De kosten van airconditioning zijn vrij hoog. Niet alleen het apparaat maar ook de energie. Hieronder een simpele oplossing : koppel een 12 volt ventilator aan een zonnepaneel. Niet zeer innovatief, maar wel effectief. Heeft u interesse dan kunt u altijd een email sturen naar info@greencheck.nl
Salderen en Energiebelasting zijn hot topics. Henri Bontebal schreef een analyse van de mogelijke effecten van wetswijzigingen tav deze voor de schatkist belangrijke belasting. Het wordt snel duidelijk dat het ontbrekene van goede gegevens en een helder beeld tav economische effecten een duidelijke conclusie lastig maken.
Henri beschrijft dat in ons regeerakkoord een verkapte feed-in maatregel is afgesproken. Deze zegt dat lokale stroom productie en leverings intitiatieven minder energie belasting zal hoeven betalen tov de gemiddelde afnemer. Net als bij het feed-in tarief gaan zo de energiekosten voor de niet lokaal duurzame opwekker omhoog.
"..Invoering van een verlaagd tarief in de eerste schijf van de energiebelasting op elektriciteit die afkomstig is van coöperaties van particuliere kleinverbruikers, aan deze verbruikers geleverd wordt en in hun nabijheid is opgewekt. Deze wordt lastenneutraal gefinancierd door een generieke verhoging van het reguliere tarief in de eerste schijf van de energiebelasting."
Volgens ons wordt de energie belasting en teruglever discussie verkeerd gevoerd. De verschillende motivaties om een issue te maken van deze belasting zijn 1. De cashflow door de banken 2. De inkomsten van het rijk. De eerste categorie is niet irrelevant, een grote factor in de Nederlandse politiek gaat over geldstromen die beheerd worden door mensen die daarvan leven. Maar als we op de tweede factor focussen dan werpt zich een vraag op : Zijn de onkomsten uit energiebelasting van teruggeleverde stoom een inkomsten derving van het rijk? De redenering dat dan geen fossiele energie wordt verkocht en geassoscieerde belasting gewonnen gaat niet op, die fossiele energie zal ergens anders wel verkocht worden, zoals we zien met het ETS debackle. Misschien in een ander land dat wel, maar dan is er nog steeds geen analogie tussen die inkomsten en wat gedorven wordt.
Het rijk heeft recht op een deel van onze productiviteit, omdat het onze grenzen beschermt en allerlei verantwoordelijkheden neemt die ons leven veiliger en aangemamer maken. Energie is een productiemiddel, en om dit productie potentieel te bevorderen wordt meer belasting geheven over niet productief gebruik (verbruik) ivm productief verbruik. De burger betaalt meer voor de energie, en meer energiebelasting. Wordt dit geld over een gebruiker van fossiele energie geheven dan zal dit misschien/waarschijnlijk leiden tot minder gebruik van die energie ivm wanneer de belasting niet geheven werd. Het rijk kan dat geld dan zelf aan energie laten uitgeven door de instanties die het energie belasting geld ontvangen.
Hernieuwbare zonnepanelen energie is echter een totaal ander dier dan fossiele energie. Het ontstaat bij een cooperatie of burger op het dak, zonder aankondiging of economische afstemming. Dit is een zeer essentieel verschil dat niemand lijkt op te vallen. Stel in een afgelegen dorp wordt een windturbine van 10 MegaWatt geplaats. Plotseling is er voor duizenden euro’s stroom. Echter, niemand heeft geld om het te kopen, want dat wordt al gebruikt om alle andere transacties te regelen. Niemand heeft geld om de energie te kopen! De prijs verlagen tot bijna gratis blijkt een ramp, na een paar weken heeft de eigenaar van de turbine al het geld uit het dorp geslurpt. De kolenboer is ook failliet en vertrokken. Op een of andere manier moet het geld terugkomen, en men spreekt af dat de stroom dan maar gratis moet zijn.
De vraag is "Waar komt het geld vandaan dat men als belasting int". Als iemand een zonneinstallatie neerzet dan wordt de stroom door het (meest fossiele) energiebedrijf vergoed, de terugleververgoeding. Daar zit belasting en btw bij. Er wordt verondersteld dat het energiebedrijf deze stroom elders verkoopt,
Lots of times lights are on in the office or at home during the day. For one reason or another the ambient light is not enough, or you are deep inside a building or there is a requirement for certain amount of lux or lumen in the workspace. It is possible to use daylight to power your lights, especially with wattage LED, while also having light when it gets dark. The trick is to combine the input of a solar panel and an AC/DC converter so that de AC takes over from Solar when it gets dark.
We created below experimental setup. It has all elements needed, and works as advertised. The solar panel and the adapter provide 12 Volt to a balancer board, which then provides the power to the LED light source. The balancer board in it’s simplest design contains two diodes, that prevent current to run on the wrong direction.
During the day the solar panel produces power with a varable voltage. When this voltage rises above 12 Volt it shuts down the adaptor, because the current from the adaptor needs a voltage drop to flow. The current from the solar panel does not flow towards the adaptor because of the diode.
At night when the panel produces less power, it’s voltage drops to below 12 Volt and the adaptor can take over. Then no current flows to the panel because of the other diode. In the intermediary period between bright day and everning/night both the adaptor and the panel can deliver current. Because the panel voltage rises quickly if no current flows it takes the lead in delivering power. This setup guarantees the light will always be on.
Solar panels accumulate electrons like water blown up a ramp by a wind (of photons), if you allow current to flow the voltage drops to where the new electrons added by the ‘wind’ balance those removed by the current flow
This hypersimple setup means you don’t pay for an inverter nor batteries, yet you use the full capacity of the pane (which always only works during the day). An advanced control system is not hard to develop, what it does is give insight into where your power comes from by measuring the current from the panel and from the AC/DC adaptor.
Use of daylight and solar panels have subsidies in some countries (Holland under the EIA arrangement and SDE+). This method allows to get a higher yield from solar panel investments because the extra cost and complexity of having an inverter and linking to the grid is circumvented. Want to know more please contact info@greencheck.nl
To augment this system one can add a battery, and increase the capacity of the battery bank as the savings from not having to pay the power bill come in. There is a limit to the usefullness of batteries however, because all power is assumed to be used at all times, at least it may be smart to design the system that way.
