Exciting advances in supercapacitors

Daryl wrote:I live in a large house in Australia that has solar power and solar hot water, along with a wood heater.
We live an excellent first world life with huge TVs and such.
Because of our solar I have a record of our power consumption and it is generally about 7kwh, sometimes up to 10kwh.
Comments on here reinforce the world wide perception that the US is energy extravagant.

Some regions of the world do not need much heating or cooling.
What is your point? Or you can just go the Russia route... Freeze your ass off and die young. Or India, sweat your ass off and die young.

Joat42 wrote:I'll just point out that the average for a 100-120 m2 house in Sweden being solely heated by electric heaters is 24-25kWh/day. The same house but with no electric heating is 10kWh/day. Guess what numbers you are looking at?

Relax wrote:... I pointed out household AVERAGE.

Joat42 wrote:Yes, 8.9kWh. Then I pointed out that the number 24kWh is for houses that uses electric heaters.

Relax wrote:I never specified heat source. The number above is AVERAGE in Sweden and ALL other nations listed across ALL household types. Why number of households was listed.

.

... So, no, you WISH upon a star the numbers are different.
Typical.

Heat source was not listed. That is an average for ALL homes in their respective countries, be they straight electric, HVAC, or Natural gas heated.

If you use straight electric heat, without a heat pump, there is no way in this world you will heat an average sized home on 24kWh/day. Try Several times higher.

I used to have one of those homes using straight electric in a VERY mild climate region of the USA(Western Washington State) where the Temperatures barely went below freezing during the winter--> Average is around 5-->10C. We were running hundreds of kWh/day. Knew the house had problems and instantly went to work.

#1 Instantly threw 1/3 of a meter of insulation into the attic+old compacted insulation for ~1/2m thick, drilled holes into the walls(15cm) and refilled the walls with insulation as the old insulation had compacted down.
#2 Sealed all light fixtures, plumbing holes and assorted openings into the attic. Ripped open the roof peak to vent for summer
#2, ripped off the aluminum old single pane windows(couldn't even open the windows anyways) and installed double paned Wood Anderson windows and resealed everything. Even did a bag test on several of them and seals were perfect when new anyways.
#3 Ripped off the sliding door which was broken anyways(I did mention I got a screaming deal on the house yes?) and replaced with a non sliding swing door which actually had seals and less glass. Front door I added new seals in grooves I cut into the door making it air tight. Got to the Garage doors later.
#4 Added a valve block to exhaust fans as well(later though)
#5 Fireplace Chimney was blocked initially just to get a reading.

Still had Electric Heat(hot water included). kWh/day dropped down to around 40-->50kWh/day(winter) in a NON Freezing climate in a ~1200 sqft(120m^2) home using electric only. 1 refrigerator only and that was back when everyone was using incandescent lights. There is no way in this world an average household residence would be lower than this unless you share common walls with your neighbors.

To achieve lower numbers than this with ONLY electric heat, you would have to double the thickness of the walls for double insulation at minimum or build a South facing Greenhouse on front of your home and live in a VERY cold home or NEVER go home, warm yourself on your companies $$$, or resteraunts(pay big $$$ for food while pretending you are "helping the environment") and do not have a Family...

I was not going to do that.

Sold the home, now doing roughly the same on the home I am in.

PROOF. OF. CONCEPT.

Relax, this is the real joke of a discussion, instead of the one you were ranting on about in another thread. Got your threads crossed?

You ever heard of a proof of concept? No?

Well have you ever heard of the Wright Brothers and their stupid gadget that stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered an astounding 180 feet?

No? Well what about Thomas Edison and his light bulb, whose feat, btw, was made possible by Thales of Miletus, a Greek, who around 600 BC found that when amber was rubbed with silk, it became electrically charged and attracted objects. He had originally discovered static electricity.

Benjamin Franklin? That idiot was trying to kill himself by flying a kite in a lightning storm for his proof of concept. Dunno what it could've been. Do you?

Alexander Graham Bell? No?

You haven't heard of any of these people? You couldn't have. Or you certainly wouldn't be rambling on about nothing.

