PV versus Heat Pumps ---------- Read my Book ---- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0070YIZWY

The news is full of how Solyndra failed and how China is winning the Photovoltaic (PV) war. The US installed approximately 1.8 million kilowatts of peak PV systems in 2011. The Germans installed 7.5 million kilowatts peak of PV systems in 2011. For the layperson a kilowatt is about the instantaneous power a hairdryer requires. Given the amount of sunshine, average generation in the US is approximately 2,000 kilowatt hours a year for each kilowatt peak of PV installed. Again for the layperson, as the sun only shines a certain number of hours in year and other daylight hours are cloudy, we do not get all the hours in a year (8,760 hours) multiplied by the 1 kilowatt. We only get a fraction of this total. Now we know we get 2,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a year for each kilowatt of PV cell installed, we will correspondingly get 3.6 billion kilowatt hours each year going forward for the 1.8 million kilowatts of PV installed in the entire US during last year.

This sounds like a lot of power for the $9 billion that was spent to install those 1.8 million kilowatts of PV. Actually had we spent the $9 billion on another alternate many more kilowatt hours of fossil fuel power generation could have been saved and the $9 billion would have been better spent by saving average citizens money and correspondingly saving the planet a lot more carbon dioxide emissions. What is the alternate? Is it some unproven new high tech gizmo? Actually the device is simple and very well proven. The device is a heat pump hot water heater.

The US has approximately 20 million homes where the hot water heater is powered by an old fashioned electrical resistance heater. The old fashioned hot water heaters do convert more than 95% of the electrical energy into heat in the hot water. This seems to be highly efficient and a good use of the electricity? Well for each kilowatt of electricity used by the home owner for hot water heating only 0.95 kilowatt hours of heat was imparted into the water. A heat pump extracts heat from the ambient air, even in winter, and a single kilowatt hour of power used by the heat pumps compressor can impart as many as 3 to 5 kilowatt hours of heat into the water by conveying heat from the air into the water. The warmer the ambient temperature of the air the higher the advantage of energy imparted from the air to water. Think of the heat pump as the thermodynamic lever or a set of pulleys that gives you advantage. Just like a crowbar gives you added mechanical strength, the heat pump give you added heat over and above the simple electricity that is used by the system.

By coincidence the state of Florida has a significant portion of its homes that use electricity as the fuel for hot water heating. Florida has a warm climate and is perfect for year round heat pumping. I estimate that for each kilowatt hour of electricity used on average in a hot water heat pump in Florida (year round) approximately 3.8 kilowatt hours of heat will be imparted into the hot water. The average household used about 4,000 kilowatt hours a year of electricity to impart 3,800 kilowatt hours of heat into their hot water with the old fashioned resistance heater. The same household will only need to purchase 1,000 kilowatt hours a year of electricity with a heat pump hot water heater. Therefore, they will save 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity purchases each year. The added first cost for the heat pump system versus a traditional electric resistance heater is about $1,200 as compressors are more expensive than resistance heaters. The cost of residential electric power in Florida is approximately 11 cents per kilowatt hour hence the yearly electricity savings will equal $330. The added initial cost for the heat pump system will be recovered in three and two thirds years (44 months).

Had we as a country spent the $9 billion on heat pumps we could have bought 7.5 million heat pumps versus the same number of traditional hot water heaters and saved 22.5 billion kilowatt hours of power each year in heating the hot water used in these 7.5 million homes. This savings is much more than the 3.6 billion kilowatt hours a year of electricity the $9 billion that was spent on PV systems will generate. The added 18.9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity (22.5 – 3.6 billion) have carbon dioxide emissions that are approximately 12.3 million tons a year. Hence by a misallocation of scarce capital in our economy we actually caused carbon dioxide emissions to increase by some 12.3 million tons and did not help the common householder to make a prudent investment that would have provided them a handsome return and a rapid payback. Approximately 50% or $4.5 billion of the $9 billion for PV installations was provided by the Federal and State government. Had our government simply directed their $4.5 billion gift to poorer households to install heat pump hot water heaters, 3.75 million households could have benefited from the program and 11.25 billion kilowatt hours of power could have been saved.
I ask why oh why do we place so much hope on PV when simpler and more immediate alternates yield far better results? Let the Chinese win the PV war. We can better spend the money they loan us and then let them take a hot bath on the write-down of the debt when we pull a Greece on them.

