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How I Gave Up Alternating Current

robrhinehart.com

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Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#61

Post by shawabawa3 »

ovulator wrote: post #43
condescendence wrote: post #34

As another user hinted at, this article is completely back-asswards. >I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than…

When I got to the washing part (I skipped over the Soylent part because I assumed it was just a paid advertisement), I expected him to talk about using a washing board or something. No, I just buy new clothes. So instead of using a little energy for a spin cycle, I have factories in China spew coal, then have shipping freights (some of the worst environmental offenders) bring it half way across the world for me so I…

> then presumably add it to the land fill.

He said he donates it, so presumably some charity ends up footing the bill for his laundry

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#63

Post by david-given »

justinph wrote: post #4

Interesting, but it seems like a lot of the lifestyle choices are just pushing the carbon/climate impact to someone else where the author doesn't have to think about it. Getting custom clothes made in china and shipped frequently is certainly far less environmentally friendly than simply re-using the clothes you already have. Taking an uber still burns gasoline. A bike would be better.

Hmm.

A washing machine consumes about 100Wh == 360kJ for a load (ref: http://www.rpc.com.au/information/faq/power-consumption/wash...).

The Emma Mearsk, one of the largest container ships around, uses 13 tonnes of fuel an hour to transport 18000 containers, over a distance of (say) 20000 kilometres, which is 1kg of fuel to transport one container 45km (according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...), or 450kg for the whole distance.

A 7.5kg washing machine load occupies about 0.00025 of a container, so the fuel requirement to transport that washing machine load is 0.1kg.

The ship's engines use 0.163kg of fuel to generate one kWh, so the energy consumption for just the transport of our washing machine load is 0.6kWh, or 2200kJ.

360kJ of USA residential electricity will cost about $0.015. (Pulled randomly from: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...)

0.16kg of heavy fuel oil in Singapore will cost $0.05. (From: http://shipandbunker.com/prices/apac/sea/sg-sin-singapore#IF...)

This is, of course, horribly simplified --- e.g. I'm not calculating the cost of washing water, or transport from the container port to the owner's house --- it does at least show that big ship shipping is really, really cheap. While I still think the original author is wrong, they are at least plausibly wrong.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#65

Post by qrendel »

condescendence wrote: post #34

As another user hinted at, this article is completely back-asswards. >I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than…

Not to mention those synthetic fabrics are a direct cause of microfiber pollution, so using them over something biodegradable, like ordinary cotton, is pretty much the opposite of environmentally friendly: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/27/...

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#66

Post by Jeema101 »

fezz wrote: post #47
justinph wrote: post #4

Interesting, but it seems like a lot of the lifestyle choices are just pushing the carbon/climate impact to someone else where the author doesn't have to think about it. Getting custom clothes made in china and shipped frequently is certainly far less environmentally friendly than simply re-using the clothes you already have. Taking an uber still burns gasoline. A bike would be better.

Agreed on the shifting the consumption down the line. However, the primary energy advantage of Uber-like car services is that it reduces the high cost of energy to produce a car by reducing the pool of cars through optimizing their use (meaning, instead of a majority of cars sitting around doing nothing, using a pool of cars working most of the time would mean fewer cars needed overall). If all cars end up being full…

I don't know that it's even clear that using Uber-like services reduces carbon footprint. I mean wouldn't a car wear out a lot faster if 20 people were using it as opposed to 1? Sure, some components in a car are mileage independent, but generally not the most critical ones like the engine and transmission...

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#67

Post by CameronBanga »

sp332 wrote: post #31
Glide wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where I stopped. I can appreciate people who can run low powered devices. But new clothes? Just run a washer and hang your clothes if you're in a dry climate. Then you wouldn't even need to buy new clothes because you don't have a machine that slowly turns clothes into lint.

If you're in a dry climate, it still seems like a bad idea to run a washer. Since he seems to be OK with high shipping costs, he could send his clothes somewhere that has more water to be washed.

YC Winter 2015 idea: LaaS. Laundry as a Service.

I'll be valued at 15 billion from our initial SF/LA orders in no time.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#68

Post by dragontamer »

david-given wrote: post #63
justinph wrote: post #4

Interesting, but it seems like a lot of the lifestyle choices are just pushing the carbon/climate impact to someone else where the author doesn't have to think about it. Getting custom clothes made in china and shipped frequently is certainly far less environmentally friendly than simply re-using the clothes you already have. Taking an uber still burns gasoline. A bike would be better.

Hmm. A washing machine consumes about 100Wh == 360kJ for a load (ref: http://www.rpc.com.au/information/faq/power-consumption/wash... ). The Emma Mearsk, one of the largest container ships around, uses 13 tonnes of fuel an hour to transport 18000 containers, over a distance of (say) 20000 kilometres, which is 1kg of fuel to transport one container 45km (according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_eff…

Shipping is always surprisingly cheap.

But manufacturing new clothes every time you need new clothes? In China, land of the "who cares about the EPA" coal-laden environmental almost-slave-labor disaster?

Built from synthetics (which are Petroleum-derived) ?

To add insult to injury, he talks about injuries / deaths from HEPPA-regulated American Power Plants without giving a damn about the suicide nets placed outside of Chinese Sweatshops that builds his clothes because he's too lazy to wash them.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#69

Post by HNaTTY »

mizzao wrote: post #9

Lead-acid batteries can't be used effectively for energy storage, especially not vanilla car batteries that are optimized for cranking amps but will only last a few cycles of charging and discharging. Generally, lead-acid batteries will sulfate at low levels of charge, which is a hard-to-reverse reaction.

Deep cycle lead-acid batteries are still the go-to battery for off-gridders. They're recyclable and fairly affordable for the amount of energy storage.

He's not using a high-CCA battery, you can see the model of the battery behind the window in the picture.

I hope this situation changes in 2016 because I'm tired of adding distilled water.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#70

Post by throwaway8954 »

ovulator wrote: post #43
condescendence wrote: post #34

As another user hinted at, this article is completely back-asswards. >I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than…

When I got to the washing part (I skipped over the Soylent part because I assumed it was just a paid advertisement), I expected him to talk about using a washing board or something. No, I just buy new clothes. So instead of using a little energy for a spin cycle, I have factories in China spew coal, then have shipping freights (some of the worst environmental offenders) bring it half way across the world for me so I…

If he lives in LA he should use good white linen clothes, wash them with a bit of water after every use and whiten / disinfect these with sunlight.

These would look much better than cheap synthetic staff, would not use (child?) slave labor (drones?) in China, would not use resources to make/maintain drones in China, no need to ship these, would not result in the laundry cycle in the charity, etc...

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