just asking, to see what kind of choices we a the public have as far as how our counties produce power. and what options, or choices(power types) they give you to choose from?

here in canada there is a lot of hydroelectricity(in quebec

here in alberta ill have to double check, there may be coal used
i know they are thinking of putting a nuclear plant in , and i hope they dont
nuclear just gives me bad vibes

As far as I know we've got nuclear power (In fact I've been for a walk round wylfer [that might be spelled wrong, my welsh is virtually non-existent] power station) and coal powered power stations. There are plenty of plans afoot to build both on-shore and off-shore wind farms but they're being held back because people don't want them near them. It makes me laugh really, on the one hand people are saying we need cheaper cleaner energy and on the other they say but not the easiest cheapest form we know of right now because I don't think those wind turbines look very nice. There's no pleasing some people.

Well, engaging the private sector in power generation should be encouraged.. The government shouldn't interfere ... Innovation is more likely in the private sector..

Totally agree depolariser,

I've helped install energy effiecent lighting in the latter part of my career as an Electrician I maintained Solar powered systems, Diesel generators, worked on many projects, I saw a trend for awhile that was refreshing where in the tax dollars for public schools were allocated to cut the cost of power & lighting by 60% per kilowat hour.

Also must have been a month or two ago, they had this special on discovery or some discovery owned channel
- eco-homes - eco cars, honestly people can completely come off the grid if they want to. You can't wait on your governement to do it for you. However tax-rebates for people whom want to get off the grid should be encouraged. Or do away with taxes all together... :yawn:

the goverment has just become a bad word these days, revolution any one :)

if more peopl realize how much they save in the long run and how nice it would be not to get power bills all the time. that would help, the government giving rebates would be cool too. there may even be something like that in canada. they offer some sort of rebate if you buy a hybrid vehicle

Well thay are building a new nuclear powerplant pretty close to where I live and I'm not worried. Nuclear power is cheap, prettu god damn effective and safe... On the longrun it saves much of taxpayer money... But that was a little offtopic. Sorry.

I agree with Unfazed on this matter. (sorry for the typo)

its on topic
also covers alternative energy options, we would like our governments to offer :)

yes/no depends on were you live, right now there is a proposal for miny niclear generators, bury them, no possibility of melt down, and you can forget about them for 40 years, and nuclear plants are safe, only chirnoble was bad, and thats because they didnt have the regulations that everyone else instated, and because of that a whole town disapeared in one night :(

buring them.. exellent idea, take the danger level down to minimal.
good point

weve installed a wind tower generator thingy on top of , i believe grouse mountain here in BC. for the olympics, but its also supposed to produce a fair bit of power.

http://www.bcenergyblog.com/2009/09/articl...n-wind-turbine/

and a pic, freaking thing is huge

http://www.onthesnow.com/photo_guide.html?...p;text=facility

If you feel goverment controlled power is a bad thing, same thing can be said of only privatly controlled power. Private power can make countries dependant on private companies, or in other words, private companies running a country. Cant be a good thing neither. If you now see what enviromental disasters oil companies often produce in countries like Nigeria and such, give those companies the ownership of the power in a country and they can go about as they please, all they need to do is cut off power whenever something happens that doesnt fit their agenda. Take the situation with Gazprom and the Ukraine as example. Same kind of problems can surface when state is the only owner. Imo it has to be a good mix of the 2 with a clear oversight by some independant organ to monitor stuff like enviroment and prices. And then there is the aspect of maintenance and investments. I like to take the state if the UK rail system as an example here. Since it got privatised the state the rail system is in only got worse over the years. And thats not only in the UK, Holland got the same problem for example. Privatisation is not always a good thing, and i think power production is one of those areas where you dont want those same excesses happening like in the rail system in the UK. A good partnership between state and private sector is always better.

Generating enough of you own power to go off grid is a very expensive thing to do. You need generation equipment such as solar panels, wind turbines and a large diesel backup generator. On top of that you need an enormous bank of deep cycle batteries, probably in the region of 200 plus. Then you need numerous pure sine inverters capable of intelligently managing multiple generation sources and battery charging.

