Introduction or "Why this blog?"

My name is Robert and I am a nobody.  Literally.  Nobody outside of a few friends and my family knows about me.  This is the case with 99.9% of the people in the world.  I am ok with being a nobody.  However, I am tired of the Somebody's taking advantage of us nobody's.  Whenever I surf the 'net, I am bombarded with all sorts of junk and crap that seems to be too good to be true.  Most of it is.

Here is the thing, though.  Some of it isn't.  So how is a nobody with an average intelligence and average education supposed to know the difference between the crap that isn't true and the stuff that is mostly untrue and the stuff that is mostly true and the stuff that is the truth?  The simple fact is, most of the time one can't tell the difference.

Like most people in the world, I am concerned with certain global issues such as the global economy, wars, Iran's steadfast refusal to civilize itself and join the rest of the civilized world, global environmental issues, energy and the like.  Since there is little I can do about Iran (except hope that one day their leaders grow up and start acting like adults), the economy, environmental issues and wars, I will leave these issues to those who want us to believe that they have the answers.

Energy, on the other hand, is something in which anyone with a high school education can participate.  Personally, I don't know the first thing about most forms of energy that I didn't learn in high school physics and some research I have completed online.  Energy is something we all use every day in various forms.  From the food we consume to the electricity used to store and prepare that food, to the fuel used to propel our vehicles to various locations to procure said food, we, as a world, consume more energy in one day than the whole world did from the year 1CE through the year 1950 CE. 

That is an alarming statistic.  Since our insatiable appetite for energy usually takes the form of things like fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, oil, etc.) it is obvious that the Earth's finite stores of these resources are rapidly diminishing.  New sources of energy MUST be found in order to maintain a healthy and civilized world (despite Iran's best efforts to the contrary).  Man has made great strides in developing many alternate forms of generating electricity such as wind turbines, photovoltaics, geothermal and nuclear.

But there are serious faults with each of these.

First is efficiency.

Solar cells only work when the sun is shining and are only at peak performance for a couple of hours per day depending on the angle of the sun in the sky in relation to the solar panel.  During night, these panels are, of course, totally worthless.  

Wind generators only work when the wind blows above a certain speed.  Some wind turbines will work in wind speeds as low as four miles per hour (or 6.4 kph) and others need speeds to exceed 20 mph ( 32 kph) just to turn the blades.  The biggest problem with wind generators, though, is that they do not generate a lot of power.

Geothermal is still in its infancy stages of development.  Geothermal energy is difficult to produce though it is capable of producing huge quantities of power.

Nuclear has its own issues and they are quite obvious and I won't go into them here except to say that it is a myth that nuclear plants are inherently dangerous.  Yes, there are two very good examples of what happens when they do have problems, but the fact is that there are ONLY two examples.  Compared to the number of nuclear plants currently operating and those which have been shut down over the years, that is a very good safety record.

The one thing that all these forms of energy production have in common is expense.  It is VERY expensive to generate meaningful amounts of power using these methods.  Until the world overcomes this insane idea that it MUST use money, we are going to have to live with this concept.  Cost rules everything.  Don't even get me started on the insanity of all this.

So, until humankind comes to its senses regarding money, we have to find ways to generate energy (particularly, electricity) that are both fuel and cost efficient.

And that, friends, is the purpose of this blog.  Find ways to generate electricity that are both fuel and cost efficient.  Find a way that EVERY house in the WORLD can generate its own electricity at little or no cost to the occupant(s).

Now you are asking yourself, "But if you are as you say, average intelligence and average education, how do you plan to develop these technologies?  Do you have lots of money?"  The answers are, No, I do not have lots of money, in fact I live in a lower middle class neighborhood bordering on the lower economic class.  And the other answer is; that is the beauty of this blog, it can also be named "... for Dummies" if it wasn't already copyrighted. 

So, let's review.  Here are the goals of this blog.

1.  Experiment with alternate, alternate power generation methods.  (Yes, alternate is in that sentence twice on purpose.)
2.  Keep these methods inexpensive.
3.  Develop methods using little to no external fuel sources such as fossil fuels, batteries, etc.
4.  Conduct experiments in a manner that even I can understand them.

It is my intention to experiment with ONE concept at a time.  I don't want to get bogged down with having so many experiments running that I lose track of what I am doing.  I, with the help of my nephew, Kevin, will experiment with one concept at a time until we can take that concept no further.  Being of only average intelligence, I imagine that won't take too long in most cases.  But if the experimentation takes years to prove or disprove a concept, then I am dedicated to taking that time.

I hope to generate a following of people who can offer advice, assistance or comments about things we haven't thought about (or just don't know about) or just offer encouragement.  Hopefully, we can learn together and develop something the world can use.  And if we don't, well, at least we had a hell of a lot of fun trying.

Robert (and Kevin)