Hello, welcome back to Energy 101. 
Today we're going to do an other lecture 
talk about other energy issues and 
technologies,[COUGH]. 
I didn't quite to know what to call this, 
but it's the catchall for the issues that 
in technologies that some of you that 
brought up, and that would, wanted to 
want it covered. 
there's, there's just not, wasn't time to 
cover everything. 
This is the last week. 
But let me just make some general 
statements about them. 
but how, how did I choose the topic, I 
think, self recognize how I chose the 
topics that we did cover. 
it, it came from the course objectives in 
that I wanted you to know where our 
energy use is going and, and what the 
demand is and why we have that demand. 
Wanted you to know where the energy 
sources are that we're getting them from, 
and the conversion technologies. 
and then have at least some examples of 
how to access and the process of 
assessing new energy technologies and 
deployment. 
So this is all about deployment, 
assessing what happens when you deploy 
new energy technologies, which we 
certainly hope will happen here over the 
next 20 to 50 years or and including next 
year. 
So that, that was my purpose and I always 
say we need to understand the 10 to 15 
trillion dollar infrastructure that 
exists in our energy system today. 
It's at least that, and we can't just 
bulldoze it all down overnight and 
replace it with something new. 
But we've gotta have a plan, and just in 
case haven't made the point that we need 
to do everything. 
We need, no matter how small or how big, 
we need to do implement all the new 
technologies to reduce energy 
consumption, increase our supply, 
increase our renewable energy, decrease 
CO2 emissions and decrease particularly 
oil supply but also of course for CO2, 
co, coal and gas. 
so I'm going to talk about a lot of em, 
here so let me just race through them. 
number one, one thing that's always a 
little frustrating to me, is that there's 
an infinite number of, of ideas and 
suggestions that have been sa, ga, have 
been brought to me over the last 35, 40 
years that I've been in the energy area. 
particularly in the 70's they started 
with the the energy crisis in the 70's 
which if you Google it, and look back at 
it, had a dramatic impact on our 
lifestyle and culture which I won't go 
into. 
But th, th, there are either they want, 
they want somebody to access their 
technology, analyze it, and develop it 
and build it. 
Because it's such a great idea they're 
convinced it'll revolutionize the world, 
they just want to keep the patent rights 
and want somebody else at no cost, to to 
them to access it and develop it. 
obviously that doesn't work, in my 
situation anyway. 
I don't have those resources available to 
me from the university or otherwise. 
and, but a few of them also are building 
prototypes, but they're not quite 
running, they hadn't, they won't work, 
but all they need is a few million 
dollars more. 
And the couple, they're generally raised 
a lot of money in some cases and to 
amateur investors they convinced would 
work. 
but the ones I hear about most, they 
immediately are recognizable as violating 
the natural laws of nature. 
for instance, engines running on water. 
hydro-electric power generators, that 
have more than 100% efficiency volleying 
the conservation of energy law, that you 
cannot create or destroy energy. 
engines running off of magnets, that's 
the really popular one. 
That is free energy, because, you can get 
it from magnets and you won't demagnetize 
the magnets, it'll just run forever for 
perpetual motion. 
And often they have patents, but having a 
patent, people think because you got a 
patent that it means it'll work. 
Patent knowledge does not substantiate 
that it'll work. 
They merely substantiate that it's unique 
compared to other patents that are out 
there and other technologies and ideas 
that are out there. 
regarding engines running on water, I 
always like to tell the story, I've been 
in that one for a long time. 
When I was a teenager I had a friend that 
had an old car and the fuel tank, 
gasoline tank rusted. 
And it would get rust in the carburetor, 
so he just disconnected the fuel tank on 
the car, and put a five gallon can in the 
back floorboard. 
Back then they had enough floorboard 
space to do that in the back. 
And put gasoline in there, and just ran 
the gas line in there, and pumped it out 
of there instead of out of the tank. 