A good week in America

Readers are pleading with me to give up on being blue and return to the optimistic color green. Hence this week’s blog is so positive that no electrons will fly. Coal mines are shutting in the US. We have so much excess coal as the winter has been warm and natural gas fired power generation is taking the place of coal fired units. Sad for coal miners and the railroads that ship coal but good for the lowering of carbon emissions and the reduction of acid gases and mercury emissions. More good news in that the Volt and the Leaf each managed a paltry sales in January of some 600 units and US consumers are now aware that it is far better to buy a Cruze or an Ultima than the plug in junk the department of entropy has handsomely funded. More good news is that Ener 1 went bust and only cost the US tax payer $118 million that Joe Biden handed them exactly a year ago.

The real good news is that employment went up and the unemployment rate went down. The stock market in the US is up significantly in the first month of 2012 and folks are talking about a soft landing in China. This is good news for the copper and nickel producers who have seen increases in the cost of these industrial metals. The world did not have a major oil spill in January and except for the Arab spring possibly becoming a nuclear winter only a small fraction of humanity managed to kill each other in January. Of course there were many more births than deaths and the global population again grew in January 2012. The GOP primaries and the almost daily debates moved from South Carolina to Florida and what a difference a week makes. Of course 15 million dollars of negative advertising also sways the voters.

Super Bowl is tomorrow and I have no skin in the game as I do not really care for two northeastern cities 3,000 miles away. The pig does have skin in the game and in fact the pig was so committed to American Football it gave up its life. I may just recline in my chair, eat some potato chips and dip and watch Madonna prove that 50 is the new 20. The field goal kicker knows that a fifty yarder is much harder than a twenty yarder and may explain this to Madonna in the three hour after game special that will analyze each blade of Fieldturf in the Indianapolis Lucas Oil Stadium. Fieldturf is made from polyethylene blend fibers woven into a polypropylene backing. Perhaps one of the super bowl ads will be sponsored by BP and will state that BP brings oil to American shores and plastics to football fields. Actually I love the ads and I am sure there will be some really clever and memorable ones this year. Lucas Oil is the new STP for your engine. STP to Engineers means Standard Temperature and Pressure. STP claims to make your engine run cleaner and more efficiently. Actually these engine additives do have some scientific merit and do keep engines running cleaner. Maybe Madonna takes some STP to keep her looking and moving like she is in her twenties. In her case I hope STP stands for Super Tantalizing Performance and not So Terrible and Pathetic.

BMW Bavaria’s Mistaken Widget.

BMW has a reputation of producing some really fine automobiles and motorbikes. I have to say they simply have gone off-track with their latest car. They are marketing their new Active E as “one car two souls”. I wrote the following email to BMW customer service after receiving a glossy mailing in my Saturday mail.

"I just received your mailing of one car two souls. I must fit into some marketing profile by zip code to have the honor of being on your mailing list. I live in zip code 94920. I am known as the Green Machine as it rhymes with my name Lindsay Leveen. I blog at www.greenexplored.com and write a column titled the Green Machine for our local paper the Tiburon Ark.

Now I will get to the point of my email. Your Active E is just plain dumb as far as saving the planet and I will explain.

The flyer lists a suggested price of $60,375 to calculate the lease payment of $499 a month. This makes sense as a gasoline 128 i costs $30,000 and the Active E has 32 kwh of batteries that cost the extra $30,000. Now I ask you should I lease the 128 i that gets 23 miles per gallon on average for $339 a month or lease the Active E for $499 a month for 24 months with $2,750 cash at signing? The gasoline 128i goes from 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds and the active E in 9 seconds. Of course in Iowa in winter when it is -10 degrees C outside I will be warm and toasty in the gasoline car but will almost die of exposure in the Active E. But, wait BMW says I only drive 11,500 miles a year and in two years I will buy 1,000 gallons of gasoline and spend $3,500 for this gasoline. With my lease on the standard 128 i at only $339 a month I save $3,840 in the 24 months on the lease payments compared with the Active E. I also have to pay something for electricity so let’s say the Active E needs 0.3 kilowatt hour of DC power per mile or 0.33 kilowatt hour of purchased AC electricity per mile at 10 cents per kilowatt hor. Thus it costs me 3.3 cents per mile for electricity or another $759 for the electricity I will purchase in the two years. Hence my added cost for driving the Active E for the 23,000 miles in 2 years is $1,099.

