[vtsnowedin]

Dohboi, i'm trying to develop point-source reduction of the transmission of plastics and garbage to the ocean by issuing personal solar energy credits as an incentive to properly dispose of household wastes. If a person is rewarded with free energy for his household in exchange for his garbage, no waste flows into the ocean, less ff energy is needed for normal household use, the city and countryside and waterways are cleaner, tourism is enhanced because the city, countryside, waterways, and the ocean are cleaner, and the family getting free energy via solar is financially better off. If the costs of garbage remediation in the ocean can be partially transferred to solar credits to prevent that garbage from flowing into the oceans to begin with, everyone wins. Oh, the last benefit is the introduction of a new market for solar energy to an area that currently cannot afford it.

Scratching my head here. Isn't it illegal to improperly dispose of household waste? Isn't that enough? I spent a day recently helping at the local transfer station. One compactor takes clean/rinsed loose recycling unsorted. everything from loose magazines to glass and plastic. placing stuff in that bin is free. Beside it is the landfill bin that takes all the rest. They charge you $3.50/ 30 gal. bag for that one. Also flat cardboard goes into it's own bin for free and metal and appliances (Freon free) go into yet another bin for $10/ cubic yard.
The kicker is that the state wants people to stop putting any food waste in the landfill bin. So now you wont be able to put garbage in the garbage pail. I have compost cones at home so it is just an annoyance but for apartment dwellers without any yard space you have to wonder what the state expects those people to do.

[KaiserJeep]

Most of you, it would appear, are not competent to manage just your own wallets, let alone a homestead.

I left this thread alone and just read it for amusement from time to time.

Note that Centralized Energy is not a Sacred Cow, it is a triumph of modern technology. For more than a century we have been building and using our power grid and large centralized power plants to go with it.

Over the last half of that period, we have delivered power at an average burdened cost below $0.100 per Kwh. In just the last two decades, that has risen to about $0.113 per Kwh, because of the inclusion of renewable energy sources other than hydro, and the de-emphasis of nuclear energy - which is the cheapest form of power other than natural gas and coal at this point in time.

Note that I used the term "burdened cost". The price includes the construction and operation and maintenance of the power grid and all the various power plants, all the way to the feed wires attached to your circuit breaker panel - the panel and the wires in the walls, you own. "Burdened cost" also includes a reasonable profit for the power company.

Now I realize that not everybody is an EE like me - but I could not let this thread continue without an injection of reality - which is needed by everybody except Tanada.

In late July I will have had a Solar PV roof for 6 years. During that time, those premium mono-crystalline silicon panels have produced power at a burdened cost of about $0.437 per Kwh. When the next owner of my house must decide between the $0 purchase of the panels or the lease renewal, the 18 years of solar roof would have produced power somewhere in the average cost of $0.230 per Kwh, competitive with urban grid power here in Silicon Valley.

Of course, I am not actually paying $0.437 per Kwh. Thanks to the California Solar Initiative and the Federal EPA and the terms of my panel lease - called a "Power Purchase Agreement" - I am paying today - and the next owner will continue to pay - only $0.227 per Kwh, the average retail power price when I signed the agreement in 2010.

In other words - while enjoying a six figure income and owning a residence in Silicon Valley, I shamelessly took advantage of the foolishness of the average California taxpayer, and Federal taxpayers everywhere - to lock in my power costs, and to boost the resale value of my home by approximately 10%, for $0. This cost relief (aka "other people's money") was in the form of State and Federal tax rebates and a grant from PG&E, my power company.

I have done several studies of distributed power generation costs when I modelled home ownership in rural Wisconsin over the last few months. There may be several things that most of you have not considered as part of your analysis. For example, the impact to the fire coverage portion of your homeowner's insurance is about a 270% bump - if they know you have a homegrown power plant not designed and installed by professionals using all UL or CSA components, and maintained and operated by an amatuer such as yourself. If you presently have such a power plant and have never paid the premium they want for such coverage, then they have more than enough to deny coverage after your house is totalled by fire.

I could go on and on - my roof panels only get washed once per year here, which is not enough for me, as I can see an appreciable increase in power generation after the cleaning. But that's not enough incentive for me to get out on my roof - six times in six years - to clean them myself. But when my solar inverter "phoned home" and reported that it was overheating, I did get my shop vacuum out to clean the air filter - because as an EE I knew how to unplug the fan and where to stick the air nozzle to clean it without getting zapped.

Got a clue yet? If you are planning a wind turbine on a tower, are you going to lubricate it yourself, climbing the tower or lowering it to the ground with a winch? Because both tasks are way more dangerous than cleaning a solar roof. Will you be attaching a dial indicator to assess the wear on the alternator bearings? Are you planning a weekly inspection of your battery room, including the watering of batteries and the checking of the hydrogen gas venting?

