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Aug. 7, 2004 - Art Bell
02:51:07
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Richard Perez - Living off the Power Grid
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🎵 Music 🎵 From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid
you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whatever the case may be in the time zone, you're located
on...
All covered like a great warm blanket by this strange nighttime program called Coast to Coast AM.
It's my honor and privilege to be with you for the weekend.
Great to be here.
Let's see.
What's going on?
Well...
Quite a bit, actually.
On my webcam, I have placed a photograph of our sleepy little town of Veronta, Nevada, or at least a little part of it, taken from the air in the helicopter in which I got a ride about three years ago.
Now, since that time, we have become a boomtown.
Boy, are we a boomtown.
I mean, new Walmarts and all kinds of stuff here.
It's going crazy.
We're one of the, according to the... I forget what it was, the...
The Wall Street Journal, I think.
We're the second fastest growing town, or even the fastest in the whole country.
Crazy!
So our little boom town is kabooming.
In fact, we've got a new little restaurant.
This'll take you back.
Back to the 50s, easily.
We have a new little restaurant opening.
Just about to open.
Not so little, really.
You know, they're the kind right out of a 1950s American graffiti movie with the girls on the roller skates and the whole thing.
This town is like a blast back into the 50s period, so it'll fit right in.
I think that's pretty cool.
All we, perhaps on the local radio station, we had to run a night of Wolfman Jack or something.
Wouldn't that be cool?
Anyway, that's an air photograph of our little town about three years ago before the big boom hit.
Now, I'm going to go ahead and mention this to you.
Tomorrow night, ABC television is going to be here.
Why?
I don't know.
They're doing a... Peter Jennings is doing a two or three hour special that'll be aired in February of 2005, and they're going to interview me and come and shoot and invade and hang around like locusts.
So that'll be aired tomorrow night.
I've had that happen a few times since I've been doing this program, having a major network in here while we're doing the show.
It's kind of... I don't know.
Kind of weird, actually.
I mean, they've got to get a camera right up in your face.
So we'll see.
Tomorrow night, by the way, we're going to have Stephen Greer here, who got... You know how I'm always talking to Stephen about how potentially unsafe what he's doing is?
Well, he received a pretty serious telephone threat.
In fact, we've got a copy of it, and you'll hear it tomorrow night.
He'll be our guest tomorrow night, Stephen Greer, and so we're going to be talking ufology and UFOs and, you know, the government cover-up and all the rest of it.
In a moment, the other cover-up, at least a lot of people, of course, think it is.
I note the first 1, 2, 3, 4 major national stories tonight continue to be about Iraq.
in a moment now i guess i should refer to the the good people of a bc
at a bc is locust They're not.
It's just a sort of a state of mind.
I, you know, I don't like TV.
Being honest with you, I just don't like TV.
I like watching it, but I don't like being on it.
However, in this case, the reason I consented to do this is because they have promised and I, you know, I think this is very, very important.
They really have promised me that this is an objective honest non chuckle factor look at ufology and they hope to propel with this program a major investigation of what these things are and if that really is their goal then no matter the inconvenience I really could not help but be a part of it that's very important and we've been all waiting for a major network to take a major real honest-to-god interest in this subject and they promised to do that so
Inconvenient or not, I felt obligated to be part of it.
So that will occur tomorrow night and they'll be around.
Now, the Iraqi government has decided to give amnesty to people who have committed some crimes.
The Iraqi interim prime minister signed an amnesty Saturday intended to persuade militants Fighting a now 15-month-old has been going on for 15 months, this insurgency, to put down their weapons.
They're invited to and join the government to help rebuild the country.
However, the law pardons only what they call minor criminals, not killers or terrorists.
So it appeared very unlikely to dampen any of the violence, as some insurgent leaders called it, quote, insignificant, end quote.
Probably from the point of view of their crimes, I'm sure it is.
So what does that mean?
If you were a pickpocket, if you stole a painting out of a museum, you would be pardoned, but if you continue to blow things up, no!
An Al-Qaeda terror suspect detained in England was sent to the U.S.
in early 2001 by the principal architect of the September 11 suicide hijackings to perform surveillance on economic targets in New York, according to U.S.
officials and government interviews with other captured terror suspects.
said the suspect claimed get this folks that he has associates in america possibly in california the heightened state of alert in new york newark new jersey and washington is a quote grim reminder of terrorist threats that still face the u.s.
said president bush on saturday he defended the elevated warnings in the face of criticism that they were based on old intelligence And the pre-trial hearing for a soldier photographed with naked Iraqi prisoners a recessed Saturday without any ruling on whether the Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking administration officials must testify.
An aspiring politician and video game designer who faked his own beheading.
Can you believe that?
Faked his own beheading?
By Iraqi militants awoke on Saturday to learn, oh look at that, television stations around the world were showing his homemade video, his hoax.
Benjamin Vanderford, 22, said he posted the 55 second clip, which seems to show a knife sawing against his neck.
On an online fire-sharing network in May, it circulated in cyberspace before crossing over to the major media, airing on Arab television, and of course, the whole world.
Why somebody would... Well, it's the world today.
A series of witnesses, uh, play six top al-Qaeda fugitives in Africa, and what were they doing there?
They were buying up diamonds in the run-up to September 11th.
This is according to a confidential report by U.S.-backed prosecutors obtained by the Associated Press.
The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to the very long-standing claims of Al-Qaeda that millions of dollars was laundered before September 11th.
John Kerry said Saturday, the restriction on stem cell research, we just did a program on that, Imposed by our president was a triumph of ideology over science and quote, only adds to the loss and pain, end quote, of millions of Americans suffering from potentially curable disease.
At this very moment, he said, some of the most pioneering cures and treatments are right at our fingertip spot because of stem cell research ban.
They remain just beyond our reach, the Democratic presidential candidate said in his party's weekly address.
Well, how many of you have a pet that you would pay $50,000, and we all love our pets, don't we, $50,000 to have cloned?
Well, if you love your pet that much, now you can do it!
Two cloned kittens have been born using a new cloning method that may be safer and more efficient than traditional methods.
Genetic Savings and Clone promises to clone anyone's pet for $50,000 or so, and began with the chief executive of that company and his pet.
The two kittens, Taburi And Baba Ganoush were born to separate surrogate mothers in June, said the company.
Its report was not submitted for the traditional scientific review process and has not been scrutinized by cloning experts, but the company is less interested in scientific questions and medical promise of cloning and much more interested in its business model, helping people make copies of their beloved pets.
So they claim they've got the science down to a paw, but they don't really care about that.
They actually, they're in biz.
So this is cloning, commercial cloning, a reality.
So I know there are some people with the money out there who love their pets so deeply that they would clone the little guy or gal.
Would you be one of those?
Just $50,000?
When performed by a skilled team using sufficiently advanced technology, clones resemble their donors to an uncanny degree.
Just as we predicted, they say.
It's a happy day for our clients.
Some experts have argued that cloning pets is a gamble, as non-genetic factors like conditions in the mother's womb can affect coat color and temperament.
So, I don't know, would you really get the same exact Well, probably not.
But the question remains, how many of you would have, would love your pet so much, and there are plenty of people, that you would clone the little guy or gal?
Well, now you can!
This is not future shock, this is now!
The Perseid meteor shower is on the way, you know.
Conditions this year, they say, are very favorable, with no moonlight to worry about, no nasty moonlight to Ruin everything.
Some are already being seen each night now, but the best is yet to come.
In fact, they will increase in number each night for the next few days, reaching a maximum late in the night of August 11th and 12th when, get this, up to 100 meteors per hour may be visible under good conditions.
The shower occurs when the Earth passes through the trail of particles left by Comet Swift-Tuttle.
Named after its discoverers.
And then, Jeff sends this, and I have no way of knowing if this is really a Bush quote or not, but you know, the President is certainly in the middle of a big fight to retain office, and he's under a lot of pressure.
And in fact, Jeff says, Art, the pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush, He came up with a gem of a fraudulent slip yesterday at the signing ceremony.
I don't know if this is true.
At the signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said, quote, Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people.
And neither do we.
I find it a little hard to believe.
The President would have uttered such words, but you know, these things do happen.
So, I don't know.
You tell me.
Did the President actually say that?
Does anybody have that on tape?
How do you think he's doing?
Do you think the President is going to be re-elected?
Have you made up your mind yet?
I am told The next president of the U.S.
will be decided by those who have not made up their mind.
I would be one of those.
I have not made up my mind yet.
Traditionally, in times of war and conflict, sitting presidents are retained by an American people who don't want to change things in the middle of a conflict.
On the other hand, we're on the downside of this conflict where there's been a lot of political pressure because of the death of American men and women in Iraq, and so it's a hard call.
Traditionally, presidents during good economic times are retained.
Do you think these are good economic times?
Remember the famous quote, do you think you are better off than you were four years ago?
Do you?
As you look around at your lifestyle, your salary, your general happiness with your life conditions, are you better off than you were four years ago or not?
If that is the question, then perhaps you have the answer.
Let's take some calls.
West of the Rockies, you are upon the air.
Good evening.
Yes.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yeah, this is a live person.
Uh, well let me see.
Yeah, a pinch hurts.
Yes, I appear to be alive.
Yes.
Okay, this is not Art, is it?
Um, what would your best guess be?
Well, your voice doesn't sound like Art Bell's voice.
Oh, that's very suspicious, huh?
So if I claim to be Art, then you will not believe me, probably.
Well, could be.
You do have a little twist to your voice.
Well, let's say, let's say, let's say.
For the sake of our discussion that I am art.
If I was art, what would you be saying?
Well, since I'm aware of the feedback situation, my radio is about 30 feet away from me, so I don't know what the current subject is.
There is none.
It's open lines.
Oh, great!
Well, I've got a subject to discuss with art.
Yes, well, what is it?
Well, it has to do with You thought there weren't screeners, huh?
You thought there weren't screeners, right?
I don't know.
But here I am asking you what you want to talk about, huh?
Okay, well, I'll tell you.
Okay.
It has to do with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And it seems to be... Wait a minute.
You found them?
No, I didn't find them.
Oh.
Well, just listen to me.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, originally, we gave or sold to Iraq Weapons of mass destruction.
We did?
Biological and chemical weapons when they were at war with Iran.
Oh yes, there was some of that.
So we knew that he had them, but did he use them all up?
Well, you know, here's what I've always wondered about.
You know when the tanks were rolling toward Baghdad, And you know, in Baghdad, they had to know, hey baby, it's all over.
It's over.
And so, if they did have these weapons of mass destruction, wouldn't you think at that moment they would use them?
I don't think so.
No?
Dom was more smart than that.
Really?
Yeah.
Are you talking about... I mean, how smart was he?
They found him hiding in the bottom of a hole.
Yeah.
Right?
They had to drag him up out of the dirt.
I mean, maybe he was smart, but...
Yeah, he was on the escape route, but I'm talking about the first Gulf War, and that probably put him on notice, and he could have buried all these weapons.
But what intrigues me is that never is there mentioned anything in the news about how we, America, Well, that's pretty common knowledge, really.
I mean, you don't really want to tell Art all this stuff, do you?
Well, it just intrigues me, because I never hear this ever mentioned on the news.
Well, I'm afraid Art just doesn't want to hear about that.
Oh, well, okay.
That's fine.
But thank you for calling.
Okay.
and take care.
International Line, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hello there?
Yes?
Hi, Art.
Hello.
You're on a distant-sounding cell phone.
Yeah.
I'm driving a truck.
That's probably all the background noise there.
I believe there's a lot of hype to the terrorist threat and things.
I think it's possible, but I think it would have happened by now.
You mean if something bad was going to happen again, something after 9-11, you think it would have already occurred?
Yes, I do.
Okay, well that's an extremely interesting question, and I asked a guest, I think it was last week, about Whether we are, he pointed out that we certainly overestimated the Soviet Union in terms of what they could do and the likelihood of an attack through the Volgograd and all the rest of it, right?
And he said, yes, we vastly overestimated their capability, though we all do know they had the nuclear tipped multiple reentry type capability.
Nevertheless, we did overestimate their capability and we may be doing that with Al-Qaeda.
Now, will another Something or another occur.
I don't know.
I really don't know.
Are we overestimating their capability?
I don't know.
But they did do what they did, so you have to assume that they would try something of that magnitude or greater again, and to not assume that would be to not prepare for it, and to not prepare for that would be criminal.
So, I think what the government is doing right now is okay.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Mark Bell, what an honor to speak to you again.
Good to have you.
The other night, George Norie had on Geena Davis, and she was following about the 9-11 and all that.
Well, she was speaking about that Mohammed Hussein, and I heard on the news yesterday where the FBI has arrested him.
Really?
Yes.
I thought it was such an interesting program.
And I just wish that there could be a follow-up to that program again.
There were so many unanswered questions.
Well, if you're right, and they really have arrested him, I haven't heard that, well then the follow-up would be the trial and the sentencing and all the rest of it, right?
Yes, exactly.
All right, sir, thank you.
Thank you, Art.
Right, take care.
You think President Bush really said this?
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
I bet he didn't really say that.
Or if he did, it certainly would be worth having a tape of.
A lot of things get said during the stress of a campaign that, of course, they, you know, the candidates don't mean to say.
They deserve to come rolling out from the high desert in the middle of the night.
i'm art bell and this is close the
the I see the blues.
The moon... ...is beautiful.
Beautiful, oh yeah, oh yeah The moon is beautiful
The sun is even more beautiful Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
Beautiful, oh yeah, oh yeah Beautiful, oh yeah, oh yeah
Beautiful, oh yeah, oh yeah To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code
7.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access Number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
I couldn't resist.
Remember that, everybody?
