Tesla Founders Blog

It is great to see others with the same view on solar. I still can’t see why every new building, residential or commercial being built in areas that are good candidates for solar aren’t being made solar ready, or better yet having a solar system as part of the plans. There is all this talk about making new government building green, but rarely do you hear about them putting solar systems to supply even part of the power needed.

I know it’s expensive, but I think you summarized it best, it’s not just about saving money, and it won’t be for some time. People need to see that every little bit helps. A solar system will be going on my house as soon as I am out of school. My first solar project will most likely just be a solar thermal water heater. The cost is a lot lower and the payback is a lot quicker.

Good to see you back and posting!

You are using your car to pay off your solar system. Using solar panels to replace gas REQUIRES an electric car. Are you saying electricity is worth more (costs more?) when you have an EV?

Martin Sez:

But there is a neat synergy between PVs and EVs; having an EV justifies a larger PV installation and reduces your carbon footprint further.

Love the idea of building code changes to “enable” simple retrofit to solar. It should be done. But there’s a shed-load of existing rooftops out there. Imagine if anyone could sell back the power to PG&E at say 2X or 3X the going rate until the retrofit equipment is paid for. I’d expect hundreds of thousands of people would chop $30K worth of holes in houses just to be more green. It’s a win, win, win (PG&E, homeowner, environment all win). Plus a few hundred thousand housetops would cost less than a nuke plant!

I wish we Americans’ could get media attention on doing something like this. A simple tax law change would do it. Other countries have creative plans to build out infrastructure one house at a time, why can’t we?

$17,000 is roughly 2% of $850,000… not 20%. Big difference!!

Martin sez:

Thanks! My bad typo, and I will fix it! No matter how many times I proofread my writing…

Again, I don’t account for the present value of future money…

Another way to look at it:

You should be able to invest $36.000 over a longer period of time at 5%, giving you $1.800 each year. Your PV *also* gives you $1.800!

And I wouldn’t be surprised if your PV’s value would increase over time.

Not a bad investement. And surely a lot more fun!

PS: 20% of $850.000 is $170.000, not $17.000.

Martin sez:

Yep. Typo fixed!

I’m hoping that my future investment in solar power pays off alot quicker. I’m building an off grid house in lower michigan, and just running power from the nearest pole was quoted at $6000. The difference between the roof trusses that i could have bought to build the house without the weight of solar panels on the roof would have been about $500 cheaper than what I’m going with. With all this considered, and with power going for 9 cents a KWH around here, the system should pay for itself in about 9 years. Doing the installation myself also saves a bundle.

Martin,

Great write-up on your efforts and thoughts.

It is hard to sell increased regulation, especially when it costs people more. I was debating on a conservative blog that the cfl and led lightbulbs pay for themselves several times over, during their lifetime, without having to replace lamps, fixtures, etc., but no one was budging.

Our Congress keeps attaching a requirement to eliminate the tax breaks recently given to oil companies, as a part of the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Bill, ensuring Bush will veto it, so the incentives that consumers, cities and states have for sustaining growth in the renewable energy systems will soon end, killing the momentum that the industry has.

Martin sez:

Building construction is already highly regulated – the National Electrical Code, the National Plumbing Code, the Uniform Building Code, Title 24, earthquake structural requirements, fire codes, etc. Most of this regulation has resulted in better buildings, and the uniformity they require has driven costs of components and construction down.

I love the whole idea of having solar panels on my house or garage…and it’s good to know that they are continuously improving them. Just this morning I read about a new technique that mimics Moth eyes to create a solar panel that is only 2% reflective (compared to the 35-40% of current models)…and best of all, it doesn’t even cost as much as current anti-reflective technologies. Very cool!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/moth-eyes-solar-panels.php

Wow, Jason, straight from the Laffer curve, eh? Your idea that we would all be better off if we squeezed every dime out of the middle and lower classes and let the rich profit gratuitously from wage slavery is sick and immoral. The concept that conservatives manage to call themselves Christian and believe things like this is hard to understand. But Laffer is also bad economics…hardly any economists agreed with him at the time, and Bush senior as you’ll recall called it voodoo. Our economic history simply doesn’t support the claim that “trickle-down” encourages growth…even if we were so shallow as to consider GDP growth our only goal, instead of a “means” to the “end” of a high standard of living for our people. Also, your assertion that corporations are paying a lot of taxes is bunk; this was true in 1950, but for quite some time now the corporations have been getting off real light. Their share of the revenue bottomed out in 2003 at just 7.4% of total tax revenue, or 1.2% of GDP, and while they have risen some since then (a reflection of the fact that ALL the gains from the Bush tax cuts have gone to corporate profit (read: rich folks), while the worker has actually lost money) they still are a much smaller percentage than they were before 1983 when the major change happened.

When we had a highly progressive tax system, strong unions, a “war on poverty” (which worked quite well, btw) and fair wages, America was incredibly strong and getting stronger. Every class of society was getting wealthier at remarkably similar rates. Since we wrecked those systems, the richest fifth of the country has tripled it’s wealth and the bottom three fifths have lost a goodly portion of theirs. Now we see both public and private debt crises and an America that is clearly sliding backwards as an economic world power. This doesn’t work. Reagan hoodwinked us. We need to get back to progressive politics before it’s too late.

(Sorry for going OT Martin…sometimes you just can’t help it)

Keep in mind, there’s a huge difference between tax breaks for corporations, and tax breaks for CEO’s. My political inclination would be to reduce taxes on corporations, but increase taxes on CEO’s. (FWIW, I am the CEO of my own corporation, albeit a small one.) By all means, keep the taxes low on the oil companies per se, but get rid of the harmful subsidies, and tax the cabbage out of their massive executive salaries. Just my two zillion cents’ worth.

P.S. Martin, see you at TED!

Martin,

It is reality, not twisted logic. The Congress should leave the petroleum industry alone, because everything they attempt will only be passed along to consumers. If they just focused on maintaining or strengthening support for renewable fuels, the petroleum industry will retract from “natural capitalism” – a better product(s) that consumers prefer will displace it.

Any increase in gasoline prices will just hurt our economy.

Martin sez:

I just don’t see giving one industry tax breaks that others don’t get as “natural capitalism.”

Peder,

Financing the cost on your home loan is roughly equivalent to taking the money out of the bank as far as your net worth is concerned. Either way there is interest on the money that is tied lup in the solar installation.

Sure, there are a lot of things to think about. I checked into the cost for me to do a solar installation. It doesn’t quite work for me, but our electric rates are less than Martin pays. I don’t know why that is since we both are in California. But the real difference is the interest on the money.

Raymond Michiels wrote:
# I wouldn’t be surprised if your PV’s value would increase over time.

Not a sure thing. Newer technology keeps coming out so today’s system may look dated, overpriced and worn out in 20 years time. As long as you stay in the house and it works you are getting your money’s worth, but I wouldn’t count on any appreciation for the system itself. Thin film PV and other technologies threaten to drive the price down substantially.

Mark wrote:
# If your home’s value has actually increased because of solar installation than there will be extra taxes to pay each year.

Not everywhere.
California grants a property tax exemption for solar energy system related improvements

—

Oil company tax break link

Anybody see what happened in Florida today??

Hey Everyone! We put a solar water heater on our roof back in July of ‘07 at a cost of $4,950.00 installed. I just returned a couple of hours ago from a trip to the accountant and yes indeed, I got $3,000.00 dollars of the $4950 back. (he-he) So, for $1,950.00 I have kissed the gas company goodbye. No muss, no fuss. You know how good that felt???

About the system: the collector has a 10 year warranty and the tank (80 gallon – equipped with a heat exchanger), I believe is 8. It has a back up heating element that I have had to turn the breaker on once. Oddly enough that one time was in the middle of August. We had 3 days of cloud cover and on the 3rd day we started running out of hot water.

My message to everybody here is I’ve never experienced such bang for my buck.

The PV Installation is going on this house in October in anticipation of some sort of electric vehicle in the near future. Even though Martin has no clue who I am I’ve been watching him over the last year and a half and he’s lit a fire under my glutes so to speak. Watching him made me decide It’s time for me to take action NOW. (Thank you Martin!) In the future when it’s time to sell my home I’m certain no utility bills to a potential buyer will look rather lucrative.

Franklin,

How many in your household and did you compare against a tankless hot water system?

Have not looked into that area in detail, yet.

My initial thoughts has me asking where the break point between them is and guessing on how many people or when & how much hot water demand within a short period of time (morning).

My system will have a tank regardless which way I go. Too many forget that they have 30-40-50 or more gallons of potable water in their water heaters. So a tankless system will still have a large, traditional gas fired water heater, just not hooked up and that thing should last forever…

I don’t think anyone needs to justify their environmental positions any more than they need to justify buying a house vs. renting (when often renting is a better economic choice). However, with regards to calculating savings based on gasoline cost instead of electricity cost, it seems a little disingenuous to not consider the cost of the EV in the equation.

Hydrogen cheaper than gasoline – more breakthroughs in hydrogen production:

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669

One approach been noodling ever since purchased the solid state compressor patent portfolio for SunMicro is hydrogen ICE or fuelcell as the storage system.

Generate hydrogen & oxygen from the photovoltaic array instead of pumping it back into the grid after consuming whatever.

After the sun goes down, use the gases in hydrogen ICE or fuel cell.

Issue will be the tanks and liquid hydrogen & oxygen the better way….but….the losses from a compressor another issue.

The solid state process is very efficient and is scalable from a postage stamp to tonnage of refrigerant.

Too bad Sun has no interest in these patents. Diamond foam was one discovery we made while working on this.

In California, it’s hard not to justify Solar Panels.

Lots of Sunshine
State Subsidies
Property Tax Exemption
Time of Use Net Metering
High Electric Rates

I’ve had panels for several years and the “smile factor” of knowing I’m part of the solution is by far the most important benefit. Having it cost justified is just a perk.

Jason, I found your link to the EETimes news quite amusing. The writer got quite carried away and suggested that with this new 85% efficient electrolysis that it would be pratical to create hydrodgen from water in your car to drive the fuel cell. What a joke. Where is the power going to come from for the electrolysis? Now he has a battery and water to create hydrogen to drive a fuel cell to drive an electric motor! And this is supposed to be better than hooking the battery up to the motor?

Great post Martin!

I totally agree with your logic.

We live in a country, where parts (solar panels, misc. hardware) are cheap, and labor (installation) is expensive.
It ’s much cheaper to plan for “options” to anything ahead of time. We do it with cars, computers, why not houses too?

My dad has two huge tanks in the cellar, that would be used for diesel oil heating. He did that because it was cheaper to install them ahead of time, before we built the house on top of them.
We’ve yet to use them, but my dad doesn’t feel bad about installing them. (He gambled that heating by oil would become more energy efficient within 20 years. (which is why we have the house set up heated floors.-same reason, cheaper to snake pipes before the floor goes in) – Unfortunately efficiency hasn’t gone up.

We decided to use inverter technology and heat the house electrically instead. (inverter technology works by “pulling” the ambient heat from the outside air in a 4 to 1 ratio. 4 parts heat “produced” for 1 part electricity)

Who knows what we’ll use the tanks for in the future. Probably not fossil fuels.

I think you should develop several housing designs and make them available (for a price) to people that have an interest in having a home built for them. I also think you should lead the way yourself by starting a building company to actually get these homes built for people, perhaps by having your design services available to existing building companies to incorporate your energy efficiency options into their building designs as options to their customers. It would be nice to have standards dictated, but we don’t even have the option in the interim!

You did get involved with a Solar company recently didn’t you? How about having them begin being proactively marketing solar upgrades to US builders.

News story: 280-megawatt solar power plant to be built near Phoenix

Jason, you’re still wrong that taking back the tax break would increase the burden on consumers. You are correct that congress cannot set prices, but you miss the fact that neither can the oil companies. As I said before and you ignored, they are selling a commodity in a market controlled by a cartel of which they are not members. Their costs have absolutely no relationship to their selling price. Pull out any intro microecon textbook and it’ll tell you the same thing. This tax break is going directly to corporate profit (which was already at record levels before the giveaway), and is doing absolutely nothing to reduce the price at the pump.

Jason, you are so wrong it’s comical. Where did you come up with the idea that these companies decide their pricing for themselves? Have you ever heard of a commodities market? Let me say again: OIL COMPANIES DO NOT SET OIL PRICES.

Oil prices are determined on an ask/bid market like other securities. Exxon can’t decide to charge more for a barrel of oil any more than Microsoft can decide to charge more for shares of its stock. Furthermore, when price is determined on the market, the cost of production never enters into the equation. Seriously, taking away part of American oil companies’ vast profits (which we just gave them as a handout for no decent reason) will not affect the price of oil. It will not be “on the backs of everyday people” but rather on the backs of the rich few who extracted an unfair windfall from the government using massive special interest lobbying and contributions. Please, pretty please, go take a microecon course someplace and stop spewing this garbage.

Also, your wild-eyed Citgo conspiracy theory would be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that oil companies really are giving millions of dollars in contributions to the Republicans who gave them this outrageous windfall tax break (among other things). Somehow that takes the humor out of your fiction. I searched opensecrets for Citgo and found nothing at all. The only fault Republicans have found with Citgo’s U.S. political dealings (at least publicly) was when they cried foul over a deal to provide discounted heating oil to poor New Englanders in the winter. Why are they mad? Turns out most of the poor people up there are Democrats, so they are getting most of this cheap oil. Funny, they don’t seem to find a problem with the dividend tax cut going largely to wealthy Republicans. But whatever; saying the Democrats are beholden to oil money is definitely addressing the speck in your neighbor’s eye without considering the log in your own. And saying that taking away the oil companies’ windfall will impact ordinary Americans is completely false.

