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[yogi]

I'm thinking that the electricity supply, grid locked or otherwise, is a lot like what goes on in the technology world in general. It would be a wonderful place if all computers, for example, worked the same way. Repair and maintenance would be simplified and costs could be reduced dramatically. Given that more than half my electric bill is for distribution costs, I'd guess there is a lot of room for improvement through standardization of those methods. However, competition rules in our economy. Thus very little is standardized and inefficiency is prolific. I don't see a solution coming until each energy user is self-sufficient and won't need to connect to any distribution network. Of course, that's about as likely to happen as standardization in the industry.

[Kellemora]

It's also against the low in most cities, counties, and states.
Every place I have lived, you MUST be connected to the Electric, Water, and Sewer Services or your home will be condemned.
I was in a year and a half long fight with the electric company. They can cut your power, but it is illegal for them to touch anything that is privately owned by you. Such as the pigtails that come out of your weather head, except to connect to them.
The electric company came out and CUT my pigtails off right at the weather head.
They said it was because I did not have the property type of relay on my new Dynamo.
There was NO relay to start with, so it could not be of an improper type.
I had a manually operated switch box that allowed electric into my house either from the electric company or from my own dynamo, no automatic switching devices. Also, it was impossible for any power I generated to get into their electrical system. You can think of a two blade knife switch which can only close the circuit one way.

I ran on my China Diesel for a full year. At the end of that year, I had only spent around 3 dollars more on fuel and maintenance than what my previous years electrical bills added up to, and the current year was already at a higher rate.
Now, if it was legal for me to sell electric to my neighbor, I could have made a tidy profit. If I could sell to four neighbors, I would more than pay for my equipment, fuel, and still at least triple my profits.
But it is illegal to generate your own electric if you have access to an electric utility. You MUST be connected to that utility. However, you can supplement your electric by generating your own, as long as you still pay the minimum charge from the electric company. In some areas, and if you have the right kind of meter, you can sell electric back to the electric company at a greatly reduced rate of what they charge you, which is also why reverse running meters are no longer allowed.

My uncle still had a well, and made good use of it too, especially for car washing and watering his garden and lawn.
But he still had to have city water, because that is how they calculate the sewer bill. Same here!

Getting back to my weather head. The county threatened to fine me for every day I was not connected to the electric service, so I had new pigtails installed and let them hook me up again. They didn't care that the electric company illegally cut my pigtails off, and I've never been rich enough to fight the powers that be, although I did talk to several different attorneys about the matter.
I had an electrician come out and rewire a few things from my panel box, such as the AC unit, my Electric Clothes Dryers, of which I had three of them in my basement, and a few other things so I could still make good use of my dynamo. It was also made completely separate of the electrical system powered by UE, so they couldn't cut me off again. If the electric did go out, I had these massive jumper cables with twist in plugs I could connect my dynamo to the panel box, which still had the big ole switch box to disconnect from the electric company.

I hate to think of what a big dynamo like I had costs these days. I'll bet it would be over ten grand for sure.

[yogi]

It's a sad fact of life, but wherever you plant your roots, you are bound to play by the rules of that area. If the municipality you are part of says you need their existing utilities, then that is the law. I don't think that will be the case forever. In spite of what you hear about love and/or money being what runs affairs here on earth, it's actually people who have the ability to provide energy that rule the world. That's why oil is such a big deal. It directly translates to energy.

At some point in the future methods of providing energy will be decentralized because the technology for producing it will change. The move toward wind and solar energy is a step in that direction, but I'm thinking of something less elaborate and more portable. I don't know what it is, to be honest, but I do know it's coming because of what I read about the future attempts to colonize places other than planet earth. When you spend two or three years getting to a destination, you aren't going to be connected to the local utilities. You will have them all self-contained within the box you are traveling in. That expertise will trickle down to the average bloke at some point, and that is when we can cut the wires from Consolidated Edison.

[Kellemora]

Wind power using those tall generators are not really cost effective. If it were not for government subsidies, OUR TAX DOLLARS being wasted on them, every one would go bankrupt fairly fast.
Solar energy and using solar panels although slightly profitable right now, and the price is coming down.
What is the major problem with them?
We know the windmills kill eagles and other birds, and start fires.
But then so do solar farms, with all of them reflecting the suns rays back up, and if a bird goes through a focal point it gets fried. Plus that light reflected back up will some day be claimed as yet another cause of global warming, and the suns rays not hitting the ground could cause global land cooling as well.

The only thing we have that truly is efficient, and has the least impact once built, is water over the dam, falling through turbines, which last much longer than a wind turbine without needing repairs. Besides, all the dams have already been built and paid for and most are sitting idle doing nothing since they put in the deadly nuclear reactors. What about the waste from nuclear reactors? Spent Rods contaminating the earth with man made radiation.

