reikiman's blog

The End of Suburbia is a documentary concerning itself with predicting the effects of the coming peak of oil production. It consists of interviews with leading peak oil educators including Richard Heinberg, Colin Campbell, Michael Rupert, and James Howard Kunstler. The movie paints a very dark story, and calls on America to relocalize into walkable urban centers rather than continue the folly of suburban sprawl. Additionally it calls for relocalization of our economy, a reversal of globalization, ending the "3000 mile ceasar salad", and other practices which result from abundant cheap energy supplies.

The core of the story is Peak oil, which is the theoretical construct studied by some scientists which predicts production from oil fields as they age. What's been observed over decades of oil production is that once the easy oil is pumped out of a field it is harder and harder and harder to extract the oil. The United States went past its peak of oil production in 1971 and its thought that the world went past its peak of oil production a year or three ago.

Economics 101 "supply and demand" theory says that a commodity with rising demand and decreasing supply will see an increasing price. Right? The history of oil usage is an ever increasing rate of use. That is, except for a short period in the late 70's to early 80's, immediately after the oil crises of the 1970's (and the Carter Administration years). The last few years have seen a wide range of fuel prices leaving us with gasoline cost far higher than recent history. The higher price hasn't been adequately explained to us. It's my belief that the root cause is production peak issues as predicted by the peak oil theory.

This is the sort of problem that The End of Surburbia asks the viewer to ponder. The movie doesn't dwell on questioning whether the peak oil theory is right or wrong. Clearly the people behind this movie assume that it is a correct theory, and their job is to put viewers through a thinking process about the folly of suburbia, the vast amounts of energy wasted to fund the suburban lifestyle, the vast amounts of energy wasted in globalization, and to ponder how we might survive through the coming crisis spawned by less energy availability.

The issue with suburbia itself is the low population density and the unwalkable nature of modern suburbs. Low population density means mass transit is an uneconomic unprofitable business which cannot survive (in most cases). Part of the reason for this is a concerted effort by General Motors, Firestone and Standard Oil to destroy mass transit (street car) systems all over the country replacing them with cars on rubber tires fueled by gasoline.

A byproduct of unwalkable cities is that we as a people have gotten out of the habit of casual exercise. We can't walk to the store, we can't walk to work, etc, instead we drive everywhere. Lack of casual exercise is a likely culprit in obesity.

The "3000 mile ceasar salad" is a way of describing a key flaw in globalization. Globalization is about shipping goods all over the world to serve a global search for the lowest price. The "3000 mile ceasar salad" is when globalization means the ingredients for your ceasar salad at lunch are shipped from 3000 (or more) miles away. An example of globalization is availability of fresh fruit in grocery stores all year long even when the fruit is out of season. This is enabled by cheap shipping costs in turn enabled by cheap abundant energy (fossil oil) supplies. If fuel costs continue rising it will make global-wide shipping expensive, making it unprofitable to ship ceasar salad ingredients across the world.

These are the things discussed in The End of Suburbia. It is an excellent movie, very informative, and for some it was a life-changing experience to watch.

Reposted from: http://www.7gen.com/blog/david-herron/review-end-suburbia

Bike-to-Work day is this week. In the past I barely recognized it because I bike to work so often it wasn't out of the ordinary for me. However there's a big deal made about it seemingly. At least here in Silicon Valley there is active promotion of the idea.

How to Live with Insufferable Cyclist Syndrome seems to be assuming a bike-to-work person might sway over to over-hyping or over-evangalising the idea of biking to work. Y'know, scraping their keys along the sides of the hummers in the parking lot, or blocking the hallways when they bring their bicycle inside etc.

Interesting thoughts.. As he said perhaps the best evangalism of bicycling to work (electric or otherwise) is to simply do it and demonstrate with actions rather than words.

Here's a few electric bicycling centered thoughts ...

Why oh why is it that bicycling advocates ignore electric bicycles? It's like the thought is only non-power-assist bicyclists are pure enough to be called bicyclists. In truth for me anyway the goal is transportation with a smaller power / energy / ecosystem impact, and any kind of bicycle is a huge improvement over driving a car to accomplish the same solo commute to work. Seems to me they should acknowledge that both non-power-assist and power-assist bicyclists are chasing the same rainbow, that we can get to work w/o driving a behemoth that stinks up the atmosphere.

An electric bicycle is more practical for commuting to work as it decreases the concern over being stinky when you get there.

Because an electric bicycle is more practical perhaps it's not required to wear the lycra and all that stuff. BUT, wear your helmet and who cares if it makes you look like a dork. The helmet can save your life, even the skimpy bicycle helmets.