Banking is not ‘green’, this is obvious, the exception of one ‘sustainable’ bank or another doesn’t make a difference. We can explain it has two reasons, the first, environmentally banks don’t care. They live of cashflow and credit for any activity, whether it is drugs, wars, chemical plants, it’s all the same. The more profit the businesses they invest in make, the more people need credit. The second reason explains their preference for fossil fuels, which is that a fossil fuel based mechanized economy responds to our present type of credit, which is carbon credit, in a predictable way.
You give a guy money to buy a house, and because food, logistics, mining, manufacturing all depend on fossil feuls the guy can use the money to get his plan executed, hire people willing to work for the money, get the logistics companies to move the stuff. That all hinges on one big condition : The money buys fossil fuels. Try runnig a cab business accepting money that doesn’t buy gasoline. Money shifts fossil fuels around our globe, at least in the real economy part of it. Banks covet our dependence on that fuel as much as they covet our dependence on credit (money has to be in short supply).
The financial crisis is a strategy designed by the banking system to remain in control as fossil fuel supplies dwindle.
This system is coming apart because the basic desire for humans is not to be rich, but to survive. Contraty to the economic mythology the market is not the essential thing, it is production, ownership. Where economic interest will always try to distance us from what we need, so the intermediaries seem essential to our survival, our own instinct is to get things where we are. Many things have been made very hard for us to do, like owning property, selling energy, producing food, just so we become wage earners supporting the so called carboncredit economy. Now that fossil energy is dwindling this system has no answer but cut more credit, so less carbon is consumed. It has no answer to the crisis, the crisis is it’s survival strategy!
Money is a mobilizer if it promises a share of what people help produce
The growing cost of the banks trying to surivive is the waste of human potential in society. Money should not be originated, brought in circulation only to burn fossil fuels. This is something the banks have pushed increasing our fossil fuel dependence over many years. Instead money can simply be a promisory note, for instance "good for three potatos", and used to organize the planting of a potato field. As poeple trust the ‘potatomoney’ they work the field. Later when it is time to harves they know they will get three potatos for every note they own. The only way this is possible today would be potato futures, which would be done by a bank like JPMorgan Chase. While in principle the farmer needing the hands in planting can create that money. No reason why these notes could not be used between planting and harvest to pay for other things.
By the example above you can see that almost anyone with a viable plan could create their own money. This is the natural thing to happen. Words can mean money if one says "If you help me plant this field you get 3 potato’s each!". Banks always foment distrust for this type of situation, smearing it and reminding you of times it didn’t work out so well, because they live of that distrust, or rather, irrational fear of being cheated, as part of their deciet. You have to be confused and at a loss, and then the neat good looking bankers will ‘help’ you. They use you, and this use comes at an incredible cost.
Our idea of ‘saving the banks’ is the most generous handover of power to them in history
To break the control banking has on society and individuals they secrecy of banking needs to be lifted. Rather the whole franchise of lending out money based on fractional reserves or on valuated assets needs to be centralized in an utility type organization, so the whole financial system needs to be sacked, but that is a bit of a stretch for some. There is a good reason why a financial system is a labyrinthal casino, because as stated above it depends fundamentally on carbon cashflow which has a hard limit, the fossil fuel supply. An essential part of banking thus consists of losing money, dissapearing it, which as long as it increases control over assets is fine! Banks don’t need money, it is just a tool for them.
Instead of trying to make banks more honest we propose a new system, a hypertransparent system for transactions. Instead of securing the data of people doing transactions we propose to open them up 100%, in fact, the visibility of all transactions guarantees the integrity of the system. It consists of two parts:
1. The transaction log.
2. The observers
The transaction log processes entries done into it. It functions almost 100% like twitter does today. Twitter creates a publicly visible log of messages entered by the twitter user. There is no privacy against any internet user. Anyone can see the messages. The only difference is that in our case all messages are transactions.
The observers are all the users that can access the transaction log. Because they all can they can reconstruct the sequence of all transactions reported. In practice this means a user accesses the transaction log from a digital device with local storage and working memory. This means at any time many copies of the transaction log exist apart from the storage necessary to serve the log by the main site. The integrity/validity of the transactions in the log can be derived from them being reflected in the copies stored in the observer devices. A hologram of datepoints means no one person or even a group of people can ever create a false impression of certain transactions having taken place that where not originally fed into the transaction log. You know a transaction has to be 100% reflected by the observers or it is bogus.
Example Log:
> Pete sends three dimes to Hans
> Sally sends 40 dollars to Jurgen
> BASF sends 400 tons of salt to AKZO (order 1234)
> Frans sends $500 for 20 steel pipes
Each transaction is essentially both a contractual promise as the execution of a transfer of ownership of goods or services. The currencies like the $50 are not of the sender or the reciever, but of the country that creates them for the purpose of transactions. Therefore it must be clear what can be transacted in what currency, what backs it, what is the basis of a currency in use. This does complicates things a bit, but that complexity is not hidden at the cost of having an instabile unreliable economic and financial environment. The key notion is that credit is not extended to allocate carbon to consumers, but that currency is created to the measure of goods and services to be traded. Then it is a pure trading system, while right now banking is a covert energy distribution system. Credit is not created by banks, but by anyone that wants to trade what they have.
Uit een enquete van Eneco met 1005 deelnemers blijkt dat 39% een huis met zonnepanelen aantrekkelijker vindt dan een zonder. Wilt u uw huis verkopen dan vergroot u die kans dus als u panelen installeert.
Check SVN Duurzaamheidsleningen
Gelukkig valt het installeren van zonnepanelenen en andere duurzame maatregelen onder ‘woningverbetering’. Daardoor is het mee te nemen in de hypotheek, de rente is ook aftrekbaar. In veel gemeenten kunt u een duurzaamheidslening afsluiten, deze heeft een rente van 5% over 10 jaar voor een bedrag tot 7500,- Euro, waarvoor u een prima zonnesysteem kunt aanschaffen. Doordat het rendement van de panelen hoger is dan 5% betekent dit direct lagere lasten (al gaat het om een paar tientjes per maand). Naarmate de energie prijzen stijgen neemt uw voordeel toe!
U kunt ook gewoon een klein bedrag op uw hypotheek doen. Een verbouwing of dakvernieuwing kan ook mbv zonnepanelen, zoals dit project laat zien.
