CNG How do we get there?

Seems that we have made a big jump with green logic. We are spending billions that we will never get back by jumping into anything that looks "green". Some one has to ask, "is it worth it?" That is where I come in. A lone voice out in the polluted and cold wilderness. The best numbers that I have been able to come up with show the breakdown of cost for CNG to be:

Natural gas---------$1.77/gal
Electricity--------- 0.78/gal
Equipment----------- 0.60/gal
Road Tax------------ 0.54/gal
Total---------------$3.69/gal

I am still working on my numbers, but remember we still have to pay road tax. I can by gas or diesel right now without road tax and put in my car, but that would be breaking the law. When you see cost figures, make sure they include road tax before you compare it to gas from the pump.

In one source, I found that CNG has 92% of the heat value of gasoline by weight, but there is a lot more to it. Natural gas burns more complete in an engine so it may actually give you more mileage.

I found that in some states, natural gas sells for as little as $0.70/therm. Now what is a therm? It is a 100 cubic feet of average quality natural gas at standard temperature and pressure. For most high quality gas, this is only 96.7 ccf. Am I losing you? Here is another one. One therm is equal to 29.3 kwh. Now we are getting some place. Heat is one thing, but mechanical power is another. If you could actually convert a therm to 29.3 kwh, that would be great, but it is not possible. Remember, 1 hp is equal to .75 kwh. The best internal combustion engines only convert about 25% of the heat into mechanical energy. Coal fired power plants do about the same, so you need to use care when throwing around numbers.

I looked at LNG or liquefied natural gas too. The only place were it is logical to make LNG is in places where, due to the location, the natural gas is almost worthless. They use the Linde process that was invented over 100 years ago so we are not talking about new technology here. There is a lot of wasted natural gas in the process, but who cares, it is not worth much in the first place. Better to have half a loaf than no loaf at all. Our government has invested all kinds of our money into trying to run trucks on LNG, but so far it has been a bust. There is logic in making CNG out of LNG, but it can only be done in a few locations. CNG made from LNG according to my numbers would cost about half as much as compressing low pressure gas from the gas line. The problem is that 100% of LNG is now imported so it would not change our import balance and making it here is too expensive.

See what I was telling you? This green energy thing is complicated and you have to do your homework to get the right answers and I am not sure that I have them either.

Converting our cars over to CNG is not a big deal nor does it cost much extra. The problem is the limited range that you have with CNG, it is better than batteries, but still not real good. Propane is equal to gasoline and a little less expensive. If we could make propane out of natural gas, that might be a break thru.

The one thing that I have not seen is a low tech system for co generation. One concept would be to collect the waste heat from cars and trucks and substitute it for other heating fuel uses. Remember, you car and truck waste about 75% of the heat from the fuel. If that could be collected, it could be used to heat your home or swimming pool. We are talking about a lot of energy here and it is going out the exhaust and the radiator.

The debate goes on, but I hope I have made it a little more interesting.

Go Green Sites On The Web

It has been a cold day, so I have been cruising the web for entertainment and have found the "Go Green" sites some of the best. These are sites that cater to people who want to save the world by going green. Most articles have a grain of truth, but soon turn to being some kind of advocate with an agenda. That is normally where they jump off the accuracy boat into the land of make believe. It is entertaining reading, but if you know anything about technology, chemistry or physics, you have to go to never never land to understand their logic. The really bad part is that they want to take money from you and me to promote their personal green agenda. As I have said in the past, I don't have anything against them going green with their own money, but when they want to use my money, I draw the line.

As I was trying to find data on LNG and CNG, I came across sites from the DOE where they were spending our money on all kinds of way out green energy projects. A common thread in many of them was their claim that we needed to be "energy independent" and it seemed they felt that we should do this no mater how much it costs. Why don't they have this same attitude about anything else? How about cell phones or TV sets? We make "zero" of those, yet we produce over 50% of our energy. If the greenies had their way, we would have to keep warm by rubbing our hands together.

At some point, we have to get back to reality on this whole green vs energy thing. I noticed that there was total silence on population growth or immigration. One way to make our energy go farther is to have fewer people using it. I think that we have about a million Mexicans crossing our border every year while all the wind mills and solar panels combined could not supply the energy needed for 10% of them. We have families with more than 5 kids who are on welfare, yet there is total silence by the green community. If we were really serious, we would do all the cheap things first before bankrupting the country, but that is not the way of the green movement.

Next time you are bored, try visiting some of the Go Green sites. It could bring sun shine to a cloudy day.

CNG Compressed Natural Gas

I guess that some of you noticed I have been blogging on Green Energy without ever writing anything about CNG. Well here goes. I like green energy, I have found it difficult to find snapping turtle facts about CNG. It seems that everyone has an angle or something to sell. I just want the facts so that I can make up my own mind. I don't need someone to tell me how to think. This will be short because I do not have many repeatable facts.

I found one study by Edmund's, the car company, that did seem to have some facts. Like most of these, I had to do more research to clarify them. Edmund's converted a standard production car and ran an equivalent of 51.9 gal of CNG thru it. Since, by definition, the CNG was equivalent, they got the same gas mileage. Follow that one? They did the test in San Diego, Ca and got the CNG from a local source. They did get some details about the cost of the CNG. To produce the 51.9 gal equivalent, it required $40.29 of electricity to run the compressor and the natural gas was $91.69. Based on these two numbers, the CNG would cost $2.55. Sounds good so far, but. They did not say how much they actually paid for the CNG.

I looked up what the cost would be for a compressor unit rated at 3,000 psi and I think that I could buy a home unit for about $3,000. If I used 1,000 gal per year and wanted to pay the thing off in 5 years, it would cost me $0.60 per gallon. Now, that brings the cost of CNG up to $3.15/gal. Not looking so good. I still have to work on getting even better numbers.

If you noticed, electricity to run the compressor turned out to be 25% of my total $3.15/gal. If a group went together on the compressor, that could reduce the $0.60 capital cost, but the number would not go to zero. The fact that the electricity cost is so high tells you that it must take a big electric motor to produce a lot of CNG and you would be right. We know that 1 hp is equal to 0.75 kwh. Now if we pay $0.15/kwh and the gallon of CNG required $0.78 of electricity, then to make one gallon of CNG per hour you would need a compressor with a 6.9 hp. Well now, that is a very big unit. Most of the home units that I found on the Internet only had a 2 hp motor and could only make about a quart of CNG per hour.

AS you are starting to see, it is a little more complex than people have been letting on on. I is much the same when you ask how long it takes to recharge a big car battery or how big of an electrical service you need. Because Americans are so dumb when it comes to anything technical, they have to go on "faith" and you all know how far that has gotten the human race. I'll have more when I get some more facts.