Pay attention to the commute time required for the e-bicycle commute. In my experience my (former) commute took 10-15 mins by car, 20 mins by motorcycle, and 30-45 mins by e-bicycle. Your boss won't appreciate that you're saving the planet if you show up to work late or work less hours because of your longer commute. But you can balance the longer commute by knowing you're getting exercise and becoming healthier.

Pay attention to safety, as it's no good to be using a more wholesome commute process and get creamed by an SUV because you weren't practicing safe cycling. That finger points at me too, because I got knocked over by an SUV while e-bicycling to work one day. Fortunately the SUV was going low speed and I was able to immediately get up and start yelling at them. In any case there are bicycle safety training programs, motorcycle safety programs, and they can teach you about good bicycling safety etiquette.

It's such a shame that most businesses and stores have so few bicycle parking slots. That's part of the overbearing normalthink (prevailing consensus opinion) that the only valid way of transportation is using a car. It impedes the success of using a bicycle for transportation.

It seems most people think of a bicycle as a toy for recreation, and e.g. they'll strap the bicycle to an SUV and drive to a park to spend an afternoon bicycling around, then drive home. Uh? What a crazy picture that is in my mind. Anyway bicycles can be perfectly adequate for regular transportation, and electric bicycles are doubly so.

This afternoon my mind wandered into a patch of thinking I'd gone over several times before. It has to do with open source and green technology.

Here's how I reason this out ... "green" is a bad word because it's too vague to make sense of what we mean. The better word is "Sustainable", which has a fairly obvious meaning long term survivability, long term existence, etc. There's a lot of talk about Sustainability nowadays as a desired goal so it's useful to think about some aspects of sustainability.

Say a vendor, uh.. Vixterc, make a really nice electric lawnmower that everybody falls in love with etc. But the company ends up in trouble and goes belly up, stranding all the purchasers of Vixterc lawnmowers without parts or support. This lawnmower which was supposed to enable more sustainability, because the maker went out of business, was not itself sustainable. Further the death of the vendor hinders everybody's ability to become sustainable.

That's assuming the Vixterc Corporation follows typical corporate practice and makes their lawnmower a closed source proprietary widget, and actively prevents their customers from reverse engineering or modifying the lawnmower.

Therefore I think the typical business practice with the proprietary model is not compatible with the sustainability goal. And that the model which promotes sustainability is open source.

To help with understanding of why.. consider The Open Source Definition. It defines Open Source as

1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code
3. Derived Works
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
7. Distribution of License
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

Some of those features are related to open source software but it's plausible to transliterate the features to other fields. There is also licenses similar to this for freely redistributable documentation and hardware designs. In any case I like the Open Source Definition because it explains a lot of the principles of why this is important for sustainable technology.

The ability to derive new works from a given design, the ability to reuse the design in other works, the ability to mingle two designs together, etc. That allows a lot of freedom to the end users that in turn allows the end users to adapt the technology as they need. It also gives them freedom from vendors dying etc. It also promotes something like fermentation where a bunch of people can work on similar designs, share ideas back and forth, and all of us gain in the process.

It also means a given design can live on and on if it's successful at what it's trying to do. In other words open source directly supports sustainability. And as I said, closed source (proprietary) hinders sustainability.

Well, that last is a little too broadly put. If the closed source widget is designed using standardized interfaces then someone could substitute other widgets. Such as those of us who have modified an electric bicycle by replacing the vendors motor (or controller) with a 3rd party motor or controller. The fact that electric motors fall into a few standardized designs makes it possible for others to provide controllers that work with those standardized designs. That's not open source but it's almost as good as open source.

Uh, seems I drank deep of the koolaid over the last few years.

What inspired this? I was working on a scooter I own made by a defunct manufacturer. (Vego 600sx) The fact that I'm able to continue modifying that Vego 600sx is due to the absolute sheer simplicity of the electrical systems on these low end scooters.

But as the vehicles are more complex (cough cough Vectrix cough cough) it's more difficult .. right?

Wow! GoEco is an electric bicycle dealer in Ireland (they say they're the only such) who is selling some wild looking trailers, and offering electric bicycle support for trekking around Ireland. Very tempting looking.

They call these "midget bicycle campers". It's a cargo trailer that looks well built which can comes along with a tent. They also have a picture of a tent that appears to be built onto a camping cot.

Testing use of MarsEdit to post to my blog on V

MarsEdit automatically detects settings. I simply told it the URL for V, http://visforvoltage.org/, and it autodetected that this is a Drupal site. The only change to make is in the Settings dialog to change "Blog Id" from "1" to "blog". Then you can log in using MarsEdit and your V user ID and password.