Well Penny, thank you for reminding me why I stopped replying to you.

Proof of "concepts" have to have a practical end use. There is nothing special about a capacitors structural use, we already know how to make capacitors which could be used as structural members. Its called get this: Engineering

Concrete is ~95% rock, there is no place to "place" said "proof of concept"...

Relax wrote:Well Penny, thank you for reminding me why I stopped replying to you.

You forgot? Well let me remind you why you stopped replying to me. In the politics forum, you misused the word jibe. You incorrectly used jive. Now, I am the last person to be the grammatical police. I simply thought I missed the meaning of a "play of words." Playing with words is something I do a lot. You dug in like a tick for several pages until my last post. I am sure you were embarrassed but I didn't mean to embarrass you. I haven't heard from you since.


viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7565&hilit=to+agree+with+the+wind&start=60

Relax wrote:Proof of "concepts" have to have a practical end use. There is nothing special about a capacitors structural use, we already know how to make capacitors which could be used as structural members. Its called get this: Engineering

Concrete is ~95% rock, there is no place to "place" said "proof of concept"...

Engineering? I think I have heard that term before. I am a Civil Engineer by trade. Over 25 years in the business as a Lab Manager for a Fortune 500 company. I ate CBRs for breakfast. Graduated in the top 5 % in my class. I tested concrete foundations, retaining walls, pylons, airport roads, bridges, and critical walls and structures like nuclear power plants. And let me tell ya BUD! YOU NEVER USE 95 % aggregate for anything! Especially in critical applications like airport roads, retaining walls of dorms, gyms, etc., (where the lives of kids are involved) or in nuclear power plants. 95% aggregate would produce some of the weakest concrete you can make. No room for binding agents.

FYI, as an engineering student you are exposed to that course, Strength of Materials - or its nickname just strength - in your lower junior year. 3rd year of a five year course. You had to do a year abroad.

But you've certainly reminded me why I needed a very long break from the forum.

In our area minimum morning winter temperatures can get to minus 3C, and peak summer temperatures can reach up to 40C+. However I concede that are extreme variations.
In Australia we tend to use reverse cycle air conditioning for heating and cooling. A "heat pump" like that produces about 4 times the warmth that a simple electrical resistance heater would.
While not a rabid greenie, I have evolved my situation over years to use deadfall wood (from 8 acres of woodland) for heating, and rarely need to use our big aircon. As to freezing our ass off, we live an enviable life, with every imaginable modern convenience.
Sorry about the cheap shot about US energy, but it is a sensitive topic for us, as manufacturers are starting to bring in huge US pick up trucks. Ironically they only carry about half what an Australian ute does, while taking up much more space, and using twice the fuel.

Relax wrote:

Daryl wrote:I live in a large house in Australia that has solar power and solar hot water, along with a wood heater.
We live an excellent first world life with huge TVs and such.
Because of our solar I have a record of our power consumption and it is generally about 7kwh, sometimes up to 10kwh.
Comments on here reinforce the world wide perception that the US is energy extravagant.

Some regions of the world do not need much heating or cooling.
What is your point? Or you can just go the Russia route... Freeze your ass off and die young. Or India, sweat your ass off and die young.

Daryl wrote:In our area minimum morning winter temperatures can get to minus 3C, and peak summer temperatures can reach up to 40C+. However I concede that are extreme variations.
In Australia we tend to use reverse cycle air conditioning for heating and cooling. A "heat pump" like that produces about 4 times the warmth that a simple electrical resistance heater would.

And there are ways to boost the energy efficiency of a heat pump (or air conditioning) if you're willing to spend more money (and have a bit of land for installation) - by using a ground source heat pump instead of the more usual air source one.

With a regular (air source) heat pump in your summer it's trying to pump heat into the 40C+ air, and in the winter it's trying to pump heat out of the minus 3C air. That's hard work, it takes more energy that pumping against less extreme temperature gradients.