It's not a practical exercise if your house needs heating or air conditioning. Even if you can reduce your consumption to say less than half of the average domestic consumer the set up costs would still be very high. Ongoing battery maintenance and replacements every five years means it's not as green as people think and it would never pay itself off unless you qualified for a fat government subsidy.



What about the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island?


If you bury a nuclear power plant and there's an incident then radioactivity gets directly into the water table. This is worse than them being on the surface.




I agree, essential services controlled by government or private sector, it's between a rock and a hardplace. Government institutions are notoriously bureaucratic and inefficient, private sector will always be driven by what's best for the shareholders and upper management bonuses, the customer comes a distant third at best especially when it's a monopoly or only limited competition.

I think you hit the nails on the head stating that a mix of private and government supplied power is a good idea. with an independant organ to monitor. it would force competetive pricing while keeping safety an issue as well.

baddog, there is a new fairly inexpensive thing to lower your energy consumption. it uses the earths temperature for heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. thermal, ill have to get back to this.

also my boss has a new metal thats 300% efficient in conducting heat, scalded himself instantly when he touched it in the sun. i touched it in the garage where it was cool and in the shade, and it was warm to the touch. ill ask him what it is again, i forgot. but its real saw and touched it with my own eyes , ill take a pic when i get a chance.

OHHHH boy kenya is aeons away from any stable power generation, Thyey just cut down half they're forest which messed with the balance and now the dam doesnt deliver enough power to the WHOLE country.....so yeah thats power rationing every tuesdays from 9AM upto 5PM(which mostly ends up being 9PM)...Worst part is where i live the Power Company "KPLC" (Kenya power and lighting-ingenious i know) loves playing around with the power so they just switch it off for fun every day for 1 to 2 hours(Apparently there's always something breaking down at the most perfect timings 9.30Am 12Am on the dot)...and since they're the only provider nation-wide there's not much we can do...

Here is a topic I can speak directly to. Green power accounts for a good chunk of my income. My trade is remodeling homes and buildings, we install a lot of green systems. Some points I would like to hit

Green power can be expensive. Out of the box systems are definitely expensive. But if you can do the work yourself you cut around 40% from the price which is the true cost of labor when balanced against what your own time is worth. You can look for deals on equipment or find other folks needing the same equipment and buy in lots, you could easily shave another 10-20%. You would still have to have a licensed electrician do the final inspection and hook ups.

In the U.S. if you can produce more power than you use and your equipment passes code the electric co. has to purchase your power. With the coming green revolution, as the Feds keep upping the amount of power that has to be generated threw green sources, the incentive for the power co to want to buy your power is growing daily which means the pricing might start to favor the producers.

I have been interested in green power since I was in high school and am working on some ideas that are pretty revolutionary. I intend to give the ideas away to every one any way, i have no interest in trying to patent a system and sell it I intend to make my profit off of the power I generate. So here is a short version of what Im working on.

I have found a company in Georgia that manufactures generators and alternators. The have a 50kw alt. that produces the proper voltage and wave form for grid use. It costs $1200 which is a good price for the heart of a power system. 50kw at wholesale price is worth about $1500 a month in my area.

Power amplifier, this one is a bit tricky it is sort of a perpetual system, I know perpetual motion\power is impossible. The system is basically this, a large motor plugged into the grid with its coils regulated to output rpm, turning an alt.alternator with its coils regulated to out put current. The alternator doesn't directly supply the motor as perpetual motion, it uses the grid as a battery bank, if the grid goes down so does it. So as i said it basically amplifies the grid power. Very basic, simple equipment, the only other hardware needed is a panel with the power company required conditioning and regulating equipment. Ive built a small one with a car alt a clothes dryer motor and a dozen car batteries, none of which were bought new for this, all stuff i had laying around and junkyard buys. Even being no where near efficient it manages enough juice to run our lights and a small fridge at our camp site. The real big idea i had to make it work was to put a go-kart clutch on the motor shaft\pulley. We charge the batteries with the truck and then switch the motor on and the clutch lets it come up to speed before it gets the load on it from the alt.

