Hybrids - Toyota vs Honda

In general, I'd AOL that. In this case, Mike Hunter doesn't even
make it to "troll" status, just "loud-mouthed ignoramus". And we
seem to be creating an interesting discussion despite him. <g>

 

Sorry, but no. That's not the primary reason why the visibility
balls are placed, or they would be installed on all power lines.

The power lines in selected locations tend to snag more METAL birds
than live birds as they fly past, I.E. light airplanes and
helicopters. Some power lines cross small valleys and rivers
laterally from peak to peak, and the power transmission wires can be
very high over the terrain below - where a pilot following visual
flight rules would assume he has clear air. If the light is wrong,
you can't see those wires till you are right on top of them.

All it takes is the local radio station's traffic reporting plane or
the local police patrol helicopter flying too low in the wrong place,
trying to spot a traffic tie-up or follow a pursuit. If they happen
by at the same altitude as the power lines, it gets really messy.

The visibility balls on the static wire are there to show the wire
location clearly, even in low visibility conditions where the pilots
can't see the towers.

--<< Bruce >>--

 

Yeah, it is - and here's the top two hits I got, which
coincidentally enough show the other side:

http://www.homepower.com/files/birds.pdf

They have a sound theory that may explain the few places that bird
strikes are concentrated in, namely the Altamont Pass near San
Francisco - agricultural pesticides are used on rodents, raptors eat
the rodents, and are drugging the raptors so stupid they're flying
into the generators - even when they are not turning at the time.

A bird flying into a stationary tower or a stationary wind turbine
blade is not the fault of the tower. It's the bird's responsibility
to spot and navigate around fixed obstacles. They have eyes. Too bad
they're connected to a brain the size of a pea.

And the other - http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html

Wow - all those birds running into lighted and checkerboard-painted
radio towers, and the sides of fixed buildings....

To conclude: It's tough to be a bird.

--<< Bruce >>--

 

www.sfgate.com

San Francisco Chronicle
12/19/04
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environmental Writer

Taming the Deadly Wind Farm Key Source of Renewable Energy
Often Lethal For Birds

If environmentalists and state officials have their way, the
towering windmills that dot the Altamont Pass will be replaced
and moved to prevent the killing of thousands of birds annually,
including species protected under federal and state laws.
....
With 5,000 windmills in a 50 square mile area, the Altamont Pass
is the world's largest windfarm, producing electricity to power
200,000 households annually. But it is also the worst in the
country for slaughtering birds.

Altamont Pass is a prime hunting ground for golden eagles and other
raptors, and scientists estimate _conservatively_ that the turbines
kill some 4,700 birds every year. ...

 

Ah, the unsupported "underpowered" assertion again. Can'te leave it alone,
can you? But you can't supply any facts, either, can you? You're the
bllowhard.

The '05 Sienna has more power than the '05 Freestar. Remember what Edmunds
had to say about the Freestar:
http://www.edmunds.com/new/2005/ford/freestar/100412870/researchlanding.html
"Unrefined powertrains with less horsepower and worse fuel mileage than most
competitors..."

The Camry is one of the most popular cars on the market. Toyota actually
makes money selling them. Most people think the 4 is at least adequately
powered or they wouldn't buy them and Toyota wouldn't make money selling
them. Friends who drive them think they move out just fine (and none of
these owns one of the latest with VVTi and a better power-to-weight ratio
than ever before).

Case closed.

Of course, we're talking about normal sedans and other passenger cars, not
fuel-wasting penis-substitutes such as the Mustang GT. If you really
need your fuel-wasting penis-substitute, and consider anything less than a
fuel-wasting penis-substitute to be underpowered, well. we can't help you
there.

 

Camry may still be the number one selling car but it was never the number
one vehicle sold in the US. The F150 is the number one seller and has been
for nearly thirty years, at just about twice as many sold as the Camry.
Camry is aparently not as popular as it was last year either. Cold it be
becse they are underpowered? The Camry was the ONLY vehicle in the top five
to lose sales in 2005, it dropped around 20,000 sales, falling from third
place to fourth below the Dodge Ram. The others all gained sales, including
the Honda Accord, which is actully made in the US, not merely assembed of
imported parts like the Camry

VEHICLE Sales Y-T-D 2005 Last Yr. '04 Rank Chg.

1 Ford F-Series pickup 760,929 740,817 1 +2.7
2 Chevrolet Silverado pickup 616,139 575,886 2 +7.0
3 Dodge Ram pickup 409,252 362,122 6 +13.0
4 Toyota Camry 383,478 403,136 3 -4.9
5 Honda Accord 371,307 367,210 5 +1.1

 

Wow! I never realized that the top 3 selling vehicles in America are
pick-up trucks. That's enlightening.
Rich

 

Thanks for the insights on the USian setup. However, our local
power company here in the eastern UK did install such power line
decorations to save swans/geese/etc from accidents, when flying
around favoured grazing/landing sites. Maybe they saved the odd
plane too -- dunno.

Back to the windmills: perhaps I ought to enquire as to rates of
bird strike locally, now that more and more of the whirly things
are being installed. Mind, some are offshore, by a mile or two,
and I am guessing we can spare the odd seagull (breeding to pest
numbers).

 

What's the relationship between torque and HP? I never understood
that.

And I had a year of physics at an engineering shchool.