Plausible Deny Ability

Plausible Deny Ability, did you ever hear that one out of Washington DC? If you are an elected official and know the ropes, that is what you do. This is how it works. If you make a decision that you don't want to be held responsible for, you get one of your people to carry out the decision, but keep you out of the "official" loop. This way, if you get caught, you can say, "I don't know anything about it". The trick to making this work is that it has to be "plausible". That is where the problem comes in. Often when something bad happens and it is clearly on you watch, there only two ways that it could happen and both are bad. First, you did not know anything about what happened and you did not authorize it. Second, you are incompetent and should not have the position that you have because you should have known about this and prevented it from happening. That is the situation in Washington DC now. The only way out for Obama and Holder is that they are either caused the problems or they are so incompetent that the problems occurred under their watch without them knowing it. Both need to be impeached or resign.

I can just see the two of them making plans with very key staff people and both saying to all, "you never heard me giving this order and if you do, I will deny it." There will already have been an "unwritten" rule in place that tells all key people to never leave a "paper" trail on anything that happens in the oval office. That is why when questioned about a meeting that should have happened that they claim that they have never spoken in the past several months to the President. If they never spoke to the President, then how could he have given then instructions or they give him any kind of an update on what has happened. If they all do this right, they all end up as stupid and incompetent, but do not go to jail. Is that anyway to run a government, but is the way it works.

You just watch over the next few months as the multimillion dollar green loans and the gun running gets investigated by the congress. You are going to see "Plausible Deny Ability" used again and again as a defense. What you have to do is to see thru this. Stupidity is not a defense nor is "Plausible Deny Ability". You may never here the words "Plausible Deny Ability", but you will know it when you see or hear it.

The Student Loan Problem

I have blogged on the problem with student loans before, but I am going to do it again. I have a lot of friends who are college graduates and I do not know any who ever had a student loan. Obama just said that the average graduate graduates with a $25,000 student loan. Looks a little low to me. I know that there is a large number of kids who never graduated from college, but who have a big student loan. How are these people ever going to pay these loans back? It is worse than the home mortgage situation, because at least, the home loans were made on real homes. The homes may now be worth less than the amount of the loan, but they are not worth "zero" like many of the student loans. 99% of student loans made by banks are guaranteed by the government or us taxpayers. It is the same model as the home loans that were also guaranteed by the government or us taxpayers. In both cases, it is not the banks who were and are the problem, it is the government. Wake up! Obama also pointed out the fact that the cost of college has gone up faster than medical. That is because our kids are paying for college with borrowed money that they never plan on paying back. Notice how this looks exactly like many of the old home loans. People could "flip" houses, but there is no way to "flip" a bull shit college degree. It is worse and it is going to get even worse. Obama wants to take the banks out of the picture and make the student loans out of the White House. I have some ideas on this whole thing and here are some.

Try this? College does not make you "smart", it only proves that you are "smart" for going to college and graduating. If you agree that college does not make you smart and only allows you to learn help full information, then this next point will make a lot of sense. I have hired hundreds of recent graduates over my career and the key thing that I looked for was whether or not the were "smart". I found a lot of kids who could parrot back what they learned in college, but they were not smart and could not solve simple problems. To solve new problems, you have to be smart. Much of what determined the success of a new hire was not what they had already learned, but how quickly they picked up new knowledge on the job. To do this, they had to be smart. The reason that I am trying to develop this point is that we need an alternate to the expense of college.

In another blog, I argued that our kids should not go for college degrees, but only take those classes that would prepare them for a job. I proposed that they sell their transcript rather than their degree to a prospective employer. Remember that one? Now, I propose going one step farther. The best colleges require the highest SAT scores so they start with the "smartest" kids and thus turn out the best graduates. That is because they were the smartest in the first place. If that is the case, then why don't our kids take the SAT exam and then take the results out into the labor market and sell their SAT score and the fact that they are among the "smartest". That is what employers looking for so cut out the colleges.

We know that Steve Jobs was not a college graduate, be we all agree that he was "smart". My guess is that he had a high SAT score.

Now the back side. If your kid has a low SAT score, it indicates that he or she is not smart and going to college is not going to make him or her smart. All we end up with is a bunch of national debit and kids who are not any smarter. If you notice to get more of our kids thru college who have low SAT scores, we have had to water down the courses and offer degrees that are worthless. This whole business of student loans is stupid and should be significantly reduced not increased.

What do you think?

Original Solar Energy

I have been working almost every day cutting and splitting wood. I have been heating my home with wood for the past 30 years. As I have gotten older, the job is becoming more difficult. With all the talk about Green Energy, I finally figured out that I have been well ahead of the game with my heating with wood. According to the forest service it only takes about 5 acres of forest to heat the largest home for every. What I am going to do every time that I encounter on of the liberal Greenies is to ask them how many trees the plant per year on their own land. We all want to save the world, but conservatives do it with their own money while liberals want to save the world with other people's money. Check it out and I am sure you will come to the same conclusion.

Trees are one of the best means to collect and store solar energy in the forms of wood. In the news, we keep hearing about things like efficiency, but we never hear about how much is cost to collect solar energy. I can tell you for a fact that a tree can collect more solar energy for less investment than anything that us humans have come up with.

Full time electrical power has a cost of about $0.150/kwh and you can buy interuptable power for about half or $0.075/kwh. I have blogged before that solar and wind power is only worth $0.075/kwh because it is only available part time. If you notice, all the liberals calculate it value as being equivalent to full time power. That doubles the value of green energy when it is only worth half that.

I was reading some data that showed that energy from wood is twice that from either solar or wind. Why don't we ever hear about wood? In my woods, cutting of fire wood increased the value of my woods. In every wood lot there are a lot of trees that have little commercial value and by cutting inferior trees and using them for fire wood helps the more valuable trees grow faster. You never hear about things like this in the media because they are economical in their own right and do not need taxpayer's money.

There is an expression within the fire wood community that states, "fire wood heat you three times". It heats you when you cut and split the wood. It heats you when you haul and stack the wood. It heats you when you burn it. In my case it is a very good natural exercise that we all need. Rather than going to the gym, I took my chain saw for a walk in the woods for free and ended up with a lot of good fire wood.

What you need to do is to challenge the liberals who try to save the world with your tax money rather than their own money. Ask them how many trees they planted this year on their own land. Ask them how much wood they burned to heat their homes. If you do this, you will prove that they are all phonies.

