TWO HOURS, that they were not paying me for the power I was sending back to the grid the way they were supposed to. It finally became obvious that they were clueless -- even the "Supervisor" didn't understand that TXU Energy has customers who produce power and actually expect to be credited.
So, I turned off the AC input to the house. I've been running off the solar panels for five days now in protest. That and at least this way they won't be able to steal any more electricity from me. I sent them a letter quoting the parts of the Public Utility Commission rules, as well as the federal laws, that they are violating. Meanwhile, they aren't making any money off me, and neither are they stealing my electricity.Current Mood:  amused |
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Well, here we are, almost a year after my first post on the Gore Minimum and Solar Cycle 24 is still as anemic as it was a year ago, which was pretty anemic. I don't know if anyone is counting, but I think there have been more Solar Cycle 23 sunspots in SC 24 than SC 24 sunspots. Which is not a good sign.
As predicted, people are claiming that this is the start of a "Global Cooling" cycle, forgetting that the solar cycles come and go and when the Gore Minimum is over, so will the respite from global warm be over.
Enjoy it while it lasts, people. Between the Global Economic Depression and the Gore Minimum (if this is the Gore Minimum, I guess this is also the Bush Depression ...), global fossil fuel consumption is falling off enough that OPEC has been unable to prop up oil prices with production cut-backs. Oh, and I called the economic collapse as well -- skyrocketing oil prices were one of the triggers that helped create the present mess, along with rampant mortgage fraud. As long as people weren't tapped out, mortgages were a lot easier to pay. Add in a few hundred extra dollars a month in energy costs (recalling that Yours Truly has been actively cutting her energy bills with a chain saw of late) and pretty much everyone was hurting.
So I guess this is how it's going to be -- economic collapse will put a large dent in many efforts to switch to a renewable energy economy, pushing us further down the road, still stuck on fossil fuels. Except for anyone who's had the foresight to realize that we must quit guzzling energy like drunken sailors.
Which gets me to my present adventure. A few months back I went to my now-former employer and presented a plan for making low-power computers and was turned down. And this from a major computer manufacturer that touts itself as "Green". Now that I've joined the ranks of the gainfully self-unemployed, I've started a new business venture to sell them myself -- http://www.greenhousepc.com/. Please forgive the half-completed website -- much to be done, not a lot of time thus far to do it. The computers I'm selling really do cut energy costs -- there's some entry a few months back where I describe what all I've done. Since then I've gotten much better -- the performance is very respectable (the house server is now a greenServer™ model) and the electric bill just keeps on going down.
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Saturday the inverters churned out their 3rd megawatt hour.
Now if the sun would just come back out I'd be able to make progress on Megawatt-Hour #4 ...Current Mood:  awake |
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(Yeah, busy day here on the cat farm ...)
Every now and again I get asked about my solar panels and what they are costing me. I haven't a clue how to answer because I took a very holistic approach to the entire thing. A better question would be -- what has it taken to get to where I'm at? By that I mean, what has it taken to have a $50 electric bill while the neighbors pay $300?
Solar Power --
I'm into the existing system to the tune of about $26,000. That's solar panels and batteries enough to last 24 hours without electricity. The cost savings is about $52 per month, which is up a bit as the incremental cost of electricity has risen. Still not enough to pay for itself as the mortgage on the house to install the panels is $200 all by itself. Net cost over the 10 years of the mortgage? $15,600, minus the value of never being without electricity.
Replacement A/C System --This past spring my compressor finally went out, and the evaporator coil was also bad. With both major components gone, I was looking at a new A/C system, and about a $6,000 bill. Instead, I replaced the existing 14 SEER unit with a 20.5 SEER unit which cost $8,600. Net cost? Well, the A/C had to be repaired, so I put the increase at $2,600, but minus the savings in electricity of about $100 per month (yes, that much -- a change in 7.5 SEER is substantial) of electric usage, spread out over the 10 year life of the system, and that gets me to $2,600 minus $6,000 in saved electricity is a net savings of $3,400 over the next 10 years.
Replacement Refrigerator --I liked the old fridge, but it had all the problems of a side-by-side -- too much space taken up by doors and dividers. The new refrigerator is also Energy Star rated and saves approximately 700 KWH per year. The cost was $1,800. The net cost, again over ten years, is 700 KWH * 10 years * $0.15 / KWH, or $750. Not bad for a fridge with more usable interior space that will also work better with the solar power system. Oh, and I got $300 when I sold the old fridge, so the total cost is $450.
