Greetings From a Solar Consumer,
Midnite Solar recently surfaced as part of an all-energy solution to the replacement of my sailboat's venerable-but-faltering Atomic 4 (A4) gasoline auxiliary propulsion. (So, right off, this is a first-world problem.)
For the past 20 years, I've been a daysailor, but now have ideas about cruising further. The A4 gave up the ghost and I decided to go electric; more for reliability than greenness. The idea expanded and I now have aboard 600 lbs of AGM batteries along with 120 lbs (580 watts) of solar panels.
This has been very interesting but I'm wondering if there's a forum out there that ponders solar conversions in general terms. I'm sure my conversion has had a large carbon footprint.
Please redirect me to that group, if possible.
Very sincerely,
Bob M
Ox 1976 C&C 33-1
Jax, FL
P.S. I'm just a software guy and not affiliated with the oil companies.
Solar power is not nearly as energy dense as diesel or gasoline. On a boat, you will be weighing it down with a lot of batteries to replace a IC engine, and a lot of PV panels will be needed to keep the batteries charged.
Or consider an electric generator and run like a modern Diesel Electric locomotive, electric generator drives motors in the wheels (your prop shaft). No transmission, just a solid state motor controller.
You do not (or maybe you do) want to be out somewhere when you need your engine, and the batteries are low. You will find that a bunch of batteries only gets you a half mile or so.
Hello Bob,
I like the idea. I know there were some electric boat articles and boards out there. I'm not crazy about your battery technology choice, Lithium sounds better in a limited space unless they go up in smoke.
I also like Mikes idea on the generator to supplement charging/propulsion in a pinch. Nailing down consumption is going to be critical, I think you need to decide fairly closely your use patterns before throwing money at it. Most sailors I've known use the auxiliary more than the main propulsion, aka the wind.
If this is for docking, maneuvering and some motoring, OK but if you plan to head for Bermuda and don't want to mess with the sails, take lots of food and beer and make sure Ginger and Maryann are aboard.
Have fun
Wade
Hi Toothy Wade,
Thanks for your reply and insight.
Determining my future use patterns is important, irrespective of Maryann's and Ginger's requirements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilligan's_Island
I might very well be going solo for my three hour tour. :-)
I'm more a fan of Bernard Moitessier
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Bernard+Mouttesier&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Bob M
hope you have his finances too... ;)
But he is also remembered for wrecking not one, but three different boats during the course of his sailing career
http://www.wavetrain.net/lit-bits/546-bernard-moitessier-what-really-happened-to-joshua
Me too like this buddy idea a lot.
Yes,,, For a long time Solar Power was only identified as the conversion of sun light to to electricity. While this is not inaccurate most of us do not know that the energy harvested must first be converted to electrical energy to be able to produce generally functional electricity. The conversion is made possible through the photovoltaic or PV, a method that uses semiconductors to convert the sun's radiation to electrical energy.
Buddy I know about Solar energy conversion through solar panels but I don't know about this carbon foot-print,,,what is it,,,, sounds gr8,,,me too want to know more about it.
I have searched it now on Google I found out this http://www.altairsolar.com/home "The carbon footprint is basically an in-depth analysis of the amount of carbon dioxide is produced when people engage in certain activities. Carbon dioxide is a type of greenhouse gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is a major contributor in the issue of global warming. Global warming is the temperature change that is occurring in our atmosphere. Carbon footprints are measured starting at the beginning of production of certain items, and then extends forward until use is ceased by humans. Let's take the example of electricity. Certain fossil fuels are required in order to produce electricity. From the time that the fossil fuels are burned to the time that a person receives the power, and uses it to completion, all is within the time frame of the carbon footprint measurement. "
Is this relevant ???
Unless mankind can harness and control the output in BTU's of all our planets volcanos as well as control the emissions
such as sulpur and sulphuric acid particles and other nasties. All talk about global warming is basically a crock!
Volcano's on this planet are far more polluting and do more damage to the atmosphere than man.
It is just another devious means to try and extract money from people and make rich crocks richer!
I choose to use solar because it gives me financial relief from power companies and a bit self-sufficiency
while still have modern appliances.
On subject I have toyed with solar panels and batteries in small basa wood boats and I gave up as it was not practicle.
And as stated lithium ion may be a better choice in regard to power to weight ratio.
Do some research on diesel electric submarines and their specs. It might be a eye opener.
@Russ_drinkwater: Sulpher aerosols are an agent of global cooling. And proving global warming from atmospheric chemical processes amounts to proving the carbon/methane (livestock) outweighs the volcanic (primarily sulpher cycle) generally cooling.
I have no idea about the politics.
