Crooked Energy Companies

[Leshrak]

Originally posted by Rosuav
example of getting stung: the Segway was funded by vulture capital, and they're very quiet about their profitability, leading to speculation that they haven't recovered their investment yet, after nearly seven years - see Wikipedia article and its references quoted

I'd like to believe that their not recovering investment costs has more to do with the fact that the Segway is more of a silly gadget than a serious means of transportation. I mean, really, who wants to ride around sidewalks on a personal scooter? Are we that lazy as a society? Aside from the visual silliness of it, it's impractical. If you rode that to the office, where would you park it? at your desk? Inside a typical office that thing would be bulky at best, and at worst (i.e. in a cubicle office) a pretty big nuisance and moderate safety risk to pretty much everyone in the office.

Edit: I didn't know when I wrote all of that that it's actually been banned from sidewalk use in some major cities, with the exception of if it's being used by someone with a disability. Using this thing on the road just screams "I want to get run over".

/end derailment

[Kerrin]

My Honda Civic gets 30-32 MPG driving the back roads between home and work. My wife's newer Civic gets 37-40 MPG on the highway (it's not even a hybrid).

It still costs us $40 to fill up each one. That stinks!

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Leshrak
I'd like to believe that their not recovering investment costs has more to do with the fact that the Segway is more of a silly gadget than a serious means of transportation. I mean, really, who wants to ride around sidewalks on a personal scooter? Are we that lazy as a society? Aside from the visual silliness of it, it's impractical. If you rode that to the office, where would you park it? at your desk? Inside a typical office that thing would be bulky at best, and at worst (i.e. in a cubicle office) a pretty big nuisance and moderate safety risk to pretty much everyone in the office.

It has a number of excellent uses. However, it is not (as its inventors(?) originally envisioned) a replacement for the automobile. If you look at it as an alternative to either Shank's Pony or a bicycle, it has more validity:

* Security personnel can patrol a larger area than they can on foot, yet can still conveniently enter doorways and such (which is awkward with a bike)

* Adam Savage can glide away with ease in search of the object they just fired out of who-knows-what, while Jamie Hyneman walks up eventually behind him

* Instead of using a 4WD with surfboard rack to say "Hey look, I have more money than I need", use a Segway instead, and say "Hey look, I have lots of money and I'm a geek".

[Ilusan]

I was going to start a new thread for this but this thread has taken off in the direction I wanted to see anyway :-)

I've been curious how many people out there live in a grid supplied but alternative energy like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc. If so, whats your KW/H cost? Statistics show that alternative energy lacks in proficiency...do you notice any times of day when your power fluctuates? Brown outs due to lack of supply? Peak hour brown outs? Etc. Etc. Discover magazine had a great article last month about the real problems for alternative energies being the lack of technologically feasible storage. There are several workable options but they seem too expensive for wide-spread use right now. Thousands of options for alternative energies though get put in a strangle-hold from establihed moguls.

Transportation-wise. This could never be a wide-spread option either, but on a personal level, if your interested, I'm posting the link to my brother-in-law's bio-fuel site. If not anything else its an interesting read and its much better than a fucking segway. ( minus the congestion/traffic)

www.greasenotgas.com

[Tartun]

Originally posted by Rosuav

But we need that research or society as a whole can't move forward. So what's the answer?

The answer my friend, is the space race. All of that research will either be the product of a war (cold or otherwise) or a massive space exploration project. Cell phones, Microwaves, Ballpoint pens, contact lenses, modern polymers in general, computers that fit on a desk let alone a single normal sized room, all of these things are the result of either a war or the space race, or the combination of the two.

[Rilthyn]

Originally posted by Ilusan
I've been curious how many people out there live in a grid supplied but alternative energy like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc. If so, whats your KW/H cost? Statistics show that alternative energy lacks in proficiency...do you notice any times of day when your power fluctuates? Brown outs due to lack of supply? Peak hour brown outs?

We use the "green" electricity provider Genesis Energy, in New Zealand. We pay more for our power than those who use the boogeyman Meridian Energy, but only marginally.