Believe me, generating your own power is something way down on your priority list at a doomstead. You would be better off considering advanced strategies for composting waste vegetation or advanced manure management strategies than spending time thinking about your own power plant. Your first concern is feeding yourself for 365 days, plus a canned food reserve for a couple of bad growing seasons, for example.

Now please THINK about what I said before you fire back. I appreciate thoughtful commentary, I have no patience for fools.

[vtsnowedin]

Nice post KJ.
If you read the whole thread you will know that I agree with you about the value of the grid and that I dismissed the original post as nonsense. But as many threads do this one has digressed and we are now chatting about what one might do if that grid was gone.
My own house runs completely without electric power so if it goes away they only thing I might have to do is go to bed early in the winter months. ( and stop using the freezers)
But being a Yankee I'd always be trying to find a better way then going back to hand tools and candles.
I've been atop 100 foot wind mill towers and know what that is like especially when your disassembling them and get down about half way. (very shaky).
At my age I'll hire any needed maintenance done by younger men with the right equipment.
Discussing what it takes to generate your own only reinforces how cheap ,safe and convenient grid supplied power is.

[KaiserJeep]

What brought this on for me was a power failure we had yesterday - after the first two hours, I got in the Jeep and filled up a plastic two-gallon gas can at the corner, where they still had power. The PG&E truck was working on a hole in the ground with a scorched smell, it didn't look promising. Then I added that sick-looking green 2-cycle oil and I was standing there, shaking the can to mix it, when the garage lights came back on. So I have about $10 worth of gas and oil I will probably end up paying $2 a gallon disposal fee at the end of Summer, as the only use for it is the chainsaw and the emergency generator.

I made me appreciate the modern conveniences more. During the outage I continued reading a book on my battery-powered E-reader and made lunch the old-fashioned way - striking a match to light the burner for cheese and tomato on grilled rye, plus Moka coffee. Nor did we ever lose water pressure, and the one hardwired telephone continued to work, although without the base station transmitter, the portable handsets were all non-functional, and wifi was down.

[vtsnowedin]

What brought this on for me was a power failure we had yesterday - after the first two hours, I got in the Jeep and filled up a plastic two-gallon gas can at the corner, where they still had power. The PG&E truck was working on a hole in the ground with a scorched smell, it didn't look promising. Then I added that sick-looking green 2-cycle oil and I was standing there, shaking the can to mix it, when the garage lights came back on. So I have about $10 worth of gas and oil I will probably end up paying $2 a gallon disposal fee at the end of Summer, as the only use for it is the chainsaw and the emergency generator.

I made me appreciate the modern conveniences more. During the outage I continued reading a book on my battery-powered E-reader and made lunch the old-fashioned way - striking a match to light the burner for cheese and tomato on grilled rye, plus Moka coffee. Nor did we ever lose water pressure, and the one hardwired telephone continued to work, although without the base station transmitter, the portable handsets were all non-functional, and wifi was down.

Been there and done that. I keep an old cord phone in a closet I can plug in when I need to report a power outage. I also use a chainsaw enough so no gas would go to waste. You could just put it into your jeep when the tank was down a quarter. the lube oil won't do any harm diluted that much.

[Timo]

Dohboi, i'm trying to develop point-source reduction of the transmission of plastics and garbage to the ocean by issuing personal solar energy credits as an incentive to properly dispose of household wastes. If a person is rewarded with free energy for his household in exchange for his garbage, no waste flows into the ocean, less ff energy is needed for normal household use, the city and countryside and waterways are cleaner, tourism is enhanced because the city, countryside, waterways, and the ocean are cleaner, and the family getting free energy via solar is financially better off. If the costs of garbage remediation in the ocean can be partially transferred to solar credits to prevent that garbage from flowing into the oceans to begin with, everyone wins. Oh, the last benefit is the introduction of a new market for solar energy to an area that currently cannot afford it.

