Hi Entropy455,
As to the construction, have you given thought to building a portion of the horn under ground?
Regards,
As to the construction, have you given thought to building a portion of the horn under ground?
Regards,
Yes. My Wife really likes the idea. Burry the horn under Earth, except for the mouth, and the throat-chamber - which would be contained in a small out-building/shed. She actually wants a nice stone wall, and for me to build the horn mouth into the wall. I must say, that would look really nice. . . . The shed would house the electronics, drivers, crossovers, processor, etc. And I could also keep the mower in there too. . . I'd probably climate-control the shed (dehumidifier at the least).
I'd also apply a very liberal coating of tar to the concrete, before I backfilled (extra protection against water seeping in).
Obviously, the backfill will add very appreciable sound deadening to the structure. It also reduces the eyesore factor by 10-fold. . . . .
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"Honey, you need to water the stereo. The grass is starting to look a little brown."
"Honey, let's plant some flowers on the horn."
LOL!
"Honey, let's plant some flowers on the horn."
LOL!
Hi Entropy455,
Post #322: "...Burry the horn under Earth, except for the mouth, and the throat-chamber - which would be contained in a small out-building/shed..."
I would keep the throat/shed under ground too. With a little planing you get an emergency shelter for free. 🙂
I have an old in-ground pool that was just too difficult to maintain; one idea that has been dancing inside my head has been to convert it into a dedicated listening space w/ horn loudspeakers (including bass horn(s)), it already has a slope towards the deep end, and is 36ft long.
Regards,
Post #322: "...Burry the horn under Earth, except for the mouth, and the throat-chamber - which would be contained in a small out-building/shed..."
I would keep the throat/shed under ground too. With a little planing you get an emergency shelter for free. 🙂
I have an old in-ground pool that was just too difficult to maintain; one idea that has been dancing inside my head has been to convert it into a dedicated listening space w/ horn loudspeakers (including bass horn(s)), it already has a slope towards the deep end, and is 36ft long.
Regards,
Attachments
I agree 100%, however Kitsap County frowns upon underground manned structures. Spaces that are normally occupied year-round (i.e. homes) are specifically not authorized to be built underground in Kitsap County.
That being said - you "can" pull a permit for an underground wine cellar, a fallout bunker, an underground workspace, etc - but there's a lot of red-tape. The main issue is controlling toxic air. Hydrogen sulfide, refrigerants, hydrocarbon vapors, depleted O2, elevated CO2 - all these things can build up over time in an underground "confined space" and become lethal. Basically you need a small ventilation blower that's always exchanging outside air. Or you need a blower-circuit that turns on whenever the space is occupied (introducing a concern should the power go out. . . .) The toxic air control system must be formally evaluated and approved by County inspectors/engineers. It's a lot of red-tape.
The other downside with building an underground space, is that my horn project will draw a very appreciable level-of-attention at the permitting office - which is normally not a good thing. We'll see what happens. . . . I'll investigate the option when I go to pull my permits. . .
If I put a vent on top (gooseneck), and a vent down low (an air-grate on the access door) - both of adequate size - I "might" not need a blower system. . . .
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Oliver,
Right on both counts.
The OP 5 driver simulation looks to be around 116 dB one watt one meter, 120dB is one acoustic watt.
Good luck with the pool conversion!
Art
ok, you said Kitsap. Im in Chilliwack and you're insane. we need to stay in touch because im always looking for new, insane people to lose my mind with where audio is concerned.
I could help you frame this, my dad is a master Cabinetmaker so i understand wood.
I
I could help you frame this, my dad is a master Cabinetmaker so i understand wood.
I
Not sure what David McBean is modelling to get 58%. That would mean you could destroy the hearing of everybody in your house with a 5-watt amp.
But I (poorly) recall the real-world horn numbers are more like 5-10% which compares to box speakers at 1-2%. Either way, you are trying to move thin air using a relatively heavy piece of cardboard - although that makes more sense with a transformer (AKA horn).
A Rice-Kellogg cone driver is like a 1968 car engine getting 12 MPG.
Ben
But I (poorly) recall the real-world horn numbers are more like 5-10% which compares to box speakers at 1-2%. Either way, you are trying to move thin air using a relatively heavy piece of cardboard - although that makes more sense with a transformer (AKA horn).
