The need to rant!

[Gary D]

I saw Woof's complaint of no one posting rants! Ok, here goes!

 Seeing Dan's new crossflow/banki turbine got me to thinking. I live in Pa., a low wind state, however it has many currently no longer utilized low head dams, as do many Eastern states. Left over from olden times, formerly used for milling grain or weaving. Whether turbines, or old fashened wheels, for ambience and power production. Now with the thousands of them in my state alone, just think of the untapped megawatts just waiting to come back to life!

 Just as Habitat for Humanity, Adopt a Road litter cleanup and such, volunteers could drop pipes over the dam breasts ( with safety screens of course) and siphon varying ammounts into generators. Ten kw here, 20 there, thereby reducing the strength of undertow hydrolics that claim a few lives each year, making neighborhoods safer as a side benefit. With Community colleges and Tech schools combining resources to figure the best units for each Dam....

 Tree huggers should have their input of course and such, but the environmental damage was done decades ago. The money made from production could be put to rehabing the towns, or nearby communities, whatever... only costs involved should be the materials used.

 Add the Dams used for recreation and drinking, that are required to discharge x ammount daily to keep streams below them flowing, with a much higher head, and the numbers of kw's drastically could be upped ( the discharge pipe is already in place).

 Could these resourses be tapped economically? Definately! With proper safeguards and co-operation from the required Federal, State, and local Governments, and power companies. Will this happen? Doubtfull, until the wife of enough people in power flip on an appliance and no juice is there to run it!

 I'm sure each state has untapped resourses of some type just waiting to be used(drooled at the thought of putting a turbine in the irrigation pipe flowing off the mesa to Grand Junction for example). It's just a matter of enough people wanting to do the right thing, and coming together to get down and dirty!

 Now back to reality..... Gary D

[Gary D]

Sorry, I thought this wouldn't clutter up the front page with the new format! Gary D.

[HyperSpectral]

It is too bad that a lot of these good ideas will be actively squelched

by the conspiracy of Govt. and Industry which is pushing ever harder

to force you to buy your needs from their monopoly. Out West, we have

been experiencing sinister moves by authorities to limit everyone's

possibilities for living out in the country. They are inventing ecological

crises where none exist, causing red-tape complications to justify their

useless bureaucratic jobs...

It is guys like you and the rest of the homepower tinkerers which must

make training manuals and help the future generations to be able to

help themselves AFTER the collapse of this bureaucratic idiot society.

[Gary D]

Hi Hyper, my need to rant came after an article in last months Roural Electric Co-op's magasine. It applauded Summerset county in Pa's new setback rule of 1,000 feet for wind genny towers from any occupied dwelling ( the lawsuit wanted 3,000 ft.). I'm not sure if this applies to home built units as well tho...

So I ranted that communities (ie interested people) that want renewables in the mix could just switch gears to a different way (24-7 production). Since this forum is about home power production, NOT community based, I posted it in rants and oppinions.

 Inerestingly this month, a new article stated that America is only using 70% of capasity of power plants. The claim is that in the next ten years NO new production plants of ANY kind will need to be built, read in wind, solar, hydro, biogas, or any other carbon neutral plants. The empasis was definately on high risk investments (ie new technologies).

 If the U.S. would import and refine 30% more oil per year then, assuming capasity in the world markets was there, would the price drop? Demand and supply- If you had a product you needed to sell, you'd drop the price to move it. Yes a very simplistic view. But in the electric market the opposite seems to be true. PPL corp. is asking for a minimum of 7.5% increase in price to allow juice from others to flow thru their lines! I tend to think this is a direct effort to recoup their loss in court due to inadequate rights of way clearing ( waiting for trees to fall on their lines instead of preventing in the first place).

As For me or anyone needing to write how to manuals, this forum hopefully will teach you and me and others, then if the need ever arises, you (me us etc.) will have the knowledge to help others hands on ( if this society implodes or such). Just look at the suffering that happens after a natural desaster when power is lost, lost food, martial law, heard mentality and such, if something unnatural were to happen, I figure the one with the biggest gun will have the power literally. That's not me! ( Hopefully I'll be sitting on my sack of magnets and magnet wire ;-/ ) ......  Gary D.

 

[Gary D]

As an addition - on the Government conspiracy thing.... as I look at my electric bill, 1.805 cents per kwh goes to the Feds (FCR charge). On a $60.00 total bill, $10.65 goes to them. Wonder why they don't want to subsidise solar hot water systems...? You decide... Just something to add a little thought to your day...  Gary D.

[Gary D]

The FCR is the Fixed Cost Recovery charge. I definately misspoke/misstyped. Wouldn't want the Feds. or anyone blamed for something that was wrong, sorry!  Gary D.