Compact Fluorescent Bulbs --What started this entire journey was a switch from incandescent to CFL bulbs. The electricity savings, based on my old electric usage, seems to be about 350KWH per month -- more, by the way, than my solar power system produces in an average month. There were a total of about 50 bulbs in all that were ultimately replaced. At an average cost of $7 per bulbs, that comes out to $350 to convert (much cheaper than the solar power system, also by the way). During the past 18 months, 10% of the bulbs have failed, or $24 per year for upkeep. Total cost over 10 years is $350 (initial outlaw) plus $240, or $590. Total savings in electricity is $6,300, or a net savings of $5,710 over a ten year period. Of course, the next ten years will be even better because I won't have to make that initial investment.
Kitchen Computer Replacement --With a complex household, comes the need for lots of computers. Except, one of them wasn't doing anything but keeping track of the weather and electrical system. Cost? $15 per month in electricity. Solution? ARTiGO embedded PC running GenToo Linux. The ARTiGO was $400 to build -- that's including the memory and hard drive -- and uses 6 watts. The old PC consumed 85 watts, for a savings of 79 watts / hour, or 58KWH per month. Assuming the computer last 5 years, which is pretty typically, the savings over the next 10 years are twice the five year net cost of $400 for the computer, minus $522 in electricity savings. Ten year net savings is $244.
What you want next, no doubt, is the grand total -- what did it cost to reduce my electric consumption by about 75%?
| Item | 10 Year Cost / Savings | | Solar Power | -15,600 | | New A/C System | 3,400 | | New Refrigerator | -450 | | New Light Bulbs | 5,710 | | New Kitchen Computer | 244 | | Total | -6,696 |
Was it worth it? I think so. The environmental savings alone -- $50 per month to cut CO2 emissions -- and to have more modern appliances, and reliable electric power seems like a good deal. Add the electric motorcycle to the equation and I might even be ahead each month.
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Apparently the Republican Party is splitting in two -- the people, such as myself, who were followers of Ronald Reagan's brand of conservative politics, and the followers of George W. Bush who are mostly neo-conservatives. This article makes the point, as does this post --
"When there is this level of endorsement to an opposing candidate - it becomes clear that that candidate is head and shoulders above the other. this is not about McCain - but the hope and positivity that Senator Obama is engendering in all corners of the American populace, regardless of color, creed or party membership for that matter."
If enough Conservatives, not the fake and phoney, bombard them with insults, Rush Limbaugh trained neo-conservatives, defect to the DNC, there is a very real chance that the Conservative ideology can mix with and temper the fuzzy headed Liberal philosophies that have been a constant threat to wealth and prosperity for this nation. There is nothing wrong with Universal Health Care, if it is done properly. There is nothing wrong with Public Education reform. There is nothing wrong with Early Childhood Development programs. There are proven and workable ways of doing each of those, and they all pay handsome dividends in creating a more productive, and more just, society.
John McCain and the death throes of the Republican Party may be the best thing that's happened to the Conservative movement since Ronald Reagan.
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| » Real Trickle-Down Economics |
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I like Barack Obama. I'd like to vote for Barack Obama. I'd like for Barack Obama to understand economics well enough for me to vote for him. But he doesn't.
Nor does John McCain.
The basic principle of the trickle down economics is that people who have money, will spend the money. They will give it to people who make things, and sell services, and those people will then have money. Those people in turn will spend it and so on until it's completely circulated in society. That's the theory and it's a pretty sound one at that.
What we've had for the past 20 years, really since the end of the Reagan era, is not "trickle down economics". It's an entirely different form of economic system in which wealth is accumulated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Those people can't spend all their wealth, so they invest it. And many of those investments take the form of loans and other debt instruments. So now, instead of the wealth going around in a circle -- rich guy pass middle class car repair shop owner guy to fix Beemer, who pays mechanic who buys groceries from store that pays farmer that buys fertilizer from rich guy -- the money keeps coming back to rich guy who owns everything of everyone else because rich guy owns the mortgage on all of it.
That's not "trickle down economics". It's economic slavery. And what do we have today? Well, economic enslavement to the credit institutions that are now facing problems because the wealth stopped moving because people aren't getting money from anyplace but the banks, but the rich guys of the world have all the money.
