You May Not Have Electricity This Winter

[JimH52]

Yup.

Fully automatic until they don't work at all and then the idiots who bought 'em and left them to fend for themselves need 'em.

But then it comes as a shock. I will grant that propane powered generators have a great maintenance advantage as propane doesn't go all gummy. But one also has to be sure the tanks don't leak and that there full. Most people aren't up to that much responsibility.

It's like buying yourself a dog when you're not willing to walk it, feed it, care for it.

The generator runs a test once a week. If there is a problem, the data will be forwarded to the company who will be holding the maintenance agreement, if you have one.

 

[HenryBHough]

What percentage of people who buy generators also buy a maintenance agreement?

My bet is it's in single digits.

I not long ago retired from volunteer work that involved maintaining two large backup power systems and a flock of solar systems. The 55 and 66 kVA systems got test run/test transferred weekly. Batteries on "maintainers"; oil and all filters changed regularly. I instructed a "responsible" person on how to do that stuff and six months later got called back when one of them wouldn't start automatically. The person who had been taught how to maintain them just didn't do it.

As to solar, I'm a big fan of it where it's appropriate. Mountaintop radio repeaters are great provided there are enough batteries to get through periods when there's ice or snow covering the panels - and that can be months. Wind machines, however, are a pig of a different odor. Moving parts to wear. Blades to ice and fly off. But in a warmer climate and with properly scheduled (and actually completed) maintenance? Yeah, worth the effort if the location warrants the expense.

 

[Silhouette]

What percentage of people who buy generators also buy a maintenance agreement?

My bet is it's in single digits.

I not long ago retired from volunteer work that involved maintaining two large backup power systems and a flock of solar systems. The 55 and 66 kVA systems got test run/test transferred weekly. Batteries on "maintainers"; oil and all filters changed regularly. I instructed a "responsible" person on how to do that stuff and six months later got called back when one of them wouldn't start automatically. The person who had been taught how to maintain them just didn't do it.

As to solar, I'm a big fan of it where it's appropriate. Mountaintop radio repeaters are great provided there are enough batteries to get through periods when there's ice or snow covering the panels - and that can be months. Wind machines, however, are a pig of a different odor. Moving parts to wear. Blades to ice and fly off. But in a warmer climate and with properly scheduled (and actually completed) maintenance? Yeah, worth the effort if the location warrants the expense.

How do you feel about the other kind of solar that runs steam turbines?

 

[HenryBHough]

How do you feel about the other kind of solar that runs steam turbines?

I have no experience with solar steam turbines. From the little I've seen of them I feel (FEEL) they are a whole lot of sound and fury signifying very little. Some are mechanically intense - moving mirrors - and that's a maintenance career for a bunch of people. Steam plumbing is not something to be taken lightly. I won't say they're not functional but I wouldn't put any money into such a system. Of course, at may age, I'm not likely to spend much on solar of any kind unless I (again) built a home in a location where the grid isn't available. Americans (like most humans) are avoiders when it comes to routine maintenance so that's something that any practical system needs to take into account. Simple and somewhat efficient works. Pushing for high efficiency at the expense of heavy maintenance results not just in cost but neglect and failure.

 

[Silhouette]

How do you feel about the other kind of solar that runs steam turbines?

I have no experience with solar steam turbines. From the little I've seen of them I feel (FEEL) they are a whole lot of sound and fury signifying very little. Some are mechanically intense - moving mirrors - and that's a maintenance career for a bunch of people. Steam plumbing is not something to be taken lightly. I won't say they're not functional but I wouldn't put any money into such a system. Of course, at may age, I'm not likely to spend much on solar of any kind unless I (again) built a home in a location where the grid isn't available. Americans (like most humans) are avoiders when it comes to routine maintenance so that's something that any practical system needs to take into account. Simple and somewhat efficient works. Pushing for high efficiency at the expense of heavy maintenance results not just in cost but neglect and failure.

But you DO have experience with steam turbines in general right? Because if you didn't, you'd be ignorant of the way that most of the United States and other countries get their centralized power.