Do you remember that?
They're up there, aren't they?
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, back to open lines in a moment.
Oh yeah.
I guess the President did say this.
He did.
I've had about, I don't know, a couple dozen fast blasters saying, yes, unfortunately, he did say that.
I wonder if he... There's no follow-up here to tell me if he realized what he said when he said it.
But you know, those things happen.
And I definitely don't hold that against the President in any way.
I mean, it's just a slip.
Of course, this is worse than your average slip.
I wouldn't hold it against President.
They're under a great deal of pressure, any candidate for the highest office in the land, and they do a lot of speaking.
Millions of words come from their mouth, and every single one of them is dissected.
Nevertheless, this will rate up there as one of the classics of all time, and I really would like to have a copy of it.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, Art BD in Las Vegas.
How you doing, buddy?
Pretty good, man.
How are you tonight?
Well, you know what?
Two things for you, man.
Number one, congratulations on this ABC deal.
Oh, yeah.
You know, because they promised it would be a very serious, you know, kind of for the first time, one of the big three networks looking at UFOs.
And so it was irresistible, much as I do not like having TV here.
Well, you know what?
In this war against disclosure, you're not just a soldier.
You're like Commander-in-Chief.
No, I'm not.
You're up there.
You're a higher-ranking official.
No, what I am is a spokesperson, sir.
A talking head.
That's what I am.
People like Dr. Greer, they're the ones that are out in front.
Well, do me a favor.
If I can't get in tomorrow night, ask Dr. Greer about the whole DMT connection, because I really believe that that's part of the riddle.
You know, McKenna said, hey, there's no more standing on these lonely hilltops.
Well, all right.
For you, sir, I am going to ask Dr. Greer, bearing in mind this is an emergency room surgeon, right?
An emergency room doctor.
And so I'm going to talk to this doctor tomorrow night on your behalf, and I'm going to say, hey, doc, what do you think about Taking some DMT and meeting up with the aliens.
Hey man, I'll tell you what, you have a good one, and who's your guest tonight anyway?
It's a secret.
Secret.
Alright, I'll stay tuned.
No it isn't.
We're going to talk about energy.
My guest tonight is Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine.
And we're going to talk about energy.
God knows, it's probably, it should be at the top of our national priority of things that we ought to be getting done, actually should have had done already.
But we are going to talk about energy.
Oh my, what a topic that is going to be as time goes on and the last of the oil pumps from the ground.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yes, hi Art.
Hello.
I'm glad to hear you're on the radio again.
Good to be here.
You were talking about the war earlier, and, you know, we have a born-again Christian as a president, and he knows that we're living in the last days.
And if you notice, we've been going through some pretty bad weather.
And we're supposed to be going through some famines that's going to come about, and we're going to have a lot of people dying and a lot of people sick.
And they said that they have to lower the population because of this.
And as you know, I guess, I don't know if you've been told, but a lot of our soldiers are sick now.
And many of the people there in Iraq are.
A lot of people are sick in Iraq, my dear, because of the depleted uranium shells that we, on top of, of course, what the shells did, but the depleted uranium shells that were used, it'll be around for a thousand years or so.
And there are claims that there are many, many sick already.
So that, that certainly is true.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello?
Hello?
John?
Yes, John.
I want to talk about the basic subject, static electricity.
What about it?
Well, what I noticed is in the last year or two, I'm calling, by the way, from Springfield, Oregon, and listening to KOH, but anyway, what I've noticed is The, you know, every time you, uh, scooch out of your car, uh, normally, uh, if it was, uh, kind of a cloudy overcast day, you know, a lot of moisture in the air.
Yes.
High humidity.
Yes.
Then you wouldn't get shocked.
Correct.
Uh, not lately.
You're saying static electricity now has broken through.
Increased.
Broken through the humidity barrier?
Uh, something like that.
Uh huh.
I'm educated in electronics.
I have a two-year electrical engineering degree, and just completed a bachelor's in computers, but anyway.
I was always led to believe that static electricity was, you know, such as... It is a by-product.
...stuff in your foot across the carpet.
Yes.
It's like the catnip hose or whatever.
That's right, yes.
But what I'm observing is the static is just more in the air now.
That's an interesting observation.
Let's see if anybody else has made it.
Now, of course, I live here in the high desert where it's single digit dry most of the time.
So we live with static electricity as a way of life.
And we have to always be conscious of it around any electronic devices or anything else.
In other words, always touch, you know, a piece of metal first.
And then whatever you intend to proceed to do, otherwise you might zap it.
Do any of the rest of you in humid-type climates notice an increase in static electricity?
I'm not sure what that would mean, but it certainly is an interesting observation.
On the international line, you're on the air.
Hi.
I heard I got a couple of light-eyed and stirring here, Paul.
We're listening to you on KPNW.
KPNW.
And where are you?
Oh, pretty good.
Wait, no, no, no, no, no.
Where are you?
The Powell River is kind of like, you know where Victoria is?
Yes.
It's, you hop out across the water toward Vancouver, just across, about a 40-50 minute ferry ride.
All right.
You know what Mel Blanc's Tombstone reads?
What does it read?
You know, Mel Blanca?
It reads, that's all, folks.
That's what it says?
Yeah, that's what it says.
Well, he had a grand sense of humor, didn't he?
He did.
I loved him.
Also, a funny thing happened in Vancouver.
We had a little symphony of fire every year, you know, when the fireworks end.
Yes.
And we got policemen on horses.
And, of course, people, you know, they sometimes take some booze along with them.
That's a poster, right?
That would be the Royal Mounted, right?
Some of my Royal and some of the Vancouver Police Force.
Well, I heard in the news that a drunk hit a horse.
A drunk hit a horse?
I mean, I could just imagine swinging a poor horse.
I don't know where he hit him, but he just hit him in the mouth or something.
No, no, the drunk hit the horse.
You mean, you mean socked the horse?
He hit the horse with his fist.
Well, that's really sick.
I know.
All right.
Well, I appreciate your call, but that's, that's truly sick.
It was out Western where somebody decked a horse.
You remember that?
Oh boy.
First-time caller line, you are on the air.
Hello.
It's a pleasure to talk with you, Mr. Bell.
And to you, sir.
Where are you?
This is Mark out in Seattle, and the reason I called was I've been having the feeling recently that I need to dig a hole in my backyard, like a 1950s-style bunker, and I'm wondering if any of your really psychic listeners are feeling the same way.
Are you one of my psychic listeners, or is this just sort of an overwhelming thing for you?
I would say somewhere in between.
I wouldn't say that I'm really psychic, but often I'll have hunches, and if I follow through with them, they turn out to be right.
Well, better to dig and nothing to happen than you to be above ground saying, damn, I sure wish I dug that hole.
You know, I kind of feel that way.
Well, then dig it, sir.
I mean, follow your You know, follow your feelings.
If you think you should dig a hole, then dig a hole.
What are you going to put on top of it?
Boards?
Dirt?
It's probably steel.
You know, I'm getting older, Art.
Digging a hole is a lot of hassle.
It's going to be a lot of work, yeah.
I kind of feel like, well, if it's the end of the world, maybe I ought to just ride out and meet it head on rather than... Well, there is the other side.
I mean, you could have a heart attack digging the hole to save your life.
Well, that's true.
That's very true.
You've got to factor that in.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe if other people feel that way.
We'll see.
Alright, if I get a bunch of, yes, that man was right, we should be digging a hole.
I mean, how many of you have that subconscious feeling right now?
Your inner self telling you, it's time to dig a hole.
I need a hole, a deep one with a big piece of, a big slab of metal above it.
But then you reason with yourself, and you say to yourself, well, if the only way I can survive is in a hole with a big piece of metal above me, Then what do I have that's worth going back to?
Classic dilemma.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, Art.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Yes, I'd like to talk about how we can't vote for either President Bush or John Kerry.
That seems to be the choice, yes.
I wish a real American would step up and grab the reins and take this country in the right direction.
And do you think that will be either one of these men?
Not really.
We have a porous border.
If these people are going to come to this country, I believe that we need to teach them English and they need to become Americans as Other generations of immigrants have come to this country and became Americans.
Well, nevertheless, the sad but true fact is that that is going to be your only realistic choice.
There may be others running, but I mean, realistically, we both know that not a third party is going to win.
It's going to be President Bush or John Kerry.
So you've got to make that choice.
And faced with that, how do you think you'll choose?
You know, I voted for President Bush four years ago.
I voted for his father when I could first vote in 1992.
I emailed the President with some things and I said if you don't, you know, I believe if you don't do them you won't get elected.
But I think that he will.
It's unfortunate the way that he could say one thing and people can turn it into this big firestorm.
And then, you know, John Kerry says one thing or does one thing and when on the other side the Republicans try to do something or say something, all these people say, why are you bothering him?
Blah, blah, blah.
I think it would be my guess that the President will be re-elected, and that's just my guess.
It's pure guess.
But I think the American people, in the end, are rather unlikely to change horses in the middle of a conflict.
And I believe because we are fighting an enemy from the 7th century who, just like the President said today, will stop at nothing to turn this world into a Muslim world.
And I don't understand why the government does not educate this country And the world on what we are fighting.
Muslim, radical, fundamentalist Muslims.
Not every Muslim.
I'll tell you what I think the reason for that is, sir.
The president has been very careful to frame the extremist factions from the mainstream Muslim world.
We don't want war with the entire Muslim world.
Hopefully the mainstream Muslim world does not want a war with us.
And so the president, for obvious reasons, has been very careful to frame it as only the extremist, and I hope that's all it is.
I really do.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Oh, Art.
Hi.
Your fellow listener doesn't want to live in a concrete bunker.
I live in one.
You're not going to dig a hole?
Oh, you already live in one.
Walls are four feet thick, and I have a steel ceiling Heavy-gauge steel ceiling.
What is it?
Why have you done this?
I haven't.
I bought this place.
Well, nevertheless, I mean, you've acquired it.
So my question to you is, what are you expecting?
I wasn't expecting anything.
It was just an inexpensive place to live at the time.
Huh.
For what reason was it originally built?
I think it was a bomb shelter.
It was built back in the 60s.
So you bought somebody's bomb shelter?
I guess I did.
Well, so how is it living in a bomb shelter?
You can't hear nothing going on outside.
I'll bet.
But I mean, how is it from a day-to-day living point of view?
Is it like anywhere else except, uh, just, you know?
I live here in the Midwest and I have to run a dehumidifier constantly to keep the moisture out from the inside of it.
Yes.
Yes, well, um, Well, you're ready for anything, I guess.
I guess.
We had a storm here about two weeks ago.
I stepped outside.
It looked like a tornado had run through the neighborhood.
Don't you worry a little bit about flooding?
Well, the water in 1993 was four and a half feet deep inside this place.
I mean, it doesn't really bother me.
I mean, the water isn't going to hurt anything.
No?
I mean, haven't you furnished your bomb shelter with, you know, the normal stuff?
Well, it's furnished like a regular house.
Well, four and a half feet of water would really disturb that.
Not with concrete floors, concrete ceilings, or walls.
I mean, it's fortified.
I've never talked to anybody who lived in a bomb shelter before.
That's pretty cool.
The whole front of it faces toward the south.
Was it real expensive?
No, what I paid for it wasn't real expensive.
Nobody else would live in it.
No, huh?
So, um, if you woke up one day and, you know, what do you do?
Is it like a submarine door to get your steel open?
No, it's got a regular door on it, but it's got one of them, it's got one of them garage door type deals on it that's heavy steel.
You can roll it down.
It's a blast door.
Yeah, that's what it is, I guess.
Oh my God.
And so how long have you lived in this?
I've lived in about five years now.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, how do you like the life?
I mean... Well, uh, other than never being able to look outside and see the outside, it's not too bad.
I mean... If you woke up one morning, and you opened your blast doors, and you looked outside, and it was obvious, uh, an incredible holocaust had occurred, and there was nothing but ashes up there, what would you do?
Uh... Probably just shut the door and say to heck with it.
Alright, thank you very much.
You remember the bomb shelter days, everybody?
That was kind of like going under the desk, in a way, I suppose.
If there was an all-out nuclear conflict, I'm not sure that any bomb shelter would be sufficient.
None at all.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Art Bell.
That would be me, yes.
How are you, sir?
Just spiffy.
This is Dave, Kenai.
Oh, all the way up in Anchorage.
Yeah, Kenai.
I've been listening to you since 1991.
Yes.
It's been a long time.
I just wanted to say I don't think we can stand another four years of Bush.
It's pretty scary out there.
Well, I don't know.
We're in the middle of a conflict with Iraq, and my thinking was, I'm just guessing, but that the American people probably would be disinclined, you know, to change presidents right in the middle of a conflict.
Did you hear that Mt.
Spur is starting to sparkle up a little bit?
Mt.
Spur?
Yeah, across the inlet there.
Really?
It erupted back in 1993 and dumped a whole bunch of ash on us here in Anchorage.
Oh yeah, I absolutely did hear about that.
What's the latest?
Are they really expecting it to... Well, it sort of quieted down.
We had a lot of earthquakes.
We've got a big lake up there now.
We never had the lake before, and it had a picture in the paper here.
Have you felt any urge to dig a hole in the ground?
No.
I'm pretty well... I'm not afraid of anything.
Uh-huh.
Except another four years of bush.
Oh, my goodness.
That serious?
Yeah.
And you know, Alaska's a Republican state.
So you firmly intend that devote of four
john kerry or definitely
uh...
and company nice talking with you
uh... well great idea to use her you found it's like you on the radio
but thank you for that have you ever noticed when people call me
other there must be something about the you know the quality of a
telephone line that uh... simply will not allow them to believe that it is me
on the other hand along finally came out caller who said you actually do sound
Well, about 30 seconds, you're on the air, first-time caller line, hello.
