New Bicycle

Before I can offer an assessment on the stimulus package's energy related aspects, my inexperience with bills needs a lot more time. My general impression is that Mr. Obama is trying to put lipstick on the biggest bag of fecal matter ever passed in our history. Aside from its staggering size, the proportion of money spent on a sustainable future is pathetically low in relation to what is being spent on preserving the status quo which is sinking us. I really do hope I am wrong about this, and will have no problem admitting it if I am.

Meanwhile, I refer back to an earlier post concerning the benefits of the bicycle, in which I stated my hope in finding a replacement for the one that carried me around for 12 years. I've been 4 years without a decent bike, but now I can say at last that I have found that replacement, a 3-speed Earth Cruiser made by Jamis.

By right clicking on that link, it can be viewed in another window, where the graphic may then be clicked and resized for comparison with an example of a bicycle derived from Geocentric Design Code's cuboctahedral wheel, shown below. The Earth Cruiser represents another step toward that ideal, and in so doing, is closer than any bicycle available in approaching that ideal. In its variation from the simplified ideal shown, the Jamis' curviness suggests a kind of hydraulic potential.

And it feels hydraulic in its smooth, noiseless, fluid responsiveness  which greatly enhances a perfectly comfortable ride. The 3-speed is geared rather low, which means I can't fully take advantage of mild down slopes or following winds, but first gear has allowed me to negotiate terrain usually reserved for mountain bikes.

So far, I have only used it to commute, and for twice-a-week trips to the grocery store and other errands. I haven't gone on any extended treks yet, but I will give it a tentative approval as the best (current) individual transportation available by which to wheel into the future.

My Infrastructure Wish List

In case any one is following this blog, some good things that should be in the economic stimulus plan now being debated:

• Highways - All speed limit signs above 60 mph taken down immediately and replaced with signs of that top speed. Many in congress are complaining about the proposed $500 checks to workers who don't earn enough to pay taxes, and crying welfare even though it is only a one time giveaway. Whhaaa. If people are paying taxes, does that not signal they are doing relatively well? Thats how I always felt whenever I made big bucks. But OK, make the lowlifes (I am currently one of them) earn the $500 by each of them replacing one sign. This will take enough time for drivers to adjust to this initial slowing. Future plans for more slowing (5-10 mph all the way down the spectrum) should be made, the benefits of which are explained in previous posts.
• Interstates - New signs installed at every exit with these words: "Bicyclists Exit Here," i.e., Interstate shoulders are legalized for cyclists with the stated stipulation that prevents interference with motor vehicles. I believe California still does this. The last time I was out there, this accommodation worked fine, though I never saw anyone else taking advantage of it. 
• Highways and roads - All new construction or improvements include bikable shoulders or lanes.
• Fiber Optics Lines - Millions of miles of them. Many would call the 3 previous ideas regressive. With the internet, are we not transmitting ourselves, in increasingly fuller ways, at the speed of light? This more than compensates for speed reduction in real space.
  
• Amtrak - double the amount of rails to greatly expand the number of serviced destinations. Upgrade all stations to facilitate (un-disassembled) bicycle loading and off-loading.
• Micro Dams -  Fish friendly, in places with nearby needs for electricity.
• Existing Dams - For reservoirs behind dams that blocked normal fish migration, pile driving to facilitate floating aquatic farms.
• Bridges - at least one pilot bridge - for polar/rotational or diamond grid scenarios - employing the guidelines laid out in Geocentric Design Code.

For a stimulus plan that is relatively cheap, with everyone benefiting both long and short term, I believe the above will help our economic engine return to life, significantly in the direction of sustainability.

Getting There

Many of the futuristic energy visions I have expressed thus far - 

though sensible, balanced, and flexible - are very much at odds with 

the present state of things and against the momentum of our socio-

economic path, clash with the overwhelmingly predominant mythos, and 

threaten to disrupt lives. These visions can't be made reality 

overnight.

Before offering scenarios describing how these visions might best 

come to pass, I should explain where I'm coming from with regard to 

political and economic philosophy. I am mostly centrist but have both 

left and right wing sentiments in certain areas, so I am also an 

independent and progressive (excepting issues that have perversely 

slithered under that umbrella).

