After all, it’s only your money;
NORTH Vancouver’s hydrogen-powered car wash, part of the province’s touted Hydrogen Highway, has not been powered by hydrogen since the beginning of April.
The Easywash eco-friendly car wash at Main Street and Mountain Highway has been running on electricity from the public grid for the past 3* months, ever since government funding for the demonstration project expired.
Now witness as this massive real world fail undergoes transformation into “conceptual” success….
About 70 per cent of the fuel cell’s costs were covered by a grant from provincial and federal governments.
The car wash project was only intended to show the concept could work, which it did, said Armstrong.
Your takeaway Green Energy Lesson for Today – “Never underestimate the power in bullshit”.
h/t Helene
First! Kate for pm!
Kate
The top link isn’t working but I get the gist of it. A combination car wash and laundry.
Syncro
As the old saying goes, bullshit baffles brains.
It must be a sign of some natural law…..
Most of these clever things, are decommisioned when the grant/subsidy ends.
Altamount Pass in California is a windmill graveyard…….
In September 2007, with the help of funding from the provincial and federal governments, a $1.2-million industrial fuel cell was installed on site
Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/technology/Fuel%20cell%20longer%20powers%20wash/3245595/story.html?id=3245595#ixzz0t7unR2As
The cost of installing the fuel cell was only $400,000 per year. Since now it is being dismantled…
“The car wash project was only intended to show the concept could work, ”
The only concept he proved is that greenie-weenie power only exists with massive subsidies from txpayers.
Just a wee bit further up the hill in North Van, at Grouse Mountain, they installed an all eco-grifter wind turbine. The install was finished months ago.
The blades have never turned, no green electricity has been produced.
Think of it as the Dr. Fruit Fly Effect.
If it didn’t make a(n unsubsidized) profit, it didn’t work.
Just got home today from a 6-day road trip through Alberta. A few days back, on the drive into Drumheller, we saw a sole wind turbine off to the side of the road…..turbines not turning at all.
I turned to my wife, saying “There stands a monument to stupidity.”
Let me try that link:
Fuel cell no longer powers car wash
Actually, Easywash is now just like most “green” businesses. Like Whole Foods and Choices Markets and lots more, they’re green because they say they’re green. Not that I necessarily mind — maybe if they all just pretended to be green everybody else could get on with life.
OT, but the North Shore News … every time I even glance at it there’s something twisted in there. Today’s sample:
Not guilty of assault on ‘intruder’
Link fixed now – sorry!
Newsflash:
Hydrogen is a storage medium, not a fuel source.
Shouldn’t that be “Eyewash” eco-friendly car wash?
I figured that this would happen and was wondering what happened to the Grouse Mountain wind power mill
“Never underestimate the power in bullshit”. Raised hogs for 17 years and it doesn’t matter, bullshit, horseshit or hogshit, AGWshit, they all smell the same and do not always come from those primary sources.
Never underestimate the power in bullshit
Hey, I learned that from Survivorman. He’s always keeping his fires going overnight by finding a dried piece of dung, and using that.
Hey, a new export for Alberta!
Never understood using a carwash in the first place.
For the price of a couple washes, you could get a couple buckets (always use TWO, one for soap, one for pad rinse), a couple good acyrlic wash pads, car shampoo and a good micro fibre drying towel.
You then get the satisfaction of doing a proper wash of your large investment and a much better chance of not trashing the finish.
Well of course is COULD work! I mean what can’t provided you throw enough tax dollars at it? The question is not whether or not you can make a hydrogen cell car wash work AT ALL, but whether or not you can do it efficiently and effectively, particularly in terms of cost. For crying out loud…..
I want a nuclear-powered car wash. One with big lasers to vaporize the bug guts off my windshield. What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah well with modern nuclear technology it is, allegedy, possible to turn lead into gold, in theory/hypothesis…the alchemists’ longstanding, eternal goal.
Only one problemo—the anticipated cost is 3-4X(if not worse) the actual price of gold.
Takeaway Green energy lesson number two: Never turn your back on the lying sons of beeatches.
