Non-political things that make you say...WTF?!?! (Welcome To Florida!) **NOT CV RELATED** NO TALKY!

The unit has magnets for ferrous surfaces, also grooves for cylindrical surfaces. It is humorous I suppose that they chose to advertise both in the same picture.

 

It's called free advertising.

 

Not sure where you were going with the natural gas pipe lines giving the oil companies a slice of the pie. In the US a better analogy for gas pipelines is a rail road. The energy producers contract with the pipeline to move the gas to the buyer. It's like Union Pacific moving cars for Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc. They don't own the cars they simply ship them. If a producer in New Mexico and sells a dekatherm of gas to the Lays potato chip plant in Idaho, the pipeline delivers a dekatherm to Lays. It's not the same gas, it could be from other producers, and depending upon the gas it could be more or less volume. The pipelines want to stay in business and if for some reason natural gas was no longer a thing they could move hydrogen. I don't think it would be as easy as turning off the natural gas and turning on the hydrogen though. There is a ton of engineering that goes into a pipeline. (source - 10+ years working for an interstate natural gas pipeline.)

You could be right about a hydrogen economy coming to us in the future, for good or evil. It wouldn't be the first time that big money did what was "right" for it and fuck everyone else.

 

I recently read an article online giving some rationale for fuel cell vs battery. The gist of it if I remember correctly is that you hit a point with batteries when you need lots of power - for heavy loads or for longer range - that the battery size and weight become unmanageable. The energy density of hydrogen is (for now) better than batteries. The cost is definitely high for the hydrogen, though.

 

The WTF? thread.....

 

A long night



Posted: Jan 1, 2022 / 09:26 AM MST/ Updated: Jan 1, 2022 / 09:38 AM MST






ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Multiple people are stranded on the Sandia Peak Tramway after icy conditions late Friday night. According to General Manager Michael Donovan, moisture and winds caused icing to occur on the tramline, causing two tram cars to become stuck near Tower 2 around 10 p.m. Friday.

Donovan says between the two cars, there’s a mix of about 21 people, consisting of employees from the Tram, as well as the Ten 3 restaurant at the peak. In the meantime, the tram cars are supplied with provisions like food and water, as well as emergency heating blankets.

One of the riders, Colleen Elvidge, posted photos from the tram car around 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning saying a rescue would be “happening soon.” Donovan says as weather conditions improve, they hope to perform evacuations by early afternoon.

 

You're right, I was being very general. From what I've read it really is as simple as purging with nitrogen, however I'm sure the metering units and sensors would need replacing. Saudis (OPEC?) are already onboard, I believe EU has already passed laws requiring 25% H2 use by 2030 or 50 I can't recall. There's a Canadian company I have stock in that produce closed loop H2 system for industrial steam (steam is HUGE) and at the finish line for home units (hot water heaters). NY banning new structures with natural gas might have inadvertently given us a timeline for when this is really going to happen

Yes, hydrogen will replace diesel and legacy industrial first ie why Nikola semi was so exciting. They're testing hydrogen locomotives already. Once the system is in place then it's easy to branch out to retail, enter mass adoption.

 

I'm not anti-nuclear.

We have a finite supply of oil and natural gas. Eventually other means of portable stored energy will be needed. People will want their personal transportation to be resupplied with stored energy in a quick and easy manner. Batteries don't presently do that very well, whereas chemical energy storage (gasoline, LNG, etc) do.

One of the things with hydrogen though is the potential for decentralized production. A filling station along the highway could potentially supply itself by cracking water using solar/wind in its backyard. No need for pipelines / trucking the hydrogen.

None of this is going to happen right away of course - but someday we (humanity) will need portable energy storage that isn't based on pumping oil out of the ground.

 

It makes people feel good, like solar and wind.

 

Solar makes me feel good once a month, the $8 minimum connection fee feels pretty good. The WTF about home solar is it makes me excited to get the electricity bill.

 

When we were in triple digits this summer, my neighbors with solar were footing electricity bills about $300 less than ours.

It’s on our to-do list as soon as we get some other item squared away first.

 

Converting forms of power always has losses. This means that you could go farther on the electricity it took to convert the hydrogen than on the hydrogen you converted.

Then you have the fact that hydrogen is pressurized. Let's take a look at another pressurized fuel, one that was used a a car fuel in the 70's in fact, propane. If you look around the country you'll find that places that fill your propane tanks are disappearing. And I've never once seen a fill your own propane tank service.

The cost of a gas station to buy filling equipment, train their personal, and the inefficiency of conversion are all working against hydrogen and why it will not become main stream in our lifetimes.

 

They say people with solar use more energy than those without it. It's true. Before solar, the AC temp was set and I don't care if you're too warm. (insert dad guarding the thermostat joke here) With solar the AC is set to whatever is comfortable, and oh gee look at my big August electric bill of $12. All in my payback will be about 8 years.

 

And then it will be moot 12 years later when you have to replace the entire setup lol

 

And by then I'll have saved enough to replace it 1.5 times. Assuming of course that power rates don't go up, and the cost of solar doesn't go down in which case it could be well more that 1.5 times. For me installing solar was a dollars and cents decision. I looked at it years ago and it didn't make any sense, but solar panels have dropped in price, increased in capacity, and the power company wants ever more $$ for power.

 

Plus it's basically adding armor plating to your roof.

What bugs me is 9 years ago when I was installing panels on houses, gas stations etc was seeing that "quality" panels (from Canadian Solar) used aluminum wiring.... Like it was some high school lab kit.

 

So it will last longer than most people's cars...

 

Lol

https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1477349404365393920

 

I'm proud of those people

 

Mine have a 25 year warrantee which guarantees a certain output for that period. I have exactly zero confidence of being able to use it in any distant future. But all they have to do is last 8 years for break even, 9 years and I'm ahead. Also it's not like they quit working at 25 years, it's that the output diminishes over time. I'm at year 2 without any real problems, crossing my fingers for 6 more years.