Although looking after the health of royalty may not be your thing when you read headlines, around here it’s something that’s always on the back burner, especially since some would argue, how America gets along with royalty is important. To be sure, there are some conspiracists (note I didn’t say theorists) who claim that royalty really runs America, despite our pretense of republican (not republicorp) democracy. And yeah, I’ll grant you that the bows (that ‘weren’t) of president Obama to the queen and a sheik do boost that case.
Instead, I’ll just watch peripheral events involving the royals. For instance, a Dutch fellow drove his car toward the bus of queen Beatrix of the Dutch royal sect on Thursday. In that attack, five died and a dozen people were injured. Not that the story will get much play in the American MSM (MainStreamMedia) which is controlled, arguably by its own set of royals, but I can help but notice that the claimed attacker died of his injuries overnight…and that has me thinking…
While reports are that the ‘motive for the attack was unclear, I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a skirmish in that Up/Down battle; part of that global revolution/rebellion meme I keep referring to – since it’s part of the linguistics about what’s ahead for the global politically.
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Watching the royals is a kind of sport, especially in the UK where people are not ‘citizens’ – they are ‘subjects of the crown’. A little more direct way of saying owned by the PowersThatBe; although when you think about it, the bankster class in America is closely akin, if not a rebrand or clone of the royals franchise.
As May Day gets underway were, we can read where prince Charles got an eyeful at what’s described as a ‘raunchy dance show in Berlin last night, and while that seems ‘cute’ enough and entertaining and all, underlying it all is a clear ongoing programmed ‘respect’ for the power of royalty. Everything from Brits standing on soap boxes so as not to be standing on the ‘queens lands’ when they make speeches critical of their government to the even more obvious.
Most people don’t think deeply, or at the symbological level, yet when I see stories with headlines like “Valve and Activision clash in royalties battle” I’m reminded that the concept of royalty is ever so deeply ingrained in our thinking as to be hard to root out.
I don’t know about you, but here in George Land, all souls weigh the same and I’d just as soon our president didn’t go around head-bobbing as much as he does. If there’s really to be ‘change’ out of this administration, it’d be nice, as I see it, if our president didn’t go around bowing down to folks who are at best only equals under our system of government. The alternative is what? That we’re really not all equal. But then, where’s the change in that?
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This being May Day, the short discussion of royalty seems in order, since any discussion of royalty has to include a short discourse in the nature of raw power. For example, May Day was really popularized by the former Soviet Union, which used to take May Day as occasion to roll out their latest – and most intimidating instruments of power. As the Rutland Herald (Vermont) notes, there will be honoring of National Guard troops deploying to Afghanistan today when folks go marching in the Loyal Day parade – an event which was invented as a sort of Western response to the Russian May Day hype.
And old habits die hard. In Cuba, there are plenty of May Day activities planned, although as the Florida Sun-Sentinel reports, “Few Cubans look to the revolutionary calendar for signs of change.”
No, I’m not an anarchist – more a small government, genuine equal rights and responsible capitalist would be a fair description – but I have noticed that most revolutions don’t stay revolutionary for very long. Once in power, most – and Cuba’s a dandy example – start up programs and undertake social actions that are less geared toward change and more geared toward ensuring the perpetuity of their own brand of new royals; it’s a pattern I see in many other countries, such as Venezuela.
I wish I didn’t have as much on my calendar. Outlook says I don’t have a moment’s free time for several weeks. If I did, you can bet I’d be rereading my tattered copy of “Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power
“Lord Acton’s affirmative version of Locke’s thesis is well known: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Acceptance of this idea need not include an acceptance of Locke’s pessimistic views on “the baseness of human nature.” Man acts from many motives, which under different circumstances operate with different strengths. Both sel-centeredness and community-centered; it depends on the cultural heritage and the over-all setting whether one or the other of them will prevail. A governmental – or proprietary – order leading to the emergence of absolute power encourages and enables the holders of this power to satisfy their own interests absolutely. It is for this reason that agrarian despotism, like industrial despotism, corrupts absolutely those who bask in the sun of total power.”