A ground source heat pump adds a coolant loop running down bore holes deep enough to expose it to a significant amount of earth that's more than ~3 meters deep. At that depth the ground holds a year-round average temperature of around 24C. Then the heat pump uses a liquid-liquid (instead of a liquid-air) heat exchanger outside so it's pushing heat, or pulling heat, from that roughly 24C source instead of the much hotter or much colder air.
Of course you also lose a bit of efficiency again due to needing a pump to circulate that coolant -- but it's still a huge net energy efficiency win.

But you need enough land to put in the bore holes, that work isn't cheap, and if the coolant loop springs a leak repairs are going to be a lot more than dropping in a replacement more conventional heat pump. So it's not without downsides - but if energy efficiency is the most important thing...

I was checking my electric bills and, assuming that I read the numbers correctly, it appears I run about 12KWh a day during the summer, and about 55KWh a day during the winter. I live in the Puget Sound area of the state of Washington; I have electric heat, electric hot water tank, no air-conditioning (the increased frequency of 90+F days might change this); I live alone (along with 8000+ books) in about 1700 sq feet townhouse, 2 stories (in a 4 unit building in which I am not an end unit). Most of my lights have been changed to LEDs.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I was checking my electric bills and, assuming that I read the numbers correctly, it appears I run about 12KWh a day during the summer, and about 55KWh a day during the winter. I live in the Puget Sound area of the state of Washington; I have electric heat, electric hot water tank, no air-conditioning (the increased frequency of 90+F days might change this); I live alone (along with 8000+ books) in about 1700 sq feet townhouse, 2 stories (in a 4 unit building in which I am not an end unit). Most of my lights have been changed to LEDs.

Yup: Those numbers are ~near identical to what I finally got down to from my old junk Redmond house. One of those junk 1970's track houses with ~zero insulation, doors/windows which leaked more air through them than kept out. Did have people home at all times though. It was truly pitiful and back in the days of incandescent lights and heating fans which run at one constant speed, an uninsulated basement originally too along with ZERO insulation between basement and 1st floor. This giant cold radiator making the house miserable. Oh yea, almost forgot had a fireplace which in effect was nothing but a open hearth chimney sucking all the heated air out as it had no way to be closed off when I bought it... Ugggg

I grew up walking on a radiative heated floor my dad built... That old junk Redmond track house was an eye opener for GARBAGE construction practices and why if you buy old tract houses built in the 70's it had better be DIRT cheap.

Daryl wrote:In our area minimum morning winter temperatures can get to minus 3C, and peak summer temperatures can reach up to 40C+. However I concede that are extreme variations.
In Australia we tend to use reverse cycle air conditioning for heating and cooling. A "heat pump" like that produces about 4 times the warmth that a simple electrical resistance heater would.
While not a rabid greenie, I have evolved my situation over years to use deadfall wood (from 8 acres of woodland) for heating, and rarely need to use our big aircon. As to freezing our ass off, we live an enviable life, with every imaginable modern convenience.
Sorry about the cheap shot about US energy, but it is a sensitive topic for us, as manufacturers are starting to bring in huge US pick up trucks. Ironically they only carry about half what an Australian ute does, while taking up much more space, and using twice the fuel.

Fire away, you haven't said anything I haven't said when trying to buy a PU Truck or the crap USA tract houses which essentially have to be rebuilt the moment you buy them, though I guess modern building standards have fixed most of the 1970's garbage tract housing, so ... silver lining I guess. As for PU trucks #1 No one actually uses them as trucks so they are essentially horribly sprung cars, #2 to get what you ~want you are forced to get piles of trim garbage = huge $$$ down the drain on a work truck that is actually load rated & 4WD(you can buy them from manufacturer, but the price... oh my where I seriously doubt Australians are doing so.) After all the average USA driver does not do so. Gave up, bought an old truck for ~$750 fixed the engine, brakes, water pump, steering pump(it was manual) put in extra leaf springs + load rated tires, extra oil cooler, larger radiator and viola, 1 ton PU is now a 3-->4 Ton PU and the parts are dirt cheap. The kicker, it is SMALLER than the modern idiotic PU trucks. I did have to reinforce the bed when putting in the hydraulics to make it dump. Oh yea, the radio was a single speaker... poor me.

Ah, my kid is finally going to sleep from the flu/fever etc... Gonna get some sleep myself.