Trying to define the direction to proceed

The problem with alternative energy sources is that everyone has an opinion. Some will be right and some will be downright wrong as far as saving the planet from the predations of man’s oil addiction. I fully believe no matter how universal the concept of energy conservation may become in our lifetime, our bad habits will overcome the best intentions to live the simple life. Each type of alternate energy production will gain its proponents, and hopefully some will become meaningful additions to a world of Energy with-out Oil.

We will need more and more energy to power all the things we need to make our lives “better”. The basic necessities are a given, with the rising population, the energy cost for each will rise. Other unforeseen energy gluttons will emerge, such as the requirement for air conditioning at both poles as well as the entire rest of the planet’s surface as global warming makes it uncomfortable for anyone to stay outside in the heat we will be forced to endure. At the rate we are polluting our atmosphere we will need to grow crops underground in vast cooled caverns as we desecrate the outdoors with totally unpredictable weather and natural disasters through carbon emissions. Consider where the light for the massive amounts of photosynthesis will come from. Of course we will need to cook and keep everything clean and tidy with the use of more and more machines that do our work for us, but demand as payment energy to operate.

Wherever we turn, we will be faced with a rising tide of energy dependency that will not go away.

So how do we satisfy this need for ever increasing energy dependence presently satisfied by dwindling and serious polluting fossil fuels with the available methodology of some form of renewable energy. The US government and big business have decided there are two basic answers, fuel cells and ethanol. From where I sit, ethanol is at best a stopgap until the planet refuses to allow plant growth on its fields, either due to drought or turbulent and uncontrollable weather patterns. But come what may, crop efficiency is going to drop as the effects of carbon pollution increase and magnify the problems we now face.

So where is there abundant energy available to be tapped? Basically it will all have to come – one way or another – from the sun, so let’s hope our pitiful efforts at destroying the planet do not spread to include that furnace. Solar Power is basically being overlooked. The predominant alternative energy source right now is wind. It fits right into big business’s view – the J.P. Morgan quote epitomizing that attitude, “Where can do you put the meter?” as he pulled the plug on Nikola Tesla’s attempt to provide free energy to the New York. You can’t put a meter on a receiving antenna, But with a wind turbine, all you need to do is plug it into the existing power grid and sell it for the same price as carbon generated electricity. Wind turbines for the local city house are not very practical, and their noise is not to be tolerated by jealous neighbors for the sake of some green power they don’t think they need (Not in my backyard).

Solar power lags behind because it is inherently independent of the grid. It produces power extremely locally and is designed to be used in very specific and defined areas. It doesn’t travel well, but simply reacts to the rays of the sun when they are available. If an individual owns his source of power, how can business and government steal a share with no effort and produce a burgeoning bureaucracy. They want to have any energy created spoonfed to them for their profit, and it is quite a problem to do that reliably with solar. The problem for the individual is that the photovoltaic cell is expensive to produce, even though they will basically repay the owner many times over over the course of their working life. The actual manufacture, distribution and installation of panels is expensive – once that is done, the cost is miniscule. People are given no incentives to go that way here in Canada.

Water movement has been used for centuries, paddlewheels and turbines, all can be driven by water movement, and this need not be stopped by the diurnal periods of sunlight. In temperate climates, the seasonal nature of our world does play havoc with steady, constant energy production. As the rivers and streams freeze into the Great White North (at least for the present), any steady power generation disappears until the spring thaw brings back the water current to drive the turbines.

What about making a fuel biologically? I am not talking about the attempt to supercede gasoline with corn “gas”, that is just trading one carbon source for another, but it does win votes in the Midwest from farmers who can make a bundle growing it while the consumer must pay higher food costs from the diversion of a foodstuff into fuel. Global warming is the excessive addition of carbon to our atmosphere, how does ethanol eliminate that problem? It may be slightly less toxic, renewable instead of the ground, but it is still producing carbon emissions that are going to cause the same problems we see with oil.

