Christian Friedrich Schönbein

Methanol and ethanol fuel cells make MUCH more sense than hydrogen.

Ok, everybody is wondering about the land bridge. Well, one of the ideas is to surround it with polyethylene lawn ponds, except for the paths leading to and from it. If we ever get around to it, we could have koi in several hundred gallon ponds with pump powered waterfalls circulating the water in between the ponds. However, right now, we are just trying to get the one twenty five gallon pond up and running. Right now its only residents are rocks and algae.

Any ways, I was trying to figure something out. So, the average square meter solar panel will produce 1 Kilowatt hour of energy a day at this latitude. The average household energy consumption in Detroit is about 500 kilowatt hours a month. That comes out to a little under 17 kilowatt hours a day. So... 17 panels at a minimum, 20 or more panels to be sure.

A square meter of solar panel runs about 750 dollars. So 20 panels, assuming you had the roof or yard space, would run you 15,000 dollars. That's a kick in the nuts. Or for you, ESC, the cervix.

However, Michigan is a net metering state. What that basically means is, you can sell your extra power to the grid. So... If you got a 3000 peak watt inverter and one panel, you could be producing one seventeenth, or about six per cent, of your power carbon free for about 3,000 dollars in equipment. Six percent is nothing to sniff at. In another six months, you can have another panel installed by not spending about five bucks a day, or 150 dollars a month. Most people might be able to eschew something in their consumption budget to save five bucks a day, especially in a two income household.

Now, you are producing 12 percent of your power carbon free. By this time, you should be seeing some kind of savings in your utility bill. More than likely, you should only need to save about 3.75, 4 dollars a day to get the third panel installed. And so it goes.

You, as a homeowner, can cut your utility costs substantially, in as little as 18 months. If you have enough roof space to produce 36 percent, or six panels, you can recoup your investment in five years. The next 20 years of the panels will be pure profit.

With careful planning, you can make money, and be part of the solution.

Richard Crenna

Chud will get the reference.

Ok, so it appears my foray into photo blogging is a success. Most people seem to be interested in the land bridge, so I'll tell you what I did today in the form of graphic, uncensored digital images. Seriously, there's no rating whatsoever on these photos.



Ok, so this is the before image of the other side of the land bridge. Note the dead brush. Now, generally, I just remove old brush by yanking it out of the ground. However, since the roots of this brush is entwined in slowly disintegrating roof shingles, I decided it would be better to just clip the brushes off at ground level. Unfortunately...



... This was all I had for shears. It appears the garden shears have either been lost or misplaced. About a year ago, I was watching HGTV, and TiVo decided that it wanted to record "First Blood", so it changed the channel. The discordian nature of the transition from HGTV to Stallone murdering sheriff's deputies in the pacific northwest was... exquisite. I decided to put the movie on "mute" and create a new backstory for the characters. I think Richard Crenna ended up being a paramilitary florist and Stallone was guerrilla landscaper.

Anyways, I was thinking about what I could use to get rid of the brush, and I came up with this...



Yeah, there is no way I am uploading an unsheathed hunting knife onto my blog. Use your imagination. Any ways, it took about five minutes to get rid of the brush. I ended up with this...



And also, this...



So, anyways, this all leads me to my favorite part of brush removal. Oh yeah, baby... burnination.











Thank you, Rev, for the inspiration.