Thursday 10 December 2015

"The Bicycle: Freedom Machine"

The BBC praise turning people into animals. See: "The Bicycle: Freedom Machine". Prior to industrial revolution 50%, or so, of our energy use was muscle power, but at least a lot of that was animal. Hence the term horsepower. The BBC promote turning people into animals just to generate a tiny bit of electricity. BBC (Bridget Kendall):

"Could you just go and peddle for 20 minutes please I just need to put on the kettle"
At the margin, at least Bridget does her research. Bicycle power generates 80 watts maximum (i.e. in 1 hour). Pedalling for 20 minutes a day, 30 days a month, gives (30 × 26.7 =) 800 watt-hours, or 0.8 kWh. My kettle uses 2kW, taking about 110 seconds to boil 2 cups of water, using about 61 watts. 23 minutes for a near athlete peddling flat out gets you your cup of tea (plus one for the cyclist). He'll need it after that!

Meanwhile, ThorCon announce a nuclear power plant that can make non-GWG electricity at about 2.5 pence per unit (wholesale), with the expressed aim of powering half the planet's electricity needs PDQ. So world media black-it-out as it's not there. ThorCon claim they can make electricity at about £25/MWe [2.5p/unit] - less than one third the cost of Hinkley C, or the cheapest wind power. They intend to start delivering such electricity in Indonesia within 5 years:
ThorCon press release | ThorCon executive summary (page 79 for their cost estimate).

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