This should work with other blog editors. On Windoze a popular one is named w.bloggar IIRC.

UPDATE: A hint is if you want to edit an existing posting, Drupal sends the signature along with the posting. If you upload it with your signature Drupal will add a second copy of the signature. If this happens simply re-edit, remove all copies of the signature, and upload again.

The curiosity I've been having for awhile is what is the actual power use on my motorcycle. The curiosity is partly due to the range I've been getting (actually not getting) since in the past it had a hard time delivering more than 10 miles range whereas other e-motorcycles such as on the evalbum are supposedly delivering more like 20 miles range with an equal size pack to what's on the Lectra. However a couple weeks ago I fiddled with the rear end, put a little bit of slack into the chain, and the performance improved dramatically and it's now easy to get 10 miles range. Given that my commute is 10 miles I'm breathing a little bit easier.

The bike came with an analog amp & volt meter pair. I had them installed for awhile but I began to doubt the accuracy, plus I've got both paktrakr and cycleanalyst units and want to use them. The CycleAnalyst is the external shunt model, and the instructions for it say to verify with some other meter whether the CycleAnalyst is giving accurate readings. I don't at the moment have any other meter hooked up so it's a little hard to verify.

I bought the CycleAnalyst with a 500A shunt .. the way electricmotorsport's webstore is set up for the CycleAnalyst it seemed to me that a 100A shunt would give readings up to 100A and a 500A shunt would give readings up to 500A. With the analog meter it would give a 300A reading on takeoff and back down to ~ 100A for cruising. That led me to believe I'd need a 500A shunt and that's what I ordered. After installing it the A reading was nowhere near what the analog meter read. I finally talked with Todd about it and he straightened me out -- they normally use 100A shunts for all their vehicles because the 100A shunt will work with the CycleAnalyst to give measurements well above 100A. In the meantime there is a setting in the CycleAnalyst to adjust it for the shunt being used. It is the RShunt setting in the advanced section, however the CycleAnalyst instructions doesn't tell how to calculate what the correct RShunt setting is. Todd did a little calculations in his head and we put an RShunt value in, and while the numbers became a little more reasonable they were still a bit off.

The only way I have to verify the CycleAnalyst is the Kill-A-Watt power meter. I can plug the chargers into it and measure the KWH's used to recharge the pack after a ride. That'll give a ball park figure to the AH's used during the ride. And since the CycleAnalyst gives an AH reading it's possible to validate that the CA AH reading is near the Kill-A-Watt AH reading.

For example the CA, with the 500A shunt and after Todd's new value setting, it consistently claimed 13.5 AH for my commute. 13.5AH * 60v = .810 KWH ... however, the Kill-A-Watt consistently claimed 1.7 KWH to recharge the pack. To be sure the RShunt value Todd calculated was a guess and neither of us knew precisely what to program as the setting. Obviously the guess wasn't right because .81 KWH is nowhere near 1.7 KWH.

Todd just sent me a 100A shunt, I just installed it and went for a spin. The readings were more in line with the readings shown on the analog meter before. 300A for a full throttle takeoff, easy to get into the 150-200A range, and cruising in the 50-100A range. On the ride I just took the CA claims 21.4 AH used * 60v = 1.284 KWH ... it's on the charger now and I'll report later what the total was to recharge. In the meantime I think this is more in line with what the Kill-A-Watt is about to say.

I'm also planning to get the Amp measuring shunt for the PakTrakr. That'll also give its own validation.

That leaves a different question. Todd felt the A's used, if accurate, were quite a bit high. He felt that 20-50A would be more reasonable for cruising. Is the above out of line?

I'm traveling for a couple days and am in Sacramento for the national Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference. Maybe it's odd for peak oil advocates to travel from around the country to meet, who knows, but I chose to travel without driving. The conference is in Downtown Sacramento and there is an Amtrak station right in downtown, and it's relatively easy to get to Amtrak from my home, so I walked to the train station, dragging a small bag with my clothes, rode the train, and then walked the 1 block from Amtrak station to my hotel. Sure the train itself used a bunch of diesel fuel but that's amortized over a bunch of fellow passengers. A few thoughts ...

First is the tradeoff ... I could have driven my car and gotten here in 3 hrs, and it took 6 hrs from door to door. The tradeoff is that I am not directly responsible for the oil use, and someone else did the driving, I got to relax and look out the window or read or doze off etc. If I'd done any of that while driving the trip would have ended up in a hospital or morgue.