Heeft u hier interesse in dan kunt u contact met ons opnemen via info@greencheck.nl
Blow the image of a russion patent of 2006 on a horizontal axis wind heating device. Wind turbines that generate heat are game changers, they can be very cheap. The low tech challenge of generating heat from any torque source makes it hard to patent. Yet google ‘Joule machine’ and you’ll find that a 2006 paper on a vertical axis wind to heat generator is no longer available. With storms picking up due to climate change cold areas of our planet can do with some heat. We plan to build a demo this week of a VAWT wind to heat generator. If you want to be part of this process send us some cash 😉 We need about 3000 Euro for a full scale demo within a month. All contributors will be mentioned and share in 20% of the project revenues.
Earlier we shown our own design, apple’s ripoff and the study from singapore from 2006 that layed out how to calculate the power and yield of a vertical axis wind to heat generator. You could find that study by googling "Joule machine", but it seems it has been pulled.
Cave drawing of Vestas patented wind driven heat exchanger
A more interesting party to dive into this area is Vestas Wind Systems A/S, a major player in wind turbines. Yet Vestas patented a wind powered heat exchanger. Their [patent focusses on the heat exchanger, I guess it’s about driving fluid or gas through the exchanger where the friction will cause heat to be produced.
"The present invention relates to a wind turbine generator comprising a heat exchanger and a first and second cooling circuit for cooling a heat-generating source in the wind turbine generator, e.g. a gear-box or a generator. The invention also relates to heat exchanger for general purposes and a method for cooling a heat-generating source with such a heat exchanger."
In Holland the same thing happened as mentioned before, a company called Dutchrainmaker developed a wind powered cooling device, used to condense water out of the air. Of course at the same time it’s a heating device, because cooling always goes hand in hand with heating.
This technology can ruin the day of many gas companies. Where it’s windy in winter you don’t need gas anymore. Combined with heat storage f.i. using ammonia (split at high temperature and recombined using a cathalyst when the heat is needed) it may allow for all kinds of economic activity without to much cost. The technology could not be simpler. This may be a good way to fend of it’s implementation by the fossil interested/dependent banking system.
Random pulled cost decomposition of a wind turbine (source)
To build it yourself it’s easier to make a vertical version. This type of turbine is more stabile, costs less and is less noisy than horizontal axis turbines. The cost, vertical or horizontal, are a fraction of the present turbine cost. It requires no generator, gear box, control electronics, power connector, transformers etc. At the same time the yield in terms of heat is higher than when using electricity, although conversion of torque into electrical power is very efficient. With heat the losses (usually heat) are added wins. The cost of the mechanics of heat generation in a wind turbine can be low, as there are standard products like compressors that can do that job. Maybe the cost can be one third cheaper, and less complicated as well.
Wind heat generators don’t need gearboxes, or to turn at high speed.
To build a vertical version the designs are widely available, and most patents have expired. The biggest challenge is self starting, which a horizontal axis windturbine does at all times (unless it’s wrongly directed). The basic calculations of power and yield can be made using the Singapore paper. Some numbers on the heat generator are shown below.
The image shows the water tank in which the water is stirred by an impeller. The tank must also have breaks mounted to the side to slow the water down. The total friction of the water churning around is converted into heat, if it isn’t the axle of the impeller will speed up which reduces the power absorbed by the wind turbine. In this case the device has a radius of .5 meter, a height of 2 meter. The watertank is 270 liter.
The effect of stirring water can be observed in the abover simulation results. They show that over time, with the input of wind energy the temperature of the water rises. This hinges on good insulation, which should not be a problem. The temperature rises up to 50 degrees, but can go higher up to the boiling point. Apple proposes to drive a steam turbine with the steam, so in that case we would be talking super heated steam of up to 500 degrees. Of course these temperatures can only be reached under pressure. For home heating this is not necessary.
The variability makes it hard to confirm the output, but we can take this model and calculate that at the average speed of 7,5 m/s this would be between 50 and 290 Watts (ok wide berth). The power needed to heat 270 liter of water to 47 degrees (assuming no losses). The energy needed to heat 1 Kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius is 4184 Joule, so the power to heat 270 liter 47 degrees is 53044200 joules. The average output has to be about 294 Watt, which is higher than the assumed power in the wind. The model will probably have calculated no losses.
A wind driven heat pump can turn 1 kW of wind energy into 4 kW of heat
Of course the stirring tank method of wind to heat conversion could be complemented with a wind driven heat pump. There is a big difference, because a heat pump creates a temperature differential, while the tank shown above always heats up. The heatpump method means you can reach higher temperatures quicker, provided you have a reserve of heat you can ‘upgrade’. Then the effecto of 1 kW wind energy input can be 4 kW heat, according to the COP of the heatpump.
This type of device can be build with light resources, so sails instead of hard rotors. It comes down to the torque that can be transferred to the axle. Enfin.. wordt vervolgd..
We are going through an economic crisis, the UK just got downgraded. The word crisis is misleading because it suggests it will be over some time in the future. In fact we are seeing a transition from an economy cherishing it’s consumers to one that pickes a few consumers and puts the rest either to work or in poverty. It’s called a plutonomy, an elite economy. It is the only option if you don’t want to liberate everyone with renewables.
The economic crisis is a crisis of the belief system of economics, it’s delusional
Of course this is a process supported by one camp in a constant tug of war over the use and ownership of resources. It starts with control over resources, so France is in Mali, the US plans to be in Africa, the UK tried to get the Falklands (unsuccesfully). If you got fuel you can trade it for everything else, energy is the reason there is other stuff at all.
Economics doesn’t have another answer than cut back and hope people ignore the immense slaughter going on in terms of elderly unable to afford medicine, women driven into prostitution and crime etc. etc. We are told it’s because the people involved where greedy and deserved it, or that they are lazy anyway. People with entitlement arrangements. People already living on foodstamp rations. it is quite clear this means people die that would not have otherwise. Even in the most wealthy countries the elderly are put on trial and told to do with less. The reason is irrelevant, only by cutting back can the illusion be maintained that we could give more!