A Rice-Kellogg cone driver is like a 1968 car engine getting 12 MPG.
Ben
Re Post #319
@ weltersys
I wasn't singling out the cone/s for protection. I've seen the metal work on drivers have rust on them & mould, due to them being stored & exposed to cold Damp air over time, even inside a building. And that was only what i could see externally on them !
Yes, multiple subs using beam steering techniques would indeed be a good unwanted sound solution. But he wants a horn 😉
@ weltersys
I wasn't singling out the cone/s for protection. I've seen the metal work on drivers have rust on them & mould, due to them being stored & exposed to cold Damp air over time, even inside a building. And that was only what i could see externally on them !
Yes, multiple subs using beam steering techniques would indeed be a good unwanted sound solution. But he wants a horn 😉
The most efficient thermodynamic device ever invented by man, is the convergent-divergent supersonic nozzle. It's a very simple concept - feed VERY hot combustion gas into the converging throat chamber (under a few hundred PSI of differential pressure) - then in the throat, the gas will transition to Mach, then down the divergent nozzle (aka horn) the gas will accelerate to well over 15 times the speed of sound - generating tremendous thrust-forces, with fantastic drops in temperature. The supersonic convergent-divergent nozzle converts heat-energy into kinetic-energy (thrust), with efficiencies nearing 100%, with virtually zero Entropy generation. No other energy-conversion device on Earth comes close to matching the efficiency of a rocket nozzle. . . .
I only mention this, because bass horns (in a way) are very similar to rocket nozzles - in that you are taking a localized intense energy source, and mechanically converting this energy to a large surface-area equivalency - and doing so with a pretty high degree of efficiency. Bass Horns are obviously sub-sonic devices - but there are some pretty staggering similarities nonetheless. Once I get my horns built, we can take the Pepsi Challenge - I'll feed the drivers with a precise electrical input power, and measure the resultant acoustic power output. Then we can compare actual, with the hornresp theoretical. My prediction? If hornresp is predicting 50% efficiency, I do not expect to measure 5 or 10 percent energy conversion, but rather somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. . . . We shall see. . . ..
Cast iron conducts heat three times slower than aluminum - this means cast iron engines will pass less heat into the coolant than modern aluminum engines - thus they'll put more combustion energy into turning the crankshaft, and less out the radiator. A large engine tuning at 2000 rpm is going to have more "time" to extract rotational work from the combustion event, than a smaller engine turning at 3200 rpm. You need to wind up small engines to make decent power, where large engines can turn slower with more thermodynamic efficiency (less irreversibilities, less Entropy generation) to make the same crankshaft power.
A very popular pickup-truck modification, is to replace a Ford 351 or Chevy 350 with a Cadillac 500 (an engine produced from 1970 to 1976), and install tall gears in the rear differential. The slower turning "high torque" Caddy 500 and tall gears move the truck with more authority, and instead of 10 to 12 mpg, you get 14 to 16 mpg. . .
The most efficient internal combustion engine in the world is a giant marine diesel, that exceeds 50% thermodynamic efficiency (converting heat into rotational work). It makes millions of foot pounds of torque at 90 rpm, and over half of the combustion heat is turned into rotational work!
I only mention this, because bass horns (in a way) are very similar to rocket nozzles - in that you are taking a localized intense energy source, and mechanically converting this energy to a large surface-area equivalency - and doing so with a pretty high degree of efficiency. Bass Horns are obviously sub-sonic devices - but there are some pretty staggering similarities nonetheless. Once I get my horns built, we can take the Pepsi Challenge - I'll feed the drivers with a precise electrical input power, and measure the resultant acoustic power output. Then we can compare actual, with the hornresp theoretical. My prediction? If hornresp is predicting 50% efficiency, I do not expect to measure 5 or 10 percent energy conversion, but rather somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. . . . We shall see. . . ..
Cast iron conducts heat three times slower than aluminum - this means cast iron engines will pass less heat into the coolant than modern aluminum engines - thus they'll put more combustion energy into turning the crankshaft, and less out the radiator. A large engine tuning at 2000 rpm is going to have more "time" to extract rotational work from the combustion event, than a smaller engine turning at 3200 rpm. You need to wind up small engines to make decent power, where large engines can turn slower with more thermodynamic efficiency (less irreversibilities, less Entropy generation) to make the same crankshaft power.