Hello Art, my name is Jack, I'm calling from Los Angeles.
Jack, what's on your mind, real fast?
Um, I saw that thing with Bush on Letterman Thursday night, they showed a videotape of it.
So it is true?
Yes it is.
No BBC News guys coming to see you?
Uh, yeah, tomorrow night.
You could ask them to bring you a copy.
Um, you know, you're right, I could, couldn't I?
Um, poor President Bush, that's a terrible thing to have said.
By mistake.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
Right.
Take care.
From the high desert in the middle of the night, this is Coast to Coast AM.
How you doing?
Abunmumba Abunmumba
Abunmumba Abunmumba
Ile ila sotala minoru Abunmumba
Nyoge mahabir indi fadum Do you know that behind all these walls
Be it silence, sound, smell or touch There's something inside that we need so much
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, or the strength of an oak when it's deep in the ground.
The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing And all these things in our memories soar And they use them to help us to fly!
Yeah!
Thanks for watching.
Oh It's war!
Want to take a ride?
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
line at area code 775-727-1295. The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033. From west of
the Rockies, call 800-618-8255. International callers may reach a
You may save yourself some money.
And who knows what you may do if you listen tonight.
and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
If you listen carefully tonight, you may well learn something,
you may save yourself some money, and who knows what you may do if you listen tonight.
And here's why I say that.
Quite a number of years ago, I began to have guests on the power question,
on our grid, on being self-sufficient, on all kinds of things like that,
and I learned all kinds of interesting things, like, well, gee, like, my appliances, for example.
They were, at the time, about 13 years old.
You know, the washer, the dryer, the refrigerator, that sort of thing.
And I had a guest on who said, you know, New appliances take about a third or a fourth the amount of electricity that what you have right now does.
And then I learned about solar panels and wind power.
And then I learned about heat.
We live here in the desert where on average it's up to 105 or 6 degrees every day now during the two brutal months we have in the desert.
And so you have to build things not to emanate heat.
As much as possible.
So I have revolutionized my household.
I am independent of the grid.
I have both wind and solar power in abundance, and I have all the equipment to generate it, and that's what I use in my home.
Then I changed all my appliances.
Then I went around and changed all my light bulbs.
Then I took these heat-prone monitors and got them out of here and put in LCD screens.
And, you know, slowly over the years, from listening to my own program, I've changed the way I live.
My wife and I have changed the way we live, and you, too, can do that or part of it.
If you listen carefully to tonight's guest, who is Richard Perez, he is the publisher for Home Power Magazine.
Now, he facilitates the work of the magazine's editorial, art, advertising, production, sales, web, CD-ROM crews.
His primary job, he says, is digital janitor.
He maintains and upgrades Home Power's extensive computer systems and writes articles and editorials.
Richard has been living and working off-grid since way back in 1970, a long time before I thought about it, with a photovoltaic and wind electric system.
Richard's goal is to change the way people make electricity.
So if you listen tonight, you just may learn.
Ladies and gentlemen, Home Power Magazine's Richard Perez.
Richard, welcome to the program.
Hello, Art, and thanks for having me.
Oh, you're very welcome.
I cannot think of a more important subject than what we're about to talk about.
Now, everybody I think remembers California's not-too-distant problems with electricity, where they had brownouts and blackouts.
Well, I'll tell you, it's felt better.
It's getting old.
shortages, that kind of thing, and that was a little taste, just a little taste.
What kind of shape is the grid in, the electric grid, across the U.S.?
Well, I'll tell you, it's felt better. It's getting old.
The power plants, the transmission line infrastructure was, by and large,
created 20 to 30 years ago, 40 in some cases, and even longer.
The utilities have been running lean, and they haven't been investing the kind of money they should have been investing in upgrading the transmission lines and power plants.
So what we've got here is a basically aged infrastructure that is stretched very, very thin.
And it's not just a matter of, oh, things like natural disasters, accidents.
You know, now we have to deal with things like sabotage, fuel supply limitations, and an ever-increasing demand for electricity.
So what we've got is a situation where this whole structure is poised to fail.
And it has failed for, well, Things like the financial concerns that caused the California energy crisis.
These are things I call energy-sharking, Enron-like activities.
And also, well, we're not sure what caused the East Coast, Midwest blackout.
Didn't they nail that down?
I thought they did to some small power plant somewhere.
Yes, and I've heard everything from that to it was a tree branch across some high voltage lines.
I don't think they're ever going to definitively pin down exactly what caused that, but the point is it is a house of cards and it is a house of cards that is stressed heavily and Any small failure anywhere in this massive grid can bring down whole sections of it.
All right, let me ask you this.
Let's back up a little bit.
You said that they had not... I understand that putting in new electric lines where there had not previously been lines would be a challenge in today's world because we have environmentalists and people who don't want you crossing properties and they don't want electric lines near and all the rest.
But why have they not upgraded The current infrastructure that we have?
Well, there's a number of reasons.
People's objections is a big one.
It's a not-in-my-backyard syndrome.
No, I've got that, but that would be respect to new things.
With respect to the lines they have up now, why not put up new wire, new insulators, you know, upgrade?
Well, upgrading a power line is only slightly less expensive than building it in the first place.
Oh.
And what we're talking about here is roughly a million dollars a mile.
Oh.
In other words, about the same type of money it takes to lay down a freeway, a four-lane interstate highway.
Very expensive.
Yes, extremely expensive.
Not including the legal work that goes up front into obtaining a right-of-way for this.
And the utilities spend roughly half of the money That they take in on their expenses.
They're spending half of it on the maintenance, upgrading, and establishment of new power lines.
Currently, we've got about 160,000 miles of high-voltage lines in the USA.
And we could use, additionally, it depends on which expert you talk to, but somewhere between 25,000 and 45,000 additional miles.
And every time I see a notice where a utility wants to put up a line or whatever, the people in the path of the line are going, no, no, no.
I know.
Not in my backyard.
And believe me, I can see their point.
You know, I live way off grid, six miles from the nearest place where you could plug in a light off the grid.
Oh, well then you're...
If you're that far from even a connection to the grid, then you had no choice.
Well, no, I had no choice.
And that's what got me started in 1970.
When you moved there, had you decided, all right, I'm going to become energy self-sufficient in my new home, and that's what I'm going to do?
Well, no, I decided I was going to be 1880s.
When I moved to the country.
So you were going to have candles and... Candles, kerosene lights, all of our water by hand.
I see.
And when did that change?
Oh, about six or seven years into the process, I decided that, hey, it was time to join the 20th century, because 1880s life is just too damn tough.
It's... hauling water gets very, very old.
But even though I'm six miles from the end of the nearest, you know, 120 volt light socket, I have a high voltage line running three quarters of a mile from my house.
Oh, really?
Yes.
Well, all right.
So what have you done?
You are independent to what degree?
What have you put up?
Oh, about 4.2 kilowatts of photovoltaic panels.
Excellent.
1500 watt wind generator.
And then the Court of Last Resort, which is a 6,000-watt gasoline-powered generator.
I'd rather eat a bug than turn it on, but if all else fails, I will turn it on.
And we run it about 150 hours yearly.
How often do you have to turn it on?
How frequently?
Well, during the summer, not at all.
And during the spring, not at all.
During the fall.
But during the winters here in Oregon, I'll run it on average maybe once or twice a week.
You know, when extended cloudy periods hang on.
Sure, and that does occur in Oregon.
Okay, so you've got 4,000 watts of electrical energy and then you must have a, do you have a battery bank to store it?
A big battery bank.
I can store enough energy to last us for four and a half to five days.
That's damn good.
So what do you have, a lot of deep cell type things?
Yes, large storage cell batteries.
I can store about 65 kilowatt hours Of energy.
That's excellent.
Right.
And when, you know, second, third day of no sun and no wind, we start conserving.
Sure.
And then we start, you know, oh, no, it's not time to vacuum the house.
Oh, no, it's not time to do the wash.
It can wait till later.
And, you know, eventually, if the sun doesn't come out, we'll light up that gas generator, we'll burn it for two or three hours, and then Everything goes on.
Alright, let me further ask.
Do you take the output of the battery bank that you have and then convert it into 110 volts or 240 or something like that?
Do you have inverters, in other words?
Oh yes.
You do, alright.
Oh, absolutely.
Gone are the days when Everybody ran a 12-volt household.
That was the very early days of off-grid living back in the early 80s.
So, these days, then, you can have the solar panels out there, folks.
They can be feeding a battery bank, and that battery bank then goes to what's called an inverter, and that changes it into 120 or 240 volts, as you would normally have in your home.
You run it into your house, and then what, Richard?
What have you done inside the house?
Our house is electrically normal.
People who walk in there are amazed that we're not on grid.
We have every particular giga that we want.
And it's just that whatever we do, we do the research and we spend that additional amount of money, and it's generally not much, probably another 5 to maybe even 15% on some cases, to get the most efficient appliance possible to do that job.
Right.
We have two refrigerator freezers.
We have a home theater system.
We have five computer systems with a network.
We have satellite internet, compact fluorescent and LED lighting.
All right for you.
I mean, it's... The house is cycling.
Well, when we're getting the sun, and we don't really particularly have to pay attention to how much we're using, we can cycle 12 to 17 kilowatt hours of renewable energy every day.
Which is enough to power a downtown home.
You know, with the possible exception of things like an electric stove.
Our stove is run by propane.
Our cook stove.
For heat, we use solar heat in the winter, and we use passive solar cooling in the summer.
When you say you use solar heat, what, what?
Oh, our home is a passive solar home.
It's also an active solar home.
By that I mean the building is situated in such a way that it catches the south.
It's got a lot of windows on the south face and it is facing due south.
Right.
That's the passive angle.
The building is super insulated.
It's about R30 in the walls and R60 in the ceilings.
And it also has an active solar heating system with four Uh, flat panels on the roof that drive a thermal slab on the ground level of the building.
And this slab is concrete and it has, uh, and it's faced with, uh, beautiful Spanish tiles and, and, uh, it has tubing embedded in the slab.
So when the sun comes up, the, uh, differential thermostat says, Hey, the collectors are hotter than the floor.
Let's pump heat.
And it runs all day long.
So, I want to get this straight.
These tubes are embedded.
You put them in and then pour concrete over them, is that correct?
Yes, that's right.
And the concrete, I take it, absorbs the heat during the day quite readily and passes it on to these tubes that, what, have water in them or something?
Yes.
It's plain old water.
Okay, and then that water circulates into what?
Into solar collectors on the roof.
Flat plate collectors.
Right.
Four by eight foot.
Four feet wide, eight foot long panels on the roof.
And then how does it transfer that heat to your home?
Just from radiation and convection off the slab.
And the slab will store three to four days of heat for the house once we get it warm.
And I mean warm.
My wife Karen and I have walked around on it barefoot and it is distinctly warm to the touch.
And when there's snow on the ground outside, we used to have a wood stove and we still have one for backup.
And although we don't burn it much, we cut our wood consumption.
And we're in a place where we get three and four feet of snow during a winter.
We've cut our wood consumption from four to five cords of winter down to half a cord of wood per winter.
Gee, that's more for aesthetics than real heat.
Yeah.
Well, there are times when we'll get Two week and three week cloudy periods here in Oregon.
It doesn't happen very often.
Last winter was a good example.
In November and December we had one.
So we'll light the stove up and burn it for a few hours.
And because the house is so well insulated, it traps that heat and then we can cruise for A couple, three days before we have to do it again if the sun doesn't come back.
Alright, well you're a pretty good example because I live, for example, in a solar paradise where clouds are the rare exception.
We have almost all sunny, windy days, so it's ideal for this kind of thing.
You're a better example because you live in Oregon where, well frankly, there's a lot of rain and a lot of cloudy days and yet you're doing it anyway.
So people can't really say, you know, I live in Oregon, I can't do it.
Wrong!
People just don't live where there isn't enough sunshine to run solar heating for their home and their hot water and also solar power for their appliances, solar electricity.
Home Power has many readers in the Western Washington area around Seattle and you know I'm in Southern Oregon where it's pretty much kinda like Northern California we get quite a bit of sun but if you can run it in Western Washington around the Seattle area you can run it just about anywhere indeed so you know these these people who put it off because they think they live in areas that won't support it are basically wrong people just don't live where there isn't enough sunshine to do this
Alright, the next question most people would ask is, alright look, I don't live in a house that was originally designed with the kind of insulation Richard probably has, and all the rest of that.
Suppose I wanted to begin now, and I wanted to begin to change my life, and I own a home, and I've got a backyard, a little backyard, a little front yard.
What can I do, and how much is it going to cost me?
Well, the first thing to do is reduce the load.
And there are two major loads in the house, electrical and thermal.
In the electrical, well, there's an armada of things we can talk about to reduce that load.
On the thermal side, it's a bit more difficult because it involves retrofitting the house.
For example, if the house has single pane windows, pop them out.
Put in double pane windows.
How much difference does that make?
Oh, a huge difference.
A single pane of glasses are 0.5 A modern window is R3.
Really?
Yes.
And also, if the house has a lot of north-facing windows... Richard, I want to stop you.
Is there a way that you can help me understand what these R ratings mean?
In other words, for example, the difference between a .3 and a 3, or something like that.
What does it mean?
It's huge.
Well?
It is roughly a tenth the transmission of heat.
In other words, an R3 would be about a tenth the transmission of a 0.3?
Yes.
And in a normal window, a single pane window, is a 0.3?
0.3 to 0.5.
Depends on the thickness of the glass.