There is a necessary balance between promoting wealth recreation, and taking wealth from them that gots and giving it to them that ain't gots.
Right now the U.S. favors concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and we've seen what that is doing. In order to stimulate economic development the government has promoted schemes that create debt, instead -- the loosening of credit restrictions -- and now we're paying for that. Without economic policies that promote wealth circulation, those in debt can never get their hands on the money to pay off that debt because it's being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The flip side, what existed in the late 1970's, and to a lesser extent in the early / mid 1990's, are policies that promote wealth redistribution. Those with wealth choose to spend or earn less, and the people who receive those funds find themselves without and the economy again suffers.
Yes, it will be great to watch the growth rate in billionaires slow, but we must never forget that without that segment of the population with disposable income, many of the jobs, and the employees who hold those jobs, will dry up. So, be careful with those tax plans, Barack. Let's not kill the upper class in a misguided attempt to benefit the working class.
Aug. 29th, 2008 @ 09:12 am
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| » [Public] Biden?!? |
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Now, don't get me wrong, I like Joe Biden a lot, and think that in a more perfect universe he might have been a decent president.
But Vice President Joseph Biden? No, this is wrong.
Joe Biden is a holdover from the bad old days when Tip O'Neil was in the House, and the Democratic Party's solution to all problems was tax the rich, give to the poor. The problem with this as a strategy is that "the rich" often includes people down in the middle class, and the truly rich have options the poor don't have, and that often includes just not making so much money in the first place. Why work extra hours, or take extra risks if the government is just going to take it away? We don't need a vice president with 1970's era ideologies, the same ideologies that Bill Clinton tried doing away with during his two terms in office.
No, Sen. Obama, Joe Biden is not the right candidate for Vice President and several runs for the White House have proven that time and again. There has never, not once, in all his times running for the office, been a Sen. Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket, and there is a reason for that.
Joe Biden is charming and witty. I met him in 1984 when he was running for office. He came to my campus and spoke for a bit. After he spoke a number of us had a chance to talk with him one-on-one. I liked his personality and found him easy to talk to. But I didn't like what he had to say politically, so that Fall I voted for Ronald Reagan.
Does this mean I won't vote for Obama in the Fall? I don't know. But I do know this -- if picking Joe Biden is an example of the kinds of decisions Obama will make as president, I won't. This isn't just a little bad decision, this is a big bad decision. Expect the polls to react, and react very negatively.
Aug. 23rd, 2008 @ 08:10 am
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| » [Public] Why I'm Voting for Obama -- Gas Tax Holiday Stupidity |
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Of the three contenders for the White House, only Barack Obama has had the courage to point out what a stupid idea the Gas Tax Holiday -- supported by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- truly is.
Sooner or later we're going to have to stop using so damned much gasoline, even if only because there is less and less of the stuff, and our insistence on buying everything imaginable from China has finally enabled them to get into the 20th century and pollute their air the same we we had in the 1950s and '60s.
What Obama needs to do next is even more offensive to the "But my gasoline costs so much!" crowd -- he needs to announce that as part of preparations for an era when fuel economy is dramatically higher, the federal motor fuels tax is being doubled. That's right -- doubled. Because if the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) target is to have teeth, there is only one way to do that -- act like it is a foregone conclusion. And when CAFE doubles, motor fuels tax collection will halve. Rather than find ourselves energy efficient with broken down roads, let's get the motor fuels tax up to where it needs to be, and give people an incentive to actually raise CAFE.
May. 4th, 2008 @ 08:30 pm
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| » [PUBLIC] Start of the Gore Minimum? |
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A bit less than 400 years ago the Earth entered an extended period of relative cool. This became known as the Maunder Minimum and was repeated a bit less than 200 years later, in the early 1800's, by the Dalton Minimum which lasted from the late 1790's until the 1820's.
What causes these?
One theory is that the 178.8 year cycle for the center of mass of the entire solar system results in changes in the number of sunspots that are produced, and this in turn affects cosmic radiation and cloud formation. Various papers, such as this one, document the relationship between sunspot counts and orbital geometry.
What does this have to do with Al Gore and climate change?
Weather and climate news has been dominated by the carbon dioxide related global warming, but the situation in the solar system at large has received little or not press. If these papers are correct, and the data appears to show a very strong correlation between sunspot counts, the center of mass of the solar system, and global climate, we should begin entering a period of global cooling which will last two or more 11 year sunspot cycles.