Scratching my head here. Isn't it illegal to improperly dispose of household waste? Isn't that enough? I spent a day recently helping at the local transfer station. One compactor takes clean/rinsed loose recycling unsorted. everything from loose magazines to glass and plastic. placing stuff in that bin is free. Beside it is the landfill bin that takes all the rest. They charge you $3.50/ 30 gal. bag for that one. Also flat cardboard goes into it's own bin for free and metal and appliances (Freon free) go into yet another bin for $10/ cubic yard.
The kicker is that the state wants people to stop putting any food waste in the landfill bin. So now you wont be able to put garbage in the garbage pail. I have compost cones at home so it is just an annoyance but for apartment dwellers without any yard space you have to wonder what the state expects those people to do.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-ocean-debris-plastic-garbage-patches-science/

To bluntly answer your question, no, it is not illegal to improperly dispose of your household waste, in all nations. In India, for example, there is absolutely no trash disposal service offered at any level. Period. Your toilet flushes into an open gutter outside your house. Household garbage is EVERYWHERE! Their caste system prevents every caste but the lowest from even touching anything that pollutes the streets. I cannot say the same lack of municipal trash disposal exists everywhere, but regardless, millions of tonnes of garbage from SE Asian nations (and every nation, for that matter) finds its way into our oceans. I would like to create an incentive to entice people to change their behaviors, and to begin to think of their waste products as resources for energy, instead of garbage that they would otherwise throw into the street.

I admit that i am only beginning to devise this idea, and by no means do i have all of the answers i need in order to pursue this as a practical program, but i am making progress in getting the answers i need in order to approach a variety of organizations to begin a pilot project to see how well this would work.

I would like to run a pilot program in a relatively developed SE Asian nation, like Thailand, in a city, or a neighborhood within a city like Chaing Mai, and seek volunteers to participate whereby they exchange their household garbage for a solar lease credit. A business, similar to Solar City, would own the solar array, and would receive financial compensation from a larger 3rd party, perhaps the Chiang Mai local government, or the Thai national government, or UNESCO, or any other private foundation whose mission is to #1 transition away from fossil fuels, #2 clean the oceans, #3 economically help the citizenry of that nation, or #4 take your pick. I don't have all of the answers i need. Yet.

Work in progress.

[vtsnowedin]

I'm not sure where you are located and that does make quite a difference. You have to take it one country at a time. If a country is still dumping garbage and defecating in the streets you have your work cut out for you.

[ralfy]

r wrote: " most people worldwide earn less than $10 a day, with many earning only around $3 daily. They cannot afford or can barely access what the middle class takes for granted."

Not sure what your point is here.

In most rural locations around the world in poor areas, solar and/or wind is cheaper than getting wires strung across great distances to connect to any (usually very intermittent) grid electricity. So your monetary argument is actually in favor of distributed alternatives in these cases.

And yes, shipping is needed in most cases, but ships are starting to have sails again, and this will likely increase. Trains can be electrified pretty easily, too.

Most of them can barely afford secure shelter, enough food daily, basic healthcare, or paying for utilities, let alone pay for solar panels, controllers, batteries, and electric wires that have to be shipped to them (together with appliances) across roads that barely exist or are hardly paved.

In short, not only do minerals and other raw materials, mining heavy equipment, container ships, rail systems, trucks, roads, bridges, and many other aspects of mining, manufacturing, and shipping require extensive inputs in oil, coal, cement, iron ore, copper, and many other material resources, even the recipients have to be supported publicly because they earn only around $3 daily.

Finally, everything you state in your last paragraph does not take place in most parts of the world, as much of shipping does not involve sail, and there are even significant shortages in rail systems, whether electrified or not.

[KaiserJeep]

Reality - what a concept!

[Timo]

I'm not sure where you are located and that does make quite a difference. You have to take it one country at a time. If a country is still dumping garbage and defecating in the streets you have your work cut out for you.

I won't take that comment personally. As i see it, ensuring this entire planet's survival is more work than all of us combined can handle.

With reference to your comments, though, i'm not in SE Asia, and i've never even been there. Headed to Thailand this November. Next, the project will (hopefully) progress much smaller than one country at a time. One pilot program on a small scale to start, then two, then maybe expanding to a region, then to an entire country. Or, one city per country at the pilot stage. I honestly don't know how things will work out. Maybe they won't work out at all. Lastly, the poorest of the poor do squat in the streets to do their business. My wife has witnessed this, quite a bit. In India, at least, people have become accustomed to this as a normal way of life. I'm hoping that India is the exception to this behavior.

[vtsnowedin]

I won't take that comment personally. As i see it, ensuring this entire planet's survival is more work than all of us combined can handle.

.

The comment was not an attack and certainly not a personal one.
If you chose to work on improving conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world you are to be commended. Do realize that your battle is not "up hill" it is "up mountain".

[Timo]

I won't take that comment personally. As i see it, ensuring this entire planet's survival is more work than all of us combined can handle.

.

The comment was not an attack and certainly not a personal one.
If you chose to work on improving conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world you are to be commended. Do realize that your battle is not "up hill" it is "up mountain".

I made that comment with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

What an idiot!

Of course i realize that i'll be climbing barefoot up K2!!

I trust you can read my tone of voice in this comment, as well.

