Highly Impractical Solar PV Yacht
This comes under the heading: “No reason it can’t be done, but no reason to do it.”
Are there boaters who don’t like deck space? Other people?
Tagged with: Solar PV Yacht
Feeling Sorry for the United States
Here’s a piece that was published a couple of days ago in the Irish Times, discussing the principal emotion that those living elsewhere experience when they think about the U.S.
Until the pandemic came along, I was a part-time Uber driver; I used Uber as a constructive and enjoyable way to take perhaps two or three breaks per day from all the reading and writing I do. Instead of making myself a sandwich and gaining another half-pound, I get to meet cool people from all over the world. Insofar as this is a wine-tasting destination, it’s rife with tourists, who tend to be friendly, sophisticated, and quite easy to engage in conversation. (more…)
Tagged with: Feeling Sorry for the United States
Planet of the Humans–A Bizarre Hit-Piece on Environmentalism
Michael Moore at the Cannes Film Festival, 2019
Here’s something I just wrote to a friend who praised Michael Moore’s new documentary, Planet of the Humans.
As the author of four books on renewable energy (and 9000+ blog posts on cleantech more generally), let me weigh in. The film is a patchwork of cherry-picked half-truths and ideas that are deliberately misstated or taken out of context. If this were 2012, a lot of this (but not all) would be true, but, again, at this point it’s almost entirely garbage. (more…)
Solar PV Sculpture
I ran into a guy at my last college reunion whose career involves selling enormous sculptures made from solar PV to corporate campuses. I seem to recall a life-size brontosaurus out in front of some IT company.
Obviously, the levelized cost of energy is going to be extremely unappealing, but if the thing’s cool enough, who cares?
Tagged with: levelized cost of energy
Coronavirus and the Economy
Here’s a discussion on re-opening the economy that readers may find interesting:Peter: I’m with this guy, Dr. Dan Erickson of Bakersfield, CA who just dropped multiple bombshells (in this video) that disagree with the official government narrative. There is not enough benefit from a stay-at-home policy to warrant destruction of the economy, and other harmful social effects. In this video, he just touches on the data, but in subsequent videos, he covers a lot of ground. I’m sold.
Tagged with: Coronavirus and the Economy
End of Winters
It’s common to hear about the horrific effects of climate change: super-storms, wildfires, sea-level rise, droughts, food shortages and the like, and feel great concern for our children’s future.
Indeed, life on this planet will change in a great number of ways, though some will be more off-putting than outright hellish. Here’s a paper from The Economist on the end of winters as we know them. If you live in the northern parts of Minnesota or Finland, that’s a change you’ll probably enjoy, but for most people, the cold snap of winter is rather appealing; it’s certainly salubrious for parts of the world that tend to have infectious diseases that are spread by mosquitoes.
Madison Wisconsin Gets Solar Chargers for City’s EV Fleet, But …..
Apparently, Madison, the capital of Wisconsin has installed its first solar EV charger to provide power for part of the city’s fleet of vehicles. The fellow in this video says that it can even charge two EVs at once.
But wait a second. The charger has three standard commercial solar panels, 77″ X 39″. That’s 3*(77*39)/(39.36^2), converting to meters, gives us 5.8 m^2. The insolation of Madison is ~3 KWhrs/day, giving you 17.4 KWhrs/day. At 25% efficiency, that’s 4.35 KWhrs/day.
A Chevy Volt has a 66 KWhr battery-pack, so charging one such EV would take 15.2 days. (Charging two: 30.4 days.) Not sure how workable this is.
A Humiliating Moment for Dr. Birx
Not everybody feels sorry for Dr. Birx, but I do.
Fox News interviewed her yesterday and asked her to comment on President Trump’s statements on disinfectants. She put it like this: “He gets new information, he likes to talk that through out loud and really have that dialogue.” (more…)
For an Excellent Reason, Republicans Are Nervous
The New York Times reports, “A cascade of ominous public and private polling have Republicans increasingly nervous they are at risk of losing the presidency and the Senate if Mr. Trump does not put the nation on a radically improved course.” (more…)
EV Range 1200 Miles on a Charge? Lithium-Sulfur Batteries to Enter Industrial Trials
From this article, sent to my by 2GreenEnergy super-supporter Gay Tulie
Lithium batteries will soon power electric vehicles traveling 2,000 km (1,242 miles) on a single charge, say the team at (Australia’s) Brighsun New Energy. The company is preparing for industrial trials later in the year for a range of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries that can power a cell phone for over a week and can theoretically travel close to 2,000 km on a single charge. (more…)
Tagged with: EV range