It would be wonderful if things could run without government 

interference, but realistically there has to be some owing to human 

nature - the same reason why the opposite extreme, communism, doesn't 

work. Market forces produce awesome material evolution, but the 

competition involved is often very destructive both to individual and 

the common good. I see cheers for "let-the-market decide" as a 

sanitized way of saying let money decide, or from a scriptural 

perspective - Let Mammon Rule. My response to money's unavoidable 

importance is that the marketplace should - in the spirit of our 

constitution's checks and balances - be checked by democratically run 

government.

In other words, government should shape the playing field according 

to a common denominator of social good and let the game be played 

with competent umpires.

So I now offer 2 examples of basic ways of proceeding to my favorite 

envisioned goals: a government and a non-government solution 

starting from our current situation.

First, I often hammer on the need to lower speed limits, because this 

will solve many problems at once: sprawl, accidents, road rage, fuel 

shortages, local and global pollution. During the recent high prices 

some people were beginning to slow down voluntarily to the already 

too-high limits. Thats good but not practical in really solving the 

problem because others won't go along. This is a circumstance for 

government action.

Of course, a sensible policy doesn't slam on the brakes. It might be 

tempting to dismiss people who would be disrupted most by this and 

say that lowering speed limits for those who have chosen to live far 

from work and who thereby gobble up far more than their share of 

limited oil resources, making fuel and food prices more expensive for 

others, a deserved punishment; even so, many in this circumstance 

have little choice, and there should be some advance notice and full 

implementation of speed reductions should be made firmly but 

gradually to allow people to make adjustments regarding how they go 

about their lives.

Another reason for a gradual slowing is that most cars on the road 

now are designed to reach their peak efficiency (relative to 

themselves) at the current high speeds. These cars should be allowed 

to roll out there lifetimes at their designed efficiencies, and 

during that time car companies can retool and make the transition 

smoothy. In the end, with the better mileage standards demanded of 

them, lowering speeds limits will help them immensely in producing 

such vehicles.

In the current economic stimulus package being debated, with 

infrastructure being a key component, soon would be a good time to 

begin implementing speed reductions - at the high and low extremes of 

the speed spectrum This promises to be quite literally "shovel ready" 

work that is relatively inexpensive for taxpayers. If infrastructure 

spending ends up including (speed of light) fiber-optic lines for an 

expansion of internet capabilities as proposed, I see the combined 

effect, when factoring in lower vehicular speeds, as one that can 

easily boast of being quite progressive as far as our society's 

notion of speed evolution goes.

My idea of a non-government solution lies in the realm of rooftop 

photovoltaic systems. It seems government-based solutions - tax 

incentives or big research - have thus far produced very limited 

results. The best way for PVs to become mainstream artifacts is for 

really well off people to go out and buy the best systems available. 

Every year they would buy an improved model like they now do with 

cars, and sell the slightly used one to the slightly less wealthy. 

PV manufacturers vie for this market with models more efficiently 

produced and PVs eventually trickle down to the common people so that 

a booming industry is established and every household has one.

Incentives? How about gratitude, patriotism and selfish independence?

Smart Contraction

A decade ago, concerns about the degraded aspects of sprawl spawned new calls for "Smart Growth." It sounded good then, but possibly owing to chance, I have seen little evidence of it in my travels during the last 10 years.

Instead, I have seen beautiful forests turned into developments that go by the names of what they have destroyed with huge ugly houses of the same tired design. In Florida, these plastered behemoths are great AC hogs, commuted to and from long distances solitarily in standard gas-guzzling RVs. Contrary to the great natural resource of the sunshine state, solar systems are a rare sight here, and though a thoughtful bygone governor (Lawton Chiles) made new state highway construction contingent on bikable shoulders, away from the beach resorts biking as transportation is also rare among the general populace.  

All this going in the opposite direction of prudence was enabled by speed. Now, after the big national swig of gasoline, the economy is slowing. To help get things  going again, it might seem counterintuitive (as in trying to manipulate a gyroscope) to lower speed limits. The imagined social contraction from such measures will be real as things will move slower until the extra time to get places is compensated for by a lateral spatial contraction that lowering speeds encourages; but I assert that the positive benefits of such measures far out weigh the negatives in achieving a better balance for a new economy with a better balance.

