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Comment by William Engwer on August 26, 2009 at 9:04pm

Yup.

Comment by Larry M. Aden on August 26, 2009 at 9:00pm

That 230 Mpg claim for the Volt is a farce, not even close to an accurate measure of the energy actually consumed, or its gasoline equivalent, so don't expect any other companies to get close to that.
We are far from having any surplus electricity to run a plug-in fleet off of, anyway. We lack all types - base, intermediate and peak.
Renewable base load generating capacity is the toughest, and really can only be addressed by geothermal, hydro-kinetic, or burning lots of biomass.
Only geothermal is more constant than water power with almost limitless potential for expansion.
I don't care if you live in the largest metropolitan area on Earth, your traffic will never be steady enough for base load, in fact, when most people are on the road, generating the most power, there will be few at home to use that power..

Comment by William Engwer on August 26, 2009 at 8:33pm

Gary, I think Larry and I agreed that there would be NO energy cost if your generators were on a downhill slope (see our respective last two posts), and that you'd actually be recovering energy otherwise lost to braking (unless the vehicle in question was running regenerative brakes). I am however kind of looking forward to testing something that claims "230MPG". The manufacturers' fuel efficiency claims have almost never been attained in the real world, and I'm thinking this one might be off by about half an order of magnitude.

Comment by Gary Fosburg on August 26, 2009 at 8:22pm

In my actual business plan, I state that the installation is on a downgrade of highway. The downward inertial of the weight of the vehicle would make a very small indent in loss of fuel especially on a downhill grade where coasting is utilized. The thought that this is a "scheme" makes me think of a "get-rich scheme". If one unit costs $1000 minus installation costs and it produces enought electricity to power 3 homes for a year, I would think that state governments would love to generate extra revenues for state coffers. If a dynamo is spinning 24/7/365 due to traffic patterns, it would not take long before these small dynamo's outperform. Traffic is a constant. wind, sun, water flow is not. Buying acreage and installing wind farms/solar farms takes many years of installation at billions of dollars.
If we accelerate moving to hybrids and electric vehicles and we have an abundance of electricity at home to recharge these hybrids, cost of KWH will be lower by installing Road Power.
In regards to the National Energy Lottery, I've re-written for my small town of 10,000. It's only $20,000 winner and winners must buy from local county. Since we can print money like Berkshires or Chamber Bucks, we might print "Energy Bucks" instead. Solar companies that install panels by the winners would be able to redeem the Energy Bucks for cash at local bank. Already talking to Mayor and city council about that program. Would be run by a 501C non-profit corporation and since no "legal tender" is being used, then raffles/lotteries would be permissible.
PS...If the Chevy Volt gets 230 MPG as advertised and other car companies not far behind....do you think the people would really care about losing a couple pennies a day to generate electricity to the state treasury?

Comment by Larry M. Aden on August 26, 2009 at 7:57pm

True enough, William, for the majority of vehicles that are not running regenerative braking, it would recoup a lot of power employed on all our downhill grades.
Gary, I just, finally, had time to read about your National Energy Lottery, it is a very good idea. With AMASS, we tried to get a lottery like this started in Paraguay back in 1997, but most countries have laws that make it impossible for any private, even non-profit, organization to run any such game of chance. We still intend to run such a capitalization scheme internationally over the Internet, but only within the Society, as the daily $1 lottery ticket is actually a receipt for the members dues for that day.

Comment by William Engwer on August 26, 2009 at 7:30pm

I love what the Pickens plan has done to connect people who otherwise might never interact, and I think that might end up being its greatest contribution to the future. I also like seeing people actually thinking, and trying to make a difference. Bravo. And I almost always agree with Larry Aden in principle, if not specific detail.

