Gas prices all over the board

Just a quick note for today. I am living in Denver, CO and gas prices are up around $2.70/gallon as of this morning. I have heard rumors that it is around $2.50/gallon on the east coast. Then I heard that in Oklahoma City it is $2.07/gallon. So what is going on here in Denver? Do the oil companies have something against us here in the Rocky Mountain Region. We didn't have a hurricane and we're not a hick town. So what gives here? Go to this link to see current gas prices officially from the Government.

More Things Bio-Diesel

Well it looks like there is much more going on than I thought in this area. There are people investing in bio-diesel and bio-diesel alliances, consortiums and even companies springing up all over the US. Look at this article on "Biofuels Come of Age as the Demand Rises." The disconcerting part of all this is that it is still a very fragile industry. The price of diesel must remain high for this fuel to be competitive plus state and federal incentives must remain in place to make this fledgling industry thrive. This is a good article describing the fragility of this market and what factors are governing it at this time. So please support this industry and buy this fuel if it is available in your town and demand more of it from our Senators, Representatives and our president.

I am concerned because this is not a small proposition. This is a major industry change like the emergence of the personal computer or the space program. It will take a lot of money and persistence to transform this industry into something that will last and change our country and the way we think about fuels. So hey lets get on with it...

The Next Generation Battery May Not Be A Battery...

So what does this cryptic title mean? I found an article on capacitors and discovered that people are actually working on making a better battery or electrical energy storage device and the key may be nanofibers. Take a look at this article on using nanofibers and capacitors. With capacitors, increasing the surface area of storage plates increases the amount of electrons or electrical energy that the average capacitor can hold.

The problem with the traditional capacitor is the surface area problem as stated here: "But capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. Capacitors charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery's electrodes, so even today's most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries."

If this technology can get off the ground, then it will be environmentally friendly because capacitors don't degrade over time so they last virtually forever, and they charge very quickly.

"It's better for the environment, because it allows the user to not worry about replacing his battery," he says. "It can be discharged and charged hundreds of thousands of times, essentially lasting longer than the life of the equipment with which it is associated."

So one more step towards making a better hybrid or electric car.

Hey gasoline prices are going down...

So gasoline prices are drifting down from the ~$3.00/gallon level to around $2.60/gallon. Hey the crisis is over and we can forget all this ever happened, right? I think everyone can remember the days when gasoline was $1.70/gallon and what always seems to happens after a high price excursion is that the price never seems to go back to its previous level. Why is that? I don't really know, but I think this nation, at this time, has more revolutionaries than any other time in history with a belief that we can change things on our own without the government and without its funding.

So please, do not let the banner of alternative fuels die. In the past, as soon as gas prices dropped to a reasonable level, and in our case that seems to be ~$2.50 everybody is happy and goes back to the same wasteful energy lifestyle. I hope that this time we can keep the momentum, keep investing in alternative fuels and move away from the horrible alliance we have made with the OPEC oil cartel.

We need to fully wean ourselves off foreign oil and get to energy independence. I am always dismayed at the hand wringing I hear in state of the Union addresses but no clear direction, no clear goals and no real commitment. Lets keep working on butanol and bio-diesel production...