No. Biologically created fuel must be fundamentally carbon free to be a true alternative energy option for our planet. I have seen a few articles about making hydrogen from algae. I have been given extensive references on the topic from a very helpful source in the UK. But, just like every other alternative, it has yet to be made commercially viable, and it is still in the laboratory. I can see where the logistics of this is very difficult and research is expensive, but the ultimate advantage is that fuel is created for transportation and later use. This is fundamentally different from creating electrical energy from Solar Panels and Wind Turbines only when the sun shines and the winds blow. It skips the electrolysis or other methodologies required to produce hydrogen from the energy input units of the system. If either sun or wind is missing, the original energy input to the system is gone. At least with hydrogen production from plants, the hydrogen is a primary product and can be stored for later use. The same original energy input argument is valid, in the case of plants, though, the hydrogen can only be made when the sun allows photosynthetic style activities.

The standard thesis is that Energy must be created in abundant quantities for two purposes:

1) We must make electricity to act as the lifeblood of the common human sedentary tasks – heating the home and office, powering machinery for productive work and leisure, etc.

2) A secondary suitable energy format must be developed in a form that allows the human spirit to break away from sedentary pursuits and travel for both work and pleasure as required.

We must power our homes and factories with electricity and provide movement with a suitable fuel to the present transportation devices – or devise radically new ones that can exploit any advantageous features of the new fuel. However we produce and use that fuel, it must be in an ecologically clean manner that adds nothing toxic to our environment. There is nothing that precludes these two requirements from being solved by a single source rather than two.

Nikola Tesla is truly the father of the world we inhabit. He devised the actual wisdom, roadmap and machinery that ushered in the Age of Electricity. As a modern man, we all have benefited from that genius. It is impossible to retreat back to the days where this electricity source was not readily available to North America and Europe. If you want to try it, simply remember back to the feelings of utter helplessness when electricity is cut off for even for a very short time. The very fabric of civilization as we know it relies completely on this power – the communication and information world we inhabit has eliminated many skills our forefathers required to survive.

Few would survive the sudden imposition of a life without electrical power and the machines that are required to support it once more. My family lived through the Ice Storm of 1998 that crippled most of Quebec in late December and early January. If there is any reason for wanting to become energy independent, this is a very strong case for it. Global warming will play havoc on all things, and there is little change in the delivery of electricity to the grid in Quebec that will categorically prevent similar problems happening when another perfect storm comes this way again.

It was Tesla’s insistence on the benefits of Alternating Current that have allowed us to provide electricity almost everywhere we need it – for a price, although that was not his intention. Using the power of powerful water flows is the way he tackled providing power to New York City, and these mighty turbines spinning constantly in Niagara Falls still offer New York its main power supply. A strong effort should be made to take his thoughts and finding to his logical conclusion and deliver energy world wide – J.P. Morgan may have made his family and friends billions on the backs of the poor by ensuring he got a piece of every volt produced, but he also denied the world the access to free energy that Tesla envisioned. His vision included electrically driven planes and vehicles that never ran out of fuel, they received their motive power from invisible electrical power flowing from the air or earth to an electrical polyphase motor through an antenna. This vision eliminates the need for the second energy source, a fuel, to be required. Everything runs on electricity ubiquitously available to each world citizen.

In this vision, according to big business, megalomaniacal bankers and elite power brokers, the world fall apart, capitalism would be undermined and anarchy would run amuck. (They wouldn’t be able to make predatory profits) They would scare you with apocalyptical predictions of doom, have you believe that democracy would crumble as the requirement of power as a salable commodity is eliminated as a necessary cost of living. They will put democracy up as what will be sacrificed when that is exactly what they have been trying to undermine all along. The elite wish they could turn the world into a socialist mass of sheep that can be easily controlled by completely and restrictively controlling the availability of power, or food, or shelter, stripping everyone of the freedom of choice, competition and making people forget their privilege of exercising democracy within their lives. They have always been trying to become the ruling elite.