Home Brewing Tips

I have been home brewing since 1954. That is a long time in any one's book. My first batch was with a can of Blue Ribbon malt extract that I bought at Safeway and one of my mother's old crocks. The brewing went fine until I realized how many beer bottles I would need for 4 gallons of home brew. As it has turned out, that has continued to be one of the biggest problems with home brewing, bottling. You have to clean and wash them and then store them until you and your friends can drink them. After that, it is the same thing over and over again. The drinking part is OK, but not all the work. That is where a few of my hard earned tips come in.

The first step is to get rid of bottles. You will need a few of the stainless steel 5 gallon pop cans called "Cornelius kegs". You can buy these for about $25 each. You will need some fittings and some spare parts like o-rings. There are places on the Internet to get all these. You still have the cleaning and washing, but it is at 5 gallons at a time so it is not that much work.

I ferment my home brew in the 5 gallon water jugs that you can find most places. The glass ones are better than the plastic ones, but plastic works fine if you clean it right after use. I put a hand full of malt grains or corn in mine and shake them to scour out any thing that sticks.

I mash the malt as well as malt the barley. I did a blog on how to get seed quality barley at the farm supply store and malt it in a 10 gallon water cooler. You can look it up.

I made a malt crusher in my machine shop using two knurled rolls that I drive with a 1/2 Milwaukee drill with a 3/4" socket. It only takes a few minutes to crush a lot of malt so I did not invest in a separate electric motor.

I purchased a 25 gallon stainless steel stock pot over the Internet for less than $200 and made a heater out of two cast iron heater bars from an old boiler. I plumbed them with regular pipe and ball valves and used two copper end caps with .080" holes drilled in them. A .080" hole will give you about 100,000 btu on propane. I mounted the units on a frame that would fit into a 50 gallon oil drum. I got a drum that had a removable top and took it down to my local auto body shop and had them trim off the top 30" and cut a hole at the bottom for the gas pipe to come out and let combustion air in. I made a frame for the heater bars so that my pot would sit about 2" above the flame. I have about 1.5" clearance between the pot and the barrel. By using a barrel with a removable top, the top of the cut off piece is nice and smooth. The pot sticks out about 6" or 8". Getting 20 gallons up to a rolling boil only takes a few minutes.

After boiling, I put the lid on and let the pot cool over night. I made a copper cooling coil that I can hook up to the garden hose, but that is too much work. By letting it sit over night, a lot of sludge sinks to the bottom.

I went on e-bay and found a used peristaltic pump. That is one like they use in hospitals with the clear hose and the roller that goes round and round. The good thing about this type of pump is that nothing can contaminate your brew and the hose is easy to clean. I use silicone hose that I got from McMasterCarr. It also has the advantage that you do not disturber the sludge at the bottom of the pot, plus the brew pumps into the ferminter with enough force to get a lot of air into it. You need that. I use the same pump to get the brew out of the ferminter and into the first keg, but this time I put the hose all the way to the bottom of the keg so that I do not get any air into the brew.

I took a Cornelius fitting and put a pressure gage onto it so that I could check the pressure in the keg as it aged. It it was too high, I could bleed off pressure. If there was no pressure, I could check for leaks or add some sugar.

Once I was satisfied that the brew was aged enough, I rack it into a new keg taking the brew from the bottom of the old keg and putting it in on the bottom of the new keg. This gets rid of 99% of the sludge from secondary fermentation. The brew should be very clear now.

Now this final point. I prefer Sankey kegs over Cornelius kegs. These are the ones that bars use. I like the 1/6th size or 5 gallon. You can get these from your friendly bar if you will pay the bar the deposit of $30/keg. They are really worth a lot more than $30. These kegs have much better seals and last a lot longer. You will need to order some fittings from Sankey to make up hoses to transfer your brew from the Cornelius kegs to the Sankey kegs. This is not a big deal and you can figure out what you need. At the same time you can make up the hoses to flush out the Sankey kegs. You can hook it up to your garden hose or a Cornelius keg where you can have soap or bleach. Being able to transfer from the Cornelius kegs is a big deal and being able to flush out the Sankey kegs without having to take them apart is also a big deal. If you make a mess with one of the Sankey kegs, you can always go back to your friendly bar and swap out your bad keg for one their good kegs. The big time brewery will not know the difference.

When it comes to carbon dioxide, I get mine at the auto supply. They are the cheapest.

I grow my own hops too, but I know that most people do not have the space or time to do that.

I mentioned in another blog that I roasted my malt in a copper kettle corn pot. It has a rounded bottom that works fine with a big wooden paddle. This allows you to have one kind of malt on hand and then roast it how you want from batch to batch.

I have been getting requests to blog on home brew more so these are some of my tips. Making up some of your own equipment is part of the fun and it also saves money.

Herman Cain 9-9-9, Wrong Argument

I have been watching the debates and the news coverage. It seems that no one gets it. Nobody seems to tell the right story about changing the USA tax code. I blogged on this a couple of years ago, but it seems that the news still has not gotten out or the American voters are too dumb to understand it. If the unions understood 9-9-9, they would be behind it too.

I think the easiest way to tell the story is by a simple example. First, when the tax code was developed we had a free standing economic system. That is we were isolated from most of the world. We produced the goods we needed and did not import very much. Most of the goods were produced in a few places, but sold in many places. It is a little like the old days when the main revenue was from the custom house. It was easy to put a guard on the borders and collect the tax there rather than tracking down everyone who purchased the item. With me so far? It was easier to collect the taxes, simple as that. Now what has changed?

First, we now have all these free trade agreements that do not allow us to collect a duty on imports. Sounded good in the beginning when we were exporting more than we were importing. Now, however, the table has turned and we import more than we export. We first thought that we would come out ahead with the free trade agreements and we did, but not now. China and others take advantage of our stupidity and send their products in here duty free. Now back to the tax question.

We need to collect taxes to run the country. That is a fact, but how we do it is very critical. Now we collect the tax as part of payroll because it is easy. We also collect social security from both the employer and the employee because that is easy too. The problem is that we load all this tax onto the products and services that we make so that no one in the world can afford to import them, while at the same time we let countries who do not load a lot of tax on their products to ship their products in here duty free. How can we correct this problem? I only see one way.

What we need to do is to, first, take off all the social security tax off both the employer and the worker and collect the same amount from sales tax where the products made in China will carry some of the load. Our products would be cheaper to export and imported products would be more expensive. This would level the playing field for jobs in America for a change. This is what they call a consumption tax. Herman Cain is proposing a 9% federal consumption tax, but it would be off set with an elimination of the social security tax on employers and workers. If it were explained that way, I think a lot more people including the unions would get behind it.

The same logic applies to the other 9's. What we are now doing is to penalize companies here who want to create jobs. Europe did the consumption tax or VAT, but they saw it as a wind fall and too the taxes and spent them. This is only a solution for the USA if we keep spending under control. Many will point to Europe's VAT as a failure, and it is up to you to see thru their argument. Can I trust you?