I’m a novice at online discussion groups, and unfamiliar with their psychodynamics. A friend pointed me to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29 which cleared up a lot of questions I’ve accumulated. Here’s some of it:
———-
“An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]”
“The basic mindset of a troll is that they are far more interested in how others react to their (posts) than in the usual concerns of … accuracy, veracity, comprehensiveness, and overall quality.”
“Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group’s common interests and concerns….”
“Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion …, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the … community.”
“Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding encourages a true troll to continue disruptive posts — hence the often-seen warning “Please do not feed the troll”.”
———-

Ignoring doesn’t seem appropriate for this blog, because a lot of people are using it to gain a better understanding of important technological and social and economic issues, which can be very confusing even to bright and well educated people. The presentation of a lot of deceptive, misleading and fatuous statements without them being challenged isn’t a positive outcome.

It would be a shame for the level of annoyance and misinformation to get so high that it would damage the benefit of this blog, only because one or more visitors seemed to have mild but persistent sociopathic personality disorders and a lot of free time on their hands.

I have no previous experience with this problem, and would be happy to learn more from those who have about various ways it plays out. Is any sort of method for dealing the problem in place on this blog?

As an example of the confusing nature of even straightforward and long-standing technology, a survey of Harvard graduates, who were familiar with the word “photosynthesis”, found that a very low percentage of them were able to correctly identify the source of the bulk of the material that constitutes a tree.

Most well-educated people in the world are taught that the reason airplanes can fly is that the top of the wing presents a longer path to the air than the bottom, thus causing a lower pressure according to the Bernoulli principle. Those same people can watch a moderately powered airplane flying along upside down at an air show without a second thought.

Steve S:

Did you ever read The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings? In The Hobbit Bilbo gets saved by the Sun from being eaten by 3 trolls.

My point is yes, trolls can be troublesome but eventually Solar Power wins out.

Frank

Just read online artcle on Li-ion batteries on National Institute of Standards & Technolgy website. Japan makes 80% of Li-ion batteries. They said U.S companies looked into making them but couldn’t make enough money vs. alkaline battery profit-and by time they looked at it, the Japanese were lowering battery costs fast-partly because they had a ready market via all the Japanese consumer electronics companies with products using li-ion. They said if U.S. makers had gotten with U.S. companies needing the batteries, like Dell and Motorola, maybe they could have made making li-ion batteries pay off. Article said that China has designated li-ion batteries & fuel cell systems as “strategic tech.” The Korea Institute of Standards has a goal of transferring good tech.ideas developed by small U.S. companies to the large Korean manufacturing companies. Also, Japanese industry has agents in U.S. on the lookout for new tech. to produce. As if we didn’t know it already, it’s really important for U.S. to keep up big private/govt. spending on R & D. The next president will no doubt be better re. this, and pushing green tech. Already home builders are offering solar-such as solar roof tile. One local builder just announced a project where all the homes will have this as a standard feature. Builders are always looking for things to make their homes stand out, energy savings is a big one. I see some solar on homes (in the 2/3’s of country good re. solar) as being a common feature -standard or optional-within the next 5 years even.

Martin,
I absolutely agree with your posting. I just wanted to add for the technical people for “when does the solar panels pay off itself” that the maintenance such as oil changes, oil, oil filters, smog tests, spark plugs, should be added to the savings for having an EV and counteracting the Solar Panels’ costs. Thank you for posting great blogs entries.

Sporadic installations of solar is fine (way to go guys above), but mainstream USA thinks you’re all Ed Beglys or rich hobbyists. Single digit solaradoption rates isn’t going to solve the problem.

Germany’s figured they needed to make it simple. And it worked. The leaders dangled a huge carrot with a simple message “We’ll pay you handsomly to feed the grid” which helps Germans get off coal, gas and nuclear.

It’s a BIG carrot too. Germany offers a feed-in tariff of 54.5 €cents/kWh for 20 years, reducing 5% per year. There is no effective cap on this program.

Germany’s message is “Feed the grid” and get paid.” Why can’t we do that? Too simple I guess.

The message… buy solar hardware, get payback and make a profit. We’d instantly have hundreds of thousands of solar rooftop businesses spring up. Germany has it happening in spades. Who can deliver this message to congress and the people? Maybe Lindsay Lohan would wear a button that says “Feed the Grid”.

Speaking of farm team media attention, just a few short years ago I was sitting around, minding my own proverbial business, reading news mags., papers, watching news shows when “Boom !” in John Madden style out of nowhere suddenly Obama was everywhere: Time, Newsweek, local paper editorials, syndicated columnist editorials , ABC, NBC, CBS news. It was like someone had suddenly thrown on a media lightswitch-and “someone” had, in fact. Knowing what I know I correctly smelled ” the pre- planned pre- -build-up”. Especially since the question was ” who’s this guy and what has he ever really done anyway to get this PR? ” . As for Clinton, he was no doubt first noticed by the farm team scouting system when he worked at age 18 on the election (or was it re-election? I forget) campaign for the gov. of Arkansas, whose name happened to be Winthrop Rockefeller. This will get “an ambitious, smart (or smartish) charismatic poor boy who just wants to be on the winning team” ( like Nixon) noticed for future training as in: Yale, Oxford-Rhodes Scholar (Cecil Rhodes being a Rothschild team member assigned to the wealth of Africa-like gold, diamonds, railroads)-”and the rest is pre-fab history” .

Dale D,

While individual home installments may seem insignificant, I believe that the future requires both in home solar power, as well as renewable energy plants feeding the grid, to fill all our needs. Plug-in vehicles require a lot of energy, so, unless you have a large home / property, you will need grid energy.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/25/world’s-largest-solar-power-plant-coming-to-arizona-in-2011/

All I can say is it’s about time.

Thanks TEG.

Jason- you’re right: very . Years ago I did a lot of reading on “the strange cases of JFK, RFK and MLK”, ending with books by David Icke, while a friend at work was reading up on the fed. reserve and all of that (Eustice Mullins). Let me tell you, the evidence “on all of this” is slam dunk-it could be proven in a civil court of law to jurors. The various” trails to follow” and details going back decades on end, leading to centuries in fact, are absolutely endless- I followed some of them until it was just too much. My brother refuses to even consider any of it- that’s smart in a way for cabbage sure: “blissful ignorance” , happy life and all of that. He even doesn’t want to let global warming bother him. Me and my nephew bought him enough green light bulbs to outfit his enitre house (the Christmas before last)- like around $200 worth. He hasn’t installed any-except when a couple of his old bulbs burned out. My brother thinks that if he can’t do something about “the way things are” he basically doesn’t want to think about it . It is really hard to know “this stuff” ( and there’s plenty of details I don’t know) and see how people around the world are conned- it’s like a soap opera. Also, I have “a small problem” re. JFK, RFK, MLK-they weren’t part of the approved soap opera, but rather were running the real thing: as in an awarding winning broadway play by comparison. The powers that be don’t like independent productions running outside the realm of their long-terms plans- productions of real substance run by people that they can’t control/manipulate/persuade- productions that are good for “avg. people” , peace and the environment worldwide-”it’s bad for (their) business”.

Jason-to go “off topic” again, though not really ’cause “it’s all related” I’d just like to say I have about 30 books on my bookshelf re. the above (and at least 3 more never came back after I loaned them to people). But if you want one book that covers a lot of it that would be “And the Truth Shall Set You Free” by David Icke. He has some wacky-like metaphysical stuff in parts of this book, but you can take that with a grain of salt-he should have put it in another book. However at least 3/4’s of the book is the real deal (his bibliography includes many of the books I have). Icke used to be a journalist in England. I would love to start typing some of what I’ve read, much from other sources than Icke, and still remember in detail (after years even) but it would get slightly out of hand: as in I’d be typing for hours and you’d be scrolling and scrolling down this blog looking for the end of it-only you wouldn’t be finding an end.

Patman3:
“You have to pay the power company for a new power meter and I heard many billing errors where the meter went backwards to much and they figure you owe many thousands of dollars. I’d be interested in hearing Martin’s billing stories, if any.”

I posted earlier on this blog about installing a solar water heater. Dealing with the gas company was easy. With a phone call they came out and shut it off. It was that simple.

The electric company I am learning is a different animal. There’s permits, inspections and issues I’m sure I haven’t discovered yet. It’s understandable because we do need to keep the house and the utility workers safe. That I can deal with. What I wouldn’t be able to deal with is if the electric company tried to impregnate me.

I too would like to hear if Martin or anybody else has had to review their bills with their electric companies post PV installation.

Thanks all in advance.

No problems with billing on our 4.4 kwh system.

First, you are dealing with high voltage utility grade power that you are producing and pumping it back into the grid. This is stuff you don’t want to play with. Inspections and permits are very necessary, but from the homeowner point of view it was painless.

SDG&E did not charge us for the new 2 way spinning meter that replaced the old. The solar provider was responsible for getting the permits, doing the work. When the work was completed, the city inspected first and then mailed a letter to SDG&E saying the system was good to go. In a few days SDG&E came and turned on the system. All this was handled by the solar provider and the utility.

We signed a net metering contract with the utility and only have to pay our bill once a year if we wish. I opted to keep my auto-pay bill every month. I also check my meter every week and keep a spreadsheet of usage. It tracks exactly what the bill meter reading is.

So in a nutshell, very easy and no blips or headaches with SDG&E and or billing at all.

About the comment in a prior post “mainstream USA thinks you’re all Ed Beglys or rich hobbyists”
I tend to agree, that perception although false is the norm.

My comment on the rich hobbyists part is that solar is simply a choice available to most homeowners. Our system was $25,000. That is in the range for the vast majority of us to purchase. We spend that much or more on cars, motor homes, desert toys, planes, boats, swimming pools, in ground Jacuzzi, landscaping, kitchen remodels, I think you get the picture. How many of those improvements pay you $140 per month? I would suggest that a solar P.V. system is simply a choice, a conservative choice, available to many, as opposed to a luxury for rich hobbyists.

Cheers
Peder

Martin,

Another great post on a great topic. I am almost as interested on solar panels as I am on electric cars (because the two go together as you explained).

Several comments:
People like you who have the finances and are willing to purchase solar panels before it makes “perfect financial sense” are the people who are investing in and driving the PVs technology. This is something to be admired. The people who have the means, but are “waiting for prices to come down” are making no contribution to the development of PVs – not to mention that prices should be on a continual decline so there’s never a good time to buy based on this view.

I have been listening to Michael Pollan, who is an expert on food (as you are on electric cars). He is brilliant, and his talks can be found on KUOW.org and TED.com. Anyway, Mr. Pollan makes the argument that organic food is not expensive (as many people claim). He says organic food is the REAL PROCE of food. It’s just that people are used to paying less for processed foods, and there’s a reason why these processed foods are cheaper.
Anyway, the same can be said of cars. The cars we buy now are artificially cheaper. I.e, we’re not paying the true cost of manufacturing – we’re definitely not paying the true price of the natural resources being used and the effect on the environment. Even Rick Wagoner of GM has expressed this – you have been in touch with him, so you can say this is true. I read an article the other day in which he suggested it’s only a matter of time until car prices are much higher.

My point is that eventually we are going to have to pay the true cost of cars, and it’s going to be a lot more than we’re paying now.

I have a sense this is the case of you buying the Tesla. Just like the solar panels you purchased for your home may not make perfect financial sense (looking at it as an investment), the same can be said about purchasing a Tesla Motors. I’m surprised you didn’t also say that in your last post about PVs. But life is not about always paying the lowest price (I refuse to enter a WallMart) as you explained well, and one can reduce their carbon footprint by buying an expensive electric car with a yet unproven and darn expensive battery pack (or should I call it Energy Storage System – ESS?)

Thank you for your posts and for being in contact with your loyal readers. You are an inspiration to be followed.

Don’t think Martin is intentional being disengenuous (as some commenters have said) by calculating his soon to arrive Roadster in his solar payback example. One should consider the usage and costs associated with such a large addtion to power usage. I do agree that using the $ saved in gasoline to offset his EV cost is unsound accounting, but they are his costs so he can allocate them where he sees fit. This just means his EV total cost would be that much higher. More conventional accounting would have him adjust his power savings amount for the 6 Megawatts to what it would cost for this additional power. In Florida residential power is tiered to usage, thus the additional electricty to charge an EV would be charged the highest rate in nearly all circumstances unless the homeowner supplements his power with another source like Solar. Using the expected rate that would be paid for the additional electricity for an EV could then shorten your cost payback time as Martin has mentioned in one of his responses.

Actually *knowing* the tax breaks given to the “extractive industries” (fossil fuels and other mining), I think it’s quite clear they should be abolished. It distorts the market; removing them would instantly make renewable energy more competitive.

If you want to avoid the regressive nature of this, just cut income taxes for the poor, or provide them with cheap public transportation, OK? There’s no rule that says the proceeds of removing tax breaks has to be wasted.

Martin,

I did manage to read the Wiki write up on Ayn Rand and Objectivism. This may come to you as no surprise, but I am thoroughly an objectivist, minarchist, John Locke-ian property rights advocate and so on.

Saw a documentary on William Buckley this weekend, in which they stated that he and his supporters, while agreeing with most of Ayn Rand’s anti-communist doctrine, weren’t Ayn Rand’s advocation of destruction of communists (something of that sort).

