Third Party & Independents: Archives

Except conservatives haven’t been in charge of anything sense the 50s. It’s either been the Democrats or the Republicans controlling everything. And neither one of them are conservative.
BTW, have ya noticed that ATT is buying up phone companies? It looks like they’re trying to get a monopoly again.

Inter low orbit satellite laser is the new delivery technology for Communications of all kinds. It is now operational militarily and represents the future of technology. Now would be a great time for citizens to lobby their representatives for a nationalized communications system if Monopoly is to be avoided.

With such a system, there cannot be multiple companies with multiple technologies. The coordination of orbital objects MUST be a government run project for both national security and safety reasons. Hence, only two paths are available, a private monopoly or nationalized system.

This is becoming the choice of many other industries of the future as well as limited resources and dire consequences of low quality mandate either monopoly run private coordination or nationalized system. Nuclear energy, water and waste management are 3 examples.

I see Japan just brought a new Nuclear plant online, at a 100% cost overrun. Take note, the only way nuclear can be sold to the public is by hiding waste costs and lying to the public about the real cost until it is brought online. At which point the massive investment requires the public to suck it up and pay for it anyway at twice the cost they were told.

Japan seems intent on making the Godzilla movies a self-fulfilling prophecy as they seek ways to get rid of the nuclear waste in the Ocean.

True, monopolies such as that are bad.
Options for electricity power companies are bad too.

There are some decent options for television are internet though.
One is satellite.
Monopolies and limited availability helped give rise to satellite television and internet.
They provide a decent alternative … especially for those that can’t get any cable.
I installed a satellite dish in my cabin in the mountains at 8000 feet (where there is obviously no cable service or electricity either) and it works great. So, my father, who lives way out in the middle of nowhere got it too. Thus far, it has been very reliable and affordable.

DirectTV.com and WildBlue.com are excellent options for television and decent-speed internet (respectively), no matter where you are (or live), unlike cable and telephone companies.

Fortunately, at my home in Texas, I also have the option of VERIZON fiber optic, or TIME-WARNER Cable too (for both television and high-speed internet). TIMER-WARNER Cable is significantly less expensive, which is causing VERIZON to lower their rates. Competition is the best defense against monopolies. That, and less government corruption and legal dysfunction that protects monopolies.

A bigger problem is the price of electricity.
The cost has increased 50% and stayed there (at about 13.77 cents per KWH). I’d certainly like to see a comparison somewhere of cost-per-kilowatt-hour (simply divide total monthly bill by kilowatt-hours). Prices seem to vary widely, which raises a lot of questions.

Folks living in areas served by cable have a choice between it or satellite. And from what I see and hear the satellite companies are giving the cable companies plenty of competition. So I don’t really see that much of a problem.
We can’t get cable out here in the boonies. So if we want something other than broadcast TV we have to use satellite TV. The good news here is there are three satellite companies to choose from. The bad news is we could only find one that would come out and hook us up. And wouldn’t ya know it, they’re the most expensive one.

d.a.n
Are you sure of how to find the cost per kilowatt hours? I just figured ours and came up with 8 cents. Seems kinda low to me. But if that’s the way, and I don’t see any reason why it aint, your gettin the shaft.
Rates also vary for residential, commercial, and industrial customers. Just called the factory and asked what our last electric bill was. The rate there is 3.12 cents per kilowatt hour.
Anytime ya want to swap bills though I’ll be glad to. I’ll take your bill and let ya pay the factory’s. It was only $15,150.72 last month. And we don’t even use as much electricity as some of the others around here.

Ron,
The cute part is that developers in Houston are using federal money to defray the cost of installing fiberoptic cables in the suburbs in upscale developments. That federal program is for RURAL development. They get around this by leaving a portion of the farms they buy and develop occupied to qualify for these grants. Last time I looked Houston and it’s suburbs weren’t rural, by any normal definiton.

Ma Bell IS back , baby.

I wouldn’t consider it a monopoly on account of the option of public broadcast.

All the best shows are on fox any how.

Ron Brown wrote: d.a.n Are you sure of how to find the cost per kilowatt hours? I just figured ours and came up with 8 cents.

