Dear Stan,
I think that this talk by Bill Gates will interest you.
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
On 2010/02/19, at 11:08 , Stanislav Jakuba wrote:
This is about the growth of the annual bills for electricity.
Electricity rate has about doubled for me in the last few years. I
though we were supposed to experience lower rates enabled by
harvesting renewable ("free") energies.
As we all know, the U.S. has been investing in the sources of "free"
electricity, mainly from the wind and direct solar technologies, the
latter meaning the photovoltaic and thermal "power" plants. We also
know that the investments have been heavily subsidized by the state
and federal governments, i.e. taxpayers who also paid for the gov't
offices and overseers. And financed also by the clean-energy-
promoting groups that collect money from various additional sources
such as the extra payments utilities were legislated to add to our
monthly bills.
You may have noticed that your utility bill GREW with the
availability of the FREE energy, not declined. Maybe it grew as much
as mine which about doubled in just 8 years. See the attached Excel
graph. The rate on the graph is simply the billed amount divided by
the consumption, and it is shown in both $/kW·h and $/GJ. As such,
the rate includes the delivery and "other" charges, among the latter
ones being the aforementioned additional fee titled on my bill as
the Combined Public Benefits Charge.
In light of this, would you like to support buying more electricity
from these FREE-energy sources? I would not. My billed rate almost
doubled as said when the proportion of electricity delivered by the
two sources grew from 0.30 % to 0.85 % of the total U.S. electricity
generation. The growth of the 0.55 % in some 7 years cost us dearly
- see the graph. Imagine what the monthly bill will be when that
portion reaches over 10 %! (Fortunately, it is unlikely to do so; seehttp://energy.sigmaxi.org/?p=743
.)
Some think that it is okay to impoverish poor people further by
producing expensive electricity just BECAUSE it is CLEAN (low on
CO2). Beware that none of the wind and direct-solar plants will ever
save more CO2 than their manufacture, erection, maintenance and
dismantling generated, not to mention the cost of manufacture and
installation of the wiring to the remote locations. And add to it
the cost of the extra controls utilities must install.
Is there a "clean" alternative? The average nuclear plant returns
its carbon debt in 6 years and last many times longer than the
renewable competition. Their output grew also in last years. The
growth was achieved by routine improvements in the existing 3- and 4-
decades old plants at essentially zero rate change. Those
improvements, negligible in cost, resulted in the increase of
electricity production TWICE as great as the increase from
installing all the additional wind and solar plants.
For reference, here are the average annual outputs for 2007 (as
finalized in 2009):
Electricity - all sources 437 GW
Electricity - wind and solar only 3.7 GW
Percentage of total electricity 0.85 %
Percentage of total U.S. energy 0.11 %
Electricity - nuclear plants only 92 GW
Percentage of total electricity 21 %
Annual growth in electricity consumption ~50 GW (compare with the
3.7 GW above).
To adhere to the spirit of my membership in the U.S.Metric
Association, the annual output is in watts.
Stan Jakuba
PS: A pleasing coincidence: I just heard on the radio that Pres.
Obama is reverting his stance on nuclear energy and will "allow"
building new nuclear plants in the U.S.
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