Month: January 2014

So I’m lugging my generator over to a repair shop last week, just as the polar vortex was kind of fading. ( I waited till after the rush) The guy there said they’d had 15 generators come in on the day of the big ice storm a few weeks ago. I, of course, have not been responsibly powering the generator up every month or so to mix the gas around, and it’s become gummed up and unstartable – which would not be a good thing if we have another bad storm.
So at the same time, I’m looking at the two Priuses in my garage.  Could there be a simpler solution to the emergency power problem? Since hurricane Sandy, we’ve been reading about plucky homebrew solutions to keeping the lights on in a pinch.

People are smart. They see the possibilities sometimes before the marketers do.

I called Fred Pickering, my car guy here in town to ask if he knows anything about this – turns out he had just been involved in a kit upgrade for a local Prius owner – and he gave it to me straight. Not ready for prime time, unless you are an accomplished electrical engineer, and don’t mind having the warranty voided on your car’s electronics.
That said, I have no doubt that we will see this emerge as a more common option in the future –  we know that Toyota has this as an option in Japan – it makes too much sense..

Autoblog Green:

The Toyota Prius’ battery pack just got something like a five-star rating from a truly seasoned professional – a 50-year aircraft technician. Bob Osemlak, who’d served more than three of those five decades with the Canadian Air Force, brought electricity back to his home in December during a heavy ice storm thanks to his gas-electric car.

The Thornhill, Ontario resident lost power for nearly a day on December 21 – not nearly as much as millions of other people hit by the recent storm – and so he still set about using his Prius for backup power, according to EV World. His ingenuity allowed him to turn on lights, furnace, refrigerator and the TV.Being an aircraft technician for so long brought Osemlak the ability to home-brew his V2H set-up that he urges other people to avoid, for safety reasons. He had planned for a potential power outage by installing an outlet on his furnace and, when the storm struck, he ran a cord through the basement window to the car. During the nine hours Osemlak used his Prius for backup power, the car’s fuel gauge only reduced less than one bar, or roughly the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.It wasn’t the first time Osemlak had played with his vehicle. In the 1960s, while stationed in Winnepeg, Manitoba, he created a car starter. Every hour, the car would start up and run for 10 minutes to avoid being frozen solid in frigid winter temperatures.

Toyota has just introduced a new option for the Prius Hybrid and Prius Plug-In Hybrid, which effectively turns them into backup generators for your home. Seeing as Prius hybrids already come with an inverter, the price of the factory-installed option doesn’t add too much to the cost of the vehicle.

Continue reading “Icestorm Blackout? Time to Power Up the Prius?”

Sort of like our own domestic war on science. This is not a side show – it’s the main event. Knowledge is a threat to those who seek to profit thru the destruction of the planet’s living community. What’s happening in Canada will happen everywhere soon, unless it is opposed.

The Fifth Estate – CBC:

WeatherUnderground:

Not a Historic Cold Wave
As notable as this week’s cold wave was–bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation–the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. As wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me, “The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country–18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California.“

Part of the reason that this week’s cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate. As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, “While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability.” For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.

Climate.gov:

‘Polar vortex’ is the new buzzword of 2014 for the millions of Americans learning about its role in producing record cold temperatures across the country. Meteorologists have known for years that the pattern of the polar vortex determines how much cold air escapes from the Arctic and makes its way to the U.S. during the winter. Now climate scientists want to know if a warmer Arctic is influencing its behavior.

The polar vortex is a high altitude low-pressure system that hovers over the Arctic in winter. When the polar vortex is strong, it acts like a spinning bowl balanced on the top of the North Pole. The image (below) shows a strong phase of the polar vortex in mid-November 2013. Dark purple depicts the most frigid air tightly contained in an oval-shaped formation inside the invisible bowl. The light purple line forming the outermost boundary of the cold Arctic air is the jet stream in its normal west-to-east pattern.

In early January, a sudden stratospheric warming event weakened and broke down the polar vortex, allowing fragments of cold air to slosh out of the bowl into mid-latitudes. The image (at the top of this post) shows the weakened vortex formation on January 5, 2014. The high pressure building up in the Arctic slowed down the jet stream, which caused it to buckle into deep folds and flow farther south than usual, introducing cold Arctic air into the central and eastern U.S.

Continue reading “NOAA on the Polar Vortex”

Thom Hartmann has produced a pretty scary, but rather accurate, piece here.

I’ve been thinking about the fine line between creating a sense of urgency vs a sense of hopelessness. There a natural urge among some folks to cut right to the “hopeless” phase, without actually wanting to do something about the problem.

There’s a lot of internet chatter about imminent doom for human civilization.  And yes, I’m talking about you, Guy MacPherson.
This is, first of all, incorrect. Secondly, not helpful.
Even the worst case scenarios in the fossil record played out over millennia, and  the experts I’ve talked to are pretty clear that no one, or at least very few, are expecting any kind of catastrophic single event in the coming few decades.
Important to remember that projected climate change impacts are a bell curve, as Stephen Schneider used to say, with “good for you” at one end, and “end of the world” on the other.  Both those extremes are the most unlikely scenarios – but there’s a whole lot of that curve on this side of “end of the world” that we would still very much not like to see happen.

Planet Earth is going to take a hit in the coming century. It falls mainly to the generation of human beings currently alive to decide if that’s going to be a 5 percent hit, a 50 percent hit, or a 90 percent hit.

John Holdren has clearly been watching the videos on this blog.

NBC ‘s weathercaster Al Roker calls out the moronic climate denialists who have been hatching conspiracy theories about the current bulge of arctic air over North America.

Politico:

Rush Limbaugh on Monday accused the media and liberals of creating the polar vortex to “lie” to the public about the “hoax” of climate change and global warming.