I need to build a new house with solar and underground thermal exchangers.

d.a.n. ,

Texas is the highest or near highest in the country.
The electricity market in Texas is controlled by a few private producers. It’s almost impossible to find information on these companies. “Good Hair” and Dudley Doo-worst” ( Perry and Dewhurst) sold Texans down the Rio Grande long ago.

It’s ridiculous.
The only thing more ridiculous than an average $240 a month electricity bills, is $310 per month in property taxes (on an ordinary middle-class, 2100 square foot, 3 bedroom home).
I just switched to WPL, but that only lowers it about 10 percent (from 13.77 to 12.8 cents per KWH).

My cable bills actually have fallen a bit lately.
And, before that, DSL was more expensive too.
Now I get cable television and high-speed cable internet (6MBit down/768Kbit up) for only $38.99 per month (that includes all taxes and fees). It used to be double that. The wildblue.com satellite internet (512Kbit down, 128Kbit up) is $49.95 per month, which is much better than dial-up (at 48Kbit) … which can cost $10 to $25 (or more) per month. Cable, satellite, and cellular have certainly taken a big bite out of telephone companies’ business.

In Texas solar water heaters make cents (be sure to use copper plumbing), solar roofing will make cents after Bush is out of office and tax rebates are restored to homeowners, changing all light fixtures to LED or fluorescent lamps, makes excellent cents.

Nothing however, makes as much cents as getting in on the design of one’s new home. How the house is oriented to the sun (length oriented E-W), the depth of roof overhangs (deeper the better within wind load constraints especially on the South side) or, balconies running the length of the South side of the home) shade the walls from direct solar gain (huge saving on AC costs), while allowing for solar gain from the lower winter sun angle, and R26 + walls and R 43 + minimum ceilings with vapor barriers vastly improve heating and cooling savings.

Lastly, tiled ground floors on slab in direct contact with earth act as a heat sink in hot climates. In winter, pull out area rugs to help insulate the floors from the earth’s cold. At .11 / kwh, our rate is pretty high. Our latest bill was $154.96, for a 1500 sq. ft. 2 story home on 5 acres with an electric space heater in our well shed and another in our 10x22’ storage building.

We don’t have solar roofing, yet, but, when it is installed, we can look toward more than a 2/3 cost reduction in monthly electric bill. Solar roofing has a 20 year life, and pays for its capital costs in our area in approx. 15 years (before rebates selling power back to the grid), leaving 5 years of free electricity. I am truly looking forward to $45/month electric bills.

Nothing however, makes as much cents as getting in on the design of one’s new home.

d.a.n
Georgia Power. For now. Next month we’ll be installing a hydraulic generator. When it’s in I’ll be my electric company.
It should be completed in a couple months. I already have the ground prepped for it. We’re using the spring closest to the house. We had it flow tested and we could run 2 generators off it if we set them up right.
Right now we’re just going with one. But we’ll be able to install the second if we decide to later.
Sure wish there was a good water source by the factory.

BTW, d.a.n
I’ve been wondering about under ground thermal exchangers. Are they as good as folks claim? If they are someone sure could heat and cool their home a lot more efficiently.

David
$154.96? Sure glad I don’t pay your rates. Our last bill was $98.64 for the same size house.
Our house is a 1510 sq ft 2 story with a basement and attached 2 car garage. Something of a rarity in these parts. Most houses here are either on a slab or have a crawl space and have carports.

Ron Brown,
Yes, I think so. But it isn’t easy to retrofit an existing home. Large Underground loops can pre-cool and pre-heat air and water, since the temperature is about 45 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (year round). See this 3 minute video.

The underground loop (with large gentle turns to reduce friction and cavitation) would allow sufficient time for the heat exchange. Blowers could move air across those surfaces (similar to a modern air handler) to pre-cool or pre-heat the air. An ordinary HVAC/Heatpump system could provide a backup, but it wouldn’t have to work as hard since the air is pre-heated/pre-cooled.

Water can be heated to higher temperatures using solar (as David R. Remer described above).

Solar panels and batteries can provide all of the lighting (LEDs are very efficient) and run a lot of appliances. I’ve got a solar system with LED lighting in my cabin in New Mexico, that runs the refrigerator, lighting, TV, DVD player, and wildblud.com satellite internet.

Homes could be built to be MUCH more efficient.

CORRECTION: See this 3 minute video

Thermal exchangers don’t work well in Houston. At least that’s what contractors that have done the work were telling me a couple of days ago. The humidity is too high to cool the house properly.