Depends on a variety of factors, like outside wind.
But basically, pretty pathetic.
Yeah, it's almost not there as far as heat is concerned.
Heat goes right through it.
Heat goes right through it.
All right, Richard, hold tight right there.
Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine is my guest, and if you would like to live independent of the grid, independent, and I might add, in the long run, a lot more cheaply, then you're going to want to listen very closely this morning.
Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine on Coast to Coast AM.
Roaring at you in the darkness from the high desert.
i'm art bell i'm art bell
i'm art bell hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah
hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah Hookah, hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah, hookah
I can't stop this feeling Hookah, hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah, hookah
Deep inside of me Hookah, hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah, hookah
Girl, you just don't realize Hookah, hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah, hookah
What you do to me Hookah, hookah, hookah, shaka, hookah, hookah
When you hold me In your arms so tight
You let me know Everything's alright
I'm hooked on a feeling.
I'm high on believing that you're in love with me.
It's as sweet as candy.
Its taste is on my mind.
Girl, you got me thirsty for another cup of wine.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access Number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
I don't know about you, but I've always wondered about R-Ratings.
You know, contractors and people like that, people who sell homes, always throw around R-Ratings, and I've never quite known what they mean.
For example, can you convert an R-Rating to a typical family's savings in, I don't know, heating bills or electricity or whatever?
How much does an R-Rating really mean?
in a moment, we'll try and find out.
As I said Richard, contractors and people who sell homes are always throwing around R ratings.
It's got R so and so.
Is there some way that you can translate in a way that we'll all understand what these R ratings mean in terms of, I don't know, how much electricity you might save or how much heating bill you might save?
Because it doesn't mean a R whatever.
Well, it's not really an absolute value.
In physics, R It's really what they call 1 over U, which is thermal conductivity.
You're not in land that people will understand.
Let me frame it differently.
Let's take a ceiling, for example.
If I had an R-20 ceiling, and I went to an R-50 ceiling, or R-40 ceiling.
In other words, what I'm trying to get at is... You'd have half the heat loss when you did that.
I'd have half the heat loss.
That's right.
You'd cut it in half.
That's something I can understand.
So, um, and you know, uh, building codes generally, well, here on the West Coast in Oregon, they specify R-19 in the walls and ceilings.
Right.
And, um, that doesn't mean that's all the insulation that you can have there, but that's what they specify on new construction.
Old construction can have anything from no insulation at all, just, you know, walls with a dead airspace in there.
And, you know, that's going to be like R2 or so, up to modern construction R19.
But this doesn't mean you have to stop there.
For example, if you've got an older home, and say it was built in the 50s or 40s, and it doesn't have 2x6 studs in the walls, it has 2x4 studs, and the insulation is barely there when it was installed, and now it's barely there at all.
When it's time to paint it or re-site it, and you strip the old siding off, you've got an excellent opportunity there to lay foam.
This is basically a foam-based insulated material, 4 by 8 sheets, aluminum foil on both sides.
Lay up one inch, two inches of foam, and then put on the new siding.
And that would make how much difference?
Oh, that would give you roughly double The insulation that you had before, depending on the foam product, you can go from R12 to R20 doing this.
And in our home, it's conventional 2x6 construction with conventional fiberglass insulation in the walls.
And then we added the foam outside before we added the siding material.
And we doubled up on the foam on the roof.
And by doing this, we came out with R30 walls and an R60 roof.
And the thing virtually doesn't leak heat.
It's very efficient.
We live up in the mountains of Oregon, and it's cool at night.
We're at altitude.
So what we do is open all the windows at night in the summertime, let the cool mountain breezes roll through, chill the house down, In the morning, when we get up, we close them.
It can be 90, 95 degrees outside, and it'll be 70, 75 degrees inside.
That's very impressive.
And so, insulation is a two-edged sword.
Not only does it save you heat in the winter, but it reduces your summer cooling load, which is critical in areas like where you live, Art.
You bet.
So insulation is not just for people who live in the freezing north, it's for people who also live where it gets hotter now in the summer.
And you don't have to stop with R-19, you can go beyond that.
Now, any... I mean, obviously, you know, each situation is going to vary, but is there a way to understand the expense involved in doing this?
If you were, say, replacing your siding, how much more am I going to spend?
Well, just replacing the siding, you'll probably add 20% or 25% to the bill by putting this insulation underneath it.
If you're building a house from scratch and you want to do this energy efficient insulated number on it and use good windows to boot, 5 to 7% of the cost of the house would be put into this.
Not that bad.
Not that bad at all.
You're going to get it back in the first five cooling and heating seasons versus burning, well, whatever you're burning for heat and whatever you're using, usually electricity, for cooling.
So, you know, the first step towards any kind of energy self-sufficiency and any kind of sane energy picture It's reducing the load.
It may have been you, Richard, I'm not sure, but at some point in the past, somebody like you, or you, made the statement that my appliances, which were, I don't know, 13, 14 years old, compared to new ones, washers, dryers, refrigerators, that sort of thing, compared to the new ones, would save some incredible amount of energy.
I just could not believe it, and I checked on it, and sure as hell, you or whoever said it was exactly right, I think it was you, And I went out and bought new appliances, and oh my goodness, what a difference!
What a difference!
Incredible differences.
Let's just look at a light bulb, for example.
Fairly common item.
Folks have them all over the place.
They leave them on.
A light bulb is 94% of the electricity you stick into it comes off as heat, not light.
So it's actually a better electric heater than it is a light.
And if you're in a summer cooling area where you're running air conditioning and you have incandescent lights in your house, you're really nuts.
You're working against yourself here.
You go to a compact fluorescent light, which is delivering as much light for anywhere from a half to a third the amount of energy in, and it's producing very little heat.
Yes, and I think we should catch people up on something, Richard.
Some time ago, gee, just a few years ago, incandescent, or rather the newer lighting, was very, it was kind of rare, and they were oddly shaped weird bulbs.
Well, people should go back to the stores in their area and look, because now they're producing These incredible new bulbs that, well, they just screw in like any other bulb.
They're made more conventionally looking now than they used to be.
They're shorter, stubbier, easier to put in all over the place.
And they're amazing because, oh, say a 60 watt bulb might burn 18 watts in electricity instead of 60.
It's amazing!
And plus, you can put your hand on it.
It's cool.
Plus, it lasts how much longer, Richard?
Oh, 7 to 10 times longer.
7 to 10 times longer.
Yeah, and these things are not expensive anymore.
When they first came out, they were, you know, $8, $12, $15 pop.
Now, $8 to $10 will buy you a 5-pack at your local discount store.
There you go.
I mean, this is going to change the world by itself.
If everybody went out and bought these new bulbs, I guess we would cut our energy load by probably a third across the U.S., wouldn't we?
Our residential energy load, you bet.
Residential energy in the U.S.
is about a third, commercial is about a third, and industrial is about a third of what the grid makes.
That's interesting.
We could eliminate somewhere between five to seven major coal-fired power plants If America's residences would get rid of the light bulb and adopt compact fluorescence, and guess what?
There's something else coming online that's even better than compact fluorescent.
You're kidding.
Yep.
Light-emitting diodes.
LED lighting.
Yes, indeed.
Yes, this stuff is as efficient as the compact fluorescent is to the incandescent.
The LED is that much more efficient than the compact fluorescent.
Yes, they're beginning to make these folks now in 110 volt fixtures.
Right.
These LED arrays.
And, man, they're incredible!
I mean, I've got a few of them around here, and they use how much power for the equivalent of whatever?
Well, for, say, a 40 watt reading lamp on your desk, you'd use a watt and a half.
A watt and a half?
Right, and they make virtually no heat whatsoever.
And not only that, they have lifetimes in the hundreds of thousands of hours.
And these are now sold just about everywhere, aren't they?
Yes, most discount houses.
Once again, you can pick them up.
And they're still a bit spotty as to where you can find them.
And they're still a wee bit expensive in comparison with compact fluorescents.
But they're coming on strong.
And they are producing a species of white light.
It's great to work by.
And we use them, and they work well.
And they inherently run on low voltage DC, but they now have models that run on conventional, you know, 117 volts AC power.
And it uses so little power, you'd be hard put to even measure it.
I mean, they're incredible.
Now, what percentage of the American people thus far do you think have made the transition from the conventional bulbs people go out and buy?
I'd say a few.
I'm betting you somewhere around a third of the folks have compact fluorescents in their house.
And more and more are using them daily.
LED is just a tiny fraction of the population.
So we've still got a lot of work to do here.
And this is just the light bulb.
The house is full of other appliances.
Washing machines, refrigerators.
Refrigerators are a prime example.
A modern Energy Star refrigerator is going to consume, oh, somewhere between a half and a third of the amount of energy as one that was made, oh, say 10 years ago, and a quarter of the energy of one that was made 20 years ago.
That blew me away.
Yeah, so, you know, Aunt Millie, when she died and left you her old Kelvinator, Well, God bless her and it was nice that she left it to you, but believe me, you don't want to plug it in.
And folks, you know, they take the old refrigerator and they do things like stick it out in the garage where it's hotter than hell all day and let it run out there.
These refrigerators are consuming an incredible amount of energy.
For example, My wife Karen decided she wanted another refrigerator and for years we had this 12 volt alternative energy refrigerator that cost a lot of money and it worked great but it was too small.
Right.
So we went energy shopping for a refrigerator on the internet and we paid very close attention to the Energy Star labels and the tests on these refrigerators.
We wound up with a 27 cubic foot refrigerator That in our application uses 1.5 to 1.6 kilowatt hours of electricity a day.
And this is a, you know, in terms of solar electricity, it's about four modules worth of electricity.
1.5 kilowatts per day.
Can you compare that then to the one you had?
No, not the one you had, but let's say one that's 15 or 20 years old.
It would be using roughly 15 to 20 years old, roughly four times that amount of energy.
Four times?
Yes.
And you know, see, the grid in America's energy infrastructure has lulled us into thinking, you know, a kilowatt hour of energy.
National average is about 7.5 or so cents per kilowatt hour.
So, you know, to run that refrigerator, our new energy efficient model is about a dime a day on grid.
Okay.
And say to run Aunt Millie's old Kelvinator, well, you know, it's 40 cents a day.
A dime a day to 40 cents a day.
And then multiply this by all these light bulbs and all these dryers and washers and refrigerators and all the rest of it.
And then you're also talking about heat, the amount of heat.
So this Energy Star thing is no joke.
It's a real McCoy, huh?
Yes, it is.
Definitely.
I wouldn't go looking for any electric appliance without consulting Uh, the little sticker that's right there in the showroom on the wall, and it'll tell you how much this thing is going to consume.
And our research here at Home Power, you know, we not only buy these things, but we also install them and then we put instruments on them and run them and see if it actually does what they say it's going to do.
And we found it to be incredibly accurate.
Really?
Yes.
In other words, normally the claims they make are pretty good?
Yes, they are excellent.
And, you know, you can do other things to your refrigerator, too.
For example, we have a pantry that is adjacent to our kitchen that is insulated out of the house so it gets cold in the winter.
And we, instead of putting a new refrigerator in the kitchen, we put it in the pantry where it is, you know, in the fifties during the winter or even sometimes lower than that.
And this resulted in even more savings on the refrigerator because it's operating in a cool location.
Sure.
So, you know, it's not only the appliance, but it's how you use it, where you locate it, and just obvious things like, you know, don't leave the TV on if nobody's in the room watching it.
Don't leave lights burning in rooms where nobody is present.
Yeah, it makes sense.
It's common sense.
Yeah, common sense sort of stuff.
And what we've found is that we can walk into the average grid household By changing a few light bulbs, maybe even changing a few major appliances, and paying a little common sense to electrical use, we can cut the electricity bill by at least 25% in a month.
And with a little more care, and spending a bit more money, we can cut it in half.
All right.
Let's take the real plunge here.
Let's say that I'm the average Joe out there right now, and I want to get off the grid.
I mean, I just flat want to get off the grid.
That's my goal, to completely get off the grid.
How much am I going to spend to do that?
Well, if you did your homework up front, and you've done an efficiency job on the house, it is dumb to go solar without doing the efficiency job, and do the efficiency job first.
If you do that, you're going to spend less money on a solar electric system than you would on a good used car.
You're kidding.
No.
No.
The solar electric system that we have that powers our house is larger than normal.
How good a used car?
In other words, what might somebody spend to actually be independent of the grid?
Let's nitty gritty time here.
$15,000 to $20,000.
That's a really good used car.
Yes, that's a good use for it.
But you know, at the same time, I see mountain cabins, too.
We profile them in Home Power, you know, our retirees in the mountains, where a solar electric system would cost them $4,000 to $6,000.
But let's stay with, oh, I don't know, $20,000.
Let's say $20,000.
Yeah, $20,000 max.
And you know, our system We spent a bit more than that, but we're larger than normal.
Also, we bought a lot of our modules back when they were more expensive.
They're cheaper now.
I hear that.
It's getting better.
Alright, $20,000.
Let's say we spent $20,000.
We're off the grid.
How long is it going to take me, or that person, that person, to recover their $20,000?
Well, number one, I wouldn't recommend going off the grid.
Oh, that's interesting.
Well, I'm off the grid because I'm six miles from the end of the power line.
Yeah, I got that.
Why not?
Why not recommend it?
Why not?
Well, the grid needs your help.
I'm serious, it does.
We now have 38 states with net metering laws.
Net metering laws say that if you put up a solar electric or wind electric system, and you maintain your connection to the grid, that you can sell the grid electricity at the same price That they charge you for electricity.
So if they're charging you a dime a kilowatt hour, you consult with them for a dime a kilowatt hour.