In the Solar Hydrogen Civilization, Roy McAlister claims many millionaires a day will be made – the problem for the establishment is that they couldn’t control such a sudden redistribution of wealth. The old ruling elite won’t be able to adjust or clamp strangling controls on them if the money and power shifts away from the “old boys” network suddenly.

With technology providing a power source to the individual, I tend to doubt that democracy wil disappear, in fact it is the worst possible scenario for the power elite and organizations that thrive on fear and disinformation. Each world citizen’s standard of living would rise enormously and the need for appliances for each would certainly make the economic markets revolve, evolve and continue to grow. Manufacture of goods would be cheaper and ecologically viable.

Communication, Tesla’s other great gift, would take the place of isolation and cultures would meet and have to adapt to each other, rather than simply collide with no recourse for discussion. Especially, assuming a solution that ignores nuclear power and it’s over riding inherent dangers; the ability for terrorists to obtain nuclear weapons of mass destruction. This would offer the opportunity for the ultimate sharing and blending of culture to a worldwide peace formulated from understanding – again scaring the religious terrorists as their power over humanity would be diminished as hate subsides to understanding. As time goes by, people would begin to share a common good and finally understand the way governments are controlled by the power hungry elite and eliminate their propaganda and reduce their harmful influence on civilization for the common people.

Of course the need to fight to secure energy resources would vanish, and much of the plans for world domination would become vacuous. Invasion of another country for dwindling resources would become irrelevant. Terrorism of energy supply, the main target for most would vanish. Would this cure all the ills of the world? Don’t be naïve, angry radical men and women will always find a “cause” to use as a road to power, fame glory or revenge, but it would be much more difficult, especially since the other threat to the world, nuclear power would be eliminated. If there is no need for a nuclear power plant, where would the extremists get the ingredients of a bomb to try to bring humanity to its knees to suit someone’s personal vision of the way it must be.

I very much doubt another Tesla will rise to fulfill the dream of free energy for all, big business will squelch that vision as fast as it did the original. With that as a jump-off point, it is time to move exactly to the opposite – provide each person with his own ability to provide all the personal power he/she requires to deal with the life he/she is presented. To do this, we need the following building blocks

- a power source,

- a way to store excess power if/when that source is unavailable and

- a generation mechanism to translate the stored energy into kinetic.

As mentioned in my first installment – September 08, 2007, during which I outlined the basic premise of this commentary, I am looking for ways to get the small individual free from the sticky addiction to oil. I am a firm believer that we already have the technology outlined to shake the bonds and reach for the ideals of safe, environmentally neutral energy production. As a group of individuals we need to find ways to implement the technologies of the late 19^th century and make the transition to clean energy in the 21^st.

All through my searches, I see all kinds of governmental incentives for the U.S. states to develop alternate sources of energy. The slowly growing groundswell of opinion and comments makes me believe it is beginning to drive the flow of research towards new ways to generate power for people. The problem for me, is that in Quebec, where most of the electricity is made through hydro-electric power anyway, there are no incentives for going away from the power supply. I can only hope that in the near future, that will change.

The idea of offering incentives to get free of the present power deployment structure is not necessarily what big business wants. I also believe, in many cases, the research seems quite tangential, safe for the big corporations to pursue since they have made it so complex that no-one small will be able to duplicate it. Why so much devotion to the flaws of the fuel cell? It is expensive, untried and technologically complex. But it sure is eating up the research dollars when there are so many other more available possibilities for the individual to pursue.

The Saturn EV1 was a viable electric vehicle that gained so much consumer loyalty that the death of the vehicle by crushing was documented in the film “Who killed the Electric car?” If you have not seen it, it is an experience that should be a requirement for every consumer. In essence the clean air act was killed by the car companies offering the golden carrot of fuel cell technology and destroying a very efficient and low cost alternative, if it had been allowed to grow naturally.

Why kill a viable and popular technology for something that is in the distant future. Why not simply fill the car with plugged in power and concentrate on making that power from other renewable resources. The electrical supply will still have to be dealt with, but the smoke and mirrors of fuel cells makes that a job for the future and will of course have to be done in record time at record profit for the contractors who land it.

