Resources on other sites[edit source]
I'm looking for solid, informative sites to link in the bottom section, with a focus on the needs of the majority world and especially the very poor. Please make suggestions! --Chriswaterguy · talk 00:37, 23 April 2007 (PDT)
Removing red links[edit source]
Based on the discussion at Appropedia talk:Village pump#Interwiki links to ported Wikipedia content, I'm going to start removing the inline red links here when they have a paired {{w}} interwiki link with them. On a case-by-case basis, they can be added back inline if the corresponding Appropedia article is about to be created. If an article is desired here but it likely won't be created in the near future, a red link for it can be created at Appropriate technology#See also, and suggested pages to create. --RichardF 05:59, 3 June 2011 (PDT)
Mokshda green cremation system[edit source]
Perhaps the Mokshda Green Cremation System (MGCS) can be mentioned ? 91.182.27.70 (talk)
Sustainable living, grid-tied, alcohol, 3-phase electricity, energy storage[edit source]
- Appropriate technology I think by definition is what fosters the long term survival of the species, if this is used as the starting point then asking the right questions becomes much easier. The right question is How to we reduce the number of people on the planet to comfortably below the indefinitely sustainable population number? and until we put our minds and politics and technology into this problem all the rest is window dressing even though some of it is very pretty and I too am guilty in part. It does not matter if we achieve 100% efficient utilisation of fossil energy and any other finite resources, we will have merely postponed a descending and depressing spiral into oblivion. We need to ask ourselves Will we be doing this in 50, 500 or 5000 years? If not then it is not sustainable.
- Moving off the grid should not be a goal or a selling point of Appropriate technology, it may very well be a means and avoiding building new grids might be very appropriate but to move off any grids that exist is a monumental waste of human resources and potential for goodness. Making better use of grids could be a technique of appropriate technology but it too should be a means and not an end. Grids are the opposite of big but one of the obvious cases where small is not good.
- Alcohol can also be used for heating (and even lighting with pressure lanterns with mantles) as well as a myriad of other non energy uses, as medicine, cleaning agent, antifreeze, currency, manufacturing reagent or feedstock for other chemicals and extracts etc., as an easy to store renewable energy supply that can survive the winter dark at high latitudes. Prohibition of distilling alcohol is a large cause of it being avoided as a fuel, granted it is also more dangerous than electricity in clumsy hands but not much more so than pressurised gas. Many products are not used appropriately because of the self inflicted nanny-state that most democracies live under. Rulers like to make rules and they are happy for you to give them your power and then use it to make more rules, not because the rule is essential but because more than half of the people thought it was a good idea at some time (fear, ignorance, lobbying, idleness, religion and such are the usual reasons). Removing politically mandated safety barriers is difficult and an essential component of appropriate technology as it enables people to prepare their own 3D printers and hobby, craft, survivalist, alternative and DIY chemical foundries. I think it is appropriate that everyone should be free to make whatever he or she wants for personal medication if he causes no harm to others including what is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines.
- On the page is mentioned, in passing mostly, the fact that houses could be standardised to use 3-phase electricity. This is pretty spurious as all but the lightest distribution is always 3-phase and the larger a dwelling or building is the more phases are hooked up. Sure a small house will only have single phase but this is because it is not cost effective to provision 3-phases when only one will ever be used. The reverse is no problem as any 3-phase site can be wired to include single phase connections if required when made or later with a single phase transformer at most. Modern equipment is almost as efficient with single phase as with 3-phase up to what you can get from a domestic plug point and any larger equipment is connected 3-phase automatically. As for the 50/60Hz thing and the voltage, it is historical and geopolitical. Again much of modern equipment can tolerate any of the systems and the production volumes for any given system are usually high enough to justify the different options if the equipment cannot be made flexible. Large 3-phase equipment is usually made to order or can be strapped for the desired conditions and motor speeds changed with pulley exchanges and such.
- The way to make the grid have value is to use it to help people get off the grid, this is a paradox in a way and not a very popular topic but the new grid tied/ grid feed energy systems are making it happen. The electrical utilities that are resisting are much like the postal worker striking to intimidate customers into using a paperless office. If the grid utilities could market their system as an energy storage device instead of an Orwellian control system they would have it made. The transmission utilities keep complaining that their networks were not designed to cope with renewable energy but it is actually false in almost all cases. Distributed generation results in the electricity having less distance to travel and this is a direct saving in resistance losses. If your neighbour needs power now and you are supplying your excess renewable to the grid at say wholesale rates, the utility gets to take the retail mark-up without doing anything, later you may buy back your electricity and again they might supply from a local source and save all the transmission costs. The only way to get off the grid in cold climates is having some way to store a lot of heat. It is going to be raw or processed biomass (probably wood or alcohol for ease of storage or transport) that you can harvest and prepare for the winter. Using this for electricity at the same time would be cool, so gasifiers (for internal combustion), Sterling engines, steam engines (pressurised boiler risks) or fuel cells will be required. These are the technologies that are needed to make the grid fear becoming obsolete sufficiently to become part of the solution instead of the problem.