Energy Use in America and The World - Today and into The Future
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Presented here are some of the current energy saving ideas. I will let you be the judge but remember there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy. In fact the truth is that energy works the other way and only offers a very costly lunch. Somebody will be paying somewhere every time. Some of these ideas do a good job of shifting and hiding where the lunch is being paid for but remember lunch is paid for everytime!
There is also a "I do not want to fail" syndrome that will tend to favor some of these ideas. Once a person has gone to the trouble and expense to install a fuel saving gadget in their auto or home they may drive or use energy in the house just different enough to see a small increase in fuel efficiency. Also when talking with their buddies they may tend to gloss over the problems and highlight the benefits to avoid the dreaded failure mode.
Run your car on Water!
Take a look on the web and you will find hundreds of sites which want to show/sell you a way to run your car on water. After all water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen and we all know burning free hydrogen in our car as fuel must be a great deal.
Most of these systems are based on using electricity to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, then injecting the hydrogen into your engine to assist in the fuel burning process and make more power.
Lets give these ideas a break and assume for a moment that injecting hydrogen into your engine will produce a little more power. Given the modern computer controlled fuel air mixtures used in today's engines and the different burn rates of hydrogen vs. gasoline or diesel fuel I would be surprised if any additional power is produced.
The problem with these type systems is where do they think the energy to make the hydrogen comes from?
The cars electrical system is used to make the hydrogen. Your battery is charged by the alternator. The alternator is spun by your engine. Your engine burns the fuel in your tank. Using electricity to separate water to make hydrogen uses a LOT of energy. At every step of this process energy is LOST. Lets say 1000 watts was used to make some hydrogen by the time this hydrogen is (maybe) converted to power in the engine I would be surprised if you would get even 10 watts back.
If you recall from the stored energy page that 7 gallons of gasoline contains 1,000,000 btu while you need about 3000 cubic feet of hydrogen to equal one million btu. So do you really think a small add on electrical gadget can supply any useful amount of hydrogen??
Free Energy!
No More Energy Bills! No More Pollution! Receive free power at your home, forever, or for as long as electricity can be sold! Would it surprise you to learn that making electricity without fuel is the easy part? There are many ways being advertised to make free or very low cost energy. Motor generators, fuel cells, magnets and hydrogen are a few that are leading the ads at the moment (mid 2008).
Some common key words to be concerned with when reading the supplied information are: God, Big Oil, Government, just days away and just a small investment. You can laugh at this one but I bet you long term it will be true - Beware of scruffy looking people in brand new lab coats.
Since many of these inventions involve electricity I will offer these cautions and tests. Accurate measurment of electrical power can be very difficult even for professionals to do. Twisting measurments to give desired results to a casual observer is very easy. If indeed you are presented with a device that makes free energy ask them to do the following.
1. Set up the equipment such that hidden wires or power supplies would be difficult to concel, as in set up on a stand so all sides - top and bottom are visible.
2. Connect the output to 10 - 100 watt light bulbs and power them for 24 hours.
Any device that can pass this test I would be very interested in observing.
Be aware that some of the larger motor type devices actualy contain hidden batteries. Use of the 10 - 100 watt light bulbs for 24 hours is usually enough of a power drain to scare off any scammer trying to fool you with hidden power supplies.
Yes it would surprise me to learn that making electricity without fuel is the easy part!
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