Unfortunately, Outlook says I have other plans. But I did make an important note: In the next lifetime, I think I’ll come back a little further up the pyramid of power. This life is nice and all, but as long as the guillotines aren’t being sharpened up by the masses, it’d be a fine day to do some basking; dangers of taking the family out shopping aside. Besides, even if I were to go shopping in such a hypothetical lifetime, I wouldn’t be going for jewels and fancy duds. I’ve learnt enough to include a stop at the local gun shop since it’s a fine line between May Day and mayday. And royalty must be precise in its thinking about such things.
So You Want to Go Solar, Huh?
Reader asks:
“Dear George, Been on your website daily for about nine months and most recently Peoplenomics, doing a great job. My question: is there a list of materials for constructing a 1.8kvw solar system similar to yours that you might share with the readers? Plans would be helpful too. I would like to go a step further by including power for a well pump and a 3/4 hp sump pump for the basement. How do you calculate the total kvw to get the power for your office and pumps? I realize this would be time consuming and maybe a whole column for you but any leads would be just fine too.
Thanks for some terrific reading,”
Two questions – both answered in Peoplenomics issue #362 of August 10, 2008 “Robust Home Power.” . Here are some pertinent extracts – starting with system design:
There are several ways to approach the load sheet because there are several ways to calculate electricity demand. A quickie refresher in electricity shows why.
Electricity may be measured either as the rate of “flow” of energy (Amps or Amperes) or it may be measured as the actual amount of ‘work done” in Watts. Volts is the measure of electrical “pressure”.
Although it’s not a perfect analogy, think about your load sheet as “how big a swimming pool full of electricity you would need” to meet your daily power requirements.
One way to figure it out would be to measure the water pressure (volts) and multiply that times the flow of water in gallons per minute (Amps are coulombs per second) in order to figure how much water (Watts) goes into the pool.
The formula: Volts times Amps equals Watts (V * A = W) is straightforward enough, but electrical engineers, ham radio operators, and people who practice the dark arts of electricity don’t use V for Volts or A for Amps, or W for Watts. That would be far too simple and would make a clear understanding of electricity within everyone’s grasp. Can’t have that, now, can we?
Remember on this week’s UrbanSurvival.com report how I admonished you when it comes to learning a new piece of software that the single best short-cut I’ve found is linking up the linguistics so you have a ‘translation table’ between Microsoft and everyone else?
The same thing holds in electricity. Symbols and language get all screwed around here, too.
Volts are represented by “E” instead of “V” on the flimsy excuse that “Oh, the is is used because we’re talking about Electromotive force!”. Right…. But if you’re looking at a part rating, a switch might be rated at 125 V or 250 V
Amperes are represented by “I” instead of A in electronics formulas, but when you write down a specification for an electric component like a circuit breaker, it’s traditional to use the abbreviation “A”/ You might order one 20A breaker for your home power system, for example.
Just remember PIE and you’re good to go: P=I*E
Power in Watts equals Amps (I) times Volts (E)
All of which gets around to explaining that using your Kill-A-Watt, you can either plug it in and let it do the watts figuring for you, or you can come up with Volts and Amps and multiply them out to get watts.
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Important Side note: A Volt times an Amp is always a Watt when dealing with DC circuits. However, when dealing with AC circuits, Volt-Amps (VA) is only the measure of ‘apparent’ power because actual power in Watts may be a bit less because of something called “Power Factor” in AC. In a pure AC sine wave, the voltage peak and the current peak ideally arrive at the same time and you have ‘pure’ AC power with a power factor of 1 (as in 100%).
What happens in situations where the power factor is less than 1 (100% pure) is that real power (work done) is discounted. If the current and voltage are out of phase slightly, the power factor may drop only a bit, to say .92 where the actual work being done may be 8% less than the apparent power would indicate. Because we’re dealing with a simple home energy system, and we’re not trying to figure out operating time of a hospital surgical suite, we’ll just keep life simple. But if someone bandies about the term ‘power factor’ you now know what that’s about.
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To begin my personal design process, I decided to take my office/shop to solar power first. Since there are caps on how much you can write off on a solar power system. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association web site, there is a 30% tax credit up to a cap of $2000 for solar installations. (This is not tax advice, just a source for you to keep an eye on.)
Obviously, if you want to get the maximum bang for your bucks, the thing to do would be build a system modularized in $6,666 increments. Provided of course, that a) the present war in Georgia doesn’t bring in Pakistan shortly and you don’t need the power sooner, and b) assuming that the federal credits are extended for another year or longer so you can add another $6,666 worth (or whatever is passed) in 2009.
In my own case, I decided to ‘bust the budget” a bit to get my core system off to a good start, but more on that as we go.
So let’s see what I came up with for a personal “bite-sized” subsystem to power – the UrbanSurvival/Peoplenomics Office & Shop:
Loads (simplified) Assumed Volts: 120 Load Amps Watts Cyle Time Hours/Day WH/Day Office Lights 1.1 132 1 3 396 Air Conditioning (fan Only) 1.2 144 1 6 864 Air Conditioning (compressor on) 8.2 984 1 6 5904 Computers 2 240 1 24 5760 Routers 0.9 108 1 24 2592 Comms (Sat and microwave) 1.2 144 1 24 3456 Total 18972 Convert to KWHrs (WHrs/1000) 18.972
To round this off, it’s 19 KWHr’s per day of consumption. If you want to estimate power costs of my office, you can take this number and multiply it by the cost per KWHr found on your utility statement. Our ranch power runs about $0.117 per KWHr, so we can estimate that my office sucks up about $2.22 worth of power per day, which doesn’t sound like much but over a year that’s $810.30 worth of power, and that’s if the power bills continue at what are really pretty cheap rates. The average power bill around the country is likely closed to 20¢ per KWHr and I think in time, even rural East Texas will catch up to those prices. When it does, we’ll be knocking on $1,400 a year for power – just for the office.
As to my personal shopping list (updated)
Ten Sharp 175 U panels. $874.99 each at Solar Home. (Source link )
(2) Xantrex C-40 charge controllers $127.50 each at Solar Home (Source link) (wanted redundancy on these)
OutBack GTFX2524 Grid-Tie Inverter $1,716.99 at Solar Home (Source Link)
(8) Interstate Battery U2200 6-Volt golf cart batteries (~$850) Interstate Battery, Lufkin Texas. (Source Link)
(14) Cables, #2, 12″ and (2) #0, 48″ (1 foot for the short ones, and 48″ for the long ones: Storm Copper Components ($87 – I can’t even buy the tools to crimp ‘em for that) ( Source Link.)
I tend to buy things like parking space for my amp-hours on a cost per amp-hour basis, and so by the same token, I also tend to buy solar panels by cost-per-watt of output. By the way, don’t know if the Sharp $175 panels are still available, but the Solar Home web site is showing (as of this morning) that Mitsubishi 170-watt panels can be had for $865.99 per panel, which works out to $5.09 per watt. That’s just a dad over the $4.999 per watt I paid for the Sharps last year. They sell Evergreen 195′s for $1,429.28, but that works out to $7.33 per watt.
BTW, if you go with panels, it’s not precisely cost per watt because you need to consider more panel support space, connectors, and wiring/screw around time involved with putting in more of smaller panels. For my money, the 170-200 watt class panels seem to be the best mix, but there are no absolutes in any of this. Yes, if anyone asked, UrbanSurvival and Peoplenomics really are solar powered…but ain’t no big thing.
Until the power goes out, in which case the system is sized to handle a full day of operation with zero sunlight including satellite up and downlink, wireless routers, PC’s and multiple monitors, plus a small A/C unit. (Pappy didn’t raise no fool…)
Key concept: Balance! If you have 2 KW of source, you need something more than 2 KW of controllers. And you can hang a 2 KW (or somewhat larger) inverter on that. And then you need to plan 3-4 KWHRs of battery for each operating hour you plan in the battery only mode.
Yes, it just so happens that I do know a bit about DC systems design (go look at the inventor names on this patent, just for an example, LOL, I do things besides study money & management)
Hope this helps? More in that back Peoplenomics issue…
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Peoplenomics
10XCSN Redux, Best Depression Businesses, and Pandemic Preps
Readers of the (free) www.urbansurvival.com site have been pondering the meaning of 10XCSN since I first mentioned it in early October 2008. In this week’s report subscribers get to see what that was all about plus a little more insight into the web bot project. From there, we move on to assessing economic impacts of a massive pandemic, and we’ll finish up this week’s report with a discussion of how to find a good business to be in during this Second Depression. Mask up, glove up, pick a bale of cotton – it’s time to rock & roll…
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“Live on $10,000″ Updated
What? You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”? Suit yourself. We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway. I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped. But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:
Yep – still possible. I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them. The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings… Click here for the page with more details on it.
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