After A Few Years, Smart Proves It Isn’t. Few Fortwo Drivers Would Buy Again.

http://autos.aol.com/article/smart-fortwo-buy-again/

With fuel economy on everyone’s mind in 2008, the pint-sized Smart Fortwo brought its eccentric styling and European flair to the United States looking to tackle a new market. The Fortwo was designed for crowded urban driving and its ability to squeeze into parking spaces and maneuver through dense traffic was unchallenged. Sure, it may have seemed out of place on American roads, but the Fortwo had qualities that many drivers found valuable. Gray-market importers had managed to sell enough Smarts earlier in the decade that it forced DaimlerChrysler’s hand to officially import the vehicle into the U.S., and it looked as though Smart had a promising life ahead of it in America.

Just two years later, however, Smart’s outlook is gloomy. According to some staggering data compiled by CNW Research, drivers of the Fortwo are dissatisfied with their cars. In fact, CNW says that a mere 8.1 percent of New York City owners -- essentially the Smart’s target market -- claim that they would purchase a Fortwo again.

To put that statistic in perspective, the next lowest vehicle charted by CNW is the Chrysler Sebring -- at 37 percent. And the current-generation Sebring is arguably the biggest automotive disaster since the PontiacAztek. Given that brand loyalty is one of the most important and cost-effective ways to generate sales, the future of Smart in the U.S. looks uncertain at best (more a link)

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Ontario’s Power Trip: Power without the people.

Key quote: "OSEA’s political clout scored another victory last Friday when the Ontario government reversed itself on a plan — announced July 2 — to cut the massive subsidy price paid for small-scale solar electricity to 58¢ for each kilowatt hour from 80¢. The cut, to be imposed on 16,000 solar project applicants, would have saved $1-billion. But now, under lobbying from OSEA, Ontario Energy Minister Brad Duguid has reversed himself. The new price would be 64¢ but the old price of 80¢ would be paid on all projects for which applications had been received as of Aug. 13.

Read more: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/08/17/ontarios-power-trip-power-without-the-people/#ixzz0wx3KVu2D

Redrant: My Minneapolis, MN Xcel energy retail residential electric cost is around ten cents per kilowatt hour. (Old) nuke costs around two cents per KWH to produce, coal is around four cents per KWH. Peaker natural gas might be eight to ten cents per KWH and "big wind" might be ten to fifteen cents per KWH without subsidies. Compare that eighty cents to sixty-four cents paid for wholesale solar!

At Nellis Air Force Base, in the Nevada desert, (which has more sun) one-hundred million dollars was spent on a solar panel system. They claim that it will save one million dollars per year on electric costs. That 1% and solar panel have at best a 25 year working life and need cleaning and maintenance. http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Gores_Dream.jpg Greg Lang

Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP

I ran across this fascinating story of the chemicals used in dispersants flowing into the gulf of Mexico before the spill.

"Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP". http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/mississippi_river_pours_as_muc.html

I remember in the 1970's there was a big push to get phosphates out of detergents. Like an area of water with a lot of natural oil seeps nature probably adapts organisms to handle these dispersant type chemicals. This may be why the oil "disappeared" so soon after the BP well was capped. Also, interesting is how no one considered this factor until now.

The "saver switch" is not as bad as it sound.

http://milliondollarway.blogspot.com/2010/07/cost-of-going-green.html#comment-form

The "saver switch" is not as bad as it sound. In residential uses it hooks up only to the central AC where the compressors can be turned off for up to fifteen minutes at a time. It is debatable how much electricity this saves since the AC compressor will make up for lost time once it starts again. People told me that it gets a bit muggy inside when the saver switch is working.

3M uses a lot but the big users here are the iron range taconite processing (lower grade iron ore processed to high iron content pellets) and a very large scrap steel "mini-mill" on the Mississippi near St. Paul. All can be shut down during heat waves making the Minnesota grid quite robust but it can be stretched only so far. Taconite for new domestic steel is way down and the scrap mini mill demand is way down. They make rebar and basic structural steel, I beams and such but the domestic demand for these is way down. Increasingly, local scrap steel is shredded, cubed and sent via barge to the Gulf of Mexico and then other countries. Mini-mills make money by converting scrap steel into rebars and common structural steel. Good products but they are new construction related. Mini-mills use electric arc furnaces which use a lot of electricity.

The point of this is that as the region grows, even in a downturn electricity demand will increase and we are now eating up the slack capacity. In the Twin Cities we have some of what I would can "we played hard to get and weren't being got economic (construction) activity. Primo construction locations held back by final "sprouting" but this is only the primo stuff. Figure electricity has a 500 mile "leash" before you get excessive line losses.

BTW: The so-called "server farms" are not big electrical users but electrical demand is highest during peak electrical demand. I used to work in the high end mainframe field and the "big irons" were water cooled! Server stacks were air cooled and didn't get that got. Basically a "server stack" can be up to fifty high end laptop "guts" sharing a single display and mouse. There are banks of what are basically desktop big hard drives and "jukeboxes" full of double sided "blu-ray" type data disks with more mundane "paperwork".

The point is that the established data centers are using less energy. If you build a modern data center from scratch that will suck up a lot of juice but that is a minor cost. Minnesota has not had the blackouts/brownouts they have had on the West Coast.

BTW: Google use the 3M model to develop Google. I have been leading a so far lame effort to have Google establish a facility on the Twin Cities 3M corporate campus.

Cross posted at my http://fourfiftygas.com (why retype?

Minnesota air pollution? It's not as bad as you think

http://www.twincities.com/ci_15644449?nclick_check=1

You might believe air pollution is on the rise. You would be wrong. 40 years after the Clean Air Act, the U.S. and Minnesota have drastically cut emissions. So why doesn't anyone know about it?

Inhale. Exhale.

That lungful of clean air was brought to you by the reformed polluters of Minnesota.

They have slashed pollution by more than 50 percent since 1970. Smokestack industries have cut emissions by almost two-thirds. The biggest polluters — drivers — have cut pollution by 77 percent.

Put another way, air pollution per capita in America has dropped almost two-thirds.