I do support Ayn Rand’s belief that communists need to be utterly annihilated. These are the “looters”, who intend to take from those who are productive, and re-distribute it to everyone else, rewarding their non-productivity / non-viability. Communists want to tie drowning men to anyone capable of treading water, thinking that will prevent drowning, when it only causes those treading water to drown. In the old West, a man’s horse was his livelyhood, without which, sustaining his life was substantially more difficult. For that reason, horse thieves were hung on the spot, no trial. In the same way, communists must be sought out and annihilated, as they violate property rights, which is the foundation of each individuals sustainability.

Jason, sometimes your posts are downright frightening. It’s certainly enlightening to listen to your admiration of hanging thieves without trial; now we know why right wingers don’t see anything wrong at Guantanamo. Couple that with the final bit that reads like a HUAC memo, and you’ve gone off the deep end.

In other news, making “the communists” (which you’re still using as a name-calling short hand for everybody left of Ronald Reagan) out to be Robin Hood with you playing Prince John doesn’t help your point. And substituting “productive” for “rich” just displays the basic sociological and economic misunderstanding that fuels the immoral flat-tax fantasy that it’s just “being fair.”

For that reason, horse thieves were hung on the spot, no trial. In the same way, communists must be sought out and annihilated, as they violate property rights, which is the foundation of each individuals sustainability.

Jason, every time you take such a radical approach and use words such as ‘annihilate’, you can put yourself on the categories of Al-Qaeda and the like. Radicalism never helps anyone.

Have you seen the movie Memento? You remind me of the main character who has a short memory span, and the last thing he remember is that someone broke into his home and murdered his wife, and so he makes it his life’s mission to find and kill the murderer. He keeps searching, finding and killing “the murderer”, but because of his condition he forgets it, and so he keeps on the hunt for his wife’s murderer, kills another man who fits the profile, forgets it all (due to his condition), and winds up living this never-ending cycle. It’s a great movie.

Anyway, I suggest you try to see GOOD in everyone and everything. If you don’t see good it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

We have many aspects of communism in our capitalism (even in the US), and taking a radical approach is never going to create utopia. Unemployment insurance is one example of a strand of communism, and if we read the news we’ll see that the government wants to keep unemployment insurance because it’s extremely important that people who are unemployed can make basic purchases in order to avoid a recession.

BTW, the topic here is Solar Synergy, but as someone mentioned, your post about Ayn Rand is scary so I thought I’d say something.

Here’s the book to read for anyone interested in where “organized” communism, as in the U.S.S.R., really came from: “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution” by Anthony Sutton ,formerly of the Stanford Hoover Institute think tank- and so “a guy in a position to know”. The bottom line is: “organized” U.S.S.R. style “communism” was set up on purpose by the formerly mentioned ” banking, et al powers that be”, funded out of 150 Broadway, N.Y.C. by a front group called, if I remember right , “American International Corp.”-where both Bush’s grandfather and George Schultz’s also (former Reagan sec. of State, now at Bechtel) worked. As a prelude, Czar Nicholas had to go-especially since he had allowed absolutely no ” bankers” to operate in Russia. Why communism?- it’s the usual “us vs. them M.O. ploy for fun and profit” . When you can’t have continual hot wars, a nice cold one lasting from 1917 to c. 1990 is conveniently very profitable. Some U.S./western tech. was leaked to the Russians on purpose: so the Russians get better weapons-oops how did they do that !? -now we need even better, more expensive ones, and more too. Also organzied communism is great for scaring people about the “domino theory”: if Vietnam goes commie, so will all of Asia. Yeah-right, look at Vietnam and China now: communist “in theory” but really also “capitalism at its finest” up and running there as well, with mega help from the entire “free world”. Nixon opened up China to the west-yeah, right-Henry Kissinger opened up China, as planned, on schedule, bringing Nixon along while he was at it to make it all look legit. The phony, pre-fab “cold war” benefited two groups: “the bankers” via huge war debts and their military/industrial complex associates that Eisenhower warned of . The small problem with the phony set-up that was Russian/east block communism was that it put tons of people under it’s thumb for decades and led to Stalin also-who bumped off countless millions. It also strssed out all of us in the “free world” -the pawns in the game, on the western side of the iron curtain, that Dylan sang about in his “Masters of War” song. There’s a writer called Susan Jacoby who’s getting media PR now (as in latest U.S. News & World Report mag. article and on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show). She’s written a book called “The Age of American Unreason”. The interviewer in the U.S. News article says to her : “Ultimately you put much of the blame on the American people” to which she replies: “Dumbness is us. When I hear people saying ‘you were lied to’, usually in relation to the Iraq war, I think the fundamental question we should ask is really why we as a people were so susceptible to lies”. I can tell her why (part of why): the entire mass media is controlled by “the bankers that be”. There is a book touching on this too: “The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian, a prof. at U.C. Berkeley. Since the avg. person in their busy life is only subject to what’s coming out of ” the mass media” (and out of “our esteemed and trusty govt. officials” , and ditto-like corp. America officals ) no wonder that pre-planned ignorance of the real score reigns as the norm.

Hunter- no, not everything, by a long shot- just some really big important “things” the things that really matter “to them” as it were.A whole bunch of Quite Reputable authors and researchers, many who are or were “part of the system” , like Sutton, sure have found info. on a whole bunch of conspiracies-all related, as it were- that sure as heck in halibut with cabbage on the side ain’t no “theory” either-despite what the mass media espouses, as in: the word “conspiracy” no longer exists in the dictionary except in the “new long form”: “conpiracy theory” . I personally have read/seen Quite Enough to tell you with 100% (yes, 100%) certainty that all this “conspiracy fact” is part of literally the biggest, most important ongoing con in the history of the world, bar none. Humans can be very cunning animals. In roman times, for example, there were all sorts of conspiracies. Does anyone think that the concept of conspiracy just disappeared in more modern times ? On the contrary, the potential for broad, really huge conspiracy just got a whole lot greater as, shall we say, wealth & power got consolidated over time. Someone once asked Einstein what the most powerful force in the universe was-he said “compound interest”. Take the wealth of “certain banking families” that have been filthy rich (more money than Cod,” nudge,nudge say no more”? ) since at least circa the mid 1700’s, and earlier for all I know-I’m no expert on all these family operations by any means ( a lot of them came out of Germany- or else they got really rich there- for some reason) and put just 5% interest on this wealth over all these years later, and then convert it to today’s value of the money-forgetting any big, fat , truly enormous investments they and their ” annointed associates” made-like in gold, oil, railroads, commodities, whatever-see what numbers you would come up with. Yep- Einstein was right again. I don’t know much about religion, but I heard that Jesus was only a real rabblerouser for about 3 years (without all that much attention being paid to him) wasn’t it ?-from the time he was 30 till he died at 33. Just before he died he had gone into the temple in Jerusalem, kicked over the “moneychangers” stalls there and said: “get the moneychangers out of the temple ! “. It was at this point, as it were, that the “shitte hit the fan”. Coincidence ? -methinks not , Horatio. Even way back then the moneychangers/bankers saw the Einsteinian power of their compound interest operation . This consortium of “banking interests” cleverly/cunningly thinks not in terms of years or decades, like the rest of us regular Joes or Josuahs, but in terms of generations-it’s a “family thing’ that makes the mafia’s “Cosa Nostra” thing look like a cub scout jamboree. By the way-who was the biggest mobster of all in the mob-and THE main money guy, without question? Well, he wasn’t no italian-imagine that: he was Meyer Lansky, card-carrying assoc. of: “the bankers” in question. Excuse me while I digress, but all this stuff is THE biggest thing in the history of the world-and how many Americans (or other people in the world for that matter) have a clue as to the real deal ? Incredible-yep, incredible-but nonetheless, like I said-it ain’t no theory. Try “conspiracy fact”, Jack.

Our feed-in tariff ALONE here will allow the system to pay for itself in 12 years even in non-optimal scenarios and that’s not counting
the savings. In fact, a system we’ve worked on will also pay for the whole structure in 20 years
(and that’s a roadway pay toll building so it isn’t exactly cheap)!
I’m surprised California gives only 1/4 of the cost, although having this from the start is a
real edge.

T.J., I assure you that “conspiracy” remains in the dictionary. Also, it may have escaped your notice that I did not in fact use the word “theory” in my post. But the problem with people like you who allege that the entire world’s history has been a conspiracy is that it’s too big a stage, with too many players. A conspiracy by its very nature must be secret, and all the participants must have the same goals. When you have over 300 billionaires in the U.S. alone, it’s just silly to claim that they all act in concert to screw everybody else over, and that none of them are whistleblowers. This doesn’t even get into the fact that these people often have demonstrably opposing views and goals: you think Michael Bloomberg and George Soros are playing on the same team?

Also, your idea that banking wealth is entirely hereditary and has been since 745 is just laughable. Sure, there are some families who have become very wealthy in banking. But your theory denies new entrants, which again, is demonstrably untrue. Similarly, acting like “the bankers” just “installed” Hitler sort of leaves out all the actual events that caused his rise to power. These people wield great influence, to be sure…but history is bigger than they.

If there’s a kernel of truth here, it’s just elite theory. They, like you, think that powerful and wealthy influences control most of society. The difference is that they are not crazy.

(BTW, I’m done with this. I thought I’d just use a one-liner to put the brakes on this absurd and OT tripe, but it didn’t help, so this is the more reasoned attempt. But regardless of where it goes from here, I’m not saying another thing in this thread unless it has something to do with electricity.)

Earlier in this blog I posted a link about the “worlds largest solar plant” being built in Arizona and online in 2011. For convenience here it is again:
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/25/world’s-largest-solar-power-plant-coming-to-arizona-in-2011/

In this article it states that the plant will power 70 thousand homes. If those same 70,000 homes had a PV system installed would that compound the size of the power plant?

Hunter- I didn’t say you mentioned conspiracy theory, I was saying it’s trotted out by the mass media, as in “conspiracy theory/theorist/nut” to the “Nth” degree as if there is no such thing as the possbility (ever) of “conspiracy fact” . I can see where everyone is coming from who hasn’t read one book on any of this. Years ago I was in the same boat-I didn’t beleive any of it. However, in following “the strange case of JFK-and RFK and MLK” (and since I was around at the time, I was persoanlly motivated to follow the trail) you quickly find that a heck of a lot of people in the know and some in a definite, undeniable positions to know, have discovered a heck of a lot of “conspiracy reality”. As in: people in the U.S. Govt. ( like Fletcher Prouty, Harold Weisberg), in elite colleges and college think tanks ( like Anthony Sutton, Peter Dale Scott, Ben Bagdakian) journalists ( like Mark Brewster, David Icke, Jim Marrs) independent researchers (like Phliip Melanson, Gary Allen, Mark Lane, Eustice Mullins)-and the list goes on, and on. People who don’t believe in “the theory” without even reading one book on “all of this” are like scientists who study no evidence on an issue at all and then say “these theories aren’t correct”. All the authors “in question” like the above people aren’t National Enquirer reporters, they’re the exact opposite-and they’ve done some really heavy lifting in terms of writing and investigation for no money to speak of-who reads these books anyway? and they pretty soon go out of print. The fact is, what these authors from various walks of life have turned up dovetails right into the works of the other authors. Also, I never said, by any means, that tons of rich people have anything at all to do with a conspricay. In terms of the population of the developed world it’s a very very small number of people involved: “the banking families (over generations) and their associates”. I also never said that conspiracies are everywhere_ the conspiracy only applies to the huge, major, important events/trends of the world. As for the year 745 thing, that supoosedly applies to a very close knit, secretive tribe that supposdely changed their religion by decree of their ruler at this time. It’s an attempt to trace the roots of “this thing” back as far as possible, as is the hypothesis re. Charlemagne. As for Andrew comment, like I said when Icke talks about metaphysical stuff in his book you can take that with a grain of salt-it does make him look nuts and he should have put those parst in another book. However, I read his book after first reading all the others. When he talks about real human events, like I said-he’s right on the money. Check out his bibliography-what he’s doing in 3/4’s of his book is baiscally compiling info. from other sources, so if you only want to read one book, it’s a good one. As for the nutzoid 1/4 of the book on the metaphysical stuff, don’t throw out “the baby with the bath water” and discount his whole book, Like I said, when I first read the book I said to myself “man, Icke you should have left out the metaphysical stuff ’cause you just give people who have read nothing else the perfect excuse to chuck your whole book”. Anyway, I can see where everyone who doesn’t believe in conspircay re. the most important “human events” is coming from-it’s hard to take in and concieve of, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t true by any means- like I said if you ain’t studied any of the “facts in question” you absolutely can’t, like a faulty scientist, automatcially say “the theory ain’t true”. How did I get started on all of this anyway?-oh, yeah- someone brought up communism. Well, sorry-Anthony Sutton’s right, and ditto for the other major researchers into “the theory”.

Here’s another problem with ICE cars, even with their catalytic converters. Diesel soot has always been known to be a big health problem but article in latest U.S. News & World Report mag. (citing studies by EPA, UCLA and New England Journal of Medicine) sez: “virus size ultrafine particles produced by (ICE) combustion” can be a major health problem “…having a house near a freeway ups the risk of hardened arteries by some 60%…” the study in New Eng. Journal if Med. “…linked a 10-microgram-per cubic meter increase in fine particulate pollution-approximately the difference between Pittsburgh and cleaner air in Anchorage-to a 76% increase in the cardiovascular death rate”. Article states that diesel vehicles ” are a particularly potent source of both fine and ultrafine particles”, and that air filtering machines with hepa filters can screen out utlrafine pollution particles. The real question is, besides living near a freeway what’s the issue with working in offices next to busy streets all day-which applies to a lot of people? Article sez that for non-smokers “driving to work is probably the most unhealthy part of your day”. In which case working in an office next to your average size city blvd. can’t be too hot either, day in and day out , over years.