Suspended particles reflect Uv radiation and cause cooling. Suspended sulphuric acid particles from volcanic activity if enough is blown into the atmosphere will result in a global cooling effect for up to 10 years depending on the magnitude of the erruptions, no argument there.
I rely on cattle for my livelihood so I put up with them farting!
How much pollution is involved making solar panels, charge controllers, wire and batteries?
The world is old and we are young in comparison and there is a lot to learn. ;)
Geo Engineering
Seeding clouds
Chem Trails
Daily over the Pacific
Is 'chem trails' a real thing? Mainstream news doesn't mention it. There's a shock.
Interesting thing about livestock as global warming methane source is that presumably the herbivore Dinosaurs were big farters back in the day, so why wasn't there a lot of GW in 65000000 BC? Maybe that's what killed of the Dinos? ;D
BINGO! You're the winner of a prize... ;D ;D wish other people would realize that all that CO2 has been around for along long time, there is no new stuff, we're just recycling it ...
I heard that same statement about water, the same volume of water has been on the planet for many years, billions?
But not sure about CO2 as this is separated by plants into carbon that they use in growing and o2 that they release into the atmosphere. So the volume of CO2 has been increasing as more natural and industrial processes create it and there are less plants (rainforests) since they are being removed at an accelerating pace. More CO2 increases greenhouse effect, planet warming, ice melting, sea level rising etc..
Quote from: Powerplay on April 01, 2016, 09:37:52 PM
Is 'chem trails' a real thing? Mainstream news doesn't mention it. There's a shock.
Interesting thing about livestock as global warming methane source is that presumably the herbivore Dinosaurs were big farters back in the day, so why wasn't there a lot of GW in 65000000 BC? Maybe that's what killed of the Dinos? ;D
Not to mention the historical endless sea of American Bison, AKA buffalo The must have been prolific farters, and I find it hard to believe there are more beef cattle than that, with the African Plains beasts in the mix.
Or not?
Tom
Quote from: Powerplay on April 01, 2016, 09:37:52 PM
Is 'chem trails' a real thing? Mainstream news doesn't mention it. There's a shock.
Im on the west coast of Canada , I see these planes leaving trails daily , but then yesterday & today NOT A ONE or a line left . Just air trafic as normal , blue sky & the plane that has a contrail (Condensation) and that dissipates as it fly's ahead, that was normal as when I was a kid in the 50's -60's . I spent alot of time looking up , hence Avatar .
I notice these trail leavers are flying higher that the first carrier class (our air carriers ,Air Canada ,Qantas) at 50K feet ceiling .There are lanes in the sky call corridors and different type of aircraft use different levels & speeds. No tailgating or passing .
So when I see a trail being left & i can see another aircraft not leaving one but lower & the lower one is on a onmi flight path , while the trail leaver one has been seen stoping it & then pulled a huge 180 & started it again , Kinda makes ya do a HUM !!
Glad that crap is not falling on me , it seems to float & spread out , It's much higher than the clouds , So day like the last two I get great harvest , chem clouds , im 70% best.
Do a U tube search , there are many plus a California State one admitting that it is be conducted , but by who was their question.
I find that worst than Lubbock Texas & the "Smell of Money", I about made cookies at that when the wind shiffeed !!
Ranching area Russ .
As for the boat , NO way would I do Solar propulsion, Im a sailor of a cutter rigged ketch , I had a Ginger on board once who got the pass slack times WRONG , I went thru backwards with full forward letting me control where i was .. IRON LUNG to the rescue , Ginger was updated to a Mary Ann ;)
VT
& @ KhaledElsheref , Carbon Foot print is a english slang term for how much oil did that take to build , do etc.
So if I fly to see you & say hi & came back , that Hi at your house might of burnt 5000 carbons in fuels , while my telephone call is 94 carbons for power .
I think that was you question .
Our world is in a state of continual recycling.
If we had no beef, lamb,goat, deer,elk, carribo or the like we would be pretty hungry for protein!
The millions of trees on our property would more than balance out the amount of beef bowel burgs from our cattle.
I try to run the place as a sustainable enterprise with little environmental damage.
Had not thought of the wilderbeast herds and the like.
I would imagine the waters where hippos live would be like a sauna tub at times :o
I heard that same statement about water, the same volume of water has been on the planet for many years, billions?
But not sure about CO2 as this is separated by plants into carbon that they use in growing and o2 that they release into the atmosphere. So the volume of CO2 has been increasing as more natural and industrial processes create it and there are less plants (rainforests) since they are being removed at an accelerating pace. More CO2 increases greenhouse effect, planet warming, ice melting, sea level rising etc..
@dvd:
Methane is 25% of it according to some sources, FWIW.
