<UK Oil Production Lowest For 28 Years The Oil Drum DrumBeat: November 6, 2006>

124 comments on Energy costs are becoming more critical

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NC on November 5, 2006 - 11:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Microwave oven were invented during the last energy crunch because they are very energy efficient.  And some things don't cook very well (bread for instance) in microwaves.

But a solar oven is more efficient yet and doesn't use any electric.  But it takes a long time (hours) to cook a meal in a solar oven which makes it a non starter for most people.

The key is to use the most appropriate tool in each situation instead of always relying on the most energy intensive, which is also usually the fastest.  The modern world is obsessed with speed.

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Leanan on November 5, 2006 - 11:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'd love to use a solar cooker, but I don't have enough direct sunlight.  I live in an apartment, and my balcony gets only a couple of hours of sunlight a day.
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NC on November 5, 2006 - 11:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Put it on the roof of your building or building where you work?  Unless someone would steal it.

They are really portable.  I know people who take these on camping trips.

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Leanan on November 6, 2006 - 12:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't have access to the roof.  I've never had access to the roof of any building I've lived or worked in.  Liability concerns, I suspect.
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jim burke on November 6, 2006 - 1:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The couple who loaned us our first solar oven (we now have two, solar oven society and solar oven), would set their oven out in the morning when they were leaving for work. They would point it due south. When they came home it was cooked to perfection and still perfectly warm, ready for dinner.

We do it that way if we're going to be out all day.

Another option is the Sierra twig stove, by ZZ manufacturing. A single, rechargable AA battery powers a fan, which burns a few handfulls of twigs very hot, cooking our food or boiling our water very fast. We've phased out our propane and only use the twig stove and the solar ovens.

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jokuhl on November 6, 2006 - 10:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Jim;
  Are you using the Solar oven like a CrockPot, too?  I've been chewing on getting a Solar CrockPot Design to work this way.  Shouldn't be too hard.. and the great thing with crock pots is, as you said, you do all the setup in the morning, and when you get home, a hot dinner is waiting for you.  Soups, stews, potroasts!!

Bob Fiske

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jim burke on November 6, 2006 - 11:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I guess.... but maybe it's more like just a slow oven. Slow cooking keeps in the vitamins and taste. Also, one huge advantage of solar ovens is that it cooks in its own moisture. In a conventional oven, the food is surrounded by exhaust gasses from the gas combustion; in a solar oven, the original air is trapped, and becomes very moist. You don't need as much water, it is less likely to stick, and the heating is even so it is far less likely to stick to the pot, or to burn on. Omelletes work pretty well!
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jjhman on November 5, 2006 - 11:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Reading through this thread there is another related issue not mentioned.  If you split your own wood you not only are warmed twice but you don't need to drive to the gym to get the exercise that your body needs.  We really have become so compartmentalized as "consumers" that we have to fight the idea that every need we have must be filled by going out and buying something.  Make that "driving to the store".

And our "vendors" have gotten so efficient at selling us stuff  that is made by those marvelous machines that no one notices the poor quality of what that stuff or the even worse quality of the service provided.

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expat on November 6, 2006 - 3:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
More than that - if you are using an efficient wood stove, you can also heat cooking/cleaning water, reducing the amount of electricity used/carbon created during food preparation.

Co-generation is one of the really major areas of conservation/efficiency, and yes, it also works real well at the micro level too.

It may not scale that well to a city dweller, but the real problem is that such solutions, where workable, provide no incentive in an economic sense. That is, no one is making money off your physical fitness, your reduction of carbon emission, or your reduction in electrical/burning use - so such solutions remain in the realm of personal virtue, not social benefit - remember, more profit is the goal, not more efficiency or a better life for the individual.

This is where I split from the idea of catabolic collapse, compared to entropic collapse - that is, societies set priorities, and then ignore reality while attempting to maintain those priorities in the face of any and all challenges, since any change represents a self-defined failure. Successful societies over time change their priorities, and unsuccessful ones die off trying to maintain their visions in the face of uncaring reality. And yes, this should sound like a reference to a certain society which seems utterly incapable of changing itself.

