The Lowe's on line energy demand calculator is working again: Intro.
http://www.generatorsatlowes.com/?cm_sp=endeca-_-Generator-_-l Calculator http://www.generatorsatlowes.com/Sizer/sizer.aspx I set up all-electric 2000 sq. ft. house: All general lighting, refrigerator, furnace fan, and general use receptacles (for TV, radio, and other small appliances.) Optional: back up additional large appliances Air Conditioning N Electric Water Heater Y Microwave Y Electric Heat N Electric Dryer N Freezer Y Heat Pump Y Hot Tub Y Sump Pump Y Electric Range (in kitchen) Y Well Pump Y I selected "Heat Pump" but not "Electric Heat" or "Air Conditioning" because you do not need the latter if you have a heat pump. The heat pump draws 5 or 6 kW according to this. Anyway, for that configuration, the calculator says you need 22 to 28 kW Then I set up an all-cold fusion house where everything that can use cold fusion heat directly, instead of electricity, is removed from the list: Air Conditioning N Electric Water Heater N Microwave Y Electric Heat N Electric Dryer N Freezer N Heat Pump N Hot Tub N Sump Pump Y Electric Range (in kitchen) N * Well Pump Y * This is a stretch. It will be a while before people trust cold fusion heat to cook with. This comes out 9 to 11 kW. For cooking and some other high temperature or specialty applications where you want a flame, such a blow torch, here is one possibility I described in the book. Cold fusion might be used to produce hydrogen from water, either with electrolysis or high temperature. The hydrogen would be burned immediately on demand in the kitchen, or it might be used to make a synthetic replacement for natural gas. That is, hydrocarbon gas, with an additive to give the gas a bad smell, for safety. This gas might be generated at central distribution plants, and distributed through existing pipelines for cooking. It might be competitive for space heating, especially during the 20 or 30 years when most houses and buildings already have gas-fired space heating. I think the natural gas distribution network may last longer than the electric power network, and it may remain competitive with cold fusion longer. I say this for several reasons. It is underground and built to last longer. It is less prone to disruption or accident, and safer. Applications that use natural gas tend to require large capital investment equipment, such as furnaces, water heaters, stoves and ovens. (Large by the standards of a household budget.) It is easier and safer to make a cold fusion electric power generator for the home than it is to make a synthetic gas generator. We already have home generators, for emergencies and for remote locations such as cabins. We do not have synthetic gas machines, and we may never have them. The moment you get an electric generator and connect it to your power main (behind the circuit breakers), you can use it with your television, washing machine or lighting; there is no cut-over expense or complexity. Assuming the market for natural gas applications survives some decades into the cold fusion era, I think by that time synthetic gas will soon be cheaper than the natural product. It can be made on site, at the distribution plant. It does not have to be drilled out of the ground or shipped in long, large pipelines. It can be synthesized from garbage, or from water and coal, or from air and water. People make synthetic oil now from garbage, such as waste from a turkey slaughtering plant. In that case, they use existing molecules with their potential energy intact. The turkey fat becomes oil for fuel. What I have in mind is building up the molecules from scratch and adding all of the energy, from cold fusion. In other words, reverse combustion. You might even start with CO2 and water, and reverse the process completely. This would be convenient because CO2 is everywhere; you just suck air into the fabrication machine, and add tap water. Of course this would take a fantastic amount of energy, but -- as I keep saying -- the energy will cost nothing, so this will not matter. I do not know how you would go about breaking CO2 into C and O2, but I suppose there is a a convenient method that can be automated. Done on a large scale this could be used to reverse global warming. I mean a very large scale, with gigantic factories producing a flow of synthetic oil from CO2 and water which would be as large as the flow of oil we now extract from wells. This oil would be buried in the ground, with a reverse oil-well. (Where you pump the oil back down in the ground, to get rid of it. Plan B would be to ship it up a space elevator and dump it into the moon, or sun.) This would cost trillions of dollars and the factory infrastructure would be useless for anything other than solving the global warming problem. 90% of the oil would be pumped into the ground and thrown away. Only 10% of present-day oil is used to synthesize plastic, or for lubrication, or for other non-energy uses. I do not like that plan. I think it would be better to use massive desalination plants to grow trees in what are now desert areas, to sequester the carbon in wood. When growth reaches a climax forest (maturity), decades or centuries from now, and the trees start to die, they should not be left to rot. That puts the CO2 right back in the atmosphere. The wood should be gathered, carbonized and buried in the ground. That is to say, in reverse coal mines. I like this better than the plan to make reverse oil wells because: 1. Many of those deserts were made by people in the first place. We should put them back the way we found them. 2. Converting barren deserts into verdant woods and fields would bring happiness to many people and other species. Of course we must leave some deserts as they are, for the benefit of the desert species. 3. Initially, we might use the land to grow crops and feed people. I predict that food factories will soon make outdoor agriculture obsolete, so the land will not be needed for long. We can just live on it, or enjoy it, or let other species live on it. Food factories will also allow us to return most of the land in North America to its natural state, or semi-natural state. The U.S. could grow all of the food we consume in an area roughly the size of greater New York City. (Not to say you would want to put all the food factories in one place.) You often read that we are "running out of land" or "running out of water." This is true, we are. But the problem is not a lack of natural resources. The problem is that people tend to be stupid, ignorant, greedy and self destructive, and they do not take fix problems in way that would not only save money, it would earn a huge profit. This was described by Arthur C. Clarke, in "Profiles of the Future," Chapter 12 -- Ages of Plenty: ". . . For terrestrial projects, it does not greatly matter whether or not the universe contains unknown and untapped energy sources. The heavy hydrogen in the seas can drive all our machines, heat all our cities, for as far ahead as we can imagine. If, as is perfectly possible, we are short of energy two generations from now, it will be through our own incompetence. We will be like Stone age men freezing to death on top of a coal bed. . . . This survey should be enough to indicate -- though not to prove -- that there need never be any permanent shortage of raw materials. Yet Sir George Darwin's prediction that ours would be a golden age compared with the aeons of poverty to follow, may well be perfectly correct. In this inconceivably enormous universe, we can never run out of energy or matter. But we can all too easily run out of brains." We can run out of brains, and also gumption, imagination and common sense. If people would only use their brains, most of our technological problems could be ameliorated or fixed. Everyone should read "Profiles of the Future," by the way. You will see that I cribbed most of my book from it. - Jed