That's fair.
That is extremely fair.
And the point here is that I'm off-grid by six miles.
I mean, I asked the power company how much to run the lines in.
I had to do it.
I knew I couldn't afford it, but I had to ask.
And they said, oh, about 200.
This was in the mid-70s.
Yeah.
They said $280,000 unless there's something kinky going on.
You mean if it's the average installation?
Well, no, it was per mile, and they said if there's mountains and creeks and right-of-way, it gets kinky and the prices go up.
So I thought $280,000, fine.
and the prices go up.
So I thought $280,000, fine.
And we've got roughly about $30,000 invested in our system over the last 20 years.
And so I figure in my case, hey, it saved me a lot of money right off.
But there are times during the summer, many times during the summer, when we've got electricity coming out of our nose.
We've sized our systems such that during partially cloudy days and during the winter, we can get full quick and we have plenty of energy.
All right, Richard, hold tight right there.
for the top of the hour and will be right back and continue with richard
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They're the ones who can tell you how to get energy independent.
893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
with Art Bell. Richard Perez is my guest. He's from HomePower Magazine. They're the
ones who can tell you how to get energy independent. But funny thing, you know, at the end of the
last hour I asked Richard about, you know, going off grid and he said, oh no, no, I don't
recommend people go off the grid because the grid needs you.
Now, we're going to explore that a little bit.
I wonder if he was being facetious, or if in fact the grid really does need you.
We'll find out in a moment.
You remember the thing with Uncle Sam?
You know, they still have it, right?
Uncle Sam needs you with a pointing finger?
Maybe we need, uh, Carey Kilowatt or something.
You know, a guy with a beard, maybe, and hair standing, of course, straight up, you know, like he'd been just hit by 5,000 volts, and he could say, The Grid Needs You.
Anyway, we're gonna find out about that right now.
Richard, what did you mean?
Were you being facetious when you said, The Grid Needs You?
No, I'm dead serious.
The grid needs you.
It needs all of us.
I don't get it.
I mean, a guy who runs Home Power Magazine ought to be urging people to be energy completely self-sufficient, you would think.
Oh, you can be energy self-sufficient and still be on grid.
See, a fact of life is that every renewable energy system has periods during most days when it's producing more than the people Are able to store in their batteries if they're off-grid.
Right.
Or more than they can consume.
Right.
This is why we have regulators on the PVs to keep from overcharging the batteries.
So you mean then that the grid needs your electricity.
Yes.
That's what you meant.
It needs your surplus generation.
You need to be clear about that.
Okay, so you want people to put it up, but then you want them to share it with the grid.
Yes, share it with your neighbors.
Help the grid out.
The grid is stretched.
Utilities call this distributed generation.
Hmm.
And it makes the grid more reliable.
Sure it would.
It reduces the load on the grid.
Sure it would.
And they will pay you what they're charging you for it.
Well, some of them will.
You know my story.
I mean, I put up the solar panels and went all the rest of it, and I went down to my electric cooperative.
Yes.
And they said, oh, sure, we'll buy from you, but we'll buy only at the wholesale price while selling to you at the retail price.
And I thought that was, well, actually, I just walked out.
Are you in the state of California?
Nevada.
Nevada, yes.
Well, like I said, there are 38 states with these net metering laws.
Just before Clinton left the White House, we had a national net metering law in committee, where it died.
And of course, under the President's administration, it's not even there anymore.
But the point is, soon this will be a national law.
But currently, it is a law state by state.
And the fine print is different in every state.
In some states, you can actually get a check from the utility.
In other states, the best you can do is break even.
But you can break even.
And, you know, say you have a solar electric system, and the kids are at school, and you're off at work, and during the day, It's spinning your electric meter backwards.
You're pumping that energy onto the grid, and you're doing it at the grid's peak demand time.
So this is helping out the grid.
I've had many meetings with utility people, and it's been a real uphill battle in every state.
We worked for four years to get the law passed in Oregon, Oregon's net metering law.
And it was an uphill battle here.
They didn't want us.
No, I know.
I'm sure.
They were just, oh, no, no, no.
I mean, they've got this century-long paradigm.
We make it, you buy it.
And all of a sudden we're going, hey, wait a minute.
We can make electricity in any place.
We can put up a solar panel.
And with the modern utility intertie inverters, We can shove this energy right back at you.
Yes.
On the grid.
Yes.
In that meter backwards.
Yes.
And this frightened them.
I'm sure it did.
Yeah.
And so, you know, but now they're starting to come around, particularly in some states.
Why?
What changed to bring them around?
Well, what changed is the advantages of solar electricity.
Number one, here is a power generating source.
Let's think about this for a second.
use the energy from and it did not invest one red and of its operating capital in this
you've invested the money in it they didn't so here we have
electricity for them and in a
but let's think about this for a second if they're forced to buy at the same rate that you pay in other words retail
uh... they're actually i mean that's gotta be a a losing proposition for them
because like every other business they buy electricity at a certain rate and
then resell it and an inflated rate
Hence, that's how they make their money, their profit.
That's where their profit comes from.
I just can't see how you would convince them that, for them, it would be a good deal.
It's going to require a change in the utilities mentality, alright?
You know, the utilities a hundred years from now are not going to be power producers, they're going to be power brokers.
In fact, they are this already.
Yeah, they really are now.
That's why I asked you the question.
In other words, what argument do you make to make it attractive for them?
Well, the argument I used on a major utility in Oregon was Do you want to keep these people as customers?
Alright?
I can throw an additional 20% on the system in terms of money.
I can install batteries, and I can tell you to take your electric meter and shove it.
Okay?
So do you want to keep these people as customers?
And the advantage is, you get this clean electricity, and I'm talking clean.
No carbon dioxide, no carbon monoxide, no nuclear waste.
No acid rain.
I'm talking clean.
You're getting it on peak.
You're not paying a cent for the generating capability of this.
There's lots of advantages for it.
So much so that in countries that are a bit more advanced than we are, notably Japan and Germany, In Japan, if you put up a utility intertied photovoltaic system, the government will pay for half of it right out of the box.
Is that a fact?
That's a fact.
In Germany, similar type incentives are available.
So much so that, you know, photovoltaic modules that Are being made in the states here or are being made by multinational corporations here in the states?
Yes.
Are getting hard to get a hold of because they're going to Japan and Germany because these people are paying more for them than we will.
Why do you think the Japanese and the Germans are so forward-thinking compared to us?
Well, in Japan it's an easy thing.
I mean, they're a petroleum importing company.
In other words, they're energy sources.
Are all imported.
And in Germany, it's due in part to a large Green Party movement there, which is controlling the government and directing it.
And they say it's better for the country, and there's a number of reasons, environmental, political, I mean, you know, the sun is very democratic, it shines on everyone, every day, and it doesn't say, you know, nobody's going to war over sunshine.
It's just good for the country to do this, and so that's the argument they're using in Germany, and they're putting up PVs much faster than we are, and in Japan, oh, all their energy is imported.
The sun delivered free daily.
All right, let's get political for a second.
I think we all know who President Bush is by now, and what direction he's taken the country, and we don't know as much about Well, as far as the energy policy of George Bush, it was a total disaster.
they're going to be in the next four years of energy policy compared to you
know to be bearing in mind uh... that one or the other would be a elected or
reelected as far as the energy policy of george bush it was a total
disaster i mean that dick cheney won't even tell us when our what went on
on the secret backroom meetings with ken lay of enron fame
that structured his entire energy uh... program and
uh... so we don't even know what went on there What we do know is that oil has hit $44 a barrel, highest ever, and it isn't likely to come down.
We've seen an end to cheap oil, period.
Do you really believe that's true?
Yes.
They talk a little vaguely about maybe energy prices coming down, perhaps after the summer, By and large, you don't think that's going to happen, do you?
You believe that the energy prices have gone up and they're going to keep going up and they're not going down again.
That's right.
That's right.
We have a worldwide natural gas shortage.
We have a worldwide petroleum shortage.
We're demanding more of it all the time.
We've passed the peak of easy-to-get-at stuff, easy-to-mine, easy-to-pump, easy-to-transport.
It's going to get much, much more expensive, and in transportation particularly.
Now, in electricity, well, here in America, we got a lot of coal.
And we can keep mining it, and we can keep burning it for a while.
But the environmental effects of doing this are becoming increasingly obvious.
The price of electricity has been going up.
The new power plants that utilities have been installing are By and large, gas fired and gas is going up.
Richard, what's happening to oil is obvious.
How closely linked to the price of oil is the price of electricity?
Well, during the last three years, the utilities have installed more petroleum fired plants than ever before.
A great increase.
So they're burning it too.
But it's primarily transportation that is burning it.
And, I mean, it's a wonderful energy source.
You know, 20 gallons of gas in the tank is a huge hit of energy.
And we're not likely to replace this anytime soon.
But at the same time, the number of cars is going up.
The number of miles people are driving in these cars is also going up.
The number of nations with cars, with citizens with cars, is going up.
People could see China, they'd get a cold chill right down their spine, what's coming.
And there's going to be A lot of international competition for what energy resources are left, right?
I mean, we're not the only ones chasing after Mideast oil.
It's going to be China and the rest of the world as well.
Yes.
And, you know, with George Bush's energy policy, things are going to keep going that way.
And I fully expect to see a huge raise in gas prices after the election.
I think they're being kept low now.
You want to guess at how high gas is going to go after the election?
I can see well over three dollars a gallon.
Boy, that'll change a lot.
It'll make people start looking at these new hybrid electric vehicles.
These things are just amazing.
I mean, it's an incremental step.
Bottom line is we don't need to be burning petroleum for energy anymore.
Alright, I saw a network piece on the cars that you're talking about.
And it's interesting.
They kind of took the other side of it, Richard, and they said, look, these hybrid cars are very interesting.
And sure enough, they it's fewer miles or more miles per gallon, I guess I ought to say, you know, substantially more.
But they said at the end of the day, with the maintenance and the Whatever all the hybrid takes that other cars don't, you're not going to pay for it in the lifetime of the car.
You're aware of that report, right?
Yes, I am.
Not true, or true?
It's horsepucky.
Horsepucky.
Yes, it's horsepucky.
These things don't require any more maintenance than any other motor vehicle, as a matter of fact.
I have a Toyota Prius, which is a hybrid vehicle.
It's 60 miles to the gallon downtown.
All you do is fill up the gas tank and change the oil every 7,000 miles.
It doesn't even have a grease fitting on it.
You don't maintain the batteries.
They're sealed in the back.
You don't do anything to it.
On behalf of all the people out there who drive cars, I want to ask you a couple of questions.
I've never test driven one of those.
I've seen a few of them on the road.
How is it for driving, for acceleration, for air conditioning, whatever all the American people are used to?
How is this new hybrid?
You're driving it.
Tell us.
The air conditioner kicks butt.
I'm telling you, I've never had a car that cooled down as fast.
Really?
And I've never seen a car where I pull up to a stoplight, or a stop sign, and I'll hit the brakes, the engine goes dead, the air conditioner keeps running on the battery, It has more pickup than a Toyota Corolla or any other, you know, midsize sedan.
Does it really?
So you can be away quickly from the stop sign?
Because when you stomp on this thing to get onto the freeway, the engine goes to the max and you still have this incredible 60 horsepower electric motor, which is also It's got infinite torque at low RPM and it just goes right onto the freeway, passes at freeway speeds.
The thing is so darn quiet that you gotta be careful not to get speeding tickets in it.
It's a $20,000 brand new car.
I had to stand in line for six months to get this thing.
I ordered it six months later, it finally got delivered.
No kidding.
They're back-ordered so far.
No kidding.
So, I mean, you really think then these people who are issuing these reports are nuts?
They're wrong.
They're just flat wrong.
Yeah, and they're also basing their pricing at, you know, $1.50 to $1.70 a gallon on gasoline.
to a dollar seventy cents a gallon on gasoline. When gasoline starts hitting
three dollars plus situation changes. Just the same way where solar
electricity you know years ago
was pretty expensive and it didn't look like a particularly good deal.
But as electric rates climb and solar rates come down, it looks better and better.
It looks better and better all the time.
Gotcha.
So, at any rate, back to the car for a second.
You're perfectly satisfied in every way, and you're getting 60 miles to the gallon with this.
Well, I wouldn't say I was perfectly satisfied.
I underwent an intense retraining program when I first stepped into the thing and started to drive it.
In what way?
Oh, it's very different.
The transmission never shifts.
You mean, what?
No, go back to that.
The transmission doesn't shift.
There are no gears.
It's got a constantly variable transmission.
There is no change from first to second to third.
Wow!
It just goes.
Wow!
And it took some training on Jackrabbit starts and Jackrabbit stops.
We don't do that anymore.
We plan ahead.
Oh yeah, the light's turning red up there.
I think I'll take my foot off the gas and kind of coast and whatever.
And then it's got a wonderful display on the dash that says, oh, you've just hit 99 plus miles to the gallon because you're not Hawking it.
And so, I mean, it's got feedback.
So it's giving you feedback all the time about how many miles per gallon you're using?
Yes.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
That is extremely cool.
And it's telling you when the electric motor is working, when the gas motor is working, when the gas motor is charging the batteries, when regenerative braking, when you stop, if you hit the brakes a little bit, then the The electric motor that's in there recharges the battery.
In other words, you recoup some of the energy you expended on accelerating the vehicle when you decelerate.
Now, if you stop the brakes real hard... So, wait a minute, let me get this straight.
They capture the energy, and there would be energy in a stop, the friction, and they... That's fascinating.
And then they store that stopping energy in the batteries, is that right?
Yes.
Nickel metal hydride batteries.