Now how much carbon dioxide emissions did I save planet earth? 1,000 gallons of gasoline from oil emits something like 25,000 pounds of CO2 from the well to the wheel. The electricity in Iowa is generated with 1.5 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour and is delivered to my 220 Volt plug with 1.8 pounds of CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour. Correspondingly I will emit 13,662 pounds of CO2 for my purchased electric power and I save the world 11,338 pounds of CO2 emissions in the two years. This is 5.15 metric tons of CO2 for an extra cost of $1,099. Therefore my carbon tax is $213.39 per metric ton of CO2. But wait I can buy a carbon offset in Europe for only $8 per metric ton. Why would I be dumb and buy the Active E???

The 32 kilowatt hours of batteries would have been better placed in 64 hybrids that each have 0.5 kilowatt hours of batteries to assist the gasoline engine. Each of these hybrid cars will save the owner 200 gallons a year of gasoline or 400 gallons in 2 years. The 64 hybrids will save in total 25,600 gallons of gasoline in two years. The world will have 640,000 pounds less of CO2 emissions. This equals 290.9 metric tons. As BMW wants to charge me $213.39 per metric ton of CO2 as my added cost for operating an Active E versus the gasoline car that is much faster, I suggest BMW donate 290.9 times $213.39 or $62,075 to the World Wildlife Fund for each Active E you sell. This is the price BMW should pay for having hogged the lithium in the 32 kilowatt hour batteries for a single Active E and not sharing this lithium with 64 others to improve their gas mileage.

Note you share the Gangrene award with Nissan, Tesla, Fisker and the other Green Fake Outs for promoting this plug in nonsense. Shame on BMW for this junk! Back in the 70s I owned a BMW Bavaria and it was a great car."

State of the Union Progression or Regression

I have to thank Colette a reader from Capetown South Africa for the cartoon I used above. I may not have used the F word and would rather have used the S word but the cartoon says it all and is a pretty hilarious commentary on how we have messed up the world. This week I followed an auction on Ebay for a fully restored Porsche 914 from the mid 70s. What interested me was the fact that the owner had converted the Porsche to be electric powered. He installed over 23 kilowatt hours of lithium ion batteries and removed the engine and replaced it with a large electric motor. He even installed a 2 kilowatt electric heater so the motorist would not die of exposure in the winter. The condition on the car of the body, paint, chrome, interior, wheels, and tires were flawless and was so clean that one could have eaten off the floor.

The seller had a reserve price for the car and stated that he had spent $100,000 to restore the car and change the drive to the state of the art electric system. The final offer made by a potential purchaser was $18,100 and this bid did not meet the reserve price. I also followed an auction for a stock model 914 Porsche that had not been restored but was in good working condition. This car did not meet its reserve price either and the bidding ended at just over $7,000. My guess of the price for a pristine fully restored Porsche with a stock internal combustion engine, that the bidding may have reached $11,000. Therefore the US public was willing to pay the owner of the 914 a premium of approximately $7,000 for the conversion of the propulsion system from gasoline to electric. I too think the electric conversion was worth only a few thousand dollars and I would have paid $13,000 for the electric Porsche.

I think that the results of the auction of the electric Porsche is a metaphor of the upright man walking back towards the apes and saying go back. The owner of the car thought he was pushing a worthwhile envelope of technical improvement by taking out the internal combustion engine. No doubt he spent a lot of money on the restoration and conversion and no doubt he did a fine job of engineering the system. What he did not contemplate was whether his endeavor had any real value? The auction proved the efforts of the owner had very little real value and simply throwing $100,000 and a lot of human labor at a hair brain idea still means the final product was a low valued item. I admire the owner of the Porsche for using his own money and not relying on the department of entropy for a handout. I do not admire him for his final product, it was simply dumb to spend all this money.

The President delivered his state of the Union address. He never had the guts to turn around and say to the apes in congress to back up. The Apes applauded his hollow words because the words are as American as Apple Pie. Last week the President sang some Al Green lines from Let’s Stay Together at the Apollo. Perhaps he should have belted out some Don McLean Bye Bye American Pie to the joint session of Congress. He can also tell the apes who want to ride the elephant to DC in November that a McLean is not a low calorie burger that is served under the Golden Arches. The McLean is the actual state of the Union where there are few jobs and the primates on both side of isle dole out billions to Tesla, Fisker, Nissan, and Coda who like the owner of the Porsche 914 will turn $100,000 into $10,000 on each car they sell. I do like Al Green but the song Let’s Stay Together is quite the opposite of turning around and telling the apes following you how it really is. This is from the Al Green song “Let me, be the one you come running to I'll never be untrue”. This from the Don McLean song “Bad news on the doorstep, I could not take one more step.” The political system requires the President to sell hope and sing Green (note the pun), but I want leadership that can deliver the bad news, change course and then bake a tasty pie.