A very popular pickup-truck modification, is to replace a Ford 351 or Chevy 350 with a Cadillac 500 (an engine produced from 1970 to 1976), and install tall gears in the rear differential. The slower turning "high torque" Caddy 500 and tall gears move the truck with more authority, and instead of 10 to 12 mpg, you get 14 to 16 mpg. . .
The most efficient internal combustion engine in the world is a giant marine diesel, that exceeds 50% thermodynamic efficiency (converting heat into rotational work). It makes millions of foot pounds of torque at 90 rpm, and over half of the combustion heat is turned into rotational work!
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1) If I recall correctly, Hornresp does not take directionality into the efficiency predictions, assuming an omnidirectional pattern for low frequencies. Once directionality is taken into account, on axis sensitivity may appear to be more than 50% efficiency, and can approach or exceed 100% in appearance. Simply adding "barn doors" to double the frontal area of your horn would raise on axis response by 3 dB, getting close to the 120 dB of one acoustical watt-which radiates spherically.
Using your rocket nozzle analogy, the same rocket fuel if detonated without the apparatus in free space would dissipate the power in all directions, and would not be able to lift a rocket into space more than a few meters.
2) In the same way as the huge pistons are more efficient than small, same applies to low frequency drivers, an 18" is (about) 3 dB more efficient than a 12", due to doubling the cone area when using the same drive motor. Unlike internal combustion engines, electric motors routinely exceed 80% thermodynamic efficiency, and can approach 100% if enough money is spent on their manufacture. Unfortunately, to convert the loudspeaker driver's sound output to anything near 50% efficiency requires huge horns.
That said, even though power demands of multiple smaller horns are around an order of magnitude greater than that of the "full size" horn(s) you are contemplating, you could still easily power a system with more than enough SPL for an outdoor domestic venue such as yours with 500 watts of solar panels and several deep cycle batteries, were it not for the irregularity of the sun peeking through the Seattle cloud cover.
Basically, the full size horns you are contemplating are equivalent to replacing a Ford 351 or Chevy 350 with a giant marine diesel, with the exception that you don't have to worry about the tires blowing out from the weight, and would not have to avoid 13'6" clearance bridges ;^).
Of course, the project you are undertaking does exchange several orders of magnitude more work and expense for the desired sonic outcome, but it appears you like to work with concrete and steel, and this could be more fun than building a bridge or a house using similar effort and materials.
And think of the resale value 😀 !!
Art
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You are completely missing the point. If you stand next to a large outdoor bonfire, you'll get warm. The fire will not "push" you. You might feel some convection-driven air currents - but that's all. A large bonfire can produce well over one-million horsepower of heat, yet with all this raw power, you're not going to do much pushing at all. It doesn't matter if you burn your fuel fast, or slow - your main output is going to be heat.
Upstream of a rocket nozzle you've got low velocity (sub-sonic) gas flow, at temperatures hot enough to boil steel. Downstream of a rocket nozzle, you've got supersonic flow (many times over), with temperatures dipping down towards room temperature. This fantastic "drop" in temperature, is the direct result of converting thermal-energy into kinetic-energy (with a high-degree of efficiency), and absolutely cannot happen in the natural world, without the aid of a convergent-divergent nozzle.
The time-rate-of-change of momentum results in thrust-force. When you take mass (fuel) that's flowing 20 to 30 feet per second, and accelerate it to over Mach 10 - the resultant thrust-force can lift a 6.2 million pound Saturn rocket off the ground. .
A driver in a sealed box is like a bonfire. Whereas a driver in a horn is like a convergent-divergent nozzle.
We are building a new house on our lower property (hopefully this spring). The plan is to make the horns at the same time we're doing our house foundation (as the concrete trucks & pumper trucks will already be onsite - as well as a big pile of rebar). It's going to cost me less than 8 grand to build my horns. I know for a fact (by looking through the archives) that people have spent WAY more on this hobby, than 8 grand. . . .
Solar power is a snake-oil industry. It's good for powering calculators & garden lights - and that's about it. . . .