The way out is to do different things from what we do today. The mindset of the consumer is radically different from the mindset of the person that we use at the moment. We don’t need people that tell us it’s their right to have broadband, we need people that tell us we could do without money if we didn’t consume fossil fuels, if we produced more energy locally. The fossil fuel industry created massive areas where the sun and wind are only used for light and fresh air. Land is enormously unproductive. We have houses that for decades used massive amounts of gas, heat escaping through the roof to keep the money flowing. In the time that people burned wood houses would be better insulated, because you can burn wood only so fast or you’ll run out of trees.
Wgenknecht about the Goldman Sachs banking plutocracy.
Leaving this the way it is is unacceptable. The big misconception has three parts, One : Economics works. Two : The people that gave it to us feel they own it and want to take it back. Three : We have a choice. Economics doesn’t work in any way, the creators of the present organization of society don’t own it or have a right to destroy it again. We don’t have a choice.
The answer is to do more and do specific things we don’t do right now. But many people rather go back to their service job earning enough to be a consumer than focus on tasks that yield results. The difference is between people in a holiday camp and the organization. The mentality of life being a big party is maintained to make sure the people in the camp don’t associate with those running it, with the cleaners, the maintenance men.
The solution is ambiguous, because one could say we need to do more work, but at the same time we have renewable energy that can do work for us. You can own renewable energy, so if it does your work you don’t need to work. The whole reason we can have billions of useless consumers is that machines do so much work. This is also the reason some thing we don’t deserve it and it can be taken away from us : The owners of the machines misinterpret their machines productivity for their own.
So the answer is : People need to do more to directly take care of their own lives, and with the rise of renewables that burden can be shifted to machines. Or people should make sure they own the machines, land, factories and make sure there’s renewable energy to power them. Of course the big issue in the way is debt and banks. We don’t own most of what’s around us. Then there is ignorance on the options we have. But the basic building blocks for enduring wealth are widely advertized : Solar, wind, wave, geothermal. Insulation, agricultural science, robotics, semiconductor science. We only need to reorganize our activities.
Money is apart from a way to access fossil fuels an organizer of activity. We organize society by buying the goods and services it produces. We believe money is valuable which make us work for it. Right now money is drained from the economy to reduce consumption, at the same time some inflation is taking place. Both disable our ability to organize our activities. This paralysis is like a prison, and this is exactly what those managing the money want it to be. This is the effect those creating the plutonomy want to see.
There is a source of money we don’t yet aknowledge, a source that will have to be recognized at some point in the future, and that is renewable energy. Renewable energy sources produce energy, this energy needs to be traded to a user, the way to do this is for the owner of the source to sell credits, those credits are money. If you own a pizza place and you neighbour has solar panels (and storage), you can decide to buy KWh of electricity from him. You do that by trading his electricity credits for pizza credits (or a mix of other credits). At the time you need the electricity you pay the credits back to him and you can use the power. This is the way money works today, fundamentally linked to fossil energy.
Money gives access to fossil fuels, you pay for stuff so the producer can produce using fossil fuel. Therein lies the value of your money.
A town could function based on a large wind turbine and storage, with lots of activity. But all activity would be paced by the production of the wind turbine, nothing else. That limit would be clear in the amount of wind energy credits the turbine owner would sell (which could be the town council). Better still, if people in the town own the turbine, they could all get credits each month and use them to buy what they liked. The key is to understand productivity and (immediatley spendeable) money supply are linked, also in our present economy.
The transition from our current economic system to a better one exist in the recognition of local renewable energy credits. In the ability for every person to emit a credit. It consists of breaking down the banking franchise for creating credit based on the fossil fuel supply. Suddenly each person will be able to use all his/her abilities irrespective of what ‘the market’ desires. Suddenly local economies become fully viable and being more usefull once again means being more wealthy. Jobs don’t have to be created, you can create jobs by doing something of use to someone.
Of course there can be brands of credits, and quality control. Renewable energy is most valuable closest to the sources, this creates some complications and changes the nature of an economy because as more people own sources of energy. So wealth would be created in local communities rather than fall from the sky called the ‘global economy’. Qualtiy will be much more important in drawing outside interest. We written about it before, it seems ideally you’d end up in a world where no country or corporation can dominate, and there’s no reason to do so because energy will be abundant and wealth accesible by all. This sounds rather utopian I admit.
Jobs we need are jobs to get us there. Jobs that create renewable energy, jobs that teach us to detach from fossil fuels, jobs that teach us to deal with the changes. Farmers of land that is flooded due to climate change need to do something to be able to carry on, not leave their fields and hope stuff grows in the supermarket. It doesn’t! Our present government and economics is not interested in this scenario, it wants to create an elite that survives, because that’s easier and allows the power structure to continue to operate. It gives a high to be above the fray, to be part of this plutonomy. People like to aspire to it and associate with its cruelty. Better wake up and build the future.
We have written here before about the need for extraeconomical zones, zones that do climaterestorative activity without being part of global trade or interacting with the financial system. We currently have massive swaths of potential farmland and ocean lying fallow, because we have a carboncredit economy, and carbon is scarce. Releasing ourselves of the basic premise of economics, the maximalization of utilization of everything, is essential for our survival.
Maersk made $461 Billion in 2012 with logistics, obviously an enormous waste of energy, but excellent because trade is good for the economy
Recently for the first time mainstream media mentioned the End Permian Extinction in reference to our current predicament. We knew about this a few years back, it’s a matter of digging into the questions posed by our situation on the basis of a desire to live, to survive. At a certain point you come across the tale of the Siberian Traps vulcano’s increasing atmospheric CO2 triggering a chain of events that killed 95% of all life on earth, paving the way for dinosaurs. Millions of years of organic silence came between, at temperatures 12 degrees warmer than today.
The End Permian Extinction is about to be repeated, taking humanity to the grave
The world is trying but is basically inert to pleas for change, and the reason is simple : Economics. Supporters of economics will say "Everything works because of economics, and nothing without", so they agree with the fundamental responsibility of economics for our present predicament. No reason to be insulted or feel disrespect, it is everyday news how economic considerations kill more life around us, put more people in hardship and deplete more resources. Most of the time it is news of the dissapointment of mainly bankers that no longer see cashflows due to the economic activity. Economic activity is about finding resources and selling them in some form or another. Selling in the market keeps the market going, and economic parameters tell us how much selling is going on, how big the market is, and how much it ‘grows’.