No cadmium, very low toxicity, all sealed up, about, you know, about 30 kilowatt hours of energy stored in the battery.
That's really cool.
It is extremely cool.
All right.
These batteries, it's a question everybody always asks, and now with the newer batteries, how long before you've got to replace them, Richard?
Toyota puts a seven year warranty on this battery.
Really?
Yes.
And then the cost to replace when you finally have to?
Well, I have no idea on that.
You'd have to talk to Toyota.
I have no idea how much it would cost to replace that battery, but since the entire vehicle is $20,000, I would say somewhere between maybe $1,000, maybe $1,500 to replace this battery.
God, that is such a cool concept to use stopping power, for example.
Well, it's not only stopping power.
When you climb a hill, you go down the other side.
That's right.
And you expend energy to climb that hill and you recoup some of that energy as you coast down the other side.
So you're actually, you're running something and charging a battery as your car goes down a hill.
Right.
Because that's generating energy.
All right.
Richard Perez is my guest from Home Power Magazine.
And I'm learning all kinds of things that I didn't know about the world around me.
The latest being this car.
That is so cool.
When you consider it, stopping, going down hills, all of that is a potential energy generator and he's using it.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to another episode of The Daily Show.
Today we're back with another episode of The Daily Show.
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And Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine.
And it's really, this really is fascinating stuff.
Just in case you didn't know, and I certainly didn't, about these new cars.
as we're coming to that other ways that you can save or maybe you'd rather think of it this way
save money you know how i see it uh...
I see it this way.
People don't have to go out and convert their house immediately to, you know, be off the grid or sharing with the grid or whatever.
And they don't have to buy a new car right away or appliances or light bulbs or anything else.
But it seems to me, Richard, that as life goes along Why, the next time you buy a light bulb, you buy one of these instead of rushing out replacing everything.
The next time an appliance goes out, you go and you look for the Energy Star.
The next time you go to buy a car, you take a good hard look at the kind of car you just talked about.
In other words, you do these things as the time for the decision about these things comes to pass naturally, huh?
That's it.
You know, I've been working on this for over 30 years now, and there's still You know, things I'm replacing, things I'm changing.
No, you don't have to change your life overnight.
But there are things that you can do overnight, like turn off those light bulbs in rooms where nobody's at.
You know, there are mindful things that you can do.
And the big ticket items, you know, converting to solar power, buying a new energy efficient vehicle.
When the time comes to get a new car or to buy a used one, or the time comes to re-side your house or re-roof it, that's the time to put some insulation in.
So, you know, a bit at a time.
Well, I think, for the average person, Richard, that the car you talked about, for example, now today, in today's world, 60 miles per gallon.
Man, that means a lot to people, Richard.
That means a whole lot.
60 miles a gallon for a lot of people who commute even an hour a day.
Think how much money that could mean.
Oh, yeah.
And even better.
Say there's a co-worker that lives half a mile or a mile from your house.
Pick him up and take him to work with you in your energy-efficient vehicle.
Carpool.
Drive less.
There's all kinds of things that we can do.
And, you know, back on the vehicles again, these hybrid gasoline vehicles are just great, but they're an interim step.
They're still using gasoline.
I mean, this is petroleum that is basically prehistoric plants that have molded for hundreds of thousands of years under the earth.
We're pumping it up and we're releasing this carbon into the atmosphere.
Global warming.
We can short-circuit that whole cycle and burn carbon that we Fixed last year in plants, for example, biodiesel.
Two of the folks who work here at Home Power have biodiesel powered rigs.
Meaning, they're using what?
They're using French fried fat from the local McDonald's.
Strain the chunks out, give it a little treatment, and they do it in their garage.
If a person goes to McDonald's and wants to buy their excess fat, how are they usually greeted?
It depends.
These days it's getting hard to find because more and more folks are doing it.
But basically it is vegetable oil.
And plants such as canola or rapeseed can be grown specifically as a fuel crop.
We grow it this summer and fix the carbon as the plants grow and then we release the carbon Throughout the year and do it again next year.
It's a one year carbon cycle instead of a 200,000 year carbon cycle.
Right.
Much better for the environment.
Also, we don't have to go to places like Iraq to get this oil.
We can grow it in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas.
We can grow it just about anywhere.
California.
Well, Richard, since we're such gigantic consumers of energy compared to the entire rest of the world, Then, why do you imagine, Richard, that other countries are so much greener than we are?
Why is Japan and Germany and all these other countries?
So, you would think we'd be leading the charge in the world toward a greener, cheaper, more energy-efficient atmosphere, but we're not at all.
How come?
Leadership?
The leadership of this country for But that's what leadership is supposed to be all about.
Well, it's not what it's about.
It's about dollars and corporations and oil.
And, uh, I mean, our president is an oil man.
A failed oil man, but an oil man nonetheless.
And you're not a big Bush guy, are you?
No, I'm not.
And, you know, I'm not a big Kerry fan either.
But, you know, this coming election, I'm just urging people to vote for anybody but Bush.
Well, look here.
There's only two.
We had Ross Perot once.
He was almost realistic.
Other than that, though, realistically, Richard, there's only two men that you can vote for who are going to win.
One of them is going to win.
So I take it that you're probably a Kerry voter.
Yes.
That would be a yes.
Kerry has some good Energy policies.
He's pushing for things like biodiesel and domestically made fuels from plants.
I've heard all kinds of things about this.
How many acres would it take to grow all the gasoline that this country needs?
That kind of what-if mentality is really doing us a disservice.
We're not going to convert this country's electricity from coal Or nukes or natural gas overnight.
We're not going to convert this country's vehicles from gasoline and diesel fuel overnight.
This is going to take a long time.
But it's going to take forever unless we get started.
And that's the point.
And it's just like you said, you don't have to go out and do all these things at once.
It's just next time it comes around, make the decision.
For something that is ecologically sound, sustainable, and renewable.
And that's what the whole thing with home power is about.
Richard, for a second, let's go back to oil itself.
We've got an oil president.
I think most people agree with that.
Oil.
We're getting a lot of it from the Middle East.
There's been an argument about Alaska and I for one would like to understand if you can fairly relate to us what Alaskan oil means or might mean and if they go ahead with this big fight you know they're having this big fight over Anwar.
If they were to get to Anwar how much oil might be at Anwar and where are we kind of with oil right now?
Somewhere between six to nine months of what we use.
That's what Anwar would be?
Yes.
That's not much.
That's not much.
And the difficulty in doing it is enormous.
We're talking about pipelines in a very harsh environment across a very long distance.
Well, it can be done.
We've done it already.
We've done it already, yeah.
And we've done things such as that before in countries, not in the USA, in other places.
Well, I hear a lot of people talking about peak oil.
You said it yourself earlier in the program.
You said we have already pulled out the cheapest oil we're going to pull out of the ground.
Peak oil.
We really are there?
Yes, we're there.
We're there now.
We're going to see oil shortages probably as close as five years from now to the point where it gets very expensive.
Are you sure about that?
I mean, a lot of people argue with you, Richard.
A lot of people argue, and they say, this is such crap.
We've got oil coming out our ears.
There's more oil than we need.
It's just, you're sure it's not true.
It's not true.
For example, just recently, National Geographic Magazine, their cover story, I believe it was the June issue of this year, the end of cheap oil.
I mean, I'm not alone in saying this.
Apologists for it are basically oil producers and oil men, the people that are saying, oh, we can keep doing this forever.
No, we can't do it forever.
We've already, you know, within, maybe it was two years ago, maybe it'll be two to five years from now, where we pass the absolute peak.
But the main thing is that our appetite for this black goo is just going nowhere but up.
We're using more of it all the time.
And the supply of it, well, you know, it went down into the ground 200,000 years ago.
It's going to have an end.
Now, whether the end was two years ago or five years from now, I don't really know.
I don't think anybody really knows.
But the point is, it is going to end.
And experts, both sides will tell you a number of things.
Uh, the bottom line is we need to use as little as possible about this.
And on Kerry, uh, you know, he's saying, uh, he wants to see, uh, 20% of America's vehicle fleets using, uh, renewable fuels by the year 2020.
Yes.
That's what he says.
And he's also, he wants to raise, uh, vehicle standards to 36 miles to the gallon by 2015.
And from the look at hybrid vehicles, That's easily doable.
I mean, Honda's making them.
Ford just licensed the hybrid vehicle technology from Toyota.
They're going to be producing their first vehicle.
It's going to be one of their big SUVs.
Tell me something, Richard.
Has the day of the muscle car gone?
Oh, definitely.
It's gone, huh?
Yeah, it's gone.
If you want to build a muscle car, you'll build a hybrid muscle car with a battery in there.
will get a library but i have a hybrid muscle car yeah i mean
it's uh...
uh... we're we're going to have all kinds of options and what's going to
make it uh... happened his people doing it people buying it uh...
you know i'd like got to think that that it's not politics or or
religion or whatever that is structuring our lives anymore
It's technology, and we vote for it by the technologies that we choose to adopt.
We vote with our bucks.
So when you buy an energy-efficient refrigerator... That's true.
I mean, it's supply and demand.
That's how America works.
That's right.
What people want is... so you've got to make them want it.
And particularly in the case of oil and hybrid vehicles, I mean, currently about 65% of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf states, and that's a good reason why we're there right now.
And about 3% of the oil's reserves in the world are in the American states, in the 50 American states.
So, I mean, even if oil were to go on and on, which it's not, We don't have it anymore.
They have it.
Which means we're going to have to import it, which means we're over a barrel here.
We're going to be having wars.
We're going to be having economic problems based on energy, on fuel.
And the thing that really frosts me to the max on this is that, you know, there's more energy delivered by the sun in a few hours than this whole entire planet uses in an entire year.
So, I mean, we've got a solar surplus here.
All we have to figure is how to get a finger in it, how to use it.
And the beginning of this is the photovoltaics and the solar hot water and the solar heating.
Well, with the existing infrastructure and the way we have it right now, Richard, people like you can talk until you're blue in the face, but the only thing in the end that's going to move people is going to be money now that's what moves people and uh... as the price of oil goes up if your statement about peak oil is correct then that'll move people you won't have to say anything to them they'll start desperately looking for something that'll get the job done get him to work and back whatever in you know get out for vacation whatever it takes they're going to be looking for that uh... richard money will do that the question is how soon
In a lot of cases, it's here already.
You know, a more efficient vehicle.
How about a solar hot water heater?
Okay?
A solar hot water heater installed in your home is going to cost you $2,000 maybe?
Yes.
You will pay that back in a two to five year period.
It'll make money for you versus burning natural gas or electricity for your hot water.
You know, very simple thing.
You don't have to modify your house.
It just, you know, pretty much goes in on the roof and that's it.
There are many types of ways of using solar and it's just a matter of doing it, you know, when the time comes around.
And it's a matter of cost.
I mean, we're going to convince, obviously this morning, we will convince some people to begin making moves now.
I'm sure we will.
Because it's sensible.
But the greater mass out there that may not even be listening tonight, those people are not going to begin to move until they're forced to move.
And money is going to force them to move.
So how oil goes, the price of oil, is going to control, I think, what people do en masse.
Don't you?
Yes, very much so.
It just hit $44 a barrel.
That's the highest price ever for oil.
Why is it that high?
It's that high because of supply and demand.
There just isn't that much around.
You know, during the last oil crisis in the 70s, the Mideast sort of bailed us out.
I mean, they had capacity that they could pump.
And now, at this point, they don't.
According to the OPEC nations, they're producing a capacity right now.
I have a question for you, Richard.
Yes.
I understand we have some strategic oil reserves, but after that, if something blew up in the Middle East and we were cut off from Mideast oil, if the U.S.
was cut off from Mideast oil, What timeline do we have before America begins grounding to a halt?
Oh, a matter of weeks.
A matter of weeks.
And what I mean by grounding to a halt, I mean the 18-wheelers that haul stuff from point A to point B, get to the point where there's no more diesel for them, or diesel at such price that it's not worth it.
That's what I mean by grind to a halt.
Yes, a matter of weeks.
We're getting a lot of our oil from South America, from Venezuela, from Colombia, but this is not enough to keep every gas station pumping.
We're at the cusp here.
We're at a point of decision, if you will.
We cannot long continue doing as we are doing now.
You know, the consequences economically are immense.
I mean, currently, you know, the U.S.
government, I mean, we're not paying a set price at the gas pump.
You know, it's like we're not paying a set price at our electric meter in our home.
You know, currently the U.S.
government is subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $1.8 billion a year.
Approximately half of the cost of your electric bill is concealed in your taxes.
So, you know, we've been lulled into thinking that energy is a very cheap commodity.
If you go to Germany or to Great Britain, you're going to find that gas is twice as expensive, electricity is twice as expensive.
Why?
Because you're paying for the actual cost of the energy, you're not subsidizing it through your taxes.
Right.
We've been lulled into thinking that this stuff is cheap and plentiful, when in fact it's not.
And what would be the motivation of lulling us in this manner?
Why?
Because the powers that be are closely business-linked with the oil and energy industries.
In other words, government and industry hand-in-hand picking our pockets.
Even that group, though, Richard, would have to foresee peak oil and then a declining availability and a sharply rising price and what that would do.
Even the people you just talked about have got to see that, and it would affect their pocketbooks as well.
So there's going to come a time when they have to make the moves, don't they?
And by they, I mean our government, our leadership.
When the gas pumps run dry, then Our leadership will start thinking about doing something else.
But it's going to be a little late by then, isn't it?
It's going to be a lot late by then, and that's why I keep preaching the Solar Bible.
I mean, all energy on this planet comes from the sun, one form or another, with the possible exception of nuclear.
