Alternative Energy Blues

I'm slowing down on buying the house. In the past I haven't listened to my committee.  I wound up with my second wife.  Dad doesn't want to buy the house.  Curtis wants me to wait.  The landlord is amenable. Mom is okay with the purchase.  Since one party has a definite bias, I take the majority to be against a purchase at the moment. I read that people who have been through a major emotional event,  like a death or a divorce should wait for a full year before making a major financial decision. After my first wife, Judith Miller, passed away I waited a full year before buying a car. I walked away from home with the clothes on my back Thursday, July 24, 2015.  I'm still going through the divorce.  So I have 210 days to go.   My concern can be moved towards taking care of my parents, physical and emotional recovery,  work,  and political projects.   

A bit of a tailwind, here.  Dad says he doesn't want me to buy the house that we're living in.  It has too many problems.  My problem is that it's the probably the only place we can afford that's this convenient to work and everywhere else. A house inspection will cost around $450.00. Abacus Plumbing said putting a camera and cable down our line will cost $150 but first they would need to jet out the line because there's so much grease they can't see.  The jetting will cost $750. We save a little money and time by not having to move.  I have mental plans for that lot and the lot behind our house.  If we can get this property, tear it down, and build a new house, that would be great.  I'd really like to buy the house on the corner next to us, and tear it down too.  The plan, and I hope I'm not repeating myself to you: Buy the house we're in.  Clean, repair, renovate, until we can get more outside funding. Buy the house next door. ...

Well. This afternoon I went to a fundraiser hosted by some Greens for the group out of the Flames of Ferguson.  I saw some friends I hadn't seen for a long time.  The food was wonderful. I realize how much I miss seeing people, talking with people and getting things accomplished that help people. I hope I can meet new friends and be a good friend. Living with my parents has allowed me to better take care of them.  My income and organizing their finances has helped us all live better. I'm grateful to be healthy enough to work. I'm grateful to be outside of jail.

I'm lying low and helping my parents dig out from a few decades of bad spending habits. As always I'm grateful that they are with me.  I pray for their good health and mine, so I can help them and my family. I talked briefly with a friend who's helping to clean out my garage at the house where my soon-to-be ex-wife lives.  I told him that I had no problem with him helping her out in any way.  Hurting her doesn't help me one bit.  I thanked him for doing that organizing and cleaning that I never had the emotional wherewithal to do.  Unfortunately, the monthly rent on a storage area that he found begins in January.  I don't want a bill for stuff that doesn't do some good.  I'll be soliciting ideas on dealing with letters from WWII to recently. My focus on the New House The first thing is to review mom and dad's finances.  They got the usual middle finger when it came to getting a loan for a home.  I look at my finances and I realize that...

It's 53 degrees F at 8:07 PM at my favorite Starbucks. I'm attempting to write full speed for one hour and then pack up and go home. My central focus is on finance and getting a paid for, easily maintained home for my parents and I. I want it to be a positive example for others as a conservation, energy and sustainability location. I want to be able to give it to relatives or friends when I'm no longer able to live there. I want it to be in excellent condition when they receive it and I want the people who receive it to be able to afford to maintain it and enjoy it. I want to have a long, healthy and prosperous life. I want to enjoy life in this house or any new house or houses with my parents, friends, relatives and any other allies. I want the house(s) to help as many people as possible as active, living houses and or energy providers for other people, and acting as positive examples for others. I want to clean up my parents' finances and my own. I want to...

So.  Put solar panels on every inch of the roof of a highly insulated, high energy efficiency house.  Install cistern to catch rainfall runoff for gardening and maintaining a xeriscaped landscape.  Carefully use recycled materials and new materials so there's a minimum of waste as a result of the construction.  Have the house planned and inspected under the scrutiny of three different independent environmental and energy non-profits for certification. Sounds like one of my pipe dreams?  Nope.  It's been done here in Houston.  Its the first triple LEEDS house in Houston, the Drummond House. According to the Code Green House website the efficiencies can be scalable down to 2000 Square feet. Just my size.  

No electricity for eleven days.  I had no work but, luckily I was still getting paid. But that didn't help the fact that there were no groceries.  I went around the city to free food places.  A few of them had MRE's, meals ready to eat from the military.  Managed to get ice too.  The water continued to work as did the old style phones.  I don't think I had a cell phone at the time.  We had electricity powered house phones which quickly stopped working.   Luckily I had a couple of old phones that didn't need batteries or our electricity to function. We had no air conditioning but that was okay because our house was so old it had been designed to allow air to flow through open doors and windows.  We have screen doors and windows fore and aft to keep out the bugs. With much less work and not as much to do at night for most people, the traffic was very quiet.  I actually enjoyed it. No AC was okay until, within about three nights t...