Upstream of a rocket nozzle you've got low velocity (sub-sonic) gas flow, at temperatures hot enough to boil steel. Downstream of a rocket nozzle, you've got supersonic flow (many times over), with temperatures dipping down towards room temperature. This fantastic "drop" in temperature, is the direct result of converting thermal-energy into kinetic-energy (with a high-degree of efficiency), and absolutely cannot happen in the natural world, without the aid of a convergent-divergent nozzle.
The time-rate-of-change of momentum results in thrust-force. When you take mass (fuel) that's flowing 20 to 30 feet per second, and accelerate it to over Mach 10 - the resultant thrust-force can lift a 6.2 million pound Saturn rocket off the ground. .
A driver in a sealed box is like a bonfire. Whereas a driver in a horn is like a convergent-divergent nozzle.
We are building a new house on our lower property (hopefully this spring). The plan is to make the horns at the same time we're doing our house foundation (as the concrete trucks & pumper trucks will already be onsite - as well as a big pile of rebar). It's going to cost me less than 8 grand to build my horns. I know for a fact (by looking through the archives) that people have spent WAY more on this hobby, than 8 grand. . . .
Solar power is a snake-oil industry. It's good for powering calculators & garden lights - and that's about it. . . .
Hi David,
Thanks for the graph in Post #328, I'll attach the efficiency graph for Entropy455's original horn design. Crazy 🙂
A quote from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Efficiency_vs._sensitivity :
"- Typical home loudspeakers have sensitivities of about 85 to 95 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 0.5–4%.
- Sound reinforcement and public address loudspeakers have sensitivities of perhaps 95 to 102 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 4–10%.
- Rock concert, stadium PA, marine hailing, etc. speakers generally have higher sensitivities of 103 to 110 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 10–20%."
Without going into the above numbers, full-size, all-horn systems can easily achieve higher efficiency than 20%, the problem being the size of the low frequency horn.
Modern professional speaker drivers combine high efficiency with high power handling and low distortion, what a bargain.
Regards,
Thanks for the graph in Post #328, I'll attach the efficiency graph for Entropy455's original horn design. Crazy 🙂
A quote from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Efficiency_vs._sensitivity :
"- Typical home loudspeakers have sensitivities of about 85 to 95 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 0.5–4%.
- Sound reinforcement and public address loudspeakers have sensitivities of perhaps 95 to 102 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 4–10%.
- Rock concert, stadium PA, marine hailing, etc. speakers generally have higher sensitivities of 103 to 110 dB for 1 W @ 1 m—an efficiency of 10–20%."
Without going into the above numbers, full-size, all-horn systems can easily achieve higher efficiency than 20%, the problem being the size of the low frequency horn.
Modern professional speaker drivers combine high efficiency with high power handling and low distortion, what a bargain.
Regards,
Attachments
You guys are killing me (thermodynamics and machine design are my two absolute favorite subjects). Here’s some food-for-thought – on the topic of electricity & efficiency.
Inside a nuclear reactor, one kilogram of uranium will produce about 1000 Mega-Watts of thermal energy, for 24 hours. Typical thermodynamic efficiency of commercial nuclear power plants is about 20 percent. This means that a 1000 Mega-Watt electric plant must be feed with 4000 Mega-Watts of thermal energy (or 4 kilograms of uranium, for every 24 hours of operation).
The average car needs about 70 horsepower. Much more is required when accelerating, and much less is required when cruising the backroads – but 70 horsepower is a reasonable first-approximation. For electric cars - due to irreversibility’s & inefficiencies within the driveline (chemical to electrical conversion losses, electrical to rotational conversion losses, and gear-train losses) – you’ll need to feed the car with about 100 horsepower – possibly much more if it’s the winter, and you’re running the heater. . . . 100 horsepower is equal to roughly 75,000 Watts. This means that 10,000 cars is equal to roughly 750 Mega-Watts of electrical loading – which is approaching the full-power output of an average full-size commercial nuclear power plant.
There are about 250 million registered cars in the US. Assume half are daily driven (a reasonable first-approximation). And of those daily driven cars, assume they are driven 40 minutes per day. If we were to magically convert all cars to electricity, the average electrical power requirement is 6.2 x 10^11 Watts. To achieve this electrical demand (using 750 Mega-Watt nuclear powered electric plants), we’d need to construct 347 of them. The reactors would consume 1041 Kg of uranium per day.