PS---------------

Let's take the social security tax as an example. Now the tax is 7% on the company and 7% on the worker for a total of 14%. This is not enough to fund all the benefits, so we are going to need more. If we now import 1/3 of our purchases and produce the other 2/3 here, how much would the new VAT tax have to be to come out even? Let's use our 4th grade math. It comes out 9.33% VAT. The 1/3 imported items would cost 9.33% more and items produced here would cost 4.67% less. That means when you went to the store for new shoes, the difference in cost between shoes made here and those made in China would be 14%. This is the kind of thing that would cause new jobs to be created here.

Some of you would say that there is more to the cost of a product than just labor, but you would be wrong. In the final analysis, all value is labor. Oil or coal in the ground is worthless. Its value is the labor required to get it out of the ground and to market. This applies to every thing.

Have you ever noticed that you can buy a Mercedes cheaper here than you can in Germany? Without the VAT, Germany would not sell any cars here. Those would be jobs lost in Germany.

Electric Car, Simple Economics, Technical Facts

I have blogged on the electric car before, but it still needs more clarification. The problem is that most of the ink has been salesman type rather than real engineering. First of all we need to agree that there is really no new technology here and more higher production volumes will have little impact. People who do not know anything about technology will disagree with this. First, batteries. There are only a couple of types of batteries and non are new. This Lithium-Ion battery was invented in 1904. That is over 100 years ago. The cheapest battery is the lead acid battery, but it is heavy. The Lithium Ion battery is lighter, but more expensive. If there is any improvement in efficiency takes place, it will be small and have a high cost. Now, the electric motor. Nothing really new has been invented in the past 100 years related to electric motors. The motors like the batteries are so mature that the basic cost is now the raw materials that they are made of, not labor. Now how about a little 4th grade math?

(1) Assume the car can go 300 miles on a charge.
(2) Assume the battery can be discharged and recharged 1000 times.
(3) Assume the car drives the 300 miles at the speed of 45 mph.
(4) Assume the car needs to develop 40 horse power to drive at an average of 45 mph.
(5) We know that it takes 0.75 KW per horse power.
(6) At 45 mph it will take 6.67 hours to drive the 300 miles.
(7) The battery needs to hold a charge of 200 kwh.
(8) The electricity cost $0.15/kwh so it takes $30 of electricity to drive 300 miles.
(9) Gas costs $3.50/gal so $30 equals 8.57 gal of gas.
(10) For the gas car to cost the same as the electric car, it needs to get 35 mpg.
(11) Since the battery will wear out, we have to figure it into cost per mile. The cost of the battery per mile be:
$ 5,000 battery = $0.017/mile
$ 7,500 battery = $0.025/mile
$10,000 Battery = $0.033/mile
(12) Electricity per mile is $0.100
(13) Gas per mile at 35 mpg = $0.100
(14) Gas per mile at 40 mpg = $0.087
(15) Gas per mile at 45 mpg = $0.078
(16) Cost of electric car plus electricity and battery is $0.133/ mile.

Notice that the electric car will cost twice that of a gas car if the gas car gets 45 mpg and the electric car battery cost $10,000.

Special note. I used 100% efficiency for the electric car motor and battery charging and I used the 1000 recharge cycles even though the spec states "upto" 1000 charges. The battery is so big that it will be very difficult for the electric car to go up long hills.

If you have a problem with any of my numbers, I would like to hear from you.

PS-------
The big battery in this electric car needs to hold 200kwh of electricity. That is a lot of juice. To recharge the battery in 2 hours after driving the 300 miles, how long do you think it would take if you used all the juice in you home? Most new homes have a 200 amp service. At 2 hours, you would need to charge at the rate of 10 kw. Now how big is that? Your whole house service is only 20 kw. You would need to have a breaker on the charger circuit rated at 100 amps. I am not sure how big of an extention cord you would need for that size charger.

2012 Presidential Election Logic

The 2012 election is going to be a big deal and it will be up to you to make the right decision. How about using some logic this time rather than blind faith. By now most of us have figured out that government and the President does not create real jobs. If that is the case, just what can the government do? The way that I look at it, the government is connected to the economy with a "rope". With the rope, the government can pull the economy down, but it can not push it up. We all know that higher taxes can kill jobs and the economy, but it is not all that clear that just reducing the taxes will cause new jobs to be created. Do you agree with that?

Look at it from the lowest level. If you are running a company and the level of taxation and regulation increases, it is going to hurt your business and you are not going to expand. If the taxes go down and the regulations are reduced, you might stop laying off people, but by itself, it does not cause you to hire more people. The point that I am trying to make is that it is easy to kill a job, but very difficult to create one. This leads me to the conclusion that the President has a lot of authority that can be used to kill jobs, but has limited authority to create jobs. If this is the case, we maybe using the wrong logic in how we select our Presidents. Rather than looking at them as what they can "do" for the economy, we should look at them on the basis of which one will do the least damage. It is a fact of human nature to look for the "good" in a candidate rather than the "least" bad. With my logic, I see all the candidates as being potentially bad rather than just good.

Remember Obama in the last election? He stressed change and hope. Hope is just another word for blind faith. If we agree that almost every thing that government does is bad, then we should have recognized that 99% of what Obama planned to do would be bad. Can you think of anything that Obama has done that has helped the economy or unified the country? I can't think of a single one. Do you still have blind faith?

Look at the candidates for the next election and tell me which one plans to do the most. I contend that the one who promises the most is the most dangerous just like Obama. Isn't interesting that the candidate who is proposing an action plan is the one who is gaining in the poles? How about the one who is proposing to make government smaller? He proposes to do less or do nothing. We need to get government off of our backs, not give more power to the government. Our economy is very complex and changing all the time. No economist knows or can predict how any action by government is going to play out. It is too complex. If they say they can, they are fools. This is the reason that changes need to be made at a very slow rate so that we can see if they are doing what we want. Obama's job program was a good example of this concept. Green energy is another example.

Look for who can do the least damage to our economy and vote for that one!!!

PS-----------------

Look at this fact. Remember when Bobby Kennedy attacked Bell Telephone? As a representative of government he felt that Bell Telephone was a hazard for the US economy because they were so dominate in the worlds communication industry. They were the best telephone company in the world and at the time we had the best telephone service in the world. Bobby was able to kill Bell Telephone with his power of the government. As it turned out we no longer have the best telephone service in the world. How is that? Western Electric, a division of Bell Telephone invented the transistor and made more telephone equipment here in the USA than most of the rest of the world combined. Now we make exactly "zero" cell phones. It is my opinion that had Bobby Kennedy not killed Bell Telephone, we would be making more cell phones here than the rest of the world. Even if it were admitted to have been a mistake, the government can't put "Humpty Dumpty together again". That is the problem with a bad government policy, reversing the policy does not mean that the clock can ever be turned back. Once a job is lost, it will most likely be forever.