We now have LEDs that put out a gazillion lumens of light for a small pittance of power.
They way they talk about them, one would almost think they have created Perpetual Motion, hi hi.
Why not use LEDs to power a solar cell, all in one neat little package. Self-contained power that never dies, hi hi.
Based on the claims made by solar cell companies on how much power they produce on X lumens of light.
And the claims made by LED manufacturers of the lumens produced by their LEDs, which is much greater than the lumens required to get power out of the solar cell, it sorta makes one wonder which one is not telling the truth.

If I have a solar cell that produces 5 volts at 300 mA when lit by 1000 lumens.
And I have an LED that produces 1000 lumens when powered by 3 volts at 200 mA.
Now if I power the LED from the Solar Cells, once it is started running by a shot of light.
This means I would have an excess of 2 volts and 100 mA for each such combination.
So with 60 such combinations assembled in a small box, I could have 120 volts output at 6000 mA.
This would be free power perpetually, if the data provided by the item makers was true.

[yogi]

I don't know what the future will bring as far as energy is concerned. I do know we will go extinct when there isn't enough energy for everybody's needs. The folks in the ISS are generating their own energy and essentially recycling everything from the food they eat to the waste they produce. I believe all their energy production is coming off solar panels. I also believe the costs to launch and maintain the ISS is outrageous, but it does prove a concept. A small environment, about the size of a house, can be self sufficient. Once that technology gets down to earth, utility companies will be history.

You make an interesting observation about LEDs and solar panels. I'm not so sure your numbers add up any better than the cell/LED manufacturers' numbers, but I can say that you left out some important details. The cost of the LEDs would wash out the cost of generating any "free" electricity. I have a feeling the carbon footprint for making LED lights is way greater than that for solar cells too.

[Kellemora]

My info was based on the fact. A 6 watt LED will produce 800 Lumens of light.
And a 7-3/4 x 7-3/4 solar panel when lit with 800 lumens, will produce a little over 6 watts.
The solar panel cost about $3.00 per watt, so we are looking at $18.00 for each solar panel.
A 6 watt LED in the range ideal for a solar panel costs less than a buck.
This would give a perpetually running light after the initial light to get it started, and once started it would never go out. Well, until it burns out.
Now, if we increase the size of the solar panel by only 1/4 inch, going with an 8x8inch solar panel, the output would be a tad over 7.5 watts. This would leave 1.5 watts to use for something else.
Naturally if you go to a bigger LED such as 1000 lumens, which draws 8 watts, and a larger solar panel that puts out 10 watts, you would have more watts left over after that used to power the LED.

In general, an incandescent light puts out 15 lumens per watt.
While an LED light puts out 60 lumens per watt.
Most of today's solar panels put out 15 watts per sq. ft. from 1000 to 25000 lumens, more in direct sunlight.
Indoors we rarely add lighting over 30 to 100 lumens per sq. ft. A dining room is normally around 30, a rec room around 75 to 100 and a TV room is often less than 30. However, it takes about 800 lumens of output from a lamp to achieve 30 lumens on the surface of your dining table.

[yogi]

You probably have researched the physics of lighting a lot more than I have given the business you were in. I have no time or inclination to look into it just for a point of discussion. If free watts are available and the industry isn't going for them, something is wrong with the assumptions. When a manufacturer can provide more light for less cost, it would be abnormal for them not to go after that kind of profit. So I don't know why your idea isn't more widely implemented. My guess is that it's not as profitable as theorized.

[Kellemora]

Not so much profitability, but the fact there is no such thing as Perpetual Motion.
Although I described the system, in real life it cannot function, due to the law of diminishing returns for one.

If you took a tall wooden pole and mounted a gallon can on it.
Made a hole in the lid and a hole in the bottom with a soft flimsy latex seal.
Then placed a continuous hollow ring through the can, with a super slick surface so it wouldn't ruin the latex bottom seal.
Then filled the can with water.
Why wouldn't the ring just sit there and spin away?

[yogi]

That last example involves moving parts that do indeed succumb the physics principle of entropy. Using light to produce more light has nothing to wear out. I suppose eventually you would run out of photons, but that would likely be at the end of the universe's existence. The flaw in your idea, I believe, is not solely what it takes to create the devices. There is a need to generate the energy to fire up the LED source; that's where the losses are. If the LED puts out 6 watts, I'm guessing it takes 10 watts to get it to do that. Or something like that.

[Kellemora]

When focused and channeled properly, the LED put out more than enough light to get the 6 watts it used from the solar cell. And yes, you did have to shine a light into the box to get it started.
I have a couple of calculators on my desk that are solar powered from ambient light, but the calculator draws so little power, it works from what little light hits my desk.
I also have a window ledge lined with those little solar powered wiggle toys. They are simple but use ten times more power to run than a calculator. So they do not run under normal room light, unless you shine a desk light right on them.

