Fuel Cell Performance

>
>> An off-grid PV home would first be energy efficient and superinsulated
>> in Amory Lovins' _Soft Energy Paths_ scenario so energy use for
>> electric
>> would be closer to 24kWh/day for a four person home.
>>
> US housing is $10 trillion of sunk capital. We have houses near us that
> are close to 100 years old. New houses being built today are double the
> size of old single-family houses, and not terribly energy-efficient. If
> your energy scenario requires $10 trillion worth of replacement costs
> and enforcement of draconian limitations on new home buyers, I think
> the
> rest of us are quite happy to plan for energy needs in the real world,
> thankyou very much.

In the real world peak energy demand, and price, occur at mid-day due
to air conditioning loads. Solar cells are ideally suited to meeting
this peak demand, since they produce energy at exactly the right time.
If peak loads can be handled by solar cells, then there is
significantly less need for centralized power plants. A decentralized
production system is also much more robust to black outs of the kind
we've seen recently and much less vulnerable to terrorist attack. The
key to making this work economically are electric meters than charge
not only by the amount of electricity used, but also by the time it is
used. This is as practiced by the grid itself for major energy
transfers. This, not pork for the energy producers, is what we need in
a national energy bill.

>
> Arthur
>
> Canada.
>
The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.