Many things in human social behavior have parallels to physical law, a circumstance which is not coincidental because, after all, life is to a large extent a response to these same fundamentals. Social contraction is no different as likened to the inward pull of gravity found in stellar interiors on its countless components, hyper-energetic as they are to migrate outward. Gravity counters this tendency and causes these components to operate in a denser environment where they tend to react more with each other. These (fusion) reactions produce new components of less total mass, but higher energy.

In a social contraction self (democratically) imposed by lowering speed limits,  the most obvious benefit is that fuel prices will tend to stay low. Without them, every breath of a seemingly imminent recovery is stopped by the same old speeding lurch that drives oil prices back upward which in turn dampens economic activity.  As the planet is not replenishing the supply of oil, signs of being in a very real trap couldn't be more apparent. Lowering speed limits not only mitigates this situation and borrows some time, but presents opportunities for some long due improvements as well.

One key opportunity found by lowering speed limits is that in the near term automakers will find it easier to reach the mileage goals increasingly demanded of them. Similarly in the long term,  automakers will be more able to advance new technologies such as battery powered vehicles. From their point of view, the bar is just to high for them to make these vehicles viable when they are burdened also with power needs for higher speeds. And the spatial contraction resulting from lowering speed limits means that these technologies don't have as crushing a burden for storing power in onboard batteries because distances required will shrink. 

The future of transportation depends on lowering speed limits across the entire spectrum - from neighborhood streets to Interstate highways.

Another opportunity resulting from the spatial contraction caused by lowering speeds  is for a long overdue revolution in design to take place. Since antiquity, shelter has been more or less a lateral endeavor, i.e., focus is overwhelmingly placed in outlooks that are  horizontal to the earth's surface, a circumstance at the foundation of sprawl. The advent of high-rises in the last century has only elevated that lateral consciousness into confined layers of cells. The problem with the lateral dimensions is that they are is limited.

To be sure, the lateral cannot be ignored - to do so would be anti-social. But it is easily within the realm of architectural design to place some emphasis on the infinite above, and to do so on mass scales with simple adjustments to the established norm of  virtual boxes long accustomed to. In this scenario, because people aren't living on top of each other, each person, by virtue of attention (whether conscious or subconscious) being shifted from the limited lateral, requires less of it and more people can live in a smaller (contracted) space more peaceably, and to fuller potentials.             

 

AD Adjustment

"The American Dream" is used in a lot of different ways. Its material aspect is embodied in a standard model of home ownership, namely a big house - with the foremost specification being a 2-car garage.

I believe home ownership is a worthy goal, but the big house paradigm consuming lots of land and energy to keep its internal climate perfect has got to change. Along with the integral specification, its realization for many,  and its want by many more, has resulted in an American nightmare:

Way too many cars on the road fouling air locally, regionally, and globally; road rage; farm and forest ravaging sprawl; general materialistic greed and envy; wars for limited fuel and awkward alliances with the world scene looking more like a barroom brawl; an economic engine so addicted to its huge momentum it smashes all kinds of ideals to keep it alive in the pursuit of lies, libation, and the pursuit of wealth. 

This is not a good model for others to follow. It doesn't have to be this way. The change required is not huge.

As it is a model that is in question, its  adjustment may be addressed  largely in the realm of design. The right design can actually lift consciousness away from the limited lateral to the infinite above to effect a reduction in the amount of space people strive for - without living on top of each other. This scenario implies compactness, but the same design balances cozy areas with airy spaces to give the home a feeling of spaciousness.  With the design having  simple unifying principles, a sense of community may be fostered when applied on aggregate scales. Size is retained by viewing a private outdoor garden area as the house's largest room. 

With the strong upward bias among this model's design principles, a more sublime sense of the earth on its grand journey can be achieved. In turn, this might calm the restlessness that makes it too easy to get in a car and go at the lamest excuse. So much travel and mobility can and should be assigned to the bicycle, and the same design - with its intrinsic geometry - harmoniously accommodates these most efficient movers ever devised.

As the house is a traveling entity in itself, its dynamism is largely powered by photovoltaic panels on a roof which - again with its design's upward bias  - faces the exact center of all sun positions throughout the year. For travel relative to the house, occupants' bicycles are handily unslotted for individual excursions, and for family outings, car pooling once or twice a week, etc. -  one motorized vehicle is quite sufficient.

