Heat the person not the volume!
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Check out the Bloom Energy Server. Just Google it. In fact, Google has an installation of this large scale fuel cell at one of its campuses. It was featured on the TV show "60 Minutes". However, I was thinking about tapping into some of those seemingly marginal sources such as people walking across special mats or rugs fitted with some mechanism to absorb the energy.
I think the microwave thing may have been plagued with the possibility of interfering with important peoples' Twittering, or cardiac pacemakers or hearing aids. As an aside, my cellphone when it begins to receive a call near my computer, creates an audio pulse just before it begins to "ring". -
Bloom Energy Server! Will look it up.
Yeah, microwaves make me nervous.
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I'm sitting here looking out the window. It's cold, overcast and windy as the last remnants of Irene finally make it across the Atlantic, having slingshotted of Newfoundland. I'm wearing a wonderful invention called a sweater.
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Lucky bastards, I cannot remember what cold feels like.
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I'd be tempted to offer a swap, Pete. But having tramped around Rome a couple of weeks back with temperatures around 40°C...with a heavy head cold to boot...I'm not so sure. It seems like it's relatively easy to keep the body warm with appropriate clothing, but there's not much defence against heat other than expensive HVAC or radical building design.
Well, actually there is...sitting under a palm tree, drinking ice cold beer and flopping into the pool every half hour or so. Trouble is you don't get much work done.
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40C sounds like paradise after 117F. I might even need a sweater. Here we have misters (not a male person but a gadget that creates a cooling mist) that sprays a fine mist over patrons of outdoor bars and restaurants.
And think about this. If your sweater causes you to sweat it will actually chill you even further as the sweat evaporates.
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@solo said:
Lucky bastards, I cannot remember what cold feels like.
You always welcomed to wist in Finland - it's starts to get a bit chilly here... bit by bit, four to five months later, maybe 30 degrees below zero (Celsius scale) or -22 ºF.
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Pentti, perhaps we can express boxes if the local climate back and forthe from Arizona to Finland until we are both comfortable. I think it had just dropped under 100F last night I 10 PM when I took the dog for a walk.
--Roger
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While we are swopping climates, anyone got rain?
We are burning up here in Texas, over 1000 homes burned down so far.
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Yeah, my mother lives close to you and is suffering it all as well.
Fortunately for us we caught the path of the recent tropical storm. A few days ago it was 90-100 and the past couple days have been rain and below 70. Other than the fact that my head is splitting and my sinus' are freaking out with the sudden change I am enjoying it quite a bit. "Hello pullover, I have missed you." -
It rained briefly here twice today, and half of yesterday = <17C [60F]...
That's around the seasonal average - just perhaps a tad cool/wet...
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]
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@tig said:
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]
Sounds familiar.
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@tig said:
It rained briefly here twice today, and half of yesterday = <17C [60F]...
That's around the seasonal average - just perhaps a tad cool/wet...
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]Yeah TIG, we sent that bit of rain over to you yesterday. A bit more on the way over the next few days. I'll let you know when we will be sending a bit a sunshine
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Hi all
There is local project here that is trying to identify which is best: 'smart occupancy' or 'behaviour modification'.
'Smart Occupancy ' = the use of digital sensors to turn on and off lights, adjust thermostats and underfloor heating, open windows etc.
Behaviour modification = encouraging the user to take more responsibility to turn things off, wear a jumper, accept that PV won't make their water really hot all the time etc.
An example of the need for this is a nearby new school that achieved Breeam Excellent, it has PV, wind turbines, super insulation, passive heating and cooling and other energy saving credentials. It also has smart occupancy sensors and some of the highest energy bills of any school in the area.
This isn't because the building doesn't work, apparently it's because the users have developed the attitude that they are absolved from all responsibility; the school generates its own power and has green controls. Therefore the staff are less inclined to turn things off and more inclined to turn the thermostats up.