As for Road Power, here I have to again agree with Larry in the fact that there is no energy free-lunch. When I noticed the displacement of railroad tracks by the weight of rail cars and locomotives, I thought of a system not unlike Gary Fosburg's. That old conservation of energy thing always comes back though.
BUT, how about if Gary puts his generators only on the downhill slope of a road, where vehicles will be either coasting or braking? Unless they're running regenerative braking, it looks to me like if not a free lunch, then at least one saved from the dumpster. WCE

Comment by Larry M. Aden on August 26, 2009 at 5:23pm

I just re-read my comment to William and realized I used the Spanish spelling of preferential in my English sentence. I apologize to one and all, I used to be an intelligent person, but learning too many other languages sure did not yield any benefit to my English spelling skills, quite the contrary.

Comment by Larry M. Aden on August 26, 2009 at 5:15pm

Gary, There is no such thing as a free lunch and there is no truly free and limitless energy, not even the from the Sun.
Every scheme I have seen, so far, to harvest kinetic energy from roadways will increase the rolling resistance of the roadway surface, and thus, will actually reduce the fuel economy of every vehicle traveling over that surface, even the piezoelectric chrystal schemes would have this same effect.
No energy is gained by such schemes.
The only gain that can and should come from our roadways is to make use of the solar energy gain over these under-utilized surface areas, plus we could make the base under the roadways into a giant country-wide DC storage battery and buss bar, which should be controlled by an open-membership national utility cooperative.

Comment by Larry M. Aden on August 26, 2009 at 4:45pm

William,
This paradox is largely because our tax system treats pure speculation with preferencial rates as capital gains, which tends to tie up a huge percentage of available investment capital in these entirely non-productive trading endeavors, and starves productive enterprise of needed investment.
There are also many other facets of our tax system that essentially discourage savings (thus the available pool of earned capital for re-investment) and investment in primary and secondary production.
The systematic destruction of our industrial base and our nation, in general, all goes back to 1913 and the passage of the unconstitutional graduated direct taxation of our incomes by the Feds, not the least of which was the unintended effect that Congress had us around the throat for their guaranteed paycheck, so that left them free to auction off to the highest-bidding foreign lobbyists their clearly enumerated responsibilities to promote the general welfare and defend American producers with import and export duties as mandated by our Constitution.
There is no real mystery to it, but, then, I rest pretty well assured that you already knew that, and your apparent quandry was purely rhetorical.
I just thought I should spell it out for those who were just barely following your chain of logic.

Comment by Gary Fosburg on August 26, 2009 at 4:23pm

It's funny you mentioned Saudia Arabia. I've sent out business plans for my invention of ROAD POWER, (partial description below) to many, many companies, Angel Investors, etc...with no success. The only reply of interest comes from a Prince in Saudia Arabia. Go figure.

WHAT IS ROAD POWER
Road power is a new device capable of converting vehicle traffic patterns and the weight of the vehicle to electricity via a submerged air-conditioner size dynamo alongside the road. Road Power is submerged as a thief prevention deterrent. A very small plate is installed across all lanes of highways to compress a soft bladder underneath creating over 200 lbs pressure which will turn a flywheel alongside the roadway. The inertia of this flywheel allows for continuous electricity to be generated even when traffic patterns slow to 1 vehicle every five minutes (highly unlikely). All respective utility connection requirements to the grid with safeguards for power outages are implemented.

POWER GENERATION (Approximation) A BASELOAD PROVIDER
One Road Power units generates 90KWH per 24 hours. If we multiply by 365 days we come up with 32,850KWH per year. Dividing by 12 months we arrive at 2737.5KWH per month. Since a home typically on average (for 112 million homes) uses 1000KWH per month, we divide by 3 the 2737.5KWH and arrive at 912.5KWH. Therefore, one Road Power generates enough electricity for 3 homes per year.
So, here's my three fold solution to America's energy needs.
1. National Energy Lottery
2. Road Power...No wind, water, sun, land acreage required.
3. We convert American Oil Tankers to "Lithium Ion Storage Tankers" to sell our excess electricity to nations that want/need it. By planning now, within ten years the battery technology will probably be a 10-fold increase in capabilities.

Too bad there are not any American companies with enough foresite to see 10 years down the road.

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