And so, one Saturday afternoon, we 
mischievous teenagers didn't have enough 
to do, so we went to a, we, we'd go 
around to all the filling stations in the 
town, and they were self service, I mean, 
excuse me full service back then, and 
nobody pumped their gas. 
And we'd pull up and they'd say, can I 
help you? 
We'd say, no we just need some water. 
And we'd get the water hose and put water 
in the fuel tank. 
And then we had an aspirin bottle that we 
had taken the labels off. 
When you take a pill out, and we'd throw 
an aspirin in there, then get in and 
drive off. 
And we thought that was hilarious, that 
we trying to make people think we were 
running a car on water. 
But that, that's been around for a long 
time and I've gone to look at projects 
over the years. 
I could write a book on, on the projects 
that I've looked at including nuclear 
powered engines. 
one in Daytona, Florida that, that could 
have, that raised a lot of money from, 
from amateur investors, like a million 
dollars or so, and that claimed it was 
running off of nuclear power. 
But none of those ever proved out when I 
looked at em and was able to have the 
time and money to make an assessment of 
it. 
But unfortunately, all these ideas keep 
coming back, because negative assessments 
are never published. 
the, it's, you don't publish in the 
science journal, or engineering journal, 
or popular journal negative assessments. 
And as soon you make a negative 
assessment, someone will make a small 
suggested change to it, that means you 
gotta start all over again, do it again. 
But they never do the assessment. 
They want you to do it and so, it is 
problematic. 
But they're infinite number of them, and 
we can't cover an infinite number in this 
course, obviously, can't even cover a 
finite number. 
But let's just look at a few of them and 
I'll make some comments. 
The first one being energy use efficiency 
and conservation. 
This is a huge opportunity from the 
beginning, these are, the, every one of 
these issues here are public policy 
issues. 
They're not technology issues, we have 
the technology to do all these things. 
And they're developed, and all you gotta 
do is just have a market for them, and, 
and it's we'll have it. 
but the first one, which I've been 
involved in, since, , what the 80s, early 
80s. 
I'm not doing it anymore, but, in 
existing factories and buildings to, 
reduce their energy consumption by do 
going in and doing energy auditing. 
And in many cases with no dollars spent, 
merely making adjustments, settings, you 
can smugif, significantly, like 20%, 
reduce the energy consumption of the 
factory or building. 
But, and you say, well that's wonderful, 
and you do that once and it's done. 
But you can't do it once, because if you 
go back in a year, you find that all the 
adjustments are out of kilter, and they 
use as much energy as they were before. 
So it's an execution and management 
problem again, it's not a technology 
problem, and, I'm a technologist. 
I'm not a public policy person, I'm not a 
politician, so I try to stay to 
technologies, and access the impact of 
those technologies, on our energy 
consumption and our infrastructure and 
CO2 emissions. 
an example are appliances, that 
refrigerators, that's a beautiful example 
and it's brought up many, many times of 
what we can do. 
Refrigerators today are the same size, 
use three times less electricity than it 
did in 1975. 
How did that come about? 
Well, it came about not by free market 
place, fortunately, even though the 
economics were very positive, they by 
spending a little bit more money you 
could always get a little more 
efficiency. 
But their accomplish were thee, the 
Congress passing U.S efficiency standards 
that, are set by, the ability for DOE to 
set those efficiency standards, and apply 
minimum efficiency standards to any 
refrigerator that is sold, and was sold 
starting in the 70s. 
And today and they're using three times 
less so in 35 years, and with that 
technologies available in the 70s is 
available now. 
heat pump water heaters is another one, 
that hasn't been as success, as popular 
as refrigerators, because that one was 
mandated, heat pump heaters were not 
mandated. 
but heat pump water heaters, they use the 
heat pump affect compared to electric 
water heaters they'll save 50% of the 
electricity used to heat water. 
they bring the operating costs for 
electric resistance water heating down to 
about that of natural gas. 
so they don't, heat pump water heaters 
don't compete with natural gas water 
heaters but they will save about 50% 
compared to conventional electric water 
heaters, including instantaneous water 
heaters. 
and I, I could go on and on with 
appliances. 