Killing the destructive power of economics for a large part hinges on eliminating fossil fuel cashflow
Imagine that on an island all farmers one year decide to use their savings in gold to buy what is on the market, one that was vibrant the year before. They all decide to take a sabatical to spend more time with their kids. When harvest time comes they go to the market to use their gold to buy food, and all are dissapointed and all families on the island starve to death the next winter. Sad tale.
The market doesn’t supply itself. It needs suppliers.
Economics assumes that never happens, but it is happening. Our land is drying up, our oceans are depleted, our air is becoming more poisonous with ozone, our fuels are running out, and all we have is economics to tell us it is getting worse but we can still make the most of it with what we have.
If the well is running dry, you need to start digging, not drinking less.
If ten strong men from the first island put twenty weak men on a second island and make them farm like slaves, then of course this would be good for the economy. The market could be enriched with all kinds of crafts because the ten strong men would be kings on their island. They could even send their sons to fight to make sure the people on the second island remain weak. They could restrict the diet of the slaves, addict them to drugs, cause internal strife, and exploit that situation. That’s economics too. Few people know Stalin learned from the US how to run his gulags. They where slave manufacturing and a way to restrict consumption. They made perfect economic sense. Wonder why the prison system in the US is the biggest manufacturer?
Nixon turned farmers into slaves of the carboncredit system by ‘modernizing’ allowing corn to enter the food chain.
Don’t fall in the trap to ask an economist about this, they are bullshitters that don’t know they are fundamentally parasitic and proud of it. Ask them about the result and their responsibility (to which they will say either ‘we where wrong, that is human.’ or ‘You didn’t implement our ideas like we meant them.’). Bullshitters is what they are. The result is ghastly, unseltting fucking disasterous. We are on a trajectory towards mass extinction, is that enough to doubt them? Why didn’t anybody apply breaks on our behaviour? Because work means income means consumption means cashflow, and the people desiring cashflow control the market and hold everyone hostage : Do this game or you’ll get nothing. The second island is actually part of the first through wages and access control.
Your wages are your shackles, your supermarket your through. You can’t own, but you can work for money.
None of this will help humanity to survive, the point is it is a suicidal masochistic philosophy, which it has to be because it is meant to make the people on the second island believe there is no way out. Striving for what captures you makes you the slave. It is like a prisoner told by a fellow prisoner he will be let free if he is very polite, but actually its a lie and the advise is meant to make him an easy prisoner. "Oh, and hit yourself over the head every day, they respect such discipline!".
We where meant to enjoy working hard, but for the ones we love, not the ones we hate.
We don’t have a free market, because a free market would escape the current fatalistic trajectory. You can easily tell the market is not free by looking at investment behaviour of banks. You may wonder "But they respond to ROI and business cases". Yep. Wake up. For years investing in renewables has been ‘too risky’. It is still expensive and only possible if the renewable resources are well contained (offshore wind) extremely expensive (hydrodams) etc. you can simply apply economic rules to see what goes and what doesn’t. Not the openly stated rule, but the one that says "Maximizing resource utilisation". True, there is progress, but you’ll see this will disrupt economics as we know it. Renewables are a threat to resource dominance and depletion. They lead to resource ownership and replenishement, to recycling, independent growth. You can’t have growth independent of the central contract of economics, money. It is the wooden dagger in the heart of the vampire.
The effect of renewables is the introduction of productive power without ownership or cost
Say the farmers on the second island got smart, they build a wind turbine that supplied ammonia fuel (NH3) for mechanical tractors. They’d build silicon control systems to run the tractors and do everything else like sampling the soil, weeding, processing, etc, mechanically and using renewable fuels. Within no time they would live a life of abundance on their island. The ten strong men from the first island would still come to fetch the food and sell it to the market, but nobody would care, until maybe the twenty grew strong enough to take over. But one could wonder why they would. Meanwhile the new slaves would be on the first island, maybe without knowing it, toiling to buy their food in the market, not knowing they could be lazy farmers.
Renewables shifts the game to where it is no longer important to have a market, because the essential resource energy no longer needs to be secured from it. This is the bond of slavery, oil and money to buy oil. It is time to make this clear and tell the world renewables can free us from these bonds, they can allow us to farm, build, manufacture without having to go to anyone time and time again for the same thing, energy, so without a phylosophy that keeps us believing we are right in doing so, without economics.
The traders took over and can’t fix the drop in supply, reluctant to give power to producers.
To replace it we need a new Economics, what we call roboeconomics, which is about renewable based automation of essential farming and ecorestauration, and subsequently everything else we desire. The energy is available in extreme abundance, we don’t have to pay for it, we don’t have to work for it. Gulag days are over. The way to get there is by requiring maximum investment of resources into renewables, ecorestauration, automation of the same while keeping people alive, fed, comfortable but without respecting ‘the market’. The best way to do that is to start new economies, extraeconomic zones as we named them, smart second islands, until the power is there to integrate the second island approach in the first one, and get enough strong men to tilt the scales.
What if farmers used renewables to work and fertilize? They would produce free food, be able to ask any prize because they would not need anything from you.
This is a strategy for survival of the human race on Earth, it is a challenge with an enormous prize, life. It needs to be demonstrated as often as possible, which is best achieved by bringing renewables to manufacturers of essential goods first. By building fertilizer wind turbines, by reducing logistics and forcing banks to invest in energy sources (not biomass). By telling economist their metrics are signs of a suicidal pathology. "The economy shank the second quarter" "Wind threatens the nuclear industry"..GOOD
Update : Energiewende published an analysis in which it states : "Grids are cheaper than storage facilities." The paper explains that we have to go for the largest possible grid so that sources and demand will level out eventually. It assumes due to the lack of storage there will be surplusses up to 41 GW at times in 2030, free electricity, which one would have to transport over ever longer distance to sell, meaning you lose a lot on the way and have no real guarantee to sell. While advising against any investment in storage it is said storage would be necessary if renewable energy reached 70% of production. Why not start now then? Arguments cost cost cost, which is a bogus and does not take into account the real cost of the grid, which is more emissions over a longer period. If you where free to build for instance a SMES factory running on renewables the cost would be very low. In short, Agora Energiewende sucks.
Het electriciteits netwerk is duur, het kost vele miljarden om aan te leggen, het kost vele miljoenen om te onderhouden. In Nederland is het aaneengeregen uit deelnetten van de voormalige lokale energie bedrijven zoals Remu, Eneco etc. Er is een sterke lobby voor een Europees Smart Grid, oa met als doel het transport van zonnestroom uit de woestijn, Desertec (tot voor kort). Het net is een voorwaarde voor de internationale electriciteits markt, met als gevolg dat de lobby voor (ongeacht of het een goed idee is) genoeg geld heeft.