A million and a half dollars for a frickin’ FUEL CELL?!!! I want to follow the money on that! Somebody just paid for their vacation home in the Bahamas with that little piece of business.
If you are a true blue econut greenie you wouldn’t be washing your car and wasting water you’d do what I do refuse to wash your Ford less the water causes it’s body to fall apart.
That’s it … the huys who end up with these contracts to supply the hardware are:
A – Always politically connected
B – Never on the hook for the costs
I know … I was in the environmental technology business for 10 years.
The second link from USS Clueless was very well written . Two parts caught my eye – the reality of petroleum refining and the scale of power production required in modern countries.
“Oil refining yields certain proportions of each product, and they all emerge simultaneously in ratios which can to some extent be adjusted but not to the extent that many think. Refining isn’t really a manufacturing process; it’s more like large scale fractional distillation, which takes what’s already in the oil and separates it. You’re always going to get at least some gasoline out, quite a lot in fact, if you need the other things coming out of the refinery,”
“You’ve got to start thinking really, really big.
Anything which, when fully deployed, generates less than ten gigawatts average (1010 joules per second) is useless for our purposes in terms of actually making a meaningful contribution to the total amount of energy we consume. For scale purposes:
Hoover Dam = 1.5 gigawatts.
Grand Coulee Dam = 6.5 gigawatts
Small coal or nuclear plant = 300 megawatts
Large coal or nuclear plant = 1 gigawatt”
So unless we reduce the need for all petroleum products (plastics, chemicals), gasoline will still be produced in similar amounts as today. If not used it will have to be what…stored, returned to Gaia?
The second point, scale, is even more important. Each new breakthrough reported as the key to sustainable energy production ignores its ability to be able to provide the amount of energy actually required, where it is needed and when it is needed. One would think that this would be a crucial point to consider before attempting to replace fossil fuels.
Thanks for blowing my money on crap, greentard airheads.
My suggestion: Start using environmentalists as a new sustainable energy source. Get a bunch of bicycles hooked up to generators to heat and pump the water and let them put their muscles to work.
If 10 cars get washed every hour over a 10 hour day, that would be 100 cars per day. If open 365 days, that’s 36,500 cars per year. Over 3 years, that’s about 109,500 cars using a $1.2 million fuel cell.
That’s $10.95 per car. Not including the actual cost of the hydrogen, water, building, taxes, labour, profit, etc…
Give them a choice. A regular car wash for $10.00 or a greenwash for $40 or $50…
I have a hydrogen car wash at home, it runs virtually free. My girlfriend uses hydrogen peroxide to dye her hair. When she’s done, I say, “Gee sweetie, you like a million bucks!” That makes her so happy, she goes out an washes the truck!
Motto for nationalized health care:
“The operation was a success but the patient died anyway.”
Apparently there are levels of failure which are entirely acceptable.
Obama’s plan for victory is remarkably similar to North Korea’s World Cup strategy.
BTW, hydrogen is a fuel. Just ask oxygen.
It has been suggested that Canada tilts, and all the nuts roll to the West Coast, and we’ve all heard of BC fruits and BC Ferries. The biggest nut is probably the Mayor of Vancouver, known as “Juice Boy” (he makes expensive and exotic juices) and he is determined to tear down all the roadways and turn them all into bicycle paths. He and his council are a sorry and strange bunch who live in a fantasy world of their own making. I could go on about Suzuki and GreenPeace and BC Bud and … well, you get he point.
USS Clueless might be a good writer, and so are some of those who write for the AGW movement and the Flat Earth Society. Good writing doesn’t necessarily make someone correct in their assumptions.
The feedstock for plastics and petrochemicals is almost completely natural gas not oil.
Have a look at the refining process:
http://www.chevron.ca/operations/refining/treatment.asp
As you can see it’s biased to produce more gasoline than would normally come from simple fractional distillation.
