Darwantae951

I'd rather use solar panels on my home to reduce electrical costs. Then my money would actually be working for me by slowing my meter and dropping my electric bill.

Jfrahm

A friend here recently installed a photovoltaic array that sells excess power back to the grid. That good because you generally get all the power during the day while you are out, and use it at night when you are home. The law now says they have to buy the power back at the full rate they sell it to you for, they used to only buy it back at 1/3 to 1/2 price.

This big array looks like it'll pay for itself eventually (maybe 15 years?) and is warrantied for about as long as the cells are good for. However new technologies will allow the cost of the arrays to go down quite a bit, when they can pay for themselves in 5 years or so it'll be time to start putting them on every roof in sight. Plug-in electric cars for daily driving would then be cheap to run also.

-Joel.

Darwantae951

That's exactly what guys are doing here. When we deploy, they use their money to have solar panels installed, then just bank on the energy they put back into the system. 7 months of no use and all that solar energy must be nice...

944J

the one thing everyone is missing is that over TIME the battery holds some extra energy that is outside the loop of the gas->spark->combustion cycle that isn't being used up and that can be put into splitting the water... so it all depends on the amounts and the ratio of the drain on the batter to the time driving the car to the time to recharge the battery as to how this can help gas mileage...

so it may or may not help gas mileage, but its a fact that with a big enough battery and enough time it can make enough energy to launch a rocket to the moon.

edit:

also the alternator may always be producing energy that is not used up to push the car forward so this may be a way of harnessing that energy back into combustion... at most its a way of increasing efficiency.

yellowline

Forget to shut off your parking lights while you're at work, and you'll come back to a car with a dead battery. The battery holds energy, but it isn't that great a reserve.

Futher, over half of the stored energy in gasoline turns into heat after combustion. It also goes to overcoming friction everywhere, which is basically more heat. 25-30% of the stored energy in gas is useful.

944J

we all know this...

but unless you remove your alternator there is a significant amount of energy being wasted that goes into charging the battery (even when the battery is fully charged)... so these water bottles might be a way of making the car more efficient... maybe they don't work but it seems like everyone flunked high school physics if they can't see that the "system" that they quoted when they wanted to sound like a physics professor is more or less closed between the gas->spark->combustion loop.

my point is that people are too quick to be sheep and jump on the band wagon of negativity towards new scientific ideas, even simple ones, even when proven wrong.

Toran

Still may be worth a try as the parts can be bought at local stores all for under $25.00

Legoland951

Last time I checked, it takes more energy to produce hydrogen through electrolysis than hydrogen combustion produces. It makes more sense to hook up the battery vent to the intake to use the hydrogen gas emissions from the battery.

PV cells normally have 25 year warranty and thats industry wide. California has a rebate program that will amost pay for 1/2 of your photovotaic cells but still will cost you $20k to $40k upfront money before you can apply for the rebate. It will pay for itself back in 15 to 20 years but I believe they changed the regulation for power going back to the grid. The power company will only let you zero out our usage at the end of the year but will not pay you for excess back in the grid. They don't want the idea to catch on. There is so much BS going on where big power companies really don't want you to find the solution so they can make more $. I think $10 a gallon gas will take care of much of the technical problems like battery technology to use in a car.

Wade B

Lesson to be learned Jeremy....that 's why you're supposed to use SEAL oil.....(non-synthetic, of course.......and baby seals work better....).

944J

we all know the amount of energy required to split water, but the point is that this process may increase the efficiency of the overall system.

just babbling a bunch of stuff you thought you learned in high school is just a bunch of negative hot air, what's useful is a real test.

until there are real tests anyone saying no is just jumping the gun to sound cool and like they are an authority, which they aren't.

944J

in fact here is a japanese company that has a car that uses water and a similar process as the ONLY means of energy... the car runs as long as it has water in it... no need to ad in anything.

reuters news video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxfMz2eDME

Legoland951

I guess common sense to me is babbling a bunch of stuff I thought I learned in high school. That common sense would also tell me that I shouldn't assume what you thought you learned in high school since I don't know you but I guess you know more about me than I do. What makes no sense to me and many others who have taken thermodynamics in engineering school makes me doubt but I guess you can school me by telling me how the efficiency of the overall system is increased whether be mechanical, electrical, or thermodynamically.

Its like fusion. We know it can be done but so far input exceeds output. I figured if distilled water can make power without external inputs, we wouldn't need any energy companies or oil companies similar to someone making cold fusion possible. Nothing is impossible but until it makes sense to me, I am not going to blindly embrace it. If that distilled water car is for real, I think the world's energy crisis is solved once and for all.

halik

No,
many of us have engineering degrees and see the bull**** from miles away. Charging a full battery won't draw current since the potentials will be near equal between the battery and alternator. The only excess energy the system would use is the stored charge on the battery, since WATER IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY. So you can improve your milage by using the battery power, which means next time your car won't start.

If you're not introducing more energy into the system, you will not gain energy. Use common sense - people knew how to get hydrogen from water for the past 100 years... do you really think that the big 3 wouldn't put $25 dollar thing into the car if it actually improved gas milage?

Peckster

Anyone who starts a post with "Hello good people" is a scam artist from somwhere. Nice to see few Rennlisters are foolish enough to take him seriously.

whalebird

+1 Halik on higher education.
+1 Lego on the battery's production of hydrogen vs. water

Man am I glad to be back here. I have done some looking on other forums for non-Porsche related stuff, and I had rather go to the public library. Thanks everyone for making me laugh this afternoon. I always come back to Rennlist.