On The Rebound

Several readers of my blog emailed me that Tesla stock had a rebound this week. Of course it was going to rebound after last week’s big drop and of course Elon Musk the Tesla CEO gave positive pronouncements on the status of the Mosel S. Elon opined that the company expects to sell 20,000 of these cars next year and with a gross margin of greater than 25%. Well Elon’s personal life is also on the rebound. His second wife Talulah Riley, a British actress, and Elon are separating. Elon’s first wife was a Canadian named Justine. Justine was not tight lipped about Elon and spilled a lot of beans on a show called Divorce Wars. I really do not care about the Musk Man’s marriages except to say that Telulah must have given Elon acting lessons prior to the split. 20,000 Model Ss with a gross margin in excess of 25% in 2013 will not be manufactured nor sold, and as they say in the old country if this happens I will eat my hat. Of course Mr. Musk did not say 2013 he said next year. He said this on January 16 so it sounds like next year is a lot sooner than all of 2013. Per Eric Savitz of Forbes, Elon also stated that the departure of the two lead engineers “was actually a slightly positive development”. I guess we will have to wait for Justine or Tululah to remove that positive spin and shed some light on how Elon sees positive from negative. Elon is so cross wired he may actually wrongly connect the terminals on the Model S and have the car go 130 miles per hour in reverse.

My disdain for Tesla is only matched by my disdain for academic chemical engineers who are at the pig trough of department of energy funding for pure junk science. We still have fools teaching in California state universities who are converting SUVs to run on hydrogen and only getting a 60 mile range but claiming zero emissions and we still have the department of entropy funding this junk. Talking of California, governor Moonbeam just fired the head of the high speed rail project that is supposed to whisk passenger from San Francisco to Los Angeles before the 22nd century arrives. This project is now estimated to cost $98.5 billion. Hey Jerry why not heat it up a smidgen to 98.6 so we can reach body temperature and keep the project alive? This puppy is so cold its temperature is that of Anchorage in mid February. For my overseas readers 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is about 37 degrees Celsius. If the Chinese were to build the California High Speed Rail it would cost $37 billion but heaven forbid we have two trains on the line at once, we would all experience a Chinese Fire Drill.

The good news in these Ignited States is that we have 240.5 million private vehicles with an average age of almost 11 years. The way things are going for the economy, I predict by the time Tesla produces 20,000 vehicles a year and enjoys a gross margin of more than 25% there will be 11 million private vehicles registered to the inhabitants of the US with an average age of 240.5 years. Of course TSLA stock will rebound in 240.5 years and when this happens and folks who paid $26 a share on January 16, 2012 will be able to say the rebound was real and their belief in Elon paid off.

Friday the 13th

A partly good and partly bad day. The bad part first. The drain to my bathroom sink clogged and the instant hot water heater for my tea leaked. It took a couple of pretty expensive visits to the old homestead by two plumbers who turned my body into a torso by taking an arm and a leg. The good part of the day is my best friend Sam turned 60 today. Sam and I became best friends in second grade back in Joburg when we were 6. We have a friendship that spans from six to six oh. As much as I love Sam and his becoming a sexagenarian had me thinking is life better or worse after sixty? If the first part of age group holds then of course life is better after sixty. Sam, I wish you a happy birthday and wishing you many more years of health and happiness.

If my friend Sam had it good who had it bad this Friday the 13th? Well I have to say my old enemy Teslacle had it real bad. They trade on the NASDAQ as TSLA and for most of Friday the 13th their stock was a flat line. Then with thirty minutes to the close of trading the news hit that their VP and chief engineer and the head of their vehicle and chassis engineering have left the company and the stock dropped. See the chart above. This is just months prior to the launch of the government funded pile of junk that transfers wealth and the pursuit of happiness from the 99% to the 1%. It is kind of like the ball has dropped at Teslacle. Prior to this happening today the want to be auto company had suffered from cryptorchidism. No doubt that Secretary Chu Chu is not happy that his wonder child no longer suffers from cryptorchidism and had wished that the two high level engineers could have stayed till after the November election.