Here’s just a few problems with electric cars:
(1) Try to pull a permit to construct 347 new nuclear reactors. To even get 10% of automobiles off of gasoline, we’d need to build 35 new reactors.
(2) We cannot produce 1041 Kg of uranium per day – not even close. Even if we could build them, we can't fuel them. . . .
(3) Our electric grid cannot handle an increase of 6.2 x 10^11 Watts – let alone during peak charging hours (which would probably be when people come home from a day’s work). Even if we could produce the electricity, we can't route it to plug in the cars - we'd fry the substation transformers. . .
The solar flux hitting the Earth is about 1.35 kW per square meter. Some is reflected back into space, some is absorbed by our atmosphere, and the rest hits the ground. On a nice sunny day, the solar flux hitting the ground is about 1 kW per square meter. Typical thermodynamic efficiency of electrical solar panels is about 15%. Some new cells are better, not much. You can forget about 50% efficient solar cells – it simply can’t happen based on the quantized packet of energy needed to dislodge and push an electron (see QED).
This means on a nice sunny day, a one square meter solar panel will crank out 150 watts of electrical power. A true solar powered car (no batteries), would need a solar panel that’s two meters wide, and 250 meters long, to put 70 horsepower on the road. . . . While this is technically possible, it would make city driving (and parking in general) very difficult. The reason solar power is a snake oil industry, is the same reason you don’t burst into flames when you walk outside on a nice sunny day. . .
Inside a nuclear reactor, one kilogram of uranium will produce about 1000 Mega-Watts of thermal energy, for 24 hours. Typical thermodynamic efficiency of commercial nuclear power plants is about 20 percent. This means that a 1000 Mega-Watt electric plant must be feed with 4000 Mega-Watts of thermal energy (or 4 kilograms of uranium, for every 24 hours of operation).
The average car needs about 70 horsepower. Much more is required when accelerating, and much less is required when cruising the backroads – but 70 horsepower is a reasonable first-approximation. For electric cars - due to irreversibility’s & inefficiencies within the driveline (chemical to electrical conversion losses, electrical to rotational conversion losses, and gear-train losses) – you’ll need to feed the car with about 100 horsepower – possibly much more if it’s the winter, and you’re running the heater. . . . 100 horsepower is equal to roughly 75,000 Watts. This means that 10,000 cars is equal to roughly 750 Mega-Watts of electrical loading – which is approaching the full-power output of an average full-size commercial nuclear power plant.
There are about 250 million registered cars in the US. Assume half are daily driven (a reasonable first-approximation). And of those daily driven cars, assume they are driven 40 minutes per day. If we were to magically convert all cars to electricity, the average electrical power requirement is 6.2 x 10^11 Watts. To achieve this electrical demand (using 750 Mega-Watt nuclear powered electric plants), we’d need to construct 347 of them. The reactors would consume 1041 Kg of uranium per day.
Here’s just a few problems with electric cars:
(1) Try to pull a permit to construct 347 new nuclear reactors. To even get 10% of automobiles off of gasoline, we’d need to build 35 new reactors.
(2) We cannot produce 1041 Kg of uranium per day – not even close. Even if we could build them, we can't fuel them. . . .
(3) Our electric grid cannot handle an increase of 6.2 x 10^11 Watts – let alone during peak charging hours (which would probably be when people come home from a day’s work). Even if we could produce the electricity, we can't route it to plug in the cars - we'd fry the substation transformers. . .
The solar flux hitting the Earth is about 1.35 kW per square meter. Some is reflected back into space, some is absorbed by our atmosphere, and the rest hits the ground. On a nice sunny day, the solar flux hitting the ground is about 1 kW per square meter. Typical thermodynamic efficiency of electrical solar panels is about 15%. Some new cells are better, not much. You can forget about 50% efficient solar cells – it simply can’t happen based on the quantized packet of energy needed to dislodge and push an electron (see QED).
This means on a nice sunny day, a one square meter solar panel will crank out 150 watts of electrical power. A true solar powered car (no batteries), would need a solar panel that’s two meters wide, and 250 meters long, to put 70 horsepower on the road. . . . While this is technically possible, it would make city driving (and parking in general) very difficult. The reason solar power is a snake oil industry, is the same reason you don’t burst into flames when you walk outside on a nice sunny day. . .
