I’m not even going to attempt to give a better explanation, Brian Greene, who is currently specializing in theoretical physics, particle string theory and also doing work on the unified theory does a fantastic job explaining the concepts so that everyone can understand it.
(Reading from an RSS feed and can’t see the video? Click here)
Energy saving light bulbs are the typical type of thing governments usually do; when things go wrong, they patch it and then patch it some more until eventually it falls apart. It’s like painting rust; the same goes for energy saving light bulbs, it’s a quick fix to spending money on decent alternatives to energy.
The idea of an energy saving light bulb is good, until you look a little closer. Besides the concerns of these bulbs increasing your risk of skin cancer, causing migraines, possibly triggering epileptic seizers in people with photosensitive epilepsy, increase skin rashes if a person has a light sensitive skin, cause discomfort for people suffering from lupus (a condition which causes swelling and pain as the body attacks its own tissue) and so forth, the light bulb itself contains enough mercury to be a cause for concern.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) suggests the following: if one of these bulbs break in your home, don’t vacuum the shards up; rather sweep them away wearing rubber gloves or pick up the shards using sticky tape as protection from the mercury. Also make sure no one inhales any dust, and seal the broken pieces in a plastic bag, to dispose of at a council dump and NOT in a normal household bin!
The mercury content in an average energy saving light bulb is no more than 5 milligrams – and would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen – but it’s still a hazardous material that could poison landfills (meaning it will eventually end up in our drinking water) or directly cause health problems in the event that one of these are broken. For this reason, used energy saving light bulbs need to be recycled rather than going in the bin and since this is a temporary solution to a much bigger problem, we need to continue looking for alternative sources of energy and keep on pushing for funding to further develop alternatives that are not more harmful to the environment than the current ones are.
We’re in an interesting time where lots of change is about to happen (if we allow it to happen) and alternative sources of energy is just one of these changes we can expect. It’s fascinating how most people in this world is always in reactive mode and start to make changes only when there’s an emergency or in this case, a possible energy crisis. I say possible as I don’t rely on ANY piece of information I haven’t FULLY investigated myself or understand the motive behind why such information was made available in the first place.
In the current situation, it’s irrelevant, clean renewable energy has a two-fold benefit, decentralising power away from the power grid and its owners and cleaning up the environment. If you’ve been in Jo’burg or even in Cape Town on day when the air is a thick, dirty, brown, odor from a distance, you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to, breathing that air is harmful to the human body (and every other carbon based living organism). What is the point of having the latest and greatest medical and biological research trying to lengthen the human lifespan to post 1000 years when the real problem is literally under our noses? Pollute the natural resources and we’ll eventually be the reason humanity goes extinct.
Starting another non-profit “go-green” organisation competing for funding from an ignorant government (who benefits from not going green in the short-term) and I might add ignorant public, has its tax benefits, but as my grandma always say, beggars can’t be choosers. Why settle for a non-profit organisation when what you’re working on can effectively take a cut out of Eskom’s 60 billion budget or a minor cut out of oil companies’ income who literally has trillions of dollars to play with and manipulate economies with? Even if the cut you’re getting is less than 0.01%, there will be plenty of money to play with, go do the math if you don’t believe me (call me a capitalist with green fingers, but the truth is without money no project will make it very far)
How are we going to solve the problem of funding (as well as the risk of being wiped by companies who own the energy pie)? It’s simple, we follow the same principles being used in high availability cluster computing, make the system duplicatable and we take care of the risk of being silenced (something which I’ve learned from my studies into multi level marketing is that people can’t be replicated, but systems can be and if the system is effective, anyone can replicate it, but since multi level marketing has a negative connotation, we’re going to avoid it as far as possible). The money part will require external sources of money, but that’s going to come from investors. Let’s face it, people with money will only give money if they can get a good return on their investment and that’s exactly the idea. Investors will literally pay to clean up the planet and investors will eventually get a fantastic return on their investment.
Where do you come into the picture? Anyone can be part of this as this project will require time, money and skill investment from as many people as possible, doesn’t matter how big or small it is. Everything you put into this project will be seen as an investment instead of a handout; nobody invests time and money in a project if it’s not going to put food on their table in the long run.
The project will be known as Project KOTS where the acronym KOTS stands for Knowledge Of The Source and where the source refers to energy. Everything in this world is made of energy, even Einstein knew that (E=mc² the mass-energy equivalence equation). If you’re currently working on ANY form of alternative energy research or implementation, I want to hear from you, you’ll be a valuable asset to the network of existing researchers. If you’re working on go-green projects non energy related, I also want to hear from you; income from work done on alternative energy will effectively be funding the go-green projects until it can be expanded to self sustained projects.
Contact me on jan@mycee.com and we can take it from there (Have visited several people working on such projects and was absolutely blown away by all the work that went into building those workable prototypes). Anything that can generate clean renewable energy is welcome, that includes, but is not exclusive to:
… and more specifically
The mailing list will be up and running again by the 7th of July, it’s currently down for maintenance, in the meanwhile, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll add you to the mailing list when it’s up and running.