I know power is work and torque is twisting force (F * r), but somehow
I would think the two would be very similar.

 

The difference is in the rpm curves. It really all hinges on the torque
anyway, as you point out, since for a given torque the hp rises in
proportion to rpm.

The low end torque is stuff I never really got a handle on, but at the high
end (where most of the controversy is anyway) it is all related to
breathing. Things like intake and exhaust design and cam considerations of
valve lift, duration and overlap can increase the useful torque at high rpms
and thereby increase the maximum power.

The torque/power debate really comes down to gearing. If we could select any
gear ratio we wanted any time we wanted, we could make good use of maximum
power and nobody would talk about torque. Back in the real world, within
each gear ratio, the torque curve determines the acceleration we feel.

Mike

 

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/8679/motor.html

 

wow that page is from 1997 too

 

Yes - here in the States the balls are orange, and are mandated by FAA
regulations where lines cross open expanses that helicopters might want to
cross. Interestingly, birds won't go near high tension lines (although they
sometimes build nests on 69KV poles). The "induction" apparently bothers
them as much as it bothers us. Lower voltages don't seem to affect birds
much.

Interesting to use windmills for piecework production. They are poorly
suited for public grids because they are too intermittent. Some think any
windy spot is suitable, but the requirements are daunting. The site must
have reasonably predictable winds mostly around the rated speed (presently
about 12 m/s or around 25 mph). Since the power output changes with the cube
of the wind speed, dropping the wind speed from 12 m/s to 10 m/s means a 40%
drop in output - a real budget breaker when you are contracted to deliver so
many MW. Here in the States many wind farms too often operate at a loss
because of failure-to-deliver penalties, and proposed FERC rules relating to
power hygiene (such as phase regulation... wind farms have been bad
neighbors on the grids so far) could make that worse. But for producing
hydrogen they could theoretically be made to pay off.

Mike

 

Re-read the chapters of the text on work, power, and torque.

No. Power is work delivered per unit time.

Google for explanations that will probably be better than any given off the
top of one's head here or at any personal web site.
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhorsepower.html isn't bad.

 

bingo!

 

Hey, they gotta be good for something! I have a brother who used to
work for American Wind Power in California, but I don't think they are in
business any more.

Seriously, uses that don't care much about the unpredictable nature of wind
power are a lot more attractive than going live on the public grids. Even
pumping water for gravity storage makes sense where the water and land are
suitable. Land that has the required characteristics for real-time wind
power is amazingly scarce and can become expensive if demand increases. Land
that has a usable amount of wind enough of the time for production
enterprises is far more common.

Whether hydrogen generation is going to have enough demand for wind or solar
powered cracking to be practical remains to be seen, but I don't rule it
out.

Mike

 

Thanks for that straightdope line. I knew power was work/time, just
misspoke.

That's the best explanation I've heard.

 

At the risk of repeating what others and have said and what you
know already...

Torque is, basically, a rotational (ie, twisting) force.

HP (horsepower) is a rate of doing work, so can also be expressed
in units such as watts (the modern preference, 1 HP == 746 watts)
and BTU (if one must).

An easy way to remember the equivalence between Force, Distance
(over which the Force is used) and Work (another way of saying
Energy) is to recall that
Work = Force * Distance

So Power, the Rate Of Doing Work, is
Work / Time

Therefore the Work done by Torque is, in effect, the Force acting
at a certain Leverage distance, tracing a circular path around a
point, over a certain Time.

One final relationship:
Torque = Force * Leverage
where Leverage is the distance between the line-of-action of the
Force and the pivot point, about which the Torque is calculated.

A 15 kilo Force pushing on a lever 2 metres long exerts a Torque
at the pivot point of 15*2 kilo-force-metres (not to be confused
with kilometres). Most engineers use Newtons, not kilos-force:
Newton = Kilo * 9.81 (approx)

So that Torque would actually be (about) 294.3 Newton-metres.

Back to the original question...

Work done in 1 revolution
= 2 * pi * Leverage * Force
= 2 * pi * Torque

So rate of doing work (ie, Power)
= 2 * pi * Torque / Time_for_1_rev
= 2 * pi * Torque * Revs_per_second
= watts

Use Newton-metres here and it is a doddle to compute Power. If
you absolutely must know the HP, divide Watts by 746.

(FWIW, AFAIK: 1 Pound-force-foot == 1.355818 Newton-metres. And
for pi you can get by with 3.14159, though it goes on to many <g>
more significant digits than that.)

Grief, I hope I got that lot right. <g> If anyone knows better,
do let me know soon.

 

Having exactly what to do with your repeated unsupported allegation that
Toyotas are underpowered?

Still, with every pickup, you get highway mileage in the teens! Yippee!
And, in spite of its voracious appetite for gas, Edmunds had this to say
about the F150:
http://www.edmunds.com/new/2005/ford/f150/100447759/researchlanding.html
"Feels sluggish even with larger V8."

Gee, thirsty AND slow. Who would have expected THAT from a Ford?

Get some facts and a clue and get back to us.

 

Considering the same vehicle weight and gearing, the vehicle with the higher
HP will go faster. Considering the same vehicle weight and HP the vehicle
that develops its torque at lower RPMs will be more powerful. Torque is
what enables a vehicle to get going from a stop more quickly and keeps it
going under load.

mike hunt