Green Energy Debate

I have been testing the waters related to the Green Energy Debate to see it I can figure out why so many voters seem to be on the Obama band wagon. I have looked at the situation from several vantage points and am starting to come to my conclusion. What I do is that all scientists have been doing for years is to propose a theory and then test that theory against the facts. If "all" the facts support the theory then the scientist goes forward using that theory as "true" until and if it is ever proven by the facts not to be true. Remember Einstein's theory of relativity? It was and still is a theory, but we all use it as true since it has never been proven wrong. Remember my theory about Obama? My theory is that he wants to "trash" the USA so that a new order can be installed that only he and his closest friends know. My challenge to you is to prove my theory wrong. Until then, I am going to assume my theory to be true. Prove me wrong!! Now, Green Energy.

The way to manipulate most people is to first make a statement that is true and one that they can identify with. If it is more emotional than logical, that is even better. The idea is to get that person moving with you in your direction. Once you have them moving in your direction, you can slip in the hook of your message. Since the first statement was true and logical as well as hitting an emotional key, the person tends to accept the second statement as being equally true without really thinking about it. People who are good at this little trick can get people to think and do all kinds of things. Obama and Rev Wright were both very good at this and the record shows it. Now what does all this have to do with Green Energy? I will get to that next.

Try this one. "We are too dependant on foreign oil." True and many people can get emotional about this point because none of us really want to be "dependant". The next one is, "Burning coal is changing the climate and causing global warming." The next statement is that, "we need to switch away from coal and fossil fuels to clean energy like solar and wind". See how this is going? Are you getting emotional? The conclusion that Obama wants us to draw from all this is that we need to stop burning coal. Note that he does not remind people that over 50% of our electricity comes from coal and that it is the cheapest source of electricity know to man. He expects us to go on blind "faith" to Green Energy even though it would mean about a 50% drop in our standard of living. Remember in one of my past blogs that I reminded you that we import 100% of our TV sets and cell phones. Why is that not a bigger problem than Green Energy. We import 60% of our new doctors. Why is that not a bigger problem? See what I mean?

What has to happen is that we have to recognize that cheap energy is what makes the world go around and if we can import energy cheaper than we can produce it here, then we should import it. There are only about 5 or 10 countries in the world who do not import major portions of their energy and we are one of those. We have more energy than 98% of the countries in the world, so what is this business of being too dependant? If the price of oil goes up on the world market, we would pay the same price as everyone else. What's the problem? If I had an oil well and the price of oil was much higher on the world market than in the USA, I would export my oil to the market where I could get more for it. Wouldn't you?

It is clear that the more we switch to Green Energy the weaker it makes the USA and that is exactly what Obama wants per my theory. It is a double win for Obama because he has convinced a lot of air heads that we need to switch to Green Energy to save the World. Obama wins both ways. Why else would he be sending much of our tax money (that we borrowed from China) to solar and wind Green Energy companies?

Notice how Obama is doing the same thing with his statement, "everyone should pay their fair share." Notice the parallel with the Green Energy? In this case it is not a win-win for him. He wins with the air heads that vote for him, but turns of the business sector. For Obama it is a good trade off considering the number of air heads and the number of business people. Obama does get a win due to the fact that higher taxes on the producers only makes them produce less and thus it helps him to trash the USA economy.

Notice how Wall Street bankers caused the housing collapse according to Obama. I blogged in the past that banks making home loans were just acting as agents of the government and their policy of letting unqualified people buy homes they could not afford. If some rich guy had a nice home, they why shouldn't the average air head? See how this works? Once Obama has convinced the air heads that the banks and Wall Street are the problem, then the solution is more government control. If the government insured loans to Green Energy companies just like they had been doing for homes, banks would be making loans to Green Energy companies just like the did for unqualified home buyers. It would have been smarter for Obama to work thru the banks rather than going direct like he has.

How about student loans? They are insured by the government and banks make them to people who they know will never be able to pay them back. Obama even has a free gift student loan program run out of the white house called Pell Grants. We now have over a trillion dollars in student loans outstanding that will never be paid back. You would think with a trillion dollars of student loans outstanding that our colleges could produce enough doctors to meet our demand. Strange how this all works. We waste the money on most student loans and the air head love it while at the same time it trashes the economy of the USA. Is this a great country or what?

Prove my theory wrong! That is my challenge to all of you.

Green Energy Gobble-D- Goop

I try very hard to do my factual research before I Blog my opinion on some topic, but when it comes to Green Energy, I am finding it very difficult to find the facts. How can that be? You would think that some place on the Internet, you could locate the facts, but that has not been the case. I learned a lesson many years ago when I worked for Harold Geneene at ITT. On his first day at work as the new President, he encountered a corporate culture that had lost touch with "facts". He wrote a short note that was published and sent to every manager at ITT about what he found. He said to everyone that there is one one fact and that was a "snapping turtle fact". A "snapping turtle fact" was one that you could pick up and throw on the ground and step on it and stomp on it if necessary and it would always turn out to be the same. That was a "snapping turtle fact" and that is exactly what we need today regarding Green Energy. You try to find "snapping turtle facts" on the Internet and see how far you get.

I was reading one account where a new type of solar panel was 300% better than some other one, but I never found how much of the solar energy that was available was collected by either panel. Now with my 4th grade math, if the original panel only collected 10% of the total solar energy, then if the new one could collect 40%, that would make it 300% better. Now I don't think the first panel was that bad nor do I feel the new one could be that much better. No where did I find a figure on how much energy from the Sun there is in a square foot of the Earth's surface. If I did, I would have to also know the day of the year and the location on the Earth as well as the time of day. I did not find any of this type of key information.

The Sun follows a sine wave path around the Earth (the Earth goes around the Sun, but for the example, let's say that the Sun goes around the Earth) and goes about 22 degrees north and 22 degrees south in a year. That means the angle that the Sun is in the sky at high noon changes during the year. The angle also changes during the 24 hour day. Some account state that you can only figure on about 5 hours per day of equivalent full Sun light on the solar panel. This is also affected by how far North or South you are. The problem is how do you find the numbers for this. I read the spec's on these solar panels and they state that it is good for so many watts. What does that mean? Is it based on high noon on the equator on the first day of spring? I am a sailor and have my own sextant so I know a little about these things.