About a half of their electricity is generated by hydroelectric stations, and some windfarms which have started to multiply in recent years.

Living in the inner city of the capital, I haven't had any problems at all with brownouts/blackouts/fluctuation. Infact, I think the only time our power has been off all year was when some work had to be done on our very block.

The only trouble with our power system, is that it is heavily dependent on rainfall, given that each of our five major power companies has it's own network of hydroelectric stations. New Zealand is a WET country, so when we get adds telling us to save water and use less power because our lakes are getting low, it does make me pull the WTF face.

There are more and more windfarms going up, but people always want to have a wah about the noise. They can stfu, I used to live in Brooklyn Heights, only a few hundred metres away from the one, enormous wind turbine that overlooks Wellington city, and it only generated a noticeable noise on the windiest of days, and even then it was barely detectable, what with the WIND. White noise and a very slight hum, my quality of life did not suffer, I assure you.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Tartun
The answer my friend, is the space race. All of that research will either be the product of a war (cold or otherwise) or a massive space exploration project. Cell phones, Microwaves, Ballpoint pens, contact lenses, modern polymers in general, computers that fit on a desk let alone a single normal sized room, all of these things are the result of either a war or the space race, or the combination of the two.

I'd generalise and say that any race will do; but it has to be one that's heavily funded by two competing governments. Imagine projects to set up research stations on the Pacific floor. That would probably cost billions, but it'd result in technological improvements that would vastly benefit submarines. (Who knows, maybe it'd result in subs becoming a viable alternative to aeroplanes for international travel!) It's a very expensive way to move forward, and it needs the government to push it, basically, because there's no way that a company would get back their costs (Reckon NASA could make a profit. selling zero-gravity experiences and outer space travel? They could run profitable trips, no doubt, but they're not going to recoup the dev costs of the rockets. That's fairly obvious I think. It's not - dare I say it - rocket science.)

I guess what that means is that the only way to drive major technological advances in today's society is to not care about the cost. Either it's government funded, so the costs are carried by the taxpayer and profit isn't considered, or it's personally funded as a pet project, like any of the millions of small projects that happen every day. (Writing software tends to be like that. Look at RosMud. How much would you be willing to pay for that? $20? Maybe?? If everyone who used RM paid me $20 (which they wouldn't, but assume they did), I might end up with a few grand; but divide that by the number of development hours I've put into it, and it starts to look really really bad. Or look at any in-house development work. Paying a programmer's salary is a hefty expense, but at the end of it, you get an expensive but perfect - hopefully - program.) Ultimately, it all boils down to the end user (consumer) generally not being willing to pay the price of R&D, so someone else has to carry it. Which is a pity, but meh, that's how it is.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Rilthyn
There are more and more windfarms going up, but people always want to have a wah about the noise. ,,, what with the WIND. White noise and a very slight hum, my quality of life did not suffer, I assure you.

People complain about noise during high wind?? Or are they complaining about the noise when the wind's lower. The higher the wind, the more noise it's going to produce elsewhere, but if the turbines produce a great creaking or clattering when there's not much wind, that could get annoying.

But since sound is a form of energy, in this case wasted energy, it's in the interests of the turbine designers to minimize it. Since they're not stupid, I'd expect that the noise levels are going to be pretty low.

[kestra]

speaking of alternative energies....what's being done to increase the effectiveness and the reduction in weight/space of automotive batteries? Whether it's cell phones, PDAs, or whatever, it seems battery technology has a lot of catching up to do.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by kestra
speaking of alternative energies....what's being done to increase the effectiveness and the reduction in weight/space of automotive batteries? Whether it's cell phones, PDAs, or whatever, it seems battery technology has a lot of catching up to do.

You mean that car batteries are still lead-acid but phones are using Li-ion? There's reasons for that. Mainly cost. A lithium battery is light for its capacity, but it has a limited life, and NiMH batteries have their downsides too. Here's a quick run-down of common battery technologies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...able_batteries