I keep toying with the idea that the society which currently exists in North America will at some point in the near historical (not in my lifetime, but not thousands of years either) future become something like the Mayans - that is, a group of people who still belong to an identifiable culture, but who no longer have anything to do with their past, having become a footnote, so to speak, even if their past accomplishments remain part of the world around them.

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Nagorak on November 6, 2006 - 4:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Splitting wood isn't much of a solution though.  We'd quickly cut down all our remaining forests if we went back to heating with nothing but wood.  There's just too many of us to be practical.  
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expat on November 6, 2006 - 6:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is somewhat true, especially in terms of cooking, but what is possible in terms of what Germans call 'Passivhäuser' (highly insulated and energy efficient, with hot water/PV integrated) is very impressive in terms of bringing heating in line with what grows naturally in a forest.

Of course, if you have bulldozered the fields and woods to make McMansions, then you would have to wait a good generation or two before the first wood becomes available as fuel - and you would need to tear down all the McMansions to build good housing in terms of energy requirements and comfort.

Obviously, the time to have started such planning was the 1970s.

 

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jim burke on November 6, 2006 - 11:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Perhaps a lot depends on how the wood is used. If you have a large house, and heat inefficiently (ie, any fireplace), you'll go through a lot of wood. If you have a very small space, that is high insulation, high thermal mass, with passive solar and a high efficiency wood stove with internal baffles, you'll be able to get by with relatively little wood.

We live in the mountains of AZ, in a 250 square foot paper adobe house which has high insulation and high thermal mass, with a lot of south facing windows. Luckily the sun shines a lot, so the walls, floor and roof heat up and stay warm, but it can get down to 8 degrees in the winter. We have a modern, but tiny Danish Morso stove, and last winter only used it once or twice a month.

I've had friends who homesteaded in the north east, in large drafty, uninsulated houses, and they chopped a lot of wood, and tended to huddle in one room. But without thermal mass, the room tends to heat up then get cold. With a tight, high thermal mass room, it is harder to heat up, but once warm it stays warm. In a conventional house, there is not thermal mass; only insulation. The only thermal mass is the air, adn the mass of the stove.

I once lived in a well insulated shack in the north woods, and any fire in the stove would make the place sweaty in minutes, and I'd have to open the windows. Once the fire went out, it got cold immediately. Needless to say, that winter was not terribly comfortable.

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expat on November 6, 2006 - 2:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As a rule, German houses are both well insulated - the common building bricks are full of air space and easily 8 inches thick, and generally quite massive. This is on top of maybe 10 inch thick external styrofoam cladding, which is becoming ever more common. Of course, a lot of older houses are poorly insulated in comparison to newer ones, but the incredibly cold style of house common in the Northeast never caught on here. Of course, really old house built in a Fachwerk style are also surprising well insulated, since they incorporate a fair amount of dead air space in terms of the thatch roofs and watting walls.

The idea of a Kackelofen (tile stove) hinges on the idea of mass - it is normally a quite large and heavy part of the house, built to retain and then relase the warmth of the fire built in it.

I may add, most German wood stoves (and oil and coal, for that matter) are designed to be efficient heating units - people pay for fuel, not for effects. Here, people want the steak, not the sizzle, so to speak.

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canbrit on November 6, 2006 - 7:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is on top of maybe 10" inch thick external styrofoam cladding, which is becoming ever more common.

Expat... I have wondered about external insulation since living in a very cold English detatched house in the 1970s... never read of any commercial product though.

Do you know any details of this... layers/surface finish etc. How is the structure allowed to "breathe"?

How does extra 10" allow for window setback etc...

Is it only for new structure design or can it be retro-fitted?

Any web links?? (German or otherwise?)

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Magnus Redin on November 6, 2006 - 7:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Too manny variabels, it can be done in an immense ammount of ways and how it is done depends on the house, the technology used, how you want the result to look and how good the contractor is.

