Offline most of the time

[Mike]

Along the same line, there is the possibility of generating electricity in the home using natural gas as the fuel.  The exhaust could be run through heat exchangers to meet the homes hot water & heating needs.  The electricity could be sold into the grid.

Being a do-it-your-selfer, I was thinking of just using any-old-motor hooked to a generator.  But now I see companies like Honda developing micro-turbines.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Ryder, remind me to chat with you offline. The time issue is an important one. At this point it is hard enough to find profitable lines of business but you have to get good return-on-time-invested too.

A lot of natural gas comes from Canada. That's good, because it's a fairly "safe" supply, but once demand starts exceeding supply, there's a big problem. Mike, there aren't enough ships equipped to ship liquified natural gas. And there are unlikely to be more of them in the future--nobody wants to spend the money on it. Shipping fleets overall are getting old--worldwide. Aging, decaying infrastructure.

[Eddie]

Who needs ships when there's enough NG deposits here to last a while??
5:10a.m, time to hit the road!

[Ryder]

Natural gas might be the savior of our energy needs.....right now I have a natural gas distrubution line running across the front of my property. I am not hooked up to it  because my energy costs would be more than using electricity to heat. I get my electricity from a co op electric company that originaly formed to supply the outlying, not as lucrative areas here in rural montana.
  I think the future energy needs are distorted by people thinking they can go on driving a car with one person in it to work 100 miles round trip every day and heating or cooling a 4,000 sq foot house for two people while eating fresh vegies from New Zeland.  Just doesn't seem to compute.   Altho folks in 1912 would think things that are going on now would be impossible.

[Mike]

I think what Eddie and I are talking about is using local natural gas, locally, as compressed natural gas (CNG) in existing cars. 

The conversion is simple.

The hard part is the compressor early adapters would have to buy and put in their garage.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$WTIC:$NATGAS&p=D&st=1990-01-01&id=p76029546596&listNum=1&a=143108173

The link is to a long term chart of spot prices of crude divided by natural gas.  Unfortunately I don't remember if $natgas is in cubic feet or btus.  I also don't remember at what price ratio there is energy parity.

I do remember that energy parity on the chart is around 5 or 6 or 7.  So when the chart oil price to natural gas price approaches 35, as it is (a crazy high ratio), we can't help but think of switching from gasoline to compressed natural gas.

Is the price of oil divided by the price of natural gas a hyperbolic blow off?  No it is the result of fracking in the Bakken ----> natural gas prices that are bankrupting leveraged gassers (like DPTR).  Meanwhile peak oil is making $100/bbl oil normal (or cheap??)

[Mike]

@Ryder
re: heating 4,000 sq foot homes
& driving 4,000 lb vehicles (one by one)

I also remember your post of the bike car and the Tiny House video.  I think both of those posts are going to prove prescient.  We should be watching those two things.  The bike-car isn't just a bike.  And the Tiny house isn't just a trailer.

[Dame]

Natural gas is sold in cubic feet.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Back online running Linux Mint.

Had to sacrifice a few programs that don't exist in the Linux world. My documents should be fine, because I use OpenOffice which works in both worlds.

Might be slightly distracted next few days as I install and restore stuff.

[Atash Hagmahani]

One thing I like about Mint:

Type what you're looking for in the search facility, and it might be able to find the app that does that. Just found the firewall and the language support that way. It's not Siri or Google; it doesn't do semantic analysis. But it worked OK for the two items I needed.

Right now I am installing Chinese and Devanagari alphabets.

[silverseeds]

At this point it is hard enough to find profitable lines of business but you have to get good return-on-time-invested too.

A stable income works as well. Much that I am doing will not have a return for a few years, but even if I cant expand should be rather stable outside of some draconian law Im unable to comply with for some reason.

[Atash Hagmahani]

A stable income works as well. Much that I am doing will not have a return for a few years, but even if I cant expand should be rather stable outside of some draconian law Im unable to comply with for some reason.

For many of us, no single solution will work, but a combination of things might: Reducing needed income level. Cooperating on joint ventures without any cash changing hands until the product is sold. Multiple small lines of business exploiting multiple small market niches too small for bigger competitors.

[silverseeds]

A stable income works as well. Much that I am doing will not have a return for a few years, but even if I cant expand should be rather stable outside of some draconian law Im unable to comply with for some reason.

For many of us, no single solution will work, but a combination of things might: Reducing needed income level. Cooperating on joint ventures without any cash changing hands until the product is sold. Multiple small lines of business exploiting multiple small market niches too small for bigger competitors.

yeah I agree totally. I was doing good on the reducing needed income part until I got this new place but it has many attributes that made it worth the risk. My wife is a teacher, teaching two grades at a school with only 5 teachers, Id guess it would be decently secure. Atleast for awhile.

As for niches, well ANY foods i grow will be marketable Id think. The ones I could grow profitably and compete on price anyway. (many things I can grow productively with out to much capitol inputs, BUT wouldnt be likely to be profitable-grains and staples and such mostly) There simply is no food grown locally except for beef, and wild harvested pine nuts. I know how to grow a decent range of things non irrigated including many that would be competitive commercially. Pests and disease are rarely issues here, its the water that is key, but I know how to optimize the water I do get. Takes time for trees though. I should be producing the vast bulk of our food by this time next year for a considerable savings.

 given enough time, considering land costs, tax levels here, and labor costs.... I really should be able to do rather well with orchards actually. I should add that I already have well established pinon trees and I know ranchers in the area that make as much in one good pinon year as they do with two from ranching per acre. I can increase this greatly actually, with passive methods that last forever once I built them. It is a bit slower to build up having little capitol to devote to it, but I own enough land to get started and can expand from there as I get the first 5 acres to production age and optimize the pinon trees. Im trialing close to 200 varieties or so at present to see what is the most reliable. Took a lot of time to select the best germplasm for this area, but its tricky since so few grow here.