psychosmurf67

I am sitting on around $281,000 at 8% for all 3 wealths. If I crank it up to 9% for all 3, I hit $317,000.

I don't see why everyone claims that these are so rare and out of season, I lived in southeast TN for most of my life (just recently moved) and these kinds of storms are almost a yearly event. Maybe not quite as severe, but certainly not uncommon.

I've never understood why people call them "high tension" when they are actually called "high voltage" lines (since they carry 100-500kV). Back to the topic, you must have pylons for high voltage lines as they require huge clearances to prevent arc-over. A 500kV line can potentially arc 5-10 feet, given a good ground and since typical distribution lines have only a 10-15ft right-of-way, the chances of damage to the lines or arc-over are very high. Considering a single 500kV line can serve 100,000+ customers, I think its probably best to protect them. The EMF from those lines is negligible considering the fact that EMF is an inverse square law (look it up), since most lines are at a minimum of 30 feet above the ground. Frankly, I'm sick of anyone complaining when they are perfectly content to sit in their air conditioned home on their PC and whine about electricity generation/transmission/distribution. Don't like it? Be part of the solution, turn your main breaker off and sit in the dark like we did 150 years ago.

Originally posted by: hym NCD, Every form of energy production has drawbacks; some are the kind that everyone in the public can see and others are only known by those with the technical knowledge, and those in the public willing to listen. The primary flaw with all forms of energy "production" is that the plant isn't producing energy, but rather changing one form of energy to another. "Renewable energy" is not exempt from this flaw either, meaning that we're taking energy from somewhere else to produce electricity. (I mention that obvious fact because some people choose to delude themselves into thinking that when we tear down all the "bad power plants" and replace them with "good, renewable ones," we'll all be able to run around naked and roll around with lions in the green grass, free from all the diseases that afflict us, the human malevolence that plagues society, and so on.) Getting back on topic, in the case of the geothermal plants, we're using a type of refrigeration process to pull heat from the earth, boil water for steam, and spin electrical generators for power. To offer another example of some problems that various types of "renewable energy" face, take solar power. Presently, the thinking is that a "distributed power generation model" is the way to go, meaning that, economically speaking, if we're ever going to get the idea off the ground, we need to get the homeowners and such to buy the equipment and mount it on their houses or something similar. For a hypothetical scenario, suppose St. Louis achieved the goal of getting everyone to put photovoltaic cells on their homes. Now, suppose a hail storm came through and tore everything up (which has happened to St. Louis before). Your average Joe is probably ticked that he lost a boatload of money and is hoping insurance will come through on the payments. Your average electrical engineer is in a panic because the electrical grid has been torn up, but the sun is still generating power on a damaged photovoltaic cell network (many photovoltaic cell systems will still generate some power on an overcast day, and even if they are significantly damaged). Suddenly, every home becomes a major electrocution hazard, not just to the public, but to the employees working on fixing things, since it's largely impossible for them to tell what cell system might be functioning and feeding the network they're working on. Put differently: 500,000 homes=500,000 potential deathtraps.quote> The distributed grid stuff is still not feasible, everyone neglects that facts that households are only part of the energy consumption, less than half actually. There are roughly 127 million households in the U.S. and the average a use of 2kW. So the houses in the U.S. consume about 254,000MW. Considering the average coal plant is around 500MW, that means housing consumes the power output of 500 coal plants. Considering there are around 1400 coal fired units in the US, and coal is about half the production, that means housing eats about 17% of the US energy production. So even if you did manage to have every single house provide its own energy (which is not possible), you still would have minimal impact. On a note about coal plants, nowadays they are pretty dang clean. The majority of flue gas is composed of CO2 and H20. The dirtiest plants are the pulverized units without any backend environmental equipment attached, which are under mandate from the EPA to have equipment installed. Also, several new boilers are going up which are a new variety. Instead of the standard pulverized unit, they are investing in CFB (circulating fluidized bed) boilers which burn much cleaner. If you want a lesson in the differences, let me know. I know I don't have any references or whatever, but I take my information from first-hand experience, so

Date: 9/10/2004 1:27:16 AM Author: budweiserdude23 Psychosmurf, earlier you PM'd me with the best reflective texture I have ever seen. Please get in contact with me again. That simply was the coolest texture I've ever seen. Please help me out with this. Heck, you seem to have a supreme talent for texture. Mind boggling what you can do, let's chat soon. I have some great ideas. Thanks. Bwd23quote> Just PM me or get with me in chat sometime and we'll talk about what you want and I'll see what I can do (not much probably).