The examples I have seen of external insulation is often more like 5-10 cm then 25 cm. You get diminishing returns with thick insulation, it is indeed harder to make the windows nice and you probably dont want to extend the roof. And its no use to super insulate unless you have a ventilation systems that recovers heat energy and good windows.

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expat on November 7, 2006 - 1:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I need to seriously consider the sizing here - insulation blocks are sold in mm, and 10 inches works out to 250 mm - and yes, that is too thick for normal use. I believe what my neighbor just put on last year was 120 or 150 mm, which works out to around 5-6 inches. I believe 200 mm is a normal size, which is then 8 inches.

The window setback is less of a problem, since southern Germans have what is called Rolladen - these are vertical 'shutters' which completely cover the window from the outside. Very efficient at cutting down on noise, light, and heat loss (northern Germans that I know living around here tend to find Rolladen insane, and a sign of how southern Germans have some real problems). In other words, windows here are already set back, and adding a few inches more is not really a problem.

As noted, the variables are huge, and also hinge on how the house is built. German houses around here tend to not use wood at all in their wall construction, and have overhanging roofs. The styrofoam is normally attached in a very water tight fashion, both underneath, between, and on top - the Rhine Valley where I live is a good place for redwoods to grow, if that gives a picture.

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markincalgary on November 6, 2006 - 6:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually, you don't have to wait nearly that long for new plantings to be harvestable as firewood. For example, over much or North America, hybrid poplar plantings are easily ready for harvest in five or six years. Most hardwoods (technically poplar is a hardwood) you are thinking of might take twice as long. But for a tree to be harvestable as fine wood-working or veneer, that takes at least a generation.

If North American society switched to a diet that included half as much meat, we could turn croplands to forests that would be ready in by 2012.

I'm hedging my bets and planting the steepest parts of my property to mostly poplar, some spruce, and a smattering of maple, just in case. Even if the cornucopian's are right, it will still protect those areas from erosion and provide shelter for my sheep. The mule and white-tail deer that go along with a poplar grove are welcome too.

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expat on November 7, 2006 - 1:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Umm, I can't actually agree with the idea of poplar being burnable as firewood a few years after planting, except in the sense that anything which grows can be burned.

My experience is with tulip poplars in Virginia, which are really fast growing - though loblolly/Viriginia pine is also comparably fast, and the poplars in Germany are also fast growing - where I live now is roughly as north as you, so that may be a better comparison.

Nobody here would waste their time cutting and burning such wood after less than maybe 15-20 years. Much of the red oak I am currently burning (mostly cut and split by hand - I don't use chainsaws) is 20-30 years old.

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markincalgary on November 7, 2006 - 1:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I said 5-6 years, not a few. You said a generation or two. I'm supporting your point that wood heating is more possible than we might at first think if we have very well insulated homes and managed plantings of fast growing tree varieties. I'm thinking that you prefer to cut trees at a much larger diameter than I (more on that below) as well as varieties that take a long time to grow. By the way, I also prefer cutting wood without the aid of fossil fuels. It may not get the job done as quickly, but it makes for an enjoyable day.

Here's a link you might find interesting (Google for "hybrid poplar culture" for more of the same):

http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2006am/techprogram/P25753.HTM

In any case, I'm sawing a load of firewood from a six year-old planting of hybrid poplar this weekend. The logs are about 4 1/2 to 5 inches in diameter for the first 8 feet or so. Since I prefer sawing to splitting, this is perfect for me and I feel safer cutting down smaller trees. This is a managed planting that was irrigated regularly for the first year and when necessary for the second. I believe it was fertilized once with liquid cow manure. The owner plants in 200' rows (the length of his drip irrigation lines and one row planted per year) spaced at 4' and wants me to cut every second tree so he can let the rest grow to a larger diameter. I never cut maple for firewood but occasionally cut one down and saw the trunk into planks for woodworking and the rest into firewood for the owner of the tree.