I used to have this little metal wire sculpture of a guy on a bicycle mounted on a walnut base.
It had a separate solar collector that measured about 3 inches by 4 inches give or take.
Depending where in the room I placed that solar collector, the little guy on the bike would pedal fast or slow, and if sunlight came through the window, he would pedal so fast he could burn out the bearings. It even said in the instructions not to expose to direct sunlight, because it would burn out the motor from too many volts or amps whatever it was.

I have solar lights on my fence posts outside my window. Two of them shine in my window at night. Not bright of course being 5 feet away and through glass. But I notice my little flapping wing duck would keep flapping it's wings at night, powered only by the light from those two fence top garden lights. I think there was more to it, such as a full moon or something, because it didn't do it all the time. And I knew they drew a lot of power compared to a calculator.

Apparently when trying to use an LED to light a solar cell, even though the LED is at full brightness and the solar cell is maintaining it's wattage, the voltage apparently is dropping slowly until the light goes back out again. As I said, no such thing a perpetual motion, or a free lunch, hi hi.
I know I'm missing something, since I don't understand much about solar cells. Do they get tired the longer they are exposed to light and need to rest? Based on my bicycle guy, I would say no, he ran 24/7 for many years. The little motor went bad and I could never find a replacement for it, so I used the solar cell to run something else.

[yogi]

I'm with you in the sense that I don't know the details of where all the losses occur in the LED/SolarCell contraption. Intuitively you would think there has to be losses but maybe not. The only certain thing is that there cannot be a gain. In other words, you can't get more out of a closed system than what you put into it. And, we are saying you actually get less. My speculation is that the energy required to get the LED shining on the SolarCell is more than what the cell can put out.

The action parts in the above scheme are subatomic particles. That is to say, electrons and photons are doing all the work. There may be other aspects involved too, but that's the part I'm not too certain about. The LED is emitting photons, which they say have no mass but do have energy. That light energy is hitting the silicon in the cell and exciting it so that electrons are released and start to flow. Those electrons do have mass and will lose energy to heat through the conductors et al.. All that means is the cell would put out more watts (electron flow) if there were no losses. But, is something actually eroding or wearing out? The LED's typically are made from gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium phosphide (GaP) which is pretty stable stuff. However, over time, a lot of time, those elements lose mass due to a process akin to evaporation. It would take a gazillion years to disappear altogether, but every day all the time some of those GaAs and GaP molecules are radiating off the core compound. So, eventually the LED will become at one with the universe. That's not what breaks, however, when an LED light bulb goes dead. The power supply used to energize the LEDs goes out well before the LED itself. It's in that power supply that I envision the losses we are talking about.

[Kellemora]

No power supply is used, like you might be thinking of an LED bulb that replaces a 120 volt incandescent.
LEDs are DC, usually around 3 to 15 volts, although they do come in other voltages.
The three color LEDs use three different voltages and only display the color for the voltage they are supplied.

A solar cell puts out DC voltage. The amount of voltage depends on the amount of light hitting the solar cell.
For this reason, you can wire the output of a solar cell directly to an LED. An LED is already a Diode, so you don't need a second diode ahead of it.
But if you want to use 120 volts, you have to have a step down transformer to convert 120 volts down to 5 volts.
Transformers or very inefficient, as are using resistors to cut down voltage.
Doing same won't help with your electric bill.
So, the power supply for reducing 120 volts down to 5 volts is a switching power supply.
They only draw about 1 watt more per 10 watts at the output, so are very efficient.
Unfortunately, they produce very high amounts of RF, and are short lived devices.

Some day in the future, I expect we will see house wiring at either 12 or 24 volts for lighting circuits. This would eliminate transformers, but would require a bridge-rectifier to convert the AC to DC for DC lighting fixtures.
In other words, a pair of Diodes BEFORE the LED, a Diode to prevent flicker hum from the LED, hi hi.

[yogi]

I'm thinking in theoretical terms wherein the laws of physics must apply. The particular theory I have in mind is that matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed.

The system of LED illuminating a solar cell could be inside a closed black box. Thus, no sunlight. The LED would require a method of activation and that would be fed into the box at the input terminals. We then measure the output terminals of the solar cell. We can use watts to measure energy in this case: volts times amps. According to the laws of physics there would be less output energy or certainly no more than equal to the input energy.

If the above proves untrue, then there are some people at DARPA who would like to talk to you. LOL

[Kellemora]

Yeppers, you nailed it Yogi!

I knew the element Carbon, could neither be created or destroyed.
But didn't know that about matter or energy. Are you correct about that?
I thought energy did consume matter to create energy.
Matter is then reduced to carbon (from which it was made), and the energy expended in the process.
What am I missing here?
I just looked it up, you are correct. I forgot about the law of thermodynamics.