We are just now entering Solar Cycle 24, which officially began January, 2008 with the first sunspot having a reversed polarity from the sunspots of cycle 23 having been sighted. It last just a few days before disappearing. The second cycle 24 sunspot was sighted in April, 2008 with spots from cycle 23 making up the rest of the very minimal sunspot activity. It, too, was very short lived.
As this chart from NOAA shows --
1998 was a record year for the global mean surface temperature, with no year since 1998 breaking that record. That year occurred two years after the start of cycle 23, which was slightly less active than cycle 22 which is the most active cycle on record.
How will this lead to global cooling?
As this paper shows, there is a strong correlation between solar cycle length and global mean temperature. If cycle 24 has not yet really started, and two very short lived sunspots aren't convincing everyone that cycle 24 actually started, each day that the cycle is delayed implies some amount of global cooling. The bitter '07-'08 winter in the Northern Hemisphere reflects the lower mean global temperature from 2006, and the forecast for 2008 is that this year will be cooler, on average, than 2007.
Is this the start of a new Ice Age?
No. This is not the death knell of Global Warming. This is part of the normal cycle -- the Dalton and Maunder Minimums being the two most recent -- that people such as myself have long used to argue against a CO2-only, or CO2-dominated global climate model. When the Gore Minimum ends in several cycles, global warming will resume, but this time bigger and badder than before, unless CO2 emissions are reduced. In another 178 years, unless something changes, a far warmer planet will again experience a few decades of relative cool before warming again.
What action is required?
I don't personally believe that any year in the coming solar cycle will surpass the global mean surface temperature record of 1998. Last year I said my thoughts about breaking the 1998 record depended on cycle 24, and based on what I've read -- and I'm no expert by any means -- cycles 24 and 25 will be such that there will be a downward bias in global mean temperature. Depending on cycles 26 or 27, global warming will pick right back up where it left off, unless something is done. The weather where I live today is cold, rainy and miserable, which is not typical at all for the Cat Farm this time of the year.
Fortunately, the something which must be done is precisely the same something we need to do to avert a catastrophic collapse of the global economy in the very near term -- quit relying on fossil fuels. When I first started actively engaging the climate change folks on the subject, oil was half the price it is today. The global economy is heading in a direction where unless oil prices begin to decline, the global economy will stall and collapse. There is only one way to reduce the price of oil in a free market economy -- reduce consumption. As we near Peak Oil, increasing production is not an option, no matter how much Pres. Bush pounds his fist on the table, demanding that oil production in the Arctic be permitted.
The option to purchase hybrid vehicles, and engage in the forms of energy conservation I've undergone, should be pursued by those who have the means, even if they "barely" have the means. The underclasses -- lower and working -- often lack the personal working capital to purchase products, such as hybrid cars or solar power systems -- which can effectively reduce overall oil consumption. Once economies of scale and free market competition make these products available, everyone should switch.
At the political policy level, governments should begin heavily taxing fossil fuel consumption, with rebates or exemptions for the lower classes, with the cap on income for receiving a rebate or exemption being reduced each year as the products penetrate the market. The goal of this strategy would be to convince the upper classes, which can afford to reduce fossil fuel consumption to do so, and thereby pay no tax, while any taxes collected are used to move others off of fossil fuels.
Apr. 27th, 2008 @ 02:37 pm
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| » [Public] Cheap Chinese Crap -- H-P battery charger |
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Today's installment of "Cheap Chinese Crap" involves the AC adapter for my Hewlett-Packard Pavilion ZV6000 notebook. For the second time since buying this laptop (now you all know what I use to surf the interwebs), the strain relief where the cord meets the plug which goes into the back of the laptop has failed to protect the cables from failure due to flexing. The cable is a multi-wire assembling with power and measurement being contained within a white insulating layer, and some other power wire being a braided shield. The braided shield wire fails, one since strand at a time, due to insufficient protection and that boundary.
This is easy stuff, guys. And the fact that the first one failed,and you sold me a second adapter with the exact same design defect tells me you've outsourced to China because you don't give a damn about quality and only care about price. HP quality used to mean something. Apparently HP quality now means "We're resting on our laurels -- keep giving us money until you figure it out, stupid!"
I'll be sending them photos and a nasty letter.
I'm going to start making these posts public so people can link them.