We just need to start tuning in to this infinite, long-lasting, benign nuke 93 million miles from here.
All right, hold it right there, Richard.
We'll be back, and we're going to take phone calls.
If you have a question about energy, well, we're your people.
So, coming up in the next hour, we'll let all of you ask questions of Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine.
Find out more about tonight's guest.
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Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine is my guest.
We're going to tell you, by the way, how to get Home Power Magazine.
That's only fair.
on the internet this is coast to coast am with art bell from the high desert in
the middle of the night indeed that would be us Richard Perez from home
power magazine is my guest we're gonna tell you by the way how to get home
power magazine that's only fair coming up in a little bit and that could save
you an awful lot of money richard press coming right up
i understand that i'm asking the impossible and it is the impossible but it you know somehow or another
what we're talking about is so important the conservation of energy
The correct use of energy and the harvesting of the natural energy that we're not harvesting is so damned important that I wish it could be separated from politics.
Now, you know, in the course of the interview, it's already very apparent Richard Perez is not a Bush guy at all, not even close.
The problem, of course, with expressing publicly your political views is that You know, about half the country goes, ah, he's a bush basher, click!
And, you know, the radios offer, they've stopped listening the moment they detect their favorite guy getting, you know, or they think he's getting bashed.
If there was some way, Richard, to separate the politics from just the cold, hard facts of energy, A diminishing energy availability and ultimately a crisis and what's coming.
I mean, all of that is just a fact that's ahead of us, Richard.
But you can't take it away from politics, can you?
No, you really can't.
I mean, it is a fact.
Oil is finite.
It is a fact that we've already used most of it up and that it's become very dear.
It is a fact that Burning coal in our power plants is the number one air polluter in America.
You know, these are all facts.
The politics is intrinsically tied into it.
Yes, it's interwoven into it.
It's the reason why we're not doing something else.
It's a reason why the oil industry gets You know, $1.8 billion a year in subsidies, but there's only $24 million allocated for renewable energy.
That's incredible.
You know, our government fosters energy technologies.
It spurs research and, you know, just little things like, oh, let's not mandate a change in the miles per gallon for automobiles.
Forget about that for a while.
As a matter of fact, let's cut it back a little.
Something like that is huge.
Fine.
Then let's take that huge thing and talk about it for a second.
I remember that there were mileage figures that were given to the major car companies in America, and they said, by such and such, you will achieve such and such.
Well, the automobile makers came back and said, we can't do it.
We can't make it.
We can't do it.
You remember that?
Yes, I do.
So we're doing it.
I'm driving around in a car that's getting 60 miles to the gallon downtown.
So they lied to us?
Yes.
They lied to the lawmakers?
Yes.
There's a tremendous amount of inertia when you're in business.
When you're in business, you want to keep doing what you're doing, particularly if it's successful.
Particularly if you're making money doing it.
Business is inherently conservative.
You don't want changes.
But these are changes that we have to make.
We're going to have no choice shortly.
You know, probably within my lifetime and probably within yours, Art, and definitely within our children's lifetime.
Big difference there, Richard.
Big difference.
You know, I mean really big difference.
If I think it's during my lifetime, in fact, if I think it's in the next Yeah.
years i'm gonna get off my butt and i'm gonna start doing all kinds of things if i think
well i'm being really honest here and i think i'm representing a
lot of american people if i think it's my children
or my children's children uh... that's their damn problem
i won't be around that's an attitude you know
it definitely is All right.
We need to take some calls.
A lot of people want to talk to you, so let's see what they've got on their mind.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
What is your name and where are you?
This is Ian.
I'm in Spring, Maryland.
Okay, Ian.
Welcome.
What's your question?
Okay.
Now, realistically speaking for myself and probably a few other people at this time and in the foreseeable future, I live in an apartment, so I've been thinking about this as I've been listening.
Good.
So, one thing that occurs to me is that, I don't know, what option is there?
That's the question.
I was thinking some kind of big wind-up kind of thing.
Is something like that available?
Is there a solar option for someone like myself?
Alright, that's a, look, super question actually.
Alright, Richard, he represents millions of Americans.
He lives in an apartment.
So, what can he do?
What should he do?
Well, the first thing is all the energy-efficient appliances.
For example, lighting.
For example, save energy by not using it And I'm not talking doing without, I'm just talking doing whatever you're doing efficiently.
For example, television sets, VCRs, microwave ovens, sit around and suck up power 24-7.
Put them on a plug strip, shut them off when you're not using them.
Things such as that.
You can go one step further.
We ran an article in Home Power about folks who lived in an apartment.
They put two modules off the balcony, out into the sun, put in a small utility intertide inverter, plugged it in the wall.
There you go.
They're not making a lot of power, just a few hundred watts, but they're making something.
I'm going to ask you a question, Richard, and I try and answer here honestly.
I remember some years ago, California got into a severe water crisis, or part of California, and they urged the people, please save water, save water, and they actually outlined the steps for people to save water.
And the people, they did so well, Richard!
They saved so much water, that guess how they got rewarded?
The price of water went up!
Well, um... Well, couldn't that happen with electricity?
I mean, if people start saving, saving, saving, then the companies are making less money, and could the end result of their efforts be to have their bills raised for that reason?
The price of electricity is going up one way or another, alright?
You know, Self-interest here?
I haven't paid an electric bill in 34 years.
That's pretty good, yeah.
All right, so there you go.
As more and more people get solar electric systems, and as they become grid intertied, those without solar electric systems are going to see a raise in the price of power.
It's just inevitable, because they're going to be making less of it, and they're going to be brokering it.
The good news is that a lot of what the utilities are going to be brokering Is your neighbor solar?
This is a transition phase.
To look at this as if we're going to convert everything next year or even in the next decade is ridiculous.
This is going to be a gradual change that is going to happen over many decades, and we basically don't have any choice.
We're going to have to do this one way or another.
All right.
Here's Garrett, and you can tell he's a member of the other crowd, Richard, from Wallop, Washington.
He says, these people... That would be you, Richard.
These people don't seem to want to acknowledge the danger of six to ten-year lifespans of the batteries and the environmental impact of the disposal of those batteries.
I mean, what's up with that?
That's more harmful and dangerous to the environment than what we've got now.
That's horsepucky.
There is no industry in America, to begin with, that lifetime isn't six to seven years.
It's more on the order of 15 to 20.
And there is no industry in America that has a better recycling history than the lead-acid battery industry.
Chances are the battery in your car has been in three or four other cars before you got it, the lead in that battery.
Um, the lead-acid battery industry has a much better recycling history than aluminum, glass, or any other consumer-type product.
And, if you go into a utility-entertised situation, where you're selling your solar back to the grid, um, gee, you know, you don't even have to have batteries.
These are battery-less systems.
Pretty good answer for Garrett.
Alright, wildcard line, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
Is this me?
Well, only you know that for certain, but it sounds like you, yes.
Alrighty.
My name is Linda.
I live in California, but I'm in Boulder City, Nevada right now, and I listened to you folks for the last hour and it was all static.
But it was so important and so interesting, I was glued to the radio.
And I used to listen to you, Art, all the time a couple years ago, but I wasn't able to get you anymore in Long Beach, so I need to know your radio station.
I need to know the phone number so I can get that recording.
There's like 500 and something radio stations, ma'am.
You'll have to pick one out.
Do you have a question for my guest?
I do.
I have a camper trailer that I'd like to use some of your systems on when I'm camping.
I'd also like to find out who I can call.
I have a house in Boulder City and my son's Electric bill is like sometimes $225 a month.
See, that gets your attention.
It's got my attention because I can't afford both houses and help him out with the electric bills because I'm a widow.
I've got so many questions, I don't even know where to begin.
Well, get a copy of the program is what I would recommend to you first.
Now, with respect to the camping question, that's a pretty good one, Richard.
What can people with little campers and that kind of thing do?
Oh, that's a simple job.
They've got a battery already.
You know, sometimes they have a generator in them.
Modern RVs and campers are coming with solar equipped right on the roof from the factory these days.
It's easy to retrofit one or two or three or four modules onto the roof, put them into the battery, put an inverter in there, kiss your generator goodbye.
It's the truth, folks.
When I bought my RV years ago, the first thing I did was put 500 watts of solar on the roof.
Oh boy, that goes a long way, doesn't it, Richard?
It goes a long way.
One of the RV stories that we wrote up in Home Power, this fellow went crazy.
He's got over 17 modules on the roof of his RV.
When he pulls into the house, What he does is he runs an extension cord from the RV, plugs it into the house, and runs his house off his RV.
Now, in terms of your electric bill, that's incredibly high, Linda, so what you need to do is investigate your consumption.
Something there is using a whole lot more power than it should be.
There's a question within a question, Richard.
Fine.
How do you investigate your consumption?
Can you take Like one of these portable little clamp-on ammeters and go around to your various appliances in the house, have an electrician do it and find out what each one is using?
Oh yeah, and you don't need an electrician.
The meters are $29, $39, $49.
They're advertised in Home Power.
You just plug it into the wall socket, plug the appliance in, leave it run a few days, it'll tell you how many kilowatt hours it's using, it'll tell you instantaneous consumption, and it's just the ticket for things like refrigerators, water heaters, and things that operate intermittently.
But investigate that, and your local renewable energy dealer, and there are thousands of them around the nation at this point, You can find out about them on Home Power's website.
There's a searchable database on there.
Alright, let's tell people how to get the magazine, Richard.
Okay.
You can get, well, first place to get it is on the web.
If you've got access to the web, you can go to our website and you can download for free our entire current issue, cover to cover.
Really?
Yes, the entire magazine.
Wow.
For free.
And that's www.homepower.com.
How are you going to ever make a living when you give it away?
Believe me, we're surviving.
We're not in this to get rich.
There's only 14 of us working on the company, and everybody is paid enough to get by, and we're happy with that.
So we're giving it away on the web, and we've been doing this for the last six years, so it's not a new thing.
Now, if you want it via paper, If you want a subscription or something, you can call our number on Monday, and that's 800-707-6585.
800-707-6585.
And we can fix you up with a subscription via paper.
All right, that's 1-800-707-6585?
That's right.
All right, and a subscription, how much?
$22.50 a year, and that'll buy you six issues.
the subscription via paper. All right that's 1-800-707-6585?
That's right. All right and a subscription, how much? $22.50 a year and that'll buy you
six issues. We come out bi-monthly and we're now in our 16th year of publication. All right.
Why, Richard, is the RV world so far ahead of the housing world in terms of alternative power and so forth?
I mean, they're miles ahead of them.
Yeah, because they're not tied down to an electric line all the time.
You're often in a place where it is inconvenient or impossible to plug in.
So what do you... Well, I mean, you're in the same situation that I am at home.
You're off grid.
And if you're off-grid, you have two choices.
You can run a generator, which is noisy, smelly, and very expensive, or you can do something else.
And something else that these people are doing is solar.
And it's just revolutionized the RV industry.
It's an option on most RVs these days.
Absolutely.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
Good morning.
Buona sera.
Good morning.
Where are you?
This is Nancy from Shrewsbury calling.
Okay.
I had a couple questions.
First of all, could there be conversion kits for cars?
And would that be possible?
Because maybe we should have some cars that still stay on using gasoline.
All right.
And then another thing is my company imports 90% of their products from China.
I'm concerned about that.
You know, a lot of people are.
Okay, Richard.
Conversion first.
That's a very good question.
The cars that are on the road right now, is there any realistic conversion for them?
In terms of a hybrid electric vehicle like the Prius or the Hondas, no.
That's got to be built in right from the ground up.
In terms of converting these cars to pure electrics, yes.
Uh, the Volkswagen Rabbit, uh, their kits out there to do this, uh, uh, to, you know, jerk the engine and replace it with electrics and batteries.
Uh, the Chevy S10 pickup, their kits available for it.
Um, but these are pure electrics now and, and, uh, pure electrics at this point in time have problems.
I mean, they have a limited range.
Right.
And, you know, they take a while to recharge.
You're not going to pull it into a recharge station and pull it up in 15 minutes.
And they don't get the little jackrabbit starts that Americans like so much.
No, they're generally slower.
I mean, no freeway cruise, but they're generally slower.
So conversion kits are available.
Now, if you have a diesel rig, Then, you can go biodiesel almost instantly.
Most diesel rigs will run on biodiesel with minimal to no conversion at all.
All right.
She asked about China.
And I agree with her.
If you've been to China, seen China, know what's going on in China, it will scare the hell out of you.
What do you think about China, Richard?
You know, I don't know what to think.
So I'm going to just pass on that.
I don't have the expertise to deal with that.
I know that they are going renewable energy more quickly than I've ever seen any pre-industrial type nation do it.
They've got lots and lots of rural villages running on diesel generators.
They're trying to get rid of those.
They are producing a tremendous uh... volume of consumer care
uh... under what i would consider to be basically slave labor type
conditions but alright hold it right there we've got a break for the uh...
bottom of the hour will get you on the line with richard peres from home power
magazine if you stay right where you are
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He talked and talked and I heard him say That she had the longest, flattest hair
The prettiest green eyes anywhere And the resume of his latest flame
Though I smiled, the tears inside were burning I wished him luck again but he set it afire
He was gone but still his words kept returning What else was there for me to do but cry?
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From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
Wow.
Talk about a program that's getting a lot of response from the audience.
We're getting a landslide here, and that's good.
I think that's good, both good and bad.
You know, people upset with Richard's politics, other people fascinated with the possibilities, and all the rest of it.
But massive reaction both ways, and I think the reason for that is because everybody is finally sinking in out there.
It's finally sinking in that we may really have an energy problem.
and so or you know positively or negatively the good thing is people now
are beginning to pay attention i think this might punctuate what i just said uh...