Tesla continues to prevaricate on their website as to the range of the Model S. They fib about the pile of junk attaining a range of 160 miles when traveling at 55 miles per hour. Yeah this may be the case on a perfectly level and straight road at night when the prevailing temperature is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. With no heater or air conditioning and no braking or acceleration the pile of junk will yield a range of 160 miles using its 40 kilowatt hours of stored energy. I opined a while back that a motorist in upstate New York dealing with an outside temperature of only 14 degrees Farenheit and driving an electric car, they had better be wearing some Northface clothing to not die of exposure when their cab does not warm up over freezing point. But don’t fret for this person from the 1% in a Teslacle, they can fork over $80,000 and get an upgraded battery pack with 85 kilowatt hours of stored electricity. Now the pile of junk weighs in at over 5,000 pounds and many more of the 99% will be deprived of their share of the lithium. The 85 kilowatt hour battery will support a larger heater that brings the cab temperature up to the perfect 68 degrees Fahrenheit. But wait the added 900 pounds for the larger battery and the added draw for the heater now make the $80,000 behemoth only go 200 miles on a single charge. The driver will be not be able to go from Buffalo to Albany he will however be able to reach Utica where he can have a urologist check on the condition of his urethra. He had better hope the urologist has two things. Skinny fingers and a spare 40 amp 220 volt circuit. Of course the motorist will have to recharge in Utica for 10 hours before making the trip to Time Square in order to really see the ball drop. I have no idea how to spend 10 hours in Utica.

How Stupid Can We Be?

Albert Einstein once said “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.” Well we now know that universe is expanding and at even a faster speed than previously thought and no doubt human stupidity is doing likewise so is there a number beyond infinity? Let me shed a little light on what I think is the most stupid government policy in these Ignited States. If you buy a Chev Volt, a Nissan Leaf, or some other plug in vehicle you receive a $7,500 gift from the Treasury of the United States. This is a supposed noble idea to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Of course the EPA gives the plug in car a green star and lets the manufacturer claim that the electricity was produced with 100% efficiency when calculating the equivalent gas mileage for the vehicle. So not only does the US government give the purchaser of the heap of junk a gift, they allow the manufacturer to make claims that disobey the laws of thermodynamics. Of course Steve Chu Chu is the engineer steering this runaway train of fake out and payola.

Now that I have got my disdain for old Steve out of my system, let’s investigate just how much money was spent by Uncle Sam in 2011 to subsidize the sales of Volts and Leaves. 9,674 Leaves were sold in 2011 in the US and 7,671 Volts were likewise sold. By my estimate, had consumers bought a Chev Cruze instead and drive 15,000 miles a year the quantity of CO2 emissions that are saved by the Volts and Leaves sold in 2011 amounts to a paltry 17,216 tons a year. The Treasury of the US spent just over $130 million in 2011 to affect those savings in CO2 emissions. Had Dr. Chu Chu provided one of the electric utilities in the Midwest such as Ameren or Duke with a $130 million gift to build a 144 megawatt combined cycle natural gas fired power station to retire a similar old coal fired power station, we could have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 578,166 tons a year. Because old Chu Chu is beyond infinitely dumb we wrongly spent the $130 million and actually will have 560,950 more tons a year of CO2 emissions continue indefinitely.

But this is not where the stupidity ends. Had the money been spent on the natural gas combined cycle generation station, GE would have supplied US made equipment for the project. Instead the Japanese supplied the batteries for the Leaves and the Koreans supplied the batteries for the Volts and GE was left scratching its butt for something to do. Of course Chu Chu is instructed by the Commander In Chief engineer who runs the administration on what is best policy for these Ignited States. Heaven forbid the man with a Noble Prize in low temperature physics actually tell the Nobel Peace Prize winner that we are flatulating in the wind when it comes to reducing carbon emissions with Volts, Leaves, Karmas, and Codas. An update on the Karma batteries there were only 239 recalled cars and of those only 50 had been delivered to customers. Yippee after over $500 million of government subsidy the Fisker motor company got 50 Karmas into the hands of customers like Leonardo De Crapio (intentionally misspelled). This week the morons on Wall Street have upped A 123’s stock price on news that they will supply batteries to Via for trucks. Who is Via one might ask? Via is the remnant of Raser the famous firm that had the other side of the isle, in the form of Senator Hatch, excited about the “100 MPG Hummer” that he drove around the US Capitol. Now tell me with all the stupidity in DC is it not time for a third party? DC is owned by Wall Street and Wall Street is owned by who knows who but stupidity like greed is universal and is growing and actually may reach a value that is larger than infinite. Perhaps old Eistein should have postulated the largest number that is post infinite and is called superinfinity. We have super PACS that can pay for negative ads in the presidential elections. These super PACs can make Gnats out of Newt so perhaps the super infinite number can make Chu Chu understand that shift happens and that DC like Exergy is being destroyed by changes in temperature. I will explain Exergy sometime in the future but for now think of Exergy as the maximum useful work in a system. Exergy is about zero in the department of entropy.