In the case of the ring passing through a can filled with water.
Although the ring is buoyant and easily floats in water.
The flimsy little latex seal to keep the water in the container, will exert enough force against the ring so it acts like a brake and overcomes the buoyancy. I used to know the formula for that eons ago, hi hi.

[yogi]

Buoyancy is about as easy to understand as thermodynamics. LOL In this case it's just a matter of weight vs volume. Given equal volumes, what weighs more; the fluid or the item floating in the fluid? The answer to those questions determines if an item floats or sinks.

Matter vs energy is a little more on the esoteric side and thus not as easy to visualize. Think of light as energy. As such it has no mass. That is what photons are. If you do it right, the LED will emit (light) energy that is already part of the material composing the diode. That light energy is what combines with the silicon photo detectors and is converted to electromagnetic energy. So, what ends up happening is that some amount of energy is put into our black box and what comes out can never be more than what is put in, assuming whatever is in the black box is in a stable state.

Here's the kicker. The universe as we know it was at one time less than the size of a helium atom. The whole tiny ball was pure energy. At some point it blew up and created some matter. Nothing has changed since. I don't get where that matter came from, but then I'm not a cosmologist who sits around trying to figure this stuff out. They claim it all came from a quantum state that was indeterminable. It just sort of self-determined itself one day. Truly amazing.

[Kellemora]

The only thing about all of that kind of stuff is I know perpetual motion is impossible.
It doesn't matter if it is mechanical or electrical, it is still impossible.
And somehow I think the same thing applies to our universe. Orbits decay, suns run out of fuel, etc.

[yogi]

You are absolutely correct. There is a balance between matter and energy that never changes. Things get swapped back and forth, but the balance is maintained indefinitely. As far as we know, that principle is universal. In some other universe where the laws of physics are not the same as what we know, things could conceivably be different. What you say about perpetual motion being impossible is another way to state the law of conservation of matter and energy. Neither one of those things are being created anymore; as far as we know anyway. Entropy is the phenomena you describe wherein everything is falling apart to a neutral state. Nothing gets built or created. It's all falling apart. That explains a lot of the things we read in the newspapers these days.

[Kellemora]

But give the government some time and they will figure out how to tax absolutely nothing.

I have an on-line friend who lives up in Chicago. He said Illinois is now taxing Rain, hi hi.
Every time it rains, they will be taxed for it.
I'm fairly certain they are taxing something, but I doubt it is rain, but rain may be a part of it.

Many of the farmers here were up in arms for years, but never won and ended up paying tax on their own water.
Many had small lakes on their property (not ponds) they used to irrigate their crops. That was outlawed completely.
Those who had wells were limited to only so much for a while, then those were outlawed too.
Then comes the Ponds, which were only filled by rain and their own runoff. Now they have to have a meter on the pumps output side, and they are taxed on how much of their own water they use.

And we all know right now they are trying to figure out ways to to tax Carbon, hi hi.

For every new tax they come up with, they create a Department to handle it, which means more taxes to pay for buildings or offices, salaries, benefits, utilities, etc. Useless man made jobs that serve no purpose except to drain the economy.

[yogi]

I've heard the same story from two interstate moving companies. They get a lot of business moving people out of Illinois, but rarely get any coming in. I can't say the entire state is corrupt, although your tax on rain story might show otherwise, but Chicago and it's 6 collar counties are among the most expensive places to live in the USA. It used to be Silicon Valley, but the same kind of migration is going on out of that area. When we were looking for houses in Colorado, it turns out they were pretty expensive. That was due to all the Silicon Valley people moving to the Denver area.

It seems crazy to be taxing people like that but wages have gone up as have the employment figures. One of the favorite quotes of the current regime is about the "full employment" we are enjoying. That has to do with people working two or more menial jobs so that they can pay their taxes. That fact is never advertised.

[Kellemora]

The worst thing about raising the minimum wage is it causes the prices to go up more than the raises cover, which hurts everyone on fixed incomes the most, because they never give a raise adequate enough to cover the true cost of living increases.
We may get a 3% increase in our SS check, but they also raised the Medicare cost they take out by 6% so our final check is even less than before. Then we have a drug plan taken out, and pay a supplemental health insurance plan separately.
After only these insurances, my actual income is 22 dollars less than last year.
And the sad thing is, you can only change insurance companies during a certain period of time. As soon as this window closes, they all up their price by 5 to 8%. This is not fair at all.

Many of the fast food places down here that used to have a dollar menu, now only have like 3 or 4 things on the dollar menu, and what used to be on the dollar menu is now on their two for five dollar menu. Another gimmick because folks like me can't eat two, we only want one, but if we want something off that menu, you have to take two items. Right now they let you get two different things, but not always. Some of them are straight twofers no substitutions.