Mark, the webmaster, not of this website, he writes and says, hey, looks like your guest's website has crashed and burned.
Well, we do that to a lot of websites on this program, but that is an indicator of the kind of interest that there is right now in all of this, Richard, and I'm getting a landslide of interest.
You know, people fast blasting in giant multitudes, people E-mailing me and all the rest of it.
In other words, the interest level is extremely high right now.
Both positive and negative, I have to say, but very high.
And so, I don't remember that day.
We've done shows like this before and people go, you know, they don't respond because what they pay at the pump is, well, you know, annoying, but okay.
What they pay for their electric bill, annoying, but you know, okay.
And they were comfortably Ready not to take any action, but you know, it seems like we've reached a kind of a, I don't know, we're at a certain point here.
We're about to go over that point.
Huh?
Oh, yeah.
We've definitely reached the point.
We're beyond it now.
The costs for energy are going to go up.
It's going to become more and more available.
And what scares me more than that is the fragility of the lines of supply.
Well, maybe you would like to address that, Richard, because, you know, the old story about the grid was that the grid is interconnected everywhere!
So, like the Internet, why you can't take it out?
Because if you take out one little part of the grid, the rest of it doesn't go down!
It's protected!
But, well, you know, It just doesn't seem in reality like it happens that way.
When we have the entire northeast part of the country, or the American southwest or the western part of the country, it goes out and then eventually they trace it to, they always say, you know, something fell on a line over there in the deepest part of Michigan somewhere, or some damn thing, and that caused it all.
How can that happen when the grid is supposed to prevent all that?
Well, it could prevent all that if it was Had the capacity to do it.
But the point is that we have stretched it to the absolute limit.
You know, there's two years ago we had blackouts and brownouts in California because folks were using more than they could get their hands on.
And part of this was financial, part of it was technical.
But the point is the grid is stretched to the max.
All it takes is a small problem and it instantly magnifies.
And it's not going to get any better.
We haven't been putting in new generating capacity.
We haven't been putting in new lines.
So then to me, again, the concept of the grid was one part goes down, the rest of it picks it up.
What you're saying is that every one of these facilities is stretched right to the very end of its capacity.
So when one little one goes down, the next one goes over capacity, boom, it goes down, the next one, boom, goes down, and it gets worse as you go.
That's right.
That's right.
And the only way to prevent this is to A, use less, and B, produce more.
And producing more, in my book, means, hey, get your own first, all right?
Put solar up on your house.
If you do this, then when the grid goes out, if you have some batteries in there, you won't even know it happened.
Okay, well then, to me this means, Richard, that the entire concept of the saving concept of the grid is really Achilles' heel as well.
Well, yeah, that's true.
Okay, listen, a lot of people want to talk.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Perez, hello.
Hi, my name is Red and I'm from Northern Arizona.
Welcome.
And, thank you, and I live in a mobile home and I wondered if there's any manufacturers out there that are making solar-friendly mobiles.
That's an awfully good question.
In general, no, because of the nature of the home and the fact that it has to be moved.
But I'll tell you what solar installers have been doing for mobile homes.
We'll put you up a power shed right outside.
A little 10 by 12 shed right outside, PVs on the roof, batteries if you want them, inverter inside, and your house can be as solar as anyone else's house.
And if you want You know, we can also put solar hot water up on there too, so your water is heated by solar.
Alright, I have a question about pre-manufactured homes, Richard.
Mobile homes, whatever you want to call them.
You know, they have very nice double, even triple wide ones now.
There's a story out there that's widely believed, and I want to know if it's true or not, and that's that pre-manufactured homes are, because of the nature of the way they're made, you know, they're made in mass, right?
and they're manufactured so they actually have better tolerances in the home and they actually have a have a foot-for-foot
better insulation as well is not a true statement or is that what what would you use horse pucky no
are it that that is a true statement for some of them and anybody buying a
manufactured home should look at the R values right and out thoroughly because you can get them all over
the place Well, those stories you hear are, well, since they're manufactured, you know, the tolerances are better.
You don't have leaks and drafts in the house and that kind of thing.
That's pretty much horsepucky, because, you know, most modern construction is wrapped in Tyvek and vapor barriers, and homes are getting so tight these days, regardless of whether they're pre-manufactured or assembled by carpenters, that you're going to have air quality problems inside the house.
You know, that's a matter of air leakage.
When you're dealing with thermal characteristics, you're dealing strictly with insulation.
Gotcha.
All right, all right.
International Line, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello, where are you?
I'm calling from Tassus, British Columbia.
Okay, what's up?
Good evening, gentlemen.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Sure.
Jeez, first off, you're playing coy.
Is oil over on the June after dark?
At any rate.
The cost of oil.
I work on a research vessel, and to fuel that thing up, about $100,000 Canadian at a go.
Military vessels, the number of fleets out there, running on diesel fuel, on a severely tapped oil system, the crunch has to come, I suppose.
I run a diesel.
Are we allowed to mention brand names?
No.
Okay, well, I have a... I mean, we could, but I'm not letting you.
I mean, what is your overall question, sir?
I'm running a 1986 pickup truck on a four-cylinder diesel engine that I run on fryer fat, basically.
Okay.
And now I'm looking to try and manufacture my own.
I've heard in India and in China... Try and manufacture your own what?
Biodiesel, basically.
Alright, alright.
Richard, how about that?
It's easy to do.
Really?
Easy to do.
You just take a bunch of oil, and this can be used oil like French fry oil or donut oil or whatever, and you heat it up and you put a little sodium hydroxide, that's a lye, in there.
And then you warm it up.
It breaks up the long fatty chains into shorter chains.
This is something you can do in your garage.
We've got instructions on how to do this in home power.
Oh great!
It's easy to do.
So you use lye and you break it down and then it's ready to use?
That's ready to use.
And the only change you're going to notice in your diesel is your exhaust is going to smell like french fries.
How happy are people who are using that kind of lash-up?
Extremely happy.
So much so that commercially made biodiesels available in three filling stations in the local valley around here.
Really?
Yes.
And it costs a bit more than regular diesel.
Why?
I have no idea.
Mainly because it's new.
But you're telling me now, I've got an RV.
It's a diesel RV.
And so, I could go fill up somewhere on this stuff and smell like a big rolling french fry?
Yeah.
You're telling me?
Yeah.
And it wouldn't harm my diesel engine?
No.
Well, that kind of sounds like fun!
It's, uh, feasibly doable.
Alright.
First time caller on the line.
You're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
Hey, I'm calling from Palmdale, California.
Yes, sir.
And it's a pretty windy place up here, so I made the commitment.
I went ahead and I put in a wind electric system, and I got the rebate here from California, the renewables buy-down rebate.
Right.
But about nine months after I installed the unit, I had a major meltdown, and I had to ship it back to the factory, and they had the thing for about seven months.
They promised it to me after about five weeks.
Right.
Consequently, it's been nine months, and I finally was able to put the thing back up last week, and it's really nice to see my meter spin backwards again.
But I wanted to ask Richard, and I am a subscriber to Home Power Magazine, by the way, Richard, and I really like your magazine.
Oh, thank you.
My question, though, for you is, what is your opinion of the small wind industry?
All right.
Oh, that's such a very good question.
I have the same question, Richard.
The small wind industry, it is a small industry and I, too, have had a couple of wind generators up, albeit beta testing for the companies.
But, you know, I've had a little trouble not to pull down and put up new ones.
Where are we today?
Well, I wish I could say these things were trouble-free.
They are not.
I've had three wind generators in the last ten years.
They break.
It is a very difficult job.
To put something like that up on a tower and just say we're not going to deal with it.
There are maintenance issues.
Some are better than others.
You get what you pay for.
But, you know, wind is, in my opinion, for the folks who are into maintenance, who are into tinkering, who are into, let's climb up the tower and check it out.
No, see, that wouldn't be me.
Then you're a solar kind of guy, and I'm a solar kind of guy.
I've got a wind generator up.
It's down right now, but I'm putting another one up.
You know, wind should be, it's like the cheapest Per kilowatt, I had heard that wind was actually cheaper than solar.
It is cheaper than solar.
As a matter of fact, the major new capacity that utilities are installing is wind.
But we're not talking home scale here.
We're talking megawatts.
But the maintenance, I mean, you said it yourself.
The callers had it.
I, too, admit it.
I'm waiting on the newest, latest, greatest model.
The question is, are we approaching A point where a person can go buy a wind generator, put it up, and forget it like they can solar panels?
No, we're not going to do that.
I mean, solar panels, you stick them out in the sun, they're going to be, they're warrantied for 25 years these days.
And they're going to be producing energy probably for 50 to 100 years.
You know, there's nothing that is supremely reliable as a solar panel.
Sorry, that's just the way it is.
Okay, well, I'll let you know the latest.
I'm going to do that pretty soon.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
Hello.
I'm calling about, well, a quick program note.
Tomorrow, when you do the UFO thing, a bumper song that you don't play very much, it's wonderful, called If I Ever Am Abducted, Don't Let It Be The Grey.
Oh, it's been a long time.
If you have that, it's so wonderful.
Alright, well, we'll see.
Okay, the other thing is, there is a Sky Car that you Interviewed the professor that was making that some years back.
That would be the Mahler Skycar, yes?
Yes, and I think that would be fabulous as a new energy source.
And the third thing is about... Wait, wait, wait, wait.
It wouldn't be a source, dear.
Well, I thought... A Mahler energy car would have to use fuel.
Well, I thought it was... He had different ways of having it go than... Well, anyway, that... When you interview him next time, I'm looking forward to it to see what he's put together.
And also Bob Lazar, maybe between the two of them.
Okay.
You know, with Bob Lazar's stuff and his.
Alright, well let's talk for a second about Bob Lazar and hydrogen.
Now, Richard, I believe that President Bush has begun motion to move us toward a hydrogen energy source economy.
What do you say about that?
Probably not in his lifetime, but You know, this whole business with fuel cells, they're called fuel cells for a reason.
They take fuel.
The fuel is hydrogen.
Where we are getting this hydrogen right now for these fuel cells is natural gas.
So what you're saying is it takes power to make power?
Yes.
Fuel cells are not energy producers.
They're merely energy converters.
See, a lot of people have it fixed in their mind.
Fuel cells.
Sounds like it's something from Star Trek, almost.
And they think that it generates energy.
And it's just a container for hydrogen.
And you've got to get the hydrogen in there, right?
From somewhere, yes.
Now, if we were to make this hydrogen from the electrolysis of water, from splitting water up into hydrogen and oxygen, and if we were to use the electricity that did that from solar wind, then hey, then we have a sustainable setup, and fuel cells are part of it.
But if we're using natural gas... Well, is it, wait a minute, is that realistic to create hydrogen from water using, let's say, solar cells as the electrical source?
Is that... Absolutely.
It is?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's been done before.
It's been done a number of places, in universities, experimentally.
By home power readers in their backyards.
It's doable.
And you run stories, do you not, about people who do exactly that?
The story of how they do it, how the mechanism is put together, and how they end up with the hydrogen, and how they use it.
It includes all of that?
And how they use the hydrogen, yes.
That's pretty cool.
They use it not only through fuel cells, but they Burn it in room heaters.
They burn it in stoves.
And hydrogen is a wonderful thing to burn because the only byproduct is water.
No carbon involved.
Right.
But if you're putting natural gas into this, then you're adding another load to an already overstressed natural gas system.
I mean, we're running short of this stuff.
We don't need to be planning an economy based around it.
Right.
OK.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Perez.
Hello.
I'm proud of you two fellows and what you've done so much better than myself.
Two quick statements and a question.
One, the question is, do these LEDs that run off 120 volt AC make noise and interfere with my radio reception of Art Bell?
The answer to that is no.
I run them here so they don't bother anything.
Next question.
These are statements where you use that foam on the outside the house where you get cold up in Canada.
Don't make it more than about one and five-eighths inch thick, otherwise it becomes a vapor barrier and you'll get ice out there on the wall.
Is that something you agree with, Richard?
Yes.
Don't run your refrigerator where it's beneath 50 or 60 degrees.
You'll violate the warranty and destroy the compressor at about 600 bucks.
Is that right, Richard?
Um, I run mine down to about 35 degrees.
Um, I've been running our RE refrigerator that way for, I'll see, almost 11 years now.
No problems.
Okay.
Well, you know, I guess everybody wants to, you know, separate the bull from the real McCoy.
And Homeowner Magazine does that?
Yes.
Our entire crew lives with the products that we write up.
We have half the crew off grid.
The rest of them are utility intertied.
When we write something up, it's no bull.
We're talking about personal experience here.
That's certainly worthwhile.
So you all live what you write.
You live it.
Yes.
That's how we got started doing this.
We started doing it for ourselves and we said, hey, you know, this is great and we want to tell folks about it and that's how we got started doing this 16 years ago.
And are you ever tempted to write anything that you ought not because of a potential sponsor for an advertisement for your magazine?
We have lost full-page advertisements because I refuse to write up products.
We will not accept advertising from products that we know ...are not as advertised.
We just don't do that.
Well, that's called integrity, and I think you've got a lot of it.
Richard, thank you for being here tonight.
The program is over.
We're out of time.
Oh, thank you very much for having me, Art.
I enjoyed it immensely.
You're very welcome, my friend.
Good night.
That's Richard Perez from Home Power Magazine.
Tomorrow night, Dr. Stephen Greer, along with ABC, This is going to be quite a night.
Quite a night indeed.
Richard Greer has been threatened.
Tomorrow night, you'll get to hear it from the high desert.
Good night.
Riders on the storm.
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