YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[OmCheeto]

Anyone else think this thread has just about run its course?

No.

When this thread shuts down, I will resign from PF.

Seriously.

 

[gmax137]

No.

When this thread shuts down, I will resign from PF.

Seriously.

I like this thread too, but it needs some serious fact checking. Here's just a few recent examples:

...Keep in mind that nuke plants spend almost as much down time refueling, etc, as they spend operating (a detail that energy companies would prefer you weren't aware of.)

No they don't spend half their time shutdown. The US average capacity factor is near 90% since 2000. see http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center...lear-Power-Plants/US-Nuclear-Capacity-Factors

Don't believe NEI? ask anyone who works at the nuke plants.

So, with diminishing demand for the plutonium the whole industry creates...

What? the plutonium produced in the commercial power plant cores has never left the plant sites. It is still contained within the spent fuel rods in the pools or in the dry casks. Plus, there is no market for plutonium, the government of the US and Russia have tons of the stuff and they'd like to get rid of it. Plus, the plutonium produced in commercial cores is worthless for WMDs since the long burnup (necessary for economic power production) ensures excessive amounts of Pu-240 in addition to the Pu-239.

... the ~real~ cost of producing nuclear power is a lot higher than most people realize. In basic terms, it's not a cost-effective way to generate power or revenue (especially if the energy company has to pay for storing spent uranium, and highly radioactive power plant infrastructure when it comes time to dismantle those.)

The nuclear power plants are the only electric generation facilities that fund their own eventual decommissioning. They also pay the government (at 0.1 cents/kw-hr) for the eventual disposal of the spent fuel. They don't get a free pass on their waste products. Compare that to the fossil generators: they use our atmosphere as their dump site at no cost to themselves.

etc... Say No to Nukes.

A lot of nonsense.

The Sun is a good place for long term storage of unusable nuclear waste.

Noboby would consider this. How about a calculation of the electric generation (MW-hr) vs. the cost to orbit the spent fuel? Plus, the spent fuel is perfect fuel for the more advanced reactor types; sending it into the sun would be foolish.

Using the spent fuel rods to warm the water before it enters the chamber makes for a lessor amount of fuel needed and reduces down time, not to mention the size of the reactor would be smaller.

The heat produced in the spent fuel is a tiny fraction of the operating power after a few weeks. Plus, using it as a pre-heater would require keeping the spent assemblies hotter then the reactor coolant (500 - 600 F) or hotter than the feedwater (300 - 400 F). Much better to keep them in the pool (~100 F).

build an actual space plane.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to make the "send the spent fuel to the sun" more reasonable. It doesn't, because it doesn't change the energy required to lift the material and it doesn't change the fact that the material is far too valuable as an energy source to throw it away

I don't have time to personally debunk everything in this thread; and I don't mean to pick on just these two contributors. It just seems like the meaty, thoughtful contributions are getting thinner and thinner.

 

[texasman1979]

I wished i had the technical jargon that went with the things I've said. It sucks having what I have in my brain and not being able to express it in a manner where others can readily understand. Plutonium is absolutely worthless, has been and always will be. All of nuclear technology is childs play. Current generator technology is archaic at best. The mathematics behind magnetic fields and conducting materials is skewed based on the technology currently existing.

Remember this:
We currently get less than 1% of the electricity possible from mechanical energy with humanities finest and most efficient generator. The basic generator design has changed very little since Edison and Tesla. Einsteins relativity is only partially correct. Speed is what will change things. Millions of RPM's.

How many volts and amps can I get from a generator powered by a 6 volt DC motor from an erector set? :)

 

[OmCheeto]

I like this thread too, but it needs some serious fact checking. Here's just a few recent examples:

...

You actually read those? When someone posts something really long, and the first sentence is obviously wrong, I don't bother finishing the post. If I notice a person doing this too many times, I add them to my ignore list. I've no time for jabberwockies.

One thing I do from time to time, is go back and review post #2, and see how we've progressed.