I’ll be in touch.
Unfortunately this is not a post packed with all the latest fuel saving technologies (it’s coming, just give me some time), instead, it’s a practical guide on how you can reduce spending, which to be honest, if you’re doing a lot of driving, quickly adds up to quite a large amount of money.
While we’re stuck with burning fossil fuels, we might as well make the best of it until the eco-friendly alternatives are widely implemented.
Do less braking and less acceleration, that means do some planning when you’re driving. When you’re in a speed bump zone, accelerating to a speed bump and then braking just doesn’t make sense, every time you accelerate, you burn up more fuel, rather keep going at a speed on which your car can handle the speed bumps and maintain that speed during the speed bump zones. After all, speed bumps are designed to slow you down.
Also, speeding to a red traffic light doesn’t make sense either, you’re only making yourself vulnerable to smash-and-grabbers when yo have to sit and wait there (something which seems to be a common phenomena in Jo’burg, no wonder people skip red lights), instead, gradually slow down and see if you can catch a green light.
Also, when you’re doing a lot of downhills and uphills, see if you can use the car’s momentum to your advantage by keeping the petrol down just enough to make it uphill and using the downhill to build up enough momentum that you don’t have to accelerate unnecessarily.
The point is, try keep a steady speed most of the time by planning ahead where you should accelerate or slow down and keep it to a minimum.
Keep your rev counter as low as possible. It’s simple, the higher the revs, the faster your engine turns, the faster your engine turns, the more fuel you burn. To keep your rev counter as low as possible, accelerate slower and shift gears sooner. Don’t drive in third gear when you can be driving in forth gear, as long as you don’t stall the car. My car gives me about 20km/l when I keep the engine running as close to 2000rpm as possible, getting closer to 3000rpm, it’ll drop to 18km/l or lower, when I go pass 3000rpm, I’ll be getting somewhere around 15km/l, 4000rpm and above, below 11km/l. These values will obviously differ from car to car, experiment a bit and find the sweet spot where your car runs at its optimal fuel efficiency.
Is that air conditioner really necessary? Switch it off if you’re not using it and keep your windows up to reduce drag. At slow speeds, rather turn the windows down than switching the air conditioner on, air conditioners take away engine power which means you’ll need to drive in a lower gear which means the rev count is a lot higher. That roof rack, have you ever used it before? If not, take it off, it creates extra wind resistance. Same goes for trailers and bike racks.
Keep your tires well inflated, tires lose air over time (about one psi per month) and due to temperature changes (about one psi for every degree drop). Proper inflated tires have less rolling resistance, be sure to check them at least once a month and make sure you check them while they are cold (not after using the car to drive somewhere).
If you buy tires that are wider than your stock tires, you’re probably going to get a lot better handling from the car, but also, the rolling resistance will increase which means you burn more fuel. If you really need the extra handling (which I doubt you’ll need under normal circumstances), at least keep the stock tires for driving long distances.
When you choose new tires, choose a radial-ply patterned tire over a cross-ply patterned tire to reduce rolling resistance and make them last longer.
Service and clean out your car regularly to make sure everything is working properly and that you’re not carrying excess weight. Check your air filter, a dirty air filter reduces performance and fuel economy. Consider getting a K&N or similar permanent filter which is cleaned rather than changed and thrown away, they are much less restrictive to airflow than paper filters. Check that there are no holes in your exhaust, a hole will cause a drop in exhaust back pressure which can lead to several problems including a drop in high speed power, torque as well as a drop in fuel economy.
If you’re in the market for a new car, carefully take a look at what you REALLY need, buying a 4×4 to basically drive to work every morning is not the smartest choice when you can downsize a bit and save a lot of money on fuel consumption. Prioritize where you need to go and rather drive less but longer distances. Driving to the supermarket and the next day driving to the store just a little further on is not only a waste of fuel, but also a waste of time, rather go there once and do everything at once. (Read David Allan’s book “Getting Things Done” if you need help prioritizing your activities and life to achieve optimum levels of productivity)
Driving to the cafe around the corner is not only a waste of fuel, but also puts unnecessary wear and tear on your cold engine, walk or use a bicycle when it’s close enough to do so (A cold engine also uses a lot more petrol than when it’s warm). Also avoid prolonged idling, if it’s been idling for longer than a minute, rather switch of the car, same goes for warming up the engine on cold mornings, 20-40 seconds should be enough.
Check how much fuel you’ve used since the last fill up and calculate whether your fuel consumption has dropped or increased, if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. If possible, install a fuel consumption gauge, that should make it a lot easier to tweak the variables responsible for fuel economy.
Will post some more information about building your own HHO kit and using hydrogen injection to massively reduce fuel costs.