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Nate Hagens on November 6, 2006 - 8:14am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
at current efficiency levels (80% for NG and 50% for wood stoves), we could replave 5% of ouor fossil fuel heating load with the annual wood biomass grown in US. if we wanted 50%, out trees would be gone in 10 years. I will post all this in a week or two (yes there can be improvements made)
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And1 on November 6, 2006 - 9:11am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Re "efficiency levels (80% for NG and 50% for wood stoves)",  

The 50% for wood stoves is terrible. Half the extractable energy is lost because of poor combustion.
In Denmark the efficiency must be at least >70%

This one ( randomly chosen) gets >80% efficiency.http://www.fokus-pejseovne.dk/dokumenter/Fokus2.pdf

The Nordic swan label for wood stoves ask for more than >73% efficiency.
http://www.svanen.nu/DocEng/078e.pdf
Citation:
The efficiency of slow heat release fireplaces, ©¯k, must be at least 78%. The efficiency of sauna stoves, ©¯k, must be at least 60%. The efficiency of wood stoves and inset appliances, ©¯k, must be at least 73 %. The efficiency of pellet stoves, ©¯k, must be at least 75 %.

From test institutes I have seen results above 85% efficiency.
regards And1.

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Valuethinker on November 6, 2006 - 9:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A systemic complication is that one has to cut and haul wood to the point of use.

If it is from your local woodlot next to your house, not too much bother.  If it is further, then you have serious energy usage issues.

Here in London, wood is technically illegal (the Smoke Orders, arising from the winter of 1952 when thousands of people died due to smog) but is burnt.  But I doubt it has any positive CO2 consequences (we use open hearth fireplaces as well).

In Aspen, Colorado, I believe, new wood burning sources are illegal, due to smog arising from temperature inversions.

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jokuhl on November 6, 2006 - 10:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There are working solutions to all of these points, however..

1)cutting and stacking- we still have need to run an economy, and there will be businesses who you can pay to bring you cut firewood, or pellets, etc.  Money doesn't go away with the 'Easy Oil'..

  1. Inputs. The amount you need to burn is critical.  As posted above, there are stoves that get more than 80% efficiency.. that combined with well-insulated homes and some passive or active solar inputs, and you become far more sustainable. (Insulation and Tightening of the house has to include fresh-air supplies for combustion sources.. this, too has been solved in several ways.. direct outdoor air to the firebox, prewarmed by the earth, etc)

  2. Smog/pollution.  The more efficient stoves are also cleaner burning, taking advantage of recombustion or gasification, and will put far less particulates out the chimney.
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louGrinzo on November 6, 2006 - 12:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Microwave oven were invented during the last energy crunch because they are very energy efficient."

Huh?  Microwave ovens are a lot older than that, and they weren't invented by someone looking for a more efficient way to cook--it was yet another of those things someone stumbled over (a guy working on a radar project accidentally melted a candy bar in his pocket).  The first commercial one hit the market in 1947:

http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/history.html

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ET on November 6, 2006 - 12:35am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yeah, I remember reading stories of WWII seamen heating up their sandwiches on the radar dishes. Not sure if these stories were the real thing or not.
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expat on November 6, 2006 - 4:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
They are real in one sense - the amount of energy being put out by a radar array is quite, quite dangerous to anyone in front of it. Even a commercial television microwave transmitter is hazardous, though the stories of fried birds are generally folk tales. Can't say anything about military equipment, though.
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jokuhl on November 6, 2006 - 10:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
My Father was on an airbase in Texas in the 50's, where a radar tech did not remove the 'powerkey' or some such, and the rig was heated up while he was in front of it.  Instantly cooked.  Dad says he heard the guy was just kind of gray all over.

Bob Fiske

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Alfred on November 6, 2006 - 8:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Raytheon were one of the first manufacturers of microwave ovens - the technology originally came from their radar side of the business. A school friend on a military training trip to Denmark was told not to stand in front of a radar antenna "if he wanted to be able to have kids of his own one day"
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Dryki on November 6, 2006 - 10:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Which pocket?

cfm in Gray, ME

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124 comments on Energy costs are becoming more critical

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