From what I know of fuel cells, the materials that are required are certainly not renewable, and the environmental benefit is, to my way of thinking, questionable at best. Why not concentrate on putting present day photovoltaic on every roof, create a weatherproof PV film to bond onto the cars’ roofs and recharge a battery whenever the sun shines – it may not be exotic like a fuel cell, but we know the technology is there and although expensive, will pay for itself over its decades long life.

But what if the need for a battery evaporated, here the fuel cell is the magic bullet of the large research corporations, high tech, space age and fantastic! Definitely not something within the normal individual’s capacity to produce. It is so perfect for business to “provide” at a generous profit – $6000.00 for less than a 2000 hour service life (quoted price from Build a Solar Hydrogen Fuel Cell System” e-book by Phillip Hurley – copyright 2004 from Wheelock Mountain Publications).

http://www.goodideacreative.com/wheelockmtn.html

I quote from page 246, second paragraph: At the time of this writing, new 1 KW stacks can be purchased for around $6,000.00 to 8,000.00. Used units of the same output may cost around 4,000.00 to 6000.00. Most current stacks have an operating life of 1500 to 2000 hours. More expensive units can go above the 2000 hour range.”

Why not take water and electrolyse it into hydrogen then store that in a pressurized cylinder to be used as needed to run a generator to recreate electricity for the habitat on demand. Fanciful? Yes, at the present time. Electrolysis from water is not the most efficient way to make hydrogen, but then it is a very clean way, with no other by-products than oxygen. In the interests of completeness, electrolysis can be made easier and less energy intensive with catalysts that are toxic and sometimes dangerous, but to my thinking, spending resources on making the proper safety structures failsafe would be much cheaper than constantly replacing short lived membranes of fuel cells so often.

I will gladly trade a bit of inefficiency for a cleaner planet. Many would say why not extract hydrogen from oil and gas instead, it is plentiful there, but nothing has been gained by this and our resources will continue to be depleted.

I have seen other ways to create hydrogen – there are patents using aluminum wire and spinning drums presently powering entire African villages and various methodologies from the book I suggested in my last entry from Knowledge Publications –

http://www.knowledgepublications.com

“The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen” by P. Litherland Teed, published for the first time in 1919 as an extensive overview of creating huge amounts of hydrogen to be used in wartime for observation balloons. The main considerations were the amount of material required and the portability of them to the battlefield. I confess I am not a chemist, and much of the book would be unavailable to me if it had not been for the companion DVD made by Stephen Harris and Roy McAlister going over the book chapter by chapter. It is a strong argument that what we need to do is delve properly into past technologies to help free ourselves of energy dependence on foreign powers that are not interested in promoting a healthy environment for all our subsequent generations to inhabit.

I intend to go to the past for many of my ideas, not rely on sudden epiphanies that require a country’s worth of resources to make a few rich. The past holds many of the keys we will need to free ourselves. Nikola Tesla created the AC power supply we all depend on for our way of life. Given a trusting environment, he would have offered mankind a way to free ourselves of energy dependency – he saw the universe as overflowing with energy, the more you tapped the more there was. If Edison had not interfered and J.P. Morgan simply supported him until he saw no way to personally profit, his legacy would probably be one of prosperity and peace for the planet. That is what I read into his discourse “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy” printed in Century Illustrated magazine, 1900.

http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm

It is Tesla’s generators that operate still in Niagara Falls, providing power to New York. We need to adapt the technology to individual applications. Using hydrogen as a fuel, to burn and create steam is a strong possibility, a safe controlled steam turbine is a distinct possibility. But, other old technologies can be brought to bear as well. The Stirling engine does not need to be powered by steam, it needs a single heat source to drive the engine. That can be as minimal as sunlight through a directed Fresnel lens, or a controlled burn of hydrogen applied during the times the sun is not available directly. How about simply wiring the electricity generated from a Solar Panel or wind turbine to a hearter coil inside the “hot” end of a Stirling engine to provide power to the cylinders. The motion can be transferred to a generator to generate electricity for household or even vehicular transportation.