What I hear you saying is "I'm going to be picky about where my steam comes from to run the generators that juice up America". Your contention is that mirrors are hard to keep clean? Seems like you've studied a bit more on solar thermal that you initially said you knew. "Steam plumbing is not something to be taken lightly"? Are you serious? As opposed to the "steam plumbing" in all other conventional power plants using coal and oil right now? The only type of steam plumbing not to be taken lightly I can think of is the radioactive steam plumbing used in nuclear water boilers.

Then you're saying "Americans won't take to some type of steam generation that requires routine maintenance". Do you think a coal steam plant the employees just flip a switch and go to sleep? The logic behind your rejection of solar thermal steam power is so thin that all one has to do is breathe on it and it evaporates into fine dust.

Keep trying.

 

[HenryBHough]

But you DO have experience with steam turbines in general right? Because if you didn't, you'd be ignorant of the way that most of the United States and other countries get their centralized power.

What I hear you saying is "I'm going to be picky about where my steam comes from to run the generators that juice up America". Your contention is that mirrors are hard to keep clean? Seems like you've studied a bit more on solar thermal that you initially said you knew. "Steam plumbing is not something to be taken lightly"? Are you serious? As opposed to the "steam plumbing" in all other conventional power plants using coal and oil right now? The only type of steam plumbing not to be taken lightly I can think of is the radioactive steam plumbing used in nuclear water boilers.

Then you're saying "Americans won't take to some type of steam generation that requires routine maintenance". Do you think a coal steam plant the employees just flip a switch and go to sleep? The logic behind your rejection of solar thermal steam power is so thin that all one has to do is breathe on it and it evaporates into fine dust.

Keep trying.

Keep on believing and invest all your money in steam technology to generate electricity.

I really don't give a shit about steam-punk electricity. If somebody wants to invest in it then they deserve whatever they get.

I'm saying Americans DO NOT take care of things and the result is failure. Hey, if it floats your boat, build complexity into systems to your heart's content.
Now those evil capitalists (I'm channeling you here) who run industrial scale power plants do pay people to maintain stuff. Sometimes they actually do what they get paid to do. But their pay contributes to the cost of the electricity produced. Keep it simple and easy to maintain and prices will moderate. Do it with maximum complexity and costs will soar. But you'd like that.

 

[Silhouette]

Keep on believing and invest all your money in steam technology to generate electricity.

I really don't give a shit about steam-punk electricity. If somebody wants to invest in it then they deserve whatever they get.

I'm saying Americans DO NOT take care of things and the result is failure. Hey, if it floats your boat, build complexity into systems to your heart's content.
Now those evil capitalists (I'm channeling you here) who run industrial scale power plants do pay people to maintain stuff. Sometimes they actually do what they get paid to do. But their pay contributes to the cost of the electricity produced. Keep it simple and easy to maintain and prices will moderate. Do it with maximum complexity and costs will soar. But you'd like that.

Building complexity into a steam generator? They are the simplest forms of high output energy that we have bar none. You were just saying that solar thermal steam is "complex" when it is the simplest of all to harvest bar none. Now you're changing your story to "screw steam generators".. Really? You'd be pretty thankful for them if you had to live in any of the cities in the US since they all rely on them and have for numerous decades. I think we have the "steam powered turbine" thing down by now...lol..

 

[HenryBHough]

Keep on believing in steam punk electricity from sunshine with miles of exposed mechanical bits and pieces. Invest all your piggy bank contents in it! It's your BIG chance!

 

[Silhouette]

Keep on believing in steam punk electricity from sunshine with miles of exposed mechanical bits and pieces. Invest all your piggy bank contents in it! It's your BIG chance!

Gotta give you points for trying. I'd rather have miles of exposed simple-to-replace tubing than one nuclear plant using steam the same way solar thermal does. At least if it is damaged, repair doesn't include quarantining thousands of square miles for 240,000 years and apologizing to the rest of the downwind states and countries for the radiation plume that is falling out on their crops.

