Just in case you wanted to know

[LowGear]

ADD?

I'm not the only person on this site.  Whew.  So, you folks want to go back to the incompetent corporate model or continue to slowly admit that you don't read or have any greater attention span than I do? 

I wonder if there is any correlation between being regulation challenged and being interested in these Energy Alternative concepts?

Casey

[Fat Charlie]

"Start thinking with your hearts and minds!  Stop thinking with your dick and balls!  The sooner we stop hogging the energy wagon the sooner we can bring our troops home from the Middle East."  Pretty good, Huh?

Nah, waving the flag only works to sell crap, not to get people to give anything up.  Look at the wars: lots of flag waving, but nobody has to do anything to pay for them except borrow money from China.  Mentioning the troops works even less.  Most people don't even know anyone who's been sent over there, much less have a family member who has gone.  Not knowing any troops, they're relegated to being some abstract idea, not really people.  Soldiers are useful for selling cheap crap from China with a flag stuck somewhere on the box.  They aren't useful for inspiring sacrifice or even a sense of shared purpose, because to most people they aren't actual people.

I'm a big fan of efficiency.  It's a great thing for personal or corporate priorities, but it's getting critical for national and distribution priorities.  The folks trying to keep the (what passes for a) grid up are seeing growth that can't be supplied. 

Carbon taxes and cap & trade have been declared unamerican by the corporate lobby mainstream media American People, and the electric supply is "regulated" by every Tom, Dick and Harry who got the nod from some brother-in-law down at the statehouse once, so energy use can't be restricted by simply making it cost more today (by accounting for tomorrow's cost of suddenly not having any energy or clean air/water).  So how can the grid watchers protect the future of the grid?  By requiring that the crap we buy be more efficient. 

I'm okay with that.  I'm okay with gas mileage requirements.  I'm okay with California's efficiency requirements for TVs.  I'm okay with efficiency requirements for motors.  Come to think of it, I'm okay with cogeneration, too.  Some of those regulators ought to think about encouraging its spread. 

No info on a break even point or percentage of efficiency increase. (that I could figure out anyway)

What's the break even point of these motors?  Availability.  It's not a lifestyle choice, it's just what a new electric motor will be.  Eventually the older motors will phase out of service, replaced by these newer ones.  But...

It reminds me of a column Pat Bedard wrote in Car & Driver back when I was in high school.  He was looking at the latest tightening of car emissions requirements and looked at the costs involved.  He looked at the reality of the US automobile fleet and concluded that we could clean more air faster at a lower cost by using mobile emissions checkpoints.  Anyone whose car failed current (before the latest restriction he was writing about) emissions requirements would have that car impounded and crushed, and would be given on the spot a new $40,000 Cadillac Somethingorother.  I've been through a lot since the 1980s and C&D's website doesn't seem to archive columns from that long ago, so I don't have that many juicy details- even the Cadillac model he proposed.  What I did retain was his central argument- that incremental increases in efficiency weren't as effective in reducing pollution as removal of the clunkers.  Making todays new cars a smidgen of a percent cleaner than last year's at a cost of X dollars each removed less pollution from the mix than simply removing a beater at a cost of $40k. 

The main difference between Bedard's proposal and government policy, I suppose, was that the incremental tightening had its cost borne by the industry and new car buyers, while the Cadillac giveaway would have been borne by taxpayers.  Obviously a Caddy wouldn't have been required by such a program (your 10 year old smoggy compact can be replaced by a current model year compact), but Bedard's point was clear:  For every dollar spent, a greater impact can be made my removing inefficient machines than by simply increasing the required efficiency of machines produced in the future.

I haven't followed the history of electric motor efficiency regulation, but the article mentions this reg as a step past a 1992 reg.  Increasing design requirements every 18 years doesn't seem too hard for industry or customers to bear.  Since they don't seem to be tightening requirements every year, a swapout program here probably won't be as effective as one for cars would have been. 

[LowGear]

Let's see.  How long would it take me to get my 92 SVX running so bad that it  had to be replaced by a WRX?  How long does it take to stick a bottle of tranny fluid in the fuel tank when filling up?  Or an accidental gallon of diesel.

I know the air in Seattle sure seems nicer now than it did 30 years ago.

Casey

[mobile_bob]

the air is cleaner here in the seattle area because the economy is so bad, there are far fewer cars, trucks, trains and ships
moving freight in and out of the area,  it is a huge difference over that of just 2 or 3 years ago.

just wait, when and if the economy rolls back up again, the air quality issues will return.  i remember seeing the brownish yellow haze of smog
on I-5 as late as the last half of 2007.

bob g

[Fat Charlie]

Yeah, less traffic is one bright side of a recession.

[highwater]

Found the following while I was looking for the motor replacement/repair/rewind guidelines that I had previously mentioned.


sounds like something heard around here.

The Systems Approach
A "systems approach" seeks to increase the efficiency of electric motor systems by shifting the focus from individual components and functions to total system performance (see Figure 1). When applying the systems approach process system design and manufacturing best practices seek to optimize performance in the entire process system, and then on selecting components and control strategies which best match the new, reduced process load. The steps involved in accomplishing a system optimization would involve: characterizing the process load requirements; minimizing distribution losses; matching the driven equipment to load requirements; controlling the process load in the most optimal manner considering all cycles of the process load; and properly matching the motor and drive to each other as well as the load.



http://www1.eere.energy.gov/industry/bestpractices/us_industrial_motor_driven.html


Randall

[highwater]

Ok.....I'm done gonna shutup about this.

This is close to what I was looking to find.

repair or replace
http://web.applied.com/base.cfm?page_id=4303

Randall