I read one article about how the panels degrade over time. How do they take this into account? If the panel is in a fixed position on your house, how does that compare with one that can be move during the day or at points during the year? Can't find numbers on that either. What they seem to want us to do is to trust the salesmen for the solar panel companies and go on dumb faith. I think that is what a lot of voters did when they voted for Obama, blind faith. I guess that I just don't have that much faith and I am sure that I am not blind.

I also tried to look at the financial numbers and it was just as bad. When ever you mix into the numbers "free" money from the government and then calculate what something costs, you get screwed up final numbers. It happened with ethanol and it is happening with Green Energy like solar and wind. I read on article where Nellis AFB was able to buy solar power for $0.022/KWH. That is a good price. They were buying real 24-7 power for $0.09/KWH. That was a good price too. I know for a fact that power generated with coal comes in at about $0.02/KWH and non 24-7 power comes in at about $0.015/KWH. If the solar panels were paid for with tax payer money and if the profits were non-taxable for solar power, it is possible to sell power for as low as $0,022/KWH, but those are fudged numbers, not real numbers.

Before we can figure out what is going on, we have to get all the funny money out of Green Energy. It is so mixed up that no one can determine its true cost. I would even go one step further and require that all solar and wind companies be public companies so that we could get at their financial records. There is no way that public money should be given or loaned to companies where the public can not see their financial records.

Take it from me that I am not thru with this subject. I am going to keep digging for "snapping turtle facts" and when I find them, I will be reporting back.

Price Line and Green Energy

We all watch the Price Line adds on TV and we all understand why you can get hotel rooms for less on Price Line. It is because the hotels want to get what they can for rooms that, other wise, would not be rented for the night. This is extra profit that they would not have gotten. Now exactly how is this related to Green Energy. Well, as you might expect, I have researched the situation and have the facts.

Now, you can't just call up a hotel any time and expect them to give you their best rate. That is because they are in business to make a profit and they need to get as much for a room as they can. Sounds reasonable to me. The kicker comes in when they have tried up to the last minute to rent rooms and they still have a few left. Now what should they do? Should they hold out until for the full price or accept a lower rate for the last minute room rental. If they go for the full price, they will lose the customer, but if they make a last minute deal, they will at least get some money for a room that would have been vacant. Logical so far? Now how about Green Energy?

As it turns out Green Energy is like those rooms that no one wants to rent because they can not just call up at the spur of the moment and get a good price. That is because most Green Energy is not available on a any time call up basis. If the wind is not blowing, no electricity. If the sun is not shining, no electricity. People can not depend on Green Energy being available when they want it. How would you like to be in a hospital having surgery done and the Green Energy would go off because the Sun went behind a cloud? You would expect full time power and you would expect to pay more for full time power compared to Green Energy that is only available when conditions are right. Seems simple doesn't it?

I blogged on this one before, but we all know that you can get your power company to sell you electricity for half price if you will let them cut you off during peak demand periods. That means that if full time power is sold at $0.15/KWH, then interuptable is only worth $0.075/KWH. Follow that? This means that Green Energy is only worth $0.075/KWH. Now that is retail, but power companies can buy interuptable power for much less too. They by full time power for about $0.025/KWH from the coal fired power plant, but they could buy interuptable or Price Line type power for about $0.015/KWH. Why is this so important? It is because the public is being screwed and made fools by Obama and the media. Here is how.

There is a law in many states that require power companies to buy Green Energy at the full time available retail price of $0.15/KWH when they could buy the same power like Price Line for only $0.015/KWH. The power companies pass along the extra cost to all their customers and since Green Energy is less than 1% of their power purchases, you don't seen the impact. Magic! When you see a private company building wind mills, they can show that they make a profit and they do. Who would not if they could sell Green Energy for 10 time what it is worth. Think about Price Line. What they are doing is logical, but what is happening with Green Energy is not! The general public is being screwed and they do not even know it.

I read an article about Green Energy and they said that OHM's law was too complex for the average person to understand so they recommended that people (voter) go on blind faith. How stupid is that? If you do not know and understand OHM's Law, you should not be allowed to vote. That is my opinion. OHM's law is one of the most simple concepts and all you need to know to understand it is 4th grade math. Maybe it is 4th grade math that is our problem.

Remittance Man

When I was sailing in the Caribbean a few years ago, there was a very popular song about a woman's husband who was a "remittance man". That is a person who leaves home to find a job and then sends money home to support their family. These people often have to go to a foreign country to find a job and then send money home. This has been a normal process for many years for people in countries with bad economies that have few jobs or opportunities. Some of the key countries who have a large number of "remittance men" are Mexico, Hatti and India. They come here and then send money home to support their families. I would like to expand on this whole concept a little.

In the case of Mexico, Hatti and India, the amount of money that is remitted home is a major part of their economies. For them, this is an industry. It is one way that they can feed their families. Now look at this from the point of USA citizens. Our problem is that 99% of our citizens could not get a job or a better paying job out side the USA. Our citizens are not competent enough to compete on a world wide basis.

Notice that the jobs foreign people get here are either manual labor at the lowest level or professional at the top of the food chain, not in the middle. Why is that? If you look at the degrees earned by our kids in our very expensive universities, you will find that most are bull shit degrees. Our kids will never make enough money to ever pay back their student loans. This is one of the groups who are doing the sit in on Wall Street. They think that they were victims of Wall Street because they can not find a high paying job with the bull shit degrees they payed good money for. I agree that they should be mad, but not at Wall Street. They should all look in the mirror or the union student adviser who in high school advised them to follow their "dream". You can bet than none of these foreign remittance people took bull shit degrees back in their own country. They took degrees that had value in the world wide market.

These people who are rioting on Wall Street need to look in the mirror and ask where in the world that they could find a good paying job and then move their. They could then send money home to pay off their student loans. Sounds like a plan to me.

Some one should ask the people who are rioting on Wall Street what degrees they earned from college and then ask our colleges to "reduce" the number of seats in those majors. It is clear that our government and parents invested far too much in degrees that have little economic value. My problem is that no one seems to want to face up to their mistakes. We are all in denial and until we admit to our mistake, I do not see any way that we can correct it. It is like an alcoholic. The first step is to admit that you are an alcoholic. Until you do that, you can never cure the problem. When I used to teach decision theory and asked my class what was the first step to solving a problem, their answer was always to "define the problem". That was the wrong answer. The correct answer is, "admit that you have a problem". That is the problem here in the USA, pure and simple.

Remittance men are sending billions of dollars outside the USA. We have to stop this and get the flow going in the other direction. I can tell you also that many of these dollars were never taxed, so it is a double hit for the economy of the USA.

Where could you go to become a "remittance man"?