What about the human beings on planet Earth that may not own a dwelling? What about the billions that are about to buy their first-cars? What about the other billions that have never owned a car and won’t for the forseeable future? Finally, what about all the renters in the modern urban world?

How can we get solar into the shelter and transpo for the 4 or 5 of the 6,000,000,000 humans beings?

PS We’re approaching a billion vehicles soon and the fleet will double or triple within a decade or so as two more billion first-time car buyers come online. Do you remember your first ride? How can our world afford three times more traffic and smog? Traffic cops are dying in their 40s in Beijing where 1,000 new cars hit the roads everyday the weren’t there yesterday!

HOW DO WE GET THIS AWESOME TECHNOLOGY INTO THE PEOPLE THAT CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE???

One more comment… According to Christensen in the Innovator’s Dilemma, the people that make a technology affordable and mainstream so that it may disrupt the status quo, are the average consumers. The people that many not understand PV, EV, CO2 and AC/DC.

Christensen looked at all kinds of examples, and disruptive technologies were always worse. The other key was finding new markets. Think Segway driven by crowd control cops. This govt. market never crossed the minds of the Segway founders when they were in the early R&D stages much like Tesla before the PV issues came along.

What I’m trying to say is that the solar issue is like cops on Segways. A new market that could enable EVs to finally disrupt. Something like carshare with EVs in a urban areas with PVs built in so that housing and transportation become one.

In other words, EVs disrupt the REAL ESTATE industry AND NOT the world’s biggest business and industry that buys more computers than Silicon Valley (the auto industry) yet…

I would love to get on board a high density below market rate housing complex that was off the grid or hybrid and came with built in transportation for 100s of tenants EITHER renting or owning or leasing. THAT’S A NEW MARKET DISRUPTION!!!

Martin,
Many thanks for that great summary. It shows that depending where you live, it can pay off to install a PV system. As mentioned in some posts, in some areas it is possible to get a return on investment.
I know that it takes about 20 years in Germany or Switzerland but as you said, adding up the costs of gas over time reduces the time considerably!
But there is not only the money….How much is it worth to reduce dependency on oil and helping the environment? Thats not even included in the calculation.

I just paid 50 GBP the other day to fill up my 40mpg car and even though thats relatively efficient compared to the national UK average, I am tired to carry all my money to the gas station . “008 is the year I will order my EV!!!

Solar energy is not possible everywhere, but ususally there are other ways to produce renewable energy. Well done Martin, I hope you PV installation will produce clean electricity for many years to come.

GE invests in both Think! and A123, who is now supplying batteries to Think!:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080305005217&newsLang=en

We might be seeing the beginning of GE becoming an electric automotive giant.

Ricardo Parker,

Yes, GE will really drive this technology forward. I would love if they came up with a new distribution system that challenges conventional dealerships, especially if EV’s are as low maintenance as advertised – current dealership models would suffer without the parts / services income – perhaps they can provide quick-charges for a premium.

As for hydrogen, both Modern Marvels and Future Car have shown that alkaline processes for dissociating water molecules is very efficient / cheap, and can be done locally, instead of requiring large scale processing plants. A unit the size of a refridgerator would produce enough hydrogen from tap water to supply a typical filling station.

It is very interesting to hear of GE’s investments in Think and A123. This fits in well with their power generation products and ecomagination intiative. They have made a huge investment in wind energy systems manufacturing and everbody knows their strength in the turbine market. I’ve been a bit surprised that they haven’t yet made a big play in the Solar market. Look for that next.

Fisker claims to be receiving up to 100 orders for the Karma:

http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=7970943&nav=0RbQ

… so they’ve got a few to several hundred pre-orders for their vehicle at this point. I hope to hear soon who their manufacturing partner will be – time to produce running prototypes.

I think wind power gives you a more rapid ROI than solar, so until solar gets cheaper, I suspect GE will stick with turbines. If the solar updraft tower planned for Australia pans out, we may see GE investing in those first, as those generate more power day and night than solar plants.

David, GE is in it for the long haul. They could invest in Solar AND Wind power technology. There’s no company more powerful out there that I know of. GE has a hand in pretty much everything and in every country on the planet. They are not looking at a quick ROI. Just thought I’d mention that.

BTW, I think GE is investing in Think and A123 because they know what’s coming down the pipe and they want to be ready. They’ll continue to be the biggest players on the block. But it’s all good because as far as I know they are doing great environmental things. Ultimately, you have to because that’s the only way to survive and perhaps thrive. I.e., you cannot sell oil that doesn’t exist and you cannot drink water out of a dry well.

BTW, how does one type Think with the inverted i? Why do they have to do that?!? I will need a new key on my keyboard if this company takes off.

Here’s a link to a short video slide show to calm the mind: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2366156032790931125&q=robert+crumb&total=142&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4
Illustrations and piano by R. Crumb.

News report (BBC News) sez that 8 states (Calif., Conn., Iowa ,N.J, N.Y, R.I., Vermont & Wisc.) are suing the 5 biggest U.S. co2 emitting power companies ( American Elect. Power Co., Southern Co, Xcel Energy, Cinergy & Federal Tennessee Valley Authority) to get them to reduce their co2 emissions . None of the power companies are in the states that are suing-but they can sue based on “public nuisance law” that provides the right to curb pollution from other states. “The National Assoc. of Manufacturers, which represents some of the power companies, said regulating co2 emissions would seriously depress the U.S. economy”. The scaremongers also “… argue that regulation of co2 emissions would limit their use of fossil fuels”. Per Dana Carvey- “well isn’t that special”.

Jason, I don’t know what to think about the huge Australian convection tower thing. It sure seems cool…but the last time I looked into it I was hearing that the projected cost/watt was much higher than current solar-thermal projects. I’ve heard you say that it should be more reliable, but I don’t follow…an unbelievably tall stack of spinning turbines strikes me as much more maintenance intensive than an electric motor articulating a dish….and some solar thermal installations don’t even need to do that. Now, granted there’s another benefit in having a greenhouse for plants underneath, but is this really going to be used in this installation, or is that just a “what if”? Maybe this would be a good fit for algae-based biodiesel production. Plop one of these out in the desert and put a shallow pond underneath that you pipe ocean water into, then make the resultant algae into fuel for big trucks, ocean going vessels, planes, and other stuff that isn’t (with today’s tech) easily battery powered. That could be pretty slick…but in its current incarnation I’m not sold on the tower.

Martin sez:

I live in the Chicago area (snow). Are there any solutions to keep the snow off a pv system that don’t use more energy than the system is making. (besides me climbing up there and manually cleaning it )

Martin sez:

Interesting problem. I don’t know of any existing solutions – I guess their blackness will keep off a very light snow, but once it gets going, the snow will pile up.

Bush plugs EVs…

TEG: it only took him 8 years.

I agree with you Ricardo, but I think you’ve confused Jason’s reply as my words. GE is a massive company and can certainly afford to invest in solar and wind and many other things at the same time. To Jason’s point, just because they can doesn’t mean they should. The solar market is a good fit for them. Demand has outstripped supply for some time and with the foreseeable energy dynamics, the solar market should only get better. F believe they could achieve effective synergies with some of their existing bearishness units as well as.

Martin Said:
“Even more valuable is energy that can be produced on demand, such as that produced by a hydroelectric dam.”

Speaking of alternative energy on demand. Does anyone know what happened to thought’s of utilizing ocean currents, e.g. the Gulf Stream. From Wickepedia: “Typically, the Gulf Stream is 80–150 km wide and 800–1200 m deep. The current velocity is fastest near the surface, with the maximum speed typically about 2.5 m/s[6] (approx. 4.9 knots).” Don’t need to lookup the density of seawater to realize is a little bit of energy. It is very close to the coast and long 2-blade screws shouldn’t pose an environmental risk.

Steve- I don’t have cable so can’t pull up video you mention ( I have dial-up. When I got new computer about a year ago they didn’t even have dsl in my area of town for some reason. Now they do but I haven’t changed over yet-probabaly wouldn’t come up good with dsl anyway, right?). But I read comments posted by others about it. I know in England there is the weasel- run Tavistok Institute (and no doubt a bunch of other “think tanks” elsewhere) that figures out just how to manipulate “the masses”, they say. Dig this re. the terrorist subway bombings in London: remember one of the bombers “rather strangely” blew up a bus in another part town ? Well I was watching ABC Nightline, they said that the bus blew up in front of some townhouse where some famous guy used to live (maybe it was where Ben Franklin lived when he was in London -or maybe Mark Twain ?- I forget). However, anyway, I’m looking as they pan the door on the show and right next to it on the right, in the corner of the picture, what do I see?-a plaque on the wall next to the adjoining townhouse door saying: “Tavistock Institute”. Very interesting, Watson- to say the least. What’s also interesting is that Bin Laden & Co. , et al, surely know (”and don’t call them Shirleys”) about “the bankers cabal et al and all their world-controlling manipulations” and yet we don’t hear a peep from him / them about this. Also, he was trapped in those caves in Tora Bora, according to most accounts, and the U.S. Military didn’t go in, only the Afghans-what’s halibutin’ up with that, anyway ? Also, his family has been buddies with the Bush family like forever (”being one of richest families in Saudi Arabia and all of that”) Also, Binny(Ninny ) used to be an agent in the Saudi intelligence service .It’s all quite conveniently coincidental. Quite possible bottom line: the jackass is “on the banker cabal team”, Watson-or Ripley . Radical thought, you may say-and “shirley you can’t be serious ! ? “. Well if I, and plenty of other people know who’s really pulling the strings in the world at the top – namely the big strings Blah-Blah Laden says he has objections to, then why does the jackass blame the U.S. (and Israel even ? ). I mean soytenly he could blame us , but (hey Moe !) to not mention the real string pullers behind the scenes in the same sentence(s) is totally absurd “(to infinity-and beyond” ) -and yet: not a peep. The twerp of course can’t possibly so dumb/ clueless as to not to know (snowball’s chance in Mecca in July of that). So maybe what we have here is “another clue for you all”-besides “the walrus was Paul ” ? -And now for something completely different: I pulled up the Solarmisson Technologies website re. the solar wind turbine tower. That’s something else-3000 foot tower an’ all. Frank Lloyd Wright still has the record for the highest proposed building: the mile high skyscraper project in Chicago-nice, pretty spear of a building-” the design will pump YOU up !”-probably can find it on google image search- “Ya I vill now go to look now- it vill be fan-Tah-tic, and so on and so forth-unlike anything in Cal-ee-fornia” -I must now go image search (but I’ll be back).

Jason-didn’t know there was so much hydro-kinetic grubstaking going on. Mendocino link mentions Mississippi River, which is a natural except for some depth problems maybe. Also, Columbia River and St. Lawrence Seaway seem great-but article didn’t mention them. It’s pretty amazing all the stuff going on in green energy-who are all these guys anyway and where do they all get the cash? G.E. should be licking its chops at the potential: wind, hydro-kinetic, geothermal and solar thermal all use turbines & elect. equip. G.E. has been an “establishment company”, with a capital E , since forever. Now they’re getting into EV’s & Li-ion batteries too- if this keeps up they could do a lot to put green power over the top. Re. solar, I like combo of central plants and Nanosolar type rooftop solar-there are a heck of a lot of big flat building roofs in cities (and house roofs) lying fallow re. sun harvesting. There can be up to 7% loss in power in transmission lines from central plants-7% is not much, but nationwide it could add up big-rooftop solar would get some of it back. Also, of course, once individual owners pay off cheaper Nanosolar type PV, they don’t have to pay a power bill to anyone (while sun shines)-until panels degrade-wonder how long this type of PV is projected to hold up ? I heard silicon type lasts for 25 years or more before starting to degrade significantly , unless this has improved lately.

Solar roads sound great but seem a long way from practical. Roads take a lot of abuse. How about covering the highly traveled urban expressways with a solar canopy that integrates the lighting and signage underneath. This would obviously cost a LOT of money but would last and some of the cost would be offset by savings in lightpoles and sign structures. Also, if desgined right it might improve all vehicle’s efficiency by better channeling the disturbed air in the direction of travel. Recapturing, in a sense, some of the energy imparted to the air by traveling vehicles.

Clarifying my earlier comments about ocean currents: “long 2-blade screws shouldn’t pose an environmental risk.” This was referring to direct marine life risk. Obviously, absorbing too much of the current’s energy could have catastrophic consequences. Perhaps this is an overiding concern.

I did a little googling for the Australian convection tower — and was rather surprised at how little I found, esp. that the top-ranking articles were all from around 2002. (Including one that predicted it would be built by 2005 or 6!).

I suspect that this concept is in a bit of a financial catch-22: it’s not economical to produce until you get up to sizes that are in the $1 billion cost range, yet who’s going to invest that much when there are no moderate-scale installations to help verify that the concept should actually work? Conversely, who’s going to put $100-$500 million into a scaled-down project that even calculations show won’t be economical?

All we really have to give us that 200MW number is some mathematical models and/or simulations. There could be new factors that come into play when you get up to that scale, that may not have been accounted for in the model, that cause the wind strength to not be nearly what you thought it would be. No one has ever even built a structure this tall before, much less a chimney.

At least, this is what the potential investors must be thinking.

Martin said: “Additionally, the local power company (So Cal Edison) will not let us (or anyone else) connect a PV array that is significantly larger than the historical consumption of the house. This is frustratingly, unbelievably stupid.”

What do you think the rational is behind this? Sounds like they don’t want customers to be able to sell a large positive net energy back to the utility.

