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Solar Powered Mobility Networks
Request: Leadership support for building solar powered mobility
networks at
Benefits:
- Self-reliance.
- Change our economic lifeblood from oil to ingenuity.
- Powered by abundant locally available source,
sunshine.
- Economic lifeboats. Each instances of
distributed power generation becomes an economic lifeboat, making
civilization more durable against uncertainty and terrorism.
- Mobility regardless of age, ability or wealth.
- Housing. Housing/transportation burden is major
factor in the mortgage crisis. Cut transport costs for
working families by 65%.
- Inflation. Remove inflationary pressures from
food and fuel.
- Trade Deficit. Local manufacture cuts import of
cars and oil while expanding export of JPods.
- Jobs. Local manufacture and infrastructure
build.
- Security. High value targets (trains, buses)
disperse into low grade targets.
- Foreign Policy. Remove accusation that
America’s is in it for oil.
- Climate Change & Kyoto. Comply by profiting
from preempting waste.
- Food. Oil-independent food distribution
network. Limit ethanol programs.
- Avoid Famine. Price spikes and fuel shortages can
collapse our long distance food distribution networks.
Action: Re-tool highly repetitive transportation
for on-demand mobility of people and cargo within a solar budget.
- Apply Deming, Six Sigma, Just-in-Time process practices to
energy/mobility.
- Drive out sources of variation
- Zero defects. Take care to make each
item/trip within high quality specifications. You cannot manage
quality in a batch, it must be by individual. Buses and trains
are batch processes. The best service is to move the person/cargo from
origin to destination on-demand, non-stop.
- Excellence is the process of relentlessly improving.
- Ingenuity. De-monopolize transportation and power
generation.
- Simplicity. Only simple things will be possible
once the looming crisis impacts.
- Scalable
- Darwin economics, try a lot of things, keep what
works.
- Lifeboats, "Feed In Tariffs", "many hands make light work"
- Germany's five year old Lifeboat program has
created 250,000 new jobs, $12 billion in exports in 2007 and they are
ahead of schedule to generate 12% of power needs from renewables by
2010. In 2006 they produced 202 Terrawatt hours, enough for 10 million
homes.
- California moving to follow German lead. Current
central planning resulted in 242 MW add in the last five years.
- Ontario has adopted a partial program
- Profit. Doing
must add strength. Target 10X improvement. Incentives
for performance will accelerate viable solutions. Subsidies are
not sustainable.
- Leverage what works
- On-demand, personal mobility is the answer
- Cars are the right answer. They have a 97% market
share (80% in Europe). Cars are just the wrong mass and random
behavior in the niche of repetitive travel. JPods provide the
convenience of cars using 4% of their energy, and thousands of times
more safe.
- Elevators, based on riders per day, are the most
successful form of public transportation.
- Build a network of Horizontal-Elevators™,
JPods/CargoPods/TrashPods/MedicalPods/etc...
- DOT’s solution to Oil Embargo is Personal
Rapid Transit and Automated Guideways
- Modern deployments
- Synergy
between transportation’s distributed need for power and
sunshine’s ability to deliver it across a network. JPods
require 200 watt-hours (5.4 hp engine) to travel a mile a 30 mph.
Solar collectors 6-foot wide, gather 2.5 million watt-hours in a
typical day (12,500 vehicle-miles).
- Power is used where it is gathered.
- Distributed power generation is durable.
- Power source is locally available.
Background:
- Economy
- Amplifying natural resources
- Held together by abilities to Trust, Transact and
Transport
- Confederation of up-side-down pyramids
- Individuals, communities, industries, nations
- Base, resources consumed
- Top, value added and risk acceptance
- Vulnerability, famine, inadequate Trust, Transact
or Transport, 20th Century's Top 10
- Economic Stability = Work * Churn * Vulnerability
Containment
- Opinion_Personal
- Vulnerability Containment is often called energy
efficiency.
- "Efficiency" is an elective nicety, not a mission
critical imperative
- An astute Senior Coast Guard official noted, "We
have no culture for efficiency."
- Fuels are allocated
- Missions are allocated
- No profit feed-back mechanism as in commerce
Vulnerability is increasing
- Even if we have oil, we cannot use it without
depression consequences
- People who made $billions being right about oil
supplies and price: Pickens,
Simmons
- Supplies are at risk
- Access to oil is destabilizing. GAO report on Peak Oil, 2007
- Current supplies 62.8% medium or worse risk of
delivery
- 84.9% medium or worse risk to investments
required to develop reserves into deliveries.
- Suppliers have problems
- Venezuela, 4th largest supplier openly hostile
“Not a drop to America” was a recent campaign speech by
Venezuela’s President.
- Mexico, 3rd largest supplier (12%) will no longer
export by 2012.
- Saudi Arabia, 2nd largest supplier, long supply
lines in a hostile region.
- Canada, largest supplier, environmental damage
from oil sands, Kyoto.
- EIA conference Dec 5, 2007
- BusinessWeek: “Some 37.5 million
barrels a day of additional oil-production capacity is needed by 2015,
but only 25 million barrels a day are planned, International Energy
Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol said.”
- “If supply turns out to be less than this
(25 mb/d), we are in serious trouble. If these projects do not
come on line, the wheels will fall off our energy system.”
Mr. Birol, Chief Economist, EIA.
- An economic Titanic needs economic
lifeboats
- Retooling transportation and energy is an
overwhelming task. Take the ant approach to eating an elephant, small
bites, lots of friends.
- End monopolies
- Oil risks increase risks to the electrical
grid.
- Oil is a finite resource.
- Transportation (personal and economic mobility) is less
than 1% efficient.
- Congestion costs a work-week per year (48 hours)
- Moving a ton to move a person?
- Parasitic Energy Consumption (PEC)
- Ratio of moving mass to cargo mass times
start-stops.
- “Beam me up Scotty” would be a
prefect 1. Move only what you want to move, non-stop origin to
destination.
- JPods PEC is about 4. 350 pound vehicle, 1
start-stop.
- Cars PEC is about 280, 2,000 pound vehicle,
20 start-stops
- Train PEC about 300, 6,000 pounds of train per
passenger, 10 start-stops.
- Congestion costs a work-week per worker per year
(48 hours)
- Efficiency/conservation have the greatest immediate
affect. In short distance, repetitive travel we are less
than 1% efficient.
- Re-tooling mobility will take 50 years, much longer
than cheap oil will be available to fuel the transition.
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