PS-----
The reason that most of the remittance people are either at the bottom of the food chain or at the very top is that our kids don't want to work hard or they are too dumb or lazy to take the harder professional degrees in our colleges. Some remittance people come here to take the more difficult technical degrees in our colleges and then send money home. Why can't our kids do that? You can see the problem if you look in the mirror. Why do you think that 60% of our new doctors are from outside the USA? 99% of these foreign doctors are "remittance men". Not only are we paying thru the nose for medical services, much of that money is being sent back home by the doctors. Are we smart or what?

Lessons From Steve Jobs And Apple

With the passing of Steve Jobs, I think it is the time to reflect on who the man was. I only met Steve one time and that was about 30 years ago. I am sure that he did not remember me. At the time he had no cloths on and was in a hot tub with a bunch of friends up in the mountains and Red Wood trees above San Jose. Two of my best friends worked at Apple and had clock numbers under 100. Seems like a million years ago now, so much has changed, but that was my first encounter with Steve Jobs.

As I said, I did not really know him, but observed what he did and how he affected my two friends. The first point I want to make and it may be the most significant is that to really manage technology, you have to really understand technology. You can't just be a manager of skilled people. It is a little like the teacher who can't do anything, but they can teach. To my way of thinking, that is crap and I think Steve Jobs understood this at the gut level. When I was in college at San Jose State, I got an A+ in advanced computer programming. I was the best in the class, but I hated computer programming. Now why was that? To really be good at computer programming and to keep the detailed logic straight and the syntax correct, you could not think of anything else. You had to be a "nerd". I chose not to go any farther in computer programming and vowed never to get a job where I had to manage computer programmers. I knew that to do the kind of job that was required, you had to dedicate your life to the job and that is exactly what Steve Jobs did. He was up to his ears in the personal computer technology as he had to be.

One other thing, is that Steve Jobs recognized the connection between the human mind and graphical representation of data. Originally it was very mentally demanding to keep track of all the rules of computer programming with symbols that only meant something to a computer, not the human mind. I stumbled onto the "windows" concept in about 1960, but did not recognize its significance, but Steve Jobs did. My encounter was with a road map of Oakland, Ca. We were trying to sort mail, before zip codes, by keying in portions of the standard address. Someone realized that if we used a map of Oakland, Ca and put small buttons under the map that taxi cab drivers could punch the location on the map where the mail should go. In one stroke they could push one of 625 different buttons and get it right every time. To do this same decoding with standard address data, you would need at least 12 key strokes and you would still make a lot of errors. Now this is a little off track, but Steve Jobs saw that this was the window that would allow millions of normal people to easily learn how to operate a personal computer. He came up with his won operating system and stuck with it against Microsoft when all other PC builders jumped on the Microsoft band wagon. Steve Jobs was right and this single factor had more to do with the success of Apple than any other decision that he made.

The other point with the trends in technology that are sweeping the world is that ideas and understanding of technology are more important than capital. Apple has not been the success that they have been because of some big sugar daddy with a bundle of money to invest, it was the understanding of technology at the top management level. Look at Obama and all his loans to green start up companies? This may have been how it worked 50 or 75 years ago, but not now. Anyone can play now if they have ideas and understand technology. The top managers of big companies in the past used to be bankers and financial men who did not feel they needed to understand technology, but not now. I worked for Harold Geneene at ITT. He was a smart guy, but his strength was in accounting, not technology. His formula worked in the old days, but not now. Where is ITT today? They were one of the top 10 companies in the world at one time, but now they are not in the top 1000.

The final point to make from Apple and Steve Jobs is about the future. The next big success story will not be another Apple, but it will be based on the same formula as the Steve Jobs story. The top guy and the top several guys or girls will totally understand the technology and where that technology is going. They will know that it is like a child that will grow up and then be replace by an even newer technology. They will know that they will have to run to keep from going backwards. How else could Steve Jobs produce so many break thru products in such a short time? He did it the same way they designed and built the first DC-3 airplane. The guys at the top knew what they were doing and did it right the first time.

Steve Jobs will be missed, but I hope the lessons that he demonstrated will not. We can only hope.

Jonathan Silver DOE Free Money

I have been blogging for some time about how stupid our government is regarding energy. I have presented my arguments from almost every angle and they always turn out showing that green energy is stupid. I have been researching this guy Jonathan Silver to see what kind of educational background he has. The decisions that have to be made by the DOE requires the person to be able to separate bull shit from true technical facts. I do not see how a person who does not have a fundamental understanding of Physics can judge whether or not they are being bull shitted. I have looked at all the green energy ideas that are on the table and "none" are economical and "none" appear that they will be economical within the next 100 years.

If and when the documents are published, I want to see what cash flow discount rate was being used by the DOE. I also want to see the probabilities of success/failure on the different loans and grants that were approved. I also what to see the factor sensitivity analysis that would show what factors were most significant in the decision process. I think that I can tell you that I would have flunked 95% of the people who were making the multimillion dollar decisions at the DOE if they were in one of my decision theroy classes.

As I have blogged too, the media and our elected officials in the Congress and Senate who we have in trusted to watch over these departments and the President are just as unqualified as I think Jonathan Silver was. Being a political science major, a lawyer or a good salesman are not the qualifications that are needed to run the DOE.

If you look around the world at the countries who are doing well and who do not have all the natural resources that we have, the common factor is that their top people have technical degrees, not political science or law. We are the only ones who put those kinds of people in high offices. Look in the mirror, we are getting exactly what we deserve.

If anyone has any details on Jonathan Silver's qualifications for the job he had, please let me know? My guess is that he was just a little more qualified than Obama.

PS--The DOE mandated that power companies had to buy back power from people who invested in solar energy at the "retail" rate when he power company could buy this same power for about 15% of "retail".  They then passed their extra cost of power to the consumer.  As long as the amount of power the power company had to buy at "retail" was small, customers did not see that they were being screwed by the DOE mandate.  As the amount of solar power that the power company increased, so did the power bills to their customers.  Now, the customers in Nevada have realized that the DOE was screwing them and they have revolted by eliminating the mandate to buy back solar power at "retail" prices.  When will more people wake up that the they are being screwed by renewable power games?

Stupidity In Solar And Wind Energy

I am getting a little tired blogging on the stupidity of solar energy all the time, but as a Registered Professional Engineer, I feel that I have a responsibility to shine some light on the stupidity of solar energy. Even some smart technical people do not understand our problem, that is what frustrates me. Myth #1 is, "We need to become energy independent". No country in the world is independent of anything and that includes energy. The much of the equipment that is used to get the oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia come from the USA. So, what does "independent really mean?

