The Shrine

They place small crystals that generate electricity when pressure is applied. Israel is conducting a test on a small stretch of road and is working at the same time on an electric car initiative with Nissan (there's a good choice....dumbasses)

http://blogs.carpoint.ca/2008/12/electricity-gen.html

I don't know much about these piezoelectric crystals but obviously the idea is viable enough to give 'er a test run.

Along with wind and water turbines, this is the next best idea I've heard of. I hope it works.

Japan already has this in practice in some subways. They use the same technology on the floors of the turnstyles, so the energy generated by people walking on them powers the turnstyle itself and the lights.

Ive always wondered why we dont take advantage of kinetic energy more often. Perpetual motion machines are impossible, but there are so many things constantly moving it seems silly not to hook up a small generator to them for some savings. Doors at retail stores, elevators in offices, escalators even (they are run on elec but why not hook up a little generator to capture and feed back SOME of it?). Cars and people are awesome ideas.

Every little bit helps.

Flip wrote: Every little bit helps.

No it doesn't, where's my ROI on this stuff? Most of this technology isn't in practice because it's not worth the investment. Electricity doesn't cost nearly enough yet for businesses to want to invest in most of this stuff outside of novelty. I can see the big stuff like the subway system using it, but everything else would either be too small or large scale to implement.

Tessian wrote:

Flip wrote: Every little bit helps.

No it doesn't, where's my ROI on this stuff? Most of this technology isn't in practice because it's not worth the investment. Electricity doesn't cost nearly enough yet for businesses to want to invest in most of this stuff outside of novelty. I can see the big stuff like the subway system using it, but everything else would either be too small or large scale to implement.

Oh yeah, there are tons of ways to generate fuel/power, it's just not worth it from a cost-benefit analysis point of view for most of these methods. That's why solar energy hasn't taken off like everyone thought it would. There's actually a machine out there that'll turn basically any garbage into oil but they found that it takes more energy to convert it than it generates.

But what intrigues me on this one is that Israel, of all places, is doing a pilot on it. So they seem to think that these crystals will a) generated enough power and b) do it for a long enough time to make it worth while.

Zeus wrote:Oh yeah, there are tons of ways to generate fuel/power, it's just not worth it from a cost-benefit analysis point of view for most of these methods. That's why solar energy hasn't taken off like everyone thought it would. There's actually a machine out there that'll turn basically any garbage into oil but they found that it takes more energy to convert it than it generates.

Solar energy DEFINITELY has ROI. It hasn't taken off because people are still content to suck gas and coal to get their electricity. Sometimes, it's just plain laziness.

SineSwiper wrote:

Zeus wrote:Oh yeah, there are tons of ways to generate fuel/power, it's just not worth it from a cost-benefit analysis point of view for most of these methods. That's why solar energy hasn't taken off like everyone thought it would. There's actually a machine out there that'll turn basically any garbage into oil but they found that it takes more energy to convert it than it generates.

Solar energy DEFINITELY has ROI. It hasn't taken off because people are still content to suck gas and coal to get their electricity. Sometimes, it's just plain laziness.

It's the costs that stop people from buying it, period

http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/building.html

It costs money to install these stuff in the first place. If it's going to take 100 years to get your money back, it's probably not worth it. Making the stuff that produces energy can create pollution too. If I recall solar cells have a pretty high environmental cost for being produced, so if you can't keep them going for a while, you might be worse off than before you used them.

TFA wrote:It costs about $11,000 to collect one kilowatt hour of solar energy on the rooftop of your house, more than most people want to invest.

Monthly average residential consumption of electricity in the United States in 1999 was 866 kilowatt hours. (Source: US DOE) Therefore, a one kilowatt hour system is actually what you need. The IRS will give you a 30% credit. (There was a $2K cap, but that has been removed.) Therefore, a $11K system is now $8K.

My bill can go upwards of $250 during the summer/winter, and hit around $100-150 during the lower periods. If I could eliminate that, the solar panels would pay for themselves in 4-5 years (given averages of $150/mo).

Besides, in the next few years, when solar sheets are in production, the price of solar energy will drop to $1/watt or less. It would cost about $2000 to install a solar panel system.

SineSwiper wrote: Monthly average residential consumption of electricity in the United States in 1999 was 866 kilowatt hours. (Source: US DOE) Therefore, a one kilowatt hour system is actually what you need.

What? You're pulling numbers from 1999??? Nearly a decade ago, when this previous decade has seen the largest growth in power consumption and electronic purchasing? Last month I consumed 1260 kwh for a ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT (2 months ago was 735kwh). So no, your belief that 1 kilowatt hour system is all you need is bullshit.

So no, solar power is not cost effective yet and won't be for still quite some time.

Another factor for those of us living north of Tennessee and east of Oregon: snow. There's gonna be a lot of times where we won't get much out of our solar panels 'cause they're covered in ice and/or snow.

Simply put, it's WAAAAAY too expensive still. It's quite literally 4x more expensive than it needs to be before it even hints at mass market....and hasn't gone down in a decade or more. It's so not worth it up here.

There are two very good sources of power that are renewable and could be worth the coin: windmills and geothermal heating.

We now have tons of farmers pretty close to the big cities up here with wind farms. Get a bunch of them up with all of the wind we have and farmers are getting more out of their wind farms than they are crops, even with all the subsidies.

You can drive just a little north of Brampton, a northern suburb of Toronto, and literally see hundreds of windmills. It's proven, not too expensive, renewable, and has basically a negligible negative impact on the environment. There should be windmills in every street corner in Toronto. You know how much wind goes through that city (imagine if they installed them in Chicago...)? Instead they have just the one privately-owned one by the lake. Why? "They're an eyesore". Are you fucking kidding me? Prissy fucks....

I was at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec in July and there was a concept drawing of newly designed windmills that look sort-of like bubbled-out light posts with curvy blades in the middle. It actually looked good, served a purpose (can double as a light post), and generated power all at the same time. That's the type of shit, along with these road crystals, that we need to explore. The windmills are monitarily viable on a large scale, that's been proven many times over all over the world already. They just need to see if they can bring them down to lamppost size and put them everywhere within a city so the whole city can generate electricity. Particularly the large, coastal cities with tons of wind. Half the large cities in Canada and the US would qualify.

As for geothermal, it's quite expensive but if you put in the full boiler and electricity generator in your house, you could actually get credit for the electricity you put back into the grid (if you could get enough power, that is). But even then it's still got a 10-20 year payback at best. So it's good for the rich with estates and a little more reliable than solar up here, but it's a complimentary solution as opposed to a complete one