Smart grids zijn netwerken waar beter bekend is wat er doorheenstroomt. Een netwerk heeft geen opslagcapaciteit, er blijft geen stroom tussen uw lichtschakelaar en de lamp in het snoer zitten als u de lamp uitschakelt. Daardoor is het op peil houden van het voltage (voor u van 230 volt) een gevoelige kwestie. Zogauw iemand in uw buurt stroom gebruikt gaat het voltage voor u niets omlaag, en moet worden aangevuld. Als op grote schaal mensen de schakelaar omhalen moet ergens een centrale harder gaan draaien. Hoewel dit waar is heeft niemand echt inzicht in de ‘stabiliteit’ van het net en kan het ook als boeman gebruikt worden voor allerlei zaken.
Deze dynamiek wordt netjes verborgen, u krijgt geen informatie over de stroom variabiliteit/netzekerheid in uw wijk voor de komende 24 uur. In landen waar centrales niet stand by staan maar er bv. fossiel tekort is bestaan er wel schema’s,dwz tussen 12 uur ‘s nachts en 6 uur ‘s ochtends geen stroom. Soms zoals in landen als Pakistan is er een half uur geen stroom, zit je opeens alleen maar bij kaarslicht in het snel warmer wordende resaurant te eten. Deze gevoeligheid wordt momenteel gebruikt om zn. Combi opwekking (Kombikraftwerke) te promoten, dat is een combinatie van bv. Zon, wind en biomassa. Maar eigenlijk is dit een domme oplossing, met name bedoelt om de huidige complexiteit te behouden.
Energie wordt momenteel hoofdzakelijk opgeslagen in eenmalig bruikbare vorm, dus kolen, gas, uranium. In wezen zijn dit opslag media die permanent vernietigd worden bij gebruik. Er is dus opslag, maar deze wordt niet als zodanig erkend. Hoeveel kolen er ook klaarliggen een centrale heeft een eindige capaciteit, die ook afhankelijk is van de mogelijkheid om te koelen, dus in de zomer is deze lager dan in de winter. In wezen gedraagt ons energie systeem zich als een wegwerp batterij die langzaam leegraakt. Ook het aanvullen van de berg kolen of plas olie wordt op gegeven moment zo energie intensief dat het niet meer kan en dan is het afgelopen met de wegwerp batterij. Als de kolen op zijn kunnen de centrales worden afgedankt.
Het is zeker waar dat het eind voor kolen en gas nog niet in zicht is, maar er moet een existentiele beslissing worden gemaakt want door deze brandstoffen te gebruiken verzekeren we onze extinctie. De belangrijkste factor hierin is de vrijheid van de fossiele sector. Die mag doen en laten wat ze wil, voornamelijk omdat mensen er van afhankelijk zijn geworden. Voor de sector is het vanzelfsprekend door te gaan, voor de consument is het dat niet, want de consument snapt dat het anders moet en kan. Het opslaan van hernieuwbare energie is een sterke enabler voor een welvaart die niet meer zucht onder de fatalistische fossiele knoet.
Zon en wind en golven en geothermie zijn als een brandend vuur in een kolencentrale. Als je er slim mee omspringt kun je er je welvaart op baseren door er de zaken mee te produceren die het leven aangenaam maken. Deze bronnen zijn echter niet constant (hoewel golf en getijden energie zeer voorspelbaar zijn). Het is alsof de kolen met onzekere snelheid op de lopende band naar de oven worden geschept. Opslag van zonneenergie voor dat deze vrij komt vindt plaats in de zon. Windenergie is vaak opgeslagen in een warme oceaan of landmassa. Zo wordt er meestal niet over gedacht. Opslag van windenergie kan de praktisch bruikbare capaciteit van een windpark vergroten door stroom uit turbines en batterijen tegelijk vrij te laten komen. Stroom opslaan in turbines kan heel efficient in de turbine pilaren mbv zogenaamde Nikkel Waterstof batterijen. Deze zijn zeer duurzaam en met wat verbeteringen ook zeer efficient. Ze zijn jaren in de ruimte gebruikt omdat ze zo extreem betrouwbaar zijn.
Opslag is een krachtig concept tov het grid. Vergelijk het met een restaurant waar één ober langs 20 tafeltjes gaat en een warme maaltijd in een kleine stoof zet, zodat deze met alle anderen tegelijk gegeten kan worden, of een restaurant waar 20 obers de warme maaltijd tegelijk naar 20 tafels brengen. De optie met één ober is efficienter. Je kunt een windpark met een capaciteit van 50 MW een output geven van 80 MW als je in de stille uren 30 MW opslaat. De productiecapaciteit hoeft dus niet de piekvraag te zijn.
Oplaan van stroom is ook belangrijk omdat er nu steeds meer stroom en warmte thuis wordt geproduceerd. Het transport van stroom leidt tot verliezen, vooral op het laagspannings stuk. Een accu in elk huis ter groote van een wasmachine is genoeg voor een gemiddeld gezin. Dat kunnen lood accu’s zijn, die rijden tenslotte met 130 km/u overal rond. Het mogen ook nieuwere accu’s zijn of zeer oude zoals Edison Accu’s, die zeer stabiel zijn en waarvan de oudste meer dan 100 jaar is en nog prima werkt. Uw investering in een Edison Accu (zn. NickelIJzer) heeft u er na 8 jaar uit, en dan gaan ze nog jaren mee. Ze zijn bovendien alkalisch (geen zuur), produceren in het uiterste geval H2 maar zijn niet kapot te krijgen. Ze werden jaren in treinen gebruikt en van het ene versleten treinstel naar het nadere verhuist.
Opslaan kan in vele vormen, er wordt veel over Pumped Hydro geschreven, maar dat is echt geen slimme aanpak. Het is vooral een interessante aanpak vanwege de bouw en financiele component, het zou in Nederland veel werk vergen. Daarmee is niet gezegd dat het Markermeer niet een pumped hydro meer kan worden oid. Het is alleen nergens voor nodig.