So.  A week to two weeks ago I stopped thinking about wood gas as a home electricity/gas solution. I can only speak about my situation and where I'm coming from.  I live in a gigantic city.  I'm not a tinkerer.  I've never considered myself good with my hands.  I can work very hard for a short period of time, then I get sick for a  long time.   I can see myself loading a generator on a daily basis, and doing quite well at it.  But all the day in day out care that's required to maintain the machinery and supplies  could lead to either the machine's breakdown or mine, very quickly. There's some direct funding possible for  a new, high efficiency,  ecologically sound house for my parents and I to live in.  There's some more indirect funding for some kind of generators that can create a surplus of power that can be used for some non-profit purpose. I'm not interested in building a fortress. I actually want to be tied into...

Yellow Rose Distillery said no.  I called back a moment later and asked about the spent distillers grain.  She said the spent grain was taken away by farmers.  She didn't know if they bought it or if was just given away.  I wanted to emphasize that I was willing to pay the entire cost of organic certification, and the cost of a batch, the event planner was not only not interested she was downright rude about not being interested.  Okay. Still, I've taken a step towards knowing who I'm not dealing with.  Let's find other sources of fuel or users for electricity.

Well,  my divorce is in progress.   I see that I'm in it thick. The distillery that might be interested in producing a certified organic whiskey was reluctantly surprised when they couldn't simply fluff me off. I initially offered to pay the price of getting certified and the extra cost of certified organic ingredients.  Certification with the Texas Department of Agriculture costs a minimum of  $2,350.00. What's the cost of certified organic ingredients?  How large is a batch run at the distillery? I know that they can run a maximum of 500 gallons in the still at once.  They don't like to do that large a batch at once so the prefer to do a maximum of 400 gallons.  However, they can step down how much whiskey or vodka they make to almost any lower amount they would like. That doesn't give me a price.  The lady with the distillery apologized but they couldn't run a batch because it would take away from current production there's also labe...

Proton Power finally called me back.  The raw numbers are $4 Million for most of a system that can deal with the fuels  primarily interested in.  Plus another  $1 to $1.5 Million for the drying system. They would generate 250 kw consuming 5 dry tons of fuel a day. They say they need to keep the moisture in the fuel down to a maximum of 45%.  They prefer bone dry fuel, especially for comparing the energy and waste yield of various fuels. I asked if we could get just the gasifiers and not the engines or other components. He said no.  They want to make sure they deliver a reliable, comprehensive, working system. They have at least two levels of removing tar from the syngas before it gets to the engine/generators.  After the fuel variety concern that was my second biggest worry. I talked to a gentleman who had worked in Indonesia.  He said that country was littered with non-working gasifiers.  I suspect that tar build up probably fouled up ...

The short and simple reasons to gasify stuff are first, to eliminate or reduce pollution and second or lastly to create energy. Some useful products can be created from pyrolysis or gasification.  Some byproducts of these processes can be disposed of with greater safety and using less landfill than with leaving the biomass or biosolids in standard treatment mode. The two different processes of dealing with biomass and biosolids are pyrolysis and gasification.  Pyrolysis is at a lower temperature range and results in tars, biochar and syngas.  Gasification is at a higher temperature range.  This latter process results in more syngas because the biochar and tar are consumed  (or cracked ) by the higher temperatures.    Both processes produce ash.  In pyrolysis the ash is mixed with biochar.  In gasification the biochar is mostly consumed.   Well, what if we really raised the temperature as high as humanly possible?  Appare...

So far, so good. A magazine led me to a possible manufacturer of gasifiers.  Can their gasifiers actually use biomass pellets for fuel?   It's looking good but I'm hoping to talk with someone with the company tomorrow. I recently learned the difference between pyrolysis and gasification.   Pyrolysis is at a lower temperature range and produces more tar and charcoal.  Gasification occurs at a higher temperature range and results in more complete consumption of tars and charcoal. Gasification results in more syngas, heat,  and ash than pyrolysis. It appears that each level of heating results in different types of products and byproducts. Adding or subtracting simple things like air, oxygen, water, steam and other things create even more variations in those products and byproducts. I'll go for whichever method will result in the least pollution of the air, water, and land. For the machines that I want to use to create electricity or transportation fuels I...