But that one merely, the heat pump water 
heater is merely the economics are very 
good. 
Typically a household will spend $600 a 
year for hot water heating and heat pump 
water heaters are on the order of $1,500, 
so it's a 2 to 3 year payback, and better 
than that in some areas like Hawaii or 
high, California high cost the 
electricity years. 
regarding auto efficiency, that's another 
example of that was accomplished by US 
EPA Standards when they were first 
imposed in '70, mid '70s. 
average auto effi, efficiency was 13 
miles per gallon. 
that improved to about 28 miles per 
gallon due to standards set by the EPA. 
And but they didn't change from 28, for 
about from the mid 80s or so, up until 
them mid 2000s or late 2000s. 
So we went about 20 years without 
increasing that, even though Europe has 
had the technology there for many, many 
years because they have more an economic 
incentive. 
And, we, th, they have a large tax on 
their gasoline and diesel fuel. 
So those again are examples that have 
been done and can be done, but they're 
public policy issues, none of these are 
technology barriers. 
we, we don't need to be doing R&D on them 
particularly of significance, just 
developing the component base of the 
technology that we have. 
other energy technologies, don't know 
what else to call it other then other. 
sa, people have asked, you have asked for 
items such as ocean energy, lightning 
energy, electric power transmission, 
distribution smart grids, keystone 
pipelines, solar/wind electric energy 
storage, and solar/wind backup power to 
be addressed. 
We don't have time to go into all of 
those. 
essentially most of these are not being 
deployed. 
smart grid is the exception. 
and maybe Keystone Pipeline will be 
implemated, who knows. 
but let's start with the beginning here 
and look at ocean energy wave, tidal and 
currents looked at that many times, and 
there's a lot of da, lot of analysis 
that's out there and available in that. 
The bottom line is that it's a dispersed 
form of energy for, you gotta cover a 
large area if you're trying to capture 
wave energy. 
tidal energy many times will get in the 
way of navigation currents. 
And that's caused by tides flowing with 
currents flowing in and out due to tides, 
is the, the, the navigation issues, but 
the bigger problem is infrastructure and 
robust system that you have to put in 
place to, to survive the 30 foot or so 
ocean waves that develop just seasonally, 
not due to hurricanes or storms, but just 
seasonal act, storms and activities. 
It requires robust, robust systems. 
And I was born and grew up down in the 
southeastern coast of Florida near West 
Palm Beach and the, the Gulf stream, is 
the closest to the coastline down there, 
than any other place along the Atlantic 
seaboard, where the where the where the 
Gulf stream flows. 
And, for, probably 50 years, people have, 
including the Navy, have gone out there 
and tried to put turbines in the gulf 
stream to capture some of that energy and 
to generate electricity, none of it to 
any avail because they would always break 
loose and they have to, they just used to 
have to have a incredibly robust 
structure to make them sto, stay fixed, 
and all of this is economics. 
That's one thing I probably haven't 
mentioned enough, is economics, 
economics, economics, economics. 
We need to be in deploying the, the 
renewable energy technologies, for 
instance, and oil saving technologies 
that will save the most oil and the most 
CO2 emissions with a minimum capital 
investment and minimum cost. 
And in a free marketplace, which is what 
we have, given thee, thee restrictions 
and the policies you'll come up with the 
least cost way to accomplish that. 
People will mention lightning, lightning 
is so sporadic, both in time and location 
it's just it, it's just not practical. 
Electric power distribution and 
transmission, the smart grid is, is, is 
already being implemented essentially. 
remote meter reading is part of the smart 
grid. 
And when you've got dispersed power 
generation with photo altag systems on 
roofs. 
Or, or large privately owned wind farms 
that are distributed around your grid, 
you've got a lot more generation, 
generation out there that's dispersed. 
And you gotta have a smart grid to 
control it, and know when it's coming up 
and down and it's varying with the wind, 
it's varying with the sunlight, et 
cetera. 