CEAS ofwel Compressed Air Energy Storage is ook geen handige optie. Men vergeet te vertellen dat er bij het comprimeren van de lucht warmte vrijkomt (energie) die niet wordt opgeslagen, en later nodig is bij het vrij laten komen van de lucht. De turbines van een CEAS systeem hebben dus warmte nodig, en waar moet die vandaan komen? Kolen?
"During peak hours, the compressed air is released and heated, turning the turbines to create power when needed" (bron)
SMES is Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage, dwz je wekt een stroom op in een supergeleidende ring, die blijft door de ring stromen tot je hem gebruikt. Een beetje als een vliegwiel alleen dan zonder bewegende delen. Het verlies zit hem in het koel houden van de supergeleidende ring, verder lijkt dit een redelijk ideal systeem. Het kan best zijn dat als men dit in een granietformatie doet dit weinig koel energie verbruikt, en dus goed werkt.
SMES voor een kleine waterkrachcentrale in Duitsland (bron)
"Once the superconducting coil is charged, the current will not decay and the magnetic energy can be stored indefinitely." (bron)
SMES lijkt ook voor huishoudens of wijken een goede oplossing. De materialen zijn niet per se duur (ceramiek). Als er industriele toepassingen worden aangeprijst is het vaak ook een prima product voor thuis, alleen bestaat er dan economisch gezien al een markt die niet mag worden aangetast. SMES werd al in 1997 in vijf staten met een capaciteit van 30 MW in de VS toegepast. 100 MW SMES opslag is mogelijk. Het is na CEAS de makkelijkst op te schalen optie (volgens informatie uit 1997). Het is vele malen makkelijker een ondergrondse SMES opslag te regelen, dan een CEAS of Pumped Hydro installatie te bouwen.
SMES is op te schalen tot de GWh capaciteit, genoeg om een gemeenschap uren van stroom te voorzien. Er wordt gewerkt aan zn. HSMES, waarbij hoge temperatuur supergeleiders worden gebruikt, iets waar in 2003 door E.ON AG een demo van werd gebouwd. Hierover is verder weinig informatie te vinden.
Een belangrijke eigenschap van SMES is de hoge piekvermogen, dus het amperage dat direct beschikbaar is of opgenomen kan worden. Meer over SMES opslag hier.
Ultracaps
Ultracapacitors zijn weer een andere manier van stroom opslaan. Het zijn in wezen accu’s met extreem weinig accu vloeistof (redox medium) maar extreem grote electroden. De normale batterij reactie net vindt niet plaats, maar de lading wordt opgeslagen door het binden en herorienteren van de redox stoffen. Het omgekeerde is de Flow Battery die extreem veel accu vloeistof heeft ivm met de kleine electroden. Ultracapacitors zijn zeer goed in staat plotselingen enorme stromen op te wekken, en gaan bij goed gebruik zeer lang mee. Ze zijn goed te fabriceren met koolstof, plastic en eenvoudige battrij vloeistof en zouden dus goedkoper moeten worden. Ze zijn zonder dat we het door hebben al op vele plaatsen in gebruik, bv. ook in electrische auto’s voor het bufferen van de batterij output en rem input.
In het plaatje hierboven wordt de indruk gewekt dat ‘high power supercaps’ altijd een korte ontladingstijd hebben. Dat is niet waar, ze kunnen wel zeer snel ontladen, maar dit proces is zeer goed te beheersen, zodat de energie in een ultracap ook over dagen, weken of maanden benut kan worden. ‘Discharge time at rated power’ van een ultracap zondermeer is dus iets heel anders dan deze maat voor een apparaat dat van ultracaps gebruik maakt.
Op de korte termijn zijn er dus iig redelijke oplossingen voor het opslaan van electriciteit voor bedrijven en consumenten. De kosten moeten zeker omlaag, maar dat is niet zozeer een kwestie van tijd, maar van het toepassen van hernieuwbare energie. Een accurecycler werkend op hernieuwbare energie heeft lagere kosten (krimpende energie kosten) en maakt zo het bezit en onderhoud van accu’s goedkoper. Het ontwikkelen van een makkelijk recyclebare lood accu is mischien ook geen gek idee. De dingen slijten nauwelijks, alleen de electroden moeten worden terug gebracht in de oorspronkelijke vorm.
De meesten van de bovenstaande technieken dateren terug tot in de 70er jaren, de olie crisis
De vraag is wat nu slimmer is, dure grondstoffen en energie investeren in een grid, een netwerk, dat geen welvaart brengt zonder verbonden te zijn met centrales, dat stroom verdeelt op een manier die eigenlijk nergens voor nodig is, dat een groot deel van het budget van hernieuwbaar opslurpt, of opslag, accu’s of andere technologie, die een zeer robuust systeem creert met eindige kosten, overzichtelijk onderhoud en waar bovendien vele eenvoudige vakmensen een baan aan kunnen hebben? Zogauw u uw eigen stroom kunt opslaan en produceren en van het net afkan, zou u dat toch doen? Waarom dan die miljarden in een netwerk investeren waarvoor u blijft betalen? Is ‘Smart’ dan wel echt smart?
Update: A new Guardian piece is more alarming:
"Overall, global grain consumption has exceeded production in eight of the past 13 years. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 2o-40%"
A new study fairly asks :
"Can a collapse of civilisation be avoided" (source)
Last year the UN reported that 2013 would see a major food crisis. It’s 2013 now, so what’s up with food.The warnings where not half measure:
Global grain reserves hit critically low levels
Extreme weather means climate ‘is no longer reliable’
Rising food prices threaten disaster and unrest
"According to Brown, we are seeing the start of a food supply breakdown with a dash by speculators to "grab" millions of square miles of cheap farmland, the doubling of international food prices in a decade, and the dramatic rundown of countries’ food reserves." (source oct 2012)
"The geopolitics of food is fast overshadowing the geopolitics of oil."
So how will this pan out. It seems we are in a hologram again, just like our economic and financial hologram that gives no indication of the impending collapse, food is used up even as reserves run down.
"Global grain reserves tighten even as food prices fall" (source)
"The lower the stocks, that means any unexpected development creates more variability in the prices than would otherwise, ..This is what we have been witnessing over the last few years. I don’t think 2013/2014 will be that much different until we build up stocks to levels that the trade community feels are comfortable."