As to the subject at hand, it is probably the most ludicrous example of greenwashing I’ve seen, ever. Take renewable hydroelectric energy from BC, throw some of it away to make hydrogen, then throw more of it away to make electricity with a fuel cell, then use this inefficiently produced electricity to heat water for a car wash. A high efficiency boiler running on LPG or even fuel oil would waste less energy than this greewnwashed demonstration of stupid inefficiency. Of course using the renewable hydroelectricity to directly heat water in a simple electric hot water heater would be much much ‘greener’ than this ludicrous demonstration of how to waste tax money. Flat plate solar collectors on the roof of the car wash to produce hot water would be even ‘greener’ than hydroelectricity.
Of course the government doesn’t care about wasting tax dollars on greenwashing, they’ll get them back with the carbon tax.
The world is run by idiots.
John Galt
You were doing real good until the end of your second last paragraph……
Solar thermal doesn’t function much in BC for about 6 months…..latitude and angle of the sunlight ya know.
Photo-voltaic panels will never produce the energy during it’s expected lifetime, that was used to build it. The $$$ are likely never recovered.
Solar thermal seems to produce more energy that photo-voltaic but really sucks in a blizzard.
HYDRO, Nuclear and coal work reliably. Diesel and NG gas turbines lack the efficiency of the steam plants.
Currently except for heavy duty applications…..road and farmtractors/combines/earthmovers diesel cannot be amortized versus gas….cars and pickups anyhoo. The extra cost of the diesel cannot be justified with fuel savings.
I guess we will have to wait for somebody to come back from the future bring one of those small wiz-bang fusion reactor thingy’s….or aliens who don’t want us for lunch.
The concept is doomed to failure from just looking at the energy losses.
The hydrogen used in the fuel cell can only be made economically and efficiently from steam reformed natural gas. This process alone strips away and discards most of the initial energy. Then the hydrogen is consumed in a fuel cell which is at best 80% efficient. The end result is about 30% of the initial energy from the natural gas available to heat the water.
The alternative of burning the natural gas directly in a full condensing commercial water heater can give you 96% of your initial energy for heating the water.
The hydrogen route is dead in the water without all of the substantial cost of the reformer, fuel storage and transport, and fuel cell.
What a stupid political parlor trick.
If only you fools get past the math …
err … make that
If only you fools could get past the math …
BTW: If something costs $1.56 (taxes in) and the customer gives me a toonie, a nickel, and a penny – how much change do I give him?
It’s obvious that some people need to learn how to use Google and educate themselves on concepts like: Energy return on investment (EROI) for photovoltaic energy, rather than using an internet forum to personally insult others with their unfounded opinions.
Even in locations much further north than Vancouver, a combination of thermal solar and hydroelectric source water heating is ‘greener’ than fuel fired heating, and cost competitive with petro-fuel fired systems for applications like car washes and laundromats.
John Galt wrote: “The world is run by idiots.”
Reminds me of the guy who walks into a bar at 1:30 AM, has six drinks then yells out, “All of people in here, you’re all assholes.”
You made your point John! That’s important!
John Galt wrote: “The world is run by idiots.”
Reminds me of the guy who walks into a bar at 1:30 AM, has six drinks then yells out, “All of people in here, you’re all assholes.”
You made your point John! That’s important!
John Galt,
Then the taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize them … because, like, they will make a fortune without them … Am I right or what?
Can you answer my skill-taking question above?
Of course the taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize the installations. The one’s I’m familiar with were not taxpayer subsidized.
Addressing people personally on an open forum is rude and unnecessary. Try to be objective adults and discuss the topics.
You folks do realize that oil and gas is given 2 billion dollars annually in subsidies right? It’s not like oil and gas don’t require a junk load of government support to do what they do.
Nonetheless this hydrogen experiment is absolutely ridiculous and a prime example of the wheel spinning morons who end up in politics. Only when you have a budget funded by public taxes could you convince anyone that a flaky pilot project like this is anything but blind foolishness.