[dohboi]

r, I am well aware of the plight of the poorest people in the world. I used to live in the Philippines where our neighbors 'house' had cardboard 'walls.'

You might have noticed that the topic of this thread is 'Centralized Energy.'

Bringing up poverty in this context prompts the question of whether centralized or dispersed alternative energy is cheaper for many of the the worlds poor.

If you are saying that neither will ever be affordable for pretty much any of them, that's fine.

But if you are trying to argue that centralized energy is more affordable for them than dispersed alternative energy, then just repeating over and over that the poor are poor doesn't really do anything for your argument.

[Timo]

Dohboi, you just touched on a central question that i'll need to answer in my own personal quest for decentralized energy glory, that being the physical practicality of placing solar PV panels on people's homes. Sure, doing that is perfectly feasible for millions of homes, but for millions of others, not so much. My idea of exchanging garbage for solar energy credits might actually increase the economic disparity between the haves and the have nots where ever (if ever) my idea gets a trial run. Maybe a way around it is to place a larger, ground-based solar array somewhere that can collectively provide energy for a dozen homes, rather than personal arrays on each individual home. The incentives are still there, but it becomes a collective endeavor, rather than a personal family endeavor. That places obligations on one toward the whole. That might work, but then again, that might not work.

[dohboi]

"place a larger, ground-based solar array somewhere that can collectively provide energy for a dozen homes, rather than personal arrays on each individual home"

Yeah, I do think in many cases neighborhood solutions are the way to go.

[Timo]

I agree, but incentivizing a collective v an individual runs additional risks and complications.On the one hand, it actually makes the trade much more feasible because there are fewer installation and maintenance requirements, but on the other hand, it increases the likelihood that slackers will benefit from the work of the others without adding any personal effort toward the collective good. Wait! That just described all of humanity, didn't it?!

Anyway, i've got lots of numbers to run, and lots of variables to consider to generate each and every one of those numbers. Probably first and foremost, however, is that i should absolutely familiarize myself with SE Asian cultures. Fro what i can gather from friends from Thailand and the Philippines, the concept and meaning of "family" is a much stronger part of individual life over there than it is here. Here, it is a strong consideration and motivator for nearly everything we do. There, i can surmise, family is the primary dictate for doing much of anything. I need to understand their culture very well before i can even contemplate starting up a plastics for solar energy credit enterprise. The business end is complicated, but even having a firm grasp on that end of it doesn't mean that its viable if the people, themselves, do not accept it.

Can anyone remind again me why life is so convoluted and complicated?

[vtsnowedin]

I agree, but incentivizing a collective v an individual runs additional risks and complications.On the one hand, it actually makes the trade much more feasible because there are fewer installation and maintenance requirements, but on the other hand, it increases the likelihood that slackers will benefit from the work of the others without adding any personal effort toward the collective good. Wait! That just described all of humanity, didn't it?!

Anyway, i've got lots of numbers to run, and lots of variables to consider to generate each and every one of those numbers. Probably first and foremost, however, is that i should absolutely familiarize myself with SE Asian cultures. Fro what i can gather from friends from Thailand and the Philippines, the concept and meaning of "family" is a much stronger part of individual life over there than it is here. Here, it is a strong consideration and motivator for nearly everything we do. There, i can surmise, family is the primary dictate for doing much of anything. I need to understand their culture very well before i can even contemplate starting up a plastics for solar energy credit enterprise. The business end is complicated, but even having a firm grasp on that end of it doesn't mean that its viable if the people, themselves, do not accept it.

Can anyone remind again me why life is so convoluted and complicated?

Why go to Asia? Europeans have been interfering there for over three hundred years and except for a few railroads and English being the language of business in India there is precious little to show for it. They don't want our advice or interference.
Why not work on problems closer to home where you are already part of the culture?

[dohboi]

You might want to try to contact others in the region who are doing similar things. An acquaintance (more of a friend of a friend of a friend) has been doing some work bringing smallish solar installations to remote parts of the Philippines (where he is from). So I know there are people working on this stuff in the region. IIRC, Filipinos are among the most aware of and concerned about GW. And yes, family and social cohesion is a big thing in most traditional rice growing countries, especially those further influenced by Confucianism.

(I do share vt's concern about why you are choosing to do this work in a region that you have said you don't have much understanding of.)

[Timo]

Vt,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-ocean-debris-plastic-garbage-patches-science/

Read this. I can't for the life of me figure out how to paste graphics from other sources into this message space. Cut to the chase, the top 10 sources for plastics by volume in the ocean are from SE Asian nations. China is first, then a whole host of other SE Asian nations. That's my motivation for focusing my attention there.

[Tanada]