Apr. 16th, 2008 @ 08:14 am
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| » Cheap Chinese Crap -- battery charger |
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Last fall, faced again with a Corvette battery that had sulfur deposits on the lead plates, I decided to buy a $100 car battery charger capable of properly correcting all manner of problems. Unlike the typical Cheap Chinese Crap battery chargers, this one had a "desulfate" cycle along with an "equalize" cycle. Ignore these terms if they don't make sense -- some of us worship at the altar of lead acid battery maintenance.
ANYWAY, I went to help some friends one morning with their dead battery. The result was that the charger seemed to die. A puff of smoke, some interesting readouts, and then ... death. I took it back to the house and tried it on some batteries I had. It seemed to work -- because I keep my batteries charged, it would turn on, display a few amps of charge, then pronounce them "FUL".
And then there is the Corvette, once again showing signs of an aging battery. Even with a trickle charger on the newest battery. I'll have to check and see if the trickle charger is also Cheap Chinese Crap. When the semi-dead charger failed to do its thing on the now-known-to-have-problems Corvette battery, I realized the charger really was broken. It was time to do what I do best -- take stuff apart in hopes I can fix it myself because returning poorly built or designed crap for repair means I own poorly built or designed crap that is going to break again.
It was then that I realized that instead of being a high quality product, I was dealing with ... Cheap Chinese Crap. The product was not designed to EVER be taken apart. Many fo the screws had broken off (!) inside the charger during the manufacturing process. Digging deeper, I found the part that let go its smoke -- a half-bridge rectifier, SBR20100CT -- responsible for converting high frequency AC from a switching power supply into DC. According to all the manufacturer spec sheets I could find for this part, this part requires being attached to a heat sink. Which makes sense -- they deal with large amounts of power, they should have heat sinks. These weren't. Oh, there were parts that -- if designed correctly -- might have functioned like a heat sink, but they weren't designed correctly. Firstly, the metal tab on the part is connected to the center electrode, which means they really needed two electrically separated heat sinks. Being Cheap Crap, they didn't do they. They tried to thermally attach the parts to a large metal front piece by pressing the two parts against an electrically insulating sheet that then pressed against this large metal case. The metal part used to apply pressure didn't actually do that -- both parts were several millimeters away from the metal case. Secondly, there was little or no thermal compound to be found anywhere, not that it would have made any difference. In short, designed to BREAK.
Haven't figured out how I'm going to fix it. The parts are $1.65 a piece, and I should replace both of them. But I need to find a proper method of cooling them, and the existing heat sink parts will never work.
Apr. 10th, 2008 @ 06:40 am
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| » [Public] Energy wastage |
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(Updated to include 9/20/07 statement.)
A few months back, fed up with a teenager who refuses to turn off lights, I decided to take matters into my own hands -- I replaced the bedroom and bathroom lights with compact fluorescents.
The drop in electric consumption was so dramatic, so immediately obvious, that I ran out and replaced all the bulbs in my entire house, almost. There are still a few I've not replaced, but they are almost never turned on. For those of you who've not made the switch yet, here's my electric bill for over a year. You can see the dramatic drop in kilowatt hours used.
I'm making this public so y'all can link it however far and wide you like, and I encourage you do to so. My average monthly savings is $47.00. That's just too much money for me to pass up.
(Just to add a bit of explanation, the January bill has no appreciable savings in it, so it should be compared to the February bill. The March and April 2007 bills should be compared again the March and November 2006 bill. I'll update the photo from time to time on Photobucket, so the changes will continue to be visible as the summer approaches)
Jan. 24th, 2008 @ 08:00 am
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| » More On Energy Wastage |
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In an earlier post, I detailed my journey from incandescent lights to compact fluorescent lights. Keep in mind, this journey started because I wanted to make sure I could run my house on a natural gas powered backup generator for those occassions when I manage to lose power. Which happens more often than it should.
In that other post I mentioned that the house remains much cooler because there is less heat generated by light bulbs. What I've found is that I actually have to open the windows and let fresh air in because otherwise the house winds up smelling stale without the A/C. This makes a lot of sense as modern houses are constructed to be fairly air tight, and the routine odors of a house slowly accumulate.
With the last statement came the need, finally, to start running the A/C to keep the house comfortable. Since I had 3 good months of "little or no A/C" running data for my little data gathering exercise -- remember, the goal is to make sure the house can operate through an extended power outage -- I decided to start pushing really hard on energy conservation through lifestyle changes.