Hectorrv, I’m sure what I’ve already said is part of it. But it doesn’t seem like the whole story. It’s not like they aren’t already making a buck by selling one’s extra electrons to the neighbors. They certainly have it worked out to make a profit regardless.

Martin, after you get your Roadster, your consumption will go up. Maybe after that SCE will let you add more panels. After you’ve built a “new” history.

Wow, I guess Tesla and Fisker should have asked for more money:

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=125074#2

# Jason wrote:
## Better than rooftops, they are now looking at building solar PV into highways.

Um, like wouldn’t those solar collectors get covered up by too much road grime? All the ICE vehicles spewing oil and exhaust over your solar panel array. Plus all this skid marks when people “burn rubber” or slam on the brakes.

I’m glad to see that someone (Jason) brought up the subject of the solar chimney, or “solar updraft tower”, if you prefer. I’d like to ask Martin what his opinion of this technology is. I am not an engineer, merely a lowly biologist, but it appears to be a very promising solution to bringing down the cost of solar/wind energy. It looks like the initial start-up costs could be high, but certainly much cheaper than say, the Grand Coolee Dam. It looks like a solar chimney generating station could run 24/7 (or very close to it) with minimal running costs compared to hydrocarbon or nuclear powered generating stations. The design could even be slightly modified to produce pure drinking water from condensation on the underside of the solar collection surface. The plant can, and should be built on cheap desert land. Although it apparently has a very low efficiency due to heat loss through the chimney structure, when you’re getting all your energy for free this seems to be an issue of lesser importance. Anyway, Martin, I respect your opinion on all things relating to alternative energy (& many other subjects too), and I wonder if you would like to share your thoughts on this technology with all of us who follow your blogs. All the best,

Chris H.

After looking back over some of the earlier postings I realize that I missed a few comments about the Enviromission solar tower. So here are a few additional comments…. Jason, I think that the best material to cover the ground under the solar collection canopy would be black asphalt (Tarmac to all you Brits). Firstly, being black this material would absorb a large amount of visible light and ultraviolet, and convert it into infrared, which would re-radiate to heat the air between the ground and the solar canopy. This would add to the kinetic energy of the air driving the turbines at the base of the tower. Secondly, this layer of asphalt would store thermal energy during the day which would be released at night, which again would heat the air above it and keep the turbines spinning. Thirdly, asphalt is a relatively common and cheap building material that can be easily applied to the surface in the desired shape. Fourth(ly?), I believe that it is important to have smooth surfaces lining the space below the solar canopy so as to produce a smooth laminar flow of air towards the centre of the collector. Rough or uneven surfaces would introduce turbulence which would detract from optimal performance of the turbines.

Some possible design improvements might include the following…. One, in addition to the 32 turbines at the base of the tower, it should be possible to incorporate additional turbines within the chimney itself, without reducing the output of the turbines at the base, as the hot air flowing up the chimney would still be gaining kinetic energy due to its low density and the chimney effect. This could help improve the overall efficiency of the solar updraft tower design.
Two, by pleating the solar canopy slightly one could create a series of V shaped surfaces which could collect water that condenses on the underside of the canopy surface at night. This phenomenon was observed to produce large quantities of potable water on the prototype tower that was constructed in Spain. On the prototype this water was just allowed to run into the ground and resulted in abundant growth of vegetation below the solar canopy, which in my opinion probably reduced the efficiency of that tower. In drier parts of the world where this technology might be deployed, the water production could be considered a significant secondary output of the solar tower.

Considering the construction of the tower: It might be possible to build the tower of pre-formed concrete rings stacked one upon the other and either bolted together, or held together by high tension steel cables threaded through internal channels in the rings. This might be a more practical, and flexible, alternative to a simple poured concrete tube. Just some ideas, let me know what you think.

All the best,

Chris H.

I am very impressed with your blog. I have been interested in Solar energy for years. I live in N. Central FL and a few years ago I was going to build a new home with my then boyfriend. We discussed Solar energy. We broke up before construction, and I decided I was going to install Solar on my exisiting home. My home was built in 1972, so I’d have to go through similar upgrades to have the Solar installed. However, this was not my hurdle. I found that my City Electric company does not support Solar energy. I’m not sure the name of it, but something to do with our Solar panel recriprocating with their electric panel so we can give and share electricity. I was very disappointed to say the least. I too wouldn’t do it for the financial benefits, rather the freedom from dependence on Foreign oil.

I am a Real Estate Agent and for the last few years have specialized in New Construction. I love your idea about integrating Solar options in a new construction home. And if the costs are as low as you mentioned, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be an offer. I’d like to explore this avenue with you further. Thanks for your information. Nicolerep@aol.com

As an aside to above, there was an abatement in progress from 1961-63. As an aside to this aside, google search:”Mary Pinchot Meyer-he was changing too fast, he knew too much” (do a “cached search”), then do a google wikipedia search on her, scroll down to the last heading at the very end : “Cord Meyer’s later statements” (he was her ex-husband), specifically, the last sentence.

Chris Harvey,

I like your comments on the solar updraft tower, and there is nothing lowly about biologists.

1) Asphault is a good cheap solar heat collector. It and other smooth materials should be evauluated.

2) Canopy material does need to be a thin polymer, because thicker materials and glass wouldn’t allow enough of the sun’s energy through at low angles of incidence, reducing efficiency. Being thin, as in the Spanish configuration, they make the canopy taut by pulling down on the center of the paned sheet. Given this slight “pyramiding” of the sheet within each pane, “pleating” may not work, but collecting the condensation could still be done by having the wire pulling the canopy taut passing down the center of a drip collecting pipe with drip pan at the top, just below the lowest point on the canopy.

3) Turbines in the chimney would reduce efficiency of turbines around the base. The pressure drop caused by the rising air is necessary for the turbines around the base to generate power. In EE terms, think of the whole system as an RCL (resistor / capacitor / inductor or is it RLC?) circuit, in which the whole thing is an inseperable system that produces a steady state effect. The chimney is there to create the desired low pressure state behind the turbines, while the canopy is there to create the high pressure state ahead of the turbines. The height and diameter of the chimney is the minimum required to create the pressure drop and flowrate to make the project feasible. Further, turbines in the chimney are going to be harder to maintain than the 32 around the base and certainly more expensive to install, so everything should be optimized to make the 32 work as efficiently as possible.

The blower would be placed at the top of the chimney, so that there is never a condition of outside air mixing with the hot air inside the chimney, which is what would kill the cycle. At peak output, during the day, when there is no threat of outside air mixing into the chimney, the blower could act as a turbine, adding to the net power production, but at night, the blower would actually maintain a pushing force against the outside air, keep the cycle moving, albeit less efficiently.

If you’re a car or motorcycle guy you’re probably already a Peter Egan fan. Here’s a link to some of his articles: http://www.roadandtrack.com/default.asp?section_id=26 .

Hi again Jason,

I just went back and re-read your EUREKA! post (a place where I wouldn’t mind living actually) and something jumped out at me that I didn’t notice before. You said:

“As in the tall solar updraft tower, you need to have the pressure drop to get the hot air to move laterally towards the chimney. Once moving, the air will keep moving, so it is just the start-up transient state that needs the kick.”

The design that I’m familiar has a gradually sloping solar canopy. It slopes upwards from the periphery to the base of the tower. The rising hot air following the upwardly sloping canopy is the “kick” that initiates the self propagating process. Of course, the lower pressure inside the chimney, caused by the chimney effect, does contribute to the movement of air into the tower, so in effect you end up with both a “push” and a “pull”.
I think that I should also say that one of the characteristics that drew me to this technology in the first place was the simplicity, the elegance, of the design. It could be built with cheap, abundant (and recyclable) materials (concrete, glass, asphalt, plus the turbines), and it is essentially a low energy system. No molten salts at thousands of degrees Celsius, no exotic (and expensive) materials, no complex (and sometimes unreliable) tracking systems, all of which should translate into low operating and maintenance costs.

Anyway, once again, let me know what you think. I enjoyed reading your ideas. All the best,

Chris H.

Also, with a tower up to 3000′ tall, slap Nanosolar on all faces execept the north-that should make for some serious power. The real question is: what is Martin going to do next in the green world?

T.J.,

You are right, I forgot that solar panels do get ridiculously hot. The nanosolar panels would be great, since you can lay them flat and not worry about tracking systems, since they don’t have thick glass with a high refractive index. You would get extra power from the solar panels, but I don’t think they would absorb enough heat to stay warm all night, like asphault, but I dunno, maybe it would work.

Chris H,

You always have the push from the heat generated by the asphault, but you may not have the right kind of pull, from the chimney, because, at the top, cold air might rush down the inside walls and mix within the chimney, reducing / killing the pull – a blower would eliminate the threat of mixing, even on a short tower.

Jason & Chris…

I don’t have much familiarity with the theory of the chimney effect, but from some general principles I can see some problems in some of your ideas.

The sloping of the canopy as it approaches the chimney would not itself be the source of any push; that would just be a way to accomodate the increasing speed of air flow as it approaches the center. Ultimately, it’s the pressure differential between the outer edge of the canopy and the base of the chimney that drives the whole thing. Getting the updraft in the chimney as strong as possible is the key. Especially when you’re going to a high altitude, at which the ambient air pressure will be significantly less, which means your chimney air has to be that much hotter.

I don’t understand your point of the “blower” or using bladders to constrict the air flow. I mean, you’re worried about cold air reducing the upwards air flow… so you add mechanisms to make *sure* that the air flow is reduced?? Worrying about maintaining hot air lower down in the chimney and under the canopy is pointless if the hot air is stuck at the bottom anyways.

On another point, most of the area under the canopy is not going to be a concern in terms of air flow; it’s only as you near the center that it would start to be an issue — at which point you’re raised the height of the canopy to accommodate it. I’d guess that most of the area under that big circle — maybe beyond 1/3 of the radius from the center — will probably have pretty low wind speed. This would reduce turbulence around plants or other structures to probably negligible levels. The main concern there in terms of wind speed would just be the total cross-sectional area free for air flow, for a given circumference. Basically, the main job of that part of the canopy should be heat collection, as long as there is enough pressure differential to keep the hot air from escaping the outer edge.

A note on asphalt — not only does it come from underground, it also tends to leach volatile organic compounds into the air. Which is why they have to resurface roads every so often. If you had that full 20-square-kilometer area or so covered with asphalt, that leaching might amount to a significant contribution to greenhouse gases. At least, you wouldn’t be able to say that this is a “carbon-emission-free” technology. T.J.’s suggestion of using lava rock or other darkish material would probably do just as well. Even water, or plants themselves, would collect and retain most of the sun’s radiation quite well. Heck, with plants, you’d also get some residual heat from the decay of dead material, which would help even more for sustaining the flow overnight.

I rather fancy the idea of even having a *town* under the outer portions of the canopy, actually. I mean, it’s shelter from the elements, thus supplying one of the main functions that our buildings give to us, right? Might be interesting as a recreational area, at least.

Perhaps better than adding a blower / turbine at the top, burning small amounts of hydrogen or natural gas just before or after the turbines, to maintain airflow, so that worst case conditions are avoided. It would still be an active system, allowing you to build a shorter, cheaper tower.

Most of the time, the system would work as intended, with hydrogen or natural gas used during worst case conditions.

It would end up being a hybrid plant. Just thoughts on how to creep up on an eventual super tall design, without taking a blind stab from a 50 kW design to a 200 MW design.

You could first build a hybrid 1 MW plant, then 10 MW, then 50 – 200 MW.

As I said before, if you are only trying to prevent air mixing, then baffles, contracting oriface, etc. will suffice. I think a blower / turbine approach gives designers far more flexibility in tower height and diameter. To have turbines working efficiently in poor conditions, I believe turbines would be maxed out in optimal conditions, unless you add natural gas boost so that poor conditions never exist.

I thought about those insulative foam spacers used in housing, where concrete is poured in and around interlocking foam shapes, to add high R values to the wall. It works well, but the walls are not very high. For a very tall structure with very high compressive loads, you would probably need carbon fiber molds – again expensive. I think the double wall approach might just be twice as expensive than single wall, no insulation.

I am starting to think that burning natural gas at the base of chimney, with baffles at the top would help the designers develop a shorter chimney that maintains a fairly constant air flow through the 32 (made mistake, not 36) turbines, so that turbines can be optimized for narrow range of air flow.

Here’s an amusing link showing one of the many ways some children and other irresponsible people can easily control and manipulate adults, and become the center of attention:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1395493197112560766&q=%22didn%27t+your+mom%22&total=8&start=0&num=100&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 . A more sophisticated technique is making erroneous and annoying statements. Another is merely asking a lot of pointless questions. Most adults are trained to have the social grace to share information.

If not lava rock, just pour a thin layer of conc. (like 2″) and , as Mick said once: “Paint it Black” and carpet w/ Nanosolar. Here’s an idea, wacky or otherwise- ground source cooling: drill some deep well holes around the tower, put in ground source cooling piping and blow cold air to near top of the chimney (insulate cool air ducts when they exit ground). Would this create added draft/draw , or no?

Also, wonder what a high, cone shape inside the tube tower would do re. better airflow/draft- cone would have concave sides. There is also a thin f plastic film they make with tiny grooves in it-it was (is ?) used on America’s Cup sailboat hulls to cut turbulance (like a shark’s skin they say)- wonder if good for airflow turbulance as well? -or maybe some other aerodynamic devices, scoped out by aeronautical engineers) could in incorporated inside tower.