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This stuff is so cool!
In a power plant, it is convergent-divergent supersonic nozzles that actually turn the electric generators (just like rocket engines - only with steam in lieu of oxy-fuel).
Hot steam enters the turbine’s nozzles (at sub-sonic velocity, and high temperature), and exists the nozzles at super-sonic velocities, with very appreciable reduction in temperature. The drastic conversion of thermal to kinetic energy (many times the speed of sound), allows the turbine blades to be "forced" into rotation, from the resultant time-rate-of-change in momentum impulse events on the blades. Without the nozzles, all you’d have is very hot turbines, and steam condensers working some serious overtime. . . .
Again, bass horns (in a way) are very similar to supersonic nozzles - in that you are taking a localized intense energy source, and mechanically converting this energy to a large surface-area equivalency - and doing so with a pretty high degree of efficiency.
In a power plant, it is convergent-divergent supersonic nozzles that actually turn the electric generators (just like rocket engines - only with steam in lieu of oxy-fuel).
Hot steam enters the turbine’s nozzles (at sub-sonic velocity, and high temperature), and exists the nozzles at super-sonic velocities, with very appreciable reduction in temperature. The drastic conversion of thermal to kinetic energy (many times the speed of sound), allows the turbine blades to be "forced" into rotation, from the resultant time-rate-of-change in momentum impulse events on the blades. Without the nozzles, all you’d have is very hot turbines, and steam condensers working some serious overtime. . . .
Again, bass horns (in a way) are very similar to supersonic nozzles - in that you are taking a localized intense energy source, and mechanically converting this energy to a large surface-area equivalency - and doing so with a pretty high degree of efficiency.
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I'm sorry to hate on solar (it was not intended to be a jab at you weltersys) - but rather my rant towards the solar industry - which has no future in my opinion.
If solar were a viable energy source, the manufacturers wouldn't need massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies, and would already be turning a huge profit on their own. Those subsidies should be spent on making coal cleaner, or making nuclear more safe. But I digress. . . . .
If solar were a viable energy source, the manufacturers wouldn't need massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies, and would already be turning a huge profit on their own. Those subsidies should be spent on making coal cleaner, or making nuclear more safe. But I digress. . . . .
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As long as this is no longer about horns and way OT into alternative energy I'll throw down a bit more. Living in Ontario I have a unique perspective of wind and solar. Our provincial government decided a few years ago to invest heavily in "green" energy, paying IIRC $0.80/kwh contracts to individuals or businesses to provide wind and solar, which is over 10x more that they get paid for the same kwh. This has made electric rates skyrocket to some of the most expensive in the world, people are going broke trying to pay utilities and not starve. (See Ontario FIT and MICROFIT programs for more info if you are interested.)
Our rural community is one of several that has had wind contracts forced upon us. These are not local companies either, they are international companies erecting dozens of wind turbines. Toronto wants the wind energy but they don't want it in Toronto, so here they are in counties to my right and left, with a proposed project coming to my county.
I'm not going to get into the greed and corruption fueling these bad choices, that would be far too political. But if you think about the tons of raw materials that go into a full size wind turbine, the energy required to forge it, the tons of concrete and rebar that go into the base, it's hard to imagine these things will ever be even energy neutral, let alone "green". Solar is the same, the materials that go into the panels are toxic and plenty. And the lifespan of a turbine or a solar panel isn't much more than 20 years.
The ironic twist is that now that things are so out of balance, wind and solar actually do make sense - for some people. In the next ten years (and hopefully in the next three) I hope to go off grid completely (for residential at least, not business). It is now economically feasible and even advantageous in the long term for me to go off grid. I could do this with wind or solar but I'm leaning towards a generator powered with gasification.
I'm already using an outside boiler for heat and hot water, the logical next step is to gasify the smoke and power a generator. 20 or so heavy duty deep cycle batteries is only a couple thousand dollars, a 4000 watt inverter is a couple thousand more. The system would pay itself off in a couple of years. Elon Musk is making home battery banks sexy and cool but they cost about 10x more than the already available deep cycle battery banks.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/powerwall
If I wasn't intellectually invested in gasification I would be looking towards solar. In the past 5 years the cost of an off grid solar system has already come down by about 25 percent, the savings are directly due to stupid governments like mine heavily investing in first adoption policies. With Musk and Tesla entering the ring this is going to get a whole lot more high profile, research is going to continue at ever increasing rates, better and cheaper products will be coming to market. Even at Tesla's hugely inflated price they sold out of batteries almost immediately. And the intended usage for the batteries doesn't even make sense - they are intended to draw power from the electric utility at low rate times of day and supply it at high rate times to reduce overall cost. They aren't even intended to be primarily used by systems that actually generate their own power.