Although the house does have a programmable thermostat which does a good job of keeping things cool and not wasting energy when I'm not home, I decided to take matters directly into my own hands. I just ... turn it off entirely. Rather than allowing the thermostat to decide I'll be home every day at the same time, when I come home, I just turn it back on. I now have a recording thermometer, so I'll be able to chart the daily ups and downs of the temperature when I'm not here, and it will be interesting to see what's going on behind my back.
The current monthly electric consumption estimate is right around 770kWH. If you read that other post, based on what the load is when the A/C is running on its own schedule, consumption should be 1125kWH. The bill is due in 2 weeks. I can't wait to see what it is.
Jun. 8th, 2007 @ 08:18 am
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| » [Public] Is alternative energy a smart thing to do? |
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(I've opened this up as a public post because I wish to talk about it in public.)
I recently posted about saving energy, but what I didn't post is why I was driven to so dramatically cut electricity. Yeah, the teenager is part of it, but not all of it.
Last summer we had a number of power problems and there was a threat of rolling blackouts here in Cat Ranching country. Having lived for days on end in New Orleans where I often didn't have power, I'm not interested in repeating that here at home. I started to investigate having a natural gas powered standby generator installed so that I could survive any storm or power company related outage. The estimates were in the range of $10K to $12K, with an upper limit of $15K if I went with a really large generator capable of powering the entire house and running the A/C. Considering how much home equity I have (which is probably the subject of another post -- how to pay off ones house well before retirement, unlike the majority of Americans who own a mortgage and not a house ...), I figured a generator could be financed with a second mortgage with no difficulty at all.
After getting the first electric bill since going to fluorescent lights, I realized that my peak daily average consumption was well within the limits of a solar powered inverter. With a peak average load of about 1,200 watts, or 28.8 KWH per day, a four to six hour outage, which is about the maximum for severe weather caused outages, a solar charged standby system with a 7.2 KWH storage capacity and 3,000 watt inverter was sufficient for most of my needs. I looked at components and concluded that a 9.6 KWH battery array and 5,000 watt grid-tied inverter was a nice configuration. It would provide all the power I should need to survive 4 to 6 hours without electricity from the power company. The system would operate at 48 volts and store electricity in 4 200 amp hour batteries.
Then came the matter of charging the batteries and keeping them topped up. The largest commonly used panels provide approximately 200 watts power. A goal was to be able to recharge in a reasonable period of time, so I decided that 4 KWH was an approximate goal for a day's solar generation. This would recharge the batteries in two days, using an average of 4.5 hours equivalent worth of sunlight. Even though the sun shines more than 4.5 hours a day here, even in the winter, the angle of the sun during the day, and over the course of a year, means that a solar array behaves as though it is operating at full output only so many hours a day on average. That figure is approximately 5 hours per day here.
Now that I had a backup system designed, I was able to contact a local installer. I described my goals and proposed system to them and was quite surprised that it was competitive with a natural gas backup system. As an added bonus, because I've specified that the system be grid-tied, I will produce approximately 120 KWH of electricity that will offset the electricity I get from the grid. The net result, for those of you who've read that other post, is that I will be able to further reduce my consumption, net of heating and cooling, from 630 KWH per month to 510 KWH per month. Assuming there was a prolonged outage, I should almost be able to live completely off-grid with the remaining major power consumers -- television (I only own one -- a smaller one would be a wise idea as an emergency backup), stereo (the big one, not all of them ...), computers, etc. -- cut off. I say "almost" because refrigeration is an unknown quantity, and I suspect it accounts for a sizable fraction of what remains. I've not checked to see what my mini-fridge consumes, but in the event of a prolonged crisis, I suspect I'd move the absolute essentials to it and run that off the solar inverter.
So there you have it -- for less than $15,000 a homeowner can create a system that would likely allow them to reasonably well survive prolonged loss of power from the electric grid. Each year hundreds of thousands of electric customers wind up without power for days on end. It's not all that improbable that some day I'll be without power for more than just a few hours.
Apr. 22nd, 2007 @ 09:41 pm
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| » [Public] My Journal is Friends-Only. Comment to be added |
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Most of my journal entries are set to only allow "Friends" to view them. If you have found a comment of mine in another LJ interesting, please let me know what you found interesting and I'll consider adding you to my Friends list. If you're just out looking for people to add you to their Friends list, and you've never read any LJ posts by me, please consider pestering someone else.