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I went to a military high school in Pennsylvania and we had coal fired steam radiators because the windows were single pane glass and the there was no insulation in the walls. So the furnace ran day and night. Of course the administration thought this made the rooms too stuffy and decided that the windows had to be kept open during the day. I remember standing for inspection and watching water leak out of the radiator and then freeze on the floor. It was an American school with a strong dash of British Army officers and NCOs thrown in for flavoring. Some very stiff upper lips, but they may have just frozen in that position.
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I've been to a few places in the States where the common washing line or rotary was regarded as either unsightly or maybe just plain primitive...and everything had to be tumble dried...even in perfect drying weather, which you get a lot more over over there than in the UK. Seems to me like energy conservation ought to start with the easy and obvious.
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@alan fraser said:
I've been to a few places in the States where the common washing line or rotary was regarded as either unsightly or maybe just plain primitive...and everything had to be tumble dried...even in perfect drying weather, which you get a lot more over over there than in the UK. Seems to me like energy conservation ought to start with the easy and obvious.
Yes, we had those too before entering the modern age.
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@roger said:
Yes, we had those too before entering the modern age.
Yes, but the rest of us are already in the post-modern age, Roger. That's how we use only 50% of the energy of the USA per capita...to no discernible disadvantage.
[flash=640,390:df132hvu]http://www.youtube.com/v/sF4lZsx9Ifs?version=3[/flash:df132hvu]
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Hi folks.
Heating the person instead of the volume might be a good idea but there is a limit.
Here, in the southern part of the province of Quebec, in winter, the temperature can go down to -30°C and sometimes lower, in January.
Not heating the inside of the house would be like living on an iceberg. Even with warm clothings the idea of breathing very cold air 24 hours a day is not really appealing. Also, cold and humid air, yes, out climate is very humid here, is prone in developing mold, fungus and all kind of nasty things on humid surfaces like walls, ceilings, etc.
Add to that the fact that my wife is from Mediteranean origin, so she likes warmer climate
In conclusion, we keep the house at 22-23°C in winter and 24-25°C in summer by heating but not too much and using the air conditioning but not too much. Between these extremes, we neither use heat or A.C., we just open the windows.
Just ideas.
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Alan, please send me a white sheet and I will wash and dry it for you. For a good part of the year. It would dry in no time at all. It would also turn red and be hard as a rock from blowing dust. That would be if it did not get away and be blow into a desert Palo Verde tree. One day last year I was driving home and looked up a side street just in time to see a 12' x 12' gazebo lift 20 to 30 feet in the air and then rocket down just behind a small truck that was passing by. An if you did air dry your things they would soon turn to powder in the strong UV light. I had a cord on an outdoor umbrella. One day when I went to pull the cord it simply turned to powder in my hand. I grabbed another piece, put it between my hands rubbed twice and there was nothing but a handful of white powder. Outdoor drying is simply not on in this area.
But you have given me a great product idea. A drying machine designed specifically designed for the southwest. The exhaust for dryers is ducted to the outside, but the air is taken in from indoor sources. We could use solar heaters and bring that hot air to the dryer from the outside, cycle it it through the dryer and then dump the humid air back outside. Far more energy goes into heating the dryer air than turning the drum.
Also we have two 17MW power generating stations going online now. One this month and another before the end of the year. And we will have the world's largest concentrated solar generating station going online in 2013. It is a 245 MW plant designed by Abengoa solar of Spain.
I think a lot of people would be surprised at how fast the energy picture is changing here in the US. Our biggest problem is political. If we could capture the heat from extreme right wing politicians we could power the whole nation and have excess energy to sell to our friends in Quebec.
On the subject of Quebec. I worked next to a Canadian software engineer from Quebec that told me his apartment there was so tightly constructed that he could almost heat the apartment with the bodies of the occupants and the energy given off by light bulbs. Something else about the city of Montreal in Quebec that surprised me was how much of the city was underground. There are whole underground shopping centers surrounding the stations of the underground rail system.
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