Of course, lots of things have changed in the last 9 years. Solar panel prices have done nothing but come down.

Solar Energy: This Is What a Disruptive Technology Looks Like
...
In 1977, solar cells cost upwards of $70 per Watt of capacity. In 2013, that cost has dropped to $0.74 per Watt, a 100:1 improvement
...

Unfortunately, the installation costs are still fairly high.

From this image:

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/NRELsolarcostchart-555x216.jpg
​

It appears that installation is about $5.00 per Watt.

Of course, one trend I would like to see continue, is the rise of the plug-in hybrid:

Plug-in hybrid sales soar; all-electric cars stay in low gear
...
Thanks to a resurgent Chevrolet Volt and Toyota's introduction of a plug-in version of its popular Prius, sales of such vehicles have jumped 381% to more than 13,000 in the first half of this year, according to Edmunds.com.
...

Imagine if everyone drove a Volt type vehicle:

Jay Leno Drives his Chevy Volt 11,000 Miles on 4.6 Gallons of Gas

I like electricity when I need it and gas when I need to use it. I travel 28 miles to the studio every day, then I go shopping, run errands, pull in the driveway; that's 40 miles or so, then I plug it in, but if I need to travel further the car is ready for that too. I’ve never had to put gas in it yet. They gave it to me with a full tank (9.3 gallons) of gas. I’ve used less than half of that.

And for those who are about to whine about Leno using coal generated grid electricity, I have acquaintances who charge their electric cars, with their roof mounted solar panels, IN OREGON!

The blue section no less...

[PLAIN]http://solarcellcentral.com/images/usa_insolation_map.jpg[/CENTER]

And they are not millionaires.

And don't get me started on the fact that they are dumping wind farm energy, because the infrastructure doesn't exist to export the energy... stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...​

 

[gmax137]

... jabberwockies ...

here where I work, we use that name for guys who monopolize the conversation on our lunchtime walks

And thanks for the solar update; that's the kind of info this thread needs.

 

[OmCheeto]

here where I work, we use that name for guys who monopolize the conversation on our lunchtime walks

And thanks for the solar update; that's the kind of info this thread needs.

Also known as "Mansplainers".

Being that I was at one time extensively trained in hydraulics, electric motors, and batteries, I still have a bit of knowledge about how such things interact.

I was at the beach two weekends ago, and was trying to diagnose why my friends photovoltaic powered water pumping system didn't work. Not only did he not have a clue what he was doing, but another acquaintance kept butting in with his mansplanation of why nothing worked. It was very frustrating for me, as the mansplainer was so good at it, that my friend with the failed pumping system kept listening to him, rather than my somewhat obtuse; "It's complicated"

Their constant jibber jabber made it almost impossible for me to think.

It wasn't until after everything had been put away was I able to collect my thoughts, and determine what actually was wrong with his system.

He had two different sets of pumping systems. One was a 24 volt(maybe), land based model, which from the size of the motor, I estimated was rated around 2 hp. The other system was a 12 volt(which he claimed were rated at 24vdc) pair of 1100 gph bilge pumps, hydraulically hooked up in parallel. His solar panels, which I had never taken a close look at, and had always assumed were 250 watt panels, turned out to be 80 watt panels. Obviously, the 160 watt source was no match for the 1500 watt demand of the land based model. And the dual bilge pump system, which I never did determine how they were wired electrically, barely pumped anything at all.

Anyways, Cal, the owner of the failed pumping system, disappeared. Ray, the mansplainer, also disappeared, and I was able to hook up my 3 bilge pumps, 3 x 50 watt solar panels, 3 x 5 gallon buckets, 300 feet of garden hose, and successfully water down the volleyball courts, and made a bunch of people, a bit more comfortable. Which I believe, is what engineering is all about.

 

[johnbbahm]

And don't get me started on the fact that they are dumping wind farm energy, because the infrastructure doesn't exist to export the energy... stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...