Small scale hydro power is cheap and efficient but not feasible because of the wet lands protection act, they don't like you building damns. Which Im for because they are bad for the river. I have come up with a design for what I call a bobber mill (fishing bobber) that has almost no impact on the river and doesn't violate the wetland act.
Its a raft built of a platform on top of empty 50 gallon plastic drum like a swimming raft. On top of that is a truck axle with a water wheel on each end using the drive shaft yoke to turn an alternator on a platform built above the axle and power transferred to shore by wires to the panel it can be anchored to the bottom with cables or i have been playing with the idea of it riding up and down on 2 poles sank into the bottom but either way its a boat not a structure, it floats so water level does not effect it as long as it doesn't bottom out. If the current is slow you could drive some galvanized water pipe into the bottom and use galv. sheet metal to build a weir to speed the water to the wheels.
The only problem this one has is how to stall the input to maintain a steady 1800 rpm at the alternator.

And last but by far not the least. The same company that manufactures the Alternators sells a tractor PTO gear box that converts the 540 rpm PTO to 1800rpm so this is as simple as hooking a tractor to it on a pad and letting it run. By using used fry grease to power the tractor it becomes very green and very very cheap. Restaurants pay to have their grease disposed of. Its not nearly as complicated as you would think either, to use veg grease in a diesel motor all you have to do is strain it threw a very fine strainer and heat it before it goes threw the fuel system. The way to do this is to get a large fuel oil drum and mount it laid on its side with the radiator from the tractor mounted inside it with some means of circulating the oil in the tank which could be a simple as a water pump from a car engine mounted on the side of the tank turned by a dryer motor or a tensioner and the belt put right around the the shaft coupler on the PTO. Use the tractors fuel tank to run it on fuel until the cooling system has warmed all the veg fuel then switch tanks. A little trick Ive seen used on trucks running on veg fuel is to install an oil filter in the fuel line and wrap it with a piece of copper tubing plugged into the cab heater lines right where the coolant is hottest coming out of the block. filters and reheats the fuel. Now that this is making 50kw you can use that to run more alternators off of that by electric motors and maybe generate 200-300kw. The original alt will be giving its extra to the grid so you can leave a margin for peak loads as well as being able to add the extra alternator sets one at a time as you can afford them.

If you have the know how and skills by all means, this is my Intellectual property, run with it, its free.

We use a nuclear plant in my area. The only thing i know about it is, if that thing blows I won't be posting here again.

Are you describing a geothermal heat pump? This is basicall an air conditioner that runs in reverse taking heat from the ground and putting it into a building. Insulation and energy efficient building practices are even more efficient, that way you don't need heating and air conditioning.


As far as I know there's no room in the periodic table for a new metal it's probably an alloy. Can you give a link please?


This does sound like a 'perpetual motion' system to me but I don't fully understand your explanation. Can you give a link for more info please?.


I don't understand what you mean by 'conditioning'. Are you talking about power factor correction or a panel to allow the export of power back into the utility supply grid?

Edit, Reading this post back I'm probably being dim but I don't understand much of what's being described. Links would really help but maybe post them in the Banana Republic topic here where they will be more on-topic. This thread was originally about government power utility monopolies.

Badog I will answer in the other thread as these are my ideas I don't have a page to link to.

baddog, yes, its a geothermal heat pump. and yes its an alloy, used to make some sort of tubbing. he just got another, my boss. gone on vacation, so ill ask him when he gets back. i have been meaning to for a while. when i find out ill post a link.


also in british columbia, canada, there is a new policy stating that independant owners can produce and sell safe and enviro friendly energy back to the local distributor. it has to be inspected and pass code, but this is a big step forward :) you can also lease crown land fairly cheaply to do so.

wish list

They've added more synthetic elements into the table. There's always room - you just have to tack it on the end, assuming it has more protons than the last one. If not, it already exists.

when ever i run across sceptics, in general, nothing to do with any comments here.

but like i was saying, when ever i run into skeptics about logical new ideas, i tell them to be carefull, and watch where they step. because they may fall off the edge of the world. it is flat after all