I believe this new model will result in a greater quality of life for individuals, families, and society as a whole. Because it is scaled down materially, the truly worthy goal of home ownership will be attainable by more people more easily to jibe more with the greater American Dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Another Grand Solar Vision

This post is a continuation of the last, exploring the hypothetical of a massive employment of photovoltaics with numbers and calculations to glimpse both their present viability and future potential - along with some cautionary notes for comparison with today's predominant electricity generating schemes.

Again, I refer to a commentary on another blog discussing future goals in which I opined:

A better goal for 2050 would be for each of the planet's residents to receive half their power needs from 100 sq ft. of PV over their heads - area already provided by roofs, hopefully.

To clarify, "half of their power needs" means power required at places of residence. Residential electricity use, in California for example, is about a third of total electricity consumption - meaning half of that is about a sixth of the entire generating pie. The reason I specified "half" is because, for one, it seems reasonable goal-wise, and two, I like the idea of a citizenry having that kind of independence from the grid.

In that spirit, 100 sq ft seemed a reasonable round number for the average person - a 10 ft by 10 ft area. The total area of such photovoltaic roofs used by today's population would approximately be:

(100 sq.ft./person) X (7,000,000,000 people) X (1 sq.mi/27,878,400 sq.ft.) =  25,109 square miles = about the size of West Virginia.

So what would the average world citizen get with a hundred square feet of PV over their head, now? For an average solar insolation figure, wikipedia cites .25 kw/sq meter that seems to consider all factors except clouds. This number might be OK to use if one assumed that roofs optimally tilted would compensate for clouds. To be conservative, I will use .2 kw/sq meter as the average - taken from the line graph and map of actual measurements in the same article . 

For average PV efficiency in converting energy to electricity I use 15%, and 5% for the albedo factor of  reflectance (due mainly to PV's protective glass). With these numbers, power generated by a hundred square foot array is:

(.2 kw/sq meter) X (1 sq meter/10.76 sq ft) X (100 sq ft) X (.15 efficiency) X (1.0 - .05 albedo = .95 absorption) = .265 kw 

Monthly electricity generated would be:

.265 kw X 30 days X 24hr/day = 191 kwh

This could power:

160 w compact refrigerator - 116 kwh

160 w computer used 2 hours a day - 10 kwh

100 w box fan used 12 hours a day a third of the year - 12 kwh

1500 w microwave oven used 45 minutes a day - 34 kwh

900 w coffee maker used 15 minutes a day - 7 kwh

60 w light bulb used 4 hours a day - 7 kwh

15 w cfl used 4 hours a day - 2kwh

16 w small stereo system used 4 hours a day - 2kwh

Total: 190 kwh. This seems more than half of an individuals electricity requirements. True, heating, hot water, and AC is a big missing chunk but theoretically electricity required for them could be lessened or by using natural gas, fuel oil, and/or solar geothermal schemes. In view of this, and because PV efficiency is likely to improve greatly by 2050, I would downsize the area goal to one 4X8 - the standard unit of a  roof 's plywood sheathing.

Back to the present: The waste heat generated by the average hundred square feet of PV unit is not insignificant. Supposing it lowers the average surface reflection by .3 (.35 average albedo - .05 PV albedo), waste heat it contributes is:

(.2 kw/sq meter) X (1 sq meter/10.76 sq ft) X (100 sq ft) X [.3 - (.15 X .95)] = .293 kw > electricity generated.

This is not good but comparing to other power sources generating the same amount of power -

steam powered coal plant:  .265 kw X (.61/.39 efficiency) = .414 kw

co-generation natural gas plant: .265 kw X (.42/.58 efficiency) = .191 kw

nuclear power plant =  .265 kw X (.67 X (.67/.33 efficiency) = .538 kw

PV does much better than coal or nuclear, while natural gas is currently superior to PV in this regard, although with CO2 emissions and transmission losses factored in I'm not so sure. At any rate the heat contribution of PV on a large scale is significant enough to watch and deal with by increasing efficiency - beneficial in its own right and by freeing up roof area albedo degradation can be easily compensated for. 