Much of the issue is there is almost no way to store surplus energy, you ether use it when it is there,
or it turns into waste heat.
Some of the new technology being developed in Germany and by the US NAVY could create
hydrocarbon fuel as a way of storing the energy.
Often in Science and Engineering, Nature shows us a good way of doing things,
Storing energy in the form of hydrocarbons looks to have a lot of advantages.

 

[OmCheeto]

Much of the issue is there is almost no way to store surplus energy

We've actually gone over that. I'm sorry this is such a long thread. It's all Russ's fault.

, you ether use it when it is there,
or it turns into waste heat.
Some of the new technology being developed in Germany and by the US NAVY could create
hydrocarbon fuel as a way of storing the energy.

Do you have a link? Storing energy is a big problem of mine.

Often in Science and Engineering, Nature shows us a good way of doing things,
Storing energy in the form of hydrocarbons looks to have a lot of advantages.

Agreed.

 

[russ_watters]

Anyone else think this thread has just about run its course?

No.

When this thread shuts down, I will resign from PF.

Seriously.

As tempting as that is (J/K ), you're definitely right that it hasn't. This is going to be a serious issue for generations unless that Italian guy gets his pesky energy multiplier working. The difficulty in moderating a thread like this comes from its breadth and the time between significant discussions. We'll get a lot of one-shot posters, many of which are uninformed or even crackpots. I don't want to go deleting every such post or closing the thread, thereby stifling a lot of discussion. I'd rather err on the side of educating. So I think we've ended up with somewhat lower quality than we'd all prefer. And that's on me, of course; my thread, my subforum. But I'll still ask for help from vigilant regulars; report posts you think are bad and/or respond with corrections.

Speaking of educating...

 

[russ_watters]

A mineable uranium deposit contains between 1 and 2% uranium. That leaves you with 98-99% waste to deal with, a lot of it radioactive or otherwise a major problem (thorium, radium, radon, lead, and so-on). So, for every 1 kilo of U238 and U235 you extract, you will have to place 98 or 99 kilos of waste in a rocket and blast it into space.

Since the more radioactive it is, the more usable it is, what's left when we use what we can is significantly less radioactive than when first dug out of the ground. There's no reason therefore not to put it back where we found it, unless we can make better use of it (like bullets and boat keels). It's really only the high level waste (post-reactor) that is more problematic.

(I had a key part to play in getting uranium mining banned forever in B.C. a few years ago...)

A shame that that's how it ends up working. A lot of damage has been done and the tide is only now starting to turn.

This spring, 100% of all new energy production in the US that came on-line was renewable energy: wind, solar, and so-forth.

Nonsense (or at best highly misleading). For the first half of 2013, it was 25% renewable, with the lions share being natural gas:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/07/renewables-provide-25-of-new-electrical-generating-capacity-in-first-half-2013

One looming issue with our electrical production is the costs for pollution control being added to coal. Natural gas so far has done reasonably well in picking-up the slack, but that's going to need to be accelerated to avoid supply problems.

By the end of 2015, or early 2016, the cost of renewable energy production will have dropped below the cost of comparable non-renewable energy.

Typically, such analysis is done on a cost per watt basis, ignoring the extremely low capacity factor of renewables. For peaking plants only (for which solar can be good) that may be ok, but again the lions share of our power can't be provided by solar or wind. In other words, if you shut down a coal plant, you can't replace it with a solar plant or wind plant, even at a 6:1 ratio (6 watts of solar added to replace 1 watt of coal to produce the same kWh).

Please note: As I said in the previous post, I'm leaning toward educating rather than censoring, but the leash is pretty short. Please take more care to post true facts, don't post about what you don't know and post sources.

 

[russ_watters]

Remember this:
We currently get less than 1% of the electricity possible from mechanical energy with humanities finest and most efficient generator. The basic generator design has changed very little since Edison and Tesla.

That isn't true. Today's generators are well over 90% efficient.

 

[russ_watters]

One thing I do from time to time, is go back and review post #2, and see how we've progressed.