The problem with Stirling engines is that they aren’t available in the power that makes sense for running either a house or a car. On the American Stirling Engine website:

http://www.stirlingengine.com

There is lots of good stuff on the topic. What is interesting is that Dean Kamen, developer of the Segway transporation device is shown with the president of American Stirling in an article suggesting that the Segway may soon be equipped with a commercially produced Stirling Engine. Something all of us people interested in the free generation of energy would be ecstatic to see.

http://www.stirlingengine.com/FullPower.adp

Maybe soon these assorted technologies and ideas that were essentially suppressed and forgotten for a century will begin to become more common and easier to develop. Miniature power plants for each home, running electric generators for the world’s ever-growing hunger for power are the future, and a resuscitation of past unexplored pathways for non-polluting and renewable energy from the genius of the past. We simply need to look at, and adapt the brilliant ideas before the lure of cheap and abundant oil and gasoline shut down our human curiosity for a century and allowed us to ruin the environment we leave to our children. Time to wake up and get back on the road to renewable and safe energy.

Energy with-out Oil

There are so many reasons to do a blog. I will try to enumerate the reasons I have decided to add my regular opinion to the rest of the voices calling for change in the way humans have been treating the planet in general and our non-renewable resources in particular.

<>This blog will be devoted to my explorations and findings on renewable energy implementation by the mass population, without the influence of mainstream corporate structure trying make sure we pay excessively all the way – I am looking for free or low cost delivery of energy to the small guy. As much as possible, without profit to large controlling corporations who prefer to apply their stranglehold for exorbitant profit.

<>We need safe standards and rational governmental controls, but at the same time we must be sure that big business doesn’t have the chance to strangle promising technologies because they can’t control them or see a way to extort a profit from them.

<><I am also a proponent of replacing the present fiat monetary system with the only Constitutionally defined metals as egal tender for the U.S. – Gold and Silver. The very rich are hoarding these precious metals, they know these are the only safe havens against the governmentally produced inflation of freely printed paper. It is time to dismember the Creature from Jekyll Island.<>http://www.realityzone.com/creature.html <>
The Creature from Jekyll Island – G. Edward Griffin

We have blown it. Well, not maybe the little guy who can be blamed mainly for having to listen to the propaganda for so long it has become obvious truth. We have only been able to listen to all those (biased and purchased) experts and sales forces of corporations “in the know” who are willing to make our habitat expendable for their increased power, influence and economic agrandizement. A reasonable voice against this madness is only just beginning to evolve. Most people are simply reacting to the only message that has been available about energy and economics. – The banks manufacture fiat currency at the expense of increased worldwide inflation for bloated paper profits that go into the oil companies’ coffers for exploration and exploitation and to promote their strident dismissal of the doom and gloom of global warming.

We have become much like the frog in the pot of heating (but soon to become globally boiling) water. If we were suddenly parachuted into the temperature of mainstream messages and pollution we now must tolerate, we would be surely burned and try to leave any way possible. But we have become so programmed to be comfortable in this hostile environment, that we don’t even know the boiling point is just ahead – along with drastic and irreparable changes to life as we know it.

The global governments and worldwide corporate structure aren’t interested in that truth, it would cost them too much to make amends. We are simply faced with the loss of the way of life to which we are accustomed, or pay exorbitantly to big business to allow them to fund the research on tangential technologies that maybe, just might, possibly, find a viable and appropriate solution. In the process, we have been robbed of hard money. Gold no longer is a viable source of money, easily produced paper fiat currency, controlled by collusion between financiers and governments is what we now must use – it has the force of law behind it telling us we must use only that. We have had our atmosphere sullied, our waters polluted and our ability to cry foul completely muffled over the whole mess.