Ballard Power Systems is based in B.C. and it is the reason that the provincial and federal gov’ts are supporting these things and the Hydrogen Highway. It is still the world leader in hydrogen cell technology and probably the Canadian gov’ts want to maintain and increase this lead. Every major car company has a major investment in Ballard (for the car cell stuff) and it is still, I believe, a money sink but the potential is huge and it will happen because these scientists and engineers are good and stuff is becoming more cost effective everyday. In cars, the problem is storage of hydrogen in a small compact and cheap way, and these guys are coming up with some amazing ideas in materials and reactions to accomplish this. For larger applications, like this car wash, the problem is creating a market for hydrogen.
Also, I’m sure that Ballard receives much much more money from the US gov’t than Canadian gov’ts (directly and indirectly) because the potential is so huge and the progress being made is big. When President Bush made the big speech about having efficient hydrogen cell cars by 2020 and coughed up some big dough for development, Ballard, I’m sure, got hundreds of millions through their US subsidiary. Check their website out if you want their corporate spin.
Several years back, a friend had 1000 shares in Ballard, worth at the time $120,000. I advised him to sell and gave him numerous technical reasons why the hydrogen economy was not going to happen. He ignored me and held through the long collapse to sub $10. That 1000 shares are now worth $1700.
I would still advise to sell.
I don’t support conventional energy subsidies either, but at least oil and gas companies produce something that works.
“You folks do realize that oil and gas is given 2 billion dollars annually in subsidies right?”
Yes, I do. That two billion in government support is the difference between being able to run the company in Canada or giving up and shutting it because the regulations take all the money out of it.
Suncor just coughed up a couple billion bucks for DUCKS, how many times do you think they’re going to do that before their investors say “Screw this!” and invest someplace rational? So, Suncor gets “subsidies” in a nice, quiet intravenous drip to offset the grandstanding political noise machine.
Its called “crony capitalism”, one step below full-on fascism. You can’t make a buck unless you’re in the club, you can’t be in the club unless you’re already in the club.
Its the same reason no one has successfully started a car company in Canada since Studebaker went under. Ford can spin off a new car brand to be made in Canada. Mr. Tata cannot, no matter how much money he fronts or how many politicians he buys, because regulations ensure his car company can’t turn a profit.
Tax cut now please.
The hydrogen car wash was part of the new hydrogen hi-way that was part of the PR spin around the upgraded highway 99 to whistler, this old spin has now been supplanted by;this years, CULTURAL JOURNEY where all Canadian place names have been replaced by unpronoucable made up native ones,Even Google maps have over printed place names with salish flavoured gibberish.Every ten miles or so is an authentic traditional propaganda kiosk built at huge cost, to resemble native hats.
just driving home gives me the warm and fuzzies.
“I don’t support conventional energy subsidies either, but at least oil and gas companies produce something that works.”
Then why do they need subsidies if they work so well?
And you either support something or you don’t…the middle ground is a dangerous place to be.
“That two billion in government support is the difference between being able to run the company in Canada or giving up and shutting it because the regulations take all the money out of it.”
I highly doubt that. I’d say it has more to do with the tar sands being sold wholesale to foreign companies on our tax dollar.
“Suncor just coughed up a couple billion bucks for DUCKS, how many times do you think they’re going to do that before their investors say “Screw this!” and invest someplace rational?”
You can’t just ignore the externalities of the oil sands while pointing out every single one associated with alternative energy sources. At $76 dollars a barrel nobody is going anywhere. The world is hungry for oil period.
“Its the same reason no one has successfully started a car company in Canada since Studebaker went under. Ford can spin off a new car brand to be made in Canada. Mr. Tata cannot, no matter how much money he fronts or how many politicians he buys, because regulations ensure his car company can’t turn a profit.”
Is it really regulations? Or is it the LACK of regulations combined with a very small market? Does the Auto Pact not play a significant role?
Mr Tata is getting huge funding right now from the Canadian government, I’m not sure what you were insinuating.
You know with all this green talk. No one ever brings up the fact that light air travel. Particularly for cargo is slow but you can’t beat the hauling by fuel too lets say trains , airplanes.
They could be almost full proof these days, without inflammable gas.
JMO