So when I see a trail being left & i can see another aircraft not leaving one but lower & the lower one is on a onmi flight path , while the trail leaver one has been seen stoping it & then pulled a huge 180 & started it again , Kinda makes ya do a HUM !!
Glad that crap is not falling on me , it seems to float & spread out , It's much higher than the clouds , So day like the last two I get great harvest , chem clouds , im 70% best.
Do a U tube search , there are many plus a California State one admitting that it is be conducted , but by who was their question.
I find that worst than Lubbock Texas & the "Smell of Money", I about made cookies at that when the wind shiffeed !!
Ranching area Russ .
Interesting. What would you say this is above? Ocean, farmland, mountain, other?
Our world is in a state of continual recycling.
If we had no beef, lamb,goat, deer,elk, carribo or the like we would be pretty hungry for protein!
The millions of trees on our property would more than balance out the amount of beef bowel burgs from our cattle.
I try to run the place as a sustainable enterprise with little environmental damage.
Had not thought of the wilderbeast herds and the like.
I would imagine the waters where hippos live would be like a sauna tub at times :o
@Russ_drinkwater:
I'm very impressed by your conservation efforts. That is where my interest in Midnite products comes from.
Step 1: Power company says all trees west of my house are in their right-of-way and will be cut down - I have no say in the matter.
Step 2: Power distribution company sends 'helpful' mailer out that says I can reduce my electricity costs by planting trees west of my house. Huh?
Step 3: I've always been interested in conservation, science & engineering.
Step 4: Alternative power sources.
But I'm afraid the global warming fight is a zero sum game and not possible to win. 9 billion people are on the way. 11 next time. Best to do what one can personally & hope for the best.
Quote from: Powerplay on April 03, 2016, 12:15:57 PM
Interesting. What would you say this is above? Ocean, farmland, mountain, other?
West Coast of NORTH AMERICA over Pacific is what I can see , since im on the wet coast of BC
VT
We are under a flight path at our property.
The vapour trails from high altitude jets vary from day to day.
Some days nothing and other days they run for kilometers.
I was of the opinion it was controlled by atmospheric moisture levels at the altitude at which the planes are cruising!
Large contour banks across the land here help stem water erosion from storm runoff and the effect of cattle pads caused by livestock all
tracking behind each other day after day.
Slowing water flow and reducing grass cover loss also helps increase soil humus and carbon locked into soil.
Under stocking also promotes good ground cover and reduces effect of livestock production.
Self made drought from over stocking is no friend to any of us and greed/stupidity/ignorance is the cause of most.
I am trying to avoid production of anymore man-made deserts in a country of low rainfall!
It isn't a competition between how much mankind can produce relative to a volcano. It is a matter of how much carbon annually can the planet process/recycle. It is a function of long sequestered carbon versus liberated atmospheric available carbon. The planet can cycle a lot of carbon on a yearly basis, however, the addition of the industrial revolution and its massive additional amount of carbon mainly from burning coal since the mid 1700s has slowly added to a number that cannot be cycled, thus builds up in the atmosphere.
Simple equation. If a planet can cycle 1000 units. If humans manage to add 1 unit per annum that adds up over several hundred years as it has done so. The global system doesn't have a means to process it. (Only so much bio-mass) It is left to warm the atmosphere and basically turn our oceans into carbonated water. WOOPY!
Chem-trails make me laugh as an aviator.... It isn't a global conspiracy to reduce human population numbers. It is simply physics. Combustion creates mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor. When that water vapor hits its dew point based on ambient temperature and how much humidity it is already carrying.... poof, clouds.......visable moisture.
:)
Quote from: Cniemand on April 03, 2016, 06:28:12 PM
Chem-trails make me laugh as an aviator.... It isn't a global conspiracy to reduce human population numbers. It is simply physics. Combustion creates mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor. When that water vapor hits its dew point based on ambient temperature and how much humidity it is already carrying.... poof, clouds.......visable moisture.
:)
I also am a aviator , Each to there own beliefs ,& since I don't own a smart phone I walk looking ahead & up mostly on the ranch ,What I see never dissipate but spread , Clouds are below first class air carriers , and CONTRAILS dissipate after the aircraft . These are High Bypass Turbine engines , the Military low bypass engines that fly over from Whidbey Base & Comox Base leave the odd contrail But there at 65K FT and higher , hard to spot. Been looking Up since a kid from the 50's to see if I could do that also , the sky has changed since then .
Normal Aircraft DON'T make clouds ! & yes there are a lot of wacky You tubes also .
It's NOT just in North America , It's all over , Russ says he see it , I see it in England & France
reading these latest posts made me think of "cloud seeding" done long ago for relieving drought effects etc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
Then I saw the link to this interesting article from the BBC... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130304-the-trouble-with-cloud-seeding
Might this be what is mentioned above?