Of course, lots of things have changed in the last 9 years.

I appreciate that and agree that much has changed. And I've been thinking of writing a follow-up (or did I already? Can't find one). Too bad you can't double-sticky, though I suppose I can edit the OP and link it there.

One obvious thing I didn't see coming was fracking and the resulting natural gas explosion (the good kind) and death of Peak Oil.

 

[OmCheeto]

As tempting as that is (J/K ), you're definitely right that it hasn't. This is going to be a serious issue for generations unless that Italian guy gets his pesky energy multiplier working. The difficulty in moderating a thread like this comes from its breadth and the time between significant discussions. We'll get a lot of one-shot posters, many of which are uninformed or even crackpots. I don't want to go deleting every such post or closing the thread, thereby stifling a lot of discussion. I'd rather err on the side of educating. So I think we've ended up with somewhat lower quality than we'd all prefer. And that's on me, of course; my thread, my subforum. But I'll still ask for help from vigilant regulars; report posts you think are bad and/or respond with corrections.

Speaking of educating...

The most horrific statement I saw, once I found the "Ignore" function, was made by LisaB. She said Mentors could not "ignore" people.

I really feel for you kids.

 

[Astronuc]

MidAmerica Energy, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett), invests heavily in wind and solar.

Here's What Warren Buffett Thinks About Renewable Energy
http://www.fool.com/investing/gener...mes-to-renewable-energy-buffetts-not-blo.aspx

MidAmerican has relied on both General Electric and Vestas for wind turbines for different projects. A large project in California, which deployed more than 300 megawatts of power generating capacity, featured 100 Vestas wind turbines. GE's turbines, on the other hand, are the most commonly used in MidAmerican's fleet.

. . . .

Wind turbine manufacturing is a cyclical business


MidAmerica did look at nuclear but decided not to go that route.

 

[Astronuc]

Cyclical nature of wind power and impact on other generation.

U.K. Wind Turbines Generate Record Power as Gas-Fed Plants Halt
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...rate-record-power-as-gas-fed-plants-halt.html

In the US, some nuclear plants would be forced to reduce power in order to accommodate wind generation on their grid.

 

[Astronuc]

It's time for wind power to stand or fall on its own
After two decades of generosity, wind power subsidies should be allowed to expire at the end of the year

http://theweek.com/article/index/254155/its-time-for-wind-power-to-stand-or-fall-on-its-own

Federal subsidies for wind are so lavish, that generators in places like west Texas (where wind is plentiful) have been known to bid electricity onto the grid at negative prices, just so it can collect the larger subsidy amount and pocket the difference. Negative pricing is a great deal for whoever owns the generator, but can play havoc with electrical reliability, by undercutting other power sources and discouraging investment in new capacity.

Negative pricing supported by federal subsidy seems rather unfair and counter productive to a viable market.

The big problem is not so much cost as reliability. Wind power is intermittent; it has a nasty habit of stopping, sometimes on a moment's notice. And since there is no commercially viable means of storing electricity, use of wind power requires the existence of back-up power plants (typically natural gas) that can be ramped up or down depending on which way the wind blows. . . . .

So utilities which invest in reliable baseload to assure on-demand power are penalized.

 

[Straw_Cat]

We can make a level playing ground by switching form subsidies to the Depletion Allowances other industries have enjoyed for 100 years.
It's still corporate welfare, but gussied up by rebranding.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/01/1654501/oil-subsidies-century/

Quote:
"The percentage depletion deduction generally cannot be more than 50% (100% for oil and gas property) of your taxable income from the property figured without the depletion deduction and the domestic production activities deduction."
From this IRS page:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch09.html
And:
"There is a taxable income limit for oil and gas royalty owners. Your annual deduction for percentage depletion is limited to the smaller of the following:

100% of your taxable income from the property figured without the deduction for depletion
65% of your taxable income from all sources, figured without the depletion allowance."
Quote from:
http://www.mineralweb.com/owners-guide/leased-and-producing/royalty-taxes/depletion-allowance/

There are also subsidies for coal and nuclear power. Worldwide, fossil fuel subsidies totaled $523 Billions, while renewable energies received $88 Billion.