Another tradeoff is the cost, which is $31 each way for the train ticket. It would have cost .7 tanks of fuel in my car, or pretty close to the ticket price each way for fuel. What a deal! An alternate would be to ride my gas motorcycle but the cargo capacity is limited.

It would have helped the travel time to bring a bicycle. But I don't have a bicycle with cargo capacity to carry the rolling bag I use. Well, I could have done as this one lady who had a bicycle, a huge (and I do mean HUGE) backpack, and a guitar case. But I have no idea how she could have ridden with that heavy a load.

So while I wanted to bring a bicycle it didn't seem possible to do so. Instead I walked to the local train station (about 1 mile from my house, a 20 minute walk) and waited there 20+ minutes for the next train. If I had ridden a bicycle to the train station I could have made the earlier train and then I'd also have a bicycle here in Sacramento for getting around town. Fortunately the hotels are close enough together I don't really need a bicycle in Sacramento but it would've been nice.

I could have hauled the baggage on the trailer I use for grocery shopping... hmmm...? Would Amtrak have allowed me to bring that trailer on the train? I think not. The bicycle itself would be okay on the train but what about the trailer?

Another option is an Xtracycle bicycle. I recall reading Amtrak's rules and they have a maximum size for bicycles (?? 80" length ??). Xtracycle sells their frame in a form which is easily detachable meaning you could ride the Xtracycle bicycle to the train, and then take it apart to load onboard the train. But then there's the issue of it being more trouble to load on the train.

In any case that's my brain dump from the train ride. I'm looking forward to learning more about peak oil.

One of the ideas I've been pondering is: Open Green .. It would be a place to facilitate open source green vehicle related projects. I've been scribbling ideas in a notebook for a couple months and while I'm not convinced about this it seems to be a good idea with some merit.

Goal: increase the availability of 'green' technology .. engage the people themselves in solving the issues of sustainable technology, because it seems if we leave it to the big companies they'll twist it to not be green nor sustainable ..

The Instructibles site is pretty close to what I'm thinking of. BUT their focus is on HOWTO and not DESIGN TEAM ... that is, someone who's already figgered out how to do something, they can show off what they've designed. But if a group wants to work together on a project, Instructibles is not the place to do it.

One requirement is some writings giving guidance on the open source model, the kinds of licenses which are known, governance, etc. I've looked at several projects which profess to be open source vehicle projects, and often the license has conditions which don't meet the norms of open source, or the project development isn't done in the open, etc. On the other hand as we discussed in Open Source Ponderings an open source license on a physical widget can make for business difficulties.

It seems such a site needs to be organized as 'projects' each of which has a cluster of pages for documentation, some kind of forum for project discussion, an issue tracker for reporting and tracking "bugs", and a source code management system for storing and versioning the assets of the project. Most of that can be built using Drupal and can even reside within the VisForVoltage site (if we wanted). The issue tracker is difficult in Drupal but either it's not as necessary as I'm thinking, or else a bugzilla instance could be installed and used instead.

What prompted me to write is an exchange on the ThunderSky group .. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ThunderSky/message/1741 ...

And, I've been collecting a number of links on open source hardware licensing and projects ..

I've been pondering the next major phase of my Lectra motorcycle. I'm sure the battery pack will croak "soon" because SLA batteries supposedly have a life of 300 charge cycles (or so) and every time I ride the Lectra to work it is two deep charge cycles and while I haven't been keeping count it's likely the pack I have has 70-100 charge cycles in it right now.

The Lectra has a funny battery compartment geometry. It was originally designed as an electric motorcycle so the area that would normally be a rounded off motor cage is actually a squared off battery compartment. It has two trays each 15x15 inches with approx 7 inches vertical space in the lower tray. Additionally there is a space within the frame behind the battery compartment where I have stashed a pair of batteries. This space is 10 inches wide, 6 inches deep, and 15 inches tall.

Alternatively there are options like the GPR-S or Xtreme 3500li .. where I could get a lithium ION based motorcycle much more easily through an outright purchase rather than locating a suitable pack for my Lectra. Despite what I said the other day about Xtreme's shipping policies, it does appear they're delivering solid bikes that people are enjoying even with some of them arriving damaged.

One result I'd like with the Lectra is a higher voltage. 60v gives me a 47 miles/hr max and I'd like "more" and 72v ought to deliver "more" and I can do that with very little change in the bike. My current pack is 60v in 5 paired batteries meaning that the current pack could be reconfigured as a 120v pack but would mean a new controller.