The financial hologram of our world contains assets that can be leveraged to create credit with which we buy fossil fuels to consume. It does not have any use for resources that disappear, except for insuring the risk with uncovered insurances. The US drought of 2012 made politicians push for more insurance, while it is clear you simply can’t replace crops if the entire climatic circumstances of a region change. The North Pole lost ice, it’s 12 degrees Celcius warmer there, the jetstreams changed and drought was a result. This year same story.
The general approach to global resouce collapse is reduction of demand. This is done by reducing the amount of money in circulation (under the name ‘financial crisis’), it is done by advising Austerity. Both do absolutely nothing to turn the trend.
This is the risk of a financialized economy, cashflow is king. Cashflow in trade hinges on absence of disruptions, and the biggest disruption would be the expectation of hunger. The effects of bad harvests are parked where we least notice it. We see rising prices for meat products. Beef prices should dip because of a global cull to deal with the bad 2012 harvest (cows eat mais), now prices are rising because even the smaller herds can not be fed.
"Prices for cattle have jumped by as much as 25% in the past two years as the nation’s herd dropped to its lowest level in six decades while foreign export demand boomed."
Don’t be fooled by the term ‘lowest’ above, it won’t go back up. It’s the same as reporting ‘record temperatures’, they are not records if they don’t get back down, they are simply the trend. The world is NOT dealing with the trend because we live in an economy that divides what is there amongst it’s participants.
Prices in food traded in dollars are already a problem for countries that need to earn those dollars but can’t, like Egypt and other countries in North Africa. Indirectly petrol prices have a large inpact on food prices and are influenced by the same US driven dollar inflation.
In general financial talk about resources will lose it’s meaning once scarcity becomes more serious. The World Bank already concluded it is useless to sell futures for food that doesn’t exist to push prices down, it may make food cheaper in the short run, but it will distorts the price signals that should drive farmers to produce more. Of course if harvests fail it doesn’t matter how much money is available to farm, and if the money no longer buys fossil fuels or those prices go up you’ll be shit out of luck. Sadly, economic laws about
Microinflation means you are able to pay a higher price because you originate the dollars, even though the price is not much higher. Because the US prints dollars and fossil fuels are sold in dollars, this also depletes dollar reserves, especially of poor countries.
Meanwhile, stealthily something is being done. East Africa is being developed truely agressively. We read about indiginous farmers being kicked of their land, truth is that area is taken over by ‘foreign investment’ and guess what that means. From the presentations for investors one can glean the states of the Horn of Africa basically stepped aside to hitch a ride. It is perhaps the biggest landgrab in recent history.
"Ethiopia is using one of Africa’s largest armies to help develop an economy that grew an average 8.7% over the past five years, according to the International Monetary Fund. The country operates a state-led development model that targets public and private investment in value-adding industries in order to diversify an economy in which agriculture accounts for 46 percent of total output." (source)
The secret is the aquifers under East Africa, apart from Oil. There are several, for instance below Lybia as well. One can easily green the entire Sahara with water from that ancient reserve.
Ghadaffi’s "Man Made River"
Ghadaffi should be credited here, not as a farty conspiracy theorist, but as a visionary who developed a huge pipe system to make the water under Lybia usable. He offered his best oil to the US, but the neat US and Europeans did not like his involvement and other terrible acts and cut him out. Now Lybia has oil and water, all it needs to boom. In terms of food production the produce from Lybia is still years away, and that of Ethiopia’s vast regions as well. If wars break out in Africa between Chinese, African and US interests then who knows how reliable that supply will be. Food is no use if it can’t reach you.
Once food becomes scarce the market may dry up. This happened when Russia pulled out because of bad wheat harvests recently. Prices may become more local, meaning the market fragments.
Long term any strategy involving resources that can be depleted will fail, it will be a temporary distraction, a waste of time. Sadly economics is all about wasting time, it is about consuming everything, our state is evidence for that. Never create, just bring stuff to the market. Feed the fire, burn the cash, be a trader. Sticking to this approach will see our atmosphere ultimatly becoming unbreathble, but that is when most life has already disappeared from our oceans and lands, an evolutionary reset, 4 milion years of peace. Right now we are still plowing full steam into this scenario.
The solution
There is a solution that can not be reached by looking for places where things are "still ok". That strategy of being a moveable feast, leaving scorched earth behind, won’t cut it. People with a shorter term mindset will try to sell it to you though. Don’t buy it! The solution lies in fighting the trends, but not in the usual way by looking in the market for solutions, because the market has a filter called the banking system, meaning any real solution to economic problems (problems good for carbon cashflow e.g. the economy) will be painfully expensive or unfinanceable. Example, the DutchRainmaker makes water from the air using wind. It is a simple product, it was ready for market at a price point of 10.000 Euro for a turbine providing several thousands of liters of water per day. Now it’s in development for a much more expensive size, not easily sold but much easier to financialize and leverage. It will not inhibit the development of the budding speculative water market!
Your methods of ecorestauration and climate change mitigation should not involve fossil fuels, to prevent the limiting effect of their availability. Use energy that’s already around!
Solutions consists of devices like the dutch rainmaker, it’s easy, buildable without fossil input, no need for carbon credit loans, why? You shouldn’t try to solve the climate problem by using the remaining carbon reserves, and why would you, the Sun provides many times more energy to do the work. The Sun can for the next centuries be the power source for carbon capture and storage, ecological restauration and many other eco restorative processes. In fact it will be, whether we are around or not, it happened several times before.
Big irrigation systems can be build with solar energy as much as with fossil fuel. Ammonia (NH3) is a perfect fuel for heavy machinery (behaves like diesel). So then it comes down to solar or wind driven production of this hydrogen carrier. Once the supply of fuel is secured using renewables, the building and construction of dams, canals and irrigation systems need never stop. While fossil fuel shortages push humanity towards ever more desperate situations, clean fuels like Ammonia allow harmless consolidation and strengthening of natural our support system.
Above a video of the Naga Foundation, about how simple trenches can increase water infiltration into the soil, resulting in irrigation and evaporation free water storage. A simple excavator running on biofuels, elecricity or ammonia can thus cause greening of massive stretches of land. This solution can also be applied in dry nothern Spain and for that matter dry US.
We should perhaps use the starting point of saying : Our foodbase is eroding due to climate change, how are we responding to it? Let’s get serious about what keeps us alive, and party when we improve our chances.