<>What is disconcerting is that we were addicted to cheap oil after most of the research and technological breakthroughs were made for alternate methods. Most of the cars in the early 1900s were electric. Nikola Tesla was vilified and destroyed by Alva Edison and J.P. Morgan for having the audacity and the actual patents, vision and equipment to provide free electricity to all of New York. They couldn’t charge for it, and it was so radical it would make the arcaic DC current system of New York City obsolete, putting Edison’s Electric Company under with no way to meter it. So they destroyed it – withdrawing fuinds at a critical time and denying the world pollutionfree energy for the 20th centrury at least.

<>Did you know that if you use Tesla’s technology a burned out fluorescent light bulb will operate for a lifetime or even much longer. It is the electric company and lamp manufacturers that prefer to ensure their products need to be replaced very periodically. They have no real wish to produce better, more energy efficient or longer lasting items. No, much better to consume inordinate amounts of goods and consign the short lived rubbish to the over-extended landfills. This garbage will eventually decay and pollute our water sources for our children and grandchildren’s children.

<>For the past two years I have been investigating how I, as a little guy in the city of Montreal, can dramatically lessen my impact on the environment directly around me. We live on an island, and when the glaciers finally melt, I am not even sure the house will remain dry. But I feel like a lone traveler out in the wilds with no resources to rely on. I can’t even find expertise in any alternative energy solution for my house. No-one seems to have any installation or evaluation expertise in my area. If I do nothing else, hopefully this call for help will find resources to guide me to the expertise I need to install the right products on my property to reduce my carbon footprint as much as possible. <>

<>We have been using our own bags for months when we shop, saving a little oil and landfill in the process. We have the low energy Compact Fluorescent bulbs in most lights. I was even able to find an actual store that sells solar products in Ottawa.

<>Ottawa Solar Power -

<>http://www.ottawasolarpower.com/index.html

<>They actually have a brick and mortar store! – it took a bit to find one afternoon when I was able to afford the time to look, but I left with a solar panel powered LED lamp for my bedroom. That has been costing the world nothing ever since for me to read as I try to fall asleep at night. Other than that, there seem to be no resources for people in my area to get as off-grid as possible in the metropolitan setting.

<><>So my aim with this blog is to try to offer my thoughts and how my explorations are proceeding in pulling the huge needle of Big Oil Addiction out of my family’s arm. All my friends will attest that I am no handyman, I am not looking to become an inventor, but I do know somewhat of the path which I want to take toward oil independence – I am a believer in the viability of using hydrogen to eliminate oil as much as possible. My thoughts have proceeded to the feeling that hydrogen can be used most effectively as a battery. The techniques of producing Hydrogen were definitively detailed in the 1919 book “The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen” by P Litherland Teed and once again available from Knowledge Publications:<>http://www.knowledgepublications.com/ <>

<>Steven Harris and Roy McAlister have put together a treasure trove of books and videos on the use and implementation of hydrogen as a replacement source of energy. I also have paid my dues to the American Hydrogen Association:

<><>http://www.clean-air.org/

<>I believe Roy McAlister is the founding member and is listed as President on the website. There is so much hype on the power of hydrogen, it is nice to see an inventor show the results of his work in Arizona on his hydrogen powered cars and trucks on DVD and through books (he is the author of “The Solar Hydrogen Civilization”). I do love the site, as it has lots of things to find and explore. I regularly use it as a dream portal to redirect my focus when I have lost sight of what my true aim is.

<>I would appreciate and comments and corrections. I don’t expect to offer a technical site, or one that is from an inventor. I want to offer valuable insights into what is becoming available for the little guy to do to reign in the needless waste of energy. Rather, I will be documenting my journey to oil free independence, at home and on the road. At least that is what I propose to journal. I can only hope any individuals and organizations that are interested will want to join me and contribute to the adventure.

<><>Maybe we, as an interested group, can go outside the corporate box and actually use the famous ingenuity of the North American countries given to us to offer true independence to the masses and remove, to some extent, the deadly influence of the socialist pressures to rule the world exerted by the self-elected elite power brokers. We are scary to them, one individual producing free energy outside of their control will shine a bright light and help everyone become freer.

<><>Blueram85