LifeBATT:-

Their 12v20ah battery is exactly the same footprint as the batteries I'm using. 10 of them at $470 == $4700 (minus this current special discount offer) and it's not clear what to do about chargers. It's also not clear from their site whether these batteries can be connected in parallel. My lectra currently has 10 batteries where they are arranged as 5 pairs of batteries. In any case this would be 60v40ah or slightly less rated capacity than I have right now. This could also be arranged as a 120v20ah total pack.

Their 36v20ah battery is enticing. I could fit four of them in the main trays for a 72v40ah pack. $3500 for batteries. It's again not clear whether their batteries can be parallelized or what precisely to do about chargers. Similarly the 72v10ah pack is the same size and considerations.

Their 48v20ah battery might be possible to fit in the Lectra. Same discussion. Their 96v10ah pack has the same shape and could be interesting except it absolutely would require a new controller. These might also require some frame modifications such as removing the central tray to make one battery compartment. 96v40ah total sounds enticing but I think the total cost would be over $8000...!!!

I don't quite understand the pricing .. 48v20ah appears to be the same battery as 96v10ah (same number of cells, just a different cell arrangement, but at a $120 higher price.

Headway:-

Doesn't have several bits of important information posted on their site such as size, weight or cost.

They have 12v 30ah and 48v 20ah battery packs available. It's not known whether these will fit in my Lectra. The discharge ratings are a bit less than what I'd need in the Lectra. However they're really set up to sell to dealers rather than sell to individuals. There is a group purchase operation happening http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lifepo4-purchase/ and I think Joshua has said the posted prices will change in the future.

Elite Power Solutions:-

Is selling packs made from thundersky batteries.

They sell a 60 ah 24 cell pack that looks interesting. Nearly $3000 cost. Each cell is 8.78X4.69X2.49 in and I haven't mapped it out completely but I could probably wedge these into the Lectra. The cost doesn't include a BMS and they do carry a BMS which appears to cost $1700 and then some more for a charger.

I'll have to double check on this but IIRC someone on "V" set up a bike with thundersky batteries and a different BMS.

Tradwin:-

Is also a thundersky distributor .. they don't have many specifics on the site but offer complete packs, BMS, charger, etc.

Electric Motorsport GPR-S or XM 3500li or waiting for the next model Vectrix or purchasing a current model Vectrix ... Any of these would get me on a higher speed longer range motorcycle with less trouble and maybe less cost than rejiggering my Lectra.

My day job is involved with open source software advocacy. While many think the company I work for (Sun Microsystems) doesn't "get" open source software there are many of us working here who do, and many of us work on open source software full time (as I do). Sooo....

This morning I had this inspired thought of a gizmo for an EV .. it looks like a really cool idea and I want to do a bit more thinking about this before I reveal anything. Anyway my first thinking was "hmm... what kind of patent or intellectual property protections do I need ..etc" to make a company to sell this gizmo. And then I remembered "oh, wait, open source" ...

So here's a conundrum of a couple ways to develop this idea.

The traditional method is what we call "closed source". You get all secretive, don't tell anybody, have a secret hideout where you develop the product, you post tantalizing snippets on youtube that don't reveal anything important but builds buzz, etc.. that kinda thing. You file for patents, trademarks, etc. You make suppliers sign NDA agreements, etc. Maybe in the end someone will reverse engineer your gizmo and undercut you (because they didn't have to pay out all the R&D cost because you did it for them).

Whatever it's flaws the traditional closed source method is a tried and true way of running a business. In business school they tell the MBA's to look for proprietary advantages etc that lock in customers etc.

In the open source way the design is revealed and published and everybody is free to duplicate the design. Not only that, they're free to modify the design and redistribute modified versions. It's kind of a puzzle how to make money when your customers can build their very own instance of the gizmo.

However one result in open source software is the nature of it leads to a community project. In my case I could publish the outline of the gizmo I have in mind and then work with some of y'all to improve and refine this gizmo. We would together develop it.

At the end there is a question of who gets to build a business selling the gizmo once we get it designed.

An advantage of open source for electric vehicles is that the customer base becomes more empowered to maintain their machines. Why, look at Mik's saga of his Vectrix that he now is calling Vectux. If the Vectrix corporation were more open about their implementation then perhaps Mik would not have had so much trouble. On the other hand the Vectrix corporation clearly wants their customers to see the price as payment for a high level of service. And not everybody who wants to buy an EV is willing or able to do the mechanical or electrical work to do their own maintenance.

Finally, I've been thinking for awhile that open source development of electric vehicle gizmos might speed up development and adoption of electric vehicles.

(BTW, there are some Drupal features which could be installed on VisForVoltage which could enable open source projects to be hosted on this site)