The conservative radio host told his listeners that “the left, the media, everybody” came up with “this phrase called the ‘polar vortex’” to connect the current cold weather conditions around the country to “the global warming agenda.”

“We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country,” he said, according to a transcript. “And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’ The dreaded polar vortex.”

Limbaugh said liberals are “in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming.”

“So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex, something’s happened, and that cold air which normally stays is in the North Pole, something’s happening, something deeply mysterious and perhaps tragic is happening,” Limbaugh said.

The weather system “actually sounds like a crappy science fiction movie to me,”

 

EconomyWatch:

Wind power generated 21.1 percent of Spain’s energy (blogger’s note: “energy” is not correct here – “electricity” is accurate) needs in 2013, reported the national energy grid this month, becoming the top source of electrical power in the country, narrowly ahead of nuclear energy at 21 percent.

On Monday, BusinessGreen reported the findings from a study by the Red Eléctrica de España (REE), revealing for “the first time ever, that [wind power] contributed most to the annual electricity demand coverage.”

In total, wind farms were estimated to have generated 53,926GWh of electricity last year, up 12 per cent on 2012. Meanwhile renewable energy sources in total provided 42.4 percent of the country’s electricity, up from 10.5 percent the previous year.

The added renewable energy in the mix in 2013 is predicted to have reduced the greenhouse gas emissions of Spain’s energy sector by 23.1 percent from 2012 levels, according to REE.

“Throughout 2013, the all-time highs of wind power production were exceeded,” the report stated.

“On 6 February, wind power recorded a new maximum of instantaneous power with 17,056MW at 3:49 pm (2.5 per cent up on the previous record registered in April 2012), and that same day the all-time maximum for hourly energy was also exceeded reaching 16,918MWh.

BusinessGreen noted that the fall in greenhouse gas emissions had also been caused by a 2.1 percent decrease in overall power demand. However, the increased weight of renewable energy sources likely played the main role in cutting down emissions.

Besides wind power, solar power generation also saw an increase in PV capacity by 140MW and thermal capacity by 300MW. High levels of rainfall experienced last year also meant hydroelectric power output was 16 percent higher than the historical average, climbing to 32,205GWh.

Meanwhile high emitting energy sources saw a major reduction in power output. Coal-fired plants for instance saw a 27.3 percent decrease in power generation.

EcoWatch:

A trip to Varese Ligure, Italy, will bring you face to face with a charming town of pastel-colored houses and a plethora of restaurants serving dishes with organic porcini mushrooms and chestnuts. Stop at the bustling markets and you will see Italians who have traveled from far and wide to purchase the locally produced organic meats, cheeses, and honey. It’s a far cry from just 20 years ago, when this town in the Liguria region of northwest Italy was fading away due to a lack of jobs, no industry, decaying properties, and a lack of essential services.

Continue reading “Spain Achieves Renewable Milestone. Italian Town Grows With Renewables.”

Ask me tomorrow.
I’m heading to Detroit today to talk to some insiders in the Auto and EV industry.

Cleantechnica:

A couple of CleanTechnica’s readers/advisors recently gathered together some interesting numbers and insights. To start this piece, I’ll just repost what one of them passed along to me:

I’m finding Chevy Volt replacement batteries online for about $2,300.

$2,300/16 kWh = $144/kWh

Retail.

On the GM Parts Store site a replacement battery for the 2012 Chevy Volt is listed at $2,305.88. No core (used battery) return required.

That’s 16 kWh. $144.12/kWh. Retail.

From the Volt forum –

“When I checked thru a friends Shop about this time last year (to get the ‘good guy’ price), the ‘complete propulsion battery assembly’ for a 2012 (they didn’t Have a price for the 2013 yet at that time) was quoted at $1900. And NO exchange or “core” – they did Not want the old one back, apparently.” [sic]

Here’s another site selling for $2,620.

Volt battery at $2,995. Full retail price.
$2,995 / 16 kWh = $187 / kWh

Discounted retail price.
$2,306 / 16 kWh = $144 / kWh

Dealer’s cash price 30% off MSRP of $2,995
$2,097 / 16 kWh = $131/ kWh

If GM is buying these batteries for even less and making something on them, GM’s cost could be in the $100/kWh range. That would give GM a 30% profit for selling on to dealers. 30% might be high for a pass-through profit.

Continue reading “How Cheap Are EV Batteries?”

Not a huge fan of the biofuel thing.

More midwest land that’s been under protection now being cultivated for ethanol.
Rainforests being repurposed to palm cultivation for biodiesel production in Asia and elsewhere.

Now this.

Raw Story:

The west’s drive to reduce its carbon footprint cheaply is fuelling a dirty war in Honduras, where US-backed security forces are implicated in the murder, disappearance and intimidation of peasant farmers involved in land disputes with local palm oil magnates.

More than 100 people have been killed in the past four years, many assassinated by death squads operating with near impunity in the heavily militarised Bajo Aguán region, where 8,000 Honduran troops are deployed, according to activists.

Farmers’ leader Antonio Martínez, 28, is the latest victim of this conflict. His corpse was discovered, strangled, in November.

Peasant farmers say they are the victims of a campaign of terror by the police, army and private security guards working for palm oil companies since a coup in June 2009 ended land negotiations instigated by the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya.

Witnesses have implicated Honduran special forces and the 15th Battalion, which receives training and material support from the US, in dozens of human rights violations around the plantations of Bajo Aguán.

They say private security guards regularly patrol and train with the soldiers, and have even been given military uniforms and weapons for some operations.

The military denies the allegations, blaming the United Peasant Movement (Muca) for escalating violence in the region. Repeated requests for comment from the US embassy in Honduras failed to elicit a response.

Continue reading “Clean Fuel? Dirty War.”