This is going to be big business. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but as power prices increase and public demand increases it will soon make sense for most of the rural population to go off grid.
Now about your energy estimations - I think you might be a bit off. Not in the technical parts, but in the usage parts. We have three cars and two trucks in our two person residence, all registered, insured and ready to drive all year round (and that's not counting the machinery that's business related) and we drive a total average of about 15 minutes a day. That's not 15 minutes for each car for each of us, that's 15 minutes total driving between us. Most people I know are in a similar situation. This throws your numbers off by a huge margin if there are a significant percentage of people in this category. Then there's people like Jay Leno that probably have a thousand registered cars and doesn't drive any of them more than a few minutes a day.
Besides, I don't think solar was ever presented as the answer to all the problems, rather a step in the right direction, although the way it's going is a lot more like a stumble leading to a big black eye, but it's not going to stop.
Hey, if you want to change the topic to gasification powered generators I'm on board.
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When my horns are finished, I'll have you over for some beer and pizza - and we'll play some DaDa, or maybe the new Chili Peppers album. I like just about all types of music, except for opera, and western, and country-western. . . Basically all songs that sing about getting drunk and leaving your dog out in the field - - - I don't like those types of songs. Ok, maybe I'm somewhat biased as to which type of music I like. . . ..
And that invitation will extend to others willing to make the trip (Canada is a pretty far drive to my house. . . .)
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Energy is horn related, because energy powers horns. . . .
The biggest problem with wind power (from what I’ve observed in Washington State), is that the gear boxes are not achieving their design life-expectancy. The windmills are supposed to turn a profit after 15 or so years of service (assuming around 8 cents per kWhr retail sales). However if you are dumping high-dollar repair parts into the gearbox every 10 years, you never actually turn a profit. . . . Additionally, there are literally tons of nasty cancer causing chemicals/solvents that are used to make wind turbine blades. I don’t understand how that is considered “green”
Back in the 1950s, when the young nuclear industry was seeking government subsides to start up the first nuclear power plants, we the people were told that “if we build these reactors, electricity will be too cheap to meter”. . . . Yeah - - - about that. . . . .
In keeping this the thread alive (which I still have many unanswered questions) - my wife asked me this morning if we’d really have to sit back a full wavelength from the bass horn, to have it sound good. I’ve been told (by the only person I’ve met who’s actually heard full-size outdoor horns) that the answer is absolutely yes. Do you guys agree? Apparently the transition between wave loading, and wave prorogation, is a very pronounced phenomenon when listening to bass horns outside. I.E. the sweet-spot is after the lowest wave is fully developed and propagating.
The biggest problem with wind power (from what I’ve observed in Washington State), is that the gear boxes are not achieving their design life-expectancy. The windmills are supposed to turn a profit after 15 or so years of service (assuming around 8 cents per kWhr retail sales). However if you are dumping high-dollar repair parts into the gearbox every 10 years, you never actually turn a profit. . . . Additionally, there are literally tons of nasty cancer causing chemicals/solvents that are used to make wind turbine blades. I don’t understand how that is considered “green”
Back in the 1950s, when the young nuclear industry was seeking government subsides to start up the first nuclear power plants, we the people were told that “if we build these reactors, electricity will be too cheap to meter”. . . . Yeah - - - about that. . . . .
In keeping this the thread alive (which I still have many unanswered questions) - my wife asked me this morning if we’d really have to sit back a full wavelength from the bass horn, to have it sound good. I’ve been told (by the only person I’ve met who’s actually heard full-size outdoor horns) that the answer is absolutely yes. Do you guys agree? Apparently the transition between wave loading, and wave prorogation, is a very pronounced phenomenon when listening to bass horns outside. I.E. the sweet-spot is after the lowest wave is fully developed and propagating.
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