So that's something that's happening and 
this is, requires a lot of effort for 
deployment and demonstration but that's 
the mode we're in with transmission and 
distribution. 
DC And, versus AC, we use a lot of DC 
transmission today, at very high voltage 
over longer distance. 
and even for offshore wind farms, they 
many times will convert the, the AC 
generated by the generator in the turbine 
to DC and pipe it underwater. 
For, went with DC power, and then convert 
it back to AC when it goes into the grid. 
Wireless technology for transmissions. 
That's, we, we use wireless transmission 
for information and there's very little 
power to it. 
that's, that's just several orders of 
magnitude less power. 
Then, then what would make it practical, 
and I, they can be used in some isolated 
cases like wireless powering, wireless 
phones or wireless tele, televisions or 
things, but as far as transmitting bulk 
power, to power a home, It's, I don't 
think that's in the cards. 
Keystone pipeline even, that's obviously 
a policy issue there. 
and thee, there's, there's some good 
assessments done by quality people with 
all the assumptions in it, and stated and 
that have looked at the CO2 emissions 
from oil, that is produced from the tar 
sands up in Canada. 
And it, it, it does, the oil coming out 
of the tar sands up in Canada do produce 
more CO2 than the ones that in which we 
just drill a hole in the ground and the 
oil comes up. 
But, it's it, it, it is produce, does 
produce more global warming. 
Whether we should have, should have the 
Keystone pipeline is a, is a permeating 
policy issue, that everybody can have 
their own opinion on that. 
solar/wind electric energy storage, is 
something we really need, if we're going 
to have a dominate amount of our 
electricity coming from solar and wind. 
But the economics of that today are just 
really far off. 
and we need to keep working on that, but 
this is not in the near term deployment 
phase at any economical or competitive 
situation, that we are getting to with 
wind and solar power generation. 
But in that same line, the backup without 
the energy storage for solar and wind, 
then we have to have backup power, so 
that when a cloud comes across our PV 
system or the winds slackens off, for our 
wind power, that we get conventional 
dispatchable, we call it power plants 
that can be cranked up and turned on to 
meet the power demand that people want. 
so that's just a quick run down of some 
of those other, I call em energy 
technologies, and we're, we're at the end 
of the road here, regarding this course, 
Energy 101. 
sorry we didn't have more, time to, to 
cover more topics. 
your posts were great, and the, the the 
disccusion was great. 
The one that created the most controversy 
was electric cars and CO2 emissions. 
I wanted, I did that in order to make a 
point and I was reacting to the zero 
emissions emblem that's on the back of 
every leaf. 
that is true with the proper assumptions, 
in other words, if you're look at the 
tailpipe only, there are 0 emissions 
coming out of the tailpipe, because it 
doesn't have one. 
But when you look back at where the get 
their electrical power, you have to make 
a lot of assumptions, that I made some in 
my assessment that I think are reasonable 
from national perspective, and that has 
to do with energy policy is applicable 
today, today. 
In the future you always create a, a 
scenario in which, things will be worse 
or better. 
And, locally, you can always create a 
specific state event, for instance, that 
they save significant fuel, that 
significant CO2, other states, it 
doesn't. 
But I think always in doing assessments 
and compare, comparing technologies, you 
always need to look at apples to apples 
and comparing, a Leaf's CO2 emissions, 
with an SUV is an unfair comparison 
because that, you can, got a lot of 
options to replace this SUV for a less 
fuel consumption and CO2 emissions than 
going to a, a, leaf. 
so I, I think you need to look at that, 
that, that has to do with change in our, 
our mix of types of vehicles that we 
have, and we certainly need to do that. 
Europe is the best place that example for 
that, that we can see. 
I consistently, when I'm over there get 
40 to 45 miles per gallon, in a five 
passenger midsize car. 
Technologies here, is not a technology 
issue, again, its a policy, policy issue. 
So thank you. 
We'll do a wrap up and summary next. 
Thank you. 
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