Mar. 31st, 2007 @ 08:00 am
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| » [Public] Boycott: Nedra Johnson |
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I don't believe in boycotts, but in this instance I don't see any other way to get the attention of this musician and let her know that her behavior is inappropriate.
In a recent discussion about women-only space, Nedra remarked that she would welcome men into women-only space before she welcomed transsexual women.
The controversy surrounding transsexual women in women-only space is one that is remarkably contentious and creates significant friction between different groups of women with differing political philosophies.
Regardless, all too often transsexual women are compared adversely to men. Suggesting that transsexual women should be treated as third class citizens in women-only spaces, behind men, is simply wrong. The transsexual women I'm fortunate to know live and function, day in, day out, in this world as women, experiencing all the joys and sorrows that come with being women in a society that is often women-hating.
Those of you who have influence over which artists are brought to your town, college, university, or other music event, please make them aware of what Nedra has said.
Those of you who are so inclined, I invite you to send her a note asking that she apologize for her remarks, as well as publically renounce her opposition to transsexual women in women-only spaces.
Aug. 19th, 2006 @ 12:54 pm
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| » [Public] BK Holiday Remix |
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Last year someone sent me to the It's a BK Holiday web-site. Well, there's now an MP3 remix of the music from that page here.
Dec. 9th, 2005 @ 11:08 pm
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| » [Public] Some weird food meme |
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(Stolen from someone else)
The BBC asked people to vote for the top 50 things everyone should try a bite of in their lifetime. Bold the ones you've eaten. (even a bite counts, coward...)
The top 50
1. Fresh fish
2. Lobster
3. Steak
4. Thai food
5. Chinese food
6. Ice cream
7. Pizza
8. Crab
9. Curry
10. Prawns
11. Moreton Bay Bugs - an Australian saltwater crustacean that looks a bit like a bug. It's sweet succulent flesh is reminiscent of lobster. Also called bay lobsters, shovelnose lobsters or squat lobsters if you like.
12. Clam chowder
13. Barbecues
14. Pancakes
15. Pasta
16. Mussels
17. Cheesecake
18. Lamb
19. Cream tea
20. Alligator
21. Oysters
22. Kangaroo
23. Chocolate
24. Sandwiches
25. Greek food
26. Burgers
27. Mexican food
28. Squid
29. American diner breakfast
30. Salmon
31. Venison
32. Guinea pig
33. Shark
34. Sushi
35. Paella
36. Barramundi (an Australian fish)
37. Reindeer
38. Kebab
39. Scallops
40. Australian meat pie
41. Mango
42. Durian fruit
43. Octopus
44. Ribs
45. Roast beef
46. Tapas
47. Jerk chicken/pork
48. Haggis
49. Caviar
50. Cornish Pastry
He and I only differed on two items. Apparently weird food is a fairly constant experience, even among total strangers.
Nov. 28th, 2005 @ 10:24 am
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| » [Public] Stop Ethnic Cleansing In New Orleans |
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(Please link to this and spread it as far and wide as possible.)
In the rush to remove everyone from New Orleans, a major political victory has been handed to residents of the North Shore. Beginning in the late 1970s, white New Orleans residents fled the city in droves and moved to a number of small towns located on the northern coast of Lake Pontchartrain. For decades these same people have spoken about getting rid of the black population in New Orleans. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, they are getting their wish.
( Much has been made of the flood waters within New Orleans ... )
Sep. 8th, 2005 @ 05:00 pm
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| » [Public] Name Furry's Dummy |
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I've opened this to everyone, so feel free to tell everyone you know about this post and have them send their suggestions.
I finally, after years of procrastinating and whatnot, found and bought a dress making dummy. I've decided to let everyone else on the planet have a go at naming the dummy. Some interesting facts about her is she is 59" tall at the shoulder, she has no arms, no legs, no head, and has a burgundy (I think that's right -- she's in the other room, wearing a dress I'm making) knit covering.
Here's the rules -- if you come up with a new name, add it as a comment. If you like someone elses name, add it as a response. Name with the most responses wins.
As this is a contest, the prize is a $36 donation to the charity of your choosing. I'll contact the winner at the end of February.
Here's the list of names currently in the running as of 2/5 --
Ladyquin
Anita Outphitt
Ima Justible
Feb. 5th, 2005 @ 07:00 am
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