Category Archives: Energy

Energy, Food, Security

“In the United States there are no Peugeot or Renault cars!”

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Here’s how a Peace Corp veteran tries to illustrate the presence and effects of French colonialism.

I shall never forget a Comorian friend’s reaction to his first trip to the United States. Arriving back in Moroni, rather than enthusiastically describing skyscrapers, fast food, and cable TV, his singular observation was that in the United States there are no Peugeot or Renault cars! This piece of technology, essential to Comorian life, had always been French, and this Comorian was shocked to learn that there were alternatives.

Why would anyone ever expect someone with access to daily delicious fresh fruit and fish to ever enthusiastically describe… fast food?

Yuck!

Skyscrapers?

Wat.

The French passed draconian laws and did worse to require colonies (especially former ones) to only buy French exports. I get it, yup I do. So Comorians lived under artificial monopoly, and only knew French brands. Kind of like how the typical American who visits France says “I need a coffee, where’s the Starbucks?” Or the American says “I need to talk with my family and friends, where’s the Facebook?”

Surely being forced by frogs into their dilapidated cars, however, still rates quite far above entering into a health disaster of American fast food. A Comorian losing access to the delicious, locally made slow high nutrition cuisine is nightmare stuff.

But seriously…

“This piece of technology, essential to Comorian life” is a straight up Peace Corp lie about cars.

Everyone (especially the bumbling French DGSE) knows a complicated expensive cage on four wheels is unessential to island life, inefficient, and only recently introduced. Quality of life improves inversely to the number of cars on a single lane mountain road.

Motorbikes? That’s another story entirely, as an actual “unexpected” power differential, which the Israelis, Afghans, Chinese and lately Ukranians very clearly know far too well (chasing British and Japanese lessons).

Go home Peace Corp guy, your boring big car ride to a lifeless big skyscraper box filled with tastless Big Mac is waiting. Comorians deserve better. American interventionists should try to improve conditions locally and appropriately, not just drive former colonies so far backwards they start missing French cars.

Energy, Food, Security

Used Coffee Grounds Mixed Into Concrete Significantly Increases Strength

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Grounds for celebration? Just in case you weren’t already using old coffee grounds as compost or pest management for your garden…

…the team experimented with pyrolyzing the materials at 350 and 500 degrees C, then substituting them in for sand in 5, 10, 15 and 20 percentages (by volume) for standard concrete mixtures.

The team found that at 350 degrees is perfect temperature, producing a “29.3 percent enhancement in the compressive strength of the composite concrete blended with coffee biochar,” per the team’s study, published in the September issue of Journal of Cleaner Production. “In addition to reducing emissions and making a stronger concrete, we’re reducing the impact of continuous mining of natural resources like sand,” Dr. Roychand said.

Suddenly cities full of espresso machines have an entirely new construction supply chain model. The scientists claim they were trying to solve for waste and not just hoping to justify drinking 10 cups of coffee per day.

…inspiration for our work was to find an innovative way of using the large amounts of coffee waste…

And so they conclude 100% of the 75,000 tonnes of waste that coffee drinkers produced in Australia can become a source for structural concrete. Worldwide there’s allegedly upwards of 6 million tonnes available. That means plenty of room still for innovations like powering public transit or making milk and mushrooms.

Energy, Security

School Fire Caused by Tesla Solar

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The buried lede in a story about Tesla defects in solar, which started a school fire, is the question of what is an acceptable rate.

…representatives told the Unit school board the U.S. Department of Energy estimates only one in 10,000 solar arrays have a malfunction of the nature seen at Olympia. Halo’s staff told the school board they couldn’t speak to that particular system, they said the technology has improved despite there being no recalls issued for the defective connectors.

Henkes just shakes his head when it comes to the one in 10,000 figure being used to say solar panel fires are rare. He calls it voodoo that one in 10,000 is a low risk and would like to find out who at the Department of Energy is spreading that around. One in 10,000 would be 0.01%. Henkes says that’s arson.

Henkes points out that if we go to six sigma, an industry standard used to reduce defects, reduce errors, minimize variation, increase quality and increase efficiency, “We are looking at the target rate for industry is 0.0000034 percent.”

That’s a truly huge difference. And a 0.01% rate would be like 10 schools on fire when you think about 100,000 or more units (number of school buildings in the US).

Illinois school fire due to Tesla defects. Source: WGLT
Energy, Security

Electric 1987 Nissan Sunny LEAF Vintage Pickup

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I just can’t get enough of Nissan EV news. When I heard from Toyota how they would leapfrog Nissan in solid-state battery production… I thought NO WAY was this the only angle. Nissan typically is way ahead on innovations so I poked around and found this nugget from them at SEMA 2022.

…the electric drive motor and 40-kWh lithium-ion battery pack from a Nissan LEAF. Rated at 147 horsepower and 236 lb-ft of torque, the LEAF motor has around twice the power and more than three times the torque of the gasoline four-cylinder engine originally equipped in the Sunny.

Tommy Pike Customs (TPC) dropped a LEAF powerplant into a vintage Nissan truck — boosted it with way more power, and way less pollution, than its four-cylinder gas burner — while still running a factory original 56A manual transmission.

OMG.

A manual EV compact pickup with 3X torque? A low cost zero-emission locally powered (solar) hauling machine?

Yes please.

The Nissan Sunny EV is a true ray of sunshine

Adding power meant upgrading the handling, of course. So they also dropped in a 240SX S13 front suspension — front coilovers, disc brakes and lower control arms.

Have to say it reminds me of the 1998 Electric Ford Ranger, as well as the old Chevy E10 Bolt pickup concept, but still this Nissan has its manual transmission and is drivable today.

In 2006 I worked with a Silicon Valley engineer who commuted from the mountains using solar power for their 1998 Ford Electric Ranger (60 mile range was plenty). They fought hard to keep it as their daily driver and won… one of the few 1990s EV on the road that weren’t erased from existence by the Bush Administration.
Chevy stuffed a Bolt EV inside their E10 pickup concept.

Every time an auto blogger suggests the reliable and smart LEAF is “tired” to them because it was the first EV to be mass produced, I see real hotrod potential. This LEAF conversion kit for old compact pickups might just be exactly what small town America needs right now.

Talk about turning over a new LEAF! In she goes for some Sunny days. Source: TPC

And on that note, Toyota seems to have… nothing (their hydrogen AE86 Collora being about as exciting as breathing amonia). Well done Nissan. Well done.