Yep. I'll take solar thermal steam over coal, oil or nuclear steam any day of the week. Of course the perfect system is a cogeneration system of solar thermal and natural gas taking turns boiling water. You have 200 days a year of sunshine, that's 200 days stockholders can celebrate charging the same rates and paying nothing for fuel.

Why fight it?

 

[HenryBHough]

Fight it?

Nay, invest in it! Grab every penny from your little piggy bank and buy stock in steam punk electrical generation before it goes the way of Solyndra. Better hurry.....

 

[Silhouette]

Fight it?

Nay, invest in it! Grab every penny from your little piggy bank and buy stock in steam punk electrical generation before it goes the way of Solyndra. Better hurry.....

Solyndra? Wasn't that the one that Chevron helped "engineer" [to fail] so that people wouldn't figure out how easy it is to make steam the linear way?

 

[HenryBHough]

What? Blogging instead of rushing out to buy into steam punk electricity? Have you no sense of the future? Or just no money to put where that thing that passes for a mouth is?

 

[Silhouette]

What? Blogging instead of rushing out to buy into steam punk electricity? Have you no sense of the future? Or just no money to put where that thing that passes for a mouth is?

Sounds like we have a smudgy carbon-mining stockholder on our hands with his undies in a bunch about a new [old] way to harvest steam that doesn't involve him getting rich..lol

Speaking of investing, you should switch your coal mine shares over for solar thermal cogeneration steam plants. You're going to have to sooner than later. Might as well be right now..

 

[HenryBHough]

OK.

Understood. Yer flat broke and the ObamaEBTcard can't be used to guy steampumk stock.

Hard cheese, that.

 

[Silhouette]

OK.

Understood. Yer flat broke and the ObamaEBTcard can't be used to guy steampumk stock.

Hard cheese, that.

Not on welfare bro. Don't get foodstamps. I feed myself and my family. Most of the meat I eat I butchered myself.

I just have a sensibility and you are intellectually dishonest. That's what makes you stoop to ad hominem when I bring up how steam is steam and people should be getting it the cheapest and safest way possible: from concentrated sunshine. If every carbon plant had a solar thermal array producing power every day the sun shone, stockholders in those companies would see their shares start to soar in value. Imagine the quarterly reports: Hey folks, we didn't have a outlay for fuel for 210 days last year! Enjoy this year's dividends!

 

[1776]

We are already operating on the edge for capacity during winter and summer surge periods so any cuts to capacity by Obama to "save the planet" is insane.

But it wouldn't shock me the socialists in charge don't mind if a couple million die off to "save the planet." They are always talking about population control and the US consuming too much of everything.

 

[Silhouette]

We are already operating on the edge for capacity during winter and summer surge periods so any cuts to capacity by Obama to "save the planet" is insane.

But it wouldn't shock me the socialists in charge don't mind if a couple million die off to "save the planet." They are always talking about population control and the US consuming too much of everything.

With solar thermal steam you don't "cut" any energy production! You augment it. Spin away.

 

[1776]

Asswipe....it takes electricity to move that electricity.....yes you are that fucking stupid.

Oh, how well does solar power work in the cloudy winter months???

With solar thermal steam you don't "cut" any energy production! You augment it. Spin away.

 

[Silhouette]

Asswipe....it takes electricity to move that electricity.....yes you are that fucking stupid.

Oh, how well does solar power work in the cloudy winter months???

With solar thermal steam you don't "cut" any energy production! You augment it. Spin away.

In the dead of Winter in the far far north, solar thermal still works great on sunny days. On sunny days. On sunny days. You don't isolate and talk about "what about this or that day in Winter that is cloudy?" You talk about cogeneration with existing plants in numbers of sunny days per year in energy saved. Stop playing dumb.

Here's the youtube again. Note the position of the sun low in the sky and the snow all around in the dead of Winter in Lithuania:

 

[Silhouette]

Suddenly it got quiet...

The moral of the story is "don't be a steam-bigot"