As for storing the surplus energy, people are working on ways to do that, such as molten salt heat storage, or recently improved types of iron-based batteries.
Surplus power could also be used to produce hydrogen, which can in turn be mixed in with natural gas and transported to not-so-windy places, or stored.
Or used to fuel the hydrogen cars coming on the market in 2014 (from Hyundai ).

What is really necessary are new efforts to humanize the economy.

 

[johnbbahm]

We've actually gone over that. I'm sorry this is such a long thread. It's all Russ's fault.

Do you have a link? Storing energy is a big problem of mine.


Agreed.

Sorry about the long response.
Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

 

[OmCheeto]

Sorry about the long response.

I'm in no rush.

Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

SWEET!

How it Works: CO2 + H2 = Jet Fuel

NRL has developed a two-step process in the laboratory to convert the CO2 and H2 gathered from the seawater to liquid hydrocarbons. In the first step, an iron-based catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO2 conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease unwanted methane production from 97 percent to 25 percent in favor of longer-chain unsaturated hydrocarbons (olefins). In the second step these olefins can be oligomerized (a chemical process that converts monomers, molecules of low molecular weight, to a compound of higher molecular weight by a finite degree of polymerization) into a liquid containing hydrocarbon molecules in the carbon C9-C16 range, suitable for conversion to jet fuel by a nickel-supported catalyst reaction.

I've been looking for a method to do this for quite some time.

 

[Straw_Cat]

Windpower Engineering magazine has this article about some storage batteries the Chinese are buying to store renewable energy.

http://www.windpowerengineering.com/featured/business-news-projects/corvus-signs-12-5-million-10-mwh-energy-storage-contract/

http://www.corvus-energy.com/

 

[mfb]

~1$/Wh means you need ~10000 cycles to get down to 10cents/kWh (still above the market price). Most batteries don't even come close to that value (okay, "10 times the cycle life of traditional batteries"), and with 1 cycle per day this would need 30 years just to return the investment. A nice toy, but not something we'll see on a large scale unless the price goes down at least one order of magnitude.

 

[mheslep]

Here's a company claim of $0.16/Wh, just for the battery, no inverter, etc. Who knows how many deep cycles.

The reigning king of storage is pumped hydro, at something like $0.04/Wh for a big project like Bath County, and it should be coming up on 10000 cycles soon with the end of life still far in the future.

 

[Devils]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

 

[Devils]

In the US, some nuclear plants would be forced to reduce power in order to accommodate wind generation on their grid.

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

 

[OmCheeto]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

That sounds a bit like:

Geothermal Heat Pumps
...
The geothermal heat pump, also known as the ground source heat pump, is a highly efficient renewable energy technology that is gaining wide acceptance for both residential and commercial buildings. Geothermal heat pumps are used for space heating and cooling, as well as water heating. The benefit of ground source heat pumps is they concentrate naturally existing heat, rather than by producing heat through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Is this what you are talking about?

I like the fact that people are more conscious of waste than they used to be:

In addition to space conditioning, geothermal heat pumps can be used to provide domestic hot water when the system is operating. Many residential systems are now equipped with desuperheaters that transfer excess heat from the geothermal heat pump's compressor to the house's hot water tank.

One of these days, I'm going to get around to utilizing my refrigerator to keep my bathroom warm in the winter. So many projects.

 

[mfb]

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

They get cheaper, but for most locations they are still significantly above the costs of nuclear power - even without the costs for energy storage. You cannot simply predict "it gets cheaper, so it has to get cheaper than X". That logic does not work.

By the way, there are solar power plants that use steam turbines.