I hear from my liberal engineering friends that we need to build these multi billion dollar solar farms to "prove out the viability of solar energy". Nothing could be farther from the truth. We only need to build what is called a "proof of principle" installation of one solar panel or one wind mill. Zero is gained by building thousands of solar farms or wind mills. If it can not be proved economical with one installation, building thousands will not make any difference.

Wait, you may think that there are economies of size or numbers and there is, but these are easy to estimate or test with "break even analysis". You don't have to build a "trial" Golden Gate Bridge to prove that it is possible or economical to build a bridge across the Golden Gate. Engineers proved that the bridge was possible using only pencil and paper. The same goes for solar and wind power. Since the Wright brothers, nothing technically significant has been discovered regarding propellers or wind mills. If you disagree, post what significant thing has been discovered since the Wright brothers.

Regarding wind mills, you can divide it into three areas:
(1) Blade design
(2) Structural tower design
(3) Transformers and distribution system design

Now look at each one of these and you tell me that spending billions of tax payer's money is going to significantly affect anyone of the three items? Millions have been spent on airplane propellers and the technical boundaries have been clearly defined. Any addition increase in efficiency is going to come at a very high cost. That is a cost that can not be justified and even if possible would not significantly affect the economics.

Now for structural towers. To date, billions of towers have been built and the few more that would be needed for wind mills, who have zero affect on the learning curve or any other improvement. People have to be realistic and not just go on blind faith.

The other big part is the transformers and distribution system. So far the world has spent trillions on electrical power control and distribution systems. Note that electricity from a wind mill is exactly the same as power from coal or any other source. You need exactly the same distribution system for wind power except for one key thing. You will need a much bigger transformer and distribution system for solar power per the amount of power generated. That is because the system has to be sized for the peak load or wind speed when in real life, the wind mill will operate at an average 20% of peak load. That means that 80% of the time we have made too big of an investment in transformers and distribution than we would have for a coal or nuclear power system.

You will never read in the news paper or see on TV facts like this. They all seem to what us to spend our money on the basis of "faith". That is "stupidity"

Easy Reality Test

On TV these days, we seem to have all kinds of Reality shows, but where is the reality in real life? What I have come up with is a simple "Reality Test". We all know that the USA economy is in the toilet and too many people are looking for jobs. I might add, they are looking for good paying jobs with good benefits. One of the points that I have blogged on in the past is that the economic world is changing and changing fast. The world is getting "flatter" and "fairer" and by that I mean more countries around the world are now able to share in and produce wealth. This means that some who were on top have moved down and some on the bottom have moved up. Isn't that the way it should be?

When ever there is a lot of change going on, it is important that the people who are the drivers of the economy, also change. They need the ability to change as the world around them has changed. This is where my test comes in. I got this idea while watching TV news where some liberal was being interviewed and were claiming that poor people and people who were out of work were "victims". I wanted the interviewer to ask the liberal, "Where in the world could you move to and make more money than you are making here doing the job you are doing now?" This is question number one. I can tell you for a fact that 99+% of the liberals who are running off at the mouth could not make more than they are making now any place in the world. If that is the case, then you would have to conclude that they are over paid based on international standards. In other words, they can not compete one on one any other place in the world. That is our problem with the liberals and almost everyone else if we would all just look into the mirror.

As I said, this is question number one, so what is question number two? The TV news interviewer should ask the liberal what other job they could get here in the USA that would pay as much as the job they now have? I am sure the answer would be the same. They could not get another job that paid more. Now think about this, if the world is going to be changing, then wouldn't you also expect that we should also change so that we can "keep" the same level of income? You always hear the "buggy whip" example and most people just think that is some kind of story for business schools, but it is true and it is happening all the time. Kodak just filed chapter 11. I remember when I got my very first camera and it was a Kodak. How could Kodak go the way of the buggy whip?

I mentioned "brittleness" before when applied to big systems like our economy. If we can only compete here in the USA against people in the "league", what does that say about us? If we can only earn a living by doing one singe job, what can that say about our ability to change with the times like Kodak needed too? People can be "brittle" just like systems. We have to figure out how to get some redundancy into our work force. That is, we need people who have the education that makes them "flexible" so that they can change with the changing times. People need the skills and training to do more than just one job. Or goal should be to see that our kids can compete in 2 or 3 different types of jobs.

If a football player can only kick, the chances of making the team are going to be small. We all understand that. We all know that players need to have the ability to play more than one position and it is the same for us and our kids. If I have heard this one from college graduates, I have heard it a 100 times. When asked a simple question, they answer that they did not study that in school and it is "not" required for the field they are going into. It seems that there is some kind of active program to prevent kids from learning anything except the minimum that they "think" they will need for the single profession they are planning on going into.

My scoring goes like this:

(1) If you are not qualified for another job that pays an equal amount, I rate you "Zero".

(2) If you can't move to another country and make the same amount, I rate you "zero".

(3) If you are qualified for a different but equal paying job in the USA, I rate you "one".

(4) If you are qualified for two different but equal paying jobs in the USA, I rate you "two".

Based on my scoring, much of the world would have a score between "1.0" and "2.0" while we would have a score between "0.0" and "0.5". The fact that the future does not look bright for the USA is made clear by my scoring. What do we do about it?

That is the subject of another blog and it affects our kids in school and those of us who are out of school.

Solar Energy --- Break Even --- West Marine

Another way to analyse a decision is to do a "break even" analysis. That is where you work backwards from the value of something to determine what it is worth. I used to do this to determine the value of a house. I would take the monthly rental rate and multiply it by 100 to get the value of a home. A home that rents for $500/month is worth $50,000. This is what happens on Wall Street with stock. There, they call it the earnings ratio. You look at the value of the projected earnings and then work backwards to determine how much the stock is worth. This is a real common practice, but most people have never done a break even analysis. In the case of Solar Energy, this is a very good way to determine how much the solar panels and other equipment are worth. It is easy.

Start with the spec's for the solar panel in the West Marine catalog which says that it collects 41Ah (amp hours per day). At 12 volts, this works out to 0.492 KWH per day. As in my last blog, we know that interuptable power is worth about $0.075 per KWH. If we figure that this type of investment must payout in 10 years, the value of the panel would be 0.492 X 0.075 X 365 X 10 = $134.69. That is right, the West Marine panel that is listed at $999.00 is really only worth $134.69 to the average home owner.

Now that you have a few facts to work with, do you really think that higher production volume or new technology will make it possible to get the cost of this panel down to $134.69? I don't think so and you don't either once you have a few simple facts and have done a break even analysis.

Isn't math wonderful? Isn't a little understanding of technology, also wonderful? If that is the case, then why have so many of the voters and tax payers been fooled by Obama and his Green friends? How about "Magic"?