Info. from a book review, in “Audubon” Mag., on new book “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” (Mark Lynas, National Geographic Books-Lynas is british journalist who “read thousands of research papers on climate change and molded the info. into the mother of all synthesis reports” ) : One degree C. more temp. rise = prolonged droughts, coral bleaching, speicies extinction, disappearance of serveral island nations. Another one degree more rise in temp.= large areas of the Southern Ocean and part of the Pacific will become effectvely toxic to organisims with calcium carbonate shells- “unfortunately , the creatures on which the entire marine food chain rests-plankton- have just such shells”. Other effects of two C. degree rise: obliteration of large swath of biodiversity and continued heat waves, wildfires, glacier melting, disappearing coastlines and trouble with urban water supplies in certain places. Past the 2 degree temp. rise ” the likelihood of sliding toward 6 degrees-or higher- increases due to ‘feedback of runaway global warming’ “. If methane locked up in oceans is released more, greenhouse gas levels could soar. In order to avoid global warming increase of 2 degrees more, co2 concentration can’t rise above 400 parts per million.. Now they’re at 382 and rising 2 parts per year. The European Union has set a target of 550, environ. groups are aiming at 450. Lynas says that by his count, “a point echoed in a December declaration by 200 top interantional climate scientists”-global emissions must peak by 2015, and by 2050 they must be 85 percent lower than today. Lynas suggests the following: doubling fuel economy, covering 5 million acres with solar panels, constructing 2 million wind turbines, halting deforestation and instituing mandatory ‘carbon rationing’ “.

Martin, just read series production begins March 17th. Does that mean you will be receiving your car soon or is the article referring to Elon’s car (a month late)?
http://www.innovationbeat.com/2008/03/break-through-for-all-electric-sports.html

Hi Martin,

How’s your house project going?
What have you been up to these days?

-M

Doug,

You’ve fallen into the efficiency trap, instead of looking at cost per Watt. Yes, concentrated solar is way more efficient, but, scaling Nevada Solar One’s costs, it would cost you $9.4 billion to build, instead of $0.7 billion. Assuming concentrated solar cost half what a solar thermal plant does (and I am sure it doesn’t), it would still be $4.7 billion. The whole push is to reduce cost per Watt, not efficient conversion of the solar radiation collected. Martin pointed that out in a post above.

As for the blower / turbine, it would be there to prevent the mixing of cold air at the top of the chimney, which would kill the air flow through the chimney, but as I determined later, a Venturi nozzle at the top would be sufficient to stop air mixing at the top. I still believe that it might be beneficial to include natural gas heating of air either just before or just after the 32 turbines, to keep things operating on cold winter nights.

Doug-like Martin said, better to do “Volkwagen” type solar projects- with simple design, cheaper, less radical= more of them. Still, I think the “solar tracking dish stirling engine” type could be good-made cheaper in high volume, since it’s supposedly the most efficient solar system there is. In newspaper today is an article on new published research by 2 climate scientists (at Carnegie Institute and Oregon State). Bottom line: the world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero the prevent global warming. World would have to reduce emissions by 80% to limit c02 to 450 ppm by 2050.

It’s obvious “right about now”, 50 years after the fact, that what the world really needs is a Branson Prize style c02 removal system, as gigantic as that proposition is. Every country putting out a certain min. amount of c02 should pay for removal units based on their emissions and/or GDP. What would this cost-2% of world GDP, 5% ? Seeing as how “the green energy revolution”, if pushed to the max. , would be a boon to the world economy, take some of that extra generated wealth and put it into c02 removal. But besides this point, another inconvenient truth is who (or what) really cares economic issues except humans anyway ? Nothing else on the planet gives a halibut about this item. Look at the minor required cost as the real price of doing business on modern planet earth.

Brian H.
Did you also read the whole article?…
I guess you missed something:

“The website DailyTech has an article citing this blog entry as a reference, and their story got picked up by the Drudge report, resulting in a wide distribution. In the DailyTech article there is a paragraph:

“Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.”

I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine: “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”

There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.”

Regards

Idea for your next blog post.
the cost of EV components with regard to projecting pricing of mass produced EVs. Some people have a hard time seeing past extreme prices like ACpropulsions 25k$ motor controller set and they feel EV components are inherently high priced. I think it could be very interesting for the world to hear your thoughts on how cheap we can expect motor, electronics and batteries to be in mass production. the small size of the tesla motor and current IGBT cost leads me to believe it can become very attractive pricewise. similarly batteries if you know something about that since they appear to be quite simple to make and raw materials in LiFePO4 can’t cost all that much

TEG-though Martin might like to have a wall-to-wall talk with Elon anyway, for exercise : ” well this planet ain’t big enough for the both of us, Pilgrim ! “. Speaking of a planet not being big enough, global warming fence-sitter Bob Lutz of GM should consider this: if the freeways were available in the required locations, he and a co-driver could get in a Pontiac Solstice and drive all the way around the world (getting fast food to save time, but of course) non-stop at 80 mph in 13 days-at the equator- maybe in 11 days at Detroit latitude. Or they could take a corp. jet at 520 mph or so and be back in 2 days-or like an hour and a half on the Space Shuttle. As Frank Nitti might have said :” Nice little planet we got here, wouldn’t want anything-more- to happen to it “.

Price rise in oil is supposedly tied to value of dollar-as dollar declines in value, oil producers just up their price to get the same dollar amount. Nice job there, if you can get it.

More on the chimpification of America from PBS’s Bill Moyer’s Reports. Item: massive waste & fraud in Iraq involving U.S. money- spending contolled by State Dept. Henry Waxman, Calif. congressman, had investigative committee-his investigation was impeded by Inspector General’s Office of State Dept. Condisleezy Rice stonewalled at every turn, claimed lack of knowledge even though she runs the State Dept. Waxman said, well-since you conveniently know nothing “then can we call specific employees of your dept. to try to get specific answers? ” She said yes-but only in closed door testimony. Which Waxman said is absurd because the American people can then never hear of what was said. Item: new U.S. embassy in Iraq now being built was given to a Kuwait construction firm-with no competitive bidding. It has so far cost $600 million, and now will cost a further projected $144 million, at least, before project will supposedly be complete. Kuwaiti firm (called ” First Kuwaiti”) has been using forced labor. It is by far most costly U.S embassy ever. By comparison, there is a new Mormon HQ/ office & conference center building covering an entire city block in Salt Lake City- finished about 6 years ago. It has the world’s largest indoor amphitheater space-with a gigantic span and a huge cantilevered balcony- looking like that alien senate building space in the Star Wars movie. This building is about 7 or 8 floors high, with roof gardens on the entire roof, and is totally (100 %) clad in granite. It cost $750 million. If built in Iraq it no doubt would have legitimately cost one third of that- or is it one fourth ? If built there with U.S. funds by First Kuwati it would have cost what $3 billion ? However, since the IRS / Fed Reserve act of 1913 the govt. has been able to skim money off of everyone working in this country with no real way for “us all” , at all, to control the spending of a vast amounts of it. Coincidentally, less than four years after the IRS act we entered Word War I- and the tax rate was increased, temporarily people were told at the time, to fund the war. But after the war this tax rate wasn’t in fact lowered. A short 23 years later the IRS act again came in handy to help fund WW II. According to “EH.Net Encyclopedia” website info. on WW II: “The number of Americans required to pay taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945. Americans who earned as little as $500 per year paid taxes at a 23% rate, those who earned $1 million or more paid at a 94% rate. In 1940 the govt. extended income tax to virtually all Americans and began collecting tax via the now-familiar method of continuous withholding from paychecks, rather than lump-sum payments after the fact “. Uncle Sam-we’re a monkey’s nephews.

A while ago Ricardo Parker mentioned http://www.ted.com , an annual conference of leading people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design. The next one is in February 2009 in Long Beach, CA.

The site has a lot of videos of talks given at TED. My favorites so far are from the late great Paul MacCready, founder of Aerovironment where the prototype for the GM EV-1 was invented and developed; and James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA. Both talks include a lot of humor and great stories.

Another interesting talk is from Philippe Starck, a designer. He’s French with a strong accent, which requires some concentration to understand, but one of his points has given me a lot to think about. He starts out describing two of the most commonly used design approaches. One he calls cynical design, the use of design as a weapon to sell products by making them look sexy, etc. He characterizes it with the English word for “merde”.

Another approach he has little use for is the narcissistic approach: an egotistical designer designing only to please himself and other egotistical designers.

The approach he uses (heavily paraphrased) is to not concentrate on the object being designed (!) but on the experience of using it. To that end, he wants to find out as much as he can about the habits and culture of the people who will use the product.

I often say that engineering is not usually optimization; it’s mostly the elimination of faults. That doesn’t just mean function, but includes other parameters like the annoyance level in operation, the difficulty of developing proficiency of use, the clarity of the manual, etc. Software applications strongly illustrate those issues.

The http://www.google.com website is a great inspiration. It’s simple, non-irritating, easy on the eyes, and loads quickly. The fact that it’s fantastically fast and powerful is a bonus.

Cars are discussed in terms of styling, acceleration, economy, etc, but cherished more in terms of lack of annoying characteristics, an underlying concern for and anticipation of distractions from a feeling of well-being, and dependability. There’s an old saying that has an analogue with products: people will eventually forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Re. design architects above, James Stirling is lesser known-but he was a big “deconstructivist” kinda guy, ditto for Gehry, who took that and, after a while, added curves to it and his “buildings as sculpture” M.O.-the best of both worlds, potentially. Do a google image search on : James Stirling Leicester University Engineering Building. That building is neat, especially for 1959. So are Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel and Eero Saarinen TWA terminal. But Stirling was really mechanistic/decon.-later his stuff was more watered down- he lost the scent- otherwise he might have headed in Gehry’s direction.

Martin,

Another area where government can be a big help is in incentives. As most of you know, Martin is my brother. My wife and I bought our solar system six years ago, with a major upgrade tow years ago (more capacity).

In AZ the power company (APS) pays 50% of the cost including installation. And we got 3,000 in tax credits — twice (once for the original and once for the upgraded capacity). Little trick we learned if you can pull it off, put the system in in increments and get more tax credits.

Out out-of-pocket cost for a total of 7.6 KWH was just over 20k! Not bad, really, and not only do we save money, but the added value to our house likely exceeds the 20k.

A critical point to consider: since we rolled it in to our home financing, we save more than the additional financing (e.g. the increase in monthly payment is less than the savings in electricity, so even on a cash-flow basis this is a “good deal”). Martin often pays cash for things so he does not always consider the more typical and correct way to analyze the cost is on a “monthly payment” basis.

Our system has more capacity and had less cost than yours in the “green” state of CA … something wrong there. Actually I have read in my Solar News magazine that AZ is the best state in the union for subsidized solar power. Who would have thought?

Of course, we need it more here — we use a lot of power just for A/C (my next house I a planning now will have geo-thermal heat-pump for heating and cooling).

What I strongly agree with is that at a minimum we should have regulation requiring “solar-ready” as you pointed out, a huge part of the expense is in retro-fitting. We are very lucky in our case in that we were able to mount the panels and most of the inverter stuff on/in horse barns and wire with wall mounted conduit (no drywall/plaster or cosmetics to worry about) and this saved a ton of money. I was able to trench everything with a plow on my John Deere, also saving money (and charged the solar installer so I could get the 50% of that back as well ).

Another good regulatory move would be to require “net metering” which AZ did a few years ago. Instead of purchasing electricity at retail and selling it back at wholesale they just take the net amount of electricity on an annual basis and charge us the difference (with lots of games played on the monthly bill to “estimate” this). Before the switch to net billing we were close to energy neutral, but paid a lot of money anyway. With the change to net billing we pay “nothing” (they still hose us for hookup fee, state tax, federal tax, and who knows what other taxes and fees so the bill is never zero even though we are a net producer of energy).

I think everyone should send letters to their local a state represenatives demanding net billing, higher incentives, and solar-ready construction. I mail mine

Spyderman (Eric)

Over on the Tesla blog, Ze’ev said that the production line was “switched on” according to schedule, on March 17th, and that first deliveries are about “month away.” Sounds like you have 30 days to tweak that solar array, Martin, and then you can start putting it to its intended use.

Just a quick correction: The Tesla blog announced the start of production as today. But it was in the San Jose Mercury News, where I read a US arrival date of “about four weeks” later for cars begun today. The SJMN attributed that estimate to Darryl Siry. So if your P2 is late, Martin, go knocking on Darryl’s door!

A Subaru R1e cruises New York City:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/17/breaking-subaru-expanding-r1e-pilot-program-to-ny/

Here are links to the solar power plant projects:

The Solana concentrated solar power plant
http://www.aps.com/main/green/Solana/Technology.html looks very good, at a glance, for areas without many cloudy days. Storing energy by heating liquid salt, to use up to six hours later, is a very encouraging part of it. It’s still only a supporting system for a continuous duty plant, but that’s very valuable if the costs are reasonable.

The plant is Spain, http://www.solarpaces.org/Tasks/Task1/PS10.HTM looks different but is still concentrated solar and also very impressive.