 

[Straw_Cat]

On El Hierro Island, the westernmost of the Canary Islands, there's a project to harvest renewable energy from wind and solar, etc. The surplus power from those will be used to pump water uphill and store it in a storage pit that was at one time a volcanic crater (!) so that the water can be then used to power a hydro project. Once all this is set up this will be among the first 100% renewably-powered places on the planet (there are a few others already...). Here's a write-up about the El Hierro project, from a couple years ago, showing the progress at that time.

http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/print/volume-20/issue-5/articles/pumped-storage/creating-a-hybrid-hydro-wind-system-on.html

 

[anorlunda]

I'm afraid that most of the posts in this thread ignore the reality of how power generation decisions are made in the USA. Government has a big influence, but it does not get to decide where the money is invested. It is private investments that finance power facilities. Even public utilities raise most of their money by private sales of bonds. So when many of you say "we" have to decide, "we"have to spend the money,"we" have a political problem, you have the wrong we. It is not the public, but the investors who made investment decisions.

Few people realize how much money it takes. My data may be a bit dated, but not long ago the electric power infrastructure required 25% of all capital investment in the USA. That's a huge fraction. For utilities, it makes finance almost more important that producing power. Investors must be convinced to put their money into power plants, or wind, or transmission, instead of Apple stocks, or Google, or agriculture, or bio science, or whatever. That is an extremely hard sell. How much of your 401K is invested in the electric power industry?

Traditionally, the selling point for utility investments was safety and guaranteed returns. That's no longer true. In many states, power generation has been split from the monopoly utilities. Power plant owners have no guaranteed returns. Many of them have lost their shirts in recent years. In the 1980s, Washington Public Power System even defaulted on its bonds. Every time something like that happens the whole power industry becomes less attractive for future investors.

The thing that scares investors more than anything is uncertainty. Therefore a gas turbine plant that can earn the investment back in 6 years is much more certain than a nuclear plant that may need 40 years to reach thst mark. The rules that govern plants can change dramatically in 40 years, undermining the financial assumption. Politicians making speeches about energy policy and threatening to change the game do far more harm than good by seeding uncertainty among investors. The investors respond either by refusing to invest in electric power at all or by demanding much higher rates of return. The public looses.

So please give me a break and stop this endless and pointless debate on energy assuming that it is a matter of public policy. Unless you are the fat cat investor, your voice in the subject has little influence.

Thanks for giving me a chance to vent.

 

[OmCheeto]

I saw an article the other week:

Plug-In Vehicles up 82 Percent Over 2012

The dual powered vehicles saw an 83% jump over their 2012 total of 52,835 units.

I did the math and determined that if that rate were to hold up, it would take only 12 years to replace all the vehicles in the USA. It made me smile.

And with solar prices dropping through the floor, it looks to me like the US Energy Crisis might be fixed ahead of schedule.

Solar power installation costs fall through the floor
Solar power in the U.S. this year produced as much power as 10 nuclear power plants
December 16, 2013 04:00 PM ET

The cost of installing photovoltaic solar arrays has dropped to $3 per watt of electricity they produce - about the same as coal-powered plants cost to build - creating a watershed moment in the development of clean energy, experts say.

The average price of a solar panel has declined by 60% since the beginning of 2011, according to GTM Research. And, according to CleanTechnica, a website dedicated to renewable energy news, the price of solar power has fallen rom $76.67 per watt in 1977 to 74 cents today.

 

[stevedunklee]

help the poor

A cash for cklunkers grant to poor families could remove millions of unsafe gas guzzeling mechanically unsafe vehicles from our highways and have the benefit of making our roads safer. Also most poor people get no benefit from tax incentives to go green. Energy sipping lights and weather imrovements should be subsidised to lower cost to the poor.
When they were starting to build the John W Turk coal fired plant in Arkansas I asked one of the execs why they were spending 5 billion to make it when they could produce the same amount of power installing one million 50 watt wind alternators one per power pole for less than 250 million. . A bicycle generator, two fiberglass poles and some nylon cloth for the pinwheel could be mass produced for less than $25 each
Cheers
Steve