My little credit village was already poor and miserable when that marauding motor cycle banker gang, The Laughing Hyenas, invaded.  They pillaged and burned until there was nothing left.  Nothing except for a single board that  they put up themselves.  On it they spray painted a warning to strike fear and dread in the hearts of all.  In day glow orange were three words:  Low FICA Scores. So the guy who reviewed our house electricity usage said that half of our power, a 14 kw solar panel system, would cost just $46,000.  With a 30% tax credit the panels would pay for themselves in a little over ten years. Then he asked the stumper question:  How ya' gonna pay for it? Short and simple to y'all is that we don't have the money.  My entire family's finances were shot and left for dead a long time ago. I refuse to waste any one's time.  Getting the cost of the solar panels is part of doing the larger energy project.  The money will...

As a newly single(ish) man with cash in hand, someone else cooking and cleaning, with a full tank of gas in a late model fast, sleek car; what am I doing?  I'm studying wood gas! In a former life I had a home of my own and a paying roommate who was also a best friend.  I was always reading about alternative energy, so he nicknamed me Captain Wood Gas. Then I got a second roommate who also paid but he wasn't around at all because he was staying with his girlfriend.  Finally, I got a fourth roommate who put lots of her money into repairing the house and eventually married me. Then she ran off the best friend, the other, non-present roommate disappeared entirely and no longer paid rent, the the wife ran out of money.  My savings began looking small and puny so I replaced them with large and robust debt. And now I'm over here helping my parents.  It's been several years.  I'm back where I started, studying biomass to energy, biosolids to energy, and yes...

In the movie Chinatown (1974 staring Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson) the ex-cop, Jake Gites is told by a former cop buddy "Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown."  Part of the meaning of the statement is that bad stuff is always happening in this particular neighborhood.  Other meaning mean you can't stop the wheels of injustice from grinding us all down.  The bad guys are all too big, rich, powerful, dangerous and corrupting to stop. An additional interpretation is that the big boys can come have their fun in our neighborhood, engaging in all sorts of illegal, immoral, unethical activities and the law looks the other way.  Boys will be boys.  Look at how criminal the people treat each other in in that neighborhood.  Why care about a few more criminal acts? Well, we all know Chinatown is fiction, right?  The movie is a deliberate lie.  But like Pablo Picasso said, "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." I live in Southwest Houston, ...

Back home with mom and dad.  Am I taking care of them or are they taking care of me?  I'm getting the bills paid, I'm getting the house cleaned, the lawn maintained, and mom and dad physically taken care of.  They have cash in their pockets and full tanks of gas. Still, they buy dinner for me and awaken me to go to work in the morning.  The dinner is a generous gift which I have difficulty saying no to.  The latter is a necessity that helps me keep my job.  I'd be healthier not eating a bunch late in the evening and I'd rather be vegan instead of eating the fried fish and chicken mom and dad buy for all three of us.  I wish I felt energetic in the mornings as opposed to the evenings, then I wouldn't need my parents or spouse to wake me up. Back to alternative energy: New/One Trip 20' Shipping Containers can carry approximately 24 tons New/One Trip 20' Shipping Containers can cost $2,480 to $2850 What works in US government sponsored testing of...

No response from th guy with the Department of Energy, yet.  Tuesday, October 13, 2015 could be the lucky day.  Monday is Columbus Day, so most US Federal employees will be off work.  This gives me an opportunity to put down some of my compiled research and get errands done. Lots of small time computr scams come from foreign countries outside of the United States.  (Big time computer scams come from inside the United States.  Gawd bless America!)    A computer scam I tripped accross from Nigeria for Nigerians outlined how to strike it rich exporting charcoal by the ton.  The writers of the article had verifiable, up to date information:  Charcoal costs approximately $273/ton once it's delivered to the US.  Given lots of additional costs, it would be more like $300 on arrival according to the non-profit Charcoal Project based in Brooklyn New York, USA.  The latter group has the right ideas in relation to charcoal.  It can make...

I've started a search for alternative engy which causes less polution and can be shared more fairly amongst people.  The game is up in regards to frack gas.  The bubble has burst on that one.   The rubes have all been fleeced.   The savvy investors who imagined they they could get out of the market with a bunch of cash, before the music stopped in the game of stocks and bonds musical chairs, have for the most part left the game with a little less money than they came in with.  The new bubble is frack oil. So, criminal finance is covering up the continuing crash in conventional oil production.  What can we do for ourselves?  How can we help each other? I see the short term solutions in the forms of solar power, wind power, geothermal, and turning biomass and biosolids into power. I don't like to talk abot the thing that actually works more effectively, efficiently, and fairly than any of the above:  Plain , old conservation.  Weatherize, ...