Fantastic! I had a drive of a Cvette Stingray on the weekend, so I’m all up with driving on the wrong side now mate – now all I have to do is convince wifey it’s worth the trip over from NZ…

Steve- I don’t know the book you mention, but I’ve heard of Jencks somewhere-so maybe I saw book in the bookstore once. Frank and Spyderman- I agree with Spyder-” Spitzer Scmitzer” shouldn’t have been such a goody-two shoes prosecutor, but with the subject being legal, he wouldn’t have had anything to prosecute. As for “why Sptizer item / & being ‘off topic’ “-everything in this country is related, all the way down the line. If this country were sensible in all respects we’d have a lot more cash (and attention) to throw at other, important issues- for example, to throw at the global warming problem. I like to look at “the larger picture”-as large as possible, because in the end (talking of “synergy”) it is all related, to one degree or another. Steve-Starck looks like (but maybe not-I must look into him further) he looks at things as the bay area architect Joseph Esherick (and his mentor William Wurster) did-and I dig what these guys did too, as well as similar bay area types like MLTW (Moore, Turnbull, Lyndon, Whitaker)-check out a google image search on Sea Ranch Condominiums. These guys used a lot of wood (or, except MLTW, bare conc.)- Greene & Greene were famous for wood, wood and more wood, inside and out-with curved, molded ends -and like put together with pegs. Esherick also did the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Esherick & Wurster said: “find out what the needs of the users and client are (and the particulars of the site), involve them “in the process” at every step and do sensible buildings that “solve the problem” as opposed to works of art or monuments. This, however, “doesn’t leave much room for high drama”- “and/or man does not live by bread alone”. All buildings are is geometry (or sculpture-even a dumb box is)- guys like Gehry play up that part “for the thrill of the chase”. Esherick had fun by making it all “very sensible and understated”-but actually he threw in some drama too, just “non-monumental” type. If I were doing a Tesla commercial I’d play up the high design and action of the car, like with dramtic Ansel Adams type photography (except in color-or maybe black & white & color, where it morphs from Adams-like B & W photo into technicolor. Outdoor shots on the road, in nature (per the green nature of the car)-with maybe some lightning storm action too-per the Tesla elect. nature. Like: a green tesla in a pure, deep green forest, then the Thunder Gray Tesla along the coast-gray stormy day & all that: color, nature & action: the car’s colorful, natural (green tech.) and made for action. Maybe morph into some Andy Warhol type distorted, shimmering color as the car moves. Could also have urban shots: N.Y.C. snowstorm with white car. Could use Helio Castroneves-the Brazilian Dancing with the Stars race car driver-seeing as how both he and the car are cheerful, agile, colorful, bon vivante-whatever. Yes, I can see it now (JB): Adams meets Warhol meets Gore meets Thoreau meets Formula 1 meets carnival time in Rio. Now I must meet Starck, per google search.

Steve-further Tesla car commercial ideas: use the song “Up Around the Bend” by John Fogerty (ex-of El Cerrito High School, like Martin)-checkout the lyrics online: quite appropriate for views of Teslas zipping around corners with Helio at the wheel: British Racing Green Tesla would zip past a classic Jaguar XK-120 of same color on green english countryside road, silver Tesla would zip past a German Racing Silver ’30’s style Auto Union race car on German Nurenburg banked track, a whilte Tesla would be on a winding Swedish mountain road, after a big fresh snowfall, passing a white Volvo P-1800. – & etc. : the new tradition in sportscar style & tech. taking the torch from the old. At the end, Helio Castroneves ( Brazilnut F1 & Indy Champ- a guy with a racy, upbeat personality & image, to match the Tesla ) dances on the hood (soft shoe of course)- maybe with a spliced- in Ginger Rogers- while Fogerty stands by the rear deck finishing the song. No doubt Fogerty would have done a Tesla spot-he’s a big environmentalist- but with Martin no longer being there he’d say “forget it !” (he could identify with that situation per his fights with Fantasy Records owner chimp & his bandmates who turned on him). Re. Phillpe Starck, those brand name design guys got it made in the shade. He’s doing the design for Branson’s Virgin Galatic Spaceport building in N.M.-along with Foster & Assoc. of England. He’s got it easy- Foster has to contend with: building codes, building & zoning depts., consulting engineers, handicapped accessibility codes, and a whole lot of working drawings & details, planscheck review comments . Industrial design avoids such “inconvenient / tedious / unfun complications ” . I just heard where Tata Motors of India is getting together the cash to buy Land Rover & Jaguar from Ford. Ford blew that opportunity-you would think, given the SUV market, they could have turned Land Rover into a lower-cost hit. But here’s an example where American car companies blow it. When that Jaguar sedan with the vertical oval grille first came out and my brother saw it at the L.A. auto show, he liked the looks-different for a sedan. But when he sat in the car, the interior was the usual Detroit-style unispiring, too cramped for the size of the car, with a bulky center console. I agreed- the promise of the exterior didn’t match the interior. This is the same problem that the Pontiac Solstice has- on the outside it’s a zippy, very lightweight kind of retro-English feeling car. The car needs a wide-open, lightweight, lithe interior to match (Tesla-like) -instead it blows it like the Jaguar. Almost any car fan would have seen this right away and said “send it back to the interior design shop, the car is half-baked: if it goes out this way you’ll just give plenty of people a reason not to buy the car”. The ’50’s style Land Rover had the cache potential of the new retro Toyota FJ-which looks to be selling very well. Detroit follows thru on things in fits and starts. We could all make a ton of cash as design consultants telling them (not all the time, but often enough) the obvious of where they’re going wrong- But Noooo….

Latest issue of National Geographic Mag. has a photo off a low CD car by Mercedes Benz in a wind tunnel-based on low drag design of fish called a Boxfish- nice, funky looking little car, about size of the Mini-looks alot like the fish. Martin could start a design firm specializing in green design of all types (with offices on all continents-yes, Anarctica too) : industrial, product, building/interiors-mainly because (not) his initials are apropos: “see what Me can do for you” “products for you by Me” “why Me ?-why not?” “want to go green? ask Me”. Of course pure design firms are in a rarified atmosphere-very few hitting the big time. Picture online of Phillipe Starck’s Virgin Galactic Building design lacks one thing: where’s the solar (or wind) green power ? – don’t see it, unless its “horsehoe crab” shaped roof is actually covered with something like Nanosolar-could be.

Further reading on Foster + Partners Spaceport Bldg. shows no trace of Phillipe Starck-must be doing interiors only. Project description sez they wanted to max out the landform nature of the building-but they’re already tearing up the desert with a lot of runway, tarmac, parking area (and other support stuff?) – so I would say that a vertical view tower element, “landformy” like the low building, wouldn’t be non-apropos-it might even be cranelike-rising up with the occupants (floor tilting to remain level as it rises) only when takeoffs / flights / landings were in progress. Foster is o.k., but rather blah in his buildings- Frankie Gehry goes for more fun and looseness-per one of ” his latest”- via google image serach on: “Frank Gehry Hall Winery”. He put a bending wood plank lattice-like trellis over a big sprawling building ( so much of it that it looks like burlap in the model). He better seal that wood real good, even though in moderate Napa Valley climate. Don’t know if I would have totally max-ed out with the wood, seeing as how it’s chewing up a lot of trees-but it sure will be festive walking around under all of that. Foster’s building lacks the Gehry-like playfulness/festivity, so ultimately it’s nice-but on the typical Foster-like semi-blah side.

While Tesla has yet to show any design for the Whitestar, Th!nk cars has design for 5 seat car called “Ox” on its website. Website has job openings for various spots-descriptions in Norweign. Maybe since they’ve teamed up with GE they are headed towards being the Tesla / pure EV version GM Volt of Europe.

Spyderman- the first sentence of your last paragraph is on the money. But in the U.S. certain ” corp. / lobbying interests” continually seek to promote the opposite-and in fact promote the Chimpification of America. Here’s the latest example from tonight’s PBS Show “Now”. There is a chemical in soft plastics-used a lot in children’s toys and a lot of other things, like food wraps, perfumes, cosmetics-called Phthalates. EPA -funded research has shown it to cause hormonal problems. The European Union, following in part our own EPA research, has banned Phthalates for some years now-along with hundreds of other chemicals in the past 17 years. In those 17 years the U.S. has banned no new chemicals. The European Union follows what they call “the precautionary principle”-if something is having an effect on “the human system” they will not wait 30 years down the line in terms of people’s health to find out exactly what this means. This is a very good idea in light of the vast number of chemicals we are all exposed to-and the unknown possible interactions between all of them re. humans and animals. A guy named Robt. Shapiro has written a book called “Exposed” re. the chemical industry & this. San Francisco banned Phthalates and was immediately sued by The American Chemical Council and the Toy Industry Assoc. (kind of reminds us of the case of Detroit suing over the Calif. higher milage standards-yet another case of “the Chimpification of America” ). So then the State of Calif. banned Phthalates in toys too-as in: “touche, you turkeys !” . The chemical and toy industries claim that the costs of getting rid of Phthalates would “be too much”. However the toy industry in Europe found alternative chemicals, slightly more expensive perhaps, and is thriving-in fact in China all the plastic toy makers have two assembly lines, one-for Europe and other countries, like Japan- making soft plastic toys with chemicals shown (so far at least) to have no ill effects and another assembly line making Phthalate-laced toys for the U.S. – with up to 730 times the Phthalate percentage that the Europeans have determined to cause ill effects on the hormonal system. American chemical and toy industry lobbyists actually went to Europe and tried to get the European Union regulators to “go American” and get Chimpified-the Europeans told them to take a hike- and a long one, into the depths of the Black Forest. Shapiro said that since the European market is huge, they are now driving the environmental movement on this and other things (Germany’s great solar program is another example). Shapiro sez that as a result of being progressive, “real” and “non-Chimpifed” Europe is benefiting by driving innovation on progressive, 21st century alternatives to ” faulty business as usual, America Style”-and this is leading to economic benefits. Almost 10 years ago I found online the fact that Denmark had banned transfats in all foods. This is when I cut it out from my diet -cold. Even though the Danish eat a lot of cheese they have a very low rate of heart disease / clogged arteries. In other words, about 50 years ago by now the Danish saw some research, that you can bet your halibut the U.S. food industry knew of, and they “did the right thing”. Now, after all these years, “zero transfat” is now THE big U.S. rage-and yet Corp. America knew “it was a probelm” decades ago and yet foisted it on Chimpified America- for as long as they could possibly get away with it. Just as the tobacco industry has in the last few years, even, upped the nicotene content of cigarettes by up to 15%- yet doctors say nictone is similar in addictive properties to heroin. In fact, decades ago a tobacco co. (Brown and something-forget the other name) bred tobacco in South America specifically for higher nictone content, then they exported this strain to the U.S. to be grown here-on the sly basically. Big segments of Corp.. America has a “very nasty habit”-and that includes the banking system and the military-industrial complex and the media – of conning the halibut out of every one in this country that they can for as long as they can in the service of their own Chimpfiied interests and outlooks. One in 25 residents of New Orleans are now homeless- the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers knew the levees weren’t good for a category 4 or 5 hurricane-and they had definite plans to fix them-but all the money they had put in for went to the Chimp-driven phony lie of a war in Iraq. The term “neo-con” sure as cabbage fits per the second part of it-the first part too, for that matter: “the con goes on”. As for comment on the Kennedy trust funds-if they’ve got that much cash, good for them-seeing as how they are the best political family in U.S. history. Joe Kennedy II dropped out of congress (U.S. House or Reps.) to run a non-profit company providing heating oil to poor New England residents. RFK Jr. runs an environ. group called “Waterkeeper Alliance” and is a lawyer for NRDC environ. group. He and another author did a detailed study of voter fraud in Ohio (published in” Rolling Stone Mag.”) that showed that Kerry would have been pres. if not for that. Caroline Kennedy sure seems to be following the Google guy’s credo of “do no harm”. Teddy voted against the war in Iraq (one of the very few) and accurately predicted exactly what has happened since. 4000 U.S troops have been killed and 29,000 injured, some maimed for life, for the sake of point-blank lying criminals headed by Bush and Cheney. Would you want to risk getting killed or maimed as cannon fodder for the sake of the con foisted on us by those two (Vietnam era-draft dodging, no less) chimps? -Methinks, definitively , not. No U.S troops were in Vietnam under JFK-only military & govt. / CIA advisors. He told Sen. Smathers of Florida and his aide John Powers that he was getting the halibut out of Vietnam in ‘64 upon re-election. CIA head Allen Dulles, Dean Rusk and others were trying to con him into “going along with the con”-so he fired the criminal rat Dulles. JFK was the first casulty of the Vietnam war. RFK as on his way, no doubt about it, to being elected in ‘68- but “they” couldn’t have that, could they ? If he had lived he sure as halibut would have gotten out of the con called Vietnam by ‘69, as opposed to Nixon’s ‘74 date. This would have saved thousands of the 58,000 U.S. lives lost. Each one of those lives worth a lot more than LBJ’s chimp-driven life. If JFK and RFK were part of the “cabal con” they’d both still be around (along with MLK)-so the bottom line, which may be news to Chimpified America-which continually fails to “understand the concept”, no thanks to the controlled mass media. is: they were “one of us”. The Kennedys as a family definitely follow the Brin & Page credo of “do no harm” and add the credo: “do a lot of good and take no halibut” to it. However, the families (political, banking and otherwise) comprising the cabal “on the other side” (which also have so much more power and money and assets than the Kennedys that the Kennedys look like “alum. can- collecting- in- a- shopping -cart bums by comparison”) are so ,so far in the other direction that it isn’t even funny. If the rest of Chimpified America wants to be conned and manipulated by “these guys and corp. America”, be my guest, go ahead and don’t take the time to wise up to the facts – however, humans are supposed to be smarter than chimps, so, based on that theory, it might make sense to Get With It for a welcome change.