To summarize, my grand solar vision stands as achievable, desirable, and worthy. 

Dealing with the (PV) Albedo Problem

Congratulations to the Endeavour Team on a successful mission that included fixing the International Space Station's solar array. 

In recent months I have experienced some doubts about photovoltaics as a major energy contributer, but as evidenced by my last post, those doubts have been allayed somewhat, though my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat by a new revelation.

In July, commenting on Geoffrey Styles' Energy Outlook, I had opined that a superior mid-century energy goal would be for each of earth's citizen's to receive half their electricity needs from PV panels above their heads. By doing so, I argued that global warming would be reversed by virtue of photons doing useful work instead of reradiating heat back into the atmosphere. In response to this, Mr Styles reminded me of the albedo phenomenon - a measure of how much sunlight is reflected back into space (untrapped by the atmosphere) by a particular material. Because PVs have much lower albedo than average, and thus higher absorption, they ultimately reradiate more of the solar energy they receive into the atmosphere where it is trapped as waste heat, and in this way PVs become a contributor to global warming.

Because I had invested a lot of hope in PVs, I was thoroughly alarmed by this and felt challenged to find out more about it. Even though I had come across the concept of albedo a few times before, I had never heard about it in connection to the application of solar energy. A possible reason for my ignorance might be because there doesn't seem to be much out there addressing the problem specifically. After much searching, I found very few claims that agreed with the albedo problem - possibly because PVs currently represent such a miniscule portion of electrical power. But I also found no refutations, and so consulting my long-past physics education, it seemed reasonable that albedo could be a real potential problem with PVs in any large scale future scenario.

With this tentative conclusion, I had to look at my statement in a previous post with dismay:

Photovoltaic schemes already alleviate global warming in 2 other ways (in addition to virtually no transmission losses if on a rooftop): by absorbing photons of sunlight to do useful work moving electrons, less heat energy is reflected back into the atmosphere, and trapped in the greenhouse; and by generating electricity otherwise produced by coal plants that directly or indirectly emit greenhouse gasses, rooftop PVs counter global warming with a triple whammy.

In reviewing this statement with my newfound enlightenment, it appears that "absorbing photons doing useful work" is only as true as the PV panel is efficient in converting sunlight to electricity. At only 15%, it would appear, at first glance, that the albedo effect of PVs mostly nullifies the virtue of no transmission losses. 

Although this leaves a net plus of 1 virtue (no CO2 emissions) with regard to PVs and global warming, I can definitely conclude from this that PVs should stay on rooftops, or very close to where the electricity generated is used. Adding transmission losses to the albedo problem would give PVs a net minus of global warming virtues.

But suitably situated on rooftops, I found that the waste heat attributed to PV's lack of albedo is, on the average, about 75% of what a coal plant's waste heat is for the same amount of electricity generated.  

That's not a huge difference, but there seems much that can be done to improve the situation for PV even more: The easiest action - also suggested by Mr. Styles - is to compensate for low PV albedo by installing  material with a higher than normal albedo of a commensurate area elsewhere on the roof - suggesting the future rooftop's role as a solar management device.

Other possible solutions might use the extra heat given off by PV inefficiency to effect a chimney effect in drawing cool air upward for passive air-conditioning, or as a way of heating water in a kind of combination PV/ solar hot water panel. And of course, one thing is certain: Efficiency of PVs will only improve as time goes by,and diminishing the albedo problem as they do. 

Aside from any specific remedies, my general sense is that photovoltaics have an almost inevitable future because its process is so analogous to proven processes: Photosynthesis which is responsible for covering most of the earth's land with plant life;  and the photoelectric effect, with matter's electrons ejected by photons being so like the process of energy from the sun knocking water molecules off lakes and seas to rise into clouds, then rain back down and ultimately turn hydroelectric turbines - electricity's first big power source, and still its most efficient.

That is why, after considering the albedo effect, the direct solar energy of photovolatics keeps its own major role in my electrical generating pie of the future.

But I have also learned from this exercise, that like other manmade causes of global warming beyond greenhouse gasses, attention definitely needs to be paid to albedo concerns. 

Hopefully, NASA's Triana mission - with its albedo monitoring equipment - will be re-evaluated and given the go-ahead to be launched in the near future.