Thanks for the link d.a.n.
Sure wish some of this stuff was availible when we were building our house. I know some of it was being developed then or if it was availible it wasn’t very cost effective.
Our heat pump is 22 years old. It sure aint the most effecient thing around and we’ve had to get it repaired twice sense Christmas. The serviceman was here Saturday and sugested that we look into replacing it.
We’re exploring our opptions. We don’t want the same type system if we can get something more effecient at a reasonible price.

gergle,
For high humidity climates, there are several ways to dehumidify air for an air conditioner (AC) that are not as wasteful.

One way was adapted by NASA. Heat pipes containing refrigerant are used to precool the air before it reaches the evaporator/chill coils, increasing the moisture removed. Then the air is slightly reheated, making it significantly drier. Amazingly, both the pre-cooling and re-heating are totally passive-requiring no added energy or moving parts! Also, the drier air is better for the building/structure, reducing the likelihood of mold.

The heat pipes contain refrigerant that evaporates as the warm incoming air passes by the pipe, which removes heat from that air. The refrigerant then rises along the other side of the cooling coil, encountering the chilled air, condenses into a liquid, and runs back down to where it started. As the refrigerant condenses, it returns the heat that it had extracted from the air before the cooling coil.

While heat pipes are widely used in mechanical systems to reclaim energy from exhaust air in preconditioning incoming fresh air the amazing thing is that they can also be used to achieve enhanced dehumidification.

For example, some of their heat pipes are configured in a loop rather than a single pipe, so that the gas rising up the pipe is not moving against the liquid running down.

The size of the system can vary depending on the volume of air needed, and the process can be repeated in stages for increased cooling. In Houston, you are more concerened with cooling and dehumidification, than heating. Still, 70 degree Fahrenheit underground temperatures can be very useful in reducing 95+ degree temperatures above ground to much lower temperatures via pre-cooling.

Also, in extremely hot climates, the system above could serve as a pre-cooling system allowing another HVAC system to work less, using less electricity.

The temperature underground is 45 degress to 70 degress Fahrenheit (year round), so it is a great source for pre-heating/pre-cooling.

There are some other systems (i.e. desiccant systems) that can remove moisture too.
Some of these desiccant systems use hot-dry attic air to remove moisture first (reducing moisture by as much as 80%).

No doubt, the up-front building costs are higher, but it will pay for itself in a relatively short time … especially with electricity costs rising ever higher.

Ron Brown,
Yeah, I wish I’d been able to do that.
Our next house will have it.
Here’s another link that’s very interesting.
It’s about 10 minutes long.
It is an interesting article about a new, rugged, durable solar shingle, that produces triple the electricity per square inch.
I’ve got some old-style silicon voltaic solar panels that are much more fragile compared to these solar shingles.
Here’s the site where that article, and some others appear.

Wonder if I could use those new solar panels on my hot water system. It seems they would be more efficient than the ones I have.
I’ll have to Google that.

Ron Brown,

Sure, you can run a hot water heater from batteries and solar panels.
However, water tube in a greenhouse type compartment can heat water up pretty good too.

If you have an electric hot water heater now, one thing that can help a lot is to put a timer on it.
I put a timer on my hot water heater, and set it to only run in the morning, noon, evening (not at night). There’s a manual override. That reduced the electricity usage by about 30% (probably saving about $40 per month).

d.a.n
I have an older solar hot water system. I’m talking about upgrading that system with the new panels.
Sorry, should have been more specific.

Hot dry attic air? You’ve obviously never been in my attic.

gergle,

Attics should have incoming vents in the eves (i.e. at the bottom of the roof), and outgoing vents at the top, to pull moisture out of the attic.

Hence, hot attic air is dryer.
Otherwise, you could get rotting and mold in your roof and walls.

The same is true with walls.
Have you ever noticed some holes in the mortar in the bottom of brick walls.
Some airflow is needed to reduce moisture and cool the air. Otherwise, heat and moisture would get trapped within the attic and walls, causing rot and mold.

Likewise with the Khanh Dinh heat exchanger (shown above).
When the air flows past the last coil, it slightly reheats the air, reducing the relative humidity. The specific moisture remains constant when heating air, but the relative humidity decreases.

Also, there are desiccant systems and products that remove moisture in attics.