Some further info. on Kennedys and M.L.King. Almost exactly a year before King was killed he gave a speech on the Vietnam war that was so right on the money, for the time, it was incredible. Do a google search on “Martin Luther King and Vietnam war speech”-the first listing that comes up. JFK was almost killed in WWII, so “he knew something about wars” . He smelled a rat after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion ( pre-planned under Nixon & Eisenhower actually and foisted on JFK). Don’t know the particulars of what info. he found leading to the rat smell- but it looks like he then smelled the rat that was the Vietnam con-and was following the scent to its source. Of course he did have a trusted advisor, for one at least, in RFK, who was Atty. General. Since ” I was here at the time period in question” (as in: I saw JFK give a campaign speech in 1960 in New York when I was 10, and I was almost drafted in the last year of the Viet. war when my college deferment ended) I remember things like when rich kid RFK went to Mississppi for the first time, at the suggestion of MLK and others, to see the poverty first hand. He was shocked-he said : “we’ve got to do something about this”-and he allied himself closer with MLK and the concept of taking the stupid Viet. war expenditures and attacking “social problems” with it. The powers that be were looking at definitely 16 years of Kennedys in office (JFK, RFK-2 terms each), and quite possibly then 8 years of Teddy too. None of these guys could they control or con, at least in the long run. Add MLK to the team there was another guy who couldn’t be conned. The Kennedys -not including their father-were rich kids who didn’t use their money in military/industrial dealings (unlike the B

As a final aside (this won’t take long); do a Cached google search on: “Sargent Shriver and JFK phone call to Martin Luther king in jail”-which happened when he was running for president, at which point needless controversy is not exactly “desired”. Click on the first article (”Sleeping Beauties”, etc.)-scroll down till you find Sargent Shriver highlighted-and read on (Garth).

T.J. – You really should stay on your medication schedule and possibly take this diatribe to another blog where it might be more appreciated. An interesting discussion of solar panel installations and the pros and cons of the technology is where this discussion started and what you’re interrupting. Stop being the weird uncle that no one wants to invite to dinner because he scares the children.

Martin sez:

Be nice. Remember what’s-his-name, the commenter who wouldn’t be nice even after I pointed out that I get to moderate?

Steve -I agree with your comment re. Lotus Elise vs. Tesla- Elise has too many black plastic fins, “vents” all over, Batmobile- like. Colin Chapman would not have approved. Tesla looks really solid. But the Elise would be good if they cleaned up the design to emphasize the lightness, raciness of it. I always liked the old Lotus Europa of the late ’60’s early ’70’s. Very low and slab-like but something about it I liked. If I had Leno’s kind of garage and job I’d have one. I looked for more on Dietrich via google image search, don’t see much on his designs-except a nice Packard. I think Gordon Buehrig was great-designer for Duesenburg, Auburn/ Cord-he did the great boat-tail Auburn Speedster. E.L. Cord was like Lutz of GM-he saw the value of neat design in selling cars. Re. mid-engine designs-in the early ’60’s Ford had a really clean proposed mid-engine design, to be in and around the “normal” price range-think it was Ford II, or Mark II Mustang-or something- had a fin type roll bar-must look it up. Re. artists-yeah, Van Gogh, and Stevie Ray-he’s the one bluesey kind of guy I like. I’m more of “a sucker for melody” as Billy Joel said once. Also: Andy Warhol too-except I think he was on the trail of something but never took it far enough, to the next place-but don’t ask me what that would have looked like. Also, at the risk of being repetitive re. your comment on devotion re. artists-dare I say Gehry ? He said in an interview once ” Where other architects leave off I’m just getting started ” . For years before the general public ever heard of him I used to flag the pages of buildings he did in the architecture mags. He said “I’m obsessed with architecture”- but he also likes hockey, and managed to get married twice. You want to see a neat, and different (boy howdy !) pretty early Frankie building ?- Do a google image search on ” Fishdance restaurant, Japan-Frank Gehry” . The bronze colored building shape next to the fish is a stylized coiled snake.

TJ, you are ruining this blog. How about limiting the posts to once a day, and 100 words or less. I may speak for everyone here, you have stayed here WAY too long. Go to fox news or Bill Oriely’s blog. They love randon thoughts out of control.

Martin sez:

Yeah. it makes me realize that I am late in posting my next blog entry Marc and I gave a talk in Maui last week, and I want to post my PowerPoint slides – does anyone have a good idea about how to do this in an easy way that works with WordPress?

T.J., you’re absolutely right about Buehrig, who did a lot of Duesenberg work and the wonderful Auburn boat-tailed Speedster. We seem to have similar tastes in cars. Regarding music, I’m more of a harmony guy than melody. Feynman was neither; he concentrated on rhythm. It takes all kinds.

I found a video of a long interview with Gehry. He’s a very intelligent, articulate, friendly, witty, down-to-earth guy. He complained that clients often try to insist on having part of their buildings shaped like a fish, after he did several fish buildings. He seems to be quite successful and to be offered very impressive projects. Personally, I cringe at the thought of a building designed to look like an animal. I’m more of a serene, classical beauty guy and you seem to like unusual concepts and thumbing noses at convention. Again, it takes all kinds. But I’ve learned quite a bit about architecture from your posts and by following up on your suggestions.

It’s too bad you don’t have a high speed connection, because a lot of interesting documentaries, symposia, lectures and interviews, etc. are freely presented on video on the web, whereas despite Google’s efforts the same can’t be said for books.

As you suggested, I just skip by your political rants, but a friend brought something you posted recently to my attention:

——————————————————————————————————————————–

“Here’s the book to read for anyone interested in where “organized” communism, as in the U.S.S.R., really came from: “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution” by Anthony Sutton ,formerly of the Stanford Hoover Institute think tank- and so “a guy in a position to know”.”

And, “As a prelude, Czar Nicholas had to go-especially since he had allowed absolutely no bankers to operate in Russia.”

My friend, who has a PhD in Russian history, made this comment:

“It just isn’t true that Tsar Nicholas didn’t allow any bankers to operate in Russia. The Rothschilds, among others, had banking operations in Russia, and in fact provided a considerable amount of financial support for such projects as the Trans-Siberian RR. Nicholas and his ilk didn’t like bankers, of course, but like other Russian rulers he couldn’t do without them. I’ve read plenty of complaints about the influence the Rothschilds exerted in Russia while doing research on the Yalu Concessions business of the early 1900s (which led to the war against Japan) from the people who were trying to establish Russian dominance in Manchuria in that period. The complaints were mostly to the effect that Sergei Witte, the Russian finance minister, was in bed with the Rothschilds and other bankers. Also, I don’t know who Anthony Sutton is, but being a former affiliate of the Stanford Hoover Institution (not Institute) think tank, which is by the way a very right-wing outfit, would not necessarily make him “a guy in a position to know”. There are plenty of nut-cases associated with the Hoover Institution, like Thomas Sowell. (Here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution.)”

Personally, I follow the advice suggested by a paraphrase from the great Fran Lebowitz: “You might do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type, as regards politics.” But, everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do.

Ryan Loring wrote:
# I don’t know about T.J. ruining blog-no one else is posting much.

Well I backed off because the “signal to noise” ratio was getting too far out of whack.

T.J., The movie is Sketches of Frank Gehry, and it’s directed by the great Sidney Pollack, who is a long-time friend of Gehry. I’ve seen a trailer and clips from Charley Rose interviews and elsewhere, and it’s more than interesting enough for me to buy the DVD when I find it for sale. I’m still not a big fan of his playful sculpture approach (although he denies that description) to architecture, but I’m sure I’d enjoy the experience of seeing some of it in person, maybe the next time I’m in L.A.

By the way, I learned that Gehry is an avid practitioner of sailing, which scores a lot of points with me. I was never exposed to sailing a kid, but as a young adult I was invited by a friend and his wife for a sail on a little open sailboat. His dad had gotten drunk and bought it as a gift for his mom, who had no interest in it. My friends knew almost nothing about sailing, and were a danger to everything afloat, so I took it on myself to learn the theory and practice. I’ve spent years with planing dinghies, high speed catamarans and cruising keelboats. It’s a wonderful way to get tuned into nature, and it’s not even all that expensive if you don’t care about racing: the energy source is free.

Sailing ties strongly into electric cars, for me. In a cruising sailboat it’s wise and responsible to use the diesel engine to motor out of a harbor, because of all the unpredictable traffic. One of the very best moments in sailing is after you run up the sails, fill them and turn off the motor. The annoying racket is replaced by quiet, and you feel yourself propelled by a strong, silent force. It’s an almost spiritual experience. I get close to the same feeling in an electric car or Prius. Chris Paine, I think it was, talked about how people who drive hybrids almost always try to avoid having the gas engine start up, and it’s not for any reason of economy.

I very much appreciate the fact that you’re always a gentleman, even when responding to the offensive remarks of those who aren’t.

Tesla said that his car has been made and is on the way. Maybe a couple more weeks then we get to see it!

Your inclusion of your car in your roof-top solar analysis violates the very first principle of engineering economic analysis: all projects must justify themselves on their own merits, not “tie-ins” to other projects outside the analyzed project.

Adding a government subsidy is also a no-no. If I said, “I paid $20,000 for my system, but my brother likes solar, so he gave me $8000, so it really only cost me $12,000..” is skewing the analysis. What if the Calif government simply gave the additional subsidy directly to the manufacturer instead of you? That would encourage wider usage, but your calculations would be different.

Martin sez:

I would have installed the solar with or without the subsidy. But I disagree with your point about including the car in my consideration of our solar project. My objective was to reduce/eliminate my own carbon footprint. Rooftop solar PLUS an electric car does that for me, so long as I size the PV array appropriately. When analyzing a project, you MUST consider the inputs and outputs. Imagine trying to justify a sewer treatment facility, for example, without considering the houses that create the sewer in the first place! No sewage treatment plant would ever be justified…

I love reading about the Tesla and solar energy. Most of the conversation appears to be about investment and pay back on investment. There are ways to have solar energy without paying for installation, maintenance, or system. You can reserve a solar array for your property online at today’s rate…no cost. Your rate for your rental for the array is a flat rate for 25 years. You bypass rate increases by the utility companies and create your own clean solar energy power station. Most people are interested in clean energy but many don’t see how they can ever have it.

Anyone can enroll on the grid now. No cost. When it is time to install, the rate is based on the date of enrollment, not install. Basically, increases are avoided for 25 years.

Learn more at http://www.instantlysolar.com

Martin,

This new inverter tech looks pretty disruptive. http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/technical/1510-solar1-inverter.html

Can you comment on the use of this inverter in a car (or give them a hand?)

Steve S,
A first consideration would be roof angle and slope, hopefully not involving any tree shading. I don’t know how much leeway you have but orienting the roof and picking the best roof slope will help with output. (Typically aesthetics come first, but do what you can).

Some info here.
Here too

For my RangerEV there are “public” AvCon charge spots different places, ans some are 220, some 208. They can hook to a 480v 3 phase circuit and pull off 208 for charging. It makes the charging take a little longer but still works.

Some info here.

Steve S.,
I opted not to wait for the cheaper thin films either. It is great to see them coming, but from what I hear, manufacturers like Nanosolar are targeting large commercial installations first, so it could be a bit of a wait. Also, I was roof space limited as well, so lower efficiency doesn’t work out for me either. I heard there may be some downsides to the thin films such as unproven lifespan, and a tendency to drop more in output over time compared to traditional silicon based cells. If you have cells that lose a lot of function over time you have the added downside of needing to buy an overly large inverter at first to deal with the initial level of output when the cells are new. Maybe newer thin films address some of these concerns? I wasn’t willing to take the chance on something not yet proven in the long term.

My panels have been working great the past couple of years and have reduced my power bill to practically nothing.

This is really a great article. I think it is great for you to provide so much detail on what the heck the reality is with getting a solar system up on your roof, and what it provides to you. Thanks,
Adam

You malign the Prius wrongly. I paid ~$30,000 cash for the Prius with the maintenance plan, by cashing in a CD that returned $75 a month.

My fuel costs at the time were $600 a month, which dropped to $120 a month now. As I plow that $480 back into savings, I’ll save up ~$30,000 over 5 years. We’ll drive the Prius for 10 years, so the actual savings is probably much higher.

In exchange for a $75/month return on a CD, I’m driving a comfortable new car that fits 2 dogs, can handle a road trip or small Home Depot runs, and isn’t any worse than the truck which was our only 4-door (the porsche backseat isn’t even large enough for a large dog, let alone a human over the age of 5).

Let me see… I started with $30,000…. I end up with $30,000 in 5 years… I’m saving wear and tear on an older truck and an expensive-to-maintain sportscar and all I’m sacrificing is the $75 return on a CD… I’d say the Prius will pay for itself. But there wasn’t another $25-30k car that would have been acceptable (for one thing, we needed rear seat legroom for a 6′+ passenger, and we wouldn’t buy an SUV) – so, yeah, a Prius is expensive when compared to, say, a Geo Metro, if you want to compare apples to bananas.

Even if the cost/savings netted $0, we preferred to send our dollars to a Japanese company with American plants, fair employee wages and benefits, and America-friendly politics, rather than send them to a host of oil-producing countries that disdain America. We voted with our little tiny wallets in a sea of SUV-fueling wallets. We voted against foreign oil dependence, against woman-beating Saudis and gay-murdering Iranians and just plain amusingly nutty Venezuelan leaders. We voted to save oil for ambulances and race cars and military defense and buses and solar panel production, and to sip oil for a mere commute. We voted for ingenuity over brutality, and we voted for America – she of inadequate oil reserves, a voracious oil appetite, and sprawling suburbs – to evolve and stay strong. And it cost us, if gas prices stay low, $75 a month. It would have cost us more than that to “upgrade” to a cadillac or BMW or new porsche.

Martin sez:

But it is still only methadone: we need to break our oil addiction completely, and we need to do so as soon as we can. I think electric cars will allow us to do so eventually, and I am pushing us all to work toward that end. Until then, a Prius is fine, maybe even the best choice – a lot better than an SUV or a minivan if you can fit your family in it. (I am looking forward to the new Insight as well.)