Quote from: Westbranch on April 03, 2016, 08:46:42 PM
reading these latest posts made me think of "cloud seeding" done long ago for relieving drought effects etc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
Then I saw the link to this interesting article from the BBC... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130304-the-trouble-with-cloud-seeding
Might this be what is mentioned above?
Thats It , See the pattern of the man made trails & if you notice the HEIGHT of them over clouds ..WB you might see those , I see the stream of the start .
VT
I'll have to pay closer attention to the 'trails' I can see from the cabin, it's a bit too far East of you for you to see but they fly along the spine of the coast mountains, I'm thinking of AK to CA....
We must have had chem trails and cloud seeding here over our property before I was born.
Most likely from 1940's onwards as I often found seeds lying in the cultivation as kid when I was wondering around shooting hares and wallabies and such.
Those seeds were 50 cal browning shells!
Now how the hell they got here always puzzled me.
Obviously someone at some time has fired a long burst of 50 cal browning from a plane flying overhead!
I would assume that the shells would be ejected out of the plane once extracted from the breech of the machine gun/guns.
They sure would have rattled if they had landed on the tin roof of my grandparents house here! ;D
Greenhouse emitters: Power gen = 21%, Industry = 17%, Transportation fuel = 14%, Ag Byproducts = 12.5%, Fossil fuel retrieval = 11%, Commercial/Residential = 10%, Open burning of biomass = 10%. Leading producer of CO2 = Power Generation at 30%, Leading producer of Methane = Ag byproducts at 40%, Leading producer of NO = Ag fertilizer. Unit warming effectiveness 1 unit = CO2, Methane = 25X CO2, NO (Nitrous Oxide) = 298X CO2. Tropospheric concentration vs pre 1750. Methane = 700 ppb now = 1,870 ppb. CO2 = 280K ppb now = 388K ppb. NO 270 ppb now = 323 ppb.
Note that Methane has increased about 250% or so since 1750.
Commercial & residential should be split out and better defined in my opinion.
CFCs have an enormous half life in the troposphere.
The article I read didn't talk about water vapor in this equation but it is definitely a greenhouse gas & jets put a lot out there.
Sorry, in the above NO is Nitric Oxide and is a byproduct of internal combustion engines & power generating plants + the semiconductor industry produces a lot of it. It is not an Ag byproduct as I must have carried over from the previous category.
Here is a bit of lite reading for you all about Svensmark, a Danish researcher. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/sep/09/physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation
An Article that cites Svensmark :
http://www.icr.org/article/new-theory-climate-change/
if you want to jump to the conclusion and then reread the whole article it may be a bit clearer as the rise in CME's , suns spots , leads to fewer cosmic rays getting to earth resulting in less low level clouds, which is due to stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc.... this discovery is a bit counter intuitive...
And an article on ocean s and CO2
http://www.americantraditions.org/Articles/New%20Evidence%20that%20Man-Made%20Carbon%20Dioxide%20%28CO2%29%20Does%20Not%20Cause%20Global%20Warming.htm
Here is a bit of lite reading for you all about Svensmark, a Danish researcher.
An Article that cites Svensmark :
if you want to jump to the conclusion and then reread the whole article it may be a bit clearer as the rise in CME's , suns spots , leads to fewer cosmic rays getting to earth resulting in less low level clouds, which is due to stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc.... this discovery is a bit counter intuitive...
And an article on ocean s and CO2
One correlation I noticed, was the medieval 'little ice age' correlates a bit (close enough for this topic) with the last wave a great plagues to sweep Europe. So to continue with the tradition of weak logic both pro and anti in this field, I'm forced to conclude Europeans are responsible for global warming. Since when they died off in the plague, it caused global cooling. ;D
The last article cited,titled - ocean s and CO2, seriously, in my opinion was a total hack job.
The CME effect, which I've been observing informally for a while is transitory. Kind of like drinking coffee raises the blood pressure but doesn't cause hypertension.
PowerPlay;
Trying to understand your use of different colored text?
We have a "quote" tag for quoting sources and the colors just seem harder to read at least for my old eyes.
Tom.
QuoteTrying to understand your use of different colored text?
We have a "quote" tag for quoting sources and the colors just seem harder to read at least for my old eyes.
Tom.
Thank you. Did that do the trick? I'm still getting used to the non-threaded style. I wouldn't want you to miss my logic about how the bubonic plague prevented global warming during the 'Little Ice Age'. ::)
If all the polar ice melts and most glaciers do the same I wonder if the increased volume of available water will increase or decrease the amount and frequency of storms around the planet?
We could could do with less beach houses in Australia and more rain events!