F. George McDuffee wrote:

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:33:32 -0500, "SteveF"
wrote:
snip
Or because they recognize that the American public is all for doing
something about the environment until they realize it is either going to
cost them money or be an inconvenience. My neighbor runs a local heating
oil company and we have had a number of discussions about biodiesel. He
told me that there is a large scale production plant opening in eastern
North Carolina but that even with the government subsidies, the biodiesel
is
quite a bit more expensive than regular heating oil. Tell someone that
the fuel they are using might cause their vehicle to be very hard to start
if the cold weather shows up before the "winter" blend arrives and they
will tell you were you can stick your renewable fuel.
snip
======================
Don't assume that the choice is between cheap fuel and expensive
fuel when the choice is between expensive fuel and no fuel.

That isn't the choice at the moment though.

Don't assume that bio-diesel and/or SVO *MUST* be used by the
consumer in their light duty vehicles. Again this can (and
should by the Praeto principal) be targeted (at least to start)
for the high volume users such as locomotives and inter-state
truckers (which from a strategic perspective are more important
anyhow), possibly with distribution limited to the milder climate
areas.

Consider the process and results of setting priorities and making
decisions in your life: You can't wait for perfect and complete
information because you would never make a decisions and one will
be made for you; There are always some drawbacks and downsides
because a "solution" that meets every requirement and desire is
not possible.

It is a gross waste to use #2, bio-diesel, or SVO as a direct
replacement in home heating. What needs to be considered is
co-generation in which a small diesel engine powers a generator
with the "waste" heat generated used for heat, and the power
either consumed on site or sold back to the electric company.

Now, how is that better than using it directly for heating? You get less
heat out of it and the efficiency of a small internal combustion engine is
quite a bit lower than a large baseload steam turbine power plant so you're
not getting efficient use of the fuel for either purpose. Now, if you use
it to drive an internal combustion engine that drives a heat pump, you
might be on to something--there almost all the energy of the fuel goes into
heat and some is extracted from the environment as well.

There are also the maintenance and noise issues. A diesel is simply not as
cheap to maintain as an oil furnace and you'd have to put quite a bit of
work into it to make it quiet enough that a bunch of them running in a
residental neighborhood would be socially acceptable. And then it's 2 AM
and the temperature is 30 below and half the bloody things in the country
won't start and now what?

Many states now require the electric companies to accept back
into the grid consumer generated power. The benefit of this is
that the colder the weather, the more the diesels are run and the
more power is generated and fed back into the grid when it is
needed.

Uh why is more electric power "needed" in cold weather unless electric heat
is commonplace?

"Doing nothing", and/or "more of the same only better" never were
options and we are rapidly running out of money to keep buying
foreign oil for energy and feed stocks. Every barrel of oil
*NOT* imported reduces the foreign trade deficit by 65$. Failure
to grasp this simple fact shows how out of touch with reality our
government and policy makers have become.

And so you propose